Whether the recognition had been mutual I was unable to decide.
If it had the newcomer made no sign, but extended his hand and greeted
me, while I, striving to remain unconcerned, returned his welcome.
"Your father tells me he's driving over to Swanage at half-past ten,
Miss Lucie. Are you coming with us?" he asked, as he lounged with his
hands deep in his jacket pockets, and an after-breakfast cigarette
between his lips.
"I don't think so," was her reply. "I'm lunching with the Strong
girls."
"Oh, do come," urged the dark-faced man. "You'd be back before one.
You promised me yesterday that you'd drive me somewhere."
"So I will--to-morrow, perhaps."
I watched the man's thin shaven face, and looked into his grey eyes in
silence. His was a countenance striking on account of its clear-cut
features, its mobile mouth, its high intellectual forehead, and its
protruding jaws--an eminently clever, good-humoured face, and yet the
expression in the eyes was, somehow, out of keeping with the rest of the
countenance.
He laughed lightly, making some chaffing remarks, whereat the slight
flush that arose in Lucie's cheeks told me that she was not altogether
averse to his evident admiration. He was a pleasant fellow--but,
nevertheless, a mystery.
His appearance there had, for two reasons, startled me. The first was
because I had no idea that Miller had a male visitor, and the second was
because I recognised him as a person whom I had long desired to
rediscover.
The last occasion I had seen him he had called himself Lieutenant
Shacklock, R.N. It was in very different circumstances. He had worn a
moustache and beard, and affected a gold-rimmed monocle. His personal
appearance as he stood there laughing with Lucie was, however, very
different, yet those cold grey, close-set eyes were the same. They wore
an expression that could never be altered or disguised.
We spoke together once or twice, and I began to feel convinced that he
was unaware of our previous meeting.
"Yes," he remarked to me. "Beautiful old place this. I wonder my
friend Miller doesn't live here more. If I were in his place I'm sure
I'd prefer it to wandering about the Continent."
"You've been here before, I suppose?"
"Many times. Miller, when he's home, generally invites me," and then he
turned to Lucie, by whom he was undoubtedly attracted. Little wonder,
indeed, when one recognised how handsome she was.
I again stood silent, my eyes turned upon the spruce man's face--the
face that brought back to my mind a curious and mysterious incident in
my wandering life abroad.
When one travels on the Continent as I had travelled, spending years of
aimless wandering and lazy idling in the halls and smoking-rooms of
hotels of the first order, making passing acquaintances of men and women
of all grades and all nations, listening to music in illuminated
gardens, and sometimes wandering with some fair _table-d'hote_
acquaintance beneath the stars, one meets with some queer adventures. I
had met with a good many. One of them I now found myself recalling.
Three winters before I found myself, after the brilliant season at Monte
Carlo, at a little sea-side resort called Nervi, which, as travellers
know, is a few miles beyond Genoa, on the way to Rome. You have
possibly looked out of the train and there obtained a glimpse of the
blue Mediterranean beating upon its brown rocks; you have admired the
splendid white villas of the Genoese merchants, and you have, probably,
noticed behind the little railway station a great hotel garden, with
green lawns and a splendid avenue of spreading palms.
In that garden one April night after dinner I was strolling and smoking
with two men, who were friends. We had met casually in the hotel a few
days before; a pleasant word or two, cocktails in company, a proffered
cigar, and we at once became acquaintances, as is the way of
cosmopolitans. The elder was named Blenkap, a man of sixty, a wealthy
ironmaster from Pittsburg; while Shacklock, the other, was much younger,
smart, and had just retired from the Navy.
That night we wandered through the gardens to the sea, which lay like
glass beneath the light of the white Italian moon, with the waves
sighing softly upon the shingle. But Blenkap, after half an hour,
complained of being rather unwell, and while the lieutenant went into
the town to purchase some cigarettes I accompanied his friend back to
the hotel.
It was then about ten o'clock, and refusing to allow me to call a
doctor, the American went to his room. At two o'clock in the morning I
was awakened by the night-porter, who said that number ninety-seven had
asked him to call me. Hastily I dressed, and, on going along the
corridor, found Blenkap in bed in a state of collapse.
"I'm very ill; the pains in my head are terrible," he whispered to me.
"Will you call a doctor--somebody who speaks English, if possible?"
His white face alarmed me, and I left him and went along to the
lieutenant's room at the other end of the corridor. To my knock there
was, however, no response, but on turning the handle and opening the
door, I found the room in darkness and empty. He had not returned.
Therefore I hurried out, and in half an hour returned with an Italian
doctor who spoke a little English.
On entering the room I noticed that the doctor sniffed the air
mysteriously as he crossed to the patient, who I now saw was
unconscious. He examined him, asked me a few brief questions, and then
fixing his eyes upon me, exclaimed in Italian:--
"This is a rather curious affair, signore."
"Why?" I inquired. "The gentleman was taken this evening while we were
walking together. He complained of bad pains in his head and stomach."
"Yes, but who gave him the anaesthetic?" asked the doctor.
"Anaesthetic!" I exclaimed. "Why nobody, as far as I know."
"Well, chloroform has been given him, and quite recently. He struggled
against it--don't you see?" and he indicated the American's clenched
hands and the disordered bed. "How long were you absent?"
"About half an hour."
"Then some one must have come here while you were away," the doctor
declared, stroking his dark beard very thoughtfully. At first I was
alarmed lest the unfortunate American might die, but the doctor, after
due examination, assured me that there was really no danger. For half
an hour we sat and waited, until at length the man to whom the
anaesthetic had been so mysteriously administered regained
consciousness. It was a slow recovery, but when at length his dull eyes
fell upon me he beckoned me to him and with excited gestures pointed to
a leather-covered box beneath a table opposite. I pulled it out and
tried the lock. It was still secure, and he nodded in satisfaction.
Presently the doctor left, and I returned to bed, but imagine my blank
amazement next morning when, just as I was sipping my coffee in my room,
Blenkap dashed in, crying:--
"I've been robbed! That fellow, Shacklock, did it! He must have crept
into my room while you were away, rendered me senseless, took the key
from the gold chain I always wear around my neck, opened the box,
extracted the whole of the money and jewellery, relocked the box, and
then had the audacity to replace the chain around my neck!"
"But he is your friend?" I exclaimed, with astonishment.
"I only met him a fortnight ago at the Grand at San Remo," he answered.
"He was there with a friend of his--probably a thief also. But he came
on here alone with me. The fellow has taken over eighty thousand
dollars!"
I hurried with him to the _questore_, or chief of police, and telegrams
were quickly despatched hither and thither, but the thief had evidently
got back to Genoa by the train at three o'clock in the morning, and
embarked at once upon some ship for a Mediterranean port--Naples,
Marseilles or Algiers. At any rate, though I remained a month in Nervi,
we never heard further either of the easy-going naval man, or of the
eighty thousand dollars in American notes and negotiable securities.
Without doubt it was intended by the thief, or thieves, to throw the
first suspicion upon myself, but fortunately the night-porter stated
most positively that he had seen the lieutenant coming from his friend,
Blenkap's room, ten minutes before my return with the doctor. The man
had left the main door of the hotel ajar in order to admit us, and it
was evident that by that means the thief got away unnoticed.
The robbery had been an ingenious and audacious one, and showed the
clever cunning of a master-hand.
As you have, no doubt, already guessed, the man who so cleverly got hold
of Blenkap's money, and who had escaped so swiftly, I now recognised as
the affable Lieutenant Shacklock, the intimate friend and guest of James
Harding Miller.
Was not his presence in that house sufficient to convince me that what
had been suspected of Miller was more than a mere surmise? It had been
declared that Lucie's father, though a county gentleman, was also head
of the most daring association of criminals in Europe. It seemed to me
that Gordon-Wright, alias Shacklock, was one of his ingenious
lieutenants whom he was entertaining in his cosy retreat--planning some
new scheme perhaps--and who was, at the same time, an ardent admirer of
the beautiful girl whose unhappiness and deadly peril was so great a
mystery.