"The Signore has taken three second-class tickets to Tivoli."
Tivoli! What, I wondered, was their object in going out to Tivoli at
that hour?
I watched them pass the barrier on to the platform; then I myself took a
ticket for the same destination, passed through, and entered an empty
compartment of the waiting train. I saw, however, that while Miller and
his friend were in a second-class carriage, the young man in the grey
felt hat was in a third-class compartment. They were evidently taking
precautions not to be seen in his company.
I was sorely tempted to slip across to the police office and ask the
_delegato_ to allow a detective to accompany me. Yet if I did this I
should only be giving Miller into the hands of the police, and thus
quite ruin all my chances of discovering the truth. No. If I wished to
find out what was in progress I was, I saw, compelled to continue
fearless and alone.
Something desperate was in progress, otherwise they would never have
sought the services of that young Camorrist. Miller was far too
gentlemanly a rascal to associate with common criminals.
The train was a slow omnibus one, and it was past midnight before we
drew into the station of Tivoli. I held back, allowing all three to
alight before me, and saw that, on the platform, they separated and
passed out singly, as though unacquainted. A detective was idling at
the barrier as is always the case in Italy, but their appearance did not
attract him and they took the dark road leading towards the ancient town
which in the daytime commands such beautiful views of Rome and the
Campagna, the town that has always been a popular summer resort even
since the Augustan age when Maecenas, Hadrian and the Emperor Augustus
himself had their villas there, and gave their marvellous fetes.
As I followed the trio, who still walked separately, I could hear the
quiet of the night was broken by the thunder of the giant waterfalls,
for me a fortunate circumstance, as the sounds of my footsteps were
deadened. In Miller a strange transformation had been effected. He had
been conspicuous in his suit of white, yet now he was in dark clothes.
He had adopted the trick often practised by malefactors of wearing one
suit over the other, so as to be able to enter a place wearing a light
suit and gay-coloured scarf, and leave it three minutes afterwards
dressed entirely differently. He had simply slipped off his white
cotton suit while in the train and had either thrown it out of the
window, or left it beneath the seat of the railway-carriage.
Railway searchers and platelayers, even in England, find complete suits
of clothes more often than one would imagine.
From the station at Tivoli the road to the town, part of the ancient
Valeria, runs down to the St Angelo Gate. There it branches out in two
ways, one entering the town across a high bridge, and the other
continuing up the hill and out into the country.
The three men took this latter road, a winding tortuous one which led up
past an ancient castle and away to the heights behind. There were no
lights, but the night was not exactly dark, and I could distinctly see
the white road before me and the figures moving forward. One had gone
on rapidly in front, while the other two also walked separately as
though strangers.
Suddenly I saw the figure nearest me leave the road and pass into a
vineyard. Then a few minutes later, as I went on, I lost sight of the
other two and at the same time found that we had reached a splendid old
_cinquecento_ villa, an enormous place the back of which abutted on to
the road. Its great square windows were closely barred as they had been
in those old turbulent days when every house had been a fortress, and
from the great entrance gate with its crumbling stone lions on either
side ran a long dark cypress avenue. The ponderous gate was covered
with sheet iron so that I could see only the tops of the trees within.
This was, I supposed, the Villa Verde, the country-house of the man who
had died unrecognised in the boarding-house in Shepherd's Bush.
There was no door leading to the roadway save the great entrance gate.
Through that Miller and his companions had certainly not passed,
therefore I concluded that they had reached the house by a secret way
through the vineyard.
Careful to remain always in the shadow, and moving with greatest
caution, I retraced my steps, entered the vineyard at the point where I
had seen one figure disappear, and after a few moments discovered a
narrow path through the trailing richly laden vines which led through an
open gate to a small side door in a wing of the great old building.
I tried it. The handle yielded. They had passed through there, without
a doubt!
Should I enter there? Was I not perhaps risking my life in so doing?
They were a desperate trio. I knew well my fate, if they discovered
that I had learned their secret.
I held my breath. Then with sudden resolve, I slowly pushed the door
open and peered eagerly within.
Next instant I drew back aghast.
What I saw there staggered me. I was not prepared for it.