THE HOUSE BY THE RIVER
From her window Marjorie could see the broad and sluggish river. When
the fog did not veil every object from sight, she caught a glimpse of
big ships passing up and down; fussy little tugs drawing strings of
lighters, brown-sailed barges that went with stately leisure to the
sea. In the foreground was marshland, uncultivated.
The sluggish river, for such it was at distance of a quarter of a mile,
was the river Thames; the marshland was that unlovely stretch of swamp
on its north bank, between Southend and Barking.
By putting her face close to the window she could see a small,
low-roofed building, tarred and weatherproof, from which men in white
overalls came and went.
The house she was in was an old one, as houses go. It was built of
brick; the rooms were lofty and cold and a little damp. Even in the
room which had been allotted to her use, the paper had peeled off
the wall in great pieces, and not even the fire, which the hard-faced
Italian woman who attended her kept fed, dispelled the chilly
dreariness of the apartment.
She had been brought here by night from the house on the cliff. She had
lain down to sleep after supper in her Kentish prison and had awakened
to find herself lying in the room she now tenanted.
The knowledge that they must have drugged her food filled her with
panic.
The day following her arrival she had refused to eat or drink, and now
it was not until the Italian woman had partaken from the dishes she
supplied, before Marjorie’s eyes, that the girl consented to touch the
food.
Fortunately, she numbered amongst her accomplishments a working
knowledge of Italian. Of late she had polished up her acquaintance with
the language. Frank’s work mainly lay in Italy, and she had seen the
necessity of becoming proficient.
But she received no satisfactory reply to any of her inquiries. She had
not seen Festini since that day on the cliff, though she had heard his
voice often enough.
She guessed rather than knew that in the little low-roofed house near
by was being prepared that terrible culture which was to bring England
to her knees in submission.
Everything that Festini could do to relieve the monotony of her life,
he had done.
She was plentifully supplied with books and papers, and to serve her
table he had secured a perfect Italian cook.
The only man she had spoken to was a tall giant of a man whom she had
seen on the cliff with Festini.
He answered her questions gruffly and in monosyllables.
He had merely come into the room, she gathered, to see to the security
of the bars which had been fixed outside the window. She was ill with
anxiety; she dare not give her imagination its rein.
It was Frank she thought of--Frank, who she knew would be distracted
with grief; and at night she alternately wept and prayed for the
strength and sanctuary of his arms.
It was on the third day following her abduction. She was sitting trying
to read by the window, when the click of the lock brought her to her
feet.
She heard the voice of Festini outside, and in a moment he had come
into the room, locking the door behind him.
They stood confronting one another. She had walked swiftly to the
centre of the room and placed the table between them.
“Well?” he said, with his pleasant smile. “I hope you have everything
you want.”
She made no reply at once. Then--
“I want my freedom,” she said.
“That,” he said, with a little bow, “I am sorry I cannot grant you. It
is necessary for my health and security that you should stay a little
longer. Afterwards, I hope to make you the wife of one of the richest
men in Europe.”
“That will never be,” she said steadily. “I would sooner be the first
victim of the plague you threaten than endure that humiliation.”
He winced at the words.
“It is no humiliation,” he said, a little haughtily. “In my veins runs
the best blood of Italy. It is an honour to be the chosen bride of
Festini.”
She was amazed at the unexpected vanity of the man.
She had never regarded him, even at the most friendly period of their
relationship, as more than a rather good-looking, well-mannered member
of the middle classes. That he should esteem his birth as being
sufficient to make him superior to censure was a strange point of view.
She looked at him, in spite of herself, with an added interest.
“I ask you to be my wife,” he said.
He emphasized the words.
“You ought to realize that, in addition to doing you an honour, I am
also acting with great magnanimity. You are here alone,” he said,
“entirely and absolutely at my mercy. You are surrounded by men and
women who would question no act of mine, however barbarous it might
seem to you. Do you understand?”
She understood too well.
She was safe unless she made quasi-friendly relationships impossible.
She had need to temporize.
He may have guessed what was passing in her mind.
“Understand,” he said, “there is no escape from here, except as my
wife. I will be patient without you. I have been patient with you,” he
went on. “To-morrow a priest will marry us according to the rites of my
Church.”
“To-morrow!” she gasped.
“To-morrow,” he said, a little mockingly. “It is rather soon, is it
not? And you have no trousseau!”
He waved the objection away.
“That is a detail which can either be arranged or can be overridden.”
He made no attempt to touch her.
“May I sit down?” he asked.
She nodded, and he drew a chair forward to the table and seated himself.
“I think I ought to take you a little into my confidence,” he said,
in his pleasant, matter-of-fact manner. “It is necessary to expedite
matters. Your friend--how do you pronounce his name--Mansingham?--was
picked up by a fishing smack. I think he swam out to sea and picked up
the smack, but it is immaterial. He is alive, and, I have reason to
believe, talkative.”
He saw the look of hope spring up in her face, and smiled.
“The fact that he will be able to identify me with this act of
abduction,” he went on, “embarrasses me, but, fortunately, our scheme
is so far advanced that there is no longer any necessity for me to
disguise my association with the Red Hand.
“The only thing which is a trifle annoying is that I must stay in this
deadly place a few more days. All the work that is to be done my
agents can do. But for your presence here it would be an impossible
situation. Not for all the gold in England could I rusticate by the
banks of the Thames--alone.”
His dazzling smile bewildered the girl. He had a trick of discussing
the most outrageous propositions with a serious and convincing air. It
was all superficial, but then his superficiality bit deeper into him
than into most men.
At heart she knew him to be a cold-blooded and remorseless man who
would stop at nothing to gain his ends. It was only that the veneer
of civilization was thicker, that the brute within him did not lie so
close to the surface, which distinguished him from his comrades.
But the streak of cruelty was there, as he showed.
“By the way,” he said, “I met Mr. Gallinford the other day, and
condoled with him upon your disappearance.”
“You brute!” she flamed. “How dare you mock me!”
“I like you when you are like that,” he said admiringly. “You almost
tempt me to continue to tell how ill and worn he looks.”
He laughed, but there was no note of merriment in the sound.
“A singularly thick-headed man! Had he been an Italian he would
have known by my face, by the change in my eyes when your name was
mentioned, that it was I”--he pointed to himself--“who had robbed him.
But then these Englishmen are so phlegmatic! They soon forget. You
must not worry very much about your Frank,” he said, as he rose to go.
“In a year or two he will have married some comfortable Englishwoman,
and have settled down to a life made up with shooting pheasants and
discussing defective drainage.”
She was incapable of reply.
He went out of the room and locked the door behind him, leaving her
alone, with her head on her arms--weeping from very anger.
He found Il Bue in the room below with two men who had just come in
from the laboratory he had arranged in the wooden shed.
“Well?” he asked moodily, as he flung himself into a chair at the head
of the table. “What are the developments?”
“Signor,” said one of the men, “everything is ready. We have secured
perfect cultures, even more perfect than those dispatched to the
Bacteriological Institute.”
Festini nodded.
“To-morrow I shall receive the government’s reply. I have asked them to
advertise that reply in the columns of a newspaper.”
“And what will it be?” asked Il Bue, his eyes fixed upon Festini’s face.
Festini shrugged.
“Who knows?” he said. “I think at the eleventh hour they will agree to
my terms.”
One of the assistants in white was a thick-set man with a sour,
bad-tempered face. He took no part in the subsequent discussion on the
methods to be adopted for the distribution of the plague.
Festini had made elaborate precautions and had issued exhaustive
literature for distribution amongst the members of the Red Hand.
He was sincere in his desire that the agents of his organization should
escape the consequences of their own villainy.
When the discussion was finished, the surly man jerked his head round
to Festini. He was sitting on his right hand, his elbows on the table,
his big, fleshy hands clasped.
“What about this woman, Signor Festini?” he asked.
The young man looked at him steadily.
“‘This woman’?” he repeated softly. “I do not know whom you mean.”
The stout man jerked his head upward. He was the kind of man who moved
in jerks.
“She who is upstairs,” he said.
Festini got up very slowly from the table.
“You will understand, Gregorio,” he said, in his honeyed tones, “that
you will never refer to that lady in such a way. Indeed,” he said
carefully, “you will never refer to her at all.”
“There are no secrets from the brethren,” grumbled the man. “We all
want to know what is the plan with regard to her.”
Without a word Festini’s hand leaped out; his quick, strong fingers
caught the other by the throat; with a sidelong twist he forced the
man’s head back over the table.
Festini was a strong man despite his frail physique.
“You dog!” he hissed into the man’s purple face. “Must I answer to you
for all I do?”
The man struggled to recover his balance, but a long bright blade
flashed in front of his eyes.
Festini hesitated, then he released his grip, and the man staggered up
to his feet.
“Remember this,” said the count. “Remember it all your life, Gregorio.
It may serve you well one day--the recollection.”
The man was livid and shaking.
“I’m sorry, signor,” he said humbly; “it was thoughtless. I did not
intend to offend your excellency.”
With a curt nod Festini dismissed him.
“And understand,” he said, “that I will not spare any man who speaks
slightingly or lightly of the lady who is to be the Countess Festini.
There is my plan, if you wish to know it. That is enough--too much,
perhaps--certainly enough. I give you my best--you must give me
obedience and faith. That is all I ask.”
He was in no mood of tolerance. George Mansingham had arrived in
England, and by this time Tillizini knew what he had already guessed.
London was unsafe for Festini, and he was the type of man who scorned
any disguise.
He must fret away his time in this God-forsaken spot; the fulfilment of
his plans demanded it.
He stopped in the house long enough to don the white overall which had
distinguished his companions, and went into the long wooden shed, Il
Bue and the two men joining him at the entrance of the hut.
The only light came through a big skylight. House and shed had formed
part of a boat-builder’s establishment, long since bankrupt and fallen
into decay. It suited his purpose admirably. It was far enough away
from the high road to obtain seclusion. He had a plausible excuse for
the presence of his men. The premises were ostensibly part of the
properties of a little company he had formed some time before for the
manufacture of synthetic rubber.
There is something about synthetic rubber and its manufacturers and
inventors which keeps an amused public at bay.
The shed was divided into two parts. In the first there were a number
of test tubes, retorts, and scientific apparatus upon a large bench.
The entrance to the second room was obtained through a stout door,
which was fastened by two padlocks.
These the big man unfastened. Before he opened the door he pulled up
from his chin an antiseptic mask, which he brought over his face and
secured to the hood of his white gown.
The others followed his example.
They took up rubber gloves from the bench in the outer room and drew
them on. Il Bue pulled the door open and a faint sweet scent came out
to greet them.
In the centre of the inner and smaller compartment was a long narrow
table on which, at intervals, rested four deep porcelain dishes under
glass bell covers.
They were no more to the sight than narrow strips of glass coated with
a light brown gelatinous substance, but each glass case held death in a
terrible form.
Festini looked at them curiously. It was almost impossible to believe
that these innocent-looking strips of dull glass could play so powerful
a part.
“That is all?” said he, half to himself.
“That is all, signor,” said Il Bue.
His big face was twisted in a puzzled grin.
“It seems a very simple thing,” he said suspiciously. “Why, I could
smash it out of existence with a blow of my fist.”
The man with the sour face looked up at him sideways.
“You would die very soon,” he said.
He was the chemist of the party, a brilliant man with strange gifts,
who had been brought into association with the Red Hand and found an
outlet in their operations for the lawless and perverse spirit within
him.
Festini turned and led the way from the room. He waited till Il Bue
re-padlocked the door, then he stepped out of the shed, slipping down
his mask.
The fresh air came to him like a sweet, refreshing draught; it seemed
to him that he had tasted the very atmosphere of death and desolation
in that tiny room; that it was already tainted with the plague he was
about to spread widecast.
He made no other attempt to see the girl; he was satisfied with that
one interview. He remained in his room, reading by the aid of a
portable electric lamp such comments of the press upon the Red Hand as
his agents had collected.
At ten o’clock there were two new arrivals. In one of these Festini
was particularly interested; it was the priest he had secured for the
marriage ceremony.
Psychologists have endeavoured to get at the state of Festini’s mind;
to analyze by set formula the exact proportions. Was he wholly villain?
Were the fantastic acts of chivalry, preposterous as they were, under
the circumstances in which they were displayed, indications of a better
nature?
Tillizini, in his exhaustive analysis of the man’s character, had
regarded such acts as this contemplated marriage as merely evidence of
habit. Festini’s long association with men and women of his class had
endowed him with an habitual respect for certain conventions. This was
Tillizini’s estimate, and was probably an accurate one, for he knew the
man.
The priest he had chosen had been brought post-haste from Italy and had
travelled night and day. He was a man known to the association as being
“safe”; he himself was suspected of complicity in certain outrages
which had shocked Italy in the year before the great trial. He himself
had stood with the other sixty prisoners in a cage in the criminal
court, but, thanks to ingenious perjury, he had escaped punishment.
Festini greeted him without cordiality, with the grave respect which
a true son of the Church shows to his spiritual superior, and with
the faint hint of patronage which the greater intellect instinctively
adopts toward the lesser.
He gave orders for the priest’s accommodation, and, after the brief
interview, was again left alone.
It was near midnight when Festini threw himself down on a truckle bed
to snatch a few hours’ sleep. In the early hours of the morning his
spies would bring him news of the premier’s reply. He fell into an
uneasy, fitful sleep, a sleep disturbed by bad dreams, such as were not
usual with him.
There came a light knock and he went to the door. Il Bue was waiting.
“What is it?” asked Festini.
“One of the brethren has just come in,” said the man, who was palpably
disturbed. “He came on his bicycle from where he has been watching the
London road, and he says that some soldiers are marching from London.”
Festini made a gesture of impatience.
“Did you wake me to tell me that?” he asked irritably. “Haven’t you
been long enough in England, my friend, to know that soldiers have
nothing whatever to do with police work? This is not Italy, it is
England. Go--tell your scout to return to his post, to watch not for
the army, but for Tillizini and his friends.”
He went back to his room and again lay on the bed, pulling a soft,
camel’s-hair rug over him. He tossed from side to side but could not
sleep; he got up after a little while and went out. A man was keeping
guard outside the door.
“Go to Caterina,” he said, “and tell her to make me some chocolate.”
A few minutes later the woman brought him in a steaming bowl on a
tray. She set it before him and he acknowledged it with a curt word of
thanks, when a thought occurred to him.
“Caterina,” he said, calling her back, “your lady is well?”
“Yes, padrone,” she replied. “I saw her two hours ago, before she was
asleep.”
Festini nodded.
“See her again now,” he said. “I will go up with you.”
Taking a lamp from the bracket in the narrow passage of the house, the
woman led the way upstairs, and Festini followed.
He waited outside the door whilst the woman unlocked it and entered. He
heard a smothered exclamation.
“Padrone!” cried the woman wildly. “Padrone!”
He rushed into the room. The little bed in the corner was empty. The
window was open and three of the bars were missing. Marjorie Meagh had
gone!