I reached Venice by the midnight express. St. Hilary was waiting for me
on the platform.
“St. Hilary!” I cried with affected gaiety, “what brings you here at two
o’clock in the morning?”
“Ah, what!” he grumbled. “Have you no imagination? But wait till we are
in my gondola. You are going to your rooms, I suppose?”
We were scarcely seated when he turned eagerly toward me. His yellow
face was haggard for want of sleep and lined like an old carved ivory,
but in the pale light of the lamps of the landing I saw his eyes gleam.
“You are in good enough spirits to have good news. Come, no one can hear
us now. Tell me of your little trip to Russia.”
I recounted to him the story of my fruitless journey. He listened to me
in silence. When I had finished, he drew aside the curtains of the
gondola and looked out.
“I might have known that you would have just such ill luck,” he said
bitterly, and did not again speak until we had reached the Giudecca.
We entered the Grand Canal. One thinks of the Grand Canal as a _mise en
scène_ for endless processions of tourists. Your true _flaneur_ shuns
it. He keeps, as far as possible, to the cool blue shadows of the little
canals.
But to-night this majestic waterway laid a fresh spell on me. It awed
me. This silent stream, black as death, was full of mystery. A menace
lurked in the deep shadows of the great palaces, pallid and ghostlike in
the darkness. The steel prow of our gondola, curving upward proudly,
dipped and glided through the inky waters. Is there in the whole world
anything inanimate so graceful, so almost alive, so light and so cruelly
sharp and strong as the prow of a gondola? It is the very incarnation of
the spirit of the Venetians of the Renaissance.
To-night, as we penetrated the gloom that was absolute, except for the
light of a tiny lantern on the deck forward, I could put myself back in
the middle ages. I could see the black barge of the _Fante_, the captain
of the inquisitorial guard, swiftly rowed with muffled oars to the
palazzo of the unhappy wretch who had offended against the laws of
Venice. The barge stops at his door; the bolts are slipped by a spy
within; the messenger of torture and imprisonment, somber as the night,
makes his way to the bedside of the doomed man. He starts from his deep
sleep; he is beckoned silently down the echoing stairs; he seats himself
in the black barge; and so, shivering, he goes to his end.
We shot into one of the narrow, crooked little canals. And now our
gondola scraped the very walls of the window-barred store-houses that
once overflowed with the wealth of the Orient. It was impossible to
think of myself as a simple gentleman with a letter of credit at my
bankers. St. Hilary and I were marauders, adventurers, brawlers, and
this prosaic umbrella between my knees was a long, keen blade, ready for
a lively bout with the watch.
We were in the Giudecca now, dodging this chain and that of the shipping
moored along the Fondamenta della Zattere. As we made for the shore
opposite, the rain, which had been coming down in a gentle drizzle, fell
smartly, and St. Hilary shouted to the gondolier to row faster.
Giudecca quarter is anything but fashionable. Gondoliers repeat the word
twice with scorn when the tourist expresses a wish to go there. Steamers
from Greece and America, laden with corn, are anchored along its quay.
From early dawn to night, hundreds of barefooted stevedores, each with
his sack on his shoulder, patter up the narrow plank that spans ship and
shore. An instant they poise their burden on the scale that stands at
the doorway of the magazines, while an official from the customs-house
jealously notes that it is full weight. Then shouldering it again, they
are swallowed up in the cavernous interiors.
Most of the old palaces of the Giudecca have degenerated into these
store-houses. But here and there, as a thing so insignificant that it is
overlooked, one finds a low-ceiled _trattoria_, where at the noon hour
the stevedores drink the strong wines of Chioggia and shout out their
lusty songs; or it may be an infinitesimal shop, where sharp-faced old
women sell fish and cheese and cherries.
All day long children sprawl and quarrel and play on the sun-baked
pavement; and artists paint endless pictures of the red and orange sails
drifting slowly by, with the Salute and Ducal Palace for a background.
Yes, the Giudecca quarter is the quarter of the people. But to me the
stevedores, the children, and the haggling old women have a charm all
their own. And here, at the Casa Frollo where I lived, no red-booked
tourist sets foot.
Our gondolier, winded with his long pull against wind and tide, steered
for some steps a hundred feet this side the Casa Frollo. I called to him
to row farther up the quay, but St. Hilary irritably declared it easier
for us to walk the distance than for him to row.
“But why walk in the rain?” I expostulated. “And how are you going to
return to your hotel on the Riva if you dismiss your gondolier?
Gondoliers hereabouts at two o’clock in the morning are as rare as
horses on the Piazza.”
“It happens that I don’t intend to return to-night to my hotel. As a
matter of fact there will be no bed for you, my dear Hume.”
“No bed? It is not possible that you have already brought back our
clock?”
“It is not only possible, it is true. I returned this evening in time to
get your telegram and to meet you.”
“You have had it repaired in a week?”
“Yes; so far as it could be repaired.”
“Then there could not have been much the matter with it.”
“As it happened, there was not.”
“Then it seems to me that your trip to Amsterdam was not so very
remarkable after all?” I grumbled.
“Sometimes,” quietly replied St. Hilary, “one has to go to a great deal
of trouble and expense to get a merely negative result. Sometimes it is
necessary to find out simply what a thing is not.”
“And have you found out that it is not, after all, an automaton clock?”
“My dear fellow, be reasonable. In the first place, this clock had to be
set going. It was too intricate a piece of mechanism to entrust to any
blundering workman. Are you going to find fault because it has been set
going without any trouble or delay? Every wheel of its works had to be
taken apart.”
“And the object of that?”
“It was absolutely necessary that we should be certain that the secret
of the clock, provided it has a secret, is told by the automata, and
that this secret was not hidden in its works. Now, at least, we know
what _not_ to look for.”
“The automata themselves, then, hold the secret?”
“So far as we can tell at present. The fact is, I have heard only two of
the hours strike.”
“And were the automata of the hours that you saw in working order?”
“One of them at least was, though, I confess, the result was slightly
disappointing. However, I certainly did not expect the secret of the
clock to be on the surface.”
We walked up the quay in silence. Suddenly, as we were crossing a
bridge, St. Hilary seized my arm, his familiar gesture always for
silence and caution. He looked over the parapet. Half a dozen black
gondolas, swaying in the wind, were tied to rings in the wall. In one of
them sat a man. A piece of tarpaulin protected him from the rain. As we
looked at him he struck a match to light his pipe, and I saw his face.
“Did you ever happen to see that gondolier before?” demanded St. Hilary
as we walked on.
“Never, so far as I know,” I answered idly, peering through the rain for
the landmark of Palazzo Frollo, two ridiculously small marble lions on
the rail of the balcony of the second story.
“Hum, then perhaps I was mistaken. By the way, I met the duke on the
Riva as I was going to the station to meet you.”
“Indeed?” I said indifferently. I was fumbling for my night-key. I had
insisted on that essentially Anglo-Saxon convenience, and the door had
been fitted with a lock at my expense. I glanced up carelessly at the
windows of my sitting-room, after the manner of one who has been away
from home for a few days. A light was shining through the chink of the
shutters. I pointed it out to St. Hilary.
“I remember you told me that you had brought the clock to my rooms. You
left the lamp burning, I see.”
“I? No.”
“Then who can have been in my rooms?”
I heard St. Hilary chuckle in the darkness.
“Rather, say, who is in your room? _Pianissimo, mio caro._ It will be
amusing to surprise this midnight guest. No, no; not a light, and
silence.”
My rooms were on the second floor. We had to pass through the sala, a
huge apartment, at least forty feet long, a T-square in shape, and it
extended from the canal to the garden at the rear, the smaller part of
the T-square running along the side of the canal. The ceiling of immense
beams stretched from wall to wall. Once these beams had been gaily
decorated with geometrical designs; now they were dingy with a faded
coat of whitewash. The room was lighted by the feeble rays of a
night-lamp in a niche of the wall.
We tiptoed across the cold floor. Softly, very softly, I pushed down the
straight handle of the door leading into my room. I drew this door
cautiously toward me. A second door still hid us from the intruder, if
intruder there was. Cautiously I pushed it ajar, and looked through the
crack, St. Hilary squinting over my shoulder.
Duke da Sestos was seated in my room, and on a table immediately in
front of him ticked the clock. A lighted candle stood on either side of
it. He sat huddled in the deep armchair, his head sunk on his breast.
But he was not asleep. His elbows rested on the arms of the chair; his
legs were comfortably crossed. A box of cigarettes was at his elbow, and
at his elbow, too, a decanter of brandy–my brandy.
I closed the door, and at that moment we heard very faintly from within
an exquisite chime of silver bells. Then the hour of one was struck.
“By Jove, St. Hilary,” I said savagely, “is that brute to amuse himself
all night, drinking my liquors, listening to the chimes of our clock,
unmolested?”
“Not unmolested,” chuckled St. Hilary softly.
“Ah, then, we stop his little game!”
“With all the pleasure in the world.”
He took off his cloak. It was very thick and dripping with moisture. He
nodded at me, smiling.
“Yes, yes, you get the idea? Could a troublesome guest cry out
indignantly if this fine cloak kept his head warm, do you think?”
He spread out the cloak on one outstretched arm, and tiptoed to the door
again. I followed at his heels.
“But is this necessary?” I expostulated. “Why not throw him out without
any ado?”
St. Hilary looked at me with contempt.
“Do you forget the fourteen pages? We must see them. The chances are
they are in his pocket. We are to be burglars for the nonce, dear Hume,
and this cloak is to go over his head so that he won’t be too noisy.”
I nodded. “And the program?”
“It is very simple. His back is toward the door. When the next quarter
chimes, I push open the door softly. I give a twist to my good cloak,
and, _voila_, we shall have caught our prey. Blow out the candles, then
help me. We shall wrap the cloak comfortably about his head, so that he
can not see or hear. Then I go through his pockets. If the stolen pages
are there, very good. If not, his keys may be useful. Have you a rope?
We must fasten his arms and legs.”
“Yes, a trunk-strap.”
“Good. _En garde_, then. I am extremely thirsty. My poor lips ache for a
smack of that good liqueur.”
The clock chimed the half-hour sweetly. St. Hilary, holding the dripping
cloak before him like a shield, pushed open the door.