An hour later Castiglione was admitted to the little house in Via
Belsiana by a small man with eyes like a ferret and reddish hair,
who shut the street door at once but did not seem inclined to
let the visitor pass beyond the narrow hall without some further
formality.
‘The club is not open yet,’ he said, civilly enough. ‘You probably
do not know the hours, as this is the first time you have been
here, though you have the pass words.’
Castiglione understood that it was the doorkeeper’s business to
know the faces of those who frequented the place. He gave the man
twenty francs by way of making acquaintance.
‘Thank you,’ said the fellow, who had not failed to notice that the
pocket-book from which the notes were produced was well filled. ‘I
presume you wish to join the club, sir?’
He knew his business and was a judge of men at first sight;
a glance had assured him that the newcomer was an officer in
civilian’s clothes, and was therefore perfectly eligible to the
‘club.’
Castiglione only hesitated for a moment.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I should like to see the proprietor.’
‘The treasurer, sir,’ said the man, correcting him politely, but
with some emphasis, ‘is upstairs. If you will kindly step into the
reading-room I will ask whether he can see you. I believe he has
just finished his breakfast.’
Castiglione followed him through a long passage that turned to the
left, and the man unlocked the door of a room that smelt of stale
cigarette smoke. It was dark, but in a moment the doorkeeper turned
up a number of electric lights. The walls were full of mirrors, and
the furniture was of the description which must be supposed to suit
the taste of the wicked, as it is only found in their favourite
resorts. There was a vast amount of gilding, red plush and sky-blue
satin, and the table was covered with dark green cotton velvet,
fastened to the edges with gilt nails, below which hung a green and
pink fringe.
As the place was a reading-room it was natural that there should
be something in it to read. The literature was on the table,
and consisted of a new railway guide, a small framed and glazed
price-list of ‘refreshments,’ in which ‘Cognac’ was offered for the
modest sum of twenty-five francs the bottle, and an old number of a
disreputable illustrated paper.
Castiglione was not familiar with low places of any sort, and he
looked about him with surprised disgust. He was not left to himself
very long; the door opened and a broad-shouldered man with a white
face entered and shut it behind him. He wore a dark morning coat,
very well cut, and the fashionable collar and tie, but he smelt of
patchouli and his light hair curled on his forehead. Castiglione
felt an instant desire to throw him out, and would certainly have
done so at sight if the man had appeared in his own rooms.
‘Good morning. You wish to become a member of the club? Yes? A
little formality is necessary. The committee, which I usually
represent, decides upon the eligibility of candidates. There is no
election, no subscription, and no entrance fee, so that it is a
mere form.’
Castiglione watched the man attentively during this speech, which
was delivered in a glib and oily manner, and he wondered to what
nation the keeper of the gambling-hell belonged, for he had never
seen a specimen of the breed before, though it flourishes from
Port Said and Constantinople to San Francisco by way of Paris,
London, and New York. Like the cholera, it appears to have its
origin in the East. The specimens speak every language under the
sun with equal fluency and correctness, but always with a slightly
foreign accent, and they are neither Christians, Jews, nor Turks,
but infidels of some other kind. He who has not had business with
a Levantine blackleg or a Hindu money-lender does not guess what
guile dwells in the human heart.
Castiglione looked at the ‘treasurer’ and sat down on a gilt chair.
The man followed his example, and they faced each other with the
table between them.
‘Yes,’ said the Captain, as if agreeing to the conditions of
membership, which indeed seemed extremely easy to fulfil, ‘I quite
understand. But before joining your club I should like to ask for a
little information. I am told that the members sometimes play games
of chance. Am I right?’
‘Occasionally,’ replied the treasurer, ‘they do.’
‘Just so. I am an officer, as you may have guessed. Now, in the
other clubs to which I belong, you must be aware that we generally
play with counters, and that we settle once a week. Is that the
practice in your club, too?’
The treasurer smiled. Castiglione thought his face was like a mask
of Mephistopheles modelled in whitish ice-cream.
‘No. We play only for cash here.’
‘A very good way, too,’ said Castiglione in a tone of approval.
‘But I will suppose a case. If, for instance, a member of the club
loses all the cash he has brought with him, and if it is rather
late in the evening, and he wishes to go on playing in the hope of
winning back something, is there no way by which he can borrow a
little money without going home to get it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ answered the treasurer, falling into the snare. ‘When
the committee is quite sure that a member is able to pay we are
always glad to accommodate him with whatever he needs.’
‘I see! That is just as convenient as our system of counters. The
member merely signs a receipt for the money, I suppose, and settles
at the end of the week.’
‘Not exactly. The committee prefers a stamped draft at eight days,
and charges a small interest. You see an accident might happen to
the member----’
‘Quite so,’ interrupted Castiglione, ‘and the draft protects the
club, of course. There is only one more case about which I should
like to ask. Suppose, for instance, that the member in question
did not live in Rome, and that you did not know much about him.
He might be a rich foreigner, who had joined for a few days, and
though he might have come to the end of his cash, he might have
something very valuable about him, such as a handsome diamond or
ruby. Does the committee make an exception for him and accept
anything of that sort as security?’
‘Occasionally,’ replied the treasurer, ‘it does.’
‘Yes,’ said Castiglione in a thoughtful tone, leaning back in his
chair with his hands thrust into the deep pockets of his overcoat.
‘The committee lends money on valuables. That is very convenient.’
He glanced at the treasurer, who was smoking a huge Egyptian
cigarette, which he held with his left hand, while the fingers of
his right played a noiseless little tattoo on the green cotton
velvet of the table; they were white and unhealthy-looking, and
loaded with rings.
‘The object of the committee,’ said the man, ‘is to meet the wishes
of the members as far as possible, and to study their convenience.’
‘As in the case of Orlando Schmidt,’ observed Castiglione, keeping
his eye on the treasurer’s right hand.
The fingers at once stopped playing the noiseless tattoo and
lay quite still, though the treasurer gave no other sign of
intelligence; but that alone might mean a good deal.
‘Who is Orlando Schmidt?’ he asked, apparently unmoved.
‘Surely you remember him,’ answered Castiglione. ‘You cannot have
already forgotten Orlando Schmidt, and Carlo Pozzi of Palermo, and
Paolo Pizzuti of Messina!’
The treasurer’s face did not change, but his right hand moved
and disappeared below the edge of the green velvet to get at his
pistol. Castiglione was ready, and was too quick for him.
‘Keep your hands on the table and don’t call, or I’ll fire,’ he
said sternly.
The treasurer looked down the barrel of a full-sized army revolver,
and beyond it he saw Castiglione’s eyes and resolute jaw. There
is one point in which the breed to which he belonged does not
resemble that of the European adventurer; it is a breed of cowards
always ready with firearms but never able to face them. Moreover,
Castiglione had the advantage.
‘Don’t shoot!’ cried the man in manifest terror.
‘Sign this or I shall,’ answered Castiglione, not lowering his
revolver. With the other hand he pushed across the table a sheet of
paper on which he had previously written something; he then took a
fountain pen from an inner pocket and laid it before the treasurer.
‘Sign,’ he said.
The treasurer offered no resistance, and his fingers shook visibly
as he took up the pen and bent over the paper.
‘Under protest,’ he said feebly.
‘If you write anything but your own name I will kill you. I’m
watching the point of the pen. Never mind reading what is there.
That is my affair. Your business is not to be shot. Don’t sign an
assumed name either, or I’ll pull the trigger.’
In sheer terror of his life the man wrote his own name, or at all
events the one he went by in his business: ‘Rodolfo Blosse.’
‘You have lost the money you lent to Orlando Schmidt,’ said
Castiglione, withdrawing the paper, and quietly waving it to and
fro to dry the signature, ‘but you have the advantage of being a
live man.’
The revolver did not change its position.
‘You seem to think there are no laws in your country,’ said the
treasurer, who was afraid to move.
‘On the contrary we have excellent ones, many of which are made for
people like you. Now I am going. I shall walk slowly backwards to
the door, and if you move before you hear it shut after me you will
never move again. Stay where you are, facing the table, and keep
both hands on it.’
All doors in the resorts of the wicked have good locks, and
Castiglione turned the key after him and went back to the street
entrance, where the ferret-eyed porter was waiting.
‘Always after three o’clock, is it not?’ Castiglione asked
carelessly.
The man nodded as he let him out.
‘Yes, sir,’ he answered respectfully, thinking of the twenty francs
he had just received from the new member.
Castiglione walked briskly to the Piazza di Spagna, and then
slackened his pace and drew a long breath before he lit a cigar,
and repeated to himself the words that were written on the paper in
his pocket. He walked slowly home, and when he was in his own room
he spread the sheet out and wrote below Rodolfo Blosse’s signature:
‘_Witness_, BALDASSARE DEL CASTIGLIONE, _Piedmont Lancers_.’ Then
he folded the sheet again, placed it in an envelope, which he
sealed and addressed to the ‘Reverend Father Bonaventura of the
Capuchins.’
He got into his uniform again, and having placed the envelope in
the inner pocket of his tunic, he went to see his colonel, to
whom he had telephoned before going to Via Belsiana, asking to be
received on urgent business at three in the afternoon. The great
clock in the hall rang the Westminster chimes as he entered; it
was a remembrance of the time when Casalmaggiore had been military
attaché at the Italian Embassy in London.
He gave Castiglione an enormous Havana as they sat down by the
fire, and he lit one himself and offered to have Turkish coffee
made. Castiglione had forgotten to eat anything since he had come
in from riding in the morning, and he accepted gladly.
‘Is it about that mare?’ asked the Duca when he had rung and given
the order.
‘No, not this time.’ Castiglione laughed. ‘I have come for advice
in an affair of honour.’
‘Oh!’ The Colonel seemed annoyed. ‘What a nuisance!’ he observed
with some emphasis. ‘Wait till the man has brought the coffee.
Meanwhile, about that other matter--you have heard of my last
offer?’
The Count of Montalto’s Andalusian mare happened to be the only
thing, animate or inanimate, which the Duca di Casalmaggiore wanted
and could not get; for he did not even hanker after promotion.
There was not an officer in his regiment, old or young, whom he
had not employed in some piece of diplomacy in the hope of getting
possession of the coveted animal, and he began talking about her at
once, showing little inclination to listen to Castiglione’s story,
even when the servant had come and gone and they were drinking
their coffee. He quite ignored the fact that Castiglione and
Montalto were not on speaking terms, or he pretended to do so, for
which the younger man was, on the whole, grateful to him.
‘I am very sorry to change the subject,’ said the Captain, at last,
‘but this affair of mine is rather urgent.’
‘I had quite forgotten it! Pray excuse me and tell me what the
matter is.’
The Colonel settled himself with a bored expression and listened.
He greatly disliked duelling in his regiment, and invariably
hindered an encounter if he could. In his young days a great
misfortune had happened to him; in a senseless quarrel he had
severely wounded a brother officer, who had become consumptive in
consequence and had died two years later.
He listened patiently to Castiglione’s story, and then delivered
himself of a general prediction.
‘That infernal cousin of mine will be the death of one of us yet!’
He sent an inch of heavy ash from his cigar into the fire with a
vicious flick. ‘Why the devil did you go to see her?’ he asked,
very unreasonably.
Castiglione smiled but said nothing. He knew well enough that
Teresa Crescenzi had tried to marry Casalmaggiore, and that the
latter had been forced to make a regular defence.
‘There’s only one way to deal with such women,’ he observed. ‘Marry
them and separate within six months. Then you need never see them
again! What are you going to do?’
‘That is precisely what I have come to ask you, as my chief. The
honour of the regiment is the only question that matters to me. I
shall do whatever you advise. De Maurienne expects to hear from me
after five o’clock. As for the cause of the quarrel, Donna Teresa
must be quite mad.’
‘Mad?’ Casalmaggiore laughed. ‘You don’t know her! Don’t you see
that it is all a trick to make de Maurienne compromise her by
fighting a duel for her, and that he will be forced to marry her
afterwards, for decency’s sake?’
Castiglione looked at his colonel with sincere admiration, for
such tortuous reasoning could never have taken shape in his own
rather simple brain, though he now saw that no other explanation
of Teresa’s conduct was possible. The Duca smiled and pushed his
delicate grey moustaches from his lips with the dry tip of his
cigar, which he never by any chance placed between them. He seemed
able to draw in the smoke by some mysterious means without even
touching the tobacco, for in smoking, as in everything else, he
was a thorough epicure.
‘I hope,’ he said, his words following the fresh cloud he blew,
‘that de Maurienne will at least have the sense to act as I
suggested just now. In France he can do better. He can be divorced
without difficulty. Fancy the satisfaction of divorcing Teresa!
Can you see her expression? And she would be “a defenceless woman”
again in no time. Of all the offensive forms of defencelessness!’
He laughed softly to himself.
‘Meanwhile,’ said Castiglione, trying to bring him back to the
subject in hand, ‘I am afraid something very disagreeable may
happen.’
‘What is that?’ asked the Colonel, following his own amusing
thoughts and still smiling.
‘You see, I have never fought a duel, and as I am not inclined to
let de Maurienne run me through, I might kill him. There would
be very serious trouble if an Italian officer killed a French
diplomatist, I suppose, not to mention the fact that I should have
to spend a couple of years in a fortress.’
‘You are afraid you might upset the European concert, are you?’ The
Colonel seemed much amused at the idea. ‘But it is all nonsense,
Castiglione. There is not going to be any fight.’
‘But the man called me a coward to my face, Colonel! What am I to
do?’
‘Go home and go to bed. It’s the only safe place when Teresa is on
the war-path. If you want an excuse, I’ll put you under arrest in
your rooms, but that seems useless. Go home and go to bed, I tell
you!’
‘It’s rather early,’ objected Castiglione, smiling. ‘And meanwhile
Monsieur de Maurienne will be sitting up waiting for my friends.’
‘Dear Captain,’ said Casalmaggiore, ‘I have not the least idea what
Monsieur de Maurienne will do. If I say that I will be responsible
for your honour as for my own, and for that of the Piedmont
Lancers, and if I tell you that there will be no duel, Monsieur de
Maurienne may sit up all night, for weeks and weeks, so far as you
are concerned.’
‘That is a very different matter,’ answered Castiglione gravely. ‘I
have nothing more to say. If my honour can be safer anywhere than
in my own keeping, it will be so in your hands. Do you really wish
me to stay at home this evening?’
‘Yes, unless you want a couple of days’ leave, though we have a
general order from headquarters not to allow officers or men leave
to go further than three hours by railway. Trouble is expected
owing to these strikes, and we shall probably be doing patrol duty
next week! You may have two days if you like.’
‘Thank you, no. I’ll go home.’
Castiglione made a movement to get up.
‘No, no!’ objected Casalmaggiore. ‘I have not told you everything
about that mare yet. Stay a little longer.’
‘Certainly; with pleasure. But first, if it’s not indiscreet, may I
ask how in the world you are going to settle my affair?’
‘You may ask, Castiglione,’ replied the Colonel with great gravity,
‘but it is beyond my power to answer you; for I give you my word of
honour that I have not the slightest idea. Montalto knows perfectly
well,’ he continued without a break and in precisely the same tone
of voice, ‘that I will pay twenty thousand francs for the mare
whenever he likes, and that’s a large price in Italy.’
After that Castiglione made no further attempt to talk about de
Maurienne, and his colonel kept him till after four o’clock.