The morning was cold, with fine driving rain, when at eight o'clock I
alighted from a hansom before my own house in Bath Road, and entered
with my latch-key. In the dining-room I found Annie, the housemaid, in
the act of lighting the fire, but turning suddenly upon me with
surprise, she exclaimed:
"Oh, sir! You gave me quite a turn! We didn't expect to see you back
again just yet."
"Why not?" I inquired, with some surprise. "We thought you were with
the mistress, sir."
"With my wife. What do you mean?"
"Mrs. Holford obeyed your telegram, sir, and has left for Italy."
"For Italy!" I gasped. "Where's Miss Gwen? Go and ask her if she can
see me at once." And I followed the maid upstairs.
In a few moments Gwen Raeburn, my wife's sister, a young, pretty, dark
girl of seventeen, who wore a big black bow in her hair, came out of her
room wrapped in a blue kimono.
"Why, Harry!" she cried. "What's the matter? I thought Mabel had gone
to join you."
"I've just come down from Glasgow, where I've been on business," I
explained. "Where is Mabel?"
"I don't know, except that I saw her off from Victoria at eleven the day
before yesterday."
"But why has she gone?"
"To meet you," replied the girl. "The morning before last, at a few
minutes past eight, she received a telegram signed by you, urging her to
meet you at the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Florence at the earliest
possible moment. Therefore she obeyed it at once, and left by the
eleven o'clock train. It was a terrible rush to get her off, I can tell
you. But haven't you been in Florence?"
"No, I've been in Scotland," I repeated. "Did you read the telegram she
received?"
"Yes; it was very brief, but to the point. Mabel was annoyed that you
had not told her the reason you had gone abroad without explanation.
She feared that, in view of your preoccupied manner of late, something
disastrous had happened to you. That's why she left so hurriedly. I
wanted to go with her, but she wouldn't allow me."
"I wish you had gone, Gwen," I said. "There's some plot here--some deep
and treacherous conspiracy."
"Why, what has happened?"
"A lot has happened," I said. "You shall know it all later on. At
present I haven't time to explain. I suppose the telegram isn't left
about anywhere?"
"Mabel took it with her."
"You didn't notice whence it had been despatched?" I asked.
"From Turin. We concluded that you had halted there, on your way from
Paris."
I was silent. What plot had those blackguards formed against me and
mine! Why had my dear wife Mabel been decoyed out to Italy by them? I
grew apprehensive and furious.
My sister-in-law descended with me to the dining-room. She saw my
agitation, and after the first surprise had worn off tried to calm me.
"There's a perfectly feasible explanation, I'm sure, Harry," she said.
"Perhaps it is some practical joke being played upon you and Mabel by
your friends. They want you out in the South for a week or two to
escape from the cold and wet of the London spring. I wouldn't worry, if
I were you."
"Ah, Gwen!" I sighed. "You are unaware of all the grim circumstances,"
I said. "There's a serious conspiracy here, I'm convinced. The hand of
a secret enemy has been lifted against me."
Had that crafty servant at Sussex Place dispatched the false message, I
wondered? Or was it Kirk himself? And if so, with what motive? Was
Mabel, my beloved and devoted wife, to fall helplessly into their
unscrupulous hands? My blood rose within me when I reflected how
innocently I had walked into the trap which my mysterious neighbour had
prepared for me.
I took up a Bradshaw, and saw that if I left Charing Cross by the boat
train at 2:20 I might, by good chance, catch the night mail for Italy by
the Mont Cenis from the Gare de Lyon. I could only do it if we ran into
the Gare du Nord in time. But from experience I knew that the afternoon
service to Paris was pretty punctual, and one usually arrived in the
French capital about 9:20. Then, by the aid of a taxi-cab, I could get
across to the Lyons station in time.
So I decided to make the attempt. I had been in Italy several times
when a youth, and knew Italian fairly well. My father, before the smash
in his fortunes, had rented a villa for several years up at Vallombrosa,
in the chestnut-clad mountains above Florence.
"May I come with you, Harry?" pleaded my sister-in-law. "If Mabel is in
any danger it is only right that you should take me to her."
I knew how devoted the girl was to her sister. A year ago she had come
to us from Caen, where she had been at school, and among the languages
in which she was proficient was Italian. I hardly cared, in the
circumstances, to leave her alone; therefore, although a big hole must
be made in my slender bank account, I resolved to take a second ticket
for her.
When I announced my decision her dark eyes sparkled with delight, and
she clapped her hands.
"You are a real good brother, Harry!" she cried. "I don't want any
breakfast. I'll go and begin to pack at once. I've never been in
Italy, you know."
I told her that in the circumstances of the rush we must make across
Paris I could only allow her hand-luggage, and she sped away upstairs to
put on her frock and to commence placing her necessaries together.
Afterwards, greatly agitated and full of dark apprehension, I got on, by
telephone, to the Wagon-Lit office in Pall Mall, and reserved berths for
us both on the Rome express from Paris as far as Pisa, where I knew we
would be compelled to change. Then I addressed a long telegram to Mabel
at the Hotel Grande Bretagne, on the Lung' Arno, at Florence, explaining
that she was the victim of a bogus message, but that we were rejoining
her at once, in order to bring her home.
I judged that she must already have arrived in Florence, but
unfortunately there would be no time to receive a reply ere we left
London.
Having despatched the message, I went round to the garage, and, telling
Pelham of my sudden call abroad, gave him certain instructions, drew a
cheque for wages, and otherwise left things in order.
Then I called upon Miss Kirk, but she denied all knowledge of her
brother's whereabouts. The _Times_, which I had just bought in the High
Road, Chiswick, contained no advertised message from him. Nor did I
expect any.
My intention now was one of bitter retaliation. I had been befooled by
the man who I had proved held secret knowledge of the mode of the poor
Professor's tragic end. By this message to my wife someone had touched
my honour, and I intended that he should dearly pay for it.
Gwen, girl-like, was all excitement at the prospect of this flying
journey to the south. At one moment she endeavoured to reassure me that
nothing was wrong, while at the next she expressed wonder at the motive
of the mysterious message.
At last, however, we found ourselves seated in the corners of a
first-class carriage, slowly crossing the Thames on the first stage of
our dash to Italy. The outlook was grey and cheerless, precursory,
indeed, of a dismal conclusion to our journey to the far-off land of
sunshine. We got out at Folkestone Harbour, however, well to time, and
that evening were fortunately only seven minutes late in arriving at the
Gare du Nord. We had dined in the train, so, therefore, entering a
taxi-cab, we were soon whirled across Paris to the Gare de Lyon, where
we had only eight minutes to spare before the departure of the _rapide_
for Rome.
All that night, as I lay alone in my sleeping-berth while the great
express rocked and rolled on its way to the Alpine frontier, my mind was
full of gravest apprehensions. Gwen had been given a berth with another
lady at the further end of the car, and I had already seen that she was
comfortable for the night. Then I had turned in to spend those long
dreary hours in wakeful fear.
I could discern no motive for inveigling my wife--with whom Kirk had
never spoken--to a destination abroad. Yet one curious point was quite
plain. That mysterious dweller in Bath Road--the man with the pet
parrot--was well aware of my absence in the north. Otherwise he would
not have forged my name to a message sent from Turin.
For what reason could he desire Mabel's presence in Florence? He must
have some object in her absence. Perhaps he foresaw that her absence
meant also my absence--and that my enforced journey meant a relaxation
of the vigil I had established upon the man who had gone north on the
night of the Professor's assassination. That was the only feasible
theory I could form, and I accepted it for want of any better. But in
what a whirlwind of doubt and fear, of dark apprehensions and breathless
anxiety I now existed you may well imagine.
Gwen, looking fresh and bright and smart in her blue serge gown, came to
me next morning, and we had our coffee together at a wayside station.
Though we sat together through the morning hours until we stopped at the
frontier at Modane, she refrained from referring to the reason of
Mabel's call abroad. The young girl was devoted to her sister, yet she
did not wish to pain or cause me any more anxiety than was necessary.
After passing through the great tunnel, emerging on the Italian side and
coming to Turin, where we waited an hour, the journey became uneventful
through the afternoon and evening until the great bare station of Pisa
was reached, shortly before midnight.
Here we exchanged into a very cold and very slow train which, winding
its way in the moonlight through the beautiful Arno valley all the
night, halted at the Florence terminus early in the glorious Italian
morning.
"_Fi-renze! Fi-renze_!" cried the sleepy porters; and we alighted with
only about half a dozen other passengers who had travelled by that
_treno lumaca_--or snail-train, as the Tuscans justly call it.
Then, taking one of those little open cabs so beloved by the
Florentines, we drove at once to the well-known hotel which faces the
Arno, close to the Ponte Vecchio.
Florence, in the silence of early morning, looked delightful, her old
churches and ponderous palaces standing out sharply against the clear,
blue sky, while, as we passed a side street we caught sight, at the end
of the vista, of the wonderful black-and-white facade of the Duomo, of
Giotto's Campanile, and Brunelleschi's wondrous red-tiled dome.
A few moments later we stepped from the cab and entered the wide,
marble-floored hall of the hotel.
"You have a Mrs. Holford staying here?" I asked in English of the
manager, who was already in his bureau.
"Hol-ford," he repeated, consulting the big frame of names and numbers
before him. "Ah, yes, sir; I remember! But--" He hesitated, and then
inquired, "Will you pardon me if I ask who you may be?"
"I'm Henry Holford, madame's husband," I replied promptly.
And then the man told us something which caused us to stare at each
other in speechless amazement.
The man was a liar--and I told him so openly to his face.
His astounding words rendered the remarkable enigma more complex than
ever!