“‘Then there is no ’urry, for she is not there.’
“‘You didn’t see her in the cave?’ I cried, too delighted at the
thought to keep it to myself.
“‘I had no such fortune,’ the old devil said.
“‘She is there, all the same.’
“‘I only wish I ’ad known.’
“‘And I’ve kept her long enough!’
“In fact I threw this over my shoulder as I turned and went running
down.
“‘I ’ope you will find her!’ his malicious voice came croaking after
me. ‘I ’ope you will—I ’ope so.’
“And find her I did.”
Raffles had been on his feet some time, unable to sit still or to
stand, moving excitedly about the room. But now he stood still enough,
his elbows on the cast-iron mantelpiece, his head between his hands.
“Dead?” I whispered.
And he nodded to the wall.
“There was not a sound in the cave. There was no answer to my voice.
Then I went in, and my foot touched hers, and it was colder than the
rock ... Bunny, they had stabbed her to the heart. She had fought them,
and they had stabbed her to the heart!”
“You say ‘they,’” I said gently, as he stood in heavy silence, his back
still turned. “I thought Stefano had been left behind?”
Raffles was round in a flash, his face white-hot, his eyes dancing
death.
“He was in the cave!” he shouted. “I saw him—I spotted him—it was broad
twilight after those stairs—and I went for him with my bare hands. Not
fists, Bunny; not fists for a thing like that; I meant getting my
fingers into his vile little heart and tearing it out by the roots. I
was stark mad. But he had the revolver—hers. He blazed it at arm’s
length, and missed. And that steadied me. I had smashed his funny-bone
against the rock before he could blaze again; the revolver fell with a
rattle, but without going off; in an instant I had it tight, and the
little swine at my mercy at last.”
“You didn’t show him any?”
“Mercy? With Faustina dead at my feet? I should have deserved none in
the next world if I had shown him any in this! No, I just stood over
him, with the revolver in both hands, feeling the chambers with my
thumb; and as I stood he stabbed at me; but I stepped back to that one,
and brought him down with a bullet in his guts.
“‘And I can spare you two or three more,’ I said, for my poor girl
could not have fired a shot. ‘Take that one to hell with you—and
that—and that!’
“Then I started coughing and wheezing like the Count himself, for the
place was full of smoke. When it cleared my man was very dead, and I
tipped him into the sea, to defile that rather than Faustina’s cave.
And then—and then—we were alone for the last time, she and I, in our
own pet haunt; and I could scarcely see her, yet I would not strike a
match, for I knew she would not have me see her as she was. I could say
good-by to her without that. I said it; and I left her like a man, and
up the first open-air steps with my head in the air and the stars all
sharp in the sky; then suddenly they swam, and back I went like a
lunatic, to see if she was really dead, to bring her back to life ...
Bunny, I can’t tell you any more.”
“Not of the Count?” I murmured at last.
“Not even of the Count,” said Raffles, turning round with a sigh. “I
left him pretty sorry for himself; but what was the good of that? I had
taken blood for blood, and it was not Corbucci who had killed Faustina.
No, the plan was his, but that was not part of the plan. They had found
out about our meetings in the cave: nothing simpler than to have me
kept hard at it overhead and to carry off Faustina by brute force in
the boat. It was their only chance, for she had said more to Stefano
than she had admitted to me, and more than I am going to repeat about
myself. No persuasion would have induced her to listen to him again; so
they tried force; and she drew Corbucci’s revolver on them, but they
had taken her by surprise, and Stefano stabbed her before she could
fire.”
“But how do you know all that?” I asked Raffles, for his tale was going
to pieces in the telling, and the tragic end of poor Faustina was no
ending for me.
“Oh,” said he, “I had it from Corbucci at his own revolver’s point. He
was waiting at his window, and I could have potted him at my ease where
he stood against the light listening hard enough but not seeing a
thing. So he asked whether it was Stefano, and I whispered, ‘Si,
signore’; and then whether he had finished Arturo, and I brought the
same shot off again. He had let me in before he knew who was finished
and who was not.”
“And did you finish him?”
“No; that was too good for Corbucci. But I bound and gagged him about
as tight as man was ever gagged or bound, and I left him in his room
with the shutters shut and the house locked up. The shutters of that
old place were six inches thick, and the walls nearly six feet; that
was on the Saturday night, and the Count wasn’t expected at the
vineyard before the following Saturday. Meanwhile he was supposed to be
in Rome. But the dead would doubtless be discovered next day, and I am
afraid this would lead to his own discovery with the life still in him.
I believe he figured on that himself, for he sat threatening me gamely
till the last. You never saw such a sight as he was, with his head
split in two by a ruler tied at the back of it, and his great moustache
pushed up into his bulging eyes. But I locked him up in the dark
without a qualm, and I wished and still wish him every torment of the
damned.”
“And then?”
“The night was still young, and within ten miles there was the best of
ports in a storm, and hundreds of holds for the humble stowaway to
choose from. But I didn’t want to go further than Genoa, for by this
time my Italian would wash, so I chose the old Norddeutscher Lloyd, and
had an excellent voyage in one of the boats slung in-board over the
bridge. That’s better than any hold, Bunny, and I did splendidly on
oranges brought from the vineyard.”
“And at Genoa?”
“At Genoa I took to my wits once more, and have been living on nothing
else ever since. But there I had to begin all over again, and at the
very bottom of the ladder. I slept in the streets. I begged. I did all
manner of terrible things, rather hoping for a bad end, but never
coming to one. Then one day I saw a white-headed old chap looking at me
through a shop-window—a window I had designs upon—and when I stared at
him he stared at me—and we wore the same rags. So I had come to that!
But one reflection makes many. I had not recognized myself; who on
earth would recognize me? London called me—and here I am. Italy had
broken my heart—and there it stays.”
Flippant as a schoolboy one moment, playful even in the bitterness of
the next, and now no longer giving way to the feeling which had spoilt
the climax of his tale, Raffles needed knowing as I alone knew him for
a right appreciation of those last words. That they were no mere words
I know full well. That, but for the tragedy of his Italian life, that
life would have sufficed him for years, if not for ever, I did and do
still believe. But I alone see him as I saw him then, the lines upon
his face, and the pain behind the lines; how they came to disappear,
and what removed them, you will never guess. It was the one thing you
would have expected to have the opposite effect, the thing indeed that
had forced his confidence, the organ and the voice once more beneath
our very windows:
“Margarita de Parete,
era a’ sarta d’ e’ signore;
se pugneva sempe e ddete
pe penzare a Salvatore!
“Mar—ga—rì,
e perzo e Salvatore!
Mar—ga—rì,
Ma l’ommo è cacciatore!
Mar—ga—rì,
Nun ce aje corpa tu!
Chello ch’ è fatto, è fatto, un ne parlammo cchieù!”
I simply stared at Raffles. Instead of deepening, his lines had
vanished. He looked years younger, mischievous and merry and alert as I
remembered him of old in the breathless crisis of some madcap escapade.
He was holding up his finger; he was stealing to the window; he was
peeping through the blind as though our side street were Scotland Yard
itself; he was stealing back again, all revelry, excitement, and
suspense.
“I half thought they were after me before,” said he. “That was why I
made you look. I daren’t take a proper look myself, but what a jest if
they were! What a jest!”
“Do you mean the police?” said I.
“The police! Bunny, do you know them and me so little that you can look
me in the face and ask such a question? My boy, I’m dead to them—off
their books—a good deal deader than being off the hooks! Why, if I went
to Scotland Yard this minute, to give myself up, they’d chuck me out
for a harmless lunatic. No, I fear an enemy nowadays, and I go in
terror of the sometime friend, but I have the utmost confidence in the
dear police.”
“Then whom do you mean?”
“The Camorra!”
I repeated the word with a different intonation. Not that I had never
heard of that most powerful and sinister of secret societies; but I
failed to see on what grounds Raffles should jump to the conclusion
that these everyday organ-grinders belonged to it.
“It was one of Corbucci’s threats,” said he. “If I killed him the
Camorra would certainly kill me; he kept on telling me so; it was like
his cunning not to say that he would put them on my tracks whether or
no.”
“He is probably a member himself!”
“Obviously, from what he said.”
“But why on earth should you think that these fellows are?” I demanded,
as that brazen voice came rasping through a second verse.
“I don’t think. It was only an idea. That thing is so thoroughly
Neapolitan, and I never heard it on a London organ before. Then again,
what should bring them back here?”
I peeped through the blind in my turn; and, to be sure, there was the
fellow with the blue chin and the white teeth watching our windows, and
ours only, as he bawled.
“And why?” cried Raffles, his eyes dancing when I told him. “Why should
they come sneaking back to _us?_ Doesn’t that look suspicious, Bunny;
doesn’t that promise a lark?”
“Not to me,” I said, having the smile for once. “How many people,
should you imagine, toss them five shilling for as many minutes of
their infernal row? You seem to forget that’s what you did an hour
ago!”
Raffles had forgotten. His blank face confessed the fact. Then suddenly
he burst outlaughing at himself.
“Bunny,” said he, “you’ve no imagination, and I never knew I had so
much! Of course you’re right. I only wish you were not, for there’s
nothing I should enjoy more than taking on another Neapolitan or two.
You see, I owe them something still! I didn’t settle in full. I owe
them more than ever I shall pay them on this side Styx!”
He had hardened even as he spoke: the lines and the years had come
again, and his eyes were flint and steel, with an honest grief behind
the glitter.