IN ITALY’S POWER.
Mrs. Vale was still too ill to attend Alexie’s marriage, so she had
entrusted Italy to Emmett Harlow’s care. When the carriage turned back
from the station where they had been to see the bridal pair off on
their wedding-tour, the young girl said:
“Let us drive to Mr. Gardner’s house. I must see him at once on
business of great importance.”
“Willingly,” replied Emmett, who knew much more than she supposed of
the affair which was taking her to the lawyer.
The Vales and the Gardners were on a very friendly footing now. Mrs.
Gardner was a charming woman, and had assiduously cultivated the
friendship of the Vales. No arguments would have made her believe
Italy’s mother a guilty woman. And she admired, above all things, the
beautiful, brave girl who had undertaken what her husband believed to
be such a Quixotic quest.
So when Italy and Mr. Harlow were announced, Mrs. Gardner rose to greet
them with beaming smiles of welcome.
Italy glided in, a vision of beauty in her snowy bridemaid’s gown, her
long wrap of rich golden-hued brocade bordered with fur, falling back
from her shoulders, giving a glimpse of rosy-white throat and arms
escaping from “lace like the hoar-frost, fine and thin.”
“You beauty!” cried Mrs. Gardner, embracing her fondly and holding her
so long in a close clasp that Mr. Gardner cried out humorously:
“Aren’t you going to let me speak to Italy?”
While he was shaking her cold little hand she saw over his shoulder
another form, tall, broad-shouldered, blond; her heart gave a
strangling leap of keen emotion. It was Professor Doepkin, whom she had
never met since the night he had saved her life. He had been absent
from his boarding-house ever since--on business, Emmett said.
When the German saw that beautiful vision in the center of the room he
rose up with a decidedly sheepish air and stood back of the lawyer,
waiting his turn to greet beauteous Italy. In a minute she had dropped
Mr. Gardner’s hand and pushed resolutely past him.
“Professor Doepkin--oh, what a delightful surprise! You are the person
I have been dying to see for a whole week!” she cried out eagerly,
earnestly, and with just a soupçon of raillery in her tone.
Both of her beautiful hands were outstretched to him so frankly that
he was compelled to take them in his and mutter something, he was not
conscious what, in his surprise, and she went on softly in that voice
like sweetest music.
“Oh, how can I thank you for that night? We are so grateful to you,
mama and I! We owe you our lives. People have told me how brave you
were, what a terrible risk you ran! And we were strangers to you, too.
Oh, sir, you are a hero!”
“It was a trifling risk, and it was well repaid by my pleasure in
saving two precious lives. Please say no more about it, Miss Vale,”
returned the German, in perfect English, although a trifle huskily, and
dropping her hands, for she had left them in his, while her glorious
eyes beamed on his with a look that made him long to gather her to
his heart and crush all that beauty and sweetness passionately in his
yearning arms. But he fought the temptation, and drew back a little
stiffly to hand her a chair.
“Pray have this seat, Miss Vale.”
She flashed him a look of deep reproach and turned her back on him with
sudden scorn.
“Mr. Gardner, I wished to see you--alone,” she said, a little bruskly.
“Certainly, my dear; we will go to the library. You will excuse us,
friends.”
In the library, her face lost the brightness that had flashed into it
at sight of the German, and grew pale and troubled.
“Oh, sir, my scheme failed utterly. Percy Seabright married Mrs. Dunn,
and sailed for Europe with her afterward.”
His face reflected the chagrin of her own.
“Could he have received your note?”
“I cannot tell. The messenger was well paid to deliver it promptly,
and to return and inform me how he received it, but he never came back.”
“He deceived you, probably, although there is a possibility that
Seabright might have gone on, and married her after--all. There are
some men, you know, who actually admire a woman with a soupçon of the
devil in her. I think _he_ did, and thus we are foiled. But take heart,
child. He will return, and, after all, it may be easier to work on our
clues in his absence, for as yet we have nothing to serve as a basis
for an arrest.”
She paced up and down the room, chafing with impatience.
“And what of the spy you placed in his house to search for the diary?
Was there no success?”
“None. Yet he searched carefully every room in the house but one.”
“And why not that one?”
“He could not gain access to it. The housekeeper had it locked always,
by her master’s orders, and it was further guarded by being situated
so peculiarly that it could only be entered by going through the
housekeeper’s room. She said it was nothing but a closet with some
old trunks in it, but her close watch over it proved that there was
something more important.”
Her eyes flashed with eagerness.
“Oh, if only I could get into that house!” she cried.
“Impossible, Italy. It is no place for a young girl. There would be
danger in the very air.”
He saw her face whiten, but he dreamed not at what terrible
recollection, and continued:
“No really respectable woman would even enter Percy Seabright’s
bachelor home. It is a sort of club-house for his intimate friends, and
I think they sometimes take women there--second-rate dancers, singers,
and actresses who are reckless of their reputations. To these they give
suppers and wine-parties. You see how it is, Italy.”
“Yes, Mr. Gardner, and it makes me frantic. I am so sure that a woman
would succeed where a man would fail.”
“But, my child, I sent a female detective when my man failed. Even she
was no match for the caution of Mrs. Smith, the wary housekeeper, who
guards the hidden room.”
She made a gesture of despair, and tore up and down the room like some
wild caged thing, her long white silk train sweeping behind her on the
thick carpet, her jewels flashing, and the old lawyer watched her with
yearning sympathy. He longed to help her, but fate seemed to baffle him
at every turn.
Suddenly she paused before him with a queenly air, and cried out
impetuously:
“Mr. Gardner, I swear to you I believe that if I could stand in the
presence of that woman, that housekeeper, I could force her to deliver
me the key of the room she guards so jealously.”
“Are you mad, child?”
“No, Mr. Gardner, only desperate with baffled energy. Oh, come, you
and your wife, with me to that house, and let me try. Surely there
would be no danger for me then! Oh, come, come! My carriage waits. We
can leave Mr. Harlow here till our return.”
Something in her face and voice compelled him to accede.
“Wait here, and I will bring my wife,” he said, hastening away, and, on
returning, he had his wife’s consent.
Directly the three entered the carriage and were driven rapidly to
Percy Seabright’s secluded home.
Mrs. Gardner had taken the precaution to wrap Italy and herself in
long, dark-hooded cloaks, with veils, so that there was no chance of
recognition. Thus equipped, they entered the house when the door was
opened to them at Mr. Gardner’s summons with the bell. They were shown
to the parlor that Italy remembered so well, with the portrait of Percy
Seabright smiling from the wall.
A deadly sickness seized Italy the moment that she entered the room
that had been the scene of such a fateful tragedy.
“You are trembling, Italy. You should not have come here,” cried Mrs.
Gardner, fearing she would faint. But the girl answered huskily:
“Do not fear for me; I am excited, that is all.”
They had sent for Mrs. Smith, and at this moment she entered
elaborately dressed, and gazing in surprise at her elderly visitor and
his two veiled companions.
Mr. Gardner rose and said stiffly:
“Mrs. Smith, this young lady wishes to see you alone a few minutes. Can
you take her to any room close by?”
“Certainly, sir.”
But the woman looked her vast surprise as Italy’s veiled figure rose up
to follow. She opened a door to the right.
“We can go into the library,” she said.
Italy went with her, and the door closed. Then the girl threw back her
veil, disclosing her beautiful, pallid face.
“Do you remember me?” she asked nervously.
The woman started wildly.
“So you are alive?” she cried, in a voice of keen relief. “Oh, how
often I have wondered over your fate since that night when you
disappeared so strangely from this house!”
“Oh, tell me of that night!” cried Italy tremulously. “It is all a
blank to me from the minute I fell down senseless after witnessing the
murder of Harold Severn, until I was rudely awakened by a policeman at
dead of night, wandering about the streets of Boston clad only in a
thin night-dress.”
“Oh, then you must have got up and gone away in your sleep. I always
thought that must have been the way of it. It did not look like any one
would have carried you off like that!”
And while Italy listened eagerly she continued:
“You were unconscious so long that I carried you to my own room,
undressed you, and put you to bed. Presently you roused up in a dazed
sort of way, and I gave you a very light sedative and you fell asleep
like a tired child. So I left you and went back down-stairs, for, of
course, I was frightened to death at what had happened, and did not
want a sensation in the house over a murder. With the help of a trusty
servant, I got the body safely out of the house, and we took it to
the river and threw it in. Then, returning, we took up the parlor
carpet, and hurriedly removed all traces of the crime. Then I went
up-stairs again to see after you. To my horror, you were gone in your
night-dress, leaving your clothing all there.”
“I am at times a somnambulist. I must have gone away in my sleep and
walked the long distance to Boston without waking,” explained Italy.
“Yes, that must have been the way. I often wandered what became of you,
and, oh, I was so thankful you did not betray what had happened and
send the police here!” cried Mrs. Smith.
“I ought to have done so,” answered Italy sternly. Then her voice grew
tremulous as she asked:
“You did not think I committed the murder, did you?”
“Laws, no, miss, for to tell you the truth, I saw it done myself.”
“You?” cried Italy, in wonder; and the housekeeper replied:
“Yes, miss; to tell the truth, I was peeping through that keyhole there
into the very room where you were, and I saw a woman’s face at the
window, saw her raise a pistol and fire. I rushed into the room. There
lay Mr. Severn dead, and you in a faint.”
“Did you know the woman?”
“No, miss; she was a perfect stranger to me, although I would be sure
to know her face if I ever saw it again.”
“What if I tell you that your master, Mr. Seabright, married that
murderess to-night?”
“Oh, miss, I could not believe you!”
“But it is true. I recognized her face, and it was Mrs. Dunn. But
I kept silence, because I thought she did it to save me from that
villain.”
“Oh, I wish my master had known it. He never would have married that
wicked woman.”
“Your master is very wicked himself. It is because of some suspected
villainy of his that I am here to-night,” answered Italy, coming
suddenly to the point, and before Mrs. Smith could remonstrate, she
continued:
“You are in my power, Mrs. Smith, for the widow of Harold Severn has
offered a large reward for information that would lead to the discovery
of her husband’s murderer. If I should tell her what I know, it would
bring you and your doings into terrible notoriety. Remember, you
acted a very dishonorable part, claiming to be Mrs. Gardner, a very
well-known Boston lady.”
“Oh, miss, I did wrong. For God’s sake don’t expose me!” whined the
housekeeper, falling abjectly on her knees before her accuser.
“Upon only one condition will I spare you,” Italy answered sternly.
“Oh, miss, if there is anything I can do for you?”
“There is one very simple thing,” Italy told her; adding:
“In this house Percy Seabright has one locked room of which you keep
the key. Give me admission to that room, let me search for something
that is hidden there, and whether I find it or not, your secret shall
be safe with me!”