After Hubert Waldron had left the corporal of Bersiglieri he entertained
a distinct feeling that His Excellency the General knew more of the
theft than he had admitted.
On his return to the Minister's private cabinet he found His Excellency
in consultation with his secretary, Pironti, a tall, thin-faced,
black-haired man, with whom he presently held a long discussion
regarding the theft. The secretary of the Council of Defence was also
called, and the quartette sat for nearly an hour putting forward various
theories as to how the documents could have been extracted. Up to the
present it was a dead secret. But how long it would remain so was a
question.
"Secrecy is all-important," Waldron declared at last. "We must allow no
word of this to leak out. It is His Majesty's express command."
"That sentry may possibly gossip," remarked His Excellency, drawing
slowly at his cigar stump, for he smoked perpetually.
"I have already impressed upon him the necessity for silence," replied
Waldron.
"In my own opinion the man knows something of the affair," the General
went on. "He was on sentry duty, and tells us that nobody whatsoever
passed in here except we three. Yet, notwithstanding, the papers were
stolen! He must have neglected his duty in some way--without a shadow
of a doubt."
"Yes," replied his secretary, "I quite agree with Your Excellency that
if he were continuously on duty, as he alleges that he was, then he must
have seen the thief."
"Probably bribed to remain silent," His Excellency grunted suspiciously.
Waldron uttered no word. He watched the General's face keenly and kept
his own counsel.
"The affair is a complete mystery," remarked Lambarini, who had spoken
but little. "I, too, incline towards the opinion that the man, Tonini,
knows the identity of the thief, but will not speak."
"If I have him arrested then we might get him to open his lips," His
Excellency exclaimed. Waldron at once said:
"No. His arrest would betray the secret of Your Excellency's loss.
Besides, such an injudicious action would place a very serious obstacle
in the channel of my present inquiries."
"Then you are against his arrest. Why?"
"Because that man has told me the truth."
The three high officials stared at the Englishman in surprise.
"Yes," Waldron went on boldly, "I do not believe the man knows anything
more than what he has already stated."
"But what has he told you?" inquired Pironti, whose attitude showed that
he was full of resentment that a foreigner should be employed by His
Majesty to investigate the scandal.
"That, signore, is my own affair," was Waldron's cool reply as he rose
from his chair.
"Pironti, have the corporal placed under arrest, and see that nobody
speaks with him," His Excellency ordered, a trifle pale with suppressed
anger at Hubert's words.
The latter, however, turned towards the Minister and said in a hard
voice:
"I wish Your Excellency to remember that His Majesty the King has vested
me with full powers on his behalf--as you will see by this decree," and
he drew a letter from his pocket. "Corporal Tonini is not to be
arrested, nor is he to be threatened--or even approached. This inquiry
is now in my hands, General Cataldi, not in yours. Please recollect
that this is His Majesty's orders, and that I am the King's agent in
this matter. Good morning." And he turned and left the trio staring at
each other in silence.
As he turned the corner under the high walls of the Palazzo Albani and
walked up the narrow Via Quattro Fontane in the direction of his rooms
in the Via Nazionale, he felt convinced that by His Excellency's manner
he had some knowledge of that package of documents.
Back in his own sitting-room he threw himself into a chair before the
English coal fire--a luxury in Rome--lit his old briar pipe, and
composed himself to reflect.
Ghelardi was one of the most renowned spies in Europe and would, without
a doubt, know every secret agent of Austria who had recently been or was
in Rome at that moment. Should he consult him? That was a very
difficult problem, for from the outset he knew the old man would be
antagonistic and would feel that the Englishman was usurping his
position and power.
The Italian police official is remarkable for his cunning shrewdness and
resourcefulness. In the Secret Police of Italy are men of remarkable,
even astounding, tact and ability as investigators of crime. Even the
ordinary plain-clothes policeman in Italy is, as a rule, a much more
astute officer than those of the same grade in London, Paris, or Berlin.
Indeed the Italian with his suave politeness, his natural shrewdness,
his keen intelligence, and his suspicious nature makes a most excellent
detective, and many of the cleverest officers of the Paris Surete and
the detective departments of Berlin and New York have graduated through
the Secret Police of Italy.
Old Ghelardi had all his life been brought up in that school, rising
from an obscure clerk in the Questura in Naples to be a plain-clothes
officer, and such distinction did he win in the capture of criminals
that he quickly obtained promotion to Rome. As a young man it was he
who, single-handed, captured the renowned Calabrian bandit, Bodrero, the
fiend who at his trial boasted of having tortured and killed with his
own hand over one hundred men, women, and children.
The anarchists, Palmera and Spineti, of Forli, he captured red-handed
with their bombs, which they were about to throw at the carriage of the
King's father, and again, after a whole year's diligent work, he had at
last laid hands upon the two _souteneurs_, Civardi and Tedesco who, as
probably will be remembered, murdered the young and pretty Countess
Rinaldi in the Palazzo Rinaldi in Cremona and stole her jewels.
None could deny that Ghelardi was a very remarkable man. The German
Government knew that, or they would not have seduced him from his office
in Italy and given him the position of Chief of the Secret Service. A
German appointment such as that is not given to a foreigner without
considerable merit.
In a sense, Hubert admired him for his tact, courage, and untiring
energy, and now, as he sat smoking and reflecting he remembered how, in
his ignorance, he had up the Nile met the greatest secret agent of the
present century and believed him to be a prosperous and rather
antagonistic Frenchman!
It showed Ghelardi's resourcefulness, for Waldron, keen, shrewd,
cosmopolitan man of the world that he was, was not a person easily taken
in.
Time was pressing. From one hour to another the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs might receive a cipher dispatch from Vienna indicating that the
objectionable documents had passed into the hands of the War Department
there.
He knew quite well that His Majesty--who had that morning gone to the
great review, a brilliant figure in uniform and sparkling decorations--
had ridden there and was standing at the saluting point with a quickly
beating heart. Peril, a grave and imminent peril, existed for the
nation, for Austria, who for so long had desired some excuse for picking
a quarrel with her neighbour, was now in a position to declare immediate
war.
And with the great armies of Austria-Hungary against her, poor Italy
must be ground beneath the iron heel of the invaders!
To-day it is the fashion for the public, gulled by the Press, to talk
glibly of the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. The Man in the
Street, be he in Plymouth or in Petersburg, Margate or Madrid, Rochester
or Rome, believes that treaties duly translated and made in duplicate or
triplicate, signed by the Sovereign, sealed with the Great Seal, and
delivered with all the pomp and ceremony which diplomacy demands, are a
safeguard against war. But your modern diplomat smiles, for he knows
they are not.
Truly the situation in Europe would be comic, if it were not so terribly
tragic--also if it were not so full of the smell of the lyddite shell.
Yet the beguiled Man in the Street is content to read and believe his
halfpenny newspaper--to feed upon the daily diet which the unscrupulous
journalists, bent upon money-making, provide for him, and actually give
credit to the daily "story," as it is termed in newspaper parlance, as
the real gospel truth.
Ten times within our present twentieth century has Europe been upon the
verge of a great and bloody war. Orders have been given to mobilise,
and armies have stood ready to come to grips. Yet only the Embassies
have known, and there, most happily, secrets can be kept, even in these
get-rich-quick days of bribery and dishonesty.
Europe has slept in her bed in calm, blissful ignorance that at any hour
the terrible weapons of modern warfare might provide a cruel awakening,
or perhaps a long and fatal sleep!
Such were the thoughts which floated through Hubert's mind as Peters
came in one morning after five days of uncertainty and vain inquiry, and
placed the letters at his master's elbow.
Among them was one bearing a Spanish stamp--a long and regretful letter
from Beatriz.
He read it through twice, and then tore it into little fragments and
cast it upon the fire with a brief sigh.
The telephone bell rang, and he rose and answered it.
A girl's voice spoke. It was the Princess Luisa.
"I say, Signor Waldron," she exclaimed in English, when he had told her
that it was he who spoke, "the appointment is all right. To-night at
eight-thirty--eh? I want to see you most urgently."
"I shall be there," he replied. He did not address her as "Highness,"
as he feared lest the telephone girl should be curious.
"_Benissimo. Addio_!" was her reply, and then she rang off.
Again he threw himself into his chair, his brow dark and thoughtful.
The appointment they had made when she had visited him she had been
unable to keep, as she had had to accompany the Queen to Naples; and she
had only just returned, she explained.
How strange was it all. If by good chance he were successful in his
inquiries he might, after all, save Italy and her Sovereign.
But could he? Was the dastardly conspiracy too clever and well
sustained? Ay, that was the question.
Those very men--those Ministers who depended upon the King's good
graces, and would lick His Majesty's boots, were the same men who were
now betraying him and the country into the hands of their hereditary
enemy. And for gold--always for gold--that most necessary commodity
upon which the devil has for ever set his curse.
That afternoon he spent at the Embassy attending to dispatches brought
from Downing Street by the King's messenger who had arrived in Rome that
morning, and who was due to return to London at midnight.
For two arduous hours he was closeted with the Ambassador going through
the various matters requiring attention, including several questions
regarding the Consulates of Florence and Venice. A question had arisen
in London of the advisability of reducing the Florence Consulate-General
to a Vice-Consulate and making Livorno a Consulate-General in its place.
Florence was without trade, while Livorno--or Leghorn as it is known to
the English--was full of shipping and other interests. Florence had too
long been practically a sinecure, and its Consul-General a picturesque
figure, hence the question afoot--the Ambassador being asked to write
his opinion upon the proposed reduction.
Durrant, the Councillor of Embassy, being absent in England on leave, it
devolved upon Waldron to attend to the clerical duties, and it was
nearly six o'clock ere he had sealed the last dispatch and placed it in
the small Foreign Office bag of white canvas.
Then the Ambassador questioned him upon the latest phase of his inquiry,
but to all questions he was discreetly evasive--even to his own Chief.
Hubert Waldron was never optimistic, though he felt that already he was
on the track of the thief.