THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
JULY 2ND
On the eighteenth day of April in the year 1909, there occurred in the
ancient city of Florence—the Winter City of the English—an astounding
affair, the real truth of which, had it been known, would certainly have
struck terror into the heart of Europe.
Most fortunately for the public mind, the truth was only known
to half-a-dozen or so persons, of whom I, Mariette Le Bas,
_femme-de-chambre_, chanced to be one; yet it was a truth so full of
appalling possibilities that, by mutual consent, both the authorities
at your Scotland Yard, in London, and the Pubblica Sicurezza of Italy,
treated the problem with the utmost discretion, and decided that the
facts must be suppressed; that at all hazards the Press must be kept in
ignorance, otherwise the utmost public alarm would be created throughout
every civilised community.
Hence it was that the amazing facts concerning the mysterious _anglais_,
William Cornforth, were hushed up; and now only after a lapse of time
have I received permission to place on record what actually came before
me as an eye-witness of perhaps the most remarkable sequence of events
within the knowledge of the present age.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon on the day indicated.
Monsieur le Chef de Police shrugged his shoulders, tossed away his
cigarette, and hitching his thumb into the armhole of his white
waistcoat, turned to me and said in French—
“Ah! my dear mam’zelle. That is just the problem! It is inexplicable. I
have asked you to call because you knew this Englishman.”
“Well, what is your opinion, m’sieur?” I asked, glancing around the big,
sombre room of that huge mediæval Florentine palace which is nowadays the
Prefecture of Police. The long windows looking out into the cool, shady
courtyard, with its time-worn, plashing fountain, were heavily barred,
while the finely-frescoed ceiling, where the burnished gold was still
brilliant after a lapse of five centuries, bore the arms of the great
house of Medici.
_Ma foi!_ Italy is, indeed, a country of violent contrasts. Here, in
those quiet, old-world surroundings sat the Chevalier Luigi Ansaldi, the
tall, thin, bald-headed, dark-bearded man who was the most astute police
official that Europe had ever known; his telephones, telegraphs and
speaking-tubes in the adjoining chamber, controlling the whole of Italy’s
police, numbering nearly one hundred thousand officers and men of the
Pubblica Sicurezza, together with another five thousand or so agents of
the secret police distributed at home and abroad, as precautions against
the ever-recurring Anarchist plots.
“I have no theory, mam’zelle,” he admitted, slowly stroking his beard
with his white hand, as, at that moment, his secretary entered, bearing
two yellow official telegrams, which he read, and upon them pencilled
replies.
“Order Naples to arrest all four to-night and send them here for
interrogation,” he said abruptly.
“_Si, Signor Cavaliere_,” replied the other, who then retired.
Luigi Ansaldi was ubiquitous. He was ever travelling from one city to
another, yet he preferred to make Florence his headquarters rather than
Rome, it being nearer the centre of the kingdom. Save his Majesty the
King, no man in the whole country wielded such power. Upon his simple
signature to a warrant a suspect could be arrested on suspicion, and kept
in confinement without trial for any period up to six months. In the
meantime his innocence would be proved, or he would confess. And this
power had been given him to enable him to cope successfully with the
ever-recurring Anarchist conspiracies. The tragic death of Re Umberto had
been the reason for granting such wide powers.
_Bon Dieu!_ That quiet, sombre chamber in which I sat was, indeed, a
Chamber of Secrets. In the very chair I was now occupying had been seated
many a guilty wretch who, on being interrogated by the famous official,
had been unable to resist those dark, penetrating eyes of his, and had,
in terror, confessed his crimes.
Few men, indeed, could withstand the searching cross-examination of Luigi
Ansaldi, the clever, up-to-date scientific man, who laughed at our Paris
_sûreté_ and all its antiquated methods, and used to declare that many
English laws were made for the protection, and not the detection, of the
criminal.
Outside the open windows the old-world city of Florence palpitated
beneath the blazing sun. But the courtyard of the palace was quiet and
cool, and the only movement was the steady pacing of a drowsy police
sentry.
Now and then came the sharp ring of a telephone-bell or the click of
a typewriter. But beyond there was no other sound. The silence of the
afternoon _siesta_ was over everything.
Luigi Ansaldi, chief of secret police, held no theory. The enigma was
beyond solution. Strange that I, a mere insignificant _femme-de-chambre_,
should be consulted.
“You see, mam’zelle,” he said, speaking French well, “there are a number
of points in the case which render it, perhaps, the most remarkable
problem ever presented to us to solve. Now let us examine the facts,” he
went on, slowly lighting a fresh cigarette.
“This Signor Cornforth, a tall, thin man, apparently a wanderer like
so many of the English, arrives here in Florence six months ago and
puts up at the Savoy. He becomes infatuated with the city, and rents
the fine Villa Borelli, up on the hill behind the Boboli Gardens. He is
received by the foreign colony, though they know little about him; is
elected a member of the select Florence Club, and throughout the winter,
apparently, has a very pleasant time of it.”
“_Mais, oui_,” I said; “he went everywhere—to the Corsinis’, the
Fabricottis’, the Spinolas’ and to the British Consul’s.”
“You had no idea what was in progress at his villa?” the official asked,
glancing at me quickly.
“_Jamais._ I often went there with messages for my mistress, Madame
Kennedy-Foster, but suspected nothing.”
“Well, he made no outward exhibition of wealth, save that he furnished
his house well, and, being a bachelor, gave uncommonly good dinners. I
have his _dossier_ here,” he said, pointing to a bundle of papers. “The
secret report which we keep of all foreigners contains no suspicions,
except one rather curious fact. Listen! This was made three months ago.”
He drew a blue paper from the bundle, and spreading it out upon the
table, read in Italian—
“REPORT BY ENRICO FERRI, caretaker of Villa Pontedera upon
Signor Guglielmo Cornforth, of Villa Borelli:—
“This signore is evidently a man of somewhat limited means,
for his two servants say he is extremely economical over his
household accounts. He receives and dispatches a voluminous
correspondence with persons abroad. No woman ever enters
the house, save a French _femme-de-chambre_ who has carried
messages to him, but at night on four occasions, namely, on
January 2nd, 11th, 16th and 26th, I have watched and have
seen, about three o’clock in the morning, an old, ugly and
ill-dressed woman, apparently English, carrying a small
handbag, enter the iron gate, which the signore himself had
evidently unlocked for her. She remains usually about an hour,
and then leaves, the signore locking the gate after her.”
“_Très curieux!_” I remarked. “I wonder who she was?”
“Yes,” said Ansaldi, “that is the only suspicious circumstance reported.
It was curious why he should receive his visitor in the night. Evidently
the old lady wished her visits to him to remain a secret.”
“Does the man who made that confidential report describe her?” I inquired.
“Yes. He says she had white hair, and was, he believes, about sixty-eight
or seventy.”
“You have no suspicion of her?”
He merely shrugged his shoulders, then added—
“I have interrogated both men-servants—for he seems to have hated to
have women about him. But neither has ever set eyes upon this mysterious
midnight visitor.”
“The circumstances are certainly very strange, m’sieur, to say the
least,” I remarked.
“Ah, mam’zelle, you are not aware of the whole facts,” replied the
world-famous official. “At three o’clock this morning I received a
telegram from the police in London asking me to keep this William
Cornforth under observation, as a warrant for his arrest on very serious
charges was being applied for by the British Ambassador in Rome. In
consequence, I sent an agent to watch outside the villa. At half-past
four a shabbily-dressed old lady came forth and descended the hill to the
Porta Romana. No one else left the house, but on receiving a message
from the Minister of Justice in Rome just after eleven o’clock ordering
the arrest, I took two agents and drove out to the villa. The servant who
admitted me said that his master was not up, but on ascending to his room
I found that the bed had not been slept in, and there was every evidence
that he had dressed hurriedly and departed.”
“_Ma foi!_ So he left disguised as an old woman right under the very nose
of your agent—eh?”
“Listen, mam’zelle! The curious point is that on going to the small
room on the ground floor which Mr. Cornforth used as study, I found the
door locked. It seemed a remarkably strong one, and presently, when all
efforts to open it had failed, I suddenly awoke to the fact that it was
no ordinary door, but the steel door of a strong-room! It is locked, and
up to the present it has resisted all efforts to open it! I have sent
for professional safe-makers, and they are at work upon the door, trying
to open it. I wonder if they have succeeded yet? The house is on the
telephone.”
And taking up the instrument, he gave orders to be put through to the
house of the suspect.
In a few moments he was speaking with one of his agents, who reported
that the safe-makers had declared that the only way to effect an entrance
was to use an electric current upon the door, or an acetylene jet, and
so twist the bolts from their sockets. The make of safe was one of the
very latest, and the room was absolutely impregnable.
“Let them act as they think best,” said the Chef de Police, and then,
putting down the receiver, he said, “I’m going up there again myself.
Perhaps you may care to come to the house, mam’zelle?”
_Entendu!_ I jumped at the offer, and a few moments later we were in the
Chevalier’s grey motor-car, speeding out through the ancient gateway on
the road to Rome, and up the hill where stand the great white villas of
the wealthy foreigners who spend their winters in the Lily City.
Why Monsieur Cornforth was so urgently wanted by the London police
greatly puzzled me.
I suppose I ought to explain here that, for the past four months I had
been in the service of Madame Kennedy-Foster, who had engaged me in a
_bureau de placement_ in London, and who occupied a villa high up on the
pretty Viale outside the city, further up than that occupied by Monsieur
Cornforth.
Madame was a widow, wealthy, very elegant and a devout Roman Catholic.
She had been a great traveller, and her husband, an English general,
being dead, she had now settled down in Florence, that city of the
tea-table “tabbie.”
My mistress had frequently sent me with notes to the mysterious Monsieur
Cornforth—_mission très délicate_! He had always been extremely polite
to me, and had more than once slipped a louis into my hand. On several
occasions he had come to the Villa Luba to dine, and it appeared to me as
though he and Madame were very old friends. _Chose singulière._ Madame
kept but little company. Indeed, I think that Monsieur Cornforth was
the only gentleman who ever visited her during the period I was in her
service.
And on such occasions they had been closely closeted together in the
big white drawing-room after dinner. _Moi_, I had listened on several
occasions, but I had heard nothing.
At times, a great exchange of important messages took place between
Madame and Monsieur. Then Madame departed suddenly for Dresden alone.
She did not require a maid, she said. After an absence of ten days she
returned and sent a hurried note to Monsieur.
Then, a week later, Madame had a sharp attack of _neurasthénie_, and
after her recovery left for Trieste again without a maid, and two days
before Monsieur le Chevalier had summoned me to the Prefecture for
interrogation, I had received a curt note with my _congé_ and the wages
due to me.
Madame, who was so devoutly religious, had left Florence mysteriously,
never to return. _Mystère!_
_Dieu!_ Florence is an amazing place. One section of English society is
perhaps the narrowest, most backbiting and slanderous in the whole of
Europe, while the other is the most cosmopolitan and Bohemian.
Monsieur Cornforth’s villa, a large, square, ancient house, which was the
Austrian Embassy in the days when Florence was the capital, stood behind
a high wall in the centre of pretty gardens, brilliant with flowers.
The great iron door which led to the carriage drive was opened to us by
a policeman in uniform, and as the car swung up towards the house it
was closed again, for outside in the roadway a crowd of the curious had
assembled.
On entering the wide, cool, marble hall where I had so many times handed
my notes to the monsieur now dead, we saw, at the end, several workmen
engaged upon a white-enamelled door. One of them came forward—evidently a
foreman—and addressing the Chevalier, said—
“My firm constructed this strong-room for the English signore six months
ago—before the house was furnished. Our orders were to conceal the fact
of what was being done, and the men were well paid for their silence.
Outwardly, there is nothing to show that the room is burglar-proof,
except that there is no fireplace, and only a small ventilator in place
of a window. The walls, thick originally, are lined with a metre of steel
and concrete, and the door is the very latest word in safe-doors.”
“But what was the object of its construction?” asked the Chief of Police.
“We have no idea, Signor Cavaliere. We simply carried out the
Englishman’s instructions to render the room absolutely impregnable,
regardless of what it might cost, and to complete the work in utmost
secrecy.”
“And can’t you open the door?” I asked.
“We are now trying.” And pointing to an electric cable which lay along
the hall, he added, “The electric-light people have put a cable on to
their main, and we hope to get it open before long.”
I advanced with Ansaldi, and watched the scientific operations.
From the two men-servants, both of whom I knew well, it was apparent
that they had no idea that the room without a window, and lit always by
electricity, was a strong-room. Their master had accounted for it by
stating that his oculist had ordered him to read and write by artificial
light.
The mystery of that closed chamber held every one full of anxiety.
Monsieur Cornforth, somehow suspecting that the police were coming for
him, had either got away before their arrival, or else had escaped
disguised as an old woman. Monsieur le Chevalier was full of chagrin
that he had so neatly slipped away, and had already telegraphed to the
frontiers and to the various ports to prevent him leaving Italy. He was
confident of finding him, but, in view of the urgency of Scotland Yard’s
request, he was full of regret. It was against his reputation to allow a
suspect to get away so easily, and he was proud of his reputation.
When at last all the appliances—steel plates and wires—had been fixed
upon the door and the cable attached, we stood by to watch.
Presently we all drew away, and the powerful current was turned full
on, when quickly the steel of the door began to fuse in places, and
gradually, with a loud groaning and wrenching, the flat enamelled door,
slowly blistering, bulging, bursting, began to twist and writhe almost
like a living thing. Steel bolts snapped off like wood under the immense
strain, and the bottom of the door gradually came forward, while the top
sank inward, with a loud grinding—the rending of steel.
Again and again was the current turned upon the fast-yielding door,
until at last the man directing the operations declared that it was
sufficiently free to be opened and allow the passage of a man within.
Therefore the cable was detached, the steel plates removed, and six
strong men, placing their shoulders to the heavy twisted door, succeeded
in moving it inward until there was an opening of two feet, through which
the Chevalier passed, I following at his heels.
Next second we were within the closed chamber, where the electric light
was still burning.
As I entered I sprang back with a loud cry.
_Bon Dieu!_ what met my eyes held me spellbound and stupefied.
The interior of the impregnable chamber presented no unusual appearance,
except that in place where the window had been, hung a pair of thick
curtains of purple plush, bordered with deep gilt embroidery. The carpet
was a thick one, of a delicate shade of grey, with wreaths of tiny roses,
while before the curtains was set a large table covered with green baize.
On the other side was a writing-table, littered with papers, while around
the white, steel-lined walls were cases filled with books.
Four strong electric lamps, illuminating every corner of the
room, revealed the ghastly fact that upon the floor close to the
writing-table, stretched face downwards, lay the body of Madame’s friend,
the tall, thin Monsieur Cornforth.
Ansaldi and the others rushed across and lifted him, when it was
seen that upon the carpet was the ugly stain of blood flowing from a
bullet-wound beneath the left shoulder-blade.
“He’s committed suicide to evade arrest!” somebody remarked.
But the chief of the detective service, after a swift examination of the
wound, said gravely, in Italian—
“This is no case of suicide. It is murder! It would be impossible for
him to have inflicted this wound himself. See! the weapon must have been
fired quite closely, for the cloth of his jacket is badly singed. No,”
he added, “murder has been done. The assassin must have crept up behind
while he sat writing and fired the fatal shot. See! The pen is upon the
ground, where it dropped from his fingers, and the chair overturned as he
fell.”
The agents of police searched the place thoroughly, but could not
discover any weapon whatever. That the mysterious _anglais_ had been
assassinated there could be no doubt.
In company with the astute Chevalier, the man of a hundred disguises,
whose ingenuity in the tracking of criminals was unequalled, I made a
tour of the apartment. This amazing discovery had instantly placed him
upon his mettle. He had eyes everywhere, and ere his men began to realise
the extraordinary situation he had already grasped the whole, and was
busy prying everywhere.
“Morandi,” he said, calling one of the brigadiers of the _brigade mobile_
to him, “telephone to Doctor Bellini that I want him here at once, and
cancel all inquiries and watch set for the missing Englishman.”
“_Si, signore!_” replied the little dark-faced man in grey, and he left
to carry out his chief’s orders.
The workmen who had opened the steel door were asked to retire, and
only the great _chef du sûreté_, myself and two agents remained in that
strange chamber of death. I gazed upon the white, distorted face of the
eccentric man so urgently wanted by the London police, and wondered
what crime he could have committed, curious that he should have been so
mysteriously murdered at the very moment of his impending arrest.
One of the detectives had covered the body with the dark green baize,
while search of the room, and indeed of the whole house, revealed nothing.
The police doctor, a fussy, excitable little Hebrew, in gold _pince-nez_,
arrived, examined the body of my friend, and without hesitation
pronounced it to be a case of assassination.
“The unfortunate signore was shot in the back by some one who crept up
to him quite close. A large, soft-nosed bullet was used,” he said. “The
wound is in a downward direction, showing that the assassin was standing
and the victim seated.”
“Are you quite certain that it is not a case of suicide?” asked Ansaldi.
“Absolutely! I will stake my professional reputation that it is not.
Besides, have you found the weapon?”
“No,” replied the chief of the detective service; “yet the makers of this
strong-room have assured us that the door was not only locked but bolted
on the inside.”
The doctor smiled incredulously.
“That may have been,” he said. “But surely there was some way out for the
assassin.”
“No. That’s just the point! There is not. We’ve examined this room
very thoroughly. The foreman who directed the building of it says that
everywhere the metre-thick walls, floor and ceiling were reinforced
by another metre of concrete and steel, making it both bomb-proof and
burglar-proof.”
“But why did this gentleman, whom I have met many times lately, want to
live in a bomb-proof room?” asked the fussy little man.
“Ah! at present it is quite inexplicable. You have cleared up the
question whether it is a case of suicide, doctor. For the present, that
is as far as you can assist us.”
I could see that the _chef du sûreté_, having obtained the medical
opinion he desired, wished to get rid of the doctor and pursue his
investigations himself.
Both servants declared that their master was in his usual health on the
previous night. He had returned from the Pergola theatre about midnight,
drank a whisky-and-soda in the dining-room, and went straight to his
room. The door of the study had seldom been locked, except when he was
busy writing. They, of course, knew that the door was a heavy one, but
never dreamed that the chamber was bomb-proof.
In the night no sound had been heard. If the old woman had been seen to
leave she must have entered and left quite noiselessly, for one of the
men, the cook, always slept with his room-door open.
_Très extraordinaire!_ The further the Chevalier carried his inquires the
more inexplicable the crime became.
Until late that evening I remained at the villa watching the marvellous
ingenuity and great painstaking of the man who was the prince of police
agents. No point was too small for his investigation. Finger-prints were
taken in various parts of the room, together with a complete set of those
of Madame’s mysterious friend. The carpet was examined minutely, Ansaldi
himself taking off his coat and spending nearly an hour on all fours.
Certain theories were advanced by his lieutenants, all of which, however,
he dismissed quickly.
“We shall know more,” he declared in French, “when Scotland Yard reply to
my question as to what crime this man was guilty of. Never, mam’zelle, in
my experience,” he added, addressing me, “have the English police been
so very anxious to make an arrest. The crime must have been of a most
serious character. I telegraphed at noon. We shall have a reply before
nine, I hope.”
Meanwhile, rumours of the discovery of the body of Monsieur Cornforth had
got about, and the greatest sensation was caused in the city where, in
the English colony, the “wanted” man was so very well known.
The British Consulate was besieged by inquiries, but they knew nothing.
It was purely a police matter, they replied.
I went back to the cheap _pension_ in the Via Cavour to which I had moved
after Madame’s disappearance, much puzzled over the extraordinary affair.
Later that evening I again went round to the Prefecture of Police to
inquire if any response from London had been received to the official
telegram.
Ansaldi was in his room, sharp-eyed, quick, full of energy.
“No, mam’zelle,” was his reply. “All that Scotland Yard has replied is
this,” and he handed me a telegram in English, which read—
“To the CHEVALIER LUIGI ANSALDI, Prefecture of Police,
Florence.—Beg to acknowledge telegram reporting death in
Florence of William Cornforth. Make no further inquiry, and
prevent Press from publishing details. Kindly furnish us with
photograph of body, and full measurements and description.
Matter one of strictest confidence; regret cannot explain
further.—CHETWYND, Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, New
Scotland Yard, London.”
“_Parbleu!_ Why is it a matter of such strict confidence?” I asked,
looking across at him in surprise.
“Ah!” he laughed. “Who knows? The English police are so very strange in
their ways. They are so discreet that they often defeat their own ends,
and allow the criminal to go unpunished. Surely, if I take the trouble to
render them assistance they might, at least, in common courtesy, reply
in confidence to my simple question.”
He seemed much annoyed at the treatment he had received.
“Perhaps, m’sieur, the London police want to hush up the matter.”
“It seems almost as though they do, for I have been on the telephone to
the Minister of Justice in Rome, and he tells me the British Ambassador
called upon him an hour ago to request that no further notice be taken of
the matter—now that the suspect is dead.”
“But monsieur has been mysteriously murdered!” I exclaimed. “Do they wish
you to drop all inquiry?”
“So it seems.”
“You have reported that it is murder, and not suicide?”
“Most certainly. A telegram was sent direct to London within a quarter of
an hour of our discovery,” answered the Chevalier, for he was, I saw, as
greatly puzzled by the strange turn of affairs as myself.
“The further I proceed, the more remarkable this affair becomes,”
declared the famous official, leaning back in his padded writing-chair.
“This Englishman was an intimate friend of your late mistress, Madame
Kennedy-Foster. She suddenly flies from Florence, and then Cornforth is
murdered—killed at the very moment when the police were wanting him.
By whom?” and he extended his palms, his characteristic attitude when
mystified.
“Then, again,” he went on, “we have some very remarkable features in
the case to elucidate before we can arrive at any clear theory. A
wandering Englishman arrives here. He is, apparently, not too well off,
yet sufficiently wealthy to turn his study in secret into a bomb-proof
chamber. He furnishes his house regardless of expense, yet is niggardly
over his small expenditure. And, further, he has a mysterious visitor in
the shabby old woman reported to us. Who was she? Was she your mistress
in disguise? For what reason did he require his study to be a strong-room
such as is used by banks to store bullion? There is nothing of value
concealed there! Indeed, we have it on the evidence of the servants that
the door was often left wide open!”
“Monsieur was eccentric,” I suggested.
“No,” declared my friend. “It was not a mere whim. I am convinced of
that. He had that room converted into a stronghold with some distinct
purpose. If we could discover it, we might probably be able to probe the
mystery.”
“The chief point to my mind, m’sieur, is how the assassin escaped.”
“Ah!” he cried. “There we are absolutely in the dark. The steel door
was certainly bolted on the inside. I saw those second bolts give when
the electric current was applied. The man who fixed the door afterwards
examined it, and told me that it had been fastened on the inside by
means of a combination lock—the very latest patent upon a safe-door. Yet
he certainly did not die by his own hand, and no revolver was in the
chamber.”
“_Eh bien!_ And the ventilator?”
“I have examined it, and it is quite out of the question. It only
consists of four small tubes of steel, each two inches in diameter. A cat
couldn’t pass through either of them.”
“Then it is a problem utterly inscrutable?”
“Yes,” he said. “And it is rendered the more inexplicable by this strange
reply from the London police, by which they endeavour to hush up the
mysterious death of the very man for whom, a few hours before, they had
raised a hue-and-cry! Ah, mam’zelle!” he added, “this is certainly the
most remarkable enigma which I have ever had placed before me!”