The strange couplet which the dead man had written in his will, and
urged upon me to recollect, kept running in my head--
"King Henry the Eighth was a knave to his queens. He'd one short of
seven--and nine or ten scenes!"
What hidden meaning could it convey? The historic facts of King Henry's
marriages and divorces were known to me just as they were known to every
fourth-standard English child throughout the country. Yet there was
certainly some motive why Blair should have placed the rhyme there--
perhaps as a key to something, but to what?
After a hurried wash and brush up, for I was very dirty and fatigued
after my long journey, I took a cab to Grosvenor Square, where I found
Mabel dressed in her neat black, sitting alone reading in her own warm,
cosy room, an apartment which her father had, two years ago, fitted
tastefully and luxuriously as her boudoir.
She sprang to her feet quickly and greeted me in eagerness when the man
announced me.
"Then you are back again, Mr. Greenwood," she cried. "Oh, I'm so very
glad. I've been wondering and wondering that I had heard no news of
you. Where have you been?"
"In Italy," I answered, throwing off my overcoat at her suggestion, and
taking a low chair near her. "I have been making inquiries."
"And what have you discovered?"
"Several facts which tend rather to increase the mystery surrounding
your poor father than to elucidate it."
I saw that her face was paler than it had been when I left London, and
that she seemed unnerved and strangely anxious. I asked her why she had
not gone to Brighton or to some other place on the south coast as I had
suggested, but she replied that she preferred to remain at home, and
that in truth she had been anxiously awaiting my return.
I explained to her in brief what I had discovered in Italy: of my
meeting with the Capuchin brother and of our curious conversation.
"I never heard my father speak of him," she said. "What kind of man is
he?"
I described him as best I could, and told her how I had met him at
dinner there, in their house, during her absence with Mrs. Percival in
Scotland.
"I thought that a monk, having once entered an Order, could not
re-assume the ordinary garments of secular life," she remarked.
"Neither can he," I said. "That very fact increases the suspicion
against him, combined with the words I overheard later outside the
Empire Theatre." And then I went on to relate the incident, just as I
have written it down in a foregoing chapter.
She was silent for some time, her delicate pointed chin resting upon her
palm, as she gazed thoughtfully into the fire. Then at last she asked--
"And what have you found out regarding this mysterious Italian in whose
hands my father has left me? Have you seen him?"
"No, I have not seen him, Mabel," was my response. "But I have
discovered that he is a middle-aged Englishman, and not an Italian at
all. I shall not, I think, be jealous of his attentions to you, for he
has a defect--he has only one eye."
"Only one eye!" she gasped, her face blanching in an instant as she
sprang to her feet. "A man with one eye--and an Englishman! Why," she
cried, "you surely don't say that the man in question is named Dawson--
Dick Dawson?"
"Paolo Melandrini and Dick Dawson are one and the same," I said plainly,
utterly amazed at the terrifying effect my words had had upon her.
"But surely my father has not left me in the hands of that fiend--the
man whose very name is synonymous of all that is cunning, evil and
brutal? It can't be true--there must be some mistake, Mr. Greenwood--
there must be! Ah! you do not know the reputation of that one-eyed
Englishman as I do, or you would wish me dead rather than see me in
association with him. You must save me!" she cried in terror, bursting
into a torrent of tears. "You promised to be my friend. You must save
me, save me from that man--the man whose very touch deals death!" And
next instant she reeled, stretched forth her thin white hands wildly,
and would have fallen senseless to the floor had I not sprang forward
and caught her in my arms.
Whom, I wondered, was this man Dick Dawson that she held in such terror
and loathing--this one-eyed man who was evidently a link with her
father's mysterious past?