Abergavenny Chronicle

gnniiuimmmiimumiiiniMuimnnnuyimiiiniininjiiiiiiiiuiiiHiiiiimiiiniiiiji S a I faxAL FINGERS I I By WILLIAM LE QUEUX, g1 = = 5 Author of The Money Spider," J. The Riddle of the Ring," 60. A CHAPTER XX.. I REVEALS TREACHERY. J He was half-inclined to remain and cross to Antwerp. But the thought that the man Was undoubtedly an Italian decided him, so just as the "gangway was withdrawn he llipped lightly across it and returned ashore. Next morning John Ambrose, his old self, With patriarchal white beard, wearing beavy-rimmed glasses and minus his hag, flighted from a cab before the Grand Hotel *n Brussels, and at the bureau asked for the room reserved for Mr. Greig, of Glasgow. He was at once shown to one on the second Qoor, to which, a few moments later, a well- Worn leather trunk, bearing the initials **J. F. G. was brought in, having arrived from a luggage depository an hour ago, while presently a page brought up a letter which had been waiting his arrival several days. Unlocking the trunk, the old fellow took out"* a fresh and rather smart suit, consisting of black morning coat and grey check trousers, as well as a soft grey hat, and quickly he changed his dress. Thus was his shabbincss transformed into smartness, all being completely in keeping, with gold albert and diamond ring. Afterwards he descended and passed out to take a stroll along the busy boulevard as far as the Bourse, and afterwards up the Montagne de la Cour, where he idled, look- ing into shops and gazing through his monocle at the smart ladies out shopping. During his r.bsence, however, a little, under-sized, ferret-eyed man of typical Bel- gian aspect, and somewhat eeedily dressed, entered the big hotel, and, passing into the bureau, asked in French: "Has there arrived to-day a thin-faced, clean-shaven Englishman, whose only lug- gage was a little brown leather bag? His real name is Ambrose, and he is from Lon- ion." "I regret, m'sieiir," replied the clerk politely, for he knew who he was, "but we have nobody of that name. We have had several English arrivals to-day, but nobody corresponding with the description." "No Englishman with a small brown bag -eb?" inquired the detective, adding, "The English police are very anxious that he should be detained upon a serious charge." And then he gave a further and more de- tailed description, reading him the telegram of inquiry as received at the Central Bureau of Police that morning from Scotland Yard. The truth was that the detective at Parkestcin, on returning home to Harwich, had looked at the photograph, and becoming convinced that the wanted man had actually sailed, he again telephoned to London, and Scotland Yard had, in turn, lost no time in oonamunicating with the Belgian police. "We have a Monsieur Greig from Glas- gow," replied the chef de reception, "an old Man with a full white beard, like King Lco aO and wearing a monocle. He Walks with a slight limp, laRing heavily Upon his stick." "Did he pretend to be an Italian?" "Not in the least. He spoke in English, Hm lug-g??e and letters were awaiting turn. 0 I:> ^Had he previously engaged a roomt" -Had lie pre,iously engaged a room?" And lie has & beard, and is lame, eh?" fly An, then I fear it cannot be the indi- vidual for whom the London police are searching," replied the undersized Belgian. "Look!" whispered the elcrk in French; "see over there! That's him!" And he indicated the fugitive, leanin g heavily upon his stick, though well-dressed un very prosperous-looking. "No, no," exclaimed the detective. trI1 can't be the person. He is described in this despatch as clean-shaven, decrepit, rathei slovenly in attire, often affects to be an Italian. Not a single point in the descrip- tion corresponds. Height, size, face, clothes, gait, manner—everything differs. Bah! those -English police arc droll fellows!" And then the detective laughed, and soon afterwards raised his hat to the clerk in thE bureau and left. < < < That same night, just before ten o'clock. 'While Ambrose was secure in Brussels, Maidee Lambton was standing before the mirror in her room preparing to slip out in secret. Her suspicions being again aroused., she was nervous and anxious, and had re- solved to watch Gordon's movements aftez he left the House that night. The maid, .with her dark, smooth hair and white apron, stood beside her as she was in the act of pinning on her neat black hat, when suddenly, in trying to fix it firmly; one of the long pins accidentally grazed the .top of her head. It was no unusual occurrence, therefore 6he took no notice of it until, a few moments later, as she was pulling on her long suede gloves, she exclaimed "Oh, Raynjr, I-I do feel so faint, so queer. I—I wonder what's the matter with me "You do look pale, miss!" cried the girl in alarm. "I'll get the smelling-salts from the dressing-room." Next second, however, Rayner saw that lier mistress had become short of breath. She was gasping. Her hand .clutched at her breast and she reeled sidelong against the big, handsome dressing-table, while the anaid just succeeded in preventing her fall- ing to the floor. "I can't make it out," her mis-trees gasped, her eyes staring from her head wildly, her jaws seeming as though they t had become fixed. "Whv-a.h !-I--I can't move my mouth! It was that scratch. It iburns like fire!" Rayner, too alarmed to make any com- ment, took up the two other silver hat-pina lying upon the tray on the dressing-table, and saw, to her great surprise, that upon both there had been smeared some dark brown substance that had now dried. "Why, what's that?" shrieked Maidee. lier quick eyes detecting it. "What's that on my hat-pins? Some stuff has been placed upon them purposely. Ah I CJ all Heaven help me, I—I've poisoned Next second the poor girl. haggard and terrified, tetanic convulsions showing at her white jaws, collapsed senseless into her maid's arms. .Thus had a secret enemv triumphed! I CHAPTER XXI. DON MARIO AT HOME. The sunny April afternoon was warm and drowsy in the high-up, ancient rock-village of Santa Lucia, which, perched upon the summit of a. conical hill, commands a mag- nificent view of the high purple Apennines on the one hand, while on the other lies the broad Lake of Bolsena, like a mirror in the sun, while beyond the great fertile plain stretches away to the hazy horizon, a white road running across it like a ribbon-the ancient Via Cassia, the road to Rome. Like many another dwindling and obscure Ti.llage in Central Italy Santa Lucia bears a j ?ad reputation. Its people are not friendly towards the stranger. Indeed, over the surface A Of th e steep road which comes up from the Plain and over the hills to Siena the co?- MM? have placed six inches of gravel, rendering it impassable to motor-cars, and obliging motorists to hire bulls to draw them up the steep incline. Those who re- fuse to submit to blackmail arc stoned, and many a motorist has returned to the Eternal City with his car badly damaged and his wind-screen smashed by the hostile villagers. Hence, nowadays, motorists who might bring prosperity to the little inn, the Gran Duca, give the place a wide berth. Viewed from the plain the village is most picturesque, the high square church tower rising above the cluster of red roofs and white houses. But on nearer acquaintance its ill-paved streets, where fowls run at will, are very narrow and tortuous; the ancient houses, "high and prison-like, are huddled together as was the habit in ancient days for protection against- the Saracens, while in the little piazza the grass grows over the stones, and there are everywhere signs of poverty and decay. Mighty in the days of the Papacy, Santa Lucia has now shrunk to a mere miserable relic of its former self, a place wherein scarce any man knows anything but of the few men and women who make their dwell- ing there, sons of the soil who spring from its dust and return to it. Yet they have earned for themselves the reputation of being a bad people. They were feared in the days of the Papacy; they gave shelter to the brigands of the Maremma until the last of them were killed ten years ago, and even to-day the carabi- neers never ascend there unless called, and then they go in force. The usual patrol, consisting of a pair, refuses to enter the village. More than one has been shot from a window and the assassin remained un- known. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Italian Automobile Club issue an urgent warning to motorists to avoid the place. To this poverty-stricken village fifteen years ago its hook-nosed parish priest, or curato, Don Mario Mellini, had been sent from Milan as chastisement for his too sceptical and inquiring mind. By long weary years in that solitude, and among that brutal, uncouth people he had beco-we chastened, the fire had died out of his suul and the light out of his eyes. The small white presbytery, with the iron- barred windows, stood in the deserted little piazza, where the lizards darted over the moss-grown stones. Next it was the church, the stucco of which was peeling from the old red bricks, while from the open door, disclosing a dark interior with candles burn- ing in the gloom, there issued the sweet fragrance of incense. In a bare room with stone floor, uncom- fortable old rush-bottomed chairs, a tiny shrine before which a light burned in a red glass, and a crucifix upon the white- washed wall-a room which opened upon a small courtyard shaded by trailing vines and adorned by bits of broken statuary—sat the thin old priest in rusty black cassock and black biretta, lazily smoking his long Tuscan cigar after luncheon. Upon the table there still stood a big rush-covered fiasco of good red Chianti and a couple of long glasses, while opposite, in a chawr drawn near the open door, sat his friend, John Ambrose. Don Mario had just blown out the candle by which he had lit his long, thin cigar, as I is the Italian habit, and as he did so glanced across at his visitor, who sat drowsy and dozing. The old citrato-or, rather, piovano was his actual title-was tall and stately, but his clean-shaven face was thin and drawn for want of good food, his eyes were dark and brilliant, impenetrable wells of thought, his finely-cut lips smiled but rarely, and had upon them always an expression of bitter- ness, while his complexion was yellow, like old marble. His was a cure of souls which covered many miles, but counted few persons. And for fifteen years, with many short vacations, Don Mario had lived, a cultured scholar, among the barbarians. In Milan he had preached in the great Duomo and t«en popular. In London, in Turin, and Genoa bis fame was known, and the women had crowded to hear his marvellous discourses, and even in St. Peter's itself had his clear voice sounded. He would have been a great prelate, perhaps even a Cardinal, but, being a reformer, the Vatican would have none of him, therefore, like many another brilliant cleric, he had been crushed, broken, and banished to that lonely village of bad repute. Late one night, a fortnight befor.e, the Signor Inglese had arrived at Santa Lucia in the dusty ramshackle old carroz- zelIa, in which Don Mario had driven twenty miles to meet him at the wayside station. He was a foreigner, and would have fared badly had he not been under the protec- tion of the Signor Piovano. At first the low-browed, sunburnt men, somo of whom were in sheepskins, scowled at him darkly as he passed, but already he had chatted with some of them, and they had therefore ad- mitted him into their midst, even though they were not altogether satisfied, because of his inquisitiveness and his constant pok- ing about the old ruins of the castello and elsewhere. Old Teresa, a bent, grey-haired old crone, the donna di casa, who looked after the priest's domestic affairs, hobbled across the courtyard, arousing the Englishman from his drowsiness. "This place, Santa Lucia, has a bad name," the priest was remarking to his guest. "Its people have earned it; they are mostly anarchists and law-breakers, some murderers, who snap their fingers at the carabinieri! Why? Who has made them auarchists but the adventurers who have lately been in power at Monte Citori D They legislate for themselves, put money into their pockets in the shape of fat com- missions, and drive the contadini to anarchism, or else compel them to emigrate. Already poor Italy has lost her backbone, her yeuth and her energy. The condition of Santa Lucia is but the condition of all remote villages. Ah! if the English only knew our dear unfortunate Italy as she is, and did not look out upon her through the windows of the grand hotels, I fear the charm she is supposed to possess would soon be dispelled. Surely no peasantry in all Europe is so oppressed, so hopeless, so famished, so despairing as our once light- hearted people, the honest, easy-going men and women who, for the past ten years, have been driven to desperation and to anarchism -nay, to death-by unfair taxation, the glorification of the signore, the lack of jus- tice, in the courts and the bribery and cor- ruption on every hand." Pray be careful, Mario," remarked his friend, glancing at the door. "Some official may overhear you. Surely sucji sentiments had better remain unuttered, for it would fare. ill with you if your words were re- ported to Rome." "Probably it would, my dear Ambrose," laughed the old priest. "But I only speak what I feel. Though this place is wretched, poverty-stricken, and barbaric, yet I have the welfare of my poor people at heart. They are not half as black as they are painted. Here, a word is quickly followed by a knife-thrust, and jealousy is often responsible for a secret stab in the dark. Quick, hot-headed, hot-tempered, they are I swift to take offence or execute vendetta, I and so strange are their religious convic- I tions that I have actually known men pray 'before the wayside Madonna that the theft they were about to commit might be success- ful and remain undiscovered Ambrose smiled. "And you, my dear Mario, are trying t4 I teach them different! he said. "A hard task, I should fancy, with such a people." Don Mario sighed sadly, then, tapping his big horn snuff-box, he opened it and took a pinch. His white collar was soiled, his cas- sock was greasy, and down its many-but- toned front were the marks of many of old Teresa's soups, her mincstras and her stews. Upon his chin was a three days' growth of beard. He was passing from neglect into oblivion, for now that the Sacred College was against him, no one at the Vatican dared to speak in his favour. Only on the previous night as he sat chatting with his guest beneath the oil lamp, he had declared with a bitter laugh that he was as completely forgotten as a folio upon a library shelf, and that now-a- days his only object in life was to gabble through the ritual twice a day in the big gloomy church, heedless whether anybody were present or not. Once he had had pious women of rank pleading at Rome for him and magnates soliciting his 4preferment. Once he was feted in the big cities, women hung upon his words, and crowds jostled in the great cathedrals to hear his remarkable and scholarly discourses. But that was all of the past. Instead of becoming an archbishop he was merely Don Mario M-ellini, piovano or parish priest of Santa Lucia, an obscure rock-village. He rose and, opening the rickety old persiennes, let light and air into the bare room. Then he took from a drawer in a side table a small roll of ancient brown parchments musty manuscripts of the Middle Ages, closely written in Latin with many contractions, and sat down to study them with the aid of a big lens. As with many priests in Italy., his hobby was the study of palaeography. From the old Franciscan monastery of Radicofani, across the valley, he obtained many of the documents on loan, and spent hours, weeks, nay years, in poring over them, decipher- ing them, and from them gaining a know- ledge of local history and customs. It was his only pleasure—the only pas- time allowed him—the only pursuit which caused him to forget tho brilliant past. Through the open door came the hum of the insects and the constant crick of the cicale, that harbinger of heat which the dweller in Italy knows so well. And as he unrolled one of the half-faded parchment rolls and began to pore over it with his lens and slowly transcribe it from the abbre- viated Latin into modern Italian, his guest sat regarding him in silence. A secret existed between the pair—one of the strangest and most remarkable of the many secrets in this modern world of ours— a secret of which neither ever spoke. CHAPTER XXII. I CONTAINS AN ADMISSION. Through many years John Ambrose had placed implicit faith in that solemn, pious, hook-nosed curato, the man who was such a brilliant scholar and such a wonderful orator that the Sacred College had feared his influence and hence had crushed him. j His leanings towards the Government, his support of certain decisions in the Chamber of Deputies, his friendship with Crispi and Tittoni, and his differences with the Arch- bishop of Siena had all been seized upon by the Cardinals, who had foreseen his national popularity. Hence he had been banished to that high-up obscure village, where the Government stipend was the princely one of one thousand lire—or forty pounds per annum. Remuneration mattered nothing to him. Though he never displayed the possession of private means, yet he had them-a snug account in the Banca. Nazionale in Milan. It was that which enabled him, from time to time, to enjoy brief holidays. Sometimes In left Santa Lucia and went no one knew, whither. The people were quite unaware that it was his habit to join the express in far-off Siena, and two days later arrive in that wonderful city of tlte English—Lon- don. He always pretended to them that he went to his own birthplace—away amid the misty rice-fields of Novara. That marning, while Don Mario had said mass in the dark, ancient little church, Am- brose had sat and listened to his droning Latin. Not more than twenty villagers were p sent, mostly women in their peasant- presses of bright colours. The men of Santa Lucia did not go to church except on the feata. If they prayed once a week they con- sidered it all-sufficient. The steady lfames of the long candles, the dull gilt of the altar, the time-dimmed holy 1 pictures, the rich, but faded vestments .which his friend wore, the fragrance of the incense, the dark solemnity of that black, cavernous interior in contrast with the brilliant sunshine outside, all had produced a great impression upon the fugitive from England. He had sat thinking then—just as he was now thinking as he watched his friend pur- suing his dry-as-dust hobby-the deciphering of ancient records—whether Don Mario was really the pious, high-minded servant of his Maker as he pretended. They had known each other for many years—more years than he cared to remem- ber. Yet now that he looked back along the vista of the past, certain recollections crowded upon him—recollections of strange happenings recollections which aroused within him the strange suspicion that the | eoul of Don Mario was not such as he had believed it to be—that beneath that mask of deep-eyed devotion and human charity lay a heart hard as stone and black with evil. He was watching that yellow, sphinx-like face over which the skin was drawn so tightly, and as he watched the thin hand slowly transcribe the crinkled parchment, he became seized with certain horrible appre- hensions. Could it be true what had once been whispered? No. He knew Don Mario too well. What his enemies had whispered concerning him was a lie-a black and wilful lie. That night, after the old bell in the square white tower had clanged out the venti-tre unmusically, after vespers had hee-n said in the gloomy church by the light of a few flickering candles, and the sun had dis- appeared in a blaze of crimson green and gold behind the giant Apennines, half Santa Lucia assembled under the dusty plane-trees in the little piazza, gossiping, flirting, or scandalising their neighbours, aa is their habit. The hook-nosed priest had taken his guest for a stroll through the dark, narrow, evil- smelling streets, where the swarthy, beetle- browed men and women had wished him felicissirna notte, and more than once had he lifted his shabby biretta in salutation. Then, emerging from the dark, tunnel-like old place, -so narrow that two bullocks coyld scarcely pass abreast, they went down the hillside looking out across that world of hills that, in the tailing light, seemed infi- nitely far away-like mountains in a dream. Out, of Maremma night was coming up. Beneath them, as Ambrose halted to look around upon the wonderful panorama, the olives stirred in the twilight-the night wind from the sea. Gradually the light- faded, and little by little the barren world of mountains became lost in an immense and beautiful shadow as both men stood there upon the hillside, their faces turned towards the Eternal City. Suddenly Ambrose faced his companion, and said in a low, strained voice "I wonder, Mario, what has happencd in London?" ¡ The old priest started slightly, then, re- covering himself instantly, replied with a short, h lau-h: "Ah, r wonder. The mystery is, no doubt, as complete as ever." tie he —