Three deafening reports shook the air in rapid succession, and all that was left of Arnoldo Meschini lay in a shapeless heap upon the floor. While a man might have counted a score there was silence in the room. Then San Giacinto came forward and bent over the body, while the notaries and their clerks cowered in a corner.
Saracinesca and Giovanni stood together, grave and silent, as brave men are when they have seen a horrible sight and can do nothing. Meschini was quite dead. When San Giacinto had a.s.sured himself of the fact, he looked up. All the fierce rage had vanished from his face.
"He is dead," he said quietly. "You all saw it. You will have to give your evidence in half an hour when the police come. Be good enough to open the door."
He took up the body in his arms carefully, but with an ease that amazed those who watched him. Giovanni held the door open, and San Giacinto deposited his burden gently upon the pavement of the corridor. Then he turned back and re-entered the room. The door of the study closed for ever on Arnoldo Meschini.
In the dead silence that followed, San Giacinto approached the table upon which the deed lay, still waiting to be witnessed. He took it in his hand and turned to Saracinesca. There was no need for him to exculpate himself from any charge of complicity in the abominable fraud which Montevarchi had prepared before he died.
Not one of the men present even thought of suspecting him. Even if they had, it was clear that he would not have brought Meschini to confess before them a robbery in which he had taken part. But there was that in his brave eyes that told his innocence better than any evidence or argument could have proclaimed it. He held out the doc.u.ment to Saracinesca.
"Would you like to keep it as a memento?" he asked. "Or shall I destroy it before you?"
His voice never quavered, his face was not discomposed. Giovanni, the n.o.ble-hearted gentleman, wondered whether he himself could have borne such a blow so bravely as this innkeeper cousin of his.
Hopes, such as few men can even aspire to entertain, had been suddenly extinguished. A future of power and wealth and honour, the highest almost that his country could give any man, had been in a moment dashed to pieces before his eyes. Dreams, in which the most indifferent would see the prospect of enormous satisfaction, had vanished into nothing during the last ten minutes, almost at the instant when they were to be realised. And yet the man who had hoped such hopes, who had looked forward to such a future, whose mind must have revelled many a time in the visions that were already becoming realities--that man stood before them all, outwardly unmoved, and proposing to his cousin that he should keep as a remembrance the words that told of his own terrible disappointment. He was indeed the calmest of those present.
"Shall I tear it to pieces?" he asked again, holding the doc.u.ment between his fingers. Then the old prince spoke.
"Do what you will with it," he answered. "But give me your hand.
You are a braver man than I."
The two men looked into each other"s eyes as their hands met.
"It shall not be the last deed between us," said Saracinesca.
"There shall be another. Whatever may be the truth about that villain"s work you shall have your share--"
"A few hours ago, you would not take yours," answered San Giacinto quietly. "Must I repeat your own words?"
"Well, well--we will talk of that. This has been a terrible morning"s work, and we must do other things before we go to business again. That poor man"s body is outside the door. We had better attend to that matter first, and send for the police.
Giovanni, my boy, will you tell Corona? I believe she is still in the house."
Giovanni needed no urging to go upon his errand. He entered the drawing-room where Corona was still sitting beside Faustina upon the sofa. His face must have been pale, for Corona looked at him with a startled expression.
"Is anything the matter?" she asked.
"Something very unpleasant has occurred," he answered, looking at Faustina. "Meschini, the librarian, has just died very suddenly in the study where we were."
"Meschini?" cried Faustina in surprise and with some anxiety.
"Yes. Are you nervous, Donna Faustina? May I tell you something very startling?" It was a man"s question.
"Yes--what is it?" she asked quickly.
"Meschini confessed before us all that it was he who was the cause--in fact that he had murdered your father. Before any one could stop him, he had shot himself. It is very dreadful."
With a low cry that was more expressive of amazement than of horror, Faustina sank into a chair. In his anxiety to tell his wife the whole truth Giovanni forgot her at once. As soon as he began to speak, however, Corona led him away to the window where they had stood together a few hours earlier.
"Corona--what I told her is not all. There is something else.
Meschini had forged the papers which gave the property to San Giacinto. Montevarchi had promised him twenty thousand scudi for the job. It was because he would not pay the money that Meschini killed him. Do you understand?"
"You will have everything after all?"
"Everything--but we must give San Giacinto a share. He has behaved like a hero. He found it all out and made Meschini confess. When he knew the truth he did not move a muscle of his face, but offered my father the deed he had just signed as a memento of the occasion."
"Then he will not take anything, any more than you would, or your father. Is it quite sure, Giovanni? Is there no possible mistake?"
"No. It is absolutely certain. The original doc.u.ments are in this house."
"I am glad then, for you, dear," answered Corona. "It would have been very hard for you to bear--"
"After this morning? After the other day in Holy Office?" asked Giovanni, looking deep into her splendid eyes. "Can anything be hard to bear if you love me, darling?"
"Oh my beloved! I wanted to hear you say it!" Her head sank upon his shoulder, as though she had found that perfect rest for which she had once so longed.
Here ends the second act in the history of the Saracinesca. To trace their story further would be to enter upon an entirely different series of events, less unusual perhaps in themselves, but possibly worthy of description as embracing that period during which Rome and the Romans began to be transformed and modernised.
In the occurrences that followed, both political and social, the Saracinesca bore a part, in that blaze of gaiety which for many reasons developed during the winter of the Oec.u.menical Council, in the fall of the temporal power, in the social confusion that succeeded that long-expected catastrophe, and which led by rapid degrees to the present state of things. If there are any left who still feel an interest in Giovanni and Corona, the historian may once more resume his task and set forth in succession the circ.u.mstances through which they have pa.s.sed since that memorable morning they spent at the Palazzo Montevarchi. They themselves are facts, and, as such, are a part of the century in which we live; whether they are interesting facts or not, is for others to judge, and if the verdict denounces them as flat, unprofitable and altogether dull, it is not their fault; the blame must be imputed to him who, knowing them well, has failed in an honest attempt to show them as they are.
THE END.