"Counterfeiting, sir. Right over on that mountain across the river, they captured him and killed one of his comrades. The rest got away in time, and they never were found because this man would tell nothing, even to save himself. He might have turned state"s evidence and got off with a light sentence, for he was young and not known to the police. But he wouldn"t and he got the whole thing. Leroy, his name is. The officers who captured him believe he never meant to be taken alive; for they found him unconscious, with a little pistol in his hand, and they guessed that he fainted before he could use it. He had to spend weeks in a hospital before he could be tried, getting over a broken ankle and some other worse injuries. But he and his fellows had done clever work, no one knows how much. This Leroy might have been from across the water, as you say, sir; no one knows him here."
"How long has he been here?"
"Two years, sir."
"And his sentence?"
"Fifteen."
The visitor shuddered involuntarily. Pleased by his interest, the official brightened to offer further diversion:
"If you"ll come to the inner building, sir, I can show you some more.
We"ve some in for life--"
"Thank you," the visitor refused bruskly, and moved aside to rejoin his companions.
The little group fell silent and expectant at the approach of the one whose escort they were. It was rather a brilliant group against the somber prison background. Dancla, "the man in gray" of Allard"s warning, was the only member not in uniform, with the exception of the distinguished visitor himself.
"I am going into the town," their chief announced, pausing before them, "with Dancla. You may return to the yacht. Vasili, send the launch for me in an hour. Ah, and leave on that bench by the door my rain coat; I fancy it will be storming before we return. You understand?"
"Perfectly, your Royal Highness," responded Vasili, a trim, blond young aide-de-camp with a most ingenuous smile. He spoke in French, as did all the party.
"I alone have the honor of accompanying your Royal Highness?" Dancla asked, not without a shade of uneasiness.
The velvet black eyes of his chief pa.s.sed over him deliberately.
"You alone; come."
They went out, attended by the prison officials, past the prisoner still at work. Laughing and chatting, the rest of the party walked down the room to the door nearest the river. The place left seemed darker for their going, the silence more profound after their gay voices.
"We knew each other very well five years ago--"
When the patient has apparently reached the climax of suffering, when the very excess of pain brings a relief of numbness, Fate the Inquisitor occasionally finds amus.e.m.e.nt in devising a fresh form of putting the question. Upon Allard was forced the San Benito of renewed recollection.
Nearly five years before, John Allard, in all his gay insouciance of twenty-one years, had spent an hour on the quay at Palermo to enjoy the limpid Sicilian night. Alone at first, he was presently joined by a young officer with whom he had crossed from Italy a few days before and formed a slight shipboard acquaintance. Knowing nothing of each other, there had nevertheless sprung into life between them that curious sympathy and friendliness which can be born of exchanged glances, meeting smiles; that sudden inexplicable liking which can make two pa.s.sing strangers turn to gaze wistfully after each other and vaguely resent the trick of chance that has set their feet in opposite paths. It is one of the common phenomena of existence, but it was new to Allard, and perhaps new to his companion as well.
They sat side by side while evening melted into night, starlight into late moonrise; and they chatted of everything tangible and intangible suggested by the place and the time. But they did not touch the personal note until the cathedral chimes were pealing midnight.
"I must go back," commented the European wearily. "I have had my last day."
"Your last day!" Allard echoed, startled.
"Of freedom, yes. I was promised a month"s vacation; a month to spend as I chose, but I have good reason to know the promise has been revoked.
Oh, not for any cause,--just my uncle"s whim. He is fond of playing with me so."
"Do you always do what he says?" queried the young America incredulously.
"I have that habit; it is safer, and more virtuous. Still, virtue palls when its reward is invisible. When I go back to the hotel, Petro will hand me a telegram demanding my return to the Empire."
"Then I would not go back to the hotel," was the blithe suggestion. "Run before you are told to stay. Come share my bachelor hut and let Rome vociferate for a while."
"You are not in earnest," said the other, turning to look at him with an odd, eager surprise.
Allard had not been, but he adopted his own idea with the light-hearted impulsiveness of his _bel age_.
"Why not? My people--my brother and aunt and cousin--have gone for a glimpse of Germany; and I have stayed here to cram for my last year of college. I have a delicious miniature villa five miles out of town, which I have taken until their return, and which is a thousand times too big for me alone. Come stay out your vacation with me. If your uncle promised you a month, he can not complain if you take it. It is not your fault if you do not receive his old telegram."
"No. I am not supposed to know it is coming."
"Well, then, why not come? Send a note to your servant at the hotel, and tell him you are visiting a friend. He will have to telegraph your uncle that you are not to be found."
The European stood up and looked out across the shining water.
"I am nearly twenty-seven years old," he stated, "and I have never in my life had one week of my own. If you are serious, I will do this."
"Of course I am serious. We will have the time of both our lives. Come,"
the spirit of adventure in his veins, "you can write your note in that trattoria over there, and pay a boy to take it. We shall then make a straight dash for Villa Giocosa."
"You do not know me, and I can not tell you my name without spoiling all. If I tell you, we can not ignore it, try as we may."
Allard paused, then laughed out in sheer delight at the situation.
"I forgot all about names; I believe you do not know mine, for that matter. But come incognito, if you choose. I will even play host incognito, if that will arrange matters. Monsieur, my Christian name is John."
Youth, and the South, and the romance-freighted Sicilian night!
"You are very good," said the other simply. "I am called Feodor."
They went home to Villa Giocosa.
The three weeks which followed were a charming and graceful incident to Allard, an interlude in his happy, pleasantly-filled life. What they were to his companion, the American did not realize until long afterward. The two young men read or lounged together in the mossy garden, boated on the placid sea, talked and smoked through the tranquil evenings in the perfection of comradeship. But they kept the playful incognito, calling each other Don John and Don Feodor in the pretty Italian custom of the island where they met. Yet there was a difference, for the frank and communicative Allard soon laid all his past and present open to view, while the other never spoke of himself.
"How much you know!" exclaimed Allard, one day when Don Feodor came to the aid of the college man and pa.s.sed from complicated subject to subject with the light surety of a master of each.
"I ought to know something; I have been trained in a school that concedes no rest," was the composed reply.
The idyl ended abruptly. One sun-gilded, flower-scented noon, a messenger was ushered into the villa garden. In silence Don Feodor accepted and read the letter brought, in silence wrote and gave to the bearer his answer. And then he turned to his dismayed host.
"They have found me," he said quietly. "Of course you can not realize how I shall remember this time; you are too happy."
That was all. But Allard had remembered also; remembered the breathless, hot hush of noon, the heavy perfume of orange- and lemon-blossoms, as they shook hands in the old garden, and the sense of boyish desolation with which the farewell had left him.
"We knew each other very well, five years ago--"
The prisoner bent his head over his work, setting his white teeth in his lip until his mouth was bitter with the taste of his own blood.