"I cannot see the reason for all this inquiry, Mr. Hargreave," she said one evening, as we were walking by the moonlit sea after we had dined and Madame had retired. "Why should father wish you to watch the Marchesa so narrowly? How can she concern him? They are strangers."
I was silent for a few seconds.
"Your father"s business is a confidential one, no doubt. He has his own views, and I am, after all, his secretary and servant."
"I--I often wish you were not," the girl blurted forth.
"Why?" I asked in surprise.
"Oh! I don"t really know. Sometimes I feel so horribly apprehensive.
Madame is always so discreet and so mysterious. She will never tell me anything; and you--you, Mr. Hargreave, you are the same," she declared petulantly.
"I cannot, I regret, disclose to you facts of which I am ignorant," I protested. "I am just as much in the dark concerning the actual object of our mission here as you are."
"Do you think Madame knows anything of your mission here?" asked the girl.
"I don"t expect so. Your father is a very close and secretive man concerning his own business."
"Ah! a mysterious business!" she exclaimed in a strange meaning voice.
"Sometimes, Mr. Hargreave--sometimes I feel that it is not altogether an honest business."
"Many brilliant pieces of business savor of dishonesty," I remarked.
"The successful business man cannot always, in these days of double-dealing chicanery and cut prices, act squarely, otherwise he is quickly left behind by his more shrewd compet.i.tors."
And then I thought it wise to turn the subject of our conversation.
Salerno is only thirty miles from Naples, therefore I often traveled to the latter place--indeed, almost daily.
In Italian they have an old saying, "_A chi veglia tutto si rivela_"
("To him who remains watchful everything becomes revealed"). That had long been my motto. With Lola and Madame Duperre I was in Italy in order to learn what I could concerning the woman whom Fra Pacifico had so bitterly denounced.
One warm afternoon when, without being seen, I was watching the Marchesa"s pretty daughter Flavia who had strolled into the town, I saw her meet, close to the Cafe Ferrari, that tall, black-bearded, middle-aged banker Pietro Zuccari, whom I had seen at their palazzo.
They walked as far as the Piazza San Ferdinando and entered the Gambrinus, where they sat at a little table eating ices, while he talked to her very confidentially. As I idled outside in a shabby suit and battered straw hat which I had bought, I saw this great Italian banker gesticulating and whispering into her ear.
The girl"s att.i.tude was that of a person absorbing all his arguments in order to repeat them, for she nodded slowly from time to time, though she uttered but few words; indeed, only now and then did she ask any question.
I could, of course, hear nothing. But what I was able to observe aroused my curiosity, for the meeting between the girl and the middle-aged banker was palpably a clandestine one.
On emerging, they parted, he walking in the direction of the railway station, while the girl strolled homeward. Was she carrying a message to her mother from the famous financier?
The excitement he had betrayed interested me. I noticed that he had once clenched his fist and brought it down heavily before her as they sat together.
For a whole month we remained at Salerno, and a delightful month it proved, for I had long chats and walks with Lola, and we became even greater and more intimate friends. Madame Duperre noticed it but said nothing.
I went each day to slouch and idle in Naples, to sit before cafes and eat my frugal meal at one or other of the osterie which abound in the city, or to take my _aperatif_ at the _liquoristi_, Canevera"s, Attila"s, or the others".
I confess that I was mystified why I should have been sent to watch that woman.
So clever, so well-thought-out and so insidious were all Rayne"s methods to obtain information of the intentions and movements of certain people of wealth, that I knew from experience that there was some cleverly concealed scheme afoot which could only be carried out after certain accurate details had been obtained.
I was torn between two intentions, either to reappear suddenly as a pa.s.sing traveler and call at the Palazzo Romanelli, or still to lie low.
Many times I discussed it with Lola and Madame.
"Zuccari is always with the Marchesa," I said one morning as we sat together at _dejeuner_ at Salerno. "I can"t quite make things out. I have been watching intently, yet I can discover nothing. He sent a message to her by Flavia the other day--an urgent and defiant message, I believe. I hear also that the Admiral goes to Rome to-night," I added. "He has been suddenly called to the Ministry of Marine."
"Then you will follow, of course? We will remain here to keep an eye upon the Marchesa," said Madame.
"You do not suspect the Admiral?" I asked.
"Not at all," she said. "It is the woman we have to watch."
"And also the pretty daughter?" I suggested.
With that she agreed. We were, however, faced by a strangely complex problem. Here was a woman--one of the most popular in all Italy--denounced by the humble monk of San Domenico as a dangerous adventuress. And yet she was the strongest supporter of the popular Pietro Zuccari--the wealthy man by whose efforts the finances of Italy had been reestablished after the war.
After a long conference it was arranged that Madame and Lola should go to Rome and there watch the Admiral"s movements, while I remained in Naples ever on the alert.
Sometimes I became obsessed by the feeling that I was off the track.
Once or twice I had received "_ferma in posta_"--confidential letters from Rudolph Rayne and also from Duperre. To these I replied to an unsuspicious address--a library in Knightsbridge.
By reason, however, of keeping observation upon the Palazzo Romanelli I gained considerable knowledge concerning those who came and went. I knew, for instance, that the pretty Flavia was in the habit of meeting in strictest secrecy a good-looking young lieutenant of artillery named Rinaldo Ricci. Indeed, they met almost daily. It struck me as more than curious that on the day after the Admiral had left hurriedly for Rome Zuccari should arrive from Bari, and having taken a room at the Excelsior Hotel, dine at the palazzo.
My vigil that night was a long one. I managed to creep up through the grounds and peer through the wooden shutters into the fine, well-furnished _salon_ of the palazzo. It was unoccupied, but upon a table on the opposite side of the room stood the Silver Spider, the strange but exquisite mascot of the Romanelli. No doubt some legend was attached to it, just as there are legends to many family heirlooms.
That night I made a further discovery, namely, that when Zuccari left he returned to his hotel, where Flavia"s secret lover had a long chat with him.
Next day a strange thing happened. While watching the Marchesa I saw her, about eleven o"clock in the morning, walking alone in the Corso Vittorio when she accidentally encountered the banker Zuccari. They pa.s.sed each other as total strangers!
Why? There was some deep motive in that pretended ignorance of each other"s ident.i.ty. Could it be because they feared they were being watched? And yet was not Zuccari a frequent visitor at the Palazzo Romanelli, for it was there I had first met him? In any case, it was curious that Zuccari and young Rinaldo Ricci should be friends apparently unknown to either the Marchesa or to Flavia.
In order to probe the mystery I decided that it would be necessary to learn more of Zuccari"s movements. Therefore, having watched him call at the Palazzo Romanelli, I waited for him to leave, and at ten o"clock that same night he suddenly departed from Naples for the north. I traveled by the same train. Arrived at Rome, the banker remained at the buffet about half an hour, when he joined the express train for Milan, and all through the day and the night I traveled, wondering what might be his destination.
On arrival at Milan, I kept observation upon him. From the chief telegraph office he dispatched a telegram and then drove to the Hotel Cavour, where he engaged a room. At once I telegraphed to Madame to bring Lola and join me at the Hotel de Milan. They arrived next day and I told them of my movements.
Three days later Zuccari left the Cavour and traveled to the frontier, little dreaming that he was being so closely followed. Madame and Lola went by the same train, but having discovered that he had bought a ticket for Zurich, I left by the train that followed.
On arrival at Zurich, I was not long in rejoining my companions, for we had a rendezvous at the Savoy, when I learnt that Zuccari was staying at the Dolder Hotel, up on the Zurichberg above the Lake.
"A man named Hauser is calling upon him this evening," Madame told me.
"We must watch."
This we did. More respectably dressed than when in Naples, I was smoking my after-dinner cigar in the handsome hall of the Dolder Hotel when a tall, well-set-up man, whose fair hair and square jaw stamped him as German-Swiss, inquired of the hall porter for Signor Zuccari, and was at once shown up to the banker"s private sitting-room, where they remained together for nearly an hour.
As I sat waiting impatiently below, I wondered what was happening.
I had already reported our movements to Rayne, who had, in a telegram, expressed great surprise that the Deputy should have left Italy and gone to Zurich--of all places.