"But have you no relations?" I inquired, foreseeing a great difficulty in carrying out these verbal instructions.
"Relations! Bah! what are relations?" he cried excitedly. "Only an infernal enc.u.mbrance. I suppose I have some somewhere--everybody has more or less."
"And don"t you know where yours are?"
"No, nor do I wish to know," he snapped. "I am alone--you understand-- entirely alone. And, moreover, I trust that if you are my friend, as you seem to wish to be, you will so far respect my memory as not to believe all that will probably be said against me. To you only I admit that I am not what I have represented myself to be--that is all. I accept your kindness, but, alas! with considerable shame."
I drew the Italian notes from the wallet, and counted them.
"There are twenty-eight thousand lire here," I remarked, "one thousand one hundred and twenty pounds."
"What does it concern me how much there is?" he asked, smiling. "Use it as I"ve directed. Indeed," he added, after a pause, "you need not tell any one that you have it."
"I shall tell my friend Sampson, or people may think that I"ve stolen it," I said.
"Yes," he remarked hoa.r.s.ely, with a sigh, "people are always ready to think ill of one, are they not?"
And then, as the bar of sunlight crept slowly across the worn-out carpet, a deep silence again fell, broken only by the stranger"s fierce, vengeful mutterings which to me conveyed no distinct meaning.
"_Madonna mia_!" he cried aloud once, cringing in excruciating pain.
"How I suffer! I wonder how long it must be before I give out. _Dio_!
Is this the punishment of h.e.l.l?"
Then he turned his eyes upon me--those wide-open, horrified eyes--in a look the remembrance of which is even to-day still before me, the recollection of which I shall carry with me to the grave.
There was something indescribable about that expression, uncanny, fascinating, inhuman. They were the eyes of a man who, though still alive, was obtaining his first glance into the awful mysteries of the eternity.
At half-past seven Tulloch returned and brought him a soothing draught, so that he slept, and I then left the sick-room to dress and breakfast.
With Mrs Gilbert, Sammy and I agreed that no word of the painful affair should be told to our fellow-guests, because illness in a boarding-house always causes the visitors to make excuses for departure. So we said nothing.
Sampson had some urgent business with his solicitor in the City that day, therefore I remained at home, acting as nurse to the unfortunate man whose end was now so near.
Three times during the day Tulloch returned, but all he did proved unavailing. The stranger could not possibly live, he said. It was a wonder that he had had strength to withstand the journey to England. It was the reaction that was proving fatal--internal haemorrhage.
Just before six o"clock, when I crept on tiptoe back to the mysterious man"s darkened room to see if he still slept, he called me eagerly in a low whisper, saying that he wished to speak to me in strict confidence.
I therefore seated myself at his bedside and bent down, so that the effort of speaking should be as little as possible.
"There is still one further favour I would beg of you, Signor Leaf. I wonder whether--whether you would grant it?" he asked very feebly, stretching out his thin hand until it rested upon my wrist.
"If it is within my power, I will," I a.s.sured him.
"Then you see this!" he exclaimed, drawing from beneath his pillow a small flat packet in white paper about four inches square and secured by three large black oval seals evidently impressed by some old monastic seal of the middle ages.
"I want you," he said, "to accept the responsibility of this. They are papers of considerable value to certain relatives in Italy. Will you take charge of it, and three years after my death hand it intact to the Italian Amba.s.sador? I appeal to you to do so, for you are my only friend, and I am dying," he added, in a tone of intense earnestness.
"If you wish," I said, somewhat reluctant, however, to undertake such responsibility. And I took the packet, and, after examining the seals, transferred it to my pocket.
The mysterious Ma.s.sari firmly declined my offer to go to the Italian Church in Hatton Garden and fetch a priest.
"I don"t wish to see anybody," he snapped. "I have a reason. At least let me die in peace."
And an hour later, just as Tulloch returned, he again fixed those bright staring eyes upon me and silently pa.s.sed away, carrying with him his secret to the grave.
It concerned a woman. That much he had admitted. Who was the woman, I wondered? What was her secret?
"This man had a strange history, I feel convinced," I remarked in a low voice to Tulloch as we left the chamber of death together and quietly closed the door.
"Yes," he said. "He seemed a queer fellow. But in my profession, old chap, we often meet strange people, you know. Men, when they are dying, frequently have curious fancies and extraordinary hallucinations."
And then we went down into Mrs Gilbert"s sitting-room to inform her of the unfortunate occurrence in her house.
I locked the sealed packet and the bulky wallet safely away in my despatch-box, and when Sammy returned a little later I told him all that had occurred.
My friend, a short, fair-haired, round-faced fellow of thirty-eight, a splendid type of the muscular athletic Englishman, flung himself into the big leather armchair with a cigarette and listened. Like mine, his life had been full of adventure. Some years before he had thrown up his commission in the Scots Greys in order to go on active service, anywhere so long as there was fighting. He had been through three South American revolutions; had served with the Americans in Cuba; had been mentioned in despatches for his services before Ladysmith, and was now contemplating volunteering for service against the Mad Mullah.
Possessed of comfortable private means he was soldier, traveller, big-game hunter and champion tennis-player, a good all-round man bubbling over with good-humour, and a great favourite with the ladies.
"Well, G.o.dfrey, old chap," he remarked, stretching himself out when I had concluded my story. "Certainly the fellow"s a bit of a mystery. Do you know, I watched him very closely at table last night, and it somehow struck me that he feared to be recognised. Each time the door opened he started and looked apprehensively in its direction. Besides, a man of his stamp doesn"t usually come to a boarding-house of this sort. He"d go to the Savoy, or the Cecil. Depend upon it he had a motive in coming here, and that motive was in order to hide himself. He may have done something wrong in Italy and fled to London, as so many do. Who knows?"
Truth to tell, my friend"s suggestion exactly coincided with my own suspicion. Jane, the maid-of-all-work, had told me, to my surprise, that when she had entered his room that morning during my absence he had spoken to her in most excellent English! The fact, too, that he had refused to see a priest seemed to point to a fear lest his hiding-place might be discovered.
But he was dead, and I had, rather unwisely perhaps, accepted a curious responsibility. Even the money he had placed in my charge might be the proceeds of some theft!
That night I arranged with a neighbouring undertaker that the remains of the stranger should be taken away on the following night when the whole house was asleep, a service for which I received the heartfelt grat.i.tude of Mrs Gilbert.
About seven o"clock the next evening when I returned from the club, Miss Gilbert met me excitedly in the hall, and asked whether I would mind stepping into her mother"s sitting-room for a moment.
Seated within, I found a tall, dark-haired, sweet-faced girl in neat black who looked at me with shy inquiry as I entered. I saw she was very beautiful. Her delicately moulded features were perfect, and upon her cheeks was the fresh bloom of youth. I judged her to be about twenty-five, with slim, narrow-waisted, graceful figure, eyes of soft dark brown, well-defined brows and tiny sh.e.l.l-like ears. Her air and manner was of the _chic_ Parisienne, rather than the Londoner. The instant our gaze met I saw that she was a woman of exquisite sweetness-- perhaps one of the most attractive I had ever seen in all my wide wanderings over the face of the globe.
"This lady desires to see you, Mr Leaf," explained the landlady"s daughter. "She has called with regard to our friend, Signor Ma.s.sari."
I bowed to her, and as I did so she said quickly in English:--
"I am in active search of Signor Ma.s.sari, and have come post-haste across Europe in order to find him. This lady says he has been here, but has left. You, I understand, speak Italian and have had several conversations with him?"
I glanced quickly at Miss Gilbert. She had not told the visitor the sad truth, therefore I was compelled to sustain the fiction that the dead man had left.
The landlady"s daughter, apparently unable to further evade her visitor"s eager questions, excused herself and left us alone together.
The instant she had gone the visitor rose with a quick _frou-frou_ of silken underskirts, and closing the door turned to me with a deep earnest look, saying in a low voice scarcely above a whisper:--
"Let me confess the truth, sir! I am in a most deadly peril, and yet utterly defenceless. I have come direct from Rome in order to overtake the man who has called himself Ma.s.sari. I must find him, at all hazards. If he chooses to speak--to tell the truth--then he can save my life. If not, I"m lost. Will you help me to discover him? Perhaps you know where he has gone? I throw myself upon your sympathy--upon your mercy. See!" she cried hoa.r.s.ely, with a wild look in her beautiful eyes, for she was indeed desperate, "I am begging of you, a perfect stranger, begging for my freedom, for my woman"s honour--nay for my life!"
I stood before her stunned.
What could I reply? What would you have replied in such circ.u.mstances?
CHAPTER THREE.