Chapter Sixteen. Father and Daughter.

“My dear child, you really must have been dreaming, walking in your sleep!” declared Camillo Morini, looking at his daughter and laughing forcedly.

“I was not, father!” she declared very seriously. “I saw the man take out those bundles of papers I helped you to tie up.”

“But the key! There was only one made, and you know where it is. You saw me do away with it.”

“He has a duplicate.”

The Minister of War shook his head dubiously. What his daughter had told him about Jules Dubard was utterly inconceivable. He could not believe her. Truth to tell, he half believed that she had invented the story as an excuse against her engagement to him. Though so clever and far-seeing as a politician he was often unsuspicious of his enemies. Good-nature was his fault. He believed ill of nobody, and more especially of a man like Dubard, who had already shown himself a friend in several ways, and had rendered him a number of important services.

“And you say that you put a piece of your hairpin in the lock, and that prevented him reopening it on the second night?”

“Yes. Had it not been for that he would have made a complete examination of everything,” she said. “If he had done so, would he have discovered much of importance?”

His Excellency hesitated, and his grey brows contracted.

“Yes, Mary,” he answered, after a brief pause. “He would. There are secrets there—secrets which if revealed might imperil the safety of Italy.”

“And they are in your keeping?”

“They are in my keeping as Minister of War.”

“And some of them affect you—personally? Tell me the truth,” she urged, her gloved hand laid upon the edge of the table.

“They affect me both as Minister and as a loyal subject of His Majesty,” was His Excellency’s response, his face growing a trifle paler.

If the truths contained within that safe really leaked out, the result, he knew, would be irretrievable ruin. Even the contemplation of such a catastrophe caused him to hold his breath.

“Then I assure you, father, that nearly half the documents within have been carefully and methodically examined by this man who poses as your friend.”

“And to tell you the truth, dear, I cannot credit it. He can have no key that would open the door, unless he recovered it from the Arno—which is not likely. They never dredge that part, for it is too deep. Besides, that portion of the river is my own property, and before it could be dredged they would have to give me notice.”

“But a duplicate—could he not possess one?”

“Impossible. That safe was specially manufactured in London for me, and is one of the strongest ever constructed. I had it made specially of treble strength which will resist any drill or wedge—even dynamite would only break the lock and leave the bolts shot. The only manner it could be forced without the key would be to place it in a furnace or apply electrical heat, which would cause the steel to give. The makers specially designed it so that no second key could ever be fitted.”

“Then you disbelieve me?” she said, looking into her father’s face.

“No, I don’t actually disbelieve you, my dear,” he responded, placing his hand tenderly upon hers; “only the whole affair seems so absolutely incredible.”

“Everything is credible in the present situation,” she said, and then went on to relate what Dubard had told her regarding the conspiracy of the Socialists, who intended to hound the Ministry from office.

She was seated in her father’s private cabinet at the Ministry of War, in the large leather-covered chair opposite his big littered table, the chair in which sat so many high officials day after day discussing the military matters of the Italian nation. The double doors were closed, as they always were, against eavesdroppers.

She had, at her own request, managed to have a telegram sent her by him, and with Teresa had arrived in Rome only an hour ago. She had driven straight to the Ministry, and on her arrival Morini had quickly dismissed the general commanding in Sicily, to whom at that moment he was giving audience.

The story his daughter had related seemed utterly incredible. He knew from Ricci of the deep plot against him, but that the safe should really have been opened, and by Dubard of all men, staggered belief. That was why, in his astonishment, he declared that she must have been dreaming.

But in a few moments he became convinced, by her manner, that it was no dream, but an actual fact. Dubard, who had shown himself a friend, had actually pried into what was hidden from all. Why?

What had he discovered? That was the question.

Mary told him of the memoranda, and of the impressions upon the blotting-pad, whereupon he exclaimed quickly—

“I’ll send someone up to San Donato to-night to bring the blotting-pad here. Granati, the handwriting expert, shall examine it.” Then after a brief pause, he bent towards her, saying, “You do not believe that he really discovered what he was in search of?”

“No; he seemed disappointed.”

His Excellency heaved a sigh of relief. If Jules Dubard really had opened the safe, then he feared too well the reason—the motive of the search was plain enough to him.

His teeth set themselves hard, his face blanched at thought of it; and he brushed the scanty grey hair from his forehead with his hand.

And yet it seemed impossible—utterly impossible—that the safe could really have been opened and its contents examined.

“I can’t understand Count Dubard’s reason for accepting our hospitality and then acting as a thief during your absence, father,” the girl remarked, looking him full in the face. “I’ve told mother nothing, as I preferred to come straight to you. That is why I asked you to call me here by telegraph.”

“Quite right, my dear; quite right,” he said. “It would upset your mother unnecessarily.”

“But there is another matter about which I want to talk,” she said, after some hesitation; “something that the count has told me in confidence.”

“Oh! What’s that?” he asked quickly.

“It concerns yourself, father. He says that there is a deep political plot against you—to secure the downfall of the Cabinet and to bring certain unfounded charges against you personally.”

Her father smiled quite calmly.

“That news, my dear, is scarcely fresh,” he replied. “For twenty-five years my political enemies have been seeking to oust me from every office I’ve ever held. Therefore that they should be doing so now is only natural.”

“I know! I know!” she said, with earnest apprehension. “But he says that the plot is so formed that its result will reflect upon you personally,” and then she went on to describe exactly what Dubard had told her.

His Excellency, nervously toying with the quill, listened, and as he did so reflected upon what Ricci had already told him.

How was it, he wondered, that the Frenchman, who was outside the inner ring of Italian politics, knew all this? He must have some secret source of knowledge. That was plain.

Morini looked into his daughter’s great brown eyes, and read the deep anxiety there. Within his own heart he was full of apprehension for the future lest the Socialists might defeat the Government; yet, with the tact of the old political hand, he betrayed no concern before her. What she told him, however, revealed certain things that he had not hitherto suspected, and rendered the outlook far blacker than he had before regarded it.

“The count has also told me that there is a charge of treason against Captain Solaro.”

Instantly her father’s face changed.

“Well?” he snapped.

“The captain is innocent,” she declared. “He must be. He would never betray the military secrets of his country.”

“That is a matter which does not concern you, Mary,” he exclaimed quickly. “He has been tried by court-martial and been dismissed the army.”

“But you surely will not allow an innocent man to suffer, father!” she urged in a voice of quick reproach.

“It is not a matter that concerns either of us, my dear,” he answered in a hard tone. “He has been found guilty—that is sufficient.”

She was silent, for suddenly she recollected what the count had said, namely, that any effort on her part to prove poor Solaro’s innocence must reflect upon her father, whose enemies would use the fact to prove that Italy had been betrayed with the connivance of the Minister of War.

She sighed. She had suspicions—grave ones; but she knew that at least Felice Solaro had been made the scapegoat of some cunning plot, and that his sentence was unjust. Yet what could she do in such circumstances? She was powerless. She could only remain patient and wait—wait, perhaps, for the final blow to fall upon her father and her house! A silence fell, broken only by the low ticking of the marble clock and the measured tramp of the sentry down in the sun-baked courtyard.

Her father sighed, rose from his chair, and with his hands behind his back paced anxiously up and down the room.

“Mary!” he exclaimed suddenly, in a changed voice, hoarsely in earnest, “if the secrets hidden in that safe have actually fallen into the hands of my enemies, then I must resign from office?” His face was now blanched to the lips, for all his self-possession seemed to have deserted him in an instant as the ghastly truth became revealed. “I know—I know too well—how cleverly the conspiracy has been formed, but I never dreamed that that safe could be opened, and the truth known. No,” he said in a low voice of despair, his chin sunk upon his breast; “it would be better to resign, and fly from Italy.”

His daughter looked at him in silence and surprise. She had never seen him plunged in such despair. A bond of sympathy had always existed between father and daughter ever since her infancy.

“Then you dare not face your enemies if they are actually in possession of what is contained in the safe?” she said slowly, rising and placing her hand tenderly upon her father’s shoulder. She realised for the first time that her father, the man whom she had trusted so implicitly since her childhood, held some guilty secret.

“No, my dear, I dare not,” was his reply, placing his trembling hand upon her arm.

“But you are unaware of how much knowledge Count Dubard has obtained,” she pointed out.

“Sufficient in any case to cause my ruin,” replied the grey-haired Minister of War. “That is, of course, if he is not after all my friend.”

“But he is your friend, father,” she was compelled to exclaim, in order to give him courage, for she had never in her life seen him so overcome.

“Those midnight investigations are, as you have said, a curious way of demonstrating friendship,” he remarked blankly. “No,” he added in a dry, hard tone. “To-day is the beginning of the end. These are my last days of office, Mary. The vote may be taken in the Chamber any day, and then—” and his eyes wandered involuntarily to that drawer in his writing-table wherein reposed his revolver, which, alas! more than once of late he had handled so fondly.

“And after that—what?” his daughter asked anxiously.

But only a deep sigh ran through the lofty room, and then she realised that her father’s kindly eyes were filled with tears.