Chapter Twenty. Tells the Truth.

On the following afternoon, in consequence of a telegram, the Minister of War drove into Florence, and met Vito Ricci at the club.

He seldom took the train to Florence because, on account of his position, the obsequious officials treated him with so much ceremony. He was a modest man, who at heart hated all bowing officialdom, much preferring to drive through the rich vineyards of the Arno valley to being received at the station by all the officials and having the ordinary traffic stopped on his arrival.

The Florence Club, an institution run upon English lines, is one of the most exclusive in Europe. It occupies the whole of a huge flat in the new Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele, handsomely appointed, with fine spacious rooms overlooking the busy centre of Florentine life. Its members are mostly men of the highest social standing in Italy, together with a select few of rich English and Americans, to whom membership gives the hall-mark of rank in that complex cosmopolitan world. In winter and spring its rooms are well-filled and its bridge-tables are well patronised, but in summer and autumn, when all Florence is away in the mountains or at the sea, it is deserted and handed over to the care of a couple of waiters, who scarcely see a member from one week’s end to the other.

The Deputy Ricci had telegraphed that he had no time to come up to San Donato, as he could only spend three hours in Florence; therefore the club was the most convenient place where they could meet and consult undisturbed. The urgency of Ricci’s message had aroused the other’s apprehensions that something was amiss.

“Ah!” cried the deputy in relief as the Minister entered the small card-room where he stood impatiently awaiting him. “I began to fear that my telegram had not reached you.” And the pair having shaken hands, Ricci went to the door and locked it.

Then when they crossed to the window, which gave a view of the wide-open piazza with its colossal statue in the centre, Ricci said—

“I left Rome this morning at nine, and I return by the express at six. I came here purposely to see you.”

“Has something occurred?” asked His Excellency quickly, glancing at the dark face of the Piedmontese lawyer who sat in the Chamber of Deputies and made politics his living.

“Yes,” was Ricci’s answer in a low half-whisper. “You recollect our conversation when we met last—about the impending crisis?”

“Yes. You promised, for certain considerations, to turn the political tide in my favour.”

“I have tried to do so, but have failed,” said the other in a deep, serious voice.

“Failed?” gasped the Minister as, in an instant, all the light died out of his face.

“The Opposition is too strong,” he explained. “Borselli has so completely won over the Socialists that he can cause them to dance to any tune he pleases.”

Camillo Morini’s face was blanched. Ruin was before him—ruin, utter and complete. He had trusted in Vito, feeling confidence in that adventurer’s ingenuity and influence. More than once this adventurer had cleverly turned the tide of popular thought, for certain journals were always open to write what the popular deputy for Asti dictated, and of course received substantial bribes for so doing. Yet at this most crucial moment he had failed!

“I made you the payment on condition that you were successful in rendering me the service,” remarked His Excellency hoarsely.

“I know, I know,” was the other’s response. “I have brought back the money to repay you.” And he took from his leather wallet a banker’s draft, which he handed to the Minister.

The tall, thin, refined-looking man stood motionless, his eyes fixed for a moment upon the slip of paper thus offered back to him. He recognised that the efforts of his secret agent, whose services had so often been invaluable, were of no avail, that his doom was sealed.

“No. Keep it, Vito,” he said hoarsely, with a dry, hollow laugh, that sarcasm born of desperation. “You have earned it—keep it.”

The other raised his shoulders in regret, and then, with a word of thanks, replaced the draft in his pocket.

There was a long silence. A company of bersaglieri, those well-set-up men with their round hats and cock’s plumes, were crossing the piazza, marching to the fanfare of trumpets, and behind them came a company of the Misericordia, that mediaeval confraternity disguised in their long black gowns with slits for their eyes, passing with their ambulance on an errand of mercy.

Morini gazed upon that weird, tragic procession hurrying across the square, and within him there arose grave and morbid reflections. He had worked for Italy, had given his whole soul to the reform of the army and the perfecting of the defences of the nation he had loved so well. It was more the fault of the system than his own that he had been guilty of dishonesty. The other members of the Cabinet were equally guilty of misappropriating the national funds. They were, indeed, compelled to do so in order to keep up their position, to maintain and pay the secret agents they employed, and to bribe the men of influence from seeking to expose their thefts.

Surely poor strangled Italy under the régime of his lamented Majesty King Umberto was in very evil case!

“I have trusted in you, Vito,” the Minister said simply, when he again found tongue, for the ugly truth had utterly staggered him.

“And I have done my best, your Excellency,” was the other’s reply. “In the Camera and out of it, I have worked unceasingly in order to try and win you back into favour, but Borselli is far too strong. He has influential friends, who believe they will obtain appointments and money if he is in office as Minister of War. Hence they are working by every means to place him in power.”

“And to cause my downfall and ruin!” murmured the unhappy man, staring blankly down at the piazza, still dazzlingly white in the hot sun-glare.

The adventurer sighed. To Camillo Morini he owed everything, and was conscious of the fact. He had no words to express his regret at his failure, for he knew too well all that it meant to the man before him.

“The success of the French secret service upon the Alpine frontier is the chief capital of the Opposition,” Ricci explained. “They say you have connived at it, and that Solaro was assisted by your daughter, the Signorina Mary.”

“Solaro assisted by her! How?”

“They have discovered that he was her friend. They were noticed together in Rome a year ago, when they allege that she gave him certain information gathered from your papers, which, in due course, reached the French Ministry of War!”

“Impossible?” declared the Minister. “They are acquainted, I know. But my daughter would never assist a traitor. It is infamous?”

“I quite agree with you. I cannot believe the signorina guilty of any such action. Yet the truth remains that the secrets of the Tresenta are actually in the hands of France.”

“I know,” groaned the unhappy man. “I know, Vito. But Solaro is disgraced and imprisoned. Surely that is enough for them?”

“No. You misunderstand. They are raising the cry everywhere that Italy is in danger—that you personally are culpable.”

“They will say next that I myself have sold the plans to France!” he cried bitterly.

“Ah! you know the kind of men Borselli has behind him—the most unscrupulous set of office-seekers in Italy. They will hesitate at nothing in order to arouse the public indignation against you. The fire is already kindled, and they are now fanning it into a flame. I tried to extinguish it. I offered a dozen bribes in various quarters, knowing that you would willingly pay to secure safety—but all were rejected because of Borselli’s promise to them of fat emoluments in the future.”

“Italy!” cried the Minister. “Oh, Italy! Must you fall into the hands of such a gang of thieves? I have done my best. Dishonesty has been forced upon me by this very man who now seeks to hound me out of office and take my place. I have been blind, Vito,” he added, “utterly blind.”

“Yes,” sighed the other, “I fear you have. Borselli has laid his plans too well, and arranged the conspiracy with too deep a cunning, to fail. I naturally believed that he could be fought with his own weapons, but I have found myself mistaken. We must, alas! face the worst! To-morrow the Socialists are to raise the question of Tresenta in the Camera; the vote will be taken, the Government defeated, and the whole blame will fall upon yourself. Borselli’s organs of the Press all have their orders to shriek and scream at you, to demand a searching inquiry regarding the disposal of certain sums set apart for the army—even to the giving of contracts to German contractors.”

Morini started, and his grave face went paler.

“Then Borselli has betrayed me—he, who is equally guilty with myself?”

“To his friends who intend to obtain Government appointments at high salaries he is innocent, while you alone are guilty,” Ricci pointed out. Then, sighing again, he added in a sympathetic voice,—for although a political adventurer he was nevertheless a firm personal friend of the Minister’s,—“I declare to you, Camillo, I have done my very utmost. But the weak point in our armour is the Tresenta affair, and the signorina’s acquaintance with the traitor Solaro. The natural conclusion, of course, is that she assisted him.”

“But what do they say of his friendship for her?”

“They allege that she was in love with him, but that, being only an officer with little else but his pay, he feared to approach you to obtain your permission to pay court to her, and that she, in order that he might obtain money from the French War Intelligence Department, gave him copies of certain secret documents which were in your possession.”

“But I have no plans of the Tresenta,” he declared quickly.

“There are other matters of which they allege the French have gained knowledge—details of the new mobilisation scheme.”

“Those papers are safely locked up at the Ministry,” he answered. “Mary has no knowledge of their existence.”

“If France obtained copies of them, would they be of service to her?”

“Of course. They would reveal our vulnerable points, and would show where she might strike us in order to destroy the concentration of our troops upon the frontier. Those papers are the most important of any we possess. The commanders of the various military districts have their secret orders, but they would be useless without the key to the complete scheme, which is kept safely from prying eyes in the Ministry. The French have surely not obtained a copy of that!” he gasped.

“It seems that they have—through your daughter, it is alleged.” Then he added, with a sigh, “They have all their facts ready to launch against you.”

“Their untruths—their lies!” he cried desperately, clenching his fist. “Ah, it is cruel! It is infamous! They even go so far as to brand my daughter—my dear Mary—as a traitress!”

And the strong man of Italy—the ruler of a European army—covered his face with his hands and sobbed aloud.

Vito Ricci had failed, yet was it any wonder that Morini’s enemies sought to attack his honour by making false and ignominious allegations against his daughter?

The unhappy man looked into the future of ruin, disgrace, perhaps prosecution by those very men who had been his friends, and saw but one way open from that shame—death.

And yet was not such a thought irreligious and cowardly? If they intended to attack his daughter, was it not his duty to defend her and vindicate her good name?

Ricci, unscrupulous as he had been through years of political life, sometimes holding by his intrigues the very fate of Italy in his hands, stood by in silence, his chin sunk upon his breast, for he knew too well that the ill-judged man to whom he was indebted for so much was to be made the scapegoat of the corrupt Ministry—he knew that the man before him was doomed, and yet he was utterly powerless to save him, even though he was prepared to go to any length to attain that end.

Then, a moment later, when Camillo Morini thought of that degraded officer, silent and suffering in the gloom of his prison, his mouth hardened, he held his breath, and his jaws became hard set. He remembered how that accused man had broken his sword before him and cast the pieces at his feet as guage of his innocence.

Yet the die was cast. To-day he, Camillo Morini, was Italian Minister of War, and the trusted adviser of his sovereign, King Umberto. But to-morrow—to-morrow? Ah! would that the morrow could not come.