Chapter Thirty Five. The Captain is Outspoken.

“But tell me,” cried Mary, utterly amazed at the unhappy man’s startling allegations, “do you actually declare that Dubard and Mr Macbean have conspired in order to throw the opprobrium upon you?”

“I do,” he answered in a low, hard tone. “I am convinced of it. Macbean is an Englishman living in London—secretary to an English deputy named Morgan-Mason.”

“He is a friend of mine,” she remarked quietly. “I know him quite well.”

“Then do not trust him,” Solaro urged. “He is the—” But he hesitated, as though fearing to make any direct charge against one who was her friend.

“The what?” she inquired eagerly.

For a few moments he remained silent.

“He is the man who, with Dubard, was the cause of my downfall,” he responded, although from his hesitating tone she felt assured that those words were not what he had first intended to utter.

“And Dubard?” she asked, her face now very grave.

“What use is it to discuss either of them?” he said bitterly. “I am their victim—that is all.”

“But with what motive?” she asked, bewildered at this revelation. “What connection can Mr Macbean possibly have with these false scandalous charges against you?”

“Ah! the motive is more than I can tell,” he declared. “I can only surmise it.”

“But there surely must be some motive!” she remarked, at the same time recollecting what she had learnt, that the information furnished by Dubard formed the basis of the charges intended to be levelled by the Socialists against her father.

“I have never had an opportunity of ascertaining it,” he said. “I would, however, desire to warn you most strongly against that man Macbean.”

Mary remained silent. What he had said puzzled and mystified her. His words were not prompted by motives of jealousy. That was impossible, for he was unaware of Macbean’s presence in Rome. As far as she knew, the two men had never been acquainted—the one an officer in garrison in the Alps, and the other living in far-off London. She endeavoured to induce him to speak more plainly, but it was evident that her acknowledgment that Macbean was her friend prevented him from opening his mind concerning him.

All her sympathies being with the imprisoned man, she felt a distinct suspicion arising within her concerning the young Englishman.—She wondered whether after all he had really schemed to obtain an appointment in the Ministry; if his present position was only in furtherance of some sinister object?

She spoke of Dubard, but the prisoner was equally silent concerning him.

“What I can tell you about either of them amounts to nothing without proof, and without my liberty I cannot obtain that. They know it!” he said angrily. “They know that while I am here, in prison, my lips are sealed!”

“But it is infamous!” exclaimed the red-faced old general. “If you were the victim of a plot laid by these two fellows, whoever they are, the matter ought to be sifted to the bottom. I don’t believe you are guilty, Solaro! I told His Excellency the Minister so!”

“Ah, my dear general, you have been my best friend,” declared the man now clothed in sacking in lieu of a uniform. “But your efforts must all be unavailing. They are sending me to the loneliness of Gorgona, that place where many a better man than myself has been driven insane by solitude. They know that on Gorgona I shall not live very long—indeed, they will take very good care of that.”

“They—who are they?” inquired Mary quickly.

“My enemies.”

“Mr Macbean and Dubard, you mean?”

“No, others—others I need not name,” he responded vaguely, with a careless shrug of his shoulders.

“But if you are the victim of a plot it must have been a most elaborate one, for the mass of evidence against you seems overwhelming. What object could the conspirators have had in view? Were they friends of yours?”

“Yes—once. Their object was probably not of their own—but that of others,” he added.

His words left the impression upon her that his conviction was part of the elaborate scheme of Angelo Borselli. And yet was not that very man now urging her to secure his release!

The affair was increased in mystery a thousandfold.

“Then if Mr Macbean was only slightly known to you why should he have plotted to secure your ruin and imprisonment?” she queried in eagerness.

“As I have already said, they were both in peril as long as I was at liberty. It was to their own interests—indeed for their own safety—that I should be sent here.”

“What do they fear?”

“They fear what I could reveal—the facts that I could prove if I were not held here a prisoner,” he said bitterly.

“And would those facts be strange ones?”

“They would be startling—they would create a sensation throughout Italy. They would throw a new light on certain affairs connected with the Ministry of War that would come as a thunderclap upon the people.”

“You defied the Minister, remember,” his general remarked gravely.

“I know. I lost my head. I broke my sword and threw the pieces at his feet in defiance. I was foolish—ah! very foolish. Only I was angry at his refusal to order a revision of my trial.”

“Yes,” the general admitted. “You have prejudiced yourself in His Excellency’s eyes, I fear. Your indignation was but natural, but it was ill-advised at that moment. The Minister Morini is not the man to brook defiance in that manner.”

“But I do defy him still!” cried the desperate man, turning to the tragic figure in black. “Although he is your father, signorina, I repeat that he has done me an injustice—and that injustice is because he, like the others, fears to give me my liberty!”

“But if you were released—if I could manage to obtain for you a pardon—would you make the revelations of which you have spoken?”

For some minutes he was silent, thinking deeply, apparently reflecting upon the consequences of speaking the truth. Then he answered—

“No. I think not.”

“Why not?”

“Because—well, because there are one or two facts of which I have no absolute proof.”

“But you are certain of Dubard’s connection with the false charges against you?”

“Positive. He arranged with Filoména Nodari for my betrayal.”

“But why? I cannot see the motive, and yet he must have had one!”

“In his own interests, as well as those of the Englishman.”

“You mean Macbean?”

“Yes—the betrayer!”

Mary’s heart beat quickly. She could not grasp his meaning, yet he refused to tell her plainly the whole of the strange circumstances, apparently fearing to give her pain because she had declared herself to be a friend of the Englishman. He was, of course, in ignorance of their friendship, just as he was in ignorance of her engagement to Jules Dubard.

She was in a dilemma—a dilemma absolute and complete. What Borselli had declared—namely, that the unfortunate captain was in possession of some facts which he would prove if he regained his liberty—seemed to be the truth. Yet if she secured his liberty by pressing her father to pardon him, she would only be deliberately giving to his political enemies a weapon whereby they might hound him from office. While, further, he refused to make her a direct promise to tell the truth, or make the revelations—even if liberated.

What could she do? How could she act? His allegations held her amazed, speechless. He had declared himself to be the victim of the ingenious conspiracy formed by the Frenchman and by George Macbean—the latter, of all men! The whole affair was an enigma that was inexplicable.

That Macbean had entered into a plot against him was utterly beyond her comprehension. He was essentially a Londoner, and had surely no interest whatsoever in the Alpine defences of Italy! Dubard was certainly his friend. Had he not, indeed, told her so? He had, only a fortnight before, expressed a hope that Dubard would soon return from the Pyrenees.

And yet that broken, desperate man—the man with whom she had had that pleasant flirtation during one Roman season—had fallen their victim!

But if so, why was Borselli now anxious that he should be freed in order to make his revelations against the very man Dubard who was his intimate friend—the man who it was said had furnished the Opposition with facts—most of them false—regarding her father’s political shortcomings?

She tried to reason it all out, but became the more and more utterly bewildered.

The reason of the captain’s denunciation of George Macbean was a mystery. When he mentioned the Englishman’s name she had noticed a flash in his deep-set eyes betokening a deadly, deep-rooted hatred. And yet it was upon this very man that all her thoughts and reflections had of late been centred.

As they were alone in that grim, gloomy room with its barred partition—the governor having granted them a private conference—she explained how the Socialists had endeavoured to make capital out of the charges against him with a view to obtaining her father’s dismissal from office. She made no mention of her compact with Dubard or her engagement to him, but merely explained how at the eleventh hour, while Montebruno was on his feet in the Chamber of Deputies, the mysterious note had been placed in his hand which had had the effect of arresting the charges he was about to pour forth.

Solaro listened to her in silence while she gave a description of the scene in the Chamber, and related certain details of the conspiracy which she had learned through her father, the details gathered in secret by Vito Ricci.

“Ah?” he sighed at last, having listened open-mouthed. “It is exactly as I expected. Your father’s enemies are mine. Having drawn me safely into their net, they intend to use my condemnation as proof of the insecurity of the frontier and the culpability of the Minister of War.”

“But if they attack the Minister they must attack me personally?” exclaimed the general in surprise; for he had been in ignorance of the widespread intrigue to hold the Ministry of War up to public ridicule and condemnation. “As the frontier is under my command, I am personally responsible for its security?”

“Exactly,” Solaro said in a somewhat quieter tone. “If His Excellency had ordered a revision of my trial, I should most certainly have been proved innocent, and that being so, the Socialists would have had no direct charge which they could level against the Ministry. But as it is, I stand here condemned, imprisoned as a traitor, and therefore my general is culpable, and above him the Minister himself.”

“My father should have pardoned you long ago. It is infamous!” Mary declared, with rising anger. “By refusing your appeal for a new trial he placed himself in this position of peril!”

“Had I been released I would have given into his hands certain information by which he could have crushed the infamous intrigue against him,” said the man behind the bars in a low, desperate tone. “But now it is too late for a revision of my sentence. Our enemies have triumphed. I am to be sent to Gorgona, sent to my death, while the plot against His Excellency still exists, and the coup will be made against him at the very moment when he feels himself the most secure.” Then, watching the pale face, he added suddenly, “Forgive me, signorina, for speaking frankly like this; he is, I recollect, your father. But he has done me a grave injustice; he could have saved me—saved himself—if he had cared to do so.”

“But you have said that my father fears to give you your liberty?” She remarked. “If that is so, it is fear, and not disinclination, that has prevented him granting you a pardon?”

“It is both,” he declared hoarsely.

“But is there no one else who could assist you—who would expose these enemies and their plot?” she asked.

“No one,” he answered. “The most elaborate preparations were made to set the trap into which I unfortunately fell. I was watched in Paris, in Bologna, in Turin—in garrison and out of it. My every movement was noted, in order that it might be misconstrued. That Frenchman who struck up an acquaintance with me in Paris, and who afterwards lent me money, was in the pay of my enemies; and from that all the damning evidence against me was constructed with an ingenuity that was fiendish. I, an innocent man, was condemned without being given any opportunity of proving my defence! Ask Dubard, or the Englishman. Ask them to tell the truth—if they dare!”

“But tell me more of Mr Macbean,” she cried eagerly. “What do you allege against him?”

“I make no allegations,” he answered in a low, changed voice. “I can suffer in silence. Only when you meet that man tell him that Felice Solaro, from his prison, sends him his warmest remembrances. Then watch his face—that is all. His countenance will tell you the truth.”