Chapter Ten. Across Europe.

The Closed Book had been filched from me at the very moment when I was about to learn the secret it contained.

I put a few well-directed questions to Nello, and became confirmed in my suspicion that the woman who had stolen it was actually the same whose face had so attracted me that it had lived within my memory every moment since our first meeting.

Curious how the faces of some women haunt us, even when we have no desire for their affection! The fascination of a woman’s eyes is one of the unaccountable mysteries of life, being far beyond human ken or human control, and yet one of the most potent factors in man’s existence.

In the half-open drawer of my writing-table were certain private papers that I had taken from my despatch-box two days before, intending to send them to my solicitors in London, and these the unknown in black had apparently been examining. She had called with a fixed purpose, which she had accomplished—namely, to pry into my private affairs, and to gain possession of my treasured Arnoldus, the Book of Secrets.

As I knew Tuscany and the Tuscans so well, this ingenious conspiracy was scarcely surprising. The little plots, often harmless enough, that I had detected about me during my residence by the Mediterranean had shown me what a cleverly diplomatic race they were, and with what patient secretiveness they work towards their own ends. It annoyed me, however, to think that I should thus fall a victim to that handsome woman’s ingenuity. Veiled as she had been in Father Bernardo’s study, I had judged her to be much older than I found she was when I had noticed her in the streets of Leghorn. Who could she be, and what could be her motive in stealing my property if she were not in league with the prior himself?

My old servant Nello, standing there beside me, knew something more than he would tell. Of that I felt convinced. Possibly he had participated in the plot, admitting her, well knowing her errand. He had warned me; therefore he must know something. What was the object of it all I utterly failed to conceive.

“That woman is a thief?” I exclaimed angrily a few moments later. “Who is she?”

“I—I do not know her, signor padrone,” stammered the old man.

“She gave no name?”

“None. She said that you expected her.”

“But she could not have taken away a big book like that without your noticing it?” I pointed out suspiciously.

“She had on a big black cloak, signore,” was the crafty old fellow’s response.

I closed my writing-table and locked it, for in that moment I had decided to go straight to Florence and charge Bernardo Landini with being a party to the theft. Having sold the book to me, he wished to repossess himself of it, and on my refusal, had, it seemed, put in motion a kind of conspiracy against me.

The old hunchback was undoubtedly the director of it all.

I thrust a few things into a kit-bag, placed some money in my pocket, and put on an overcoat; and telling Nello that I should not return for a couple of days, perhaps, gave orders that no one was to be admitted to the house except my most intimate friend, Hutchinson, the British consul.

At the big, bare railway station, wherein the feeble gas-jet had just been lit, I saw, lounging beside the ticket-collector, the detective attached to that post, whose duty it was to notice all arrivals and departures; and, knowing him, I called him aside and briefly described the lady who had visited me.

“Yes, signore, I saw her. She left for Pisa an hour ago; she purchased a first-class ticket for London.”

“For London!” I gasped. “Had she any baggage?”

“A crocodile-leather dressing-case and a small flat box covered with brown leather.”

“By what route was she travelling?”

The detective walked to the booking-office, and in response to his inquiries I learned that she had taken a direct ticket by way of Turin, Modane, Paris, and Calais. The train which caught at Pisa the express to the French frontier had left an hour ago; therefore I had no chance of overtaking her.

Still, something prompted me to take the next train to Pisa, for Italian railways are never punctual, and there was just a chance that she might have missed her connection. So half an hour later I sat in the dimly lit, rickety old compartment of that branch-line train, pondering over the events of the past day, and determined to run down the thief at all hazards.

At Pisa I quickly learned that the Leghorn train had arrived in time to catch the express; therefore the woman in black was now well on her way towards the frontier.

I purchased a railway-guide, and entering the waiting-room, sat down to study it calmly. After half an hour I decided upon a plan. The homeward Indian mail from Brindisi to London would pass through Turin at 9:10 on the following morning, and, if I caught it, would land me at Calais three hours in advance of the express by which she was travelling. But from Pisa to Turin is a far cry—half-way across Italy; and I at once consulted the station-master as to the possibility of arriving in time.

There was none, he declared. The express for the north, which left in two hours’ time, could not arrive in Turin before 9:20, ten minutes after the departure of the Indian mail. Therefore it was impossible.

I paced the long, deserted platform full of chagrin and utterly bewildered.

Of a sudden, however, a thought occurred to me. I knew the manager of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits at Turin station, a most courteous and hard-working Englishman named Nicholls. I would telegraph to him, urging him in the strongest terms to detain the Indian mail for me ten minutes.

This I did, and just before midnight stepped into the Rome-Turin express on the first stage of my stern-chase across Europe.

Through the hot, stifling July night I stretched myself out along the cushions and slept but little during the slow, tedious journey through those eighty-odd roaring tunnels that separate Pisa from Genoa, for the line is compelled to run so close to the sea in places that the waves lap the very ballast. I was excited, wondering whether I should succeed in catching the mail and arresting the woman’s progress.

In those past few days I had trodden a maze of mystery. My love for the antique had brought into my life one of the strangest episodes experienced by any man, yet in those breathless moments, as I tore across Europe, I thought only of regaining possession of my remarkable treasure, and of obtaining the forbidden knowledge contained therein.

Hour after hour dragged slowly by. At Genoa, long after the sun had risen, I got out for a cup of coffee in that ugly and rather dirty buffet which travellers in Italy know so well. Then re-entering, we started off up the deep valleys and across the broad wine-lands of Asti towards Turin.

As we approached the capital of Piedmont my anxiety increased. To delay the Indian mail for ten minutes was surely a sufficient courtesy, and I knew that after that lapse of time my friend Nicholls dared not assume further responsibility. The overland mail once a week between Brindisi and Charing Cross is ever on time; a contract that must be kept whatever the cost; hence, as I frequently glanced at my watch, I grew anxious as to my success in catching it.

If I did I should arrive at Calais harbour in advance of the mysterious woman, and could on board the steamer single her out and demand the restoration of my property.

We halted at Novi, and the time lost in taking water seemed an eternity. At Alexandria we were ten minutes late—ten minutes! Think what that meant to me.

At Asti there was some difficulty about an old contadina’s box; and when the train started at last for Turin we were nearly fourteen minutes behind time. I threw myself back with a sigh, feeling that all hope had vanished. We could never make up time on that short run; and the English mail, after waiting for me, would leave ten minutes or so before my arrival. Could any situation be more tantalising?

At last, however, we ran slowly into the great arched terminus of Turin; and as we did so I hung half my body from the carriage window, and was delighted to see the train of long, brown sleeping-cars still standing in the station.

My heart gave a bound. On the platform my friend Nicholls was awaiting me, and assisted me hurriedly to descend.

“Just in time, Mr Kennedy,” he said. “Another minute and I should have been compelled to let her go. Anything serious in London?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Very serious. I’ll write to you all about it. But I don’t know how to thank you sufficiently.”

“Oh, never mind about that,” he laughed. “I’ve got your berth for you. Come along;” and, hurrying me over to the next platform, he put me into one of the cars, wishing me bon voyage, waved his hand, and we moved out towards Calais—the fastest express across Europe.

Upon the result of that hard race my whole future and happiness depended. I was not, of course, aware of it at the time. I was merely consumed by curiosity regarding the strange vellum record, and was eager to obtain the knowledge that its writer had so successfully concealed—barring it with certain death to those who sought the truth.

Could I but have looked into the future, could I have realised what it all meant to me, I should never have dared to embark upon that chase; but rather should I have been pleased that this unknown woman of the sable habiliments had taken into her hands that which must sooner or later encompass her death.

But we are creatures of impulse, all of us. I found the circumstances full of romance and interest; and, beyond, I saw the woman herself as great a mystery as that written upon those envenomed pages.

My keen anxiety through those long hours while we sped through the Alps and by way of Aix, Mâcon, and Dijon to Paris need not be told. The train by which the woman I was following had travelled was before us all the way; but her delay would, I discovered, be in Paris; for while she was compelled to cross the city by cab, and wait at the Gare du Nord five hours, we travelled around the Ceinture railway, and left for Calais with only twenty minutes’ wait at the French capital.

Most of my fellow-travellers were Anglo-Indians, officers and their wives home on leave, together with a few homeward-bound travellers from the Far East, everyone eager to get aboard the Dover boat and to sight the white cliffs of Old England once again after perhaps many years of exile. If you have travelled by the overland mail, you know well the excitement that commences as one nears Calais; for once beneath the British flag of the Channel steamer, one is home again. Ah! that word home—how much it conveyed to me!—how much to you, if you have travelled in far-off lands!

We swung through Boulogne around that terrible curve that generally throws over the plates and dishes of the wagon restaurant, and at last slackened down through Calais-Ville, and slowly proceeded to the harbour where the special boat awaited us, the train having done the long run from Brindisi four minutes under the scheduled time even though Nicholls had kept it behind for nearly a quarter of an hour.

It was now eleven o’clock in the morning, and until four o’clock in the afternoon I remained in that most dismal of all hotels, the “Terminus,” at Calais, awaiting the arrival of the ordinary express from Paris. It came at last, crowded with summer tourists from Switzerland and elsewhere, business men, and that quaint, mixed set of travellers that continually pass to and fro across the Channel.

In order to discover the woman, however, I took up a position near the gangway that gave access to the steamer, and scrutinised each passenger with all the eagerness of a born detective. One after the other they passed in array, each carrying the hand-luggage, while the big, rattling cranes were at work faking aboard baggage and mails.

The stream grew thinner, until the last passenger had passed on board, and yet she did not come. My haste had been in vain. She had probably broken her journey in Paris. And yet somehow I felt that she had some motive in carrying The Closed Book to London without delay.

French porters with their arm-badges and peaked caps rushed to and fro. There was shouting in two languages, not counting the third—or bad language. They were preparing to cast off, and I was undecided whether to remain in Calais until two o’clock next morning for the arrival of the night train or to go aboard and make further search.

But just as the gangway was about to be withdrawn I distinguished among the bustling groups of passengers a face that was familiar to me, and my decision was made immediately. I rushed headlong on board, and my hopes revived as I made my way quickly across the deck.