Chapter Twenty Three. A Ruler of Europe.

“Well?” Gemma exclaimed, quickly recovering herself, and looking keenly into the dark face of the newcomer.

“Well?” he said, imitating with a touch of sarcasm the tone in which she had spoken, at the same time taking a cigarette from his case and lighting it with a vesta from the china stand upon the table.

“What does this mean?” she inquired in Italian, regarding him with a look which clearly showed his presence was unwelcome.

“Finish your coffee and come out with me. I must speak with you. Here it’s too risky. We might be overheard. St. James’s Park is near, and we can talk there without interruption,” he said. Evidently a gentleman, aged about fifty-five, with long iron-grey side-whiskers and hair slightly blanched. His eyes were intelligent and penetrating, his forehead broad and open, his chin heavy and decisive, and he was undoubtedly a man of stern will and wide achievements. He spoke polished Italian, and his manner was perfect.

Gemma kept her eyes fixed upon him, fascinated by fear. Her gloved hand trembled perceptibly as she raised her cup to her lips.

“You had no idea that you would meet me—eh?” he laughed, speaking in an undertone. “Well, drink your coffee, and let us take a cab to the Park.” He flung down sixpence to the waiter, and they went out together. She walked mechanically into the street, dumbfounded, stupefied.

By his side she staggered for a few paces, then halting said, in a sudden tone of anger—

“Leave me! I refuse to accompany you.”

Her companion smiled. It was already dark, the shop windows were lit, and the hurrying crowd of passers-by did not notice them.

“You’ll come with me,” the man said sternly. “I want to talk to you seriously, and in privacy. It was useless in that place with half a dozen people around, all with ears open. Besides,” he added, “in a café of that sort I may be recognised.” Then he hailed a passing cab.

“No, no!” she cried, as it drew up to the kerb. “I won’t go—I won’t!”

“But you shall!” he declared firmly, taking her arm. “You know me well enough to be aware that I’m not to be trifled with. Come, you’ll obey me.”

She hesitated for a moment, gazed blankly around her as if seeking some one to protect her, sighed, and then slowly ascended into the vehicle.

“Athenaeum Club,” he shouted to the driver, and sprang in beside the trembling woman. It was evident from her manner that she held him in repugnance, while he, cool and triumphant, regarded her with satisfaction.

During the drive they exchanged few words. She was pensive and sullen, while he addressed her in a strangely rough manner for one of such outward refinement. They alighted, and descending the steps into the Mall at the point where a relic of old-time London still remains in the cow-sheds where fresh milk can be obtained, crossed the roadway and entered the Park by one of the deserted paths which ran down to the ornamental water.

“You thought to escape me—eh?” her companion exclaimed when at last they halted at one of the seats near the water. He was well acquainted with that quarter of London, for he had served as attaché at the Court of St. James twenty years ago.

“I had no object in so doing,” she answered boldly. In their drive she had decided upon a definite plan, and now spoke fearlessly.

“Why, then, have you not answered my letters?”

“I never answer letters that are either reproachful or abusive,” she replied, “even though they may be from the Marquis Montelupo, His Majesty’s Minister for Foreign Affairs.”

“If you had deigned to do so, it would have obviated the necessity of me coming from Rome to see you at all this personal risk.”

“It’s well that you risk something, as well as myself. I’ve risked enough, Heaven knows!” she answered.

“And you’ve found at last a confounded idiot of a lover who will prove our ruin.”

“My love is no concern of yours,” she cried quickly. “He may be left entirely out of the question. He knows nothing; and further, I’ve parted from him.”

“Because he has ascertained who you really are,” the great statesman said.

“For that I have to thank you,” she retorted quickly. “If you had been a trifle more considerate and had not allowed the police of Livorno to act as they did, he would still have been in ignorance.”

“I acted as I thought fit,” her companion said in an authoritative tone, lighting another cigarette from the still burning end of the one he had just consumed.

“You’ve brought me here to abuse me!” she cried, her eyes flashing fiercely upon him.

“Because you played me false,” he answered bitterly. “You thought it possible to conceal your identity, marry this young fool of an Englishman, and get away somewhere where you would not be discovered. For that reason you’ve played this double game.” Then he added meaningly, “It’s only what I ought to have expected of a woman with such a reputation as yours.”

“Charles Armytage is no fool,” she protested. “If he found you here, speaking like this to me, he’d strangle you.”

The Marquis, whose dark eyes seemed to flash with a fierce light, laughed sarcastically.

“No doubt by this time he’s heard lots of stories concerning you,” he said. “A man of his stamp never marries an adventuress.”

“Adventuress!” she echoed, starting up with clenched hands. “You call me an adventuress—you, whose past is blacker than my own—you who owe to me your present position as Minister!”

He glanced at her surprised; he had not been prepared for this fierce, defiant retort.

Again he laughed, a laugh low and strangely hollow.

“You forget,” he said, “that a word from me would result in your arrest, imprisonment, and disgrace.”

She held her breath and her brows contracted. That fact, she knew, was only too true. In an instant she perceived that for the present she must conciliate this man, who was one of the rulers of Europe. The game she was now playing was, indeed, the most desperate in all her career, but the stake was the highest, the most valuable to her in all the world, her own love, peace, and happiness.

“And suppose you took this step,” she suggested, finding tongue with difficulty at last. “Don’t you think you would imperil yourself? A Foreign Minister, especially in our country, surrounded as he is by a myriad political foes, can scarcely afford to court scandal. I should have thought the examples of Crispi, Rudini, and Brin were sufficient to cause a wary man like yourself to hesitate.”

“I never act without due consideration,” the Marquis replied. The voice in which he spoke was the dry, business-like tone he used towards Ambassadors of the Powers when discussing the political situation, as he was almost daily compelled to do. In Rome, no man was better dressed than the Marquis Montelupo; no man had greater tact in directing matters of State; and in no man did his Sovereign place greater faith. As he sat beside her in slovenly attire, his grey moustaches uncurled, his chin bearing two or three days’ growth of grey beard, it was hard to realise that this was the same man who, glittering with orders, so often ascended the great marble and gold staircase of the Quirinal, to seek audience with King Humbert; whose reputation as a statesman was world-wide, and whose winter receptions at his great old palazzo in the Via Nazionale were among the most brilliant diplomatic gatherings in Europe.

“I have carefully considered the whole matter,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “I arrived in London yesterday, and from what I have learnt I have decided to take certain steps without delay.”

“Then you have been to the Embassy!” she exclaimed breathless. “You’ve denounced me to Castellani!”

“There was no necessity for that,” he answered coldly. “He already knows that you are his enemy.”

“I his enemy!” she echoed. “I have never done him an evil turn. He has heard some libellous story, I suppose, and, like all the world, believes me to be without conscience and without remorse.”

“That’s a pretty good estimate of yourself,” the Marquis observed. “If you had any conscience whatever you would have replied to my letters, and not maintained a dogged silence through all these months.”

“I had an object in view,” she answered in a chilling tone. She, quiet and stubborn, was resolved, insolent, like a creature to whom men had never been able to refuse anything.

“What was it?”

She shrugged her shoulders, and, laughing again, replied—

“You have threatened me with arrest, therefore I will maintain silence until it pleases you to endeavour to ruin me. Then together we will provide a little sensationalism for the Farfalla, the Tribuna, the Secolo, and one or two other journals who will only be too ready to see a change of Ministry.”

He hesitated, seeming to digest her words laboriously. She glanced quickly at his dark face, which the distant rays of a lamp illumined, and in that instant knew she had triumphed.

“You would try and ruin me, eh?” he cried in a hoarse menace.

“To upset the whole political situation in Rome is quite easy of accomplishment, I assure you, my dear Marquis,” she declared, smiling. “The Opposition will be ready to hound out of office you and all your rabble of bank-thieves, blackmailers, adventurers, and others who are so ingeniously feathering their nests at the expense of Italy. Ah, what a herd!”

Montelupo frowned. He knew quite well that she spoke the truth, yet with diplomatic instinct he still maintained a bold front.

“Bah!” he cried defiantly. “You cannot injure me. When you are in prison you’ll have little opportunity for uttering any of your wild denunciations. The people, too, are getting a little tired of the various mare’s-nest scandals started almost daily by the irresponsible journals. They’ve ceased to believe in them.”

“Yes, without proofs,” she observed.

“You have no proof. You and I are not strangers,” Montelupo said.

“First, recollect we are in England, and you cannot order my immediate arrest. Days must elapse before your application reaches London from Rome. In the meantime I am free to act.” Then, with a tinge of bitter sarcasm in her voice, she added, “No, Excellency, your plan does not do you credit. I always thought you far more shrewd.”

“Whatever so-called proofs you possess, no one will for an instant believe you,” he laughed with fine composure. “Recollect I am Minister for Foreign Affairs; then recollect who you are.”

“I am your dupe, your victim,” she cried in a fierce paroxysm of anger. “My name stinks in the nostrils of every one in Italy—and why? Because you, the man who now denounces me, wove about me a network of pitfalls which it was impossible for me to avoid. You saw that, because I moved in smart society, because I had good looks and hosts of friends, I was the person to become your catspaw—your stepping-stone into office. You—”

“Silence, curse you!” Montelupo cried fiercely, his hands clenched. “I’m too busy with the present to have any time for recollecting the past. It was a fair and business-like arrangement. You’ve been paid.”

“Yes, with coin stolen from the Treasury by your rogues and swindlers who pose before Italy as patriots and politicians.”

“It matters not to such a woman as you whence comes the money you require to keep up your fine appearance,” he said angrily, for this reference to his political party had raised his blood to fever-heat.

“Even though I have this unenviable reputation which you have been pleased to give me throughout Italy, I am at least honest,” she cried.

“Towards your lovers—eh?”

Standing before him, in a violent outburst of anger, she shook both her gloved hands in his face, saying—

“Enough—enough of your insults! For the sake of the land I love, for the sake of Italy’s power and prestige, and for your reputation I have suffered. But remember that the bond which fetters me to you will snap if stretched too far; that instead of assisting you, I can ruin you.”

“You speak plainly certainly,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation.

“I do. Through your evil machinations I have no reputation to lose. With artful ingenuity you compromised me, you spread scandals about me in Florence, in Venice, in Rome, scandals that were the vilest libels man ever uttered. In your club you told men that there was something more between us than mere friendship, that I was extravagant, and that I cost you as much in diamonds at Fasoli’s in the Corso, on a single afternoon, as the Government paid you in a whole year. Such were the lies you spread in order to ruin me,” she cried bitterly. “Never have I had a soldo from your private purse, never a single ornament, and never have your foul lips touched mine. You, who boldly announced yourself my lover, I have ever held in scorn and hatred as I do now. The money I received was from the Treasury—part of that sum yearly filched from the Government funds to keep up your rickety old castle outside Empoli; but bound as I was by my oath of secrecy I could utter no word in self-defence, nor prosecute the journals which spread their highly-spiced libels. You held me beneath your thrall, and I, although an honest woman, have remained crushed and powerless.” Then she paused.

“Proceed,” he observed with sarcasm. “I am all attention.”

“No more need be said,” she answered. “I will now leave you, and wish you a pleasant journey back to Rome,” and she bowed and turned away.

“Come,” he cried, dragging her by force back to the seat. “Don’t be an idiot, Gemma, but listen. I brought you here,” he commenced, “not to fence with you, as we have been doing, but to make a proposal; one that I think you will seriously consider.”

“Some further shady trick, I suppose. Well, explain your latest scheme. It is sure to be interesting!”

“As you rightly suggest, it is a trick, Contessa,” he said, in a tone rather more conciliatory, and for the first time speaking without any show of politeness. “Within the past ten days the situation in Rome has undergone an entire change, although the journals know nothing; and in consequence I find Castellani, who has for years been my friend and supporter, is now one of my bitterest opponents. If there is a change of government he would no doubt be appointed Foreign Minister in my place.”

“Well, you don’t fear him, surely?” she said. “You are Minister, and can recall him at any moment.”

“No. Castellani holds a certain document which, if produced, must cause the overthrow of the Government, and perhaps the ruin of our country,” he answered in deep earnestness. “Before long, in order to clear himself and place himself in favour, he must produce this paper, and if so the revelations will startle Europe.”

“Well, that is nothing to me,” she said coldly. “It is entirely your affair.”

“Listen!” he exclaimed eagerly. He was now confiding to her one of the deepest secrets of the political undercurrent. “This document is in a sealed blue envelope, across the face of which a large cross has been drawn in blue pencil. Remember that. It is in the top left-hand drawer in the Ambassador’s writing-table in his private room. You know the room; the small one looking out into Grosvenor Square. You no doubt recollect it when you were visiting there two years ago.”

“Certainly,” she contented herself with replying, still puzzled at the strangeness of his manner. The wind moaned mournfully through the bare branches above them.

“You are friendly with Castellani’s daughter,” he went on earnestly. “Call to-morrow with the object of visiting her, and then you must make some excuse to enter that room alone.”

“You mean that I must steal that incriminating paper?” she said.

He nodded.

“Impossible!” she replied decisively. “First, I don’t intend to run any risk, and, secondly, I know quite well that nobody is allowed in that room alone. The door is always kept locked.”

“There are two keys,” he interrupted. “Here is one of them. I secured it yesterday.”

“And in return for this service, what am I to receive?” she inquired coldly, sitting erect, without stirring a muscle.

“In return for this service”—he answered gravely, his dark eyes riveted upon hers—“in return for this service you shall name your own price.”