CHAPTER XXI IS ASTONISHING

We have an ancient proverb in Tuscany which says, "Rimediare al male fin dal suo principio." This very excellent maxim I was endeavouring to carry out. But it is always difficult—extremely difficult, especially for a woman.

When I had at length crept back to my cabin, fearing discovery by one or other of the pair whose interesting conversation I had overheard, I bolted my door and gave myself up to reflection. To act was imperative. The mysterious old man in the Via Magenta, who seemed so well informed as to Keppel's movements, and who had even told me the whereabouts of Ernest, was wrong in his surmise that the dastardly plot to blow up the yacht had been abandoned. The vessel was to sail to her doom. I alone knew the truth, and upon me devolved the duty of saving the lives of all on board.

If I failed, then the millionaire's yacht would be added to that long list of vessels which have sailed merrily from port, never to be seen or heard of afterwards. How many of these have been wilfully blown up for the sake of insurance money or of private vengeance is a question bitter to contemplate, and hard to answer. Certain it is that the elements are not responsible for all the vessels posted at Lloyd's as "missing" during recent years.

Slowly I undressed and entered my berth, but was unable to sleep, so full was my mind of grave thoughts. For a full half-hour I heard tramping in the deck-cabin above me; then all grew silent, and at last I dozed.

The dressing-bell awakened me in the morning, and after I had dressed I went along to Ulrica's cabin, where she was preparing herself with an ill grace to accompany the party to Pisa.

"I'm awfully tired of this trip!" I exclaimed, seating myself wearily upon the edge of the berth, "Five weeks at sea is quite sufficient for all purposes, without being taken around the Adriatic merely on account of old Keppel's whim."

"So am I terribly tired of it, my dear," Ulrica declared. "I only wish I could make some excuse to stay ashore."

That was exactly what I desired. I had no intention of sailing again in the doomed vessel, and had determined that she should not.

"Why can't we both stay ashore?" I suggested.

"Well, I can't," she responded, "for one simple reason. Gerald is leaving for Florence this morning; and if it were found that I, too, were missing, evil tongues would at once begin to wag."

"My dear Ulrica," I said, "I, for one, am very much obliged to old Keppel for his hospitality; but, nevertheless, I don't mean to be one of a party shipped up and down the Mediterranean like a cargo of coals. I don't intend to sail again."

"What, dear!" she cried. "Are you really serious? What's the cause of this sudden revolt?

"I'm bored to death," I replied. "And there are one or two persons on board that I intend to avoid in future; Mrs. Langdon, for instance—the old tabby!"

"Tabby is the correct term," Ulrica laughed. "I've never been able to find out where old Keppel discovered that rejuvenated skeleton. Her paint and powder are absolutely wicked."

"Listen, there's the breakfast bell," I said. "We'll all go over to Pisa and do the amiable with the others, and afterwards we must discover some matter which requires our urgent presence on shore—you understand?

"Exactly," she said.

"I leave the excuses to you, my dear; you're so excellent at soft sawder. Remember that at all hazards I don't sail. I hope you are equally determined."

"I'm quite with you," she declared. "Of course, we don't want to offend the old gentleman, for he's a useful person to know when one winters on the Riviera. Nevertheless, I quite agree that to be shipped up and down the Mediterranean like this is something beyond a joke. I wonder why the others stand it?"

"Why they stand it? Because he's a millionaire, and nearly all of them are indebted to him in some way or other. They can't demur. It isn't policy on their part to do so."

And so it was agreed between us that by hook or by crook we should either forget to sail, or openly present our apologies to our host.

After breakfast, always a merry meal when in port, but sometimes a sparsely-attended one when the mistral was blowing, we all took train to Pisa, accompanied by Keppel père et fils, the latter wishing us a temporary farewell and going on to Florence, whence, he told us, he should return on the following night to rejoin us on our cruise.

I knew that he had not the least intention of doing so. He had actually told Ulrica privately that he was compelled to go by Milan and Bâle to Berlin, on some pressing business for his father.

The day's excursion to see the Leaning Tower and other wonders of the marble-built city by the Arno was, as far as the others were concerned, a success. To Ulrica and myself, who acted as guides, it was a day of absolute self-sacrifice. The only redeeming feature was the excellence of our lunch at the little unpretending restaurant beside the river, called the Nettuno. Any of my readers who have occasion to visit Pisa should remember it, and should carefully avoid those glaring hotels near the station, just as they should avoid the station-buffet.

At five o'clock we returned to Leghorn, wearied out, and at half-past six dined together on board. During the whole of the day I had managed to attach myself to old Mr. Keppel, in order to watch his movements; but, quite contrary to my expectations, he did not excuse himself by saying that he wished to make purchases; and further, instead of remaining in Pisa, as I expected he would do, he actually returned and took his usual seat at the head of the dining-table.

There was music after dinner, and several of the men, including the millionaire, went to the smoking-room.

Was it possible, I wondered, for him to have again changed his plans? I sat in the saloon until nearly eight o'clock, but being anxious, I rose and went up on deck, in order to ascertain whether our host was still with his friends.

I passed the door of the smoking-room and peered in, uttering some chaffing words with affected gaiety.

Keppel was not there.

"They are asking for Mr. Keppel in the saloon," I said. "I thought he was here."

"No," responded Lord Stoneborough. "He went ashore a little time ago."

"Oh, thanks," I said. "I'll tell them."

The millionaire had escaped me!

I dashed down to my cabin, and without hesitation changed my dinner-frock for a dark stuff dress that I had never worn on board; then, going again on deck, I induced one of the sailors to row me ashore at once, securing the man's silence by a tip of half-a-sovereign.

If our eccentric host intended to leave Leghorn, he must leave by train and return to Pisa. Therefore at the corner of the Via Grande I entered a tram, and shortly afterwards alighted at the station. The great platform was dimly lit and deserted, for no train would depart, they told me, for another hour. It was the mail, and ran to Pisa to catch the night express to the French frontier at Modane. Most probably Keppel meant to catch this train.

Should I wait and watch?

The idea occurred to me that if that unseen individual who had been present in the deck-house, and had suggested the destruction of the Vispera, had come ashore, he would certainly meet Keppel somewhere.

The time dragged on. The short train was backed into the station, but no passenger appeared. A controller inquired if I intended to go to Pisa, but I replied in the negative. At last several passengers approached leisurely, as is usual in Italy, one or two carrying wicker-covered flasks of Chianti to drink in viaggio; the inevitable pair of white-gloved carabineers strolled up and down, and the train prepared to start.

Of a sudden, almost before I was aware of it, I was conscious of two figures approaching. One was that of old Mr. Keppel, hot and hurrying, carrying a small brown hand-bag, and the other the figure of a woman, wearing a soft felt hat and long fawn travelling-cloak.

I drew back into the shadow to allow them to pass without recognising me. The miscreant had, it seemed to me, cleverly disguised himself as a woman.

Hurrying, the next moment they passed me by in search of an empty first-class compartment. The controller approached them to ask for their tickets. Keppel searched his pockets in a fidgety fashion, and said in English, which, of course, the man did not understand:

"We're going to the frontier."

The man glanced leisurely at the tickets, unlocked one of the doors, and allowed them to enter.

As the woman mounted into the carriage, however, a ray of light fell straight across her face, and revealed to my wondering eyes a countenance that held me absolutely bewildered.

The discovery I made at that moment increased the mystery tenfold. The countenance disclosed by the lamplight in the badly-lit station was not that of a man in female disguise, as I had suspected, but of a woman. Her identity it was that held me in amazement, for in that instant I recognised her as none other than the dark-haired, handsome woman whom I had seen lying dead upon the floor of the deck-house on the previous night.

Why were they leaving the yacht in company? What fresh conspiracy was there in progress?

I had always believed old Benjamin Keppel to be the soul of honour, but the revelations of the past few hours caused me utter bewilderment. I stood there in hesitation, and glancing up at the clock, saw that there were still three minutes before the departure of the train. Next moment I had made a resolve to follow them and ascertain the truth. I entered the booking-office, obtained a ticket to Modane, the French frontier beyond Mont Cenis, and a few moments later was sitting alone in a compartment at the rear of the train. I had no luggage, nothing whatever save the small travelling reticule suspended from my waist-belt. And I had set out for an unknown destination!

The train moved off, and soon we were tearing through the night across that wide plain which had been the sea-bottom in those mediæval days when the sculptured town of Pisa was a prosperous seaport, the envy of both Florentines and Genoese, and past the spot marked by a church where St. Peter is said to have landed. Well I knew that wide Tuscan plain, with its fringe of high, vine-clad mountains, for in my girlhood days I had wandered over it, making my delighted way through the royal forest and through the gracious vinelands.

At last, after three quarters of an hour, we ran into the busy station at Pisa, that point so well known to every tourist who visits Italy. It is the highway to Florence, Rome, and Naples, just as it is to Genoa, Turin, or Milan; and just as the traveller in Switzerland must at some time find himself at Bâle, so does the traveller in Italy at some time or other find himself at Pisa. Yet how few strangers who pass through, or who drive down to look at the Leaning Tower and the great old Cathedral, white as a marble tomb, ever take the trouble to explore the country beyond. They never go up to quiet, grey, old Lucca, a town with walls and gates the same to-day as when Dante wandered there, untouched by the hand of the vandal, unspoilt by modern progress, undisturbed by tourist invaders. Its narrow, old-world streets of decaying palaces, its leafy piazzas, its Lily theatre, its proud, handsome people, all are charming to one who, like myself, loves Italy and the gay-hearted Tuscan.

Little time was there for reflection, however, for on alighting at Pisa I was compelled to conceal myself until the arrival of the express on its way from Rome to Paris. While I waited, the thought occurred to me that the Vispera was still in peril, and that I alone could save her passengers and crew. Yet, with the mysterious woman still alive, there could, I pondered, be no motive in destroying the vessel. Perhaps the idea had happily been abandoned.

Nevertheless, the non-appearance of the individual whose voice I had heard, but whom I had not seen, was disconcerting. Try as I would, I could not get rid of the suspicion aroused by Keppel's flight that foul play was still intended. If it were not, why had the old millionaire not continued his cruise? As the unknown woman had been concealed on board for several weeks, there was surely no reason why she should not have remained there another three or four days, until we reached Marseilles! No. That some unusually strange mystery was connected with the whole affair, I felt confident.

I peered out from the corner in which I was standing, and saw Keppel and his companion enter the buffet. As soon as they had disappeared, I made a sudden resolve, entered the telegraph office, and wrote the following message:

"To Captain Davis. S.Y. 'Vispera' in port, Livorno.—Have altered arrangements. Sail at once for Genoa. Box I spoke of will join you there. Leave immediately on receipt of this.—KEPPEL."

I handed it in to the telegraphist, saying in Italian:

"I want this delivered on board to-night, most particularly."

He looked at it, and shook his head.

"I fear, signorina," he answered, with grave politeness, "that delivery is quite impossible. It is after hours, and the message will remain in the office, and be delivered with letters in the morning."

"But it must reach the captain to-night," I declared.

The man elevated his shoulders slightly, and showed his palms. This was the Tuscan gesture of regret.

"At Livorno they are not, I am sorry to say, very obliging."

"Then you believe it to be absolutely useless to send the message, in the expectation of it being delivered before morning?"

"The signorina understands me exactly."

"But what can I do?" I cried in desperation. "This message must reach the captain before midnight."

The man reflected for a moment. Then he answered me.

"There is but one way I can suggest."

"What is that?" I cried anxiously, for I heard a train approaching, and knew it must be the Paris express.

"To send a special messenger to Livorno. A train starts in half an hour, and the message can then be delivered by 11 o'clock."

"Could you find me one?" I asked. "I'm willing to bear all expenses."

"My son will go, if the signorina so wishes," he answered.

"Thank you so much," I replied, a great weight lifted from my mind. "I leave the matter entirely in your hands. If you will kindly see that the message is delivered, you will be rendering, not only to myself, but to a number of other people, a very great service."

"The signorina's instructions shall be obeyed," he answered.

When he had said this I placed some money to cover expenses upon the counter, again thanked him, and left, feeling that although I had been guilty of forgery, I had saved the yacht from destruction.

The train, with its glaring head-lights, swept into the station from its long journey across the fever-stricken Maremma marshes, but I saw with considerable dismay that there was but one sleeping-car—the only through car for the frontier. I was therefore compelled to travel in this, even at the risk of meeting Keppel in the corridor. One cannot well travel in one of those stuffy cars of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits without being seen by all one's fellow-travellers. It was thus my first difficulty presented itself.

I watched my host and his companion enter the car, and from the platform saw them shown to their respective berths by the conductor. Keppel was given a berth in a two-bed compartment with another man, while the tall dark woman was shown to one of the compartments reserved for ladies at the other end of the car.

With satisfaction I saw the old millionaire take his companion's hand and wish her good-night. As soon as his door had closed, I mounted into the car and demanded a place.

"The signorina is fortunate. We have just one berth vacant," answered the conductor in Italian. "This way, please," and taking me along the corridor, he rapped at the door of the compartment to which he had just shown the mysterious woman.

I left it to the conductor to explain my presence, and after entering, closed and bolted the door behind me.

"I regret that I've been compelled to disturb you, but this is the only berth vacant," I said in English, in a tone of apology, for when I noticed that her black eyes flashed inquiringly at me, I deemed it best to be on friendly terms with her.

"Don't mention it; I'm English," she answered, quite affably. "I'm pleased that you're English. I feared some horrid foreign woman would be put in to be my travelling companion. Are you going far?"

"To the frontier," I responded vaguely. The extent of my journey depended upon the length of hers.

Then, after a further exchange of courtesies, we prepared for the night and entered our narrow berths, she choosing the upper one, and I the lower.

As far as I could judge, she was fifty, perhaps more, though she was still extremely handsome, her beauty being of a Southern type, and her black hair and coiffure, with huge tortoise-shell comb, giving her a Spanish appearance. She wore several beautiful rings, and I noticed that on her neck, concealed during the day by her bodice, was some tiny charm, suspended by a thin gold chain. Her voice and bearing were those of an educated woman, and she was buxom without being at all stout.

The roar of the train and the grinding of the wheels as we whirled through those seventy odd suffocating tunnels that separate Pisa from Genoa rendered sleep utterly impossible, so by mutual agreement we continued our conversation.

She seemed, like the "Ancient Mariner," to be needing someone to whom she could tell her story. She wanted an audience able to realise the fine points of her play. From the outset she seemed bursting with items about herself, little dreaming that I was acting as spy upon her.

I secretly congratulated myself upon my astuteness, and proceeded to draw her out. Her slight accent puzzled me, but it was due, I discovered, to the fact that her mother had been Portuguese. She seemed to label everything with her own intellectual acquirements. To me, a perfect stranger, she chatted during that night-journey about her fine figure and her power over men, about her ambitions and her friends. But her guardian interfered with her friends. He was an old man, and jealous; had her money invested, and would not allow her to look at a man. If she paid the least attention to any man in particular, she received no money. She was not forty, she told me, and her guardian, who was also in the train, was over seventy.

When she was not telling me the story of her loves, and her father, mother, and step-father, she filled in the time by telling me about some man she called Frank, who had a pretty-faced wife addicted to the bad habit known as secret drinking.

"Trouble?" she wandered on. "Oh, I've had such lots and lots of it that I'm beginning to feel very old already. Troubles, I always think, are divided into two classes—one controlled by a big-horned, cloven-hoofed devil, and the other by the snippy little devil that flashes in and out of our hearts. The big devil is usually placed upon us by others. It follows us. Sometimes we can evade it, but at others it catches us up on its horns and gives us a toss. We come down into the dust, crumpled, with all courage, ambition and hope absorbed in despair. We pick ourselves up in desperation. All that is best in us is so deadened that even our consciences cannot hear a whisper; or, on the other hand, we steel ourselves, and make a resolve which lifts us to a moral and mental victory, and to all that is noblest in ourselves and humanity."

I laughed, admitting that there was much truth in her words.

"And the other—the little imp?" I asked.

"The other—this insane perversity of human nature, gets hold on us whether we will or not. It makes us for the time ignore all that is best in ourselves and in others—it is part of us. Though we know well it resides within ourselves, it will cause our tears to flow and our sorrows to accumulate, it is a fictitious substance, with possibly a mint of happiness underlying it. We are always conscious of it, but insanity makes us ignore it for so long that the little imp completes its work, and the opportunity is lost. But why are we moralising?" she added. "Let's try and get to sleep, shall we?"

To this I willingly acquiesced, for truth to tell, I did not give credence to a single word of the rather romantic story she had related regarding herself, her friends, and her jealous guardian. In these post-Grundian days I had met women of her stamp many times before. The only way to make them feel is to tell them the truth, devoid of all flattery.

She struck me as a woman with a past—her whole appearance pointed to this conclusion. Now a woman with a chequered past and an untrammelled present is always more or less interesting to women, as well as to men. She is a mystery. The mystery is that men cannot quite believe a smart woman with knowledge, cut loose from all fetters, to be proof against flattery. She queens it, while they study her. Interest in a woman is only one step from love for her—a fact with which we, the fairer sex, are very well acquainted.

Ulrica had once expressed an opinion that pasts were not so bad if it were not for the memories that cling to them; not, of course, that the pasts of either of us had been anything out of the ordinary. Memories that cling to others, or the hints of a "past," certainly make you of interest to men, as well as a menace to the imagination of other women; but the memories that hover about yourself are sometimes like truths—brutal.

Memories! As I lay there upon my hard and narrow bed, being whirled through those suffocating tunnels in the cliffs beside the Mediterranean, I could not somehow get away from memory. The story this mysterious woman had related had awakened all the sad recollections of my own life. It seemed as though an avalanche of cruel truths was sweeping down upon my heart. At every instant memory struck a blow that left a scar deep and unsightly as any made by the knife. There was tragedy in every one. The first that came to me was a day long ago. Ah me! I was young then—a child in fears, a novice in experience—on that day when I admitted to Ernest my deep and fervent affection. How brief it all had been! I had, alas! now awakened to the hard realities of life, and to the anguish the heart is capable of holding. The sweetest part of love, the absolute trust, had died long ago. My heart had lost its lightness, never to return, for his love toward me was dead. His fond tenderness of those bygone days was only a memory.

Yet he must have loved me! With me it had been the love of my womanhood, the love that is born with youth, that overlooks, forgives, and loves again, that gives friendship, truth and loyalty. What, I wondered, were his thoughts when we had encountered each other at Monte Carlo? He showed neither interest nor regret. No. He had cast me aside, leaving me to endure that crushing sorrow and brain torture which had been the cause of my long illness. He remembered nothing. To him our love was a mere incident. It is no exaggeration to describe memory as the scar of truth's cruel wound.

I lay there wondering to myself if ever again I should feel any uplifting joy or any heartrending sorrow. Ah, if women could only outgrow the child-part of their natures, hearts would not bleed so much! One of the greatest surprises in life is to discover how acutely they can ache, how they can be strained to the utmost tension, crowded with agony, and yet not break. This is moralising, and smacks of sentiment, but it is true to nature, as many of us are forced to learn.

The train roared on; the woman above me slept soundly, and I, with tears starting to my eyes, tried hard to burn the bridges leading to the past, and seek forgetfulness in sleep. The process of burning can never be accomplished, thanks to our retentive memory; but slumber came to me at last, and I must have dozed some time, for when I awoke we were in Genoa, and daylight was already showing through the chinks of the crimson blinds.

But the woman who had told the curious story slept on. Probably the spinning of so much romantic fiction had wearied her brain. The story she had related could not, of course, be true. If she were really old Keppel's ward, then what motive had he in concealing her in that gilded deck-house, which was believed to be stored with curios? Who, too, was that unseen man whom he had apparently taken into his confidence—the man who had promised assistance by blowing up the yacht, with all hands?

I shuddered at the thought of that dastardly plot.

Yet Keppel had been declared by this unknown person to be the murderer of the woman now lying in the berth above me. Why?

The train was at a standstill, and I rose to peep out. As I turned to re-enter my berth, my eyes fell upon the sleeping form of my companion. Her face was turned towards me, and her opened bodice disclosed a delicate white throat and neck.

I bent quickly to examine more closely what I saw there. Upon the throat were two dark marks, one on either side—the marks of a human finger and a thumb—an exact repetition of the puzzling marks that had been found upon the throat of poor Reggie!