CHAPTER XI THE GENTLEMAN FROM ROME

I knew that my love for Lola was increasing, yet I did not know whether my affection was really reciprocated.

We were close friends, but that was all. I was seated with her in the pretty morning-room one day about a fortnight after my return from Madrid, when the footman entered with a card.

“Mr. Rayne is not in, sir. Will you see the gentleman?”

“Cav. Enrico Graniani—Roma,” was the name upon the card.

“He’s a stranger, sir. I’ve never seen him before,” the servant added.

“I wonder who he is?” asked Lola, looking over my shoulder at the card. “Father doesn’t somehow like strangers, does he?”

“No,” I said. “But I’ll see him. Show him into the library.”

When a few moments later I entered the room I found a tall, elegant, well-dressed Italian who, addressing me in very fair English, said:

“I understand, signore, that Mr. Rayne is not in. I have come from Italy to see him, and I bring an introduction from a mutual friend. You are his secretary, I believe?”

I replied in the affirmative, and took the note which he handed me.

“I will give it to Mr. Rayne when he returns to-morrow,” I promised him. “Where shall he write to in order to make an appointment?”

“I am at the Majestic Hotel at Harrogate,” he answered. “I will await a letter—I thank you very much,” and he departed.

Next afternoon when I gave Rayne the letter of introduction he became at once eager and somewhat excited.

“Ring up the Majestic,” he said. “See if you can get hold of the Cavaliere, and tell him I will see him at any hour he likes to-morrow.”

I could see that after reading the letter brought by the Italian, he was most eager to learn something further.

After two attempts I succeeded in speaking with the Cavaliere Graniani, and fixed an appointment for him to call on the following morning at half-past eleven.

What actually occurred during the interview I do not know.

Across the table at luncheon, Rayne suddenly asked me:

“You know Italy well—don’t you, Hargreave?”

“I lived in the Val d’Arno for several years before the war,” I replied. “My people rented a villa there.”

Then, turning to Lola, he asked:

“Would you like to go for a trip to Italy with Madame and Hargreave?”

“Oh! It would be delightful, dad!” she cried. “Can we go? When?”

“Quite soon,” he replied. “I want Hargreave to go on a mission for me—and you can both go with him. It would be a change for you all.”

“Delightful!” exclaimed the well-preserved Madame Duperré. “Won’t it be fun, Lola?”

“Ripping!” agreed the girl, turning her sparkling eyes to mine, while I myself expressed the greatest satisfaction at returning to the country I had learned to love so well.

That afternoon, as I sat with Rayne in the smoking-room, he explained to me the reason he wished me to go to Italy—to make certain secret inquiries, it seemed. But the motive he did not reveal.

At his orders I took a piece of paper upon which I made certain notes of names and places, of suspicions and facts which he wished me to ascertain and prove—curious and apparently mysterious facts.

“Lola and Madame will go with you in order to allay any suspicions,” he added. “I place this matter entirely in your hands to act as you think fit.”

A week later, with Lola and Madame, I left Charing Cross and duly arrived in the old marble-built city of Pisa, with its Leaning Tower and its magnificent cathedral, and while my companions stayed at the Hôtel Victoria I went up the picturesque Valley of the Arno on the first stage of my quest.

At last, having climbed the steep hill among the olives and vines which leads from the station of Signa—that ancient little town of the long-ago Guelfs—I came to the old Convent of San Domenico, a row of big sun-blanched buildings with a church and crumbling tower set upon the conical hill which overlooked the red roofs of Florence deep below.

The ancient bell of the monastery clanged out the hour of evening prayer, as it had done for centuries, sounding loud and far through the dry, clear evening atmosphere.

Five minutes after ringing the clanging bell at the monastery door and being inspected by a brother through the small iron grill, I found myself with Fra Pacifico in his scrupulously clean narrow cell, with its truckle bed and its praying stool set before the crucifix, but on hearing hurried footsteps in the stone corridor outside I rose, and my strange friend exclaimed in Italian:

“No, Signor Hargreave! Remain seated. I am excused from attendance in the chapel. I had to meet you.”

The narrow little cubicle was bare and whitewashed. Fra Pacifico, of the Capuchin Order, with his shaven head, his brown habit tied around the waist with a hempen rope, and his well-worn sandals, had long been my friend. Of his past I could never ascertain anything. He had called humbly upon my father when we first went to live at old-world Signa, years before, and he had asked his charity for the poor down in the Val d’Arno.

“You will always have beggars around you, signore,” I remembered he said. “We up at the monastery keep open house for the needy—soup, bread, and other things—to all who come from eight to ten o’clock in the morning. If you grant us alms we will see that those who beg of you never go empty away. Send them to us.”

My father saw instantly an easy way out of the great beggar problem, hence he promised him a fixed subscription each month, which Fra Pacifico regularly collected.

So though I had returned to live in London and afterwards played my part in the war, we had still been friends.

On my arrival at Pisa I had made an appointment to see him, and as we now sat together in his narrow cell, I questioned him whether, by mere chance, he had ever heard of a certain lady named Yolanda Romanelli. It was quite a chance shot of mine, but I knew that he came from the same district as the lady.

He was evasive. He had heard of her, he admitted, but would go no further.

His attitude concerning the lady I had mentioned filled me with curiosity.

In his coarse brown habit and hood he had always been a mystery to me. He was about forty-five years of age. He knew English, and spoke it as well as he did French, for, though a monk, he was a classical scholar and a keen student of modern science.

“Now, Fra Pacifico,” I said, as I reseated myself. “I know you are cognizant of something concerning this lady, Yolanda Romanelli. What is it? Tell me.”

Thus pressed, he rather reluctantly told me a strange story.

“Well!” I exclaimed at last when he had finished. “It is all really incredible. Are you quite certain of it?”

“Signor Hargreave, what I have told you is what I really believe to be true. That woman is in a high position, I know. She married the Marchese, but I am convinced that she is an adventuress—and more. She is a wicked woman! God forgive me for telling you this.”

“But are you quite certain?” I repeated.

“Signore, I have told you what I know,” he answered gravely, tapping his great horn snuff-box and taking a pinch, tobacco being forbidden him by the rules of his Order. “I have told you what I know—and also what I suspect. You can make whatever use of the knowledge you like. Yolanda Romanelli is a handsome woman—as you will see for yourself if you meet her,” he added in a strange reflective voice.

“That means going down to Naples,” I remarked.

“Yes, go there. Be watchful, and you will discover something in progress which will interest you. But be careful. As an enemy she is dangerous.”

“But her husband, the Marquis? Does he know nothing?”

Fra Pacifico hitched up the rope around his waist and made an impetuous gesture.

“Poor fellow! He suspects nothing!”

“Well, Pacifico,” I said, “do be frank with me. How do you know all this?”

“No,” he replied. “There are certain things I cannot tell you—things which occurred in the past—before I took my vow and entered this place. I was once of your own world, Signor Hargreave. Now I am not. It is all of the past,” he added in a hard, determined voice.

“You have been in London. I feel sure of it, Pacifico,” I said, for by his conversation he had often betrayed knowledge of England, and more especially of London.

“Ah! I do not deny it,” laughed the broad-faced, easy-going man, now again seated in his rush-bottomed chair. “I know your hotels in London—the Savoy, the Carlton, the Ritz, and the Berkeley. I’ve lunched and dined and supped at them all. I’ve shopped in Bond Street, and I’ve lost money at Ascot. Oh, yes!” he laughed. “I know your wonderful London! And now I have nothing in the world—not a soldo of my own. I am simply a Brother—and I am content,” he said, with a strange look of peace and resignation.

We who live outside the high monastery walls can never understand the delightful, old-world peace that reigns within—that big family of whom the father is the fat Priore, always indulgent and kind to his grown-up children, yet so very severe upon any broken rule.

Fra Pacifico had that evening told me something which had placed me very much upon the alert. I had not been mistaken when I suspected that he might know something of the woman Yolanda Romanelli—the woman whom Rayne had sent me to inquire about—and I felt that I had done well to first inquire of my old friend. He had hinted certain things concerning the Marchesa, the gay leader of society in Rome, whose name was in the Tribuna almost daily, and whose husband possessed a fine old palazzo in the Corso, as well as an official residence in Naples, where, in addition to being one of the most popular men in Italy, he was Admiral of the Port.

“May I be forgiven for uttering those ill-words,” exclaimed the monk, as though speaking to himself. “We are taught to forgive our enemies. But I cannot forgive her!”

“Why?” I asked.

“She has desecrated the house of God,” he replied in a low tense voice.

Two hours later I was back with Lola and Madame Duperré at the Hôtel Victoria at Pisa.

Coming from the lips of any other than those of Fra Pacifico I should have suspected that the Marchesa Romanelli had once done him some evil turn. Yet when a man renounces the world and enters the cloisters, he puts aside all jealousies and thought of injury, and lives a life of devotion and of strictest piety. Fra Pacifico was a man I much admired, and whose word I accepted without query.

Next day Lola was inquisitive as to my visit to the monastery, but I was compelled to keep my own counsel, and that evening we all three took the night express to Rome, arriving at the Grand at nine o’clock after a dusty and sleepless journey, for the wagons-lit which run over the Maremma marshes roll and rock until sleep becomes quite impossible.

With the Eternal City Lola was delighted, though it was out of the season and the deserted streets were like furnaces. Still, I was able to drive her out to see some of the antiquities which I had myself visited half a dozen times before.

My notes included the name of a man named Enrico Prati, who lived humbly in the Via d’Aranico, and one evening, two days after our arrival, I called upon him. Lola had been anxious that I should stay for a small dance in the hotel, but I had been compelled to plead business, for, as a matter of fact, I had become filled with curiosity regarding the mission of inquiry upon which I had been sent.

Prati kept a wine-shop, an obscure place which did not inspire confidence. He was a beetle-browed fellow, short, with deep-set furtive eyes, and he struck me as being a thief—or perhaps a receiver of stolen property. The atmosphere of the place seemed mysterious and forbidding.

I told him that I had come from “The Golden Face.” At mention of the name he started and instantly became obsequious. By that I knew that he had some connection with the gang.

Then I demanded of him what he knew of the mysterious Marchesa Romanelli, adding that I had come from England to obtain the information which “The Golden Face” knew he could furnish.

I saw that I was dealing with a clever thief who carried on his criminal activities under the guise of a dealer of wines.

“Yes, signore,” he said. “I know the Marchesa. She is a leader of smart society, both here and in Naples. During the war she spent a large sum of money in establishing her fine hospital out at Porta Milvio. She was foremost in arranging charity concerts, bazaars, and other things in aid of those blinded at the war. Could such a wealthy patriotic woman, whose husband is one of Italy’s most famous admirals, possibly be anything other than honest and upright?”

His reply took me aback, until his sinister face broadened into a smile. Then I said:

“I admit that. But you know more than you have told me, Signor Prati,” and then added: “Because the woman has risen to such high favor and her actions have always shown her to be intensely charitable, there is no reason why she should not be wearing a mask—eh?”

He only laughed, and, shrugging his shoulders, replied:

“Go to Naples and seek for yourself. The suspicions of ‘The Golden Face’ are well-grounded, I assure you.”

So, unconvinced, I returned to the Grand Hotel full of wonder. I was not satisfied, so I determined to take Prati’s advice and see for myself what manner of woman was this Marchesa. Fortunately, although it was out of the season, she was in Naples. Having two old friends there I went south with my companions two days later, and we installed ourselves at the Palace Hotel with its wonderful views across the bay. I had little difficulty in obtaining an introduction to the woman whom I sought. It took place one evening at the house of one of my friends, who was now a Deputy.

When she heard my name, I noticed that she started slightly, but I bowed over her hand in pretense of ignorance.

She expressed gratification at meeting me, and soon we were chatting pleasantly. She was a handsome woman of about forty-five, dark-haired and beautifully gowned. With her was her daughter Flavia, a pretty, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so, bright, vivacious, and very chic. The latter spoke English excellently, and told me that she had been at school for years at Cheltenham.