Chapter Seventeen. The Room of Secrets.

Smeaton at once hunted up the time-table. There was a fast train to Horsham in twenty minutes and he could just catch it.

He ordered a telegram to be despatched to Varney at the inn which he had given as a rendezvous, stating the time at which he would arrive, and later found the young man at the door, awaiting him.

“Thought I had better stop here till you arrived,” he said as they shook hands, “otherwise I would have come to Horsham Station. But the Forest View people know me now, and I didn’t want one of them to see me talking to a stranger. They might put two and two together.”

The two men ordered some refreshment, and adjourned to the snug little parlour, which was empty.

“No fear of being disturbed here, Smeaton, at this time of day; I know the place well. There will be nobody near for hours, except a passing carter for a glass of beer, and he won’t disturb us.”

“I was glad to have your wire,” said the detective, “for I was beginning to get a bit anxious. For several hours now I have been on the track of what I thought was a warm scent, only to find it a cold one. I’ll tell you about it when you have had your say.”

Varney plunged at once into his narrative. And certainly the story he had to tell was a very thrilling one. The main points were these.

Having been in the neighbourhood for some time, and being of a gregarious disposition, he had picked up a few acquaintances, with whom he indulged in an occasional chat when the opportunity offered.

All these people, he was sure, accepted his own explanation of his presence there, and did not for a moment suspect in the soi-disant artist who rambled about with his sketching materials the young journalist so well-known in Fleet Street.

He had become acquainted with a local doctor, Mr Janson, a man a few years older than himself, who had bought a practice in the neighbourhood quite recently. They had met, in the first instance, at the inn where Varney was staying, the doctor having been called in by the landlady to prescribe for some trifling ailment from which she was suffering.

The two men had exchanged a few commonplace remarks, and bidden each other good-bye. Next day Varney overtook him on the road, and they walked into Horsham together. In the course of their journey a little personal history was exchanged, of course utterly fictitious on the side of the pretended artist.

From the casual conversation there emerged certain facts. Mr Janson was a man of considerable culture, and of strong artistic leanings. More especially was he an ardent worshipper of the Old Masters. For several years his annual holiday had been spent in Italy, for which country, its galleries, and its associations he expressed the most fervent admiration.

Varney, little knowing what was to come out of this chance acquaintance, soon established common grounds of interest. His mother had been an Italian, and he had spent ten years of his boyhood in that delightful land. He could speak the language like a native. Janson, who was a poor linguist, expressed his envy of the other’s accomplishment.

“I can read any Italian book you put before me, and I can make them understand what I want,” he had told Varney. “But when they talk to me, I am lost. I can’t catch the words, because the accent baffles me. If an Englishman were to talk Italian, I daresay I could follow him.”

They met several times afterwards, and the acquaintance ripened to such an extent that the doctor asked the young stranger to come round to his house, after the day’s round was over, for a chat and a smoke. Janson was a bachelor; he had only been a few months in the neighbourhood, and had not as yet made many friends.

A man who knew a good deal about the subject which interested him most, and could talk fairly well on art—for Varney was a connoisseur of no mean order—was a godsend to the man of medicine, sitting by himself in his lonely house.

All this was the prelude to the startling facts which were the cause of Varney’s urgent telegram.

The previous morning just before his dinner hour, the gardener had looked in at the inn for his morning glass of beer, and informed the landlord that a visitor was expected at Forest View.

“Mr Strange comes to me after breakfast, and tells me to take in a picking of some special peas we planted, for lunch. He ain’t much of a one to talk at the best of times, but he was quite affable and chatty this morning. He tells me he is expecting a foreign gentleman who’s very particular about his food, and he wants to show him what we can do.”

This piece of news was retailed to Varney, who was, of course, immediately interested. According to local report, this was only the second occasion on which Forest View had received a visitor.

He kept a hidden watch on the house. A few minutes past twelve. Strange, to give him the name he was known by down there, drove his motor-car in the direction of Horsham. Evidently he was going to meet the visitor at the station.

In due course the car came back with its two occupants. The stranger was a man of small stature, with grey moustache and beard, of a dark complexion, and unmistakably a foreigner.

They dismounted at the gate, the garage being approached by an entrance a little lower down. Varney noticed that the foreigner got out very slowly, leaning heavily on his host’s arm as he did so. It was plain that this visitor, like the other, was in indifferent health.

Varney hung about during the greater part of the day, but he saw nobody. All the inmates of this singular establishment seemed to prefer the seclusion of the house.

After the inn had closed, he smoked a last pipe, and then went to bed. He was rather wakeful that night, and did not go to sleep for an hour or so.

Suddenly he was awakened by a loud knocking. Jumping up, he looked at his watch—it was two o’clock. He was evidently the first to hear it, for he could distinguish no sounds from the room at the other end of the passage, where the landlord and his wife slept.

He flung up his window and called out: “Hullo! Who’s that?”

He was answered by the familiar voice of Janson.

“Sorry to disturb you like this, Mr Franks,” cried the doctor, addressing him by his assumed name. “But I want your help. A foreign gentleman, an Italian, arrived at Forest View this morning, and he was taken alarmingly ill about half-an-hour ago. The poor chap’s hours are numbered. I have been trying to talk to him in his own language; he seems to understand me all right, but I can hardly follow a sentence of his, and there’s nobody in the house who understands him either.”

The incongruity of the situation forced itself upon Varney immediately. “What in the world makes a man come to a house where he can understand nobody, and nobody can understand him,” he whispered down.

“The same thought occurred to me,” came the answering whisper. “Mr Strange explained it. He said that their parlourmaid understood Italian perfectly, having lived in Italy for some years. She had gone up to London early yesterday morning and would not be back till late to-morrow.”

It flashed instantly across Varney’s mind that his suspicions about the young woman were correct: that she belonged to a different class from that which furnishes parlourmaids. She was a lady masquerading as a servant. Strange’s fiction of her having lived abroad was invented to keep up appearances.

“He is very rambling, but I ran gather this much,” went on Janson in low tones. “He wants to leave some instructions before he dies. I thought of you at once.”

“Right; I will be with you in a couple of minutes.”

By this time the landlord and his wife were awake, and he heard the man’s heavy footsteps along the passage. He opened his door, and briefly explained the situation.

In a very short time he and the doctor were in the bedroom of the dying man. Strange was at the bedside, looking intently at the prostrate figure, without a trace of emotion in his sharp, inscrutable features. He withdrew a little distance as Janson approached, and murmured something in a low voice to the other. It was an apology for disturbing him.

The man lay motionless for some few minutes, the pallor of death settling deeper over the once swarthy features. Janson turned to Varney.

“I’m afraid it is too late, Mr Franks. He is sinking rapidly. If you could have been here when I first came.”

Was it fancy, or did he see an expression of relief steal across Strange’s impenetrable mask?

If so, he was doomed to disappointment. The dying man stirred, and his lips moved. Varney leaned over, and his quick ear caught some muttered words, growing fainter and fainter with the waning of the flickering strength.

The words were in the bastard tongue of Piedmont, difficult to understand by anyone who has not lived in Northern Italy.

“Dio!” gasped the dying man. “Forgive me. The doctors have long ago told me I should die suddenly, but—I—I never expected this. Oh, that somebody here could understand me?” he whispered to himself.

“I do. Signore,” said Varney, as he leaned over him.

In the dying man’s eyes came a gleam of satisfaction and hope.

“Ah! Thank Heaven! Then listen,” he said. “I want you to do something for me—something—” and he halted as though in reflection. “Well,” he went on, “twenty years ago I did a great wrong in conjunction with another man. Go to him and tell him that Giovanni Roselli, his old comrade, implores him, from his deathbed, to make reparation. You will find him in Manchester. He was the head of the Compagnia Corezzo, and his name is James—”

The surname was never told. As he strove to utter it, the end came. Giovanni Roselli had delivered his message, but he had gone into the shadows, before he could utter the full name of the man to whom it was conveyed. Varney translated the dying man’s message to Strange, but he made no comment.

Smeaton sat in silence for a long time when the recital was finished.

“A house of sinister inmates with sinister secrets,” he said at length. “What you have told me may have a bearing upon something that has gone before.”

Briefly he narrated to Varney the discovery of the threatening letter, and his visit to the engraver and stationer.

Varney saw at once what had occurred to him.

“The Compagnia Corezzo gives us a clue—eh?—the initials ‘C.C.,’ which are the initials on the envelope. Was it an envelope from the company’s office? You say that the old engraver thought the man who ordered the cipher came from Manchester or Liverpool. Roselli tells us we can find his man in Manchester?” Smeaton rose. “I’m in hopes that something may come out of it all,” he said, as they shook hands. “Anyway, stay down here, and keep a close watch on the place. An inquest will be held and sooner or later something of importance will happen. I’ve kept the taxi waiting; shall I give you a lift to Horsham? But I noticed a bike outside the inn-door. I suppose it is yours.” Varney nodded. “Yes, it is part of my machinery. I shall go for a good long spin, and think over all that has happened.”

As Smeaton put his foot on the step of the taxi a sudden thought struck him. He turned back, and drew the young man aside.

“Keep your eye on the parlourmaid especially,” he whispered. “If we ever get to the bottom of it, we shall find she plays an important part in this mystery.”

“I quite agree,” was Varney’s answer, as the two men finally parted.