Chapter Twenty Five. In which the Stranger states his Mission.

“Well, what do you want?” Chisholm inquired sharply, glancing keenly at the foreigner, and not approving of his appearance.

“I want a word with the signore,” the man who had accosted him answered, with an air almost of authority.

“I don’t know you,” replied the Under-Secretary, “and have no desire to hold intercourse with perfect strangers.”

“It is true that I am unknown to the signore,” said the man in very fair English, “but I am here, in London, on purpose to speak with you. I ascertained that you were visiting at yonder palazzo; therefore, I waited.”

“And why do you wish to speak with me? Surely you might have found a more fitting opportunity than this—you could have waited until to-morrow.”

“No. The signore is watched,” said the man as he began to walk at Dudley’s side among the throngs of people, for in Knightsbridge there is always considerable movement after the theatres have closed and the tide of pleasure-seekers is flowing westward. “I have waited for this opportunity to ask the signore to make an appointment with me.”

“Can’t you tell me your business now?” inquired Chisholm suspiciously, not half liking the fellow’s look. He spoke English fairly well, but his rather narrow face was not a reassuring one. An Englishman is always apt, however, to judge the Italian physiognomy unjustly, for those who look the fiercest and the most like brigands are, in the experience of those who live in Italy, generally the most harmless persons.

“To speak here is impossible,” he declared, glancing about him. “I must not be seen with you. Even at this moment it is dangerous. Give me a rendezvous quickly, signore, and let me leave you. We may be seen. If so, my mission is futile.”

“You have a mission, then. Of what character?”

“I will tell you everything, signore, when we meet. Where can I see you?”

“At my house in St. James’s Street—in an hour’s time.”

“Not so. That is far too dangerous. Let us meet in some unfrequented café where we can talk without being overheard. I dare not, for certain reasons, be seen near the signore’s abode.”

The man’s mysterious manner was anything but convincing, but Dudley, perceiving that he was determined to have speech with him, told him at last to follow him. The stranger instantly dropped behind among the crowd without another word, while the master of Wroxeter continued on his way past Hyde Park Corner and along Piccadilly, where gaiety and recklessness were as plentiful as ever, until making a quick turn, he entered a narrow court to the left, which led to Vine Street, the home of the notorious police-station of the West End. Half-way up the court was a wine-bar, a kind of Bodega, patronised mostly by shopmen from the various establishments in Regent Street. This he entered, looked round to see which of the upturned barrels that served as tables was vacant, and then seated himself in a corner some distance away from the men and women who were drinking port, munching biscuits, and laughing more and more merrily as closing time drew near. Then, about ten minutes later, the stranger slunk in, cast a quick suspicious glance in the direction of the merrymakers, walked across the sanded floor and joined him.

“I hope we have not been seen,” were his opening words as he seated himself upon the stool opposite Chisholm.

“I hope not, if the danger you describe really exists,” Dudley replied. After he had ordered a glass of wine for his companion he scrutinised for a few seconds the narrow and rather sinister face in front of him. With the full light upon him, the stranger looked weary and worn. Chisholm judged him to be about fifty, a rather refined man with a grey, wiry moustache, well-bred manners, and a strange expression of superiority that struck Dudley as peculiar.

“You are Tuscan,” he said, looking at the man with a smile.

The other returned his glance in undisguised wonderment.

“How did the signore know when I have only spoken in my faulty English?” he asked in amazement.

Chisholm laughed, affecting an air of mysterious penetration, with a view to impressing his visitor. The man’s rather faded clothes were of foreign cut, and his wide felt hat was un-English, but he did not explain to him that the unmistakable stamp of the Tuscan was upon him in the tiny object suspended from his watch-chain, a small piece of twisted and pointed coral set in gold, which every Tuscan in every walk of life carries with him, either openly, or concealed upon his person, to counteract the influence of the Evil Eye.

“It is true that I am Tuscan,” the man said. “But I must confess that the signore surprises me by his quickness of perception.”

“I have travelled, and know Italy well,” was all the explanation Dudley vouchsafed.

“And I arrived from Italy this evening,” said the stranger. “I have been sent to London expressly to see the signore.”

“Sent by whom?”

“By the signore’s friend—a signorina inglese.”

“Her name?”

“The Signorina Mortimer.”

Mention of that name caused Dudley to start and fix his eyes upon the stranger with the sallow face.

“She has sent you. Why?”

“To deliver to you an urgent message,” was the man’s response. “I have here a credential.” And fumbling in the breast pocket of his coat he produced an envelope, open and without superscription, which he handed to Chisholm.

From it the latter drew forth a piece of folded white paper, which he opened carefully.

What he saw struck him aghast. Within the folds was concealed an object, simple, it is true, but of a nature to cause him to hold his breath in sheer astonishment.

The paper contained what Dudley had believed to be still reposing in the safe at Wroxeter. It was the revered relic of a day long past, the token of a love long dead—the little curl he had so faithfully treasured.

The woman into whose hands he had so irretrievably given himself had stolen it. She had secured it by stealth on that night when, conversing with him in the library, she had confessed her knowledge of his secret, so that he had been forced by overwhelming circumstances to make the unholy compact which was driving him to despair. Time after time he had risked his life against fearful odds, snatched it from savage treachery, fought for it in open fight in wild regions where the foot of a white man had never before trod, plucked it from the heart of battle; but never had he cast it so recklessly upon the dice-board of Fate as on that night when she, the Devil’s angel, had appeared to him in the guise of a saviour.

His mouth grew hard as he thought of it. What did it matter? Life was sweet after all, and she had rescued him from suicide. Impulse rode rough-shod over reason, as it so often does with impetuous men of Dudley Chisholm’s stamp; his inborn love of adventure, which had carried him far afield into remote corners of the earth, was up in arms against sober thought.

Upon the paper in which the lock of hair was wrapped were a few words, written in ink in a firm feminine hand.

He spread the paper out and read them. The message was very brief, but very pointed:

“The bearer, Francesco Marucci, is to be trusted implicitly.—Muriel Mortimer.”

That was all. Surely no better credential could there be than the return of the treasured love-token which she had so ingeniously secured.

“Well?” he inquired, refolding the paper and replacing it in its envelope. “And your message? What is it?”

“A confidential one,” replied the Tuscan. “The Signorina ordered me to find you at once, the instant that I reached London. I left Florence the day before yesterday and travelled straight through, by way of Milan and Bâle. She gave me the address of that palazzo where you have been visiting, and I waited in the street until you came out.”

“But you have told me that I am watched,” said Dudley. “Who is taking an interest in my movements?”

“That is the reason why I am in London. As the signore is watched by the most practised and experienced secret agents, it was with difficulty that I succeeded in approaching him. If those men track me down and discover who I am, then all will be lost—everything.”

The paper he held in his hand told him that this stranger could be trusted. He was essentially a man of the world, and was not in the habit of trusting those whom he did not know. And yet, what credential could be more convincing than that innocent-looking love-token of the past?

“But why are these men, whoever they are, watching me? What interest can they possibly have in my movements? The day of the Irish agitation is over,” he said in a somewhat incredulous tone.

“The signorina in her message wishes to give you warning that you are in the deadliest peril,” the man said in a low voice, bending towards him so that none should overhear.

“Speak in Italian, if you wish,” Dudley suggested. “I can understand, and it will be safer.”

The eyes of Francesco Marucci sparkled for a moment at this announcement, and he exclaimed in that soft Tuscan tongue which is so musical to English ears:

“Benissimo! I had no idea the signore knew Italian. The signorina did not tell me so.”

It chanced that Chisholm knew Italian far better than French. As he had learnt it when, in his youth, he had spent two years in Siena, he spoke good Italian without that curious aspiration of the “c’s” which is so characteristically Tuscan.

“Perhaps the signorina did not know,” he said in response.

“The signore is to be congratulated on speaking so well our language!” the stranger exclaimed. “It makes things so much easier. Your English is so very difficult with its ‘w’s’ and its Greek ‘i’s’, and all the rest of the puzzles. We Italians can never speak it properly.”

“But the message,” demanded Dudley rather impatiently. “Tell me quickly, for in five minutes or so this place will be closed, and we shall be turned out into the street.”

“The message of the signorina is a simple one,” answered Marucci in Italian. “It is to warn you to leave England secretly and at once. To fly instantly—to-morrow—because the truth is known.”

“The truth known!” he gasped, half rising from his seat, then dropping back and glaring fixedly at the stranger.

“Yes,” the man replied. “It is unfortunately so.”

“How do you know that?”

“How?” repeated the thin-faced Tuscan, bending towards Chisholm in a confidential manner. “Because I chance to be in the service of your enemies.”

“What? You are in the British Secret Service?” cried the Under-Secretary, amazed by this revelation.

“Si, signore. I am under the Signor Capitano Cator.”

“And you are also in the service of the Signorina Mortimer?”

“That is so,” answered the man, smiling.

“You are actually one of Cator’s agents?”

“The signore is correct,” he answered. “I am an agent in the service of the British Government, mainly employed in France and Belgium. Indeed, if the Signor Sotto-Secretario reflects, he will remember a report upon the Toulon defences which reached the Intelligence Department a few months ago, and about which a rather awkward question was asked in the House of Commons.”

“Yes, I recollect. The elaborate report, which was produced confidentially, I myself saw at the time. It was by one Cuillini, if I remember right.”

“Exactly! Benvenuto Cuillini and Francesco Marucci are one and the same person.”

The young statesman sat speechless. This man Marucci was the most ingenious and faithful of all Cator’s secret agents, and the manner in which he had obtained the plans of the defences of Toulon was, he knew, considered by the Intelligence Department to be little short of miraculous. The report was a most detailed and elaborate one, actually accompanied by snapshot photographs and a mass of information which would be of the greatest service if ever England fought France in the Mediterranean.

“Then you, Signor Marucci, are really my friend?” he exclaimed at last.

“I am the friend of the Signorina Mortimer,” he replied, correcting him.

“And who is the Signorina Mortimer,” Chisholm demanded. “Who and what is she that you should be her intimate friend? Tell me.”