Читать книгу Matorni's Vineyard - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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On Marseilles platform there was some natural excitement. The Chef de Sûreté himself was waiting there, together with a small company of gendarmes and various officials. The little crowd of spectators was kept back with difficulty, and those passengers of the train who were awake and had heard the news also made their way out on to the platform. After all, though, very little transpired to satisfy their curiosity. A gendarme climbed through the window, unbolted the door of the compartment, and a brief examination was made. Afterwards, everything was sealed up, and it was announced that the body of the dead man was to be taken to Nice, where the whole affair would be dealt with. A couple of gendarmes were left to guard the carriage. No official of any sort attempted to interview Mervyn or his companion, and punctually to the moment, the great train swung out once more on its journey.

“Pretty casual, aren’t they?” Mervyn observed.

The girl shrugged her shoulders.

“There is Nice to come,” she reminded him.

They parted for a time, and met again an hour or so later in the restaurant car. After they had taken their coffee, they returned to his compartment, whilst hers was put in order. With the help of a maid, who had appeared from the far end of the train, she had succeeded in effacing all traces of her disturbed night, and at close quarters Mervyn 25 appreciated more than ever the simple elegance of her travelling clothes, her jewellery and her few belongings. At her suggestion, he let down the window, and the fresh, sunlit breeze from the Mediterranean swept through the carriage. She drew a deep sigh of content, and threw her hat on to the rack. The wind ruffled her hair and brought swift colour to her cheeks, but she only laughed with the joy of it.

“Now I am happy to be back again,” she declared. “Paris, London, what are they compared to this? If only one could forget!” she added, with a sudden gravity. “What time are we due at Nice?”

He told her. She looked at her watch.

“Three more hours!” she reflected. “It is terrible!”

She became suddenly distrait, and he left her for a time. When he returned she had lost all her colour, and there was a curiously startled look in her eyes.

“We are close to Nice,” she told him, in an awed whisper.

He nodded.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he assured her. “Just a few words with the Chief of the Police there. We really don’t know anything about the affair.”

She sat with nervously interlocked fingers, waiting for the ordeal which she had apparently begun to dread. A surprise, however, was in store for them. The train came to a standstill outside Nice Station, and their voiture was boarded by a little company of men gathered on a temporary platform. They heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor, the opening 26 and closing of doors, and the train began to move again. They glided forward under the covered roof.

“Rather a good idea,” Mervyn remarked quietly. “They have taken the poor fellow away already.”

There appeared to be no unusual excitement in Nice Station. A man, however, in the uniform of an official of the police, presented himself at their door soon after the train stopped. He saluted the two deferentially, and glanced at a folded piece of paper he was carrying.

“Signorina la Comtessa Rosetta di Maureatti?” he enquired.

“Yes,” the girl answered.

“And Monsieur Mervyn Amory?” he went on, looking at Mervyn.

“My name,” the other responded.

“Would you be so kind as to give me your addresses, in case it is necessary to ask you further questions?”

The girl passed him a card.

“The Hôtel de Paris, Monte Carlo,” Mervyn confided.

The man saluted, and was on the point of withdrawal. They both looked after him in astonishment.

“Is that all?” Mervyn exclaimed.

“That is the extent of my instructions,” the man replied.

The girl leaned forward in her seat. The colour was coming back to her cheeks.

“We answered questions when the train was 27 stopped,” she said. “May we ask you something?”

“At your service, Signorina la Comtessa.”

“Who was the man—the man who was killed?”

The official consulted the paper he was carrying.

“Pietro Uguello. He appears to have been a professional man living in Rome.”

“There is no doubt, I suppose, that he was murdered?” Mervyn asked.

“Not the slightest,” was the confident reply. “He was stabbed to the heart, as he lay in the bed in his pyjamas, by some one who must have entered through the window—probably on leaving Lyons.”

“The man was a politician, perhaps?” the girl suggested.

The official shrugged his shoulders.

“Who knows? So far as we have been able to discover, there was nothing in his papers of any interest or importance. The Italian Consul has taken possession of them. A search appears to have been made amongst the dead man’s belongings, but there is no trace of anything having been removed.”

“So the Italian Consul was here when we stopped?” the girl observed thoughtfully.

“He has accompanied the body to the mortuary.”

“Will there be an enquiry?” Mervyn asked. “Shall we be summoned to attend it?”

The man shook his head.

“I am not in a position to say exactly, Monsieur,” he admitted, “but my opinion is that you will not be troubled.”

There was a sudden flash in the girl’s eyes.

“One knows what that means,” she declared, with a little tremor in her tone. “This is an affair which must be kept secret. Small type in the newspapers, a quick funeral—forgetfulness! There have been other tragedies treated like this.”

The official nodded understandingly. The horn blew, and he turned to leave the carriage.

“The Signorina has, in my opinion, correctly defined the situation,” he acknowledged. “Italy is a friendly country, having serious internal troubles, and when she expresses a desire, which is in any way reasonable, in connection with one of her own subjects, we grant it.”

He saluted them both with ceremony and took his leave. The Comtessa leaned back in her seat and relapsed into a long silence. The relief which Mervyn had expected to find in her face was absent. For a girl of her obvious youth, she seemed tortured by disquieting thoughts. They were crawling now around the curving bays and through the tunnels fringing the sea between Nice and Monte Carlo. She had established herself permanently in Mervyn’s compartment, and they sat side by side. The maid, with the assistance of an attendant, was bringing her mistress’ hand luggage from its place and arranging it in the corridor.

“Might I suggest,” Mervyn said to his companion at last, “that you try to banish, for a time at any rate, the memory of this tragical night? This man 29 Uguello probably knew the risk he was running.”

She turned and looked at him deliberately. Her hand rested upon his arm. She was certainly, he decided, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

“To tell you the truth,” she confessed, “I was not thinking about Uguello. I was thinking about you.”

“About me?” he exclaimed, startled.

The cool white fingers tightened upon his arm.

“I can guess who Uguello’s enemies were,” she continued, “and I am terrified to think that, however innocently, you may have become involved in serious trouble.”

“But Signorina!” he protested. “Comtessa! How is that possible? I am an Englishman. I know no more about Italian politics than the man in the moon.”

“That may be true,” she agreed—“I believe, indeed, that it is—yet this is what troubles me. Uguello was probably followed from the house where he has been staying in London to the station. He was watched even to his compartment. You are the only man with whom he was seen to converse upon the train. He visited your compartment afterwards.”

“It was a mere matter of travelling civility,” Mervyn protested.

“That may have been so,” she assented. “I believe that it probably was so. You look honest. I cannot conceive, from the little you can possibly know about Italian domestic affairs, that you, as an Englishman, would be interested in them. I do not believe that Uguello took you into his confidence in any way, 30 that he could possibly have entrusted you with what his murderer failed to find, but—you are listening, Mr. Amory?”

“Of course I am.”

“But,” she continued impressively, “if by any chance he did attempt to make use of you, I implore you, for your own sake, to be careful. If you carry with you a verbal message to any one, or a single written line of any sort, place the one in the remotest cell of your memory, and conceal the other in the safest possible place which your ingenuity can suggest. Uguello may have been a patriot, but he had no right to involve a stranger.”

“But, Comtessa,” Mervyn protested, “reflect for a moment: what could have happened to have induced that poor fellow to hand over his mission, whatever it may have been, to a perfect stranger, in the middle of his journey?”

“Just this,” she explained. “It happens that I know a little more about the situation than I can reveal. Uguello knew well enough—he must have known—that his mission, from the first, was a dangerous one, and he must also have known, from the moment he entered the restaurant car, and saw Torrita of the Italian Secret Service—the hook-nosed man with the black beard—within a few feet of him, that the game was up. That is why it seems to me, as I fear it may seem to them, that by passing his mission on to you, even though you were a complete stranger, there was a faint chance, after all, of his 31 papers reaching their destination. He had nothing to lose. The Cause might gain.”

“Comtessa,” he asked, “why do you go out of your way to tell me these things, to warn me so fervently?”

Her smile was a revelation to him. The clouds seemed to be passing.

“Because I rather like you,” she confided. “You have been kind and considerate, and I should hate anything to happen to you just because you had become an innocent participator in these wretched intrigues. Remember, you can do no good to any one by attempting to carry out Uguello’s mission, unless he has been able to suggest some means by which you could do so with perfect safety. It would be certain—absolutely certain—death, for you to attempt to cross the frontier with the papers which Uguello was probably carrying, in your possession. This is not a threat; it is just what you would call ‘the writing on the wall.’”

They had left Monaco and were crawling towards Monte Carlo. He leaned towards her.

“Comtessa,” he pointed out, “look at my six tennis racquets in the rack. Do I seem to you a man likely to thrust himself into the policy and intrigues of a nation in which he has not the slightest interest?”

“I agree,” she admitted. “You have not in the least that air. Nevertheless, I choose to warn you.”

“And I am grateful,” he acknowledged, rising reluctantly to his feet as the train slowed up, “because 32 I like to think that you have taken that much interest in me. Au revoir, Comtessa.”

She laughed up into his face.

“But I too,” she told him, “alight here at Monte Carlo.”