Читать книгу The Day of Temptation - Le Queux William - Страница 7

Among the thousand notable dining-places in London, Bonciani’s Restaurant, in Regent Street, is notable for its recherché repasts. It is by no means a pretentious place, for its one window displays a few long-necked, rush-covered flasks of Tuscan wine, together with some rather sickly looking plants, a couple of framed menus, and two or three large baskets of well-selected fruit.

Yet to many, mostly clubmen and idlers about town, the Bonciani is a feature of London life. In the daytime the passer-by sees no sign of activity within, and even at night the place presents an ill-lit, paltry, and uninviting appearance. But among the few in London who know where to dine well, the little unpretentious place halfway up Regent Street, on the left going toward Oxford Street, is well known for its unrivalled cuisine, its general cosiness, and its well-matured wines. The interior is not striking. There are no gilt-edged mirrors, as is usual in Anglo-Italian restaurants, but the walls are frescoed, as in Italy, with lounges upholstered in red velvet, a trifle shabby, extending down the long, rather low room. Upon the dozen little marble-topped tables, with their snow-white cloths, are objects seen nowhere else in London, namely, silver-plated holders for the wine-flasks; for with the dinner here wine is inclusive, genuine Pompino imported direct from old Galuzzo in the Val d’Ema beyond Firenze, a red wine of delicate bouquet which connoisseurs know cannot be equalled anywhere in London.

One evening, about a week after the meeting between Gemma and Tristram at Livorno, nearly all the tables were occupied, as they usually are at the dining hour, but at the extreme end sat two men, eating leisurely, and taking long draughts from the great rush-covered flask before them. They were Tristram and Romanelli.

Four days ago the pair had met late at night at the railway station at Leghorn, and the one hearing the other demand a ticket for London, they got into conversation, and travelled through together, arriving at Victoria on the previous evening. During the three days of travelling they had become very friendly, and now, at the Italian’s invitation, Tristram was dining previous to his return on the morrow to Livorno, for at that period Italy was approaching England on the subject of a treaty, and the correspondence between our Ambassador and the Foreign Office was considerable, necessitating despatches being sent to Italy almost daily.

“So you return to-morrow?” Romanelli exclaimed, twirling his tiny black moustache affectedly. To men his foppishness was nauseating; but women liked him because of his amusing gossip.

“Yes,” the other answered, sighing. “I expected to get a few days’ rest in London, but this afternoon I received orders to leave again to-morrow.”

“Your life must be full of change and entertainment,” the young Italian said.

“Rather too full,” the other laughed. “Already this year I’ve been to Italy more than twenty times, besides three times to Constantinople, once to Stockholm, twice to Petersburg, and innumerable trips to Brussels and Paris. But, by the way,” he added, putting down his glass as if a sudden thought had occurred to him, “you know Leghorn well, I think you said?”

“I’m not Livornese, but I lived there for ten years,” the other answered. “I came to London a year ago to learn English, for they said it was impossible to get any sort of good pronunciation in Italy.”

“I’ve passed through Pisa hundreds of times, but have only been in Leghorn once or twice,” observed the King’s messenger. “Charming place. Full of pretty girls.”

“Ah! yes,” cried Romanelli. “The English always admire our Livornesi girls.”

Tristram paused for a few seconds, then, raising his eyes until they met those of his new acquaintance, asked —

“Do you happen to know a girl there named Fanetti – Gemma Fanetti?”

Romanelli started perceptibly, and for an instant held his breath. He was utterly unprepared for this question, and strove vainly not to betray his surprise.

“Fanetti,” he repeated aloud, as if reflecting. “I think not. It is not a Livornese name.”

“She lives in Florence, I believe, but always spends the bathing season at Leghorn,” Tristram added. His quick eyes had detected the Italian’s surprise and anxiety when he had made the unexpected inquiry, and he felt confident that his foppish young friend was concealing the truth.

“I’ve never, to my recollection, met any one of that name,” Romanelli answered with well-feigned carelessness. “Is she a lady or merely a girl of the people?”

“A lady.”

“Young?”

“Quite. She’s engaged to be married to a friend of mine.”

“Engaged to be married?” the young man repeated with a smile. “Is the man an Englishman?”

“Yes, a college chum of mine. He’s well off, and they seem a most devoted pair.”

There was a brief silence.

“I have no recollection of the name in Florentine society, and I certainly have never met her in Livorno,” Romanelli said. “So she’s found a husband? Is she pretty?”

“Extremely. The prettiest woman I’ve ever seen in Italy.”

“And there are a good many in my country,” the Italian said. “The poor girl who died so mysteriously – or who, some say, was murdered – outside the Criterion was very beautiful. I knew her well – poor girl!”

“You knew her?” gasped the Captain, in turn surprised. “You were acquainted with Vittorina Rinaldo?”

“Yes,” replied his companion slowly, glancing at him with some curiosity. “But, tell me,” he added after a pause, “how did you know her surname? The London police have failed to discover it?”

Frank Tristram’s brow contracted. He knew that he had foolishly betrayed himself. In an instant a ready lie was upon his lips.

“I was told so in Livorno,” he said glibly. “She was Livornese.”

“Yes,” Romanelli observed, only half convinced. “According to the papers, it appears as if she were accompanied by some man from Italy. But her death and her companion’s disappearance are alike unfathomable mysteries.”

“Extraordinary!” the Captain acquiesced. “I’ve been away so much that I haven’t had a chance to read the whole of the details. But the scraps I have read seem remarkably mysterious.”

“There appears to have been absolutely no motive whatever in murdering her,” Arnoldo said, glancing sharply across the table at his companion.

“If it were really murder, there must have been some hidden motive,” Tristram declared. “Personally, however, in the light of the Coroner’s verdict, I’m inclined to the opinion that the girl died suddenly in the cab, and the man sitting beside her, fearing that an accusation of murder might bring about some further revelation, made good his escape.”

“He must have known London pretty well,” observed Romanelli.

“Of course. The evidence proves that he was an Englishman; and that he knew London was quite evident from the fact that he gave instructions to the cabman to drive up the Haymarket, instead of crossing Leicester Square.”

Again a silence fell between them, as a calm-faced elderly waiter, in the most correct garb of the Italian cameriere– a short jacket and long white apron reaching almost to his feet – quickly removed their empty plates. He glanced swiftly from one man to the other, polished Tristram’s plate with his cloth as he stood behind him, and exchanged a meaning look with Romanelli. Then he turned suddenly, and went off to another table, to which he was summoned by the tapping of a knife upon a plate. The glance he had exchanged with the young Italian was one of recognition and mysterious significance.

This man, the urbane head-waiter, known well to frequenters of the Bonciani as Filippo, was known equally well in the remote Rutlandshire village as Doctor Malvano, the man who had expressed fear at the arrival of Vittorina in England, and who, truth to tell, led the strangest dual existence of doctor and waiter.

None in rural Lyddington suspected that their jovial doctor, with his merry chaff and imperturbable good humour, became grave-faced and suddenly transformed each time he visited London; none dreamed that his many absences from his practice were due to anything beyond his natural liking for theatres and the gaiety of town life; and none would have credited, even had it ever been alleged, that this man who could afford that large, comfortable house, rent shooting, and keep hunters in his stables, on each of his visits to London, assumed a badly starched shirt, black tie, short jacket, and long white apron, in order to collect stray pence from diners in a restaurant. Yet such was the fact. Doctor Malvano, who had been so well known among the English colony in Florence, was none other than Filippo, head-waiter at the obscure little café in Regent Street.

“It is still a mystery who the dead girl was,” Tristram observed at last. “The man who told me her name only knew very little about her.”

“What did he know?” Romanelli inquired quickly. “I had often met her at various houses in Livorno, but knew nothing of her parentage.”

“Nobody seems to know who she really was,” Tristram remarked pensively; “and her reason for coming to England seems to have been entirely a secret one.”

“A lover, perhaps,” Arnoldo said.

“Perhaps,” acquiesced his friend.

“But who told you about her?”

“There have been official inquiries through the British Consulate,” the other answered mysteriously.

“Inquiries from the London police?”

The King’s messenger nodded in the affirmative, adding —

“I believe they have already discovered a good many curious facts.”

“Have they?” asked Romanelli quickly, exchanging a hasty glance with Filippo, who at that moment had paused behind his companion’s chair.

“What’s the nature of their discoveries?”

“Ah!” Tristram answered, with a provoking smile. “I really don’t know, except that I believe they have discovered something of her motive for coming to England.”

“Her motive!” the other gasped, a trifle pale. “Then there is just a chance that the mystery will be elucidated, after all.”

“More than a chance, I think,” the Captain replied. “The police, no doubt, hold a clue by that strange letter written from Lucca which was discovered in her dressing-case. And, now that I recollect,” he added in surprise, “this very table at which we are sitting is the one expressly mentioned by her mysterious correspondent. I wonder what was meant by it?”

“Ah, I wonder!” the Italian exclaimed mechanically, his brow darkened by deep thought. “It was evident that the mysterious Egisto feared that some catastrophe might occur if she arrived in England, and he therefore warned her in a vague, veiled manner.”

Filippo came and went almost noiselessly, his quick ears constantly on the alert to catch their conversation, his clean-shaven face grave, smileless, sphinx-like.

“Well,” the Captain observed in a decisive manner, “you may rest assured that Scotland Yard will do its utmost to clear up the mystery surrounding the death of your friend, for I happen to know that the Italian Ambassador in London has made special representation to our Home Office upon the subject, and instructions have gone forth that no effort is to be spared to solve the enigma.”

“Then our Government at Rome have actually taken up the matter?” the Italian said in a tone which betrayed alarm.

Tristram smiled, but no word passed his lips. He saw that his new acquaintance had not the slightest suspicion that it was he who had accompanied Vittorina from Italy to London; that it was he who had escaped so ingeniously through the bar of the Criterion; that it was for him the police were everywhere searching.

At last, when they had concluded their meal, Romanelli paid Filippo, giving him a tip, and the pair left the restaurant to pass an hour at the Empire before parting.

Once or twice the young Italian referred to the mystery, but found his companion disinclined to discuss it further.

“In my official capacity, I dare not say what I know,” Tristram said at last in an attitude of confidence, as they were sitting together in the crowded lounge of the theatre. “My profession entails absolute secrecy. Often I am entrusted with the exchange of confidences between nations, knowledge of which would cause Europe to be convulsed by war from end to end, but secrets entrusted to me remain locked within my own heart.”

“Then you are really aware of true facts?” inquired the other.

“Of some,” he replied vaguely, with a mysterious smile.

The hand of his foppish companion trembled as he raised his liqueur-glass to his pale lips. But he laughed a hollow, artificial laugh, and then was silent.