Читать книгу The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping - Warwick Deeping - Страница 14
III
ОглавлениеTrevanion reached Monte Verde about dusk, just before the gates were closed, and since a couple of peasants were quarrelling with the guard, he passed through unnoticed. The via Flavia was very dark, and there was no light in the bookseller’s house, but Luigi was sitting on the stool among his books, listening and waiting.
“So it is you.”
He closed the door quickly behind Trevanion.
“I wondered whether you would return, my friend. People are becoming interested in you here, so interested that von Mirenbach’s sbirri visited my house to-day.”
“The devil! At what hour?”
“Less than two hours ago. I lied to them, and said you had left, and had spoken of Rome.”
Trevanion was greatly disturbed.
“Luigi, I must not be meddled with by these fools. And von Mirenbach has his reasons.”
“If you take my advice you will get out of the town to-night.”
“But the gates are shut.”
“I will show you a way out of the town. A little nerve is needed and a steady head; it is not that I am a coward, sir, but if you have offended the Austrian——”
Trevanion was in no mood for tarrying.
“Wait while I get my sword and pistols and put a few things into my haversack. You will have to hide what little is left, Luigi; the things are yours, and here is what I owe you.”
“Tut, tut! never worry. I will wait here for you. The swine may come back any minute. It is their way.”
Trevanion was with him again in less than five minutes, and Luigi led the way out into the garden. He stood listening a moment, and then moved forward into the darkness. The moon was not yet up.
“Give me a hand with the ladder, friend. It is just long enough to get a man on to the city wall, but too short for the other side.”
They carried the ladder to the end of the garden and reared it against the grey stones. Luigi went up first, bidding Trevanion wait a moment. A path ran along the top of the wall, linking up the old towers and bastions.
“All is quiet. Come.”
Trevanion joined him on the wall. They moved along it for about fifty yards till something dark and huge loomed up close to them. It was a big cypress tree that grew close to the wall, so close that its branches brushed against it.
“There is your ladder. I have used it more than once; you jump well into the thick of the foliage, and get your arms round the trunk.”
“Thanks, Luigi; you are a good friend.”
“Have you any food?”
“Enough for the morning; after that I shall manage. Tell them I have gone to Rome. Good-bye.”
Half an hour later there came a knocking at the bookseller’s door. Luigi opened it, candle in hand, and with the air of a man who was sleepy and on the point of going to bed.
“Who’s there?”
A big fellow pushed in, and some half-dozen more were ready to follow him. He held a pistol at Luigi’s head and grinned cheerfully.
“Not a sound, old man. We are going to search this house for the Englishman.”
“I have told you that he left this morning, and spoke of travelling to Rome.”
“Yes, no doubt; but he was seen at the Mola gate about dusk.”
“Well, he is not here; I have not seen him.”
The sergeant of the sbirri left a guard at both doors, and went up with Luigi and the rest of his men to search the house. They missed nothing, not even a cupboard-ful of old clothes and lumber, but they found no Englishman, and came down disappointed. The garden and the cellar were equally unsympathetic, and the sbirri did not happen to notice the ladder lying along a fence and half hidden by rank herbage and vines.
Luigi pretended to sulk.
“What did I tell you, but you thought me a liar. A nice state of things when a quiet old man has his house turned upside down after dark.”
“Basta,” said the sergeant far less cheerfully, “he is in the town somewhere, and we shall find him.”
The little bookseller said nothing, but banged the door on them.
About the time that Trevanion was making his escape from Monte Verde, the woman Maria had thrown a dark shawl over her head and slipped down through the garden of the Villa Lunetta to a place where the wall had fallen and never been repaired. Someone was waiting for her there, someone who chuckled softly, and took his kisses as he pleased.
“Ten gold pieces, my love, for you, and twenty for me. It is only necessary that you should not meddle; that you should be asleep or deaf.”
The woman agreed.
“And no harm shall come to the child?”
“Harm! If it will harm her to become a countess—well, the answer is ‘Yes!’ But my noble friend is an original, and goes about his wooing like a romancer.”
“And when will it happen?”
“When the moon is full.”
“And the old man?”
“He can become the count’s librarian at Castella Nero. As for me, Mrs. Mischief, I shall be in great favour.”
“You are an old rascal,” she said, laughing.
Just as dawn was breaking, Nigel Trevanion came to the edge of the beech wood over against Sandro’s farm.
Trevanion took no chances. He went down through the cornfield on his hands and knees, crawled through the garden hedge and sat down to wait with his back against the house wall. It was not long before he heard someone stirring in the house. A shutter was thrown open, and a man’s head appeared, the head of Sandro the farmer taking stock of the morning.
Trevanion gave a soft whistle and held up two fingers. Sandro stared hard at him a moment, nodded, and disappeared from the window.
They went into a corner of the orchard together and talked.
“The Austrian is after me, padrone. I slipped out of Monte Verde last night. They have been told that I have taken the road to Rome. If you can hide me here for two days?”
“That should be easy.”
“And it is necessary that I should see the Little Lady without going to the Villa Lunetta. Von Mirenbach must not know that I am near.”
Sandro meditated a moment.
“I have a strange hiding-place that no one knows of save myself. As for the Little Lady, I can go and tell her that Giuseppe is ill.”
“And who is Giuseppe?”
“My boy of six. He is a great favourite. As to my men, they would be in the fields, and even if they discovered anything they would hold their tongues.”
