The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
I gasped, utterly staggered. “What do you mean, General? You will shoot a poor defenceless girl—and in face of that ukase before you—in face of my demand for her protection! I have promised her marriage,” I cried in desperation, “and you condemn her to execution!”
“My Emperor has given me orders to quell the rebellion, and all who make bombs for use against the Government must die. His Majesty gave me orders to execute all such,” said the official sternly. “You, sir, will have safe-conduct to whatever place you wish to visit. Take the girl away.”
“But, General, reflect a moment whether this is not—”
“I never reflect, sir,” he cried angrily; and rising from his chair with outstretched hand, he snapped—
“How much of my time are you going to lose over the wench? Take her away—and let it be done at once.”
The poor condemned girl, blanched to the lips and trembling from head to foot, turned quickly to me, and in a few words in French thanked me and again kissed my hand, with the brief words, “Farewell, you have done your best. God will reward you!”
Then, with one accord, we all turned, and together went mournfully forth into the street.
A lump arose in my throat, for I saw, as the General pointed out, that my pretended ukase did not extend beyond my own person. Luba was a Russian subject, and therefore under the Russian martial law.
Of a sudden, however, just as we emerged into the roadway, the unfortunate girl, at whose side I still remained, turned, and raising her tearful face to mine, with sudden impetuosity kissed me.
Then, before any of us were aware of her intention, she turned, and rushed back into the room where the General was still sitting.
The Cossacks dashed back after her, but ere they reached the chamber there was a terrific explosion, the air was filled with débris, the back of the building was torn completely out, and when, a few minutes later, I summoned courage to enter and peep within the wrecked room, I saw a scene that I dare not describe here in cold print.
Suffice it to say that the bodies of Luba Lazareff and General Stephen Krasiloff were unrecognisable, save for the shreds of clothing that still remained.
Luba had used her bomb in revenge for Gustave’s death, and she had freed Russia of the heartless tyrant who had condemned her to die.
An hour later I found the blackened ruins of the house of Countess Alexandrovsky, but hearing no news of Bindo I returned to the car, and set out again towards the Austrian frontier.
Yes, that brief run in Russia was full of excitement.
CHAPTER IX
CONCERNING THE OTHER FELLOW
Last spring Count Bindo again renewed his lease of the furnished villa on the Viale dei Colli, that beautiful drive that winds up behind the Arno from the Porta Romana, in Florence, past San Miniato. It was a fine old place, standing in its own grounds, and was the German Embassy in the days when the Lily City was the Italian capital.
There were reasons for this. Sir Charles Blythe was living at the Grand, and Henderson was at the Hôtel de la Ville. A coup was intended at one of the jewellers on the Ponte Vecchio—a place where it was known that there were a quantity of valuable pearls.
It was not, however, successful; for certain difficulties arose that were insurmountable.
The trio left Florence at the beginning of May, but I was left alone with the car and with the Italian servants to idle away the days as best I could. They had all three gone to Aix, I think.
The only other Englishman left in Florence appeared to be a man I had recently re-encountered, named Charlie Whitaker. He and I had become great friends, as we had been several years before. I often took him for a run on the car, to Bologna, Livorno, or Siena, and we used to meet nearly every evening.
One stifling August night Florence lay gasping.
Above the clatter of the café, the music, the laughter of women and the loud chatter in Italian, the strident cries of the newsvendors rose in the great moonlit Piazza, with its huge equestrian statue of the beloved Vittorio looming dark against the steely sky.
Only the popolo, the merry, brown-faced, easy-going Florentines, were still in the sun-baked city. All Society, even the richer tradesmen, and certainly all the foreign residents, had fled—all of the latter save two, Charlie and myself.
You, who know the quaint old mediæval city in the winter “season,” when the smart balls are given at the Corsini or the Strozzi, when the Cascine is filled with pretty women at four o’clock, and the jewellers on the Ponte Vecchio put forth their imitation cinquecento wares, would not know it in August, when beneath that fiery Tuscan sun it is as a city of the dead by day, while at night the lower classes come forth from their slums to idle, to gossip, and to enjoy the bel fresco after the heat and burden of the day.
On an August night the little dark-eyed seamstress sits and enjoys her ice at the same tin-topped table at the Gambrinus where the foreign Princess has sat in April. In winter Florence is a city of the wealthy; in summer it is given over entirely to the populace. So great is the sweltering, breathless heat, that everyone who can leave Florence in August leaves it. The great villas and palaces are closed; the Florence Club, that most exclusive institution in Europe, is shut up; the hotels move up to Camaldoli, to Pracchia, or to Abetone; and to be seen in Florence in those blazing days causes wonder and comment.
Charlie and I were the only two foreigners in Florence. I had remained on at the orders of Bindo, and Charlie—well, he remained for the best of reasons, because he hadn’t the money with which to go up into the mountains, or down to the sea.
Charlie Whitaker was an “outsider,” I knew, but not by any fault of his own. He lived in Florence mostly on the charity of his friends. A tall, lithe, good-looking fellow of thirty-two, he came of a Yorkshire stock, and for seven or eight years had lived the gay life of town, and been a member of the Stock Exchange. Left very well off, he had developed keen business instincts, and had been so successful that in three years he had gained a comfortable fortune by speculation. He bought a bijou house in Deanery Street, off Park Lane, turned it inside out, and made a pretty bachelor residence of it.
Half London knew Charlie Whitaker. I first met him when he was about to purchase a new “Napier.” He gave smart luncheon-parties at the Bachelors, dinners at the Savoy, and was the pet of certain countesses of the smart set. Indeed, he led the London life of a man of ample means untrammelled with a woman, until, of a sudden, he failed. Why, nobody knew; even to his most intimate friends the crisis was a complete mystery.
I only know that I met him in the Strand one night. He seemed sad and pensive. Then, when he grasped my hand in farewell, he said—
“Well, Ewart, good-night. I may see you again some day.”
That “some day” came very soon. Two months later he was living en pension at twenty-five lire a week in the attic of a great old mediæval palace close to the Piazza Santa Trinità. Florence, the greatest city for gossip in the whole world, quickly knew his past, and nobody would receive him. Snubbed everywhere, jeered at by the stuck-up foreign colony of successful English shopkeepers, he received no invitations, and I believe I was his only friend.
Even my friendship with him brought criticism upon me—modest chauffeur that I was. Why did I make an intimate of such a man? Some declared him to be an absconding bankrupt; others cast suspicion that he had fled from England because of some grave scandal; while others made open charges against him in the Club that were cruel to a degree.
Up at the villa, however, he was always welcome. I alone knew that he was a man of sterling worth, that his misfortunes were none of his own seeking, and that the charges against him were all false. He had made a big speculation and had unfortunately burnt his fingers—that was all.
And on this hot, feverish night, with the clear white moon shining down upon the Piazza, we sat to gossip, to drink our iced bock, and to smoke our long Toscano