The Day of Temptation. Le Queux William
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.