Out with Garibaldi: A story of the liberation of Italy

“That has gone, too, mother,” he said, when he returned to the room.

“So you see, Muriel, I was right. The one from the album may have been taken yesterday, and a dozen copies made of it; so that, even if you give them the slip here, Frank, you will be recognised as soon as you reach Paris.”

“Well, mother, it is of no use bothering any more about it. I have only to travel in carriages with other people, and they cannot molest me; at worst they can but search me, and they will find nothing. They cannot even feel sure that I have anything on me; for now that Beppo knows he is suspected of listening at doors, he will consider it possible that we may have changed our plans about where we shall hide the money. It is not as if they wanted to put me out of the way, you know; you and the signora agreed that that is certainly the last thing they would do, because there would be a tremendous row about it, and they would gain no advantage by it; so I should not worry any further, mother. I do not think there is the slightest occasion for uneasiness. I will just go by Calais, as I had intended, and by the train I had fixed on; that in itself will shake Beppo’s belief that I have the money with me, for he would think that if I had it I should naturally try some other way.”

“At any rate,” Mrs. Percival said, “you shall not go by the line that we had intended. You would be obliged to travel by diligence from Dole to Geneva, thence to Chambery, and again by the same method over the Alps to Susa. You shall go straight from Paris to Marseilles; boats go from there every two or three days to Genoa.”

“Very well, mother; I don’t care which it is. Certainly there are far fewer changes by that line; and to make your mind easy, I will promise you that at Marseilles, if I have to stop there a night, I will keep my bedroom door locked, and shove something heavy against it; in that way I can’t be caught asleep.”

“Well, I shall certainly feel more comfortable, my dear boy, than I should if you were going over the Alps. Of course, the diligence stops sometimes and the people get out, and there would be many opportunities for your being suddenly seized and gagged and carried off.”

“They would have to be very sudden about it,” Frank laughed. “I do think, mother, that you have been building mountains out of molehills. Beppo may not be a spy, after all; he may have heard you talking of this ten thousand pounds, and the temptation of trying to get it may be too much for him. He will know now that I shall be on my guard, and that, even if I have the money on my person, his chance of getting it is small indeed. I believe that you and the signora have talked the matter over till you have frightened yourselves, and built up a wonderful story, based only on the fact that Mary thought that she caught Beppo listening at the door.”

“How about the photographs?” Mrs. Percival asked.

“Possibly he has a hidden affection for me,” Frank laughed, “and has taken these as mementos of his stay here. Well, don’t say anything more about it, mother; I am not in the least nervous, and with a brace of loaded pistols in my pocket and the fair warning that I have had, I do not think I need be afraid of two or three of these miserable Neapolitan spies.”

Accordingly, Frank started by the morning mail, as they had arranged. The carriage was full to Dover; and at Calais he waited on the platform until he saw an English gentleman with two ladies enter a compartment, and in this he took a vacant corner seat. On his arrival at Paris he drove across at once to the terminus of the railway to Marseilles, breakfasted there, and sat in the waiting-room reading till the door on to the platform opened, and an official shouted, “Passengers for Melun, Sens, Dijon, Macon, Lyons, and Marseilles.” There was a general movement among those in the waiting-room. Frank found that there was no fear of his being in a compartment by himself, for only one carriage door was opened at a time, and not until the compartment was full was the next unlocked. He waited until he saw his opportunity, and was the first to enter and secure a corner seat. In a short time it filled up.

He had slept most of the way between Calais and Paris, feeling absolutely certain that he would not be interfered with in a carriage with three English fellow-passengers. It was twelve o’clock now, and he would not arrive at Marseilles until seven the next morning, and he wondered where all his fellow-passengers, who were packed as closely as possible, were going, for although he did not wish to be alone, it was not a pleasant prospect to be for eighteen hours wedged in so tightly that he could scarcely move. Then he wondered whether any of the men who might be following were also in the train. He had quite come to the conclusion that his mother and grandmother had frightened themselves most unnecessarily; but he admitted that this was natural enough, after the losses they had had. At Dijon several passengers got out, but others took their places; and so the journey continued throughout the day. The carriage was generally full, though once or twice there were for a time but five besides himself. He read most of the way, for although he spoke Italian as fluently as English, he could not converse in French. When tired of reading he had several times dozed off to sleep, though he had determined that he would keep awake all night.

At ten o’clock in the evening the train arrived at Lyons. Here there was a stop of twenty minutes, and he got out and ate a hearty meal, and drank two or three cups of strong coffee. He was not surprised to find, on returning to his carriage, that all the passengers with two exceptions had left it. These had got in at Macon, and were evidently men of good circumstances and intimate with each other; he had no suspicions whatever of them, for it was certain that men who had any intention of attacking him would appear as strangers to each other. At Vienne both left the carriage. Frank was not sorry to see them do so.

“If there are really fellows watching me,” he said to himself, “the sooner they show themselves and get it over the better; it is a nuisance to keep on expecting something to take place when as likely as not nothing will happen at all.” He examined his pistols. They were loaded but not capped, and he now put caps on the nipples, and replaced them in his pocket.

Just before they had left Vienne a man had come to the window as if intending to enter, but after glancing in for a moment had gone to another carriage.

“That is rather queer,” Frank thought. “As I am alone here, there was plenty of room for him. Perhaps he had made a mistake in the carriage. At any rate, they won’t catch me napping.”

The strong coffee that he had taken at Lyons had sharpened his faculties, and he never felt more awake than he did after leaving Vienne. He sat with his eyes apparently closed, as if asleep, with a warm rug wrapped round his legs. An hour later he saw a face appear at the opposite window. At first it was but for an instant; a few seconds later it appeared again and watched him steadily; then the man moved along to the door and another joined him. Frank without moving cocked the pistol in his right-hand pocket, and took a firm hold of the butt with his finger on the trigger. The door opened noiselessly, and the second man thrust in an arm holding a pistol; so it remained for half a minute. Frank was convinced that there was no intention of shooting if it could be avoided, and remained perfectly still; then the arm was withdrawn, and another man, holding a knife in one hand and a roll of something in the other, entered. In a moment Frank’s right arm flew up and his pistol cracked out: his assailant fell back and disappeared through the open door. Frank sprang to his feet as he fired, and stood with his pistol levelled towards the window, where the head of the second man had disappeared as his comrade fell backwards.

“He knows I have the best of him now,” Frank muttered to himself; “I don’t think that he will have another try.”

Advancing cautiously, he pulled the door to, lowered the window, and putting a hand out without exposing his head, turned the handle, and then drew up the window again. His foot struck against something as he backed to his seat in the corner. As he still kept his eyes fixed on the window, he paid no attention to this for a minute or two; then he became conscious of a faint odour.

“I expect that is chloroform or ether or something of that sort,” he said, as he lowered the window next to him; and then, still keeping an eye on the door opposite, moved a step forward and picked up a large handkerchief, steeped in a liquid of some sort or other. He was about to open the window and throw it out, when an idea struck him.

“I had better keep it,” he said: “there may be a beastly row over the business, and this handkerchief may be useful in confirming my story.”

He therefore put it up on the rack, lowered the window a few inches, and did the same to the one opposite to it. Then wrapping the handkerchief up in two or three newspapers he had bought by the way, to prevent the liquid from evaporating, he sat down in his corner again. He felt confident that the attack would not be renewed, now he was found to be on the watch and armed. It was probable that the two men were alone, and the one remaining would hardly venture single-handed to take any steps whatever against one who was certain to continue to be vigilant. He had no doubt that he had killed the man he fired at, and that, even if the wound had not been instantly fatal, he would have been killed by his fall from the train.

“It seems horrid,” he muttered, “to have shot a man; but it was just as much his life or mine as it would have been in battle. I hope no one heard the shot fired. I expect that most of the passengers were asleep; and if any one did hear it, he might suppose that a door had come open, or had been opened by a guard, and had been slammed to. Of course, the man’s body will be found on the line in the morning, and I expect there will be some fuss over it; but I hope we shall all be out of the train and scattered through the town before any inquiries are set on foot. If they traced it to me, I might be kept at Marseilles for weeks. Of course, I should be all right; but the delay would be a frightful nuisance. There is one thing, – the guard looked at my ticket just before the train started from the last station, and would know that I was alone in the carriage.”

In a few minutes the speed of the train began to slacken. He knew that the next station was Valence. He closed his eyes and listened as the train stopped. As soon as it did so, he heard a voice from the next carriage shouting for the guard. Then he heard an animated conversation, of which he was able to gather the import.

“The sound of a gun,” the guard said. “Nonsense; you must have been dreaming!”

“I am sure I was not,” a voice said indignantly. “It seemed to me as if it was in the next carriage.”

The guard came to Frank’s window. “Ah, bah!” he said. “There is only one passenger there, an Englishman. He was alone when we left Vienne, and he is sound asleep now.”

“Perhaps he is dead.”

It was possible, and therefore the guard opened the door. “Are you asleep, monsieur?”

Frank opened his eyes. “My ticket?” he asked drowsily. “Why, I showed it you at Vienne.”

“Pardon, monsieur,” the guard said. “I am sorry that I disturbed you. It was a mistake,” and he closed the door, and said angrily to the man who had called him: “It is as I said. You have been asleep; and I have woke the English gentleman up for nothing.”

A minute later the train moved on again.

“So far so good,” Frank said. “I should think that I am all right now. We shall be in at seven, and it will not be daylight till half-past six; and as I fancy that we must have been about midway between Vienne and Vallence when that fellow fell out, it is not likely that his body will be found for some time. They are sure to have chosen some point a good way from any station to get out of their own carriage and come to mine. Even when they find him, they are not likely to make out that he has been shot for some time afterwards. I hit him in the body, somewhere near the heart, I fancy; I did not feel sure of hitting him if I fired at his head, for the carriage was shaking about a good deal. It will probably be thought at first that he has either fallen or jumped out of his carriage. I suppose, when he is found, he will be carried to the nearest station, and put in somewhere till a doctor and some functionaries come, and an inquiry is held; and as he probably has been badly cut about the head and face, his death will be put down to that cause at first. Indeed, the fact that he was shot may not be found out till they prepare him for burial. I suppose they will take off his clothes then, as they will want to keep them for his identification, if any inquiries should ever be made about him. At any rate, I may hope to have got fairly away from Marseilles before the matter is taken up by the police, and even then the evidence of the guard that I was alone will prevent any suspicion falling especially on me.”

He had no inclination for sleep, and although he felt certain that he would not again be disturbed, he maintained a vigilant watch upon both windows until, a few minutes after the appointed time, the train arrived at Marseilles. Having only the small portmanteau he carried with him, he was not detained more than two or three minutes there, took a fiacre and drove to the Hôtel de Marseilles, which his Bradshaw told him was close to the steamboat offices. After going upstairs and having a wash, he went down again, carefully locking the door after him and putting the key in his pocket. He then had some coffee and rolls, and while taking these, obtained from the waiter a time-table of the departures of the various steamers from the port, and found, to his great satisfaction, that one of the Rubattino vessels would leave for Genoa at twelve o’clock.

As soon as the steamboat offices were open he engaged a berth, walked about Marseilles for an hour, returned at ten to the hotel, took a hearty lunch, and then drove down to the port. On questioning the steward he found that there were not many passengers going, and with a tip of five francs secured a cabin to himself; having done this, he went on deck again and watched the passengers arriving. They were principally Italians; but among them he could not recognise the face of the agent who had levelled a pistol at him. Both men had, indeed, worn black handkerchiefs tied across their faces below their eyes and covering their chins, and the broad-brimmed hats they wore kept their foreheads and eyes in shadow; and although he watched his fellow-passengers with the faint hope of discovering by some evil expression on his face his last night’s assailant, he had no real belief that he should, even under the most favourable circumstances, recognise him again.

Two or three of the men wore beards, and seemed to belong to the sailor class – probably men who had landed from a French ship, after perhaps a distant voyage, and were now returning home. He saw no more of these, as they at once went forward. There were only eight other passengers in the saloon; seven of these were Italians, of whom three were evidently friends. Two of the others had, Frank gathered from their talk, just returned from Brazil; the sixth was an old man, and the seventh a traveller for a firm of silk or velvet manufacturers in Genoa. The three friends talked gaily on all sorts of subjects; but nothing that Frank gathered, either from their conversation on deck or at dinner, gave any clue as to their occupation. They had evidently met at Marseilles for the first time after being separated for a considerable period – one had been in England, one at Paris, and one at Bordeaux; their ages were from twenty-three to twenty-six. Their names were, as he learned from their talk, Maffio, Sarto, and Rubini. Before the steamer had left the port half an hour, one of them, seeing that Frank was alone, said to him as he passed, in broken English, —

“It is warmer and pleasanter here, monsieur, than it is in London.”

“It is indeed,” Frank replied, in Italian; “it was miserable weather there, when I left the day before yesterday.”

“Per Bacco!” the young man said, with a laugh, “I took you to be English. Allow me to congratulate you on your admirable imitation of – ”

“I am English, signor – that is, I was born of English parents; but I first saw light in Rome, and my grandfather was an Italian.”

This broke the ice, and they chatted together pleasantly.

“We are going to Genoa. And you?”

“I also am going to Genoa, and perhaps” – for he had by this time quite come to a conclusion on the subject – “on the same errand as yourselves.”

The others looked at him in some little surprise, and then glanced at one another. That this young Englishman should be going upon such an expedition as that upon which they were bound, seemed to be out of the question.

“You mean on pleasure, signor?” one of them said, after a pause.

“If excitement is pleasure, which no doubt it is – yes. I am going to visit an old friend of my father’s; he is living a little way out of the town at the Villa Spinola.”

The others gave a simultaneous exclamation of surprise.

“That is enough, signor,” the one called Rubini said, holding out his hand; “we are comrades. Though how a young English gentleman should come to be of our party, I cannot say.”

The others shook hands as warmly with Frank; and he then replied, —

“No doubt you are surprised. My father fought side by side with the man I am now going to see, in the siege of Rome, so also did my grandfather; and both have since paid by their lives for their love of Italy. My name is Percival.”

“The son of the Captain Percival who was murdered while searching in Naples for Signor Forli?” one of them exclaimed.