The Red Room

“Yes,” I said. “What matter the affairs of others, so long as the wife I love is innocent and at my side? She is the victim of a plot from which I must rescue her.”

The Italian gazed again away across the roofs of the Eternal City, now growing more indistinct in the gathering mists.

“I fear, Signor Holford,” he at last exclaimed with a sigh, “that you have a very difficult task before you. You are evidently in ignorance of certain curious facts.”

“Concerning what?”

“Concerning your wife.”

“You would cast a slur upon her good name?” I cried excitedly, my anger rising.

“Not at all,” was his calm, polite response, his lips parted in a pleasant smile. “You asked me to assist you, and I was about to give you advice – that is, provided that you have told me the truth.”

“About what?”

“About Miss Ethelwynn – that she still lives.”

“Of that there is no doubt,” I said.

“And if you found your signora alive and well, you would undertake to make no further inquiry?” he repeated, with undue eagerness.

“Ah! You wish to tie me down to that?” I cried. “You do so because you and your friends are in fear. You realise your own peril – eh?”

“No,” declared the man at my side; “you still entirely misunderstand me. You are an Englishman, and you mistrust me merely because I am a foreigner. It is a prejudice all you English have, more or less.”

“I entertain no prejudice,” I declared hotly. “But to tell you the truth, Antonio, I am tired of all this mystery, and now that Kirk and his friends have alienated me from my wife, I intend to take action.”

“In what manner?” he asked calmly.

“I shall go to the Questore here, in Rome, and tell the truth. I happen to know him personally.”

“And you will mention my name!” he gasped, well knowing probably the drastic measures adopted by the police of his own country.

“I shall not be able to avoid mentioning it,” I responded, with a smile.

“Bene!” he answered, in a hard, hoarse voice. “And if you did – well, signore, I can promise that you would never again see your signora alive. Go to the Questore now! Tell him all you know! Apply for my arrest! And then wait the disaster that must fall upon you, and upon your missing wife. An unseen hand struck Professor Greer – an unseen hand will most assuredly strike you, as swiftly, as unerringly.” And then facing me defiantly, a grin upon his sinister face, the fellow added: “Silence, signore, is your only guarantee of safety – I assure you!”

Chapter Seventeen

Ethelwynn Speaks

I looked into the closely-set, crafty eyes of the old Italian, and saw both determination and desperation.

Was he the man who killed Professor Greer?

“I require no guarantee of safety from you, Antonio,” I answered quickly. “I am now solely in search of my wife. Where is she?”

“Caro signore, I have no idea,” was the old fellow’s bland reply, as he exhibited his palms. “I have not the pleasure of the signora’s acquaintance.”

“But you know where Kirk is hiding, and she is with him, assisting him in discovering my whereabouts, I believe!” I cried.

“That the Signor Kirk crossed from Dover to Calais I am well aware, but of his movements afterwards I assure you I am in complete ignorance.”

What could I do further?

He professed to be equally mystified with myself regarding my wife’s disappearance, declaring his readiness and anxiety to assist me if it were possible.

Then, in the falling twilight, we slowly descended the road together, he giving me his address in the Via Tordinona, a side street close to the Bridge of Sant’ Angelo, which I noted on my shirt-cuff. At the Porto del Popolo we parted, and I returned to the hotel to dine with Gwen, whom I found awaiting me in feverish expectation. I told her briefly of my meeting with a man I knew, but explained nothing of his connection with the house in Sussex Place, nor of the secret tragedy that had been enacted.

Next day was the fifth of February, the day of Santa Agata. How well I recollect it, for at noon we bade farewell to the Eternal City, and as the train roared on across those wide, dreary marshes of the Maremma on our journey northward, I sat in the corner of the compartment and made up my mind to go direct and seek Ethelwynn, the girl whom I had seen dead, and who was yet alive.

I recalled all Antonio’s ominous statements; how that he had expressed a doubt whether the professor’s assassin would ever be brought to justice, and how he had threatened that, if I betrayed the truth to the police, I should never again meet Mabel alive. Did not those words of his conclusively prove complicity in the affair? Why did he command my silence at peril of my dear wife’s life. He had lied when he told me that he was ignorant of her whereabouts; but if he were the actual assassin, or even one of the accomplices, I saw that I could hope for no assistance from him. It was that conclusion which caused me to resolve to invoke the aid of the girl whom I had seen lying upon the floor, cold and lifeless.

From Rome to Broadstairs is a far cry, but two days later we alighted at Victoria, and on the morning of the third day I found myself at the door of a pretty newly-built red-roofed house standing in its own ground high upon the cliffs between the Grand Hotel at Broadstairs and Dumpton Gap.

A neat maid opened the door, and, on inquiring for Miss Greer, I was shown across a square, ample hall to a small cosy sitting-room overlooking the sea, facing direct upon the treacherous Goodwins.

The maid who took my card returned to say that her mistress would be with me in a few moments. And then I stood at the window, gazing along at the quaint old-world harbour of Broadstairs, with “Bleak House” standing high beyond, full of keen anxiety as to the result of the interview.

She came at last, a tall, slim figure, in a dark stuff skirt and cream silk blouse, relieved by a touch of colour at the throat, a sweet-faced, fair-haired, delicate girl, whose large blue eyes wore a look of wonder at the visit of a stranger. She whom I had seen a corpse was certainly alive, and living here in the flesh!

“I must apologise for this intrusion, Miss Greer,” I began, for want of something better to say, “but I may introduce myself as an acquaintance of Mr Langton – an acquaintance under somewhat romantic and curious circumstances.”

“Mr Langton has already told me how he met you – when he believed there were burglars in our house in Sussex Place,” she said, with a brightening smile.

“Yes,” I replied. “I – well, I was put there on guard, but Mr Langton’s suspicions fortunately proved to be unfounded.”

“Ah!” she said, with just the slightest suspicion of a sigh. “I’m glad of that – very glad!”

“The reason of my visit, Miss Greer, is,” I explained after a brief pause, “to ask you whether you are aware of the whereabouts of my friend, your father?” And I fixed my eyes straight upon hers.

“My father went to Scotland,” she replied, without wavering. “At present he’s in Germany. The last I heard of him was three days ago, when he was in Strassburg.”

“He wrote to you?” I gasped, staring at her in amazement that this ready lie should be upon her lips.

She noted my surprise, and said:

“Yes, why shouldn’t he?”

What reply could I give? Could I tell her that the Professor, her father, had been cruelly done to death, and his body cremated in his own experimental furnace? Had I not given my word of honour to that weird will-o’-the-wisp, Kershaw Kirk, that I would preserve silence? Besides, my only thought was for my own dear wife, whose face now rose ever before me.

“Well,” I stammered. “I – well – I believed that you were unaware of his whereabouts, Miss Greer. At least, I understood so from your father’s butler, Antonio.”

She smiled, regarding me quite calmly. She was either in ignorance of what had occurred, or else she was a most perfect actress.

Yet how could she feign ignorance? Had not Kirk told me that she had thrown herself upon her knees before her father’s body, vowing a fierce, bitter vengeance upon his assassin? Perhaps Kirk had lied, of course, yet I recollected that the discovery had been made while the dead man’s daughter was in the house, and that after the astounding incident she had removed with Morgan, her maid, to Lady Mellor’s, while the other servants – unaware of what had occurred – had either been sent away down to Broadstairs, or else discharged. In secret, this handsome girl before me – the girl with that perfect dimpled face and innocent blue eyes – had returned, and we had found her lying apparently dead in the dining-room.

Ethelwynn’s present attitude of pretended ignorance of her father’s fate struck me as both amazing and culpable.