That was plain enough, but it was essential that his should be the only version, and when the smoke cleared away he crossed the room to look at the two who must speak no word, and to make sure.

The man was still alive for all the lead in him; Tor di Rocca watched, with a sort of cruel, boyish interest in the creature he had maimed, as slowly, painfully, Jean dragged himself a little nearer to where the girl lay, tried to rise, and fell heavily. Surely he was dead now--but no; his hands still clawed at the carpet, and when Tor di Rocca stamped on his fingers he moaned as he tried to draw them away.

Olive lived too, but her breathing was so faint that it would be easily stifled; the pressure of his hand even, but Filippo shrank from that. He could not touch the flesh that would be dust presently because of him. He hesitated, and then, muttering to himself, went to take one of the cushions from the window seat.

Out in the garden the nightingale had not ceased to sing; the cypresses swayed in the winds that shook the promise of fruit from the trees; the green and rose and gold of a rainbow made fair the clouds' processional. The world was still full of music, of transitory life and joy, of dreams that have an ending.

CHAPTER IX

"_Via!_" said Vincenzo, and his black, oily forefinger, uplifted, gave emphasis to his words. "There are no such things as ghosts. This princess of yours cannot be seen at moonrise, or at any other time."

There is no room for faith in the swelled head of young Italy, but the waiter was a middle-aged man. He paused in the act of re-filling the customer's cup. "You do not believe, then?"

The Tuscan looked at him with all the scarcely-veiled contempt of the North for the South. "You tell me you are a Calabrian. _Si vede!_ You listen to all the priests say; you go down on your knees in the mud when the _frati_ are carrying a wax doll about the roads; you think a splinter of bone from the ribs of some fool who would not enjoy life while it lasted will cure a dropsy or a broken leg; you hope the rain will stop because a holy toe-nail is exposed on the altar. Ghosts, visions, miracles!"

Vincenzo Torrigiani was the son of a stone-cutter in the village of Settignano, and he had worked as a boy in the gardens of the Villa Fiorelli. After a while the master had noticed and had taken a fancy to him, chiefly on account of his ever-ready and unusually dazzling and expansive smile, and he had been sent to a garage in Milan for six months. The quick-witted Florentine learned a great many things in a short time besides the necessary smattering of mechanics and the management of cars, and on his return he displayed many new airs and graces in addition, fortunately, to the same old smile. Later on he spent the obligatory two years in barracks, in a regiment of Bersaglieri, and came back to Avenel's service plus a still more varied knowledge of the world, a waxed moustache, and a superficial tendency to atheism. He was always delighted to air his views, and he fixed the shocked waiter now with a glittering eye as he proceeded to recite his unbelief at some length.

"G.o.d is merely man's idea of himself at his best, and the devil is his idea of other people at their worst," he concluded.

"Would you spend a night alone in this haunted house?"

"_Sicuro!_"

"Perhaps you will have to if your master takes the place. He has gone to look at it."

Vincenzo gulped down the last of his coffee. "I must go," he said, but he was much too Italian to understand that a man in a hurry need not count his change twice over or bite every piece of silver to make sure of it.

It was nearly one o'clock when, having outdistanced the pack of beggars that followed at his heels through the narrow streets of the town, he came out upon the broad, tree-shadowed upper road. He had stopped for a moment in the shelter of the high wall of the Capuchin convent to light a cigarette, and thereafter he went on unseeingly, in a brown study. Had he or had he not paid two soldi more than he should have done for the packet? A Calabrian would cheat, if possible, of course.

When, after much mental arithmetic, Vincenzo solved the problem to his own satisfaction the little sc.r.a.p of bad tobacco in its paper lining was smoked out. He looked at his watch, a Christmas present from Jean, and seeing that it was past the hour he began to wonder. There were no ghosts, and in any case they were not dangerous in broad daylight.

There were no ghosts, but what was the signorino doing all this while in an empty house? The car was there, drawn up at the side of the road under the trees, and Vincenzo fussed round it, pulling the tarpaulin covers more over the seats; he had them in place when it occurred to him to look underneath for the fur rug. It was not there.

"_Dio mio!_" he cried excitedly. "It has been stolen."

Someone pa.s.sing by must have seen it and taken it, probably someone with a cart, as it would be heavy to carry. The thief could not have gone far, and Vincenzo thought that if he drove the car towards Castel Gandolfo he might catch him, whoever he was--charcoal-burner from the woods beyond Rocca di Papa, peasant carting barrels of Frascati wine, or perhaps a _frate_ from the convent. However, he dared not attempt it as the signorino had said "Wait."

After a few minutes of miserable uncertainty, during which he invoked the a.s.sistance of the saints--"_Che fare! Che fare! Santa Vergine, aiutatemi!_" he decided to go and find the signorino himself. He was half way down the lane when he heard shots. He had been hurrying, but he began to run then, and the last echo had not died away when he reached the gate of the Villino. It creaked on its hinges as he pa.s.sed in, but no one in the house was listening for it now. He went in at the door, and now he was very swift and silent, very intent. There was a smell of powder in the pa.s.sage, and someone was moving about in the room beyond. Vincenzo felt for the long sharp knife in his hip pocket before he softly turned the handle of the door.

"Signore! What has happened?"

Filippo Tor di Rocca started violently and uttered a sort of cry as he turned to see the man who stood on the threshold staring at him. There was a queer silence before he spoke, moistening his lips at almost every word.

"I--I--you heard shots, I suppose."

The servant's quick eyes noted the recent disorder of the room: chairs overturned, white splinters of plaster fallen from the ceiling, a mirror broken. Into what trap had his master fallen? What was there hidden behind the table--on the floor? There were scrabbled finger-marks--red marks--in the dust.

"I was here with a lady whom I wished to take this house when a man burst in upon us. He shot her, and tried to shoot me, and I drew upon him in self-defence." The Prince spoke haltingly. He had not been prepared to lie so soon.

"What are you doing with that cushion?"

Filippo looked down guiltily at the frilled thing he held. "I was going to put it under her head," he began, but the other was not listening. He had come forward into the room and he had seen. The huddled heap of black and grey close at the Prince's feet was human--a woman--and he knew the young pale face, veiled as it was in brown, loosened hair threaded with gold. A woman; and the man who lay there too, his dark head resting on her breast, his lips laid against her throat, was his master, Jean Avenel.

He uttered a hoa.r.s.e cry of rage. "Murderer! You did it!"

But Tor di Rocca had recovered himself somewhat and the bold, hard face was a mask through which the red eyes gleamed wickedly. "Fool!"

he answered impatiently. "It was as I said. The man was mad with jealousy. There is his pistol on the floor. I am going now to inform the authorities and to fetch the _carabinieri_."

He went out, and Vincenzo did not try to prevent him.

"Signorino! signorino! answer me. _Madonna benedetta!_ What shall I say to Ser 'Ilario?" The little man's face worked, and tears ran down his cheeks as he knelt there at his master's side, stooping to feel for the fluttering of the faint breath, the beating of the pulse of life. Surely there was no mortal wound--the shoulder--yes; and the side, and the right arm, since all the sleeve was soaked in warm blood.

All those who have been dragged down into the great darkness that shrouds the gate of Death know that the first sense vouchsafed to the returning soul is that of hearing. There was a sound of the sea in Jean's ears, a weary sound of wailing and distress, through which words came presently by ones and twos and threes. Words that seemed a long way off, and yet near, as though they were stones dropped upon him from a great height: ... signorina ... not mortal ...

healed ... care ... twenty ma.s.ses to the Madonna at the _Santissima Annunziata_ ...

Sight came next as the sea that had roared about him seemed to ebb, leaving him still on the sh.o.r.e of this world. He opened his eyes and lay for a moment staring up at the white ceiling until full consciousness returned, and with it the sharp, stabbing pain of his wounds, the acrid taste of blood in his mouth, the remembrance of love. Olive.... Had he not tried to reach her and failed? He groaned as he turned his aching head now on the pillow to see her where she lay.

Vincenzo had cared for his master, had slit up that red, wet sleeve with his sharp knife, and had bandaged the torn flesh as well as he was able; and now, very gently, but without any skill, he was fumbling at the girl's breast.

Jean made an effort to speak but his lips made no intelligible sounds at first. The servant came running to him joyfully nevertheless.

"Signorino! You are better?"

The kind brown eyes smiled through the dimness of their pain.

"Good Vincenzo ... well done. She ... she's not dead?"

"Oh, no, signorino--at least--I am not sure," the man faltered.

"The wound is near the heart, is it not? Lay her down here beside me and I will keep it closed with my hand," Jean said faintly. "Lift her and lay her down here in the hollow of my unhurt arm."

"No ... no!" she had cried. "Together." No other man should touch her--if she died it must be in his arms. How still she was, how little warmth of life was there to cherish, how small a fluttering of the dear heart under his hand's pressure....

"Go now and get help."

Vincenzo made no answer, but his eyes were like those of a faithful dog, anguished, appealing, and he knelt to kiss the poor fingers that had been bruised under that cruel heel before he went out of the room.

Very softly he closed and locked the door, and then stood for a while in the close darkness of the pa.s.sage, listening. That devil--he wanted them to die--suppose he should be lurking somewhere about the house, waiting for the servant to go that he might finish his work.

The Tor di Rocca were hard and swift and cruel as steel. That d.u.c.h.ess Veronica, who had brought her husband the other woman's severed head, wrapped in fine linen of her own weaving, as a New Year's gift!--she had been one of them. Then there had lived one Filippo who kept his younger brother chained up to the wall of some inner room of his Florentine palace for seventeen years, until, at last, a serving-man dared to go and tell of the sound of blows in the night hours, the moaning, the clank of a chain, and the people broke in, and hanged the Prince from the wrought-iron _fa.n.a.le_ outside his own gate.

Vincenzo knew of all these old, past horrors; the Florentines had made ballads of them, and sang them in the streets, and one might buy "_L'a.s.sa.s.sina_," or "_Il Fratello del Principe_," printed on little sheets of coa.r.s.e paper, on the stalls in the Mercato, for one soldo.

So, though the house was very still, the little man drew his long knife and read the motto scratched on the blade before he climbed the stairs.

"_Non ti fidar a me se il cor ti manca._"

Hurriedly he pa.s.sed through every room, but there was no one there, and so he ran out into the dripping green wilderness of torn leaves and storm-tossed, drenched blossoms, and up the lane, between the high walls of the olive orchards, to the town.