"It is the sudden threat and terror of my vanished brother,"

explained Mr. Redmayne. "You are familiar, Virgilio, with the terrible facts concerning Robert's appearance and Bendigo's disappearance. Now, suddenly, when I have long come to believe that my younger brother's lurid career was ended and that he had ceased to be, he leaps upon the mountains and reappears in his habit as he lived! Nor can we doubt that he lives indeed. He is no ghost, my friend, but a solid, shadow-casting man, who may be seeking my life by reason of his distempered mind."

"It is romance," declared Virgilio, "but romance of a very grim and painful description. You are, however, safe enough with me, for I would gladly shed my blood to save yours."

"Well I know it, rare Virgilio," declared the other. "But we shall not long impose ourselves upon your courage and generosity. We have written to England for Peter Ganns who, by G.o.d's providence, is now in that country and hoped to visit me in a few months. We have also called upon Giuseppe Doria to return at once to us. When he does so I am content to sleep at home again; but not sooner."

Signor Poggi hastened to order a meal worthy of the occasion, while his wife, who was also a devoted admirer of the Englishman, prepared apartments. Nothing but delight filled Poggi's mind at the opportunity to serve his dearest companion. An ample meal was planned and Jenny helped her hostess in its preparation.

Poggi drank to the temporal and eternal welfare of his first friend and Albert returned the compliment. They enjoyed a pleasant meal and then sat through the June twilight in Virgilio's rose garden, smelled the fragrance of oleanders and myrtles in the evening breeze, saw the fireflies flash their little lamps over dim olive and dark cypress, and heard the summer thunder growling genially over the mountain crowns of Campione and Croce.

Mr. Redmayne's niece retired early and Maria Poggi with her, but Virgilio and Albert talked far into the night and smoked many cigars before they slept.

At nine o'clock next morning Mr. Redmayne and Jenny were rowed home again, only to hear that no intruder had broken upon the nightly peace of Villa Pianezzo. Nor did the day bring any news. Once more they repaired to Bellagio before dark, and for three days lived thus. Then there came a telegram from Turin to say that Doria was returning immediately to Como and might soon be expected via Milan; while on the morning that actually brought him to Menaggio, his wife received a brief letter from Mark Brendon. He had found Mr. Ganns and the two would set forth for Italy within a few days.

"It is impossible that we can receive both here," declared Albert; "but we will engage pleasant apartments with dear Signor Bullo at the Hotel Victoria. They are full, or nearly so; but he will find a corner for any friends of mine."

CHAPTER XI

MR. PETER GANNS

Mark Brendon received with mingled emotions the long letter from Jenny Doria. It awaited him at New Scotland Yard and, as he took it from the rack, his heart leaped before the well-remembered handwriting. The past very seldom arose to shadow Mark's strenuous present; but now, once more, it seemed that Robert Redmayne was coming between him and his annual holiday. He told himself that he had lived down his greatest disappointment and believed that he could now permit his thoughts to dwell on Jenny without feeling much more than the ache of an old wound. Her letter came a week before the recipient proposed to start upon his vacation. He had intended going to Scotland, having no mind for Dartmoor again at present; but it was not his failure, so complete and bewildering, that had barred a return to familiar haunts. Memory made the thought too painful and poignant, so he designed to break new ground and receive fresh impressions.

Then came this unexpected challenge and he hesitated before accepting it. Yet a second reading of the woman's appeal determined him, for Jenny wrote for herself as well as her uncle. She reminded Brendon of his goodwill and declared how personally she should welcome him and feel safer and more sanguine for his companionship.

She also contrived to let him know that she was not particularly happy. The fact seemed implicitly woven into her long letter, though another, less vitally interested in the writer, might have failed to observe it.

Regretting only that Albert Redmayne's friend must be approached and hoping that Mr. Peter Ganns would at least allow him a few days'

start, Brendon sought the famous American and found his direction without difficulty. He had already visited New Scotland Yard, where he numbered several acquaintances, and Mark learned that he was stopping at the Grand Hotel in Trafalgar Square. On sending in his name a messenger boy bade Brendon follow to the smoking-room.

His first glance, however, failed to indicate the great man. The smoking-room was nearly empty on this June morning and Mark observed n.o.body but a young soldier, writing letters, and a white-haired, somewhat corpulent gentleman sitting with his back to the light reading the _Times_. He was clean shaved, with a heavy face modelled to suggest a rhinoceros. The features were large; the nose swollen and a little veined with purple, the eyes hidden behind owl-like spectacles with tortoise-sh.e.l.l rims, and the brow very broad, but not high. From it abundant white hair was brushed straight back.

Brendon extended his glance elsewhere, but the messenger stopped, turned, and departed, while the stout man rose, revealing a ma.s.sive frame, wide shoulders, and st.u.r.dy legs.

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Brendon," he said in a genial voice; then he shook hands, took off his spectacles, and sat down again.

"This is a pleasure I had meant to give myself before I quitted the city," declared the big man. "I've heard about you and I've taken off my hat to you more than once during the war. You might know me, too."

"Everybody in our business knows you, Mr. Ganns. But I've not come hero-worshipping to waste your time. I'm proud you're pleased to see me and it's a great privilege to meet you; but I've looked in this morning about something that won't wait; and your name is the big noise in a letter I received from Italy to-day."

"Is that so? I'm bound for Italy in the fall."

"The question is whether this letter may change your plans and send you there sooner."

The elder stared, took a golden box out of his waistcoat pocket, opened it, tapped it, and helped himself to a pinch of snuff. The habit explained his somewhat misshapen nose. It was tobacco, not alcohol, that lent its exaggerated l.u.s.tre and hypertrophied outline to that organ.

"I hate changing my itinerary, once made," replied Mr. Ganns. "I'm the most orderly cuss on earth. So far as I know, there's but one man in all Italy is likely to knock my arrangements on the head; and I'll see him, if all's well, in September next."

Brendon produced Jenny's letter.

"The writer is niece of that man," he said and handed the communication to Mr. Ganns.

Peter put on his spectacles again and read slowly. Indeed Mark had never seen a letter read so slowly before. It might have been in some cryptic tongue which Mr. Ganns could only with difficulty translate. Having finished he handed the communication back to Brendon and indicated a desire for silence. Mark lit a cigarette and sat surveying the other from the corner of his eye.

At last the American spoke.

"What about you? Can you go?"

"Yes; I've appealed to my chief and got permission to pick this up again. My holiday's due and I'll go to Italy instead of Scotland. I was in it from the first, you know."

"I do know--I know all about it, from my old pal, Albert Redmayne.

He wrote me the most lucid dispatch that ever I read."

"You can go, Mr. Ganns?"

"I must go, boy. Albert wants me."

"Could you get off in a week?"

"A week! To-night."

"To-night, sir! Do you reckon that Mr. Redmayne is in any danger?"

"Don't you?'"

"He's forewarned and you see he's taking great precautions."

"Brendon," said Mr. Ganns, "run round and find when the night boat sails from Dover, or Folkestone. We'll reach Paris to-morrow morning, I guess, catch the _Rapide_ for Milan, and be at the Lakes next day. You'll find we can do so. Then telegraph to this dame that we start _a week hence_. You take me?"

"You want to get there before we're expected?"

"Exactly."

"Then you do think Mr. Albert Redmayne is in danger?"

"I don't think about it. I know he is. But as this mystery has only just let loose on him and he's got his weather eye lifting, it will be all right, I hope, for a few hours. Meantime we arrive."

He took another pinch of snuff and picked up the _Times_. "Will you lunch with me here in the grillroom at two o'clock?"

"With pleasure, Mr. Ganns."

"Right. And telegraph, right now, that we hope to get off in a week."

Some hours later they met again and over a steak and green peas Brendon reported that the boat train left Victoria at eleven and that the _Rapide_ would start from Paris on the following morning at half past six.

"We reach Bevano some time after noon next day," he said, "and can either go on to Milan and then come back to Como and travel by boat to Menaggio, where Mr. Redmayne lives, or else leave the train at Bevano, take steamer on Maggiore, cross to Lugano, and cross again to Como. That way we land right at Menaggio. There's not much in it for time."