He did what his judgment indicated but failed to find sufficient reasons for linking Doria with the mystery, or a.s.sociating him with Robert Redmayne. For despite Peter's luminous a.n.a.lysis, Mark still regarded the unknown as Albert Redmayne's brother; and he could find no reasonable argument for a.s.sociating Giuseppe with this person, either at present or in the past. Everything rather pointed in a contrary direction. Brendon traversed the incidents connected with Bendigo Redmayne's disappearance, yet he could recall nothing suspicious about Giuseppe's conduct at "Crow's Nest"; and if it seemed unreasonable to suppose he had taken a hand in the second tragedy, it appeared still less likely that he could be a.s.sociated with the first.

It was true that Doria had wedded Pendean's widow; but that he should have slain her husband in order to do so appeared a grotesque a.s.sumption. Moreover, as a student of character, Mark could not honestly find in Jenny's husband any characteristics that argued a malevolent att.i.tude to life. He was a pleasure-loving spirit and his outlook and ambitions, while frivolous, were certainly not criminal.

He talked of the smugglers a good deal and declared himself in sympathy with them; but it was gasconade; he evinced no particular physical bravery; he was fond of his comforts and seemed little likely to risk his own liberty by a.s.sociation with breakers of law and order.

A startling proof that Mark had not erred in this estimate was afforded by a conversation which he enjoyed with Doria on a day soon after the departure of Albert Redmayne and his friend. Giuseppe and his wife had planned to visit an acquaintance at Colico, to the northward of the lake; and before the steamer started, after noon, the two men took a stroll in the hills a mile above Menaggio.

Brendon had asked for some private conversation and the other gladly agreed.

"As you know, I'm going to spend the day in the red man's haunt,"

explained Mark, "and I'll call at supper time since you wish it; but before you go, I'll ask you to stroll along for an hour. I want to talk to you."

"That will suit me very well," said the other, and in half an hour he returned to Brendon, found him chatting with Jenny in the dark portal of the silkworm house, and drew him away.

"You shall have speech with her to-night after supper," promised Giuseppe. "Now it is my turn. We will ascend to the little shrine on the track above the orchards. There are shrines too many to the Holy Mother, my friend. But this one is not to Madonna of the wind, or the sea, or the stars. I call her 'Madonna del farniente'--the saint for weary people, whose bodies and brains both ache from too much work."

They climbed aloft presently, Doria in a holiday suit of golden-brown cloth with a ruby tie, and Brendon attired in tweeds, his luncheon in his pocket. Then the Italian's manner changed and he dropped his banter. Indeed for a time he grew silent.

Brendon opened the conversation and of course treated the other as though no question existed concerning his honesty.

"What do you think of this business?" he asked. "You have been pretty close to it for a long time now. You must have some theory."

"I have no theory at all," replied Doria. "My own affairs are enough for me and this cursed mystery is thrusting a finger into my life and darkening it. I grow a very anxious and miserable man and I will tell you why, because you are understanding. You must not be angry if I now mention my wife in this affair. A mill and a woman are always in want of something, as our proverb says; but though we may know what a mill requires, who can guess a woman's whims? I am dazed with guessing wrong. I don't intend to be hard or cruel. It is not in me to be cruel to any woman. But how if your own woman is cruel to you?"

They had reached the shrine--a little alcove in a rotting ma.s.s of brick and plaster. Beneath it extended a stone seat whereon the wayfarer might kneel or sit; above, in the niche, protected by a wire grating, stood a doll painted with a blue cloak and a golden crown. Offerings of wayside flowers decorated the ledge before the little image.

They sat down and Doria began to smoke his usual Tuscan cigar. His depression increased and with it Brendon's astonishment. The man appeared to be taking exactly that att.i.tude to his wife she had already suggested toward him.

"Il volto sciolto ed i pensieri stretti," declared Giuseppe with gloom. "That is to say 'her countenance may be clear, but her thoughts are dark'--too dark to tell me--her husband."

"Perhaps she fears you a little. A woman is always helpless before a man who keeps his own secrets hidden."

"Helpless? Far from it. She is a self-controlled, efficient, hard-headed woman. Her loveliness is a curtain. You have not yet got behind that. You loved her, but she did not love you. She loved me and married me. And it is I who know her character, not you. She is very clever and pretends a great deal more than she feels. If she makes you think she is unhappy and helpless, she does it on purpose.

She may be unhappy, because to keep secrets is often to court unhappiness; but she is not helpless at all. Her eyes look helpless; her mouth never. There is power and will between her teeth."

"Why do you speak of secrets?"

"Because you did. I have no secrets. It is Jenny, my wife, who has secrets. I tell you this. _She knows all about the red man!_ She is as deep as h.e.l.l."

"You mean that she understands what is happening and will not tell her uncle or you?"

"That is precisely what I mean. She does not care a curse for Alberto. What is born of hen will sc.r.a.pe--remember that. Her father had a temper like a fiend and a cousin of her mother was hanged for murder. These are facts she will not deny. I had them from her uncle. I am frightened of her and I have disappointed her, because I am not what she thought and have ceased to covet my ancestral estates and t.i.tle."

Such a monstrous picture of Jenny at first bewildered Brendon and then incensed him. Was it within the bounds of possibility that after six months of wedded life with this woman, any man living would utter such an indictment and believe it?

"She is great in her way--much too great for me," said Giuseppe frankly. "She should have been a Medici or a Borgia; she should have lived many centuries sooner, before policeman and detective officers were invented. You stare and think I lie. But I do not lie. I see very clearly indeed. I look back at the past and the veil is lifted.

I understand much that I did not understand when I was growing blind with love for her. As for this Robert Redmayne--'Robert the Devil,'

I call him--once I thought that he was a ghost; but he is not a ghost: he is a live man.

"And presently what will happen if he is not caught and hanged? He will kill Uncle Alberto and perhaps kill me, too. Then he will run away with Jenny. And I tell you this, Brendon: the sooner he does so, if only he leaves me alone, the better pleased I shall be. A hideous speech? Yes, very hideous indeed; but perfectly true, like many hideous things."

"Do you honestly expect that I, who know your wife, am going to believe this grotesque story?"

"I do not mind whether you believe it or no. Feel as savage as you please. For that matter I feel rather savage myself. There is a new ferocity creeping into me. If you keep company with a wolf, you will soon learn to howl--that's why I howl a good deal in secret, I can tell you. Soon I shall howl so that everybody will hear. So now you know how it is with me. I am outside her secrets and feel no wish whatever to learn them, save as they affect me. If she will give me a few thousand pounds and let me vanish out of her life, I shall be delighted to do so. I did not marry her for her money; but since love is dead, I shall like a little of the cash to start me at Turin. Then she is free as air. It will pay you quite well to try and arrange the bargain."

Brendon could hardly believe his ears, but the Italian appeared very much in earnest. He chattered on for some time. Then he looked at his watch and declared that he must descend.

"The steamer is coming soon," he said. "Now I leave you and I hope that I have done good. Think how to help me and yourself. What she now feels to you I cannot tell. Your turn may come. I trust so. I am not at all jealous. But be warned. This red man--he is no friend to you or me. You seek him again to-day. So be it. And if you find him, be careful of your skin. Not that a man can protect his skin against fate. We meet at supper."

He swung away, singing a canzonet, and quickly vanished, while Brendon, overwhelmed by this extraordinary conversation, sat for an hour motionless and deep in thought. He could hardly plough his path through what appeared a jungle of flagrant falsehood. But where another man had striven to find underlying purpose in this diatribe and consider Doria's object in choosing him for a confessor, Brendon, while swift enough to regard the attack on Jenny as foul and false, yet did not hesitate to believe that which his own desire drove him to believe. He sifted the grain from the chaff, doubtfully guided by his own pa.s.sion, and saw the Italian's wife free. But he could not see her false. He scorned the baleful picture that Giuseppe had painted and guessed that his purpose was to cut the ground from under Jenny's feet and accuse her of those identical crimes that he himself had committed. His att.i.tude to Doria was affirmed, and from that hour he believed, with Peter Ganns, that the Italian knew the purposes of the unknown and was a.s.sisting him to achieve them. But again his spirit picked and chose. He did not remember how Ganns also, though in more temperate words than Doria's, had warned him for the present to put no trust even in Jenny. He trusted her as he trusted himself; and that also meant distrusting her husband.

He considered now his own course of action and presently proceeded to the region in which Robert Redmayne had been most frequently reported. Certain appearances were chronicled and, before Ganns returned to England, the theory had been accepted that the fugitive hid and dwelt aloft in some fastness with the charcoal burners. Now Brendon felt the need to probe this opinion and determined, if possible, to find the lair of the red man.

Not single-handed did he expect to do so. His purpose henceforth was to watch Doria unseen and so discover whom he served. Thus he would kill two birds with one stone and simplify action for Peter Ganns when he returned.

Brendon climbed steadily upward and presently sat down to rest upon a little, lofty plateau where, in the mountain scrub, grew lilies of the valley and white sun-rose. Idly he sat and smoked, marked the steamers creep, like waterman beetles, upon the shiny surface of the lake stretched far below, watched a brown fox sunning itself on a stone and then plucked a bunch of the fragrant valley lilies to take to Jenny that night when he came to sup at the Villa Pianezzo. But the blossoms never reached the hand of Mrs. Doria.

Suddenly, as he rose from this innocent pastime, Mark became aware that he was watched and found himself face to face with the object of his search. Robert Redmayne stood separated from him by a distance of thirty yards behind the boughs of a breast-high shrub.

He stood bare-headed, peering over the thicket, and the sun shone upon his fiery red scalp and tawny mustache. There could be no mistaking the man, and Brendon, rejoicing that daylight would now enable him to come to grips at last, flung down his bouquet and leaped straight for the other.

But it appeared that the watcher desired no closer contact. He turned and ran, heading upward for a wild tract of stone and scrub that spread beneath the last precipices of the mountain. Straight at this cliff, as though familiar with some secret channel of escape, the red man ran and made surprising speed. But Mark found himself gaining. He strove to run the other down as speedily as possible, that he might close, with strength still sufficient to win the inevitable battle that must follow, and effect a capture.

He was disappointed, however, for while still twenty yards behind and forced to make only a moderate progress over the rocky way he saw Robert Redmayne suddenly stop, turn and lift a revolver. The flash of the sun on the barrel and the explosion of the discharge were simultaneous. As the red man fired, the other flung up his arms, plunged forward on his face, gave one convulsive tremor through all his limbs, and moved no more. The discovery, the chase and its termination had occupied but five minutes; and while one big man, panting from his exertions, approached only to see that his fallen victim showed no sign of life, the other, with his face amid the alpine flowers, remained where he had dropped, his arms outstretched, his hands clenched, his body still, blood running from his mouth.

The conqueror took careful note of the spot in which he stood and bringing a knife from his pocket blazed the stem of a young tree that rose not very far from his victim. Then he disappeared and peace reigned above the fallen. So still he lay that another fox, scared from its siesta, poked a black muzzle round a rock and sniffed the air; but it trusted not appearances and having contemplated the rec.u.mbent object lifted its head, uttered a dubious bark and trotted away. From on high an eagle also marked the fallen man, but swiftly soared upward to the crown of the mountain and disappeared. The spot was lonely enough, yet a track ran within one hundred yards and it often happened that charcoal burners and their mules pa.s.sed that way to the valleys.

None, however, came now as the sun turned westward and the cool shadow of the precipice began to creep over the little wilderness at its feet. Many hours pa.s.sed and then, after night had flooded the hollow, there sounded from close at hand strange noises and the intermittent thud of some metal weapon striking the earth. The din ascended from a rock which lifted its grey head above a thicket of juniper; and here, while the flat summit of the boulder began to shine whitely under the rising moon, a lantern flickered and showed two shadows busy above the excavation of an oblong hole. They mumbled together and dug in turn. Then one dark figure came out into the open, took his bearings, flung lantern light on the blazed tree trunk, and advanced to a brown, motionless hump lying hard by.

Infinite silence reigned over that uplifted region. Above, near the summit of the mountain, flashed the red eye of a charcoal burner's fire; beneath only the plateau sloped to a ragged edge easterly, for the lake was hidden under the shoulder of the hills. No firefly danced upon this height; but music there was, for a nightingale bubbled his liquid notes in a great myrtle not ten yards from where the still shape lay.

The dark, approaching figure saw the object of his search and came forward. His purpose was to bury the victim, whom he had lured hither before destroying, and then remove any trace that might linger upon the spot where the body lay. He bent down, put his hands to the jacket of the motionless man, and then, as he exerted his strength, a strange, hideous thing happened. The body under his touch dropped to pieces. Its head rolled away; its trunk became dismembered and he fell backward heaving an amorphous torso into the air. For, exerting the needful pressure to move a heavy weight, he found none and tumbled to the ground, holding up a coat stuffed with gra.s.s.

The man was on his feet in an instant, fearing an ambush; but astonishment opened his mouth.

"Corpo di Bacco!" he cried, and the exclamation rang in a note of something like terror against the cliffs and upon the ear of his companion. Yet no swift retribution stayed his steps; no shot rang out to arrest his progress. He leaped away, dodging and bounding like a deer to escape the expected bullet and then disappeared behind the boulder. But neither rascal delayed a moment. Their mingled steps instantly rang out; then the clatter faded swiftly upon the night and silence returned.

For ten minutes nothing happened. Next, out of a lair not fifteen yards from the distorted dummy, rose a figure that shone white as snow under the moon. Mark Brendon approached the snare that he himself had set, shook the gra.s.s out of his coat, lifted his hat from the ball of leaves it covered, and presently drew on his knickerbockers, having emptied them of their stuffing. He was cold and calm. He had learned more than he expected to learn; for that startled exclamation left no doubt at all concerning one of the grave-diggers. It was Giuseppe Doria who had come to move the body, and there seemed little doubt that Brendon's would-be murderer was the other.

"'Corpo di Bacco,' perhaps, but not corpo di Brendon, my friend,"

murmured Mark to himself. Then he turned northward, traversed some harsh thickets that barred the plateau, and reached a mule track, a mile beneath, which he had discovered before daylight waned. It led to Menaggio through chestnut woods.

The operations of the detective from the moment that he fell headlong, apparently to rise no more, may be briefly chronicled.

When his enemy drew up and fired pointblank upon him, the bullet pa.s.sed within an inch of Brendon's ear and the memory of a similar experience flashed into his mind and led to his subsequent action.

On a previous occasion, having been missed at close quarters, he pretended to be hit and fell apparently lifeless within fifteen yards of a famous malefactor. The ruse succeeded; the man crept back to triumph over an inveterate foe and Brendon shot him dead as he bent to examine a fancied corpse. With a loaded revolver still in his opponent's hand, he could take no risk on this second occasion and fell accordingly. His purpose was to tempt the red man back and if possible secure his weapon before he had time to fire again.

But he was disappointed, for the unknown, seeing Mark crash headfirst to the ground, and blood run from his mouth, evidently felt a.s.sured that his purpose was accomplished. Brendon had simulated death for a while, but when satisfied of his a.s.sailant's departure, presently rose, with no worse hurts than a bruised face, a badly bitten tongue, and a wounded shin.

The situation thus created he weighed in all its bearings and guessed that those who now believed themselves responsible for his death would take occasion to remove the evidence of their crime without much delay. The blazed tree, which he presently noted, confirmed this suspicion. n.o.body had ever seen one of Robert Redmayne's victims and the last was little likely to be an exception. Mark guessed that until darkness returned he might expect to be undisturbed. He walked back, therefore, to his starting-place, and found the packet of food which he had brought with him and a flask of red wine left beside it.