The Fourth Plague Read online

  “No, no, no!” protested the man, frantic with terror; “you do not understand. My only hope is to get away…if I could reach the Argentine—come—come!”

  He dragged the other with him to the nearest street-lamp, fumbling in his pocket the while.

  “They want me for many reasons,” he said, “and for this most of all.”

  His coat was one of those heavy cloth coats which Italian labourers wear, the corners of the pockets ornamented with tiny triangles of rusty black velvet. From the depths of a pocket the man produced a little case. It looked like a jewel case, and the Englishman observed that it was very new. Romano’s trembling hand sought for the catch. He found it after a while, and the satin-lined lid flew open. On a bed of dark blue velvet lay a little medallion.

  “San Antonio,” said the Italian, in a hushed, eager voice.

  It was a beautiful piece of work. The back ground was made up of small diamonds, the Saint with the Babe was in gold relief. This was no stamped and minted impression, but a piece of rare and delicate carving.

  “Signor,” said Miguelo, “a month ago a man who was a friend of mine brought this to me—how it came to him I do not know. He asked me to take care of it, and in time—these were his words, Signor—to restore it—”

  A motor-car came swiftly down the street, and the Italian looked round apprehensively.

  “Take it!”

  He thrust the case into Gallinford’s hands, clicking it close as he did it.

  “But—”

  “Take it—ah!”

  The car drew up abreast of them and, as the lacquered door swung open, Romano shrank back against the railings.

  Two men alighted, and they were followed by a woman.

  She was tall, slim, graceful. Frank could not see her face, for it was thickly veiled, but her voice was low and sweet.

  “This is the man,” she said, and pointed to the cowering Italian.

  The two men sprang at Romano and caught him by the arms. There was the click of handcuffs.

  “What is the meaning of this?” asked Gallinford, though, with a sinking heart, he anticipated the answer.

  “This man has taken a jewel of mine,” the lady replied.

  “What does she say—what does she say?” asked the Italian. The conversation had been in English; Frank translated.

  “It is a lie—a lie!——” screamed Romano, struggling desperately as they dragged him toward the car; “save me, for God’s sake, Signor!”

  The Englishman hesitated. He had all the national repugnance of a “scene.” He knew that the Italian would at any rate be safe at the police station—and if he were guilty, as it seemed probable, he needed no protection. The whole story was a cock-and-bull invention.

  “Where are you taking him?” he asked.

  “To Marlborough Street,” said one of the men gruffly.

  “Go quietly, Miguelo,” said Frank, turning to the struggling man, “I will follow you.”

  But the prisoner had gone limp, he had fainted.

  They lifted him into the car and the men jumped in after. The woman waited expectantly. Then Frank saw a second car behind. As the first car manoeuvred to turn, he heard voices in altercation. Miguelo had recovered from his swoon; there was a scuffle, and the Italian’s head appeared at the window.

  “Signor!” there was agony in his voice, “tell Signor Tillizini—”

  A hand was placed over his mouth, and he was dragged back as the car rolled up the hill and into the slow-moving traffic.

  Frank waited. He half expected the woman to speak. Then it occurred to him that she would regard him, if not as an accomplice, at least as a friend of the arrested man, and he went red.

  She stepped lightly into the second car. This did not turn, but made its way downhill.

  It was on the point of moving off when he remembered with a shock that, if he was not the thief, he was all unwillingly a receiver. The jewel was still in his pocket.

  The car was on the move when he realized this and sprang to the door of the carriage.

  “Madame,” he said, “a word—I have something to say—I have—”

  Through the open window of the car he saw the woman draw back.

  “I want you——” he began, and jumped back as he saw the flash of descending steel.

  He was just in time.

  The thin stiletto aimed at him struck the edge of the window, and Frank, temporarily dazed, stumbled to his knees in the muddy road as the car jerked ahead and vanished round the corner of Adam Street.

  One glimpse he got of a white hand still clasping the hilt of the quivering poignard—a white hand on a finger of which glowed a square black opal.

  He rose slowly to his feet, dumbfounded. He was furiously angry. She had evidently mistaken him for a robber.

  He brushed the mud from his knees with a handkerchief, and collected his thoughts, swearing softly.

  Here was he, a prosaic young engineer on his way to meet his fiancee in prosaic Burboro’, engaged in an adventure which was three parts melodrama and one part comedy.

  “This comes from listening to plausible Italians?” he said, savagely. He made his way to the Strand and hailed a taxicab.

  “Marlborough Street Police Station,” he directed.

  He would rid himself of this infernal jewel and clear himself, at any rate.

  The sergeant returned his greeting curtly, taking in the mud-stained figure with professional suspicion.

  “Romano,” he said. “No, we haven’t a Romano here.”

  “He has just been arrested by two of your men,” said Frank.

  “No warrant has been executed for a man of that name,” said the sergeant, shaking his head. “Just wait a minute and I’ll ask Bow Street.”

  He went into an adjoining room, and Frank heard the tinkle of a telephone.

  By and by the officer returned.

  “Neither Bow Street nor Vine Street know anything about it,” he said.

  Briefly the young man told the story of the arrest, omitting only the fact that the jewel reposed in his pocket. He had no desire to find himself detained. With Miguelo to confirm his story and with the prosecutrix present to identify the jewel, it would be different. And he had, too, an overpowering desire to explain to the murderous lady, in person, his honourable intentions.

  “No sir,” the sergeant went on, “we’ve no Italians—we’ve had enough of them since the ‘Red Hand’ started operations in England. But since Mr. Tillizini began working for Scotland Yard, they haven’t been so busy.”

  “Tillizini?” cried Frank, with a start.

  The sergeant nodded.

  “That’s the gentleman,” he said, complacently; “if you want to know anything about Italian criminals, you’d better see him—108, Adelphi Terrace; anyway, you’d best come back again—the C.I.D. men may be working independently.”

  Frank walked in the neighbourhood of the station until ten o’clock that night. He sent a wire to his host and dined at a Piccadilly restaurant.

  The clock was striking the hour when he again mounted the steps of Marlborough Street Station.

  The sergeant was not alone. Three over-coated men were talking together in one corner of the room.

  “Here he is,” said the sergeant, and the three turned and surveyed the young engineer gravely.

  “What was the name of that Italian you were inquiring about?” asked the sergeant.

  “Miguelo della Romano,” replied Frank. “Have you found him?”

  The officer nodded grimly.

  “Picked him up in the Embankment Gardens—an hour ago,” he said.

  “Where is he?” asked Frank.

  “In the mortuary,” said the sergeant, “with twenty-five knife-wounds in his body.”

  VIII. —THE RARE COLLECTION

 
MARJORIE MEAGH SAT AT breakfast with her uncle.

  Sir Ralph was in an unusually irritable mood. Breakfast was never a pleasant meal for him, but his fault-finding was generally concentrated upon the domestic shortcomings of his wife and the quality of the food.

  Now they took a wider range. He put down his paper suddenly and savagely.

  “I wish to Heaven Vera wouldn’t go dashing off to town,” he said.

  Although he was a domestic tyrant of a common type, he stood in some little awe of his young wife. On three occasions in their lives she had startled him by the vehemence of her rebellion, and with every explosion he had grown less self-confident and less satisfied with his own capacity for commanding the situation.

  Marjorie looked up from her letters.

  “Vera is making a serious study of the drama,” she said. “You must remember, uncle, that if by any chance she does succeed as a playwright it will mean an immense income to her.”

  She was very tactful. She knew that monetary considerations influenced her uncle. It was Vera’s career, which she had discovered two years before, when a little play, written for a charitable entertainment, had met with recognition at the hands of the critics.

  Though it had pleasantly surprised her husband to the possibility of his having discovered a self-supporting wife, it had been also a source of constant irritation to him. It meant expense, constant visits to the Metropolis, the cost of seats at a theatre, though this latter expense had happily been spared him of late by the discovery of a relation engaged in newspaper work, who had provided complimentary tickets.

  But it meant opening the flat in town; it meant the detachment of a servant from a household where the domestic arrangements, as planned by Sir Ralph, were so devised as to fully occupy every moment of the time of every person engaged.

  Sir Ralph took up the paper only to put it down again a moment later.

  “That scoundrel, Mansingham, has appealed,” he said. “It is monstrous.”

  The institution of the Court of Criminal Appeal was a sore point with Sir Ralph. He felt that its creation had been expressly designed for the purpose of annoying him. He had written letters to Times about it, and had expressed himself, at such public functions as gave him opportunity, in no gentle terms. It was remarkable, under the circumstances, that the Court of Appeal continued to sit.

  “It is monstrous,” he said again. “It is a slight upon the men who are engaged in carrying out the work of administering criminal law.”

  His anger came in little spasms. He had a fresh grievance every few moments. Again his paper came down after an interval.

  “That young man, Gallinford, did not arrive last night, Marjorie,” he said, severely. “The young men of to-day seem to be lamentably deficient in good manners.”

  “He wired, uncle,” protested the girl. “He said that he was detained in town.”

  “Bah!” snapped her uncle, “that isn’t good enough. I am a man of the world, Marjorie. These flimsy excuses do not suffice for me, and I advise you, if you desire to be happy—and the only way to be happy,” he said parenthetically, “is to be without illusions—to view these unsupported excuses with suspicion. He is a young man,” he went on, elaborating his grievance, “newly arrived in England after a long absence in a barbarous country—”

  “In Italy, uncle,” she murmured, “it isn’t exactly barbarous, is it?”

  “Barbarous?” he said explosively. “Why, here are two Italian murders in one day!” He flourished the paper in support of his contention.

  “Of course it is barbarous! And he comes back to civilization after a long absence, to a beautiful girl, and I admit that you are that, Marjorie,” he said comfortably, with an air of one who was partly responsible for her beauty, “and instead of rushing, as he should, and as young men did in my day, to his fiancee, he breaks his journey in town! It is perfectly inexcusable!”

  She did not defend her lover. She knew how valueless such arguments were with her uncle. He was entirely without inclination to reason—at breakfast-time, at any rate.

  For the rest of the meal he grumbled spasmodically behind the paper. He reminded her irresistibly of a dog with a bone. From time to time he fired little sentences at her—sentences which had neither beginning nor end, and were generally associated with the Government’s shortcomings.

  Suddenly she heard the grind of carriage wheels coming up the carriage drive, and jumped from the table. She gave one glance through the window and, without a word to her uncle, flew from the room.

  He glared after her in astonishment. In a few minutes she came back, with a delicate flush on her face and laughter in her eyes, leading a tall, broad-shouldered young man, brown of face and smiling a little uneasily, for he did not contemplate the coming interview with any great sense of joy.

  “This is Mr. Gallinford, uncle,” said the girl. “You have met him before, haven’t you?”

  Sir Ralph not only had met him before, but did not wish to meet him then. He was in no mood for introductions to strange people. He had, moreover, a grievance against this young man who had so slighted his hospitality. He greeted Frank Gallinford with a grunt in which he expressed in his bluff, hearty English way, as he imagined it, at once his welcome and a foretaste of the reprimand which was coming.

  “I am glad to meet you, sir,” said Frank.

  He held out a big, hearty hand and shook Sir Ralph’s.

  “I owe you an apology for not having come last night.”

  Sir Ralph inclined his head. There was no doubt whatever about the apology being due.

  “I had a little adventure,” Frank went on, and proceeded to relate the chief events of the previous evening.

  In spite of the fact that he had made up his mind to accept no explanation as being adequate, Sir Ralph found himself listening with keen interest. The girl’s face showed her concern.

  “Oh, Frank,” she said, in a shocked voice, “how terrible! Was he killed?”

  Frank nodded.

  “I had an interview with the famous detective—what is his name?”

  “Tillizini?” said Sir Ralph.

  “Yes,” said Frank, “that was his name. A remarkable chap. Of course I handed the locket over to the police, and Tillizini has it now.”

  “It’s very extraordinary,” said Sir Ralph, with a puzzled frown. “Your description of the locket sounds very much like one I have in my collection.”

  A sudden panic of fear passed over him. What if this was the famous locket? What if it had been abstracted without his noticing it?

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  Half-way to the door he turned. “Will you come along with me?—perhaps your description of the medallion may be useful. I have got a fear—”

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t think it’s yours?” said the girl.

  “I don’t know,” said Sir Ralph. He was obviously agitated. They followed him from the room to his study—a handsome combination between that and the library. From a steel drawer in his desk he took a key and led the way again upstairs.

  Sir Ralph was more than an amateur collector. Whatever his judgments might be on the Bench, there were few who could dispute his knowledge of those articles of virtue which it was his delight to collect. The Morte-Mannery collection, though a small one, was famous. It was Sir Ralph’s pleasure, from time to time during the year, to show his treasures to the great connoisseurs of Europe.

  The joy of possessing something which nobody else had, or if they had, only in a minor degree and in a less valuable form; and, moreover, to hold these wonders of dead craftsmen which were coveted by less fortunate people, and which is the basis of every true collector’s pride, was the great passion of Sir Ralph Morte-Mannery’s life.

  He had devoted forty years to securing and arranging the hundred and fifty lockets which formed his collect
ion. The room in which they lay had been specially constructed with a view to resisting fire and burglars.

  It was an open secret that, in rebuilding Highlawns after he had acquired it, the whole scheme of renovation had circled about the collection room. It was more like a prison than a museum, thought Frank, as he followed his conductor through the narrow entrance guarded with steel doors faced with rosewood.

  It was lighted by a large window, heavily barred, and the glass itself being set with strong steel network. Burglar alarms of the most ingenious character rendered entrance without detection almost impossible. Floors, wall and roof were of reinforced concrete. One long case ran the length of the room, a strip of carpet on each side forming the only attempt that had been made at comfort. The cases themselves were under heavy wooden shutters, and these Sir Ralph unlocked.

  It was a disappointing display to the average man. Row after row of medallions, dull gold, silver, jewels, enamels. There was nothing to excite the enthusiasm of any other than a connoisseur.

  Very quickly, one by one, Sir Ralph unshuttered the cases, his anxious eyes running over the neatly-ticketed rows.

  “No,” he said, after a survey, “nothing has gone. I thought from your description that my Leonard….”

  The fire of the enthusiast came to his eyes. With hands that shook a little he unlocked one case, and lifted out a small gold medallion.

  “Why!” exclaimed Frank in astonishment as he took it in his hand, “this is the very locket which the man gave me!”

  Sir Ralph smiled.

  “That is impossible,” he said. “Impossible! Only two such lockets were known, and one has been irretrievably lost.” He held the little jewel in his hand gingerly. “This and its fellow were made by the greatest artist that the world has ever known, Leonardo da Vinci. The date is probably 1387, and the design is Leonardo’s own. It expresses something of the master’s genius. As you know, he was a man who was not satisfied with painting pictures; there was no branch of art, from sculpture, to the very mixing of paint, in which he did not interest himself. He was a doctor and a chemist of no mean qualities, and it was after the great plague in Milan in 1386 that he made the two lockets, of which this is the only one extant.