to the right twice and the entrance to the palazzo courtyard confronts you. I must beg you not to delay.”
“Tell me before I leave,” Fawley begged, “if any orders have been issued for the arrest of the person who fired that shot?”
“The matter does not come, sir, within the scope of your activities,” was the icy reply.
Fawley took his departure and made his way according to directions to where, under a scarlet awning, guests were coming and going from the great grey stone palazzo. A very courtly seneschal received his card with enthusiasm and conducted him into a magnificent room still filled with men and women, talking together in animated groups, dancing in a further apartment, or listening to soft music in a still more distant one. He led Fawley towards a slightly raised floor, and, in a tone which he contrived to make almost reverential, announced the visitor. The Principessa, a handsome woman of the best Roman type, gave him her lifted fingers and listened agreeably to his few words.
“My husband has told me of your coming,” she confided. “It will give him pleasure before you leave to have a further word with you. He is showing one of the Royal Princes who have honoured us with their presence a famous Murillo which came into our family a short time ago…Elida, do not tell me you are going to leave us so soon?”
Fawley glanced around. Some instinct had already told him whom he would find standing almost at his elbow. It seemed to him, however, that he had not realised until that moment, in the over-heated, flower-scented room, with its soft odours of femininity, its vague atmosphere of sensuous disturbance, the full subtlety of her attraction. The tension which had somewhat hardened her features a few minutes ago had gone. An air of gentle courtesy had taken its place. She smiled as though the impending introduction would be a pleasure to her.
“It is Major Martin Fawley, an American of many distinctions which for the moment I cannot call to mind,” the Princess said. “My, alas, rather distant relative, the Princess Elida di Rezco di Vasena.”
The formal introduction with its somewhat Italian vagueness gave Fawley no hint as to whether the Princess were married or not, so he contented himself with a ceremonious bow. He murmured some commonplace to which she replied in very much the same fashion. Then a newcomer presented himself to the Princess and the latter turned away to greet him. Fawley found himself involuntarily glancing at his companion’s feet. She was elegantly shod in bronze slippers but the bronze and the lemon colour were not an ideal combination.
“It is your fault,” she reminded him gently. “In a short time I hope that you will see me properly shod. Tell me your news. There seem to be no rumours about.”
Her coolness was almost repelling and Fawley felt himself relieved by the gleam of anxiety in her eyes. The reply, however, which was framing upon his lips became unnecessary. It seemed as though both became aware of a certain fact at the same moment. Within a few feet of them, but so placed that he was not directly in their line of vision, stood the man whom all Italy was beginning to fear. General Berati, very impressive in his sombre uniform, very much alive, was watching the two with steady gaze.
“Princess,” Fawley said, determined to break through the tenseness of those few seconds, “I am wondering whether I have had the happiness to meet one of your family. There was a Di Vasena riding some wonderful horses in the show at San Remo last year. I met him at a friendly game of polo afterwards.”
“My brother,” she exclaimed, with a quick smile of appreciation. “I am glad that you remembered him. He is my favourite in the family. You are like all your country-people, I suppose, and the English too—very fond of games.”
“We have less opportunity nowadays for indulging in them,” Fawley regretted.
“You would say that I speak in—what is the English word?—platitudes, if I suggested that you had been driven to the greater amusements?”
“There is truth in the idea, at any rate,” Fawley admitted.
She turned and touched the arm of a young uniformed soldier who was standing near by.
“You remember Major Fawley, Antonio?” she asked. “He met you—”
“Why, at San Remo. Naturally I do,” the young man interrupted. “We played polo afterwards. The Ortini found us ponies and I remember, sir,” he went on, with a smile, “that you showed us how Americans can ride.”
“I shall leave you two together for a time,” Elida announced. “I have to make my adieux. Rome is suffering just now, as your witty Ambassador remarked the other day,” she observed, “from an epidemic of congested hospitality. Every one is entertaining at the same time.”
She passed on, made her curtsey to royalty and lingered for a moment with her hostess. Fawley exchanged a few commonplaces with Di Vasena and afterwards took his leave. He looked everywhere for his Chief, but Berati was nowhere to be found. It seemed almost as though he had sprung out of the earth to watch the meeting between his would-be assassin and Fawley, and then, having satisfied himself, disappeared.
CHAPTER V
The Café of the Shining Star could have existed nowhere but in Rome, and nowhere in Rome but in that deserted Plaza Vittoria, with its strange little pool of subdued lights. Its decorations were black, its furniture dingy but reminiscent of past magnificence. A broad staircase ascended from the middle of the sparsely occupied restaurant and from the pillars supporting it were suspended two lights enclosed in antique lanterns. As Fawley entered, a weary-looking maître d’hôtel came forward, bowed and without wasting words pointed to the stairs.
Madame, the patrona, from behind a small counter where, with her head supported between her hands, she studied the pages of her ledger, also glanced up and, with a welcoming smile, pointed upwards. Fawley mounted the stairs to a room in which barely a dozen people were seated at small tables—people of a class which for the moment he found it difficult to place. At the farther end of the room, at a table encircled by a ponderous screen, he found the Princess. A dour-looking woman standing patiently by her side fell back on his arrival.
“Sit down if you please, Major Fawley,” Elida begged him. “I have ordered wine. You see it here. Drink a glass of it or not, as you please. It is very famous—it has been in the cellars of this café for more years than I have lived—or perhaps you.”
Fawley obeyed her gestured invitation, seated himself opposite to her and poured out two glasses of the clear amber wine. She laughed a toast across at him.
“You come in a good humour, I trust,” she said. “You know at least that I am not an ordinary assassin. Perhaps I am sorry already that I raised my hand against my relation-in-law. He is on the point, I fear, of making a great mistake, but to kill—well—perhaps I was wrong.”
“I am very glad to hear you say so,” Fawley murmured.
“You have brought the slipper?”
“I have brought the slipper,” he acknowledged. “It has, in fact, never left my possession.”
“You will give it to me?” she exclaimed, holding out her hand.
“Yes, I will give it to you,” Fawley assented.
The
