The Fourth Plague (3 page)

Antonio watched him until he was out of sight. Then he resumed his aimless pacing up and down the Piazza, his hands behind his back, his head sunk forward on his breast.

Tillizini accompanied the tall officer to the Festini Palace. He pulled the rusty bell that hung by the side of the great door, and was admitted.

He was conducted with all the ceremony which his obvious rank demanded—for was not there an officer of carbineers accompanying him, and did not that officer treat him with great deference?—to the big salon of the Festinis.

It was an apartment bleak and bare. The ancient splendours of the painted ceiling were dim and dingy, the marble flagged floor was broken in places, and no attempt had been made to repair it. The few chairs, and the French table which had been pushed against the wall, seemed lost in that wilderness of chilly marble.

In a few moments Count Festini came in. He was still dressed in his velvet coat and waistcoat, and the riding breeches and boots which he and his sons invariably wore, for they were great horsemen, and had but that one taste in common.

He favoured Tillizini with a bow, which the professor returned.

“I am at your Excellency's disposition,” he said formally, and waited.

“Count Festini,” said Tillizini, “I have come upon an unpleasant mission.”

“That is regrettable,” said Count Festini shortly.

“It is my duty to ask you to allow me to conduct a personal examination of your papers.”

“That is not only unfortunate, but outrageous,” said Festini, yet without the sign of irritation which the carbineer officer, his fingers nervously twitching the whistle which would summon his men, had expected.

“It is not my wish,” Tillizini went on, “to make this visit any more disagreeable to your Excellency than is necessary, therefore I ask you to regard me rather as a friend who desires to clear your name from aspersions which——”

“You will spare me your speeches,” said Count Festini shortly. “I know you, Paulo Tillizini. I thought you were a gentleman, and entrusted you with the education of my son. I find you are a policeman. In these days,” he shrugged his shoulders—“the Italian nobility—and if I remember aright, you come from the house of one Buonsignori?——”

Tillizini bowed.

“In these days,” Festini went on, “it is necessary, I presume, for our decaying nobility to find some means of providing portions for their marriageable daughters.”

“In my case,” said Tillizini, “that is unnecessary.”

He spoke suavely and calmly: every word which Count Festini had uttered was, by the code which both men understood, a deadly insult. Yet Tillizini preserved the same outward show of unconcern which Festini had seen so disastrously reproduced in his son.

“I can only add,” the old man went on, “this one fact—that to whatever depths a member of a noble house may sink in assisting the State to bring justice to the men who are setting the laws of the country at defiance, it is possible, Signor, for a man to sink still, lower, and to be one of those whose dreadful acts, and whose cruel practices, set the machinery of the law in motion.”

He spoke in his passionless, even tones, and a red flush crept over the Count's face.

“You may search as you wish,” he said. “My house is at your disposition. Here are my keys.”

He produced from his pocket a steel ring on which a dozen keys hung.

Tillizini made no attempt to take them.

“If you will conduct me to your bedroom,” he said, “I shall not trouble you with any further search.”

For a second only Count Festini hesitated. A swift cloud of apprehension passed across his face. Then with a bow he extended his hand to the door.

He followed them into the hall and led the way up the stairs. His room was a large one, facing the road. It was as poorly furnished as the remainder of the house. Tillizini closed the door behind him, and the officer stood, barring all egress.

“Here are my keys.”

Again Count Festini held out the polished bunch.

“Thank you, I do not want them,” said Tillizini. He stood squarely before the man. “I think it is as well, Count,” he said gently, “that I should tell you what I know. Four days ago a man was arrested in the act of placing a bomb on the railway line between Rome and Florence. He was apparently a new recruit, but after he was arrested it was discovered that he was a man who stood very high in the councils of the Florentine branch of your excellent society.”

Festini said nothing. He listened with every interest.

“In some way,” Tillizini went on, “this man had discovered many secrets which I am sure the ‘Red Hand' had no intention of revealing. He may have acted as secretary to one of the heads of your Order. At any rate, he knew that documents incriminating yourself and a very large number of influential people in Italy were secreted in this house.”

“Indeed!” said Festini, coldly. “You have the keys; you may verify for yourself the truth of your informant's statement.” Again Tillizini made no attempt to take the keys from him.

“He knew more than I have told,” he said slowly. “He indicated to me a hiding-place which I gather is known only to you and to the leaders of your band.”

He walked to the end of the room, where four long windows lit the apartment. Between the second and the third hung a picture in a deep gold frame. He passed his hand gingerly over the scroll-work on the left side of the frame.

Presently he found what he wanted, and pressed.

The bottom half of the rich carving opened like a narrow drawer.

Festini watched him, motionless, as he took a bundle of papers from the secret recess behind the hinge moulding.

Tillizini examined them briefly at the window and placed them carefully in the inside pocket of his coat. He looked at Festini long and earnestly, but before he could speak the door was opened and Simone Festini came in quickly.

He walked to his father.

“What is it?” he asked, and bent his angry brows upon the old professor.

“It is nothing, my son,” said Count Festini.

He laid his hand upon the boy's head and smiled.

“You must go downstairs until I have finished my business with his Excellency.”

The boy hesitated.

“Why should I go?” he asked.

He scented the danger and was hard to move. He looked round from one to the other, alert, suspicious, almost cat-like.

“If anything should happen to me, Simone,” said Count Festini softly, “I beg you to believe that I have provided for you handsomely, and there is a provision which is greater than any I can offer you—the protection and the friendship, and as I hope one day, the leadership, of comrades who will serve you well. And now you must go.”

He bent down and kissed the young man on the cheek.

Simone went out, dry-eyed, but full of understanding. In the hall below he came face to face with his brother, who had returned from the Piazza.

“Come this way, Antonio,” said the boy gravely.

He walked first into the dining-room where an hour ago they had been seated together at their meal.

“Our father is under arrest, I think,” he said, still coolly, as though he were surveying a commonplace happening. “I also think I know what will happen next. Now, I ask you, which way do you go if I take up our father's work?”

His eyes were bright with suppressed excitement; he had grown suddenly to a man in that brief consciousness of impending responsibility.

Antonio looked at him sorrowfully.

“I go the straight way, Simone,” he said quietly. “Whichever way is honest and clean and kindly, I go that way.”

“Buono!” said the other. “Then we part here unless God sends a miracle—you to your destiny and I to mine.”

He stopped and went deadly white, and looking at him, Antonio saw the beads of sweat upon his brow.

“What is the matter?” he asked, and stepped forward to his side, but the boy pushed him back.

“It is nothing,” he said, “nothing.”

He held himself stiffly erect, his beautiful face raised, his eyes fixed on the discoloured decorations of the ceiling.

For he had heard the pistol shot, muffled as it was by intervening doors and thick walls, that told the end for Count Festini.

Tillizini, hurrying down to break the news to him, found him fully prepared.

“I thank your Excellency,” said the boy. “I knew. Your Excellency will not live to see the result of your work, for you are an old man, but if you did, you will behold the revenge which I shall extract from the world for this murder, for I am very young, and, by God's favour, I have many years to live.” Tillizini said nothing, but he went back to Florence a sad man.

Three months afterwards he again visited Siena, and in the Via Cavour, in broad daylight, he was shot down by two masked men who made good their escape; and, in his chair, at the College of Anthropology at Florence, there reigned, in good time, Tillizini the younger.

^*
Count Guido did not wait for the end, but departed without a stroke of his sword.

I. —SIR RALPH DELIVERS JUDGMENT

IT WAS ABSURD TO call the affair “the Red Hand Trial,” because the “Red Hand” had played no part in the case so far as the burglary was concerned.

It was a very commonplace burglary with a well-known, albeit humble member of Burboro's community in the dock. He had been found in a house in the early hours of the morning, he had given an incoherent explanation to the alert butler who had captured him, and, beyond a rigmarole of a story that some mysterious Italian had sent him thither, there was no hint of the workings of the extraordinary association which at the moment agitated the law-abiding people of Britain.

It was equally absurd and grossly unfair to accuse the newspapers who referred to it as “the Red Hand Case,” of unjustifiable sensationalism. After all, there was an Italian mentioned in connexion with the charge—quite enough in those days of panic to justify the reference.

The Session House was crowded, for the case had excited more than usual interest. All the county was there. Lady Morte-Mannery occupied a seat on the Bench, as was her right. Most of the house-party from East Mannery had driven over and was seated in privileged places, to the no small inconvenience of the Bar and the representatives of the Press, the latter of whom bitterly and indignantly resented this encroachment upon their already restricted domain.

But Sir Ralph Morte-Mannery, the Chairman of the Session, had a short way with critics and professed, though his practice did not always come into line with his theory, that the Press might be ignored and impressed with a sense of its own unworthiness.

The Pressmen in the Session House at Burboro' were constantly undergoing that mysterious process which is known as “being put in their place.” They desired, most earnestly, that the principle should be applied now, for their places were occupied by the guests of the Chairman.

Hilary George, K.C., sat with his colleagues, though only as a spectator. He was curious to see in operation the workings of justice, as Sir Ralph conceived it.

Sir Ralph's sentences were notorious, his judgments had before now come up for revision. He was, perhaps, the best hated man in the country. Mothers frightened their obstreperous children with references to Sir Ralph. He was the bogey man of the poacher, a moral scarecrow to tramps, people who slept out at night, and suchlike dangerous characters.

A little man, spare and bony, his clothes, though carefully fitted, seemed to hang upon him; his face was long and white, and solemn; his lips drooped mournfully at each corner. A pair of gold-mounted pince-nez struck an angle on his pendulous nose as to suggest that they were so placed in order not to obstruct his line of vision. His hair was white and thin; he had two dirty-grey tufts of side-whisker, and affected a Gladstonian collar. His voice, when he spoke, was querulous and complaining; he gave the impression that he felt a personal resentment toward the unfortunate prisoner in the dock, for having dragged him from his comfortable library to this ill-ventilated court.

Sir Ralph was a man hovering about the age of sixty. His wife, who was looking supremely lovely in her black velvet cloak and her big black hat, which one white feather lightened, was nearly thirty years his junior. A beautiful woman by some standards. Junoesque, imperial, commanding; her lips in repose were thin and straight, and if the truth be told, a little repellent. Some people found them so. Hilary George, for one, a daring rider to hounds, and wont to employ the phraseology of the field, confessed that he never saw those lips tighten but a voice within him uttered the warning, “'Ware! 'ware!”

She was a beautiful woman, and a disappointed woman. She had married Sir Ralph Morte-Mannery, five years before, in the supreme faith that she had emerged for ever from that atmosphere of penury which had surrounded her girlhood; that she had said “good-bye” to the strivings, the scrimpings and the make-believe of shabby gentility with which a mother with social aspirations and an income of a £150 a year had enclouded her.

But Vera Forsyth found she had moved from an atmosphere of penury enforced by circumstances to an atmosphere of penury practised for love of it. Sir Ralph was a mean man, he was little short of a miser, and he had the settled conviction that, in taking care of the pennies, he was appointed as by divine right, the natural heir to hundreds.

It seemed to her, in her first year of marriage, that she could never escape from the eternal account book. He was a man who believed in domestic stock-taking. He knew, better than she, the prevalent price of potatoes, and he noted with pain any advance in the grocer's bill, and set himself the congenial task of discovering the cause for any such swollen expenditure.

Now she looked along the Bench at her husband curiously; he was always a source of interest to her. She needed some such interest to sustain her in her everyday acquaintance with this man.

He was summing up with gross partiality. Though he had had one or two bad raps from the Court of Criminal Appeal, he was not to be turned from his set purpose, which was to rid the country of those who showed a disinclination to distinguish the difference between meum and teum.

All who knew the circumstances realized that the summing up was in the veriest bad taste. The young man, white of face, who stood by the dock's edge, his shaking hands clasping and unclasping the iron rail before him, was being tried for burglary, and the burglary was at Sir Ralph's own place.

“He has told you, Gentlemen of the Jury,” went on Sir Ralph in his speech, “that a mysterious Italian asked him to break into the house, where somebody would be waiting to give him an equally mysterious packet. He did not intend to steal, so he tells you; he was merely carrying out the instructions of this mythical—perhaps I ought not to say ‘mythical,'” said Sir Ralph hastily, with the recollection of a Lord Chief Justice's comments on a judgment of his—“but which may to you, Gentlemen of the Jury, appear to be a mythical person.

“He tells you that he was induced by his poverty to go to Highlawn at midnight, to effect an entrance through the kitchen, and there to wait until some cloaked, masked individual brought him a packet which he was to bring away. He tells you that he had no intention whatever of robbing the owner. He was merely being the accomplice of some person in the house.”

Sir Ralph leant back with a little contemptuous smile.

“Well, Gentlemen of the Jury,” he said, throwing out his hands, with pseudo good-nature, “if you believe that, of course you still must convict the man on the charge of being an accomplice. As you know, there is in this house a very valuable collection of Renaissance jewellery; and when the Counsel for the Crown tells you, as he has told you, that the inference to be drawn from the man's presence in the kitchen, where the butler discovered him, is that he intended to make a raid upon that jewellery, you are, perhaps, as justified in believing that suggestion as you are in believing that of the prisoner's Counsel—that he was merely acting as an innocent agent in the matter.”

He said a few more words, summarized such of the evidence as had not come under his previous purview, and commended the jury to their deliberations with the air of benevolence which invariably enwrapped the peroration of his more malignant speeches.

The jury tramped out, and a buzz of conversation overhung the court. The prisoner lingered a little by the rails; he looked down at the delicate face of his girl-wife, this woman of seventeen, who had sat throughout the trial tense and haggard, listening to the evidence.

“It can't be helped, dear,” he said. He was a man of the working classes, but his voice showed an unusual culture.

The girl could only raise her piteous eyes to his; her lips trembled, she could frame no answer. She knew that her young husband spoke the truth. Poverty had ground them down to desperation, but to whatever end it might drive them, it would never make her man a thief.

The jury were back in five minutes. They shuffled into the box, and answered to their names, keeping their eyes averted from the prisoner at the Bar. The Clerk of Assizes put his questions to them.

“Do you find the prisoner ‘Guilty' or ‘Not Guilty' of the crime of burglary?”

“Guilty,” said the foreman, in a high, nervous voice.

Sir Ralph nodded his head approvingly. He turned to the prisoner as the Clerk said, “Have you anything to say before the sentence is passed?”

The man in the dock took a swift glance at the drooping figure of his wife. She had fainted, and a kindly policeman was lifting her to carry her from the court.

“The story I have told,” he said, speaking clearly and without hesitation, “was a true story. I had no idea of burgling your house, Sir Ralph. I merely went there because I thought I was acting as the agent of somebody who was carrying on some sort of——” he hesitated. “I hardly like to say it—some sort of intrigue,” he continued boldly, “and did not want this fact to leak out.”

His eyes roved round the Bench and halted when they met those of Lady Morte-Mannery. They looked at each other; she calmly, incuriously, he hopefully, with a wondering, puzzled stare.

“It is my first offence,” he went on. “I have never been in this position before, and although the jury have found me ‘Guilty,' my lord, I do hope that you will take a lenient view of my offence, not only for my own sake, but for the sake of my wife and unborn child.” His voice shook a little as he pleaded. It was the only sign of emotion he had given.

Sir Ralph nodded again. It was a grim nod. It put a period to the prisoner's speech. The Chairman adjusted his gold pince-nez, and bent his head from left to right, consulting his colleagues.

“Your offence, George Mansingham,” he said, “is peculiarly abhorrent to me. I do not consider the fact that the house burgled was my own. Fortunately I am unaffected by personal considerations, and the fact that I, myself, was away from home that night enables me to try this case in an unprejudiced spirit.”

He looked down at the paper on his desk musingly. Then he suddenly jerked his head up.

“You will be kept in penal servitude for seven years,” he said.

Something like a gasp ran through the court. Hilary George, monocle in eye, half started to his feet, then sank back again. The man in the dock stood dazed.

“Seven years,” he repeated, and shook his head as though he could not understand it, then turned and stepped down the stairs which led to the cells below.

Hilary George was a stout man; he had a large fresh face, and eyes that told plainly of his immense vitality and joy of life. Seeing him you thought of an overgrown boy, and the monocle, as a friend had remarked, seemed out of place in one so young. He had one of the biggest practices at the Bar; he was a skilful lawyer and a brilliant debater.

You might think him an easy man to manage, with his parted lips that showed two rows of white even teeth and that look of surprise and delight which shone in his eyes. But no man who had ever tried to persuade Hilary George against his will or against his better judgment, had ever repeated the attempt.

He stood now, an immaculate figure, on the steps of the Session House. He was not smiling, he looked as grave as his facial conformation would allow. Very slowly, very deliberately, he buttoned the white gloves over his huge hands. He looked at his watch, and, as he did so, the East Mannery party came out, Lady Morte-Mannery a little ahead, Sir Ralph following with two or three of his guests.

“Will you drive over in the car with us, or will you take the wagonette,” asked Sir Ralph, pleasantly. He was rather in awe of the big barrister—as much in awe as he could be of anybody—and he invariably cloaked his uneasiness with a certain perkiness of manner which passed with Sir Ralph for good-humour.

“I'm not coming over, Ralph,” said Hilary George, quietly.

The Chairman raised his brows.

“Not coming over?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”

“I'm going back to town,” said Hilary, slowly as before.

“But why? What has happened? I thought you were keen on the shooting.”

“I'd rather not say why,” said Hilary. “If you'll be good enough to tell my man to bring my boxes to the station—I'll amuse myself in Burboro' for another hour.”

“But what is the reason?” persisted Sir Ralph. “Have you had any news? Is there any necessity for your going back to town?”

Hilary scratched his chin reflectively.

“I'll tell you,” he said, and faced the other squarely. “You've just sentenced a man to seven years penal servitude.”

“Yes?” replied Sir Ralph, wonderingly.

“It was a perfectly beastly sentence,” said the K.C., and every word cut like a knife. “A perfectly beastly, malicious, vindictive, unjust sentence,” he repeated, “and I would not stay another hour in the house of the man who passed it.

“More than this!” he said, with a sudden accession of fierceness and benevolent malignity, if the paradox may be allowed, which almost paralyzed his hearer, “I will not rest until that sentence is reduced. My solicitors shall take it to the Court of Appeal.”

“You—you—how dare you!” spluttered Sir Ralph.

“A perfectly beastly sentence,” repeated the other, with annoying deliberation. “Don't talk to me, Sir Ralph, I'm not a tyro, I'm a barrister. I know the game better than you. I know what sentence was justifiable there. I know exactly how your own personal prejudice stepped in to confine this man—this young man, a first offender—to a living hell.”

He spoke with vehemence, his plump face growing redder and redder as his anger rose.

“I will never forgive you, Hilary,” cried Sir Ralph, shaking with anger. “You have mortally offended me. You know I believe in long sentences.”

“I don't care a damn what you believe in,” said the other, and his very calmness emphasized the strength of his language. “I bid you good morning.”