CHAPTER XXVII.
IN ITALY’S POWER.
Mrs. Vale was still too ill to attend Alexie’s marriage, so she had entrusted Italy to Emmett Harlow’s care. When the carriage turned back from the station where they had been to see the bridal pair off on their wedding-tour, the young girl said:
“Let us drive to Mr. Gardner’s house. I must see him at once on business of great importance.”
“Willingly,” replied Emmett, who knew much more than she supposed of the affair which was taking her to the lawyer.
The Vales and the Gardners were on a very friendly footing now. Mrs. Gardner was a charming woman, and had assiduously cultivated the friendship of the Vales. No arguments would have made her believe Italy’s mother a guilty woman. And she admired, above all things, the beautiful, brave girl who had undertaken what her husband believed to be such a Quixotic quest.
So when Italy and Mr. Harlow were announced, Mrs. Gardner rose to greet them with beaming smiles of welcome.
Italy glided in, a vision of beauty in her snowy bridemaid’s gown, her long wrap of rich golden-hued brocade bordered with fur, falling back from her shoulders, giving a glimpse of rosy-white throat and arms escaping from “lace like the hoar-frost, fine and thin.”
“You beauty!” cried Mrs. Gardner, embracing her fondly and holding her so long in a close clasp that Mr. Gardner cried out humorously:
“Aren’t you going to let me speak to Italy?”
While he was shaking her cold little hand she saw over his shoulder another form, tall, broad-shouldered, blond; her heart gave a strangling leap of keen emotion. It was Professor Doepkin, whom she had never met since the night he had saved her life. He had been absent from his boarding-house ever since--on business, Emmett said.
When the German saw that beautiful vision in the center of the room he rose up with a decidedly sheepish air and stood back of the lawyer, waiting his turn to greet beauteous Italy. In a minute she had dropped Mr. Gardner’s hand and pushed resolutely past him.
“Professor Doepkin--oh, what a delightful surprise! You are the person I have been dying to see for a whole week!” she cried out eagerly, earnestly, and with just a soupçon of raillery in her tone.
Both of her beautiful hands were outstretched to him so frankly that he was compelled to take them in his and mutter something, he was not conscious what, in his surprise, and she went on softly in that voice like sweetest music.
“Oh, how can I thank you for that night? We are so grateful to you, mama and I! We owe you our lives. People have told me how brave you were, what a terrible risk you ran! And we were strangers to you, too. Oh, sir, you are a hero!”
“It was a trifling risk, and it was well repaid by my pleasure in saving two precious lives. Please say no more about it, Miss Vale,” returned the German, in perfect English, although a trifle huskily, and dropping her hands, for she had left them in his, while her glorious eyes beamed on his with a look that made him long to gather her to his heart and crush all that beauty and sweetness passionately in his yearning arms. But he fought the temptation, and drew back a little stiffly to hand her a chair.
“Pray have this seat, Miss Vale.”
She flashed him a look of deep reproach and turned her back on him with sudden scorn.
“Mr. Gardner, I wished to see you--alone,” she said, a little bruskly.
“Certainly, my dear; we will go to the library. You will excuse us, friends.”
In the library, her face lost the brightness that had flashed into it at sight of the German, and grew pale and troubled.
“Oh, sir, my scheme failed utterly. Percy Seabright married Mrs. Dunn, and sailed for Europe with her afterward.”
His face reflected the chagrin of her own.
“Could he have received your note?”
“I cannot tell. The messenger was well paid to deliver it promptly, and to return and inform me how he received it, but he never came back.”
“He deceived you, probably, although there is a possibility that Seabright might have gone on, and married her after--all. There are some men, you know, who actually admire a woman with a soupçon of the devil in her. I think _he_ did, and thus we are foiled. But take heart, child. He will return, and, after all, it may be easier to work on our clues in his absence, for as yet we have nothing to serve as a basis for an arrest.”
She paced up and down the room, chafing with impatience.
“And what of the spy you placed in his house to search for the diary? Was there no success?”
“None. Yet he searched carefully every room in the house but one.”
“And why not that one?”
“He could not gain access to it. The housekeeper had it locked always, by her master’s orders, and it was further guarded by being situated so peculiarly that it could only be entered by going through the housekeeper’s room. She said it was nothing but a closet with some old trunks in it, but her close watch over it proved that there was something more important.”
Her eyes flashed with eagerness.
“Oh, if only I could get into that house!” she cried.
“Impossible, Italy. It is no place for a young girl. There would be danger in the very air.”
He saw her face whiten, but he dreamed not at what terrible recollection, and continued:
“No really respectable woman would even enter Percy Seabright’s bachelor home. It is a sort of club-house for his intimate friends, and I think they sometimes take women there--second-rate dancers, singers, and actresses who are reckless of their reputations. To these they give suppers and wine-parties. You see how it is, Italy.”
“Yes, Mr. Gardner, and it makes me frantic. I am so sure that a woman would succeed where a man would fail.”
“But, my child, I sent a female detective when my man failed. Even she was no match for the caution of Mrs. Smith, the wary housekeeper, who guards the hidden room.”
She made a gesture of despair, and tore up and down the room like some wild caged thing, her long white silk train sweeping behind her on the thick carpet, her jewels flashing, and the old lawyer watched her with yearning sympathy. He longed to help her, but fate seemed to baffle him at every turn.
Suddenly she paused before him with a queenly air, and cried out impetuously:
“Mr. Gardner, I swear to you I believe that if I could stand in the presence of that woman, that housekeeper, I could force her to deliver me the key of the room she guards so jealously.”
“Are you mad, child?”
“No, Mr. Gardner, only desperate with baffled energy. Oh, come, you and your wife, with me to that house, and let me try. Surely there would be no danger for me then! Oh, come, come! My carriage waits. We can leave Mr. Harlow here till our return.”
Something in her face and voice compelled him to accede.
“Wait here, and I will bring my wife,” he said, hastening away, and, on returning, he had his wife’s consent.
Directly the three entered the carriage and were driven rapidly to Percy Seabright’s secluded home.
Mrs. Gardner had taken the precaution to wrap Italy and herself in long, dark-hooded cloaks, with veils, so that there was no chance of recognition. Thus equipped, they entered the house when the door was opened to them at Mr. Gardner’s summons with the bell. They were shown to the parlor that Italy remembered so well, with the portrait of Percy Seabright smiling from the wall.
A deadly sickness seized Italy the moment that she entered the room that had been the scene of such a fateful tragedy.
“You are trembling, Italy. You should not have come here,” cried Mrs. Gardner, fearing she would faint. But the girl answered huskily:
“Do not fear for me; I am excited, that is all.”
They had sent for Mrs. Smith, and at this moment she entered elaborately dressed, and gazing in surprise at her elderly visitor and his two veiled companions.
Mr. Gardner rose and said stiffly:
“Mrs. Smith, this young lady wishes to see you alone a few minutes. Can you take her to any room close by?”
“Certainly, sir.”
But the woman looked her vast surprise as Italy’s veiled figure rose up to follow. She opened a door to the right.
“We can go into the library,” she said.
Italy went with her, and the door closed. Then the girl threw back her veil, disclosing her beautiful, pallid face.
“Do you remember me?” she asked nervously.
The woman started wildly.
“So you are alive?” she cried, in a voice of keen relief. “Oh, how often I have wondered over your fate since that night when you disappeared so strangely from this house!”
“Oh, tell me of that night!” cried Italy tremulously. “It is all a blank to me from the minute I fell down senseless after witnessing the murder of Harold Severn, until I was rudely awakened by a policeman at dead of night, wandering about the streets of Boston clad only in a thin night-dress.”
“Oh, then you must have got up and gone away in your sleep. I always thought that must have been the way of it. It did not look like any one would have carried you off like that!”
And while Italy listened eagerly she continued:
“You were unconscious so long that I carried you to my own room, undressed you, and put you to bed. Presently you roused up in a dazed sort of way, and I gave you a very light sedative and you fell asleep like a tired child. So I left you and went back down-stairs, for, of course, I was frightened to death at what had happened, and did not want a sensation in the house over a murder. With the help of a trusty servant, I got the body safely out of the house, and we took it to the river and threw it in. Then, returning, we took up the parlor carpet, and hurriedly removed all traces of the crime. Then I went up-stairs again to see after you. To my horror, you were gone in your night-dress, leaving your clothing all there.”
“I am at times a somnambulist. I must have gone away in my sleep and walked the long distance to Boston without waking,” explained Italy.
“Yes, that must have been the way. I often wandered what became of you, and, oh, I was so thankful you did not betray what had happened and send the police here!” cried Mrs. Smith.
“I ought to have done so,” answered Italy sternly. Then her voice grew tremulous as she asked:
“You did not think I committed the murder, did you?”
“Laws, no, miss, for to tell you the truth, I saw it done myself.”
“You?” cried Italy, in wonder; and the housekeeper replied:
“Yes, miss; to tell the truth, I was peeping through that keyhole there into the very room where you were, and I saw a woman’s face at the window, saw her raise a pistol and fire. I rushed into the room. There lay Mr. Severn dead, and you in a faint.”
“Did you know the woman?”
“No, miss; she was a perfect stranger to me, although I would be sure to know her face if I ever saw it again.”
“What if I tell you that your master, Mr. Seabright, married that murderess to-night?”
“Oh, miss, I could not believe you!”
“But it is true. I recognized her face, and it was Mrs. Dunn. But I kept silence, because I thought she did it to save me from that villain.”
“Oh, I wish my master had known it. He never would have married that wicked woman.”
“Your master is very wicked himself. It is because of some suspected villainy of his that I am here to-night,” answered Italy, coming suddenly to the point, and before Mrs. Smith could remonstrate, she continued:
“You are in my power, Mrs. Smith, for the widow of Harold Severn has offered a large reward for information that would lead to the discovery of her husband’s murderer. If I should tell her what I know, it would bring you and your doings into terrible notoriety. Remember, you acted a very dishonorable part, claiming to be Mrs. Gardner, a very well-known Boston lady.”
“Oh, miss, I did wrong. For God’s sake don’t expose me!” whined the housekeeper, falling abjectly on her knees before her accuser.
“Upon only one condition will I spare you,” Italy answered sternly.
“Oh, miss, if there is anything I can do for you?”
“There is one very simple thing,” Italy told her; adding:
“In this house Percy Seabright has one locked room of which you keep the key. Give me admission to that room, let me search for something that is hidden there, and whether I find it or not, your secret shall be safe with me!”