“If you will take my advice,” he said, “you will go into the country with your three children and live on the interest of your money. If I have obliged you, the only return I desire is that you will never more re-enter my doors.”
But Miss Fry was not to be got rid of in this fashion. Dazzled by the golden shower the Count’s predictions had caused to rain upon her, she sighed for more numbers, and to obtain them she had recourse to Vitellini, in the hope that as he was still employed by the Count he might succeed in getting them for her. So eager was she to procure them that she gave Vitellini twenty guineas in advance as an earnest of her sincerity and to increase his zeal in the matter.
But though Vitellini was, needless to say, only too eager to oblige her, Cagliostro was not to be persuaded to gratify him. Hereupon, Miss Fry, repenting of her liberality, made a debt of her gift, and had Vitellini, who was unable to repay her, imprisoned. Cagliostro, however, generously came to the rescue, and obtained his release. This action awoke a belated sense of gratitude in the fellow, which he afterwards ineffectually attempted to prove.
But to return to Miss Fry. Having failed to turn Vitellini to account, she determined to approach the Countess and lay her, if possible, under an obligation. After considering various schemes by which this was to be effected, she “purchased of a pawnbroker a diamond necklace for which she paid £94.” She then procured a box with two compartments, in one of which she placed the necklace, and in the other some snuff of a rare quality that she knew the Countess liked, and watching for an opportunity of finding her alone, managed to get access to her.
In the hands of a Miss Fry, the Countess, who was the most amiable, pliable, and insignificant of creatures, was like wax. Cleverly turning the conversation so as to suit her purpose, Miss Fry casually produced the box and opening the compartment containing the snuff prevailed upon the Countess to take a pinch. After this it was an easy matter to persuade her to keep the box. Two days later the Countess discovered the necklace. As she had been forbidden to receive any presents from Miss Fry, she at once reported the matter to her husband. He was for returning the necklace at once, but as the Countess, who doubtless had no desire to part with it, suggested that to do so after having had it so long in her possession would appear “indelicate,” Cagliostro foolishly consented to let her keep it. As to retain the gift without acknowledging it would have been still more indelicate, Miss Fry was accordingly once more permitted to resume her visits.
Fully alive to the fact that she was only received on sufferance, she was naturally very careful not to jeopardize the position she had recovered with so much difficulty by any indiscretion. She by no means, however, lost sight of the object she had in view. Hearing that the Cagliostros were moving to Suffolk Street, she hired a room in the same house where it was impossible to avoid her. As she had told Cagliostro that she intended to follow his advice and live in the country with her three children—a fiction to which she still adhered—he naturally inquired the reason of her continued residence in London. She gave a lack of the necessary funds as her excuse, and hinted, as he had broached the subject, that he should “extricate her from her embarrassment by giving her numbers for the French lottery.”
The Count ignored the hint. But in consideration of the necklace she had given the Countess, and with the hope of being entirely rid of her, he gave her £50 to defray the expense of her journey into the country. This was, however, not at all to Miss Fry’s taste. She wanted numbers for the French lottery, and meant to have them too, or know the reason why, as the saying is. Accordingly, the next day she trumped up some fresh story of debts and absconding creditors, and, appealing to the compassion of the Countess, implored her to intercede with the Count to give her the numbers she wanted.
Cagliostro was now thoroughly annoyed. To settle the matter once for all, he told her that “he believed the success of the system was due more to chance than to calculation; but whether it was effected by the one or the other he was resolved to have no further concern in anything of that nature.” The manner in which these words were uttered was too emphatic to permit Miss Fry to continue to cherish the least hope of ever being able to induce Cagliostro to change his mind. Still, even now she refused to accept defeat. The numbers had become to her like morphia to a morphineuse; and precisely as the latter to obtain the drug she craves will resort to the most desperate stratagems, so Miss Fry determined to execute a scheme she had long premeditated by which Cagliostro was to be compelled to give her the numbers.
III
This scheme, described by an ardent defender of Cagliostro against the violent denunciations of the Editor of the Courier de l’Europe as “the most diabolic that ever entered into the heart of ingratitude,” was nothing more nor less than a sort of muscular blackmail. Taking advantage of his ignorance of English, Cagliostro was to be arrested on a false charge and simultaneously robbed of the precious manuscript by which he predicted the numbers.