The dark eyes of the Admiral’s young wife met his in that second, and they understood.
Five minutes later Carlo Corradini was hurrying along the Via Vittorio Emanuele, the principal street in Sarzana, in the grey evening light; then, turning to the left, he gained the Passeggio, which faced the Adriatic, that long promenade lined with its dusty, wind-swept tamarisks, where by day the cicale, harbinger of heat, chirped their monotonous chant.
Corradini’s visit to Sarzana proved to be a protracted one. His excuse was that he had been sent from the Ministry upon a special mission, and, in consequence, he had preferred to rent a little flat on the Passeggio than to live in the Albergo Stella d’Italia. One day, at six o’clock, he met, at a very obscure restaurant called The Vapore, a certain Countess Malipiero, a middle-aged, ugly, but quite wealthy woman, who lived near the Santa Maria della Salute, and who was a great personal friend of the Marchesa.
The pair dined together at the popular little establishment, eating a simple dish of paste al pomidoro, for which the trattoria was noted, a costoletta and a piece of stracchino to follow. But over that simple meal the pair remained in serious consultation, while not far from them sat the good-looking but unobtrusive Madame Gabrielle Soyez, for the pair were already under suspicion, though we had as yet no reliable evidence to justify interference. Afterwards the pair walked together as far as the Piazza Grande, and there parted, the spy of Austria smiling as he went along the noisy street towards the sea.
Chapter Twenty One.
The Admiral’s Secret.
Three weeks passed.
Old Sarzana has ever been a city of black conspiracy and clever intrigue. In those glorious days of the Venetian Republic persons of both sexes who were antagonistic, or in any way obstacles to the carrying-out of the secret plans of the Council of Ten, were “by accident” secretly poisoned or openly “assassinated,” as is shown in the many reports which even to-day repose in the secret archives of the Palace of the Doges at Venice. As mediaeval Sarzana was a veritable hot-bed of intrigue in those days when Venice ruled the Adriatic, so were desperate plots afoot in the yesterday of Cadorna’s triumphant advance into Austria. Enemy plots and counter-plots were hatched in those darkened houses upon the silent waterways, or by the open sea. One of them I now reveal for the first time.