And crossing to the table whereon stood the Silver Spider, I opened it, and there within reposed the pearls in a place that nobody would suspect.
I stood over her while she packed them into a common cardboard box and addressed them to the Princess in Rome. At first she demurred about her handwriting, but I insisted. I intended her to take the risk—just as I had taken a risk.
And, further, I compelled her to order her car, and we drove to the General Post Office in Naples, where I saw that she registered the valuable packet.
The anonymous return of the pearls was a nine days’ wonder throughout Italy; but the Marchesa never knew how I had obtained my information, and never dreamed that I had come to her upon a mission of inquiry from the one person in all the world whom she feared, the man in whose clutches she had been for years—the mysterious “Golden Face.”
When, with Lola and Madame, I returned home a week later and explained the whole of my adventures, Rayne sat for a few moments silent. Then, as I looked, I saw vengeance written upon his face.
“I suspected that she was playing me false, and selling stuff in secret through that fellow Zuccari! She is carrying on the business by herself. I now have proof of it—and I shall take my own steps! You will see!”
He did—and a month later the Marchesa Romanelli was arrested and sent to prison for the theft of a pair of diamond earrings belonging to a fellow-guest staying at one of the great palaces of Florence.
It was a scandal that Italy is not likely to easily forget.