“No. But I regret that I am not permitted to tell you who he really was. He was a person very well-known in Italy—a person of whom you read frequently in the newspapers. That is all I may tell you.”
“Well, really, Miss Miller, all this is very mystifying,” I said. “Why did he come here?”
“Because he thought that he would be able to live in hiding. He feared lest I might follow him.”
“But you said that he also feared arrest.”
“That is so. He was compelled to escape. His enemies laid a trap for him, just as he did for my father and myself.”
“But why did he refuse to give you back your happiness by clearing you of the charge? To me it seems almost incredible that a man should thus treat an innocent woman.”
“Ah! Mr Leaf, you didn’t know him. He was one of the most unscrupulous and hard-hearted men in the whole of Italy. Every soldo he possessed bore upon it the blood and tears of the poor. He lent money at exorbitant interest to the contadini, and delighted to ruin them from the sheer love of cruelty and oppression. Those papers there,” and she pointed to the securities she had scattered upon the dingy carpet, “and every franc he possessed are accursed.”
And he had given me the sum of two hundred pounds for accepting the responsibility of his funeral and of the sealed packet.
“You mean that he was, by profession, a moneylender?”
“Oh, dear no. He lent money merely for the purpose of ruining people. He was heartless and cruel by nature, and if a man committed suicide—as many did because he had ruined them—he would laugh at the poor fellow as a fool, and take the very bread from the mouths of the widow and family.”