The Sign of the Stranger

by William Le Queux

“Well,” he remarked, “you can warn her to have nothing to do with them, otherwise she must suffer, both in reputation as well as in pocket,” he smiled, and then, having finished his vermouth, he rose with his companion and left.

Then the sallow-faced fellow who had met them at Calais was Tito Belotto, an adventurer! And yet as he sat there in evening dress, smoking his cigar and chatting affably with the handsome Englishwoman, his outward appearance was that of a somewhat superior man. In his shirt-front there shone a small diamond of very good water, and on his finger was another gem that caught the electric light and flashed its radiance towards me.

He had been relating some humorous anecdote to her ladyship, who was laughing heartily at it. Evidently she was in a good-humour, just as these men wished her to be. Belotto, I noticed, paid for the dinner, and then all four walked down the arcade into the Piazza where they entered a closed cab and were driven off.

My own idea is that they were going to a theatre, but as I followed them in another conveyance I quickly found that we were travelling in an opposite direction, namely up the broad Corso Venezia and out by the city gate into that suburb that lies beyond the ancient fortifications. Outside the town the streets are not well-lighted, and the quarter is not one of the most aristocratic. Most of the houses were huge blocks of flats as is usual in Italian cities, and it struck me that they were mostly occupied by labourers. Even at that hour of the night the air seemed close, and a strong odour of garlic permeated everything.

The cab in which the four were riding turned at last into a dark deserted street of high prison-like houses and pulled up, when instantly I ordered my man to stop, jumped out, paid him, and secreted myself in a neighbouring doorway before the first man who alighted could detect my presence.

From the house where they had stopped a man came forth, carrying a lantern, by the light of which he conducted them into that ponderous house of darkness.

The cab then drove off, leaving me alone in the dark dismal street. The house they had entered was a big inartistic place apparently newly-built, for it stood slightly apart from the other buildings, and behind it was a waste plot of ground. From the other tenements in the vicinity came the cries of children, the strumming of a mandoline, a woman’s song, and a man’s voice raised in angry altercation—that babel of noises that one hears at night in every crowded street of an Italian town, and more especially in that noisiest of European cities—Milan.

Why, I wondered, had they gone there? That Marigold was unacquainted with the place, and that she was not altogether confident in the assurances of her conductors, was shown to me by the cautious manner in which she followed the man with the lantern. Besides, I saw distinctly that the two Italians, following her, nudged each other.

Not a light showed in any single window of the place, for at most of them the wooden sun-shutters were closed, as is the Italian habit at night. In one part of the building, however, the windows were devoid of glass, from which I concluded that the place was not yet completely finished. And then it occurred to me that the man with the lantern might be its first occupant.

The minutes lengthened into hours, but I still kept my patient silent vigil. The noises in the other houses around died down, until all was hushed in sleep. I emerged from the doorway and strolled backwards and forwards in the dark and dismal roadway. The closed door of the house where the Countess had been taken was freshly painted, but beyond that I could gather nothing from its exterior.