Last spring Count Bindo again renewed his lease of the furnished villa on the Viale dei Colli, that beautiful drive that winds up behind the Arno from the Porta Romana, in Florence, past San Miniato. It was a fine old place, standing in its own grounds, and was the German Embassy in the days when the Lily City was the Italian capital.

There were reasons for this. Sir Charles Blythe was living at the Grand, and Henderson was at the HÔtel de la Ville. A coup was intended at one of the jewellers on the Ponte Vecchio—a place where it was known that there were a quantity of valuable pearls.

It was not, however, successful; for certain difficulties arose that were insurmountable.

The trio left Florence at the beginning of May, but I was left alone with the car and with the Italian servants to idle away the days as best I could. They had all three gone to Aix, I think.

The only other Englishman left in Florence appeared to be a man I had recently re-encountered, named Charlie Whitaker. He and I had become great friends, as we had been several years before. I often took him for a run on the car, to Bologna, Livorno, or Siena, and we used to meet nearly every evening.

One stifling August night Florence lay gasping.

Above the clatter of the cafÉ, the music, the laughter of women and the loud chatter in Italian, the strident cries of the newsvendors rose in the great moonlit Piazza, with its huge equestrian statue of the beloved Vittorio looming dark against the steely sky.

Only the popolo, the merry, brown-faced, easy-going Florentines, were still in the sun-baked city. All Society, even the richer tradesmen, and certainly all the foreign residents, had fled—all of the latter save two, Charlie and myself.

You, who know the quaint old mediÆval city in the winter “season,” when the smart balls are given at the Corsini or the Strozzi, when the Cascine is filled with pretty women at four o’clock, and the jewellers on the Ponte Vecchio put forth their imitation cinquecento wares, would not know it in August, when beneath that fiery Tuscan sun it is as a city of the dead by day, while at night the lower classes come forth from their slums to idle, to gossip, and to enjoy the bel fresco after the heat and burden of the day.

On an August night the little dark-eyed seamstress sits and enjoys her ice at the same tin-topped table at the Gambrinus where the foreign Princess has sat in April. In winter Florence is a city of the wealthy; in summer it is given over entirely to the populace. So great is the sweltering, breathless heat, that everyone who can leave Florence in August leaves it. The great villas and palaces are closed; the Florence Club, that most exclusive institution in Europe, is shut up; the hotels move up to Camaldoli, to Pracchia, or to Abetone; and to be seen in Florence in those blazing days causes wonder and comment.

Charlie and I were the only two foreigners in Florence. I had remained on at the orders of Bindo, and Charlie—well, he remained for the best of reasons, because he hadn’t the money with which to go up into the mountains, or down to the sea.

Charlie Whitaker was an “outsider,” I knew, but not by any fault of his own. He lived in Florence mostly on the charity of his friends. A tall, lithe, good-looking fellow of thirty-two, he came of a Yorkshire stock, and for seven or eight years had lived the gay life of town, and been a member of the Stock Exchange. Left very well off, he had developed keen business instincts, and had been so successful that in three years he had gained a comfortable fortune by speculation. He bought a bijou house in Deanery Street, off Park Lane, turned it inside out, and made a pretty bachelor residence of it.

Half London knew Charlie Whitaker. I first met him when he was about to purchase a new “Napier.” He gave smart luncheon-parties at the Bachelors, dinners at the Savoy, and was the pet of certain countesses of the smart set. Indeed, he led the London life of a man of ample means untrammelled with a woman, until, of a sudden, he failed. Why, nobody knew; even to his most intimate friends the crisis was a complete mystery.

I only know that I met him in the Strand one night. He seemed sad and pensive. Then, when he grasped my hand in farewell, he said—

“Well, Ewart, good-night. I may see you again some day.”

That “some day” came very soon. Two months later he was living en pension at twenty-five lire a week in the attic of a great old mediÆval palace close to the Piazza Santa TrinitÀ. Florence, the greatest city for gossip in the whole world, quickly knew his past, and nobody would receive him. Snubbed everywhere, jeered at by the stuck-up foreign colony of successful English shopkeepers, he received no invitations, and I believe I was his only friend.

Even my friendship with him brought criticism upon me—modest chauffeur that I was. Why did I make an intimate of such a man? Some declared him to be an absconding bankrupt; others cast suspicion that he had fled from England because of some grave scandal; while others made open charges against him in the Club that were cruel to a degree.

Up at the villa, however, he was always welcome. I alone knew that he was a man of sterling worth, that his misfortunes were none of his own seeking, and that the charges against him were all false. He had made a big speculation and had unfortunately burnt his fingers—that was all.

And on this hot, feverish night, with the clear white moon shining down upon the Piazza, we sat to gossip, to drink our iced bock, and to smoke our long Toscano cigars, which, to the resident in Italy, become so palatable.

I knew that Charlie had had his romance, one of the strangest of all that I had known. Crushed, hipped, bankrupt, almost penniless, he had never mentioned it to me. It was his own private affair, and I, as his friend, never referred to so painful a subject.

It is strange how one takes to some men. All my friends looked askance when I walked about Florence with Charlie Whitaker. Some insinuated that his past was a very black one, and others openly declared that he never dare face the Consul, or go back to England, because a warrant was out for him. Truly he was under a cloud, poor fellow, and I often felt sorry for all the open snubs he received.

As we sat that night smoking outside on the pavement, with the merry, careless populace idling to and fro, he seemed a trifle more pensive than usual, and I inquired the reason.

“Nothing, Ewart,” he declared, with a faint smile; “nothing very particular. Thoughts—only thoughts of——”

“Of what?”

“Of town—of our dear old London that I suppose I shall never see again,” and his mouth hardened. “Do you remember Pall Mall, the Park, the Devonshire—and Vivi?”

I nodded, and pulled at my cheap cigar.

Vivi! Did I remember her? Why, I had often driven the Honourable Victoria Violet Finlay, the girl—for she was only eighteen—who had once flirted with me when I was in her father’s service. Why, I wondered, did he mention her? Could he know the truth? Could he know the galling bitterness of my own heart? I think not. Through the many months I had been the Count’s chauffeur I had held my secret, though my heart was full of bitterness.

Mention of her name recalled, under that white Italian moonlight, a vision of her—the tall, slim, graceful girlish figure, the oval delicate face with clear blue eyes, and the wealth of red-gold hair beneath her motor-cap. She rose before me with that sad, bitter smile of farewell that she had given me when, as she was seated beside me in the car, on our way from Guildford to London, I bent over her small white hand for the last time.

Whew! Why are we men given memories? Half one’s life seems to be made up of vain regrets. Since that day I had, it was true, never ceased to think of her, yet I had lived a lonely, melancholy life, even though it were fraught with such constant excitement.

“You knew Vivi, of course?” I remarked, after a long silence, looking my fellow-exile straight in the face.

“I met her once or twice at the house of my aunt, Lady Ailesworth,” was his reply. “I wonder where she is now? There was some talk of her marrying Baron de Boek, the Belgian banker. Did you hear it?”

I nodded. The rumour was, alas! too well known to me. How is it that the memory of one woman clings to a man above all others? Why does one woman’s face haunt every man, whatever age he may be, or whether he be honest or a thief?

Whitaker was watching my countenance so intently that I was filled with surprise. I had never told a soul of my flirtation.

Three youths passed along the pavement playing upon their mandolines an air from the latest opera at the Arena, laughing at two hatless girls of the people who were drinking coffee at the table next to us, and next moment the al fresco orchestra in the balcony above struck up a waltz.

“Faugh!” cried my companion, starting up. “Let’s go. This music is intolerable! Let’s walk along the Lung Arno, by the river.”

I rose, and together we strolled to the river-side along that embankment, the favourite walk of Dante and of Petrarch, of Raphael and of Michelangelo. All was silent, for the great ponderous palaces lining the river were closed till winter, and there were no shops or cafÉs.

For a long time we walked in the brilliant night without uttering a word. At last he said in a strange, hard voice—

“I’ve received news to-day which every other man beside myself would regard as the very worst information possible, and yet, to me, it is the most welcome.”

“What’s that?” I inquired.

“I saw two doctors, Pellegrini and Gori, to-day, and both have said the same thing—I am dying. In a few weeks I shall have ceased to trouble anybody.”

“Dying!” I gasped, halting and staring at him. “Why, my dear fellow, you are the very picture of health.”

“I know,” he smiled. “But I have for a long time suspected myself doomed. I have a complaint that is incurable. Therefore I wonder if you would do me one small favour. Will you keep this letter until I am dead, and afterwards open it and act upon its instructions? They may seem strange to you, but you will ascertain the truth. When you do know the truth, recollect that though dead I beg of you one thing—your forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness? For what? I don’t understand you.”

“No,” he said bitterly. “Of course you don’t. And I have no wish that you should—until after I am dead. You are my only friend, and yet I have to ask you to forgive. Here is the letter,” he added, drawing an envelope from his pocket and handing it to me. “Take it to-night, for I never know if I may live to see another day.”

I took it, and noting its big black seal, placed it carefully in my inner pocket. Two loafers were standing in the shadow in front of us, and their presence reminded me that that end of the Lung Arno is not very safe at night. Therefore we turned, slowly retracing our steps back to the quaint old bridge with the houses upon it—the Ponte Vecchio.

Just before we reached it my companion stopped, and grasping my hand suddenly, said in a choking voice—

“You have been my only friend since my downfall, Ewart. Without you, I should have starved. These very clothes I wear were bought with money you have so generously given me. I can never thank you sufficiently. You have prolonged a useless and broken life, but it will soon be at an end, and I shall no longer be a burden to you.”

“A burden? What rubbish! You’re not yourself to-night, Whitaker. Cheer up, for Heaven’s sake.”

“Can a condemned man laugh? Well,” he added, with a mocking smile, “I’ll try. Come, old fellow, let’s go back to the Gambrinus and have another bock—before we part. I’ve got a franc—one of yours—so I’ll stand it!”

And we walked on to the big Piazza, with its music and its garish cafÉs, the customers of which overflowed into the square, where they sat in great groups.

Italy is indeed a complex country, and contains more of the flotsam and jetsam of English derelicts than any other country in all Europe. Every Italian town has its own coterie of broken-down Englishmen and Englishwomen, the first-mentioned mostly sharks, and the latter mostly drunkards. Truly the shifty existence led by these exiles presents a strange phrase of life, so essentially cosmopolitan and yet so essentially tragic.

It was half-past one when I left my friend to walk home out of the town through the narrow Via Romana. The ill-lit neighbourhood through which I had to pass was somewhat unsafe late at night, but being well known in Florence I never feared, and was walking briskly, full of thought of my own love-romance, when, of a sudden, two rough-looking men coming out of a side street collided with me, apologised, and went off hurriedly.

At first I felt bewildered, so sudden was the encounter. My thoughts had been very far away from that dark ancient street. But next moment I felt in my pocket. My wallet—in which one carries the paper currency of Italy—was gone, and with it Whitaker’s precious letter!

Those men had evidently watched me take out my wallet when on the Lung Arno, and waited for me as I walked home.

I turned to look after them, but they had already disappeared into that maze of crooked, squalid streets around the Pitti. Fortunately, there was not more than a sovereign in it. I was filled with regret, however, on account of my friend’s letter. He had trusted me with some secret. I had accepted the confidence he reposed in me, and yet, by my carelessness, the secret, whatever it was, had passed into other hands. Should I tell him? I hesitated. What would you have done in such circumstances?

Well, I decided to say nothing. If the thief knew me, as he most probably did, he might return the letter anonymously when he discovered that it was of no value. And that there was anything of value within was entirely out of the question.

So months went by. I was ordered to take the car back to England, and then went to Germany and to France. Only once Whitaker wrote to me. Florence, he declared, was very dull now I had left.

A coup had been made in Biarritz,—a little matter of a few sparklers,—and Bindo and I found ourselves living, early in January, at the Villa Igiea, at Palermo.

As I sat alone, smoking and gazing out upon the blue bay, with the distant mountains purple in the calm sundown, the quick frou-frou of silken skirts passed close by me, and a tall, slender girl, very elegantly dressed, went forth alone into the beautiful gardens that slope down to the sea. I noted her neat figure, her gait, the red-gold tint of her hair, and the peculiar manner in which she carried her left hand when walking.

Could it be Vivi? I sat up, staring after her in wonder. Her figure was perfect, her elegant cream gown was evidently the “creation” of one of the man-milliners of the Rue de la Paix, and I noticed that the women sitting around had turned and were admiring her for her general chic.

She turned into the gardens ere I could catch a glimpse of her face, and I sat back again, laughing at my own foolishness. Somehow, during the past three years, I had fancied I saw her a dozen times—in London, in Rome, in Paris, in Nice, and elsewhere. But I had always, alas! discovered it to be an illusion. The figure of this girl in cream merely resembled hers, that was all. I tried to convince myself of it, and yet I was unable to do so. Why, I cannot tell, but I had been seized with a keen desire to see her face. I half rose, but sat back again, ridiculing my own thoughts. And so five minutes passed, until, unable to resist longer, I rose, went forth into the gardens, and wandered among the palms in search of her.

At last I found her standing by a low wall, her face turned towards the sea. Alone, she had paused in her walk, and with her eyes turned across the bay she was in a deep reverie. Then, as she heard my footstep, she turned and faced me.

“Vivi!” I cried, rushing toward her.

“You!—George!” she gasped, starting back in sudden amazement.

“Yes,” I said madly. “At last, after all this long time, I have found you!”

She held her breath. Her beautiful countenance changed, her sweet mouth hardened; I fancied I saw tears welling in her great blue eyes that were so fathomless.

“I—I did not dream that you were here, or I would never have come,” she faltered. “Never!”

“Because you still wish to avoid me—eh? Your memory still remains to me—but, alas! only a memory,” I said sadly, taking her hand again and holding it firmly within my own. “I am only a chauffeur.”

Our eyes met. She looked at me long and steadily. Her chest rose and fell, and she turned her gaze from me, away to the purple mountains across the bay.

“Let me still remain only a memory,” she answered in a low, strained voice. “It is as painful to me to meet you—as to you.”

“But why? Tell me why?” I demanded, raising her soft hand again to my lips. “Do you remember that day on the Ripley road—the day when we parted?”

She nodded, and her chest rose and fell again, stirred by her own deep emotions.

“You would give me no reason for your sudden decision.”

“And I still can give you none.”

“But why?”

She was silent, standing there with the brilliant Southern afterglow falling full upon her beautiful face. Behind her was a background of feathery palms, and we were alone.

I still held her hand, though she endeavoured to withdraw it.

“Ah!” I cried, “you always withhold your reason from me. I am not rich like other men who admire and flatter you, yet I tell you—ah yes, I swear to you—that only you do I love. Ever since you came fresh from your school in Germany I admired you. Do you remember how many times you sat at my side on the old Panhard? Surely you must have known that? Surely you must have guessed the reason why I always preferred you in the front seat?”

“Yes—yes!” she faltered, interrupting me. “I know. I loved you, but I was foolish—very foolish.”

“Why foolish?”

She made no reply, but burst suddenly into tears.

Tenderly I placed my arm about her waist. What could I do, save to try and comfort her? In the three years that had passed she had grown into womanhood, and yet she still preserved that sweet girlishness that, in these go-ahead days, is so refreshing and attractive in a woman in her early twenties.

In those calm moments in the glorious Sicilian sundown I recollected those days when at seventeen she had admitted her love for me, and we were happy. Visions of that blissful past arose before me—and then the crushing blow I had received prior to our parting.

“Vivi, tell me,” I whispered at last, “why do you still hold aloof from me?”

“Because I—I must.”

“But why? You surely are now your own mistress?”

Her eyes were fixed upon me again very gravely for some moments in silence. Then she answered in a low voice—

“But I can never marry you. It is impossible.”

“No, I know. There is such a wide difference in our stations,” I said regretfully.

“No, it is not that. The reason is one that is my own secret,” was her answer, as she drew her breath and her little hands clenched themselves.

“May I not know it?”

“No—never. It—well, it concerns myself alone.”

“But you still love me, Vivi? You still think of me?” I cried.

“Occasionally.”

And then she turned away in the direction of the hotel.

I followed, and grasping her by the hand, repeated my question.

“My secret is my own,” was all the satisfaction she would give me.

And I was forced at last to allow her to walk back to the hotel, and to follow her alone.

What was the nature of her secret?

If ever a man’s heart sank to the depths of despair mine sank at that moment. She had been all the world to me, and, cosmopolitan adventurer that I had now become, I met a thousand bright-eyed chic and attractive women, yet I revered her memory as the one woman who was pure and perfect.

I watched her disappear into the green-carpeted hotel-lounge, where an orchestra of mandolinists were playing an air from La BohÈme. Then I turned away, full of my own sad thoughts, and strolled in the falling twilight beside the grey sea.

Just before dinner, after re-entering the hotel, I wrote a note and gave it to the hall-porter to send to the Signorina.

“The Signorina and the Signora have left, Signore. They went down to the boat for Naples half an hour ago.”

I tore up the note, and next day left Palermo.

Next night I was in Naples, but could find no trace of them. So I went on to Rome, where I was equally unsuccessful. From the Eternal City I took the express to Calais, and on to London, where I learnt that the Viscount her father had died six months before, and that she was travelling on the Continent with her aunt.

Nearly a year passed without any news of my love.

I spent the spring at Monte Carlo, and in May, the month of flowers, found myself back at Bindo’s old villa in Florence, gloomy to me on account of my own loneliness. The two English dogs barked me welcome, and Charlie Whitaker that night came and dined; for Bindo was away.

After dinner we sat in the long wicker chairs out in the garden beneath the palms, taking our coffee in the flower-scented air, with the myriad fire-flies dancing about us.

At table Charlie had been in his best mood, telling me all the gossip of Florence, but out in the garden, with his face in the shadow, he seemed to become morose and uncommunicative. I asked how he had got on during my absence, for I knew he was friendless.

“Oh, fairly well,” was his answer. “A bit lonely, you know. But I used to come up here every day and take the dogs out for a run. An outsider like I am can’t expect invitations to dinners and dances, you know;” and he sighed, and drew vigorously at his cigar.

“By the way,” I said presently, “you remember you once mentioned that you knew Vivi Finlay in the old days in town. I met her in Palermo in the winter.”

He started from his chair, and leaning towards me, echoed—

“You met her!—you? Tell me about her. How did she look? What is she doing?” he asked, with an earnest eagerness that surprised me.

Briefly I explained how I had walked and chatted with her in the gardens of the Igiea at Palermo, though I did not tell him the subject of our conversation. I tried, too, to induce him to tell me what he knew of her, but he would say nothing beyond what I already knew.

“I wonder she don’t marry,” I remarked at last; but to this he made no response, though I fancied that in the half light I detected a curious smile upon his face, as though he was aware that we had been lovers.

He deftly turned the conversation, though he became more bitter, as if his life was now even more soured than formerly. Then, at midnight, he took his hat and stick, and I opened the gate of the drive and let him out upon the road.

As he left, he grasped my hand warmly, and in a voice full of emotion said—

“Good-night, Ewart. May you be rewarded one day for keeping from starvation a good-for-nothing devil like myself!”

And he passed on into the darkness beneath the trees, on his way back to his high-up humble room down in the heart of the town.

At eight o’clock next morning, when I met Pietro, Bindo’s man, I noticed an unusual expression upon his face, and asked him what had happened.

“I have bad news for you, Signor Ewart,” he answered with hesitation. “At four o’clock this morning the Signor Whitaker was found by the police lying upon the pavement of the Lung Arno, close to the Porta San Frediano. He was dead—struck down with a knife from behind.”

“Murdered!” I gasped.

“Yes, Signore. It is already in the papers;” and he handed me a copy of the Nazione.

Dumbfounded, unnerved, I dressed myself quickly, and driving down to the police-office, saw the head of the detective department, a man named Bianchi.

The sharp-featured little man sitting at the table, after taking down a summary of all I knew regarding my poor friend, explained how the discovery had been made. The body was quite cold when found, and the deep wound between the shoulders showed most conclusively that he had fallen by the hand of an assassin. I was then shown the body, and looked upon the face of poor Charlie, the “outsider,” for the last time.

“He had no money upon him,” I told Bianchi. “Indeed, before leaving me he had remarked that he was almost without a soldo.”

“Yes. It is that very fact which puzzles us. The motive of the crime was evidently not robbery.”

In the days that succeeded the police made most searching inquiries, but discovered nothing. My only regret—and it was indeed a deep one—was that I had lost the letter he had given me with injunctions to open it after his death. Did he fear assassination? I wondered. Did that letter give any clue to the assassin?

But the precious document, whatever it might be, was now irretrievably lost, and the death of “Mr. Charles Whitaker, late of the Stock Exchange,” as the papers put it, remained one of the many murder-mysteries of the city of Florence.

Months had gone by—months of constant travel and loneliness, grief and despair.

I was in my room at the Hotel Bonne Femme in Turin, having a wash after a dusty run with the “forty,” when the waiter announced Mr. Bianchi, and the sharp-featured, black-haired little man, recently promoted from Florence to watch the Anarchists in Milan.

“I am very glad, Signor Ewart, that I have been able to catch you here; you are such a bird of passage, you know,” he said in Italian. “But in searching the house of a thief in Florence the other day our men found this letter, addressed to you;” and he produced from his pocket the missive that Charlie had on that hot night entrusted to my care.

I broke the black seal and read it eagerly. Its contents held me speechless in amazement.

“Do you know anything of a young man named Giovanni Murri, a Florentine?” I inquired quickly.

“Murri?” he repeated, knitting his brows. “Why, if I remember aright, a young man of that name was found drowned in the Arno on the same day that your friend the Signor Whitaker was discovered dead. He had been a waiter in London, it was said.”

“That was the man. He killed my poor friend, and then committed suicide;” and I briefly explained how Whitaker had given me the letter which two hours afterwards had been stolen from me.

“The thief was the son of Count di Ferraris’ gardener—a bad character. Finding that it was addressed to you, he evidently intended to return it unopened, and forgot to do so,” Bianchi said. “But may I not read the letter?”

“No,” I replied firmly. “It concerns a purely private affair. All that I can tell you is that Murri killed my friend. It explains the mystery.”

Three nights later, I stood with my well-beloved in the elegant drawing-room of a house just off Park Lane, where she was living with her aunt.

I had placed the dead man’s letter in her hand, and she was reading it breathlessly, her sweet face blanched, her tiny hands trembling.

“Mr. Ewart,” she faltered hoarsely, her eyes downcast as she stood before me, “it is the truth. I ought to have told you long ago. Forgive me.”

“I have already forgiven you. You must have suffered just as bitterly as I have done,” I said, taking her hand.

“Ah yes. God alone knows the wretched life I have led, loving you and yet not daring to tell you my secret. As Charlie has written here, the young Italian, my father’s valet, fell in love with me when I came home from school in Germany, and once I foolishly allowed him to kiss me. From that moment he became filled with a mad passion for me, and though I induced my father to dismiss him, he haunted me. Then I met Charlie Whitaker, and fancied that I loved him. Every girl is anxious to secure a husband. He was rich, kind, good-looking, and all that was eligible, save that he was not of the nobility, and for that reason he knew that my father would discountenance him. He, however, induced me to take a step that I afterwards bitterly regretted. I met him one morning at the registry office at Kensington, and we were married. We lunched together at the Savoy, and then I drove home again. That very afternoon the crash came, and on that same night he was compelled to leave England for the Continent, a ruined man.”

“He must have known of the impending crisis,” I remarked simply.

“I fear he did,” was her reply. “But it was only a week later that you, who had known me so long, spoke to me. You told me of your love, alas! too late. What could I reply? What irony of Fate!”

“Yes, yes. I see. You could not tell me the truth.”

“No. For several reasons. I loved you, yet I knew that if you were in ignorance you would remain Charlie’s friend. Ah! you cannot know the awful suspense, and the thousand and one subterfuges I had to adopt. Murri, who was still in London, employed at the Carlton Club, continued to pester me with his passionate letters—the letters of an imbecile. Somehow, a year later, he discovered our marriage, by the official record, I think, and then he met me in secret one day and vowed a terrible vengeance.”

“His threat he carried out,” I said; “and you, my darling, are at last free.”

Her head fell upon my shoulder, her chiffons rose and fell again, and our lips met in a long, hot, passionate caress, by which I knew that she was still mine—still my own sweet love.

But I was merely a chauffeur—and an adventurer.

That is why I have not married.