Part 80 (1/2)

Three days later the Dean--a somewhat shrunken and diminished figure, in ordinary clerical dress, without the buckles and silk stockings that typically belonged to him--stood once more at the entrance of a small villa outside the Venetian town of Treviso.

He was very weary, and as he sought disconsolately through all his pockets for the wherewithal to pay his fly, while the spring rain pattered on his wide-awake, he produced an impression as of some delicate, draggled thing, which would certainly have gone to the heart of his adoring wife could she have beheld it. The Dean's ways were not sybaritic. He pecked at food and drink like a bird; his clothes never caused him a moment's thought; and it seemed to him a waste of the night to use it for sleeping. But none the less did he go through life finely looked after. Mrs. Winston dressed him, took his tickets and paid his cabs, and without her it was an arduous matter for the Dean to arrive at any destination whatever. As it was, in the journey from Paris he had lost one of the two bags which Mrs. Winston had packed for him, and he looked remorsefully at the survivor as it was deposited on the steps beside him.

It did not, however, remain on the steps. For when Lady Alice's maid-housekeeper appeared, she informed the Dean, with a certain flurry of manner, that the ladies were not at home. They had gone off that morning--suddenly--to Venice, leaving a letter for him, should he arrive.

”_Fermate!_” cried the Dean, turning towards the cab, which was trailing away, and the man, who had been scandalously overpaid, came back with alacrity, while the Dean stepped in to read the letter.

When he came out again he was very pale and in a great haste. He bade the man replace the bag and drive him at once to the railway-station.

On the way thither he murmured to himself, ”Horrible!--horrible!”--and both the letter and a newspaper which had been enclosed in it shook in his hands.

He had half an hour to wait before the advent of the evening train for Venice, and he spent it in a quiet corner poring over the newspaper. And not that newspaper only, for he presently became aware that all the small, ill-printed sheets offered him by an old newsvender in the station were full of the same news, and some with later detail--nay, that the people walking up and down in the station were eagerly talking of it.

An Englishman had been a.s.sa.s.sinated in Venice. It seemed that a body had been discovered early on the preceding morning floating in one of the small ca.n.a.ls connecting the Fondamente Nuove with the Grand Ca.n.a.l. It had been stabbed in three places; two of the wounds must have been fatal. The papers in the pocket identified the murdered man as the famous English traveller, poet, and journalist, Mr. Geoffrey Cliffe. Mr.

Cliffe had just returned from an arduous winter in the Balkans, where he had rendered superb service to the cause of the Bosnian insurgents. He was well known in Venice, and the terrible event had caused a profound sensation there. No clew to the outrage had yet been obtained. But Mr.

Cliffe's purse and watch had not been removed.

The Dean arrived in Venice by the midnight train, and went to the hotel on the Riva whither Lady Alice had directed him. She was still up, waiting to see him, and in the dark pa.s.sage outside Kitty's door she told him what she knew of the murder. It appeared that late that night a startling arrest had been made--of no less a person than the Signorina Ricci, the well-known actress of the Apollo Theatre, and of two men supposed to have been hired by her for the deed. This news was still unknown to Kitty--she was in bed, and her companion had kept it from her.

”How is she?” asked the Dean.

”Frightfully excited--or else dumb. She let me give her something to make her sleep. Strangely enough, she said to me this morning on the way from Treviso: 'It is a woman--and I know her!'”

The following day, when the Dean entered the dingy hotel sitting-room, a thin figure in black came hurriedly out of the bedroom beside it, and Kitty caught him by the hand.

”Isn't it horrible?” she said, staring at him with her changed, dark-rimmed eyes. ”She tried once, in Bosnia. One of the Italians who came out with us--she had got hold of him. Do you think--he suffered?”

Her voice was quite quiet. The Dean shuddered.

”One of the stabs was in the heart,” he said. ”But try and put it from you, Lady Kitty. Sit down.” He touched her gently on the shoulder.

Kitty nodded.

”Ah, then,” she said--”_then_ he couldn't have suffered--could he? I'm glad.”

She let the Dean put her in a chair, and, clasping her hands round her knees, she seemed to pursue her own thoughts.

Her aspect affected him almost beyond bearing. Ashe's brilliant wife?--London's spoiled child?--this withered, tragic little creature, of whom it was impossible to believe that, in years, she was not yet twenty-four? So bewildered in mind, so broken in nerve was she, that it was not till he had sat with her some time, now entering perforce into the cloud of horror that brooded over her, now striving to drag her from it, that she asked him about his visit to England.

He told her in a faltering voice.

She received it very quietly, even with a little, queer, twisting laugh.

”I thought he wouldn't. Was Lady Tranmore there?”

The Dean replied that Lady Tranmore had been there.

”Ah, then, of course there was no chance,” said Kitty. ”When one is as good as that, one never forgives.”