Part 19 (1/2)
”Well, really it is a bolt-hole used by those who wish to evade our very astute police. If one conforms to the rules of Signora Ravecca and her husband, then one is quite safe and most comfortable.”
Hugh realized that he was in a hiding-place used by thieves. A little later he knew that the ugly old woman's husband paid toll to a certain _delegato_ of police, hence their house was never searched. While the criminal was in those shabby rooms he was immune from arrest. The place was, indeed, one of many hundreds scattered over Europe, asylums known to the international thief as places ever open so long as they can pay for their board and lodging and their contribution towards the police bribes.
A few moments later the ugly, uncouth man who had brought him from Monte Carlo lit a cigarette, and wis.h.i.+ng the old woman a merry ”addio” left and descended the stairs.
The signora then showed Hugh to his room, a small, dispiriting and not overclean little chamber which looked out upon the backs of the adjoining houses, all of which were high and inartistic. Above, however, was a narrow strip of brilliantly blue sunlit sky.
A quarter of an hour later he made the acquaintance of the woman's husband, a brown-faced, sinister-looking individual whose black bushy eyebrows met, and who greeted the young Englishman familiarly in atrocious French, offering him a gla.s.s of red wine from a big rush-covered flask.
”We only had word of your coming late last night,” the man said. ”You had already started from Monte Carlo, and we wondered if you would get past the frontier all right.”
”Yes,” replied Hugh, sipping the wine out of courtesy. ”We got out of France quite safely. But tell me, who made all these arrangements for me?”
”Why, Il Pa.s.sero, of course,” replied the man, whose wife addressed him affectionately as Beppo.
”Who is Il Pa.s.sero, pray?”
”Well, you know him surely. Il Pa.s.sero, or The Sparrow. We call him so because he is always flitting about Europe, and always elusive.”
”The police want him, I suppose.”
”I should rather think they do. They have been searching for him for these past five years, but he always dodges them, first in France, then here, then in Spain, and then in England.”
”But what is this mysterious and unknown friend of mine?”
”Il Pa.s.sero is the chief of the most daring of all the gangs of international thieves. We all work at his direction.”
”But how did he know of my danger?” asked Hugh, mystified and dismayed.
”Il Pa.s.sero knows many strange things,” he replied with a grin. ”It is his business to know them. And besides, he has some friends in the police--persons who never suspect him.”
”What nationality is he?”
The man Beppo shrugged his shoulders.
”He is not Italian,” he replied. ”Yet he speaks the _lingua Toscano_ perfectly and French and English and _Tedesco_. He might be Belgian or German, or even English. n.o.body knows his true nationality.”
”And the man who brought me here?”
”Ah! that was Paolo, Il Pa.s.sero's chauffeur--a merry fellow--eh?”
”Remarkable,” laughed Hugh. ”But I cannot see why The Sparrow has taken such a paternal interest in me,” he added.
”He no doubt has, for he has, apparently, arranged for your safe return to England.”
”You know him, of course. What manner of man is he?”
”A signore--a great signore,” replied Beppo. ”He is rich, and is often on the Riviera in winter. He's probably there now. n.o.body suspects him.
He is often in England, too. I believe he has a house in London. During the war he worked for the French Secret Service under the name of Monsieur Franqueville, and the French Government never suspected that they actually had in their employ the famous Pa.s.sero for whom the Surete were looking everywhere.”