Her tone had suddenly changed to one of alarm. Instinctively he followed her lead and listened. More and more distinctly he could hear detached voices at the end of the corridor which led into the reception rooms. The curtains must have been drawn to one side, for the hum of conversation became much louder. She caught at his wrist.
“Follow me,” she ordered.
They passed into a darkened entresol. She flung open an inner door and Fawley found himself in a bedroom—a woman’s bedroom—high-ceilinged, austere after the Italian fashion, but with exquisite linen and lace upon the old four-postered bed, and with a shrine in one corner, its old gilt work beautifully fashioned—a representation of the Madonna—a strangely moving work of art. She locked the door with a ponderous key.
“Is that necessary?” Fawley asked.
She scoffed at him. The fury had faded from her face and Fawley, in an impersonal sort of way, was beginning to realise how beautiful she was.
“Do not think that I am afraid,” she said coldly. “I have done that to protect myself. If you refuse to give me what I ask for, I shall shoot you and point to the locked door as my excuse. You followed me in. There can be no denying that.”
She was passionately in earnest, but a sense of humour which had befriended Fawley in many grimmer moments chose inappropriately enough to assert itself just then. With all her determination, it was obvious that her courage was a matter of nerve, that having once keyed herself up to a desperate action she was near enough now to collapse. Probably that made her the more dangerous, but Fawley did not stop to reflect. He leaned against the high-backed chair and laughed quietly…Afterwards he realised that he was in as great danger of his life in those few seconds as at any time during his adventurous career. But after that first flash of renewed fury something responsive, or at any rate sympathetic, seemed to creep into her face and showed itself suddenly in the quivering of her lips. Her fingers, which had been creeping towards the bosom of her dress, retreated empty.
“Tell me what it is that you want from me,” Fawley asked.
“You know,” she answered. “I want my slipper.”
He felt in his pocket and knew at once that his first suspicion had been correct. He shook his head gravely.
“Alas,” he replied, “I am forced to keep this little memento of your expedition for the present. As to what happened a few minutes ago—”
“Well, what are you going to do about that?” she interrupted. “I deny nothing. I tried to kill Berati. But for the fact that you unnerved me—I did not expect to find any one holding the door on the other side—I should have done it. As it is, I fear that he has escaped.”
“What did you want to kill the General for?” Fawley asked curiously. “You are both Italian, are you not, and Berati is at least a patriot?”
“Take my advice,” she answered, “and do not try to interfere in matters of which you know nothing.”
“That seems a little hard on me,” Fawley protested, with a smile. “I have been knocking about Europe for a reasonable number of years and I should say that no man had worked harder for his country than Berati.”
“Nevertheless,” she rejoined, “he is on the point of making a hideous blunder. If you had known as much as I do, you would have stepped back and let me kill him.”
“I am not in favour of murder as an argument,” Fawley objected.
“You think too much of human life, you Americans,” she scoffed.
“In any case, Berati has done a great deal for Italy,” he reminded her.
“There are some who think otherwise,” she answered.
She listened for another moment, then she moved to the door and turned the key. She swung around and faced Fawley. The anger had all gone. Her eyes had softened. There was a note almost of pleading in her tone.
“There shall be no more melodrama,” she promised. “I want what you picked up of mine. It is necessary that I go back to the reception of the Principessa.”
“I am not detaining you,” Fawley ventured to remind her hopefully.
“Do you suggest then,” she asked, with a faint uplifting of her delicate eyebrows, “that I make my appearance in that crowded room with but one shoe on?”
“This being apparently your bedchamber,” Fawley replied, looking around, “it occurs to me as possible that you might find another pair.”
“Nothing that would go with the peculiar shade of my frock and these stockings,” she assured him, lifting her skirt a few inches and showing him her exquisitely sheened ankles.
Fawley sighed.
“Alas,” he regretted, “an hour ago I was a free man. You could have had your slipper with pleasure. At this moment I am under a commitment to Berati. His interests and his safety—if he is still alive—must be my first consideration.”
“Do you think that after all I hit him?” she asked eagerly.
“I fear that it is quite possible. All I know is that he was seated in his chair one moment, you fired, and when I had looked around the chair was empty.”
She smiled doubtfully.
“He is very hard to kill.”
“And it appears to me that you are a very inexperienced assassin!”
“That,” she confided, “is because I never wanted to kill a man before. Please give me my slipper.”
He shook his head.
“If Berati is alive,” he warned her, “it will be my duty to hand it over to him and to describe you according to the best of my ability.”
“And if he is dead?”
“If he is dead, my contract with him is finished and I shall leave Rome within an hour. You, at any rate, would be safe.”
“How shall you describe me if you have to?” she asked, with a bewildering smile.
Insouciance was a quality which Fawley, in common with most people, always admired in criminals and beautiful women. He tried his best with a clumsier tongue to follow her lead.
“Signorina,” he said, “or Mademoiselle—heaven help me if I can make up my mind as to your nationality—I am afraid that my description would be of very little real utility because I cannot imagine myself inventing phrases to describe you adequately.”
“That is quite good,” she approved, “for a man in conference with a would-be murderess. But after all I must look like something or other.”
“I will turn myself into a police proclamation,” he announced. “You have unusual eyes which are more normal now but which a few minutes ago were shooting lightnings of hate at me. They are a very beautiful colour—a kind of hazel, I suppose. You have an Italian skin, the ivory pallor of perfect health which belongs only to your country-people. Your hair I should rather like to feel but it looks like silk and it reminds one of dull gold. You have the figure of a child but it is obvious that you have the tongue, the brain, the experience of a woman who has seen something of life…With that description published, would you dare to walk the streets of Rome to-morrow?”
“A proud woman but, alas, I fear in perfect safety,” she sighed. “Too many people have failed with Berati and you distracted my attention. I saw his still, terrible face but when I looked and hoped for that transforming cloud of horror, I saw only you. You frightened me and I fled.”
Fawley moved slightly towards the door.
“It is plainly my duty,” he