Fawley bent over her hands and touched them with his lips. Then he turned and left the room with Patoni.
CHAPTER VI
In a life full of surprises Martin Fawley was inclined to doubt whether he had ever received a greater one than when, for the second time during the same day, he was ushered into the presence of General Berati, the most dreaded man in Rome. Gone was the severe high-necked and tight-waisted uniform; gone the iciness of his speech and the cold precision of his words. It was a tolerable imitation of a human being with whom Fawley was confronted—a dark-haired, undersized but sufficiently good-looking man dressed in a suit of apparently English tweeds, stretched at his full length upon the sofa of a comfortable sitting room leading out of his bureau, reading the New York Herald and with something that looked suspiciously like a Scotch whisky and soda by his side. He threw down his paper and welcomed his visitor with a grim cordiality.
“Come in, Major,” he invited. “I will offer you a whisky and soda as soon as you tell me exactly whom you found on the other side of that door.”
Fawley accepted the chair to which his host had pointed.
“May I take the liberty,” he begged, “of asking a question first?”
“Why not?” Berati answered with unabated good humour. “This is an unofficial conversation. Proceed.”
“Where did you disappear to after that first shot?”
Berati chuckled.
“I give audiences too easily,” he confided, “and for that reason, I have several little contrivances of my own invention. Some day I will show you this one. There is a button on my desk which I touch, the rubber floor upon which I sit disappears, and so do I, into the room below. I should explain perhaps that it is only a drop of a few feet and the end is what you call in England a feather bed. And now the answer to my question, please.”
Martin Fawley was probably as near complete embarrassment as ever before in his life. He hated the position in which he found himself. He hated what he was about to do. He kept his countenance but he was bitterly mortified as he felt for a secret pocket inside his coat and silently withdrew his cigarette case.
“General Berati,” he said, “I feel thoroughly ashamed of myself and I shall merit what you will doubtless think of me. At the same time, do remember this—I am to some extent a mercenary in your service. I allow myself that amount of excuse. It was a woman who fired the shot and, as you see, I am handing back my papers.”
“This is most intriguing,” Berati observed. “I gather then that you refuse to tell me her name?”
“Frankly,” Fawley replied, “I believe you know it already but, all the same, you are right: I refuse to tell you her name. I have been in your service for the matter of a few hours, I see you nearly killed, I know who fired the shot and I am not going to tell you who it was.”
“Capital,” Berati exclaimed. “Just what I should have expected from you. Put back your cigarette case, my young friend. After all, you probably saved my life, for, thanks to you, there was no second shot.”
“You know who it was?” Fawley asked, a little bewildered.
“Perfectly well,” Berati confided. “I joined my wife’s guests,” he went on, “chiefly for the pleasure of seeing whether you showed any embarrassment when you were presented to a certain one of our Roman beauties. My congratulations, Major. You have some of the gifts necessary in our profession, at any rate. Let me offer you a whisky and soda.”
Fawley thanked him and helped himself. Berati’s intonation as well as his manner seemed to have become curiously Anglo-Saxon.
“Listen, my friend,” he continued, “when an attempt is made upon my life, I never, if I can help it, allow anything to appear in the journals. You do not wish to give away a beautiful lady any more than I want to admit to the indignity of having been nearly wiped off the earth by so frail an instrument.”
“I think, sir, that you are a very brave and a very forgiving man,” Fawley declared, with an impulsiveness which was absolutely foreign to his character.
Berati laughed almost gaily.
“No man,” he said, “who is in touch with the great affairs of the world can afford to be made ridiculous. An attempt on my life by my wife’s niece, by the Princess Elida, is a thing to smile at. Nevertheless,” he went on, his tone becoming a trifle graver, “I have reason to believe that the Princess was carrying with her a paper of some importance.”
“She was,” Fawley admitted.
“You discovered it?” Berati snapped out with a trace of his former manner.
“I discovered it,” Fawley confessed. “Its purport is at your disposal.”
“And the paper?”
“I returned it to the Princess.”
Berati’s air of bonhomie temporarily disappeared. He scowled.
“An amazing act of gallantry at my expense,” he sneered.
“Bad enough in my position, I admit, but not quite as bad as it seems,” Fawley pointed out. “I have already told you that the purport of that paper is at your disposal.”
“It was signed by one who used to bear a great name in Germany?” Berati asked.
“It was,” Fawley assented.
“And in return for certain action on your part you were offered—?”
“I can tell you specifically, if you like.”
Berati shook his head.
“A copy of the proposed agreement reached me ten minutes ago. My mind is not made up. I have decided to wait until you have visited Germany. Your reports from there will influence me. At present I have an open mind. The Princess Elida has been bitterly disappointed,” he went on, “by what she thought was a point-blank refusal on my part. She believes that I lean towards Behrling. She has the usual woman’s fault—she jumps at conclusions.
“Is it permitted to ask what your intentions are with regard to the Princess?”
Berati grunted.
“Nothing venomous, I can assure you. I do not make war on women. She is now on her way to Vienna in the safest of my airships. I regret the necessity for such discipline, but she will not be allowed to cross the frontier again for a year. This need not disturb you, my friend, for I doubt whether you will spend much of your time in this country. You will recognise the fact, I am sure, that however much I may choose to risk in the way of danger, I cannot afford to be made ridiculous.”
“I think that you have behaved very generously,” Fawley declared.
Berati rose to his feet and touched the bell.
“The car in which you arrived is waiting for you, Fawley,” he announced. “Your place is taken in the night train for Monte Carlo. You have thirty-five minutes. Good luck to you. Carlo,” he added in Italian, to the servant who had answered the bell, “show this gentleman to his automobile. He goes to the Central Railway Station. By the by, Fawley, your luggage has all been registered and your small things put in your compartment. Once more—good night and good luck to you.”
Fawley lingered for a moment until the servant was out of hearing.
“How do you propose