E. Phillips Oppenheim - 21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series)

He held out his hand. Fawley took it, but lingered for a moment.

“My instructions—” he began.

“They will arrive,” the Italian interrupted. “Have no anxiety. There will be plenty of work for you. You will begin where Joseffi left off. I wish you better fortune.”

Fawley obeyed the little wave of the hand and took his leave. In doing so, however, he made a not incomprehensible error. The room was irregular in shape, with panelled walls, and every one of the oval recesses possessed a door which matched its neighbour. His fingers closed upon the handle of the one through which he believed that he had entered. Almost at once Berati’s voice snapped out from behind him like a pistol shot.

“Not that one! The next to your right.”

Fawley did not, however, at once withdraw his hand from the beautiful piece of brass ornamentation upon which it rested.

“Where does this one lead to?” he asked with apparent irrelevance.

Berati’s voice was suddenly harsh.

“My own apartments—the Palazzo Berati. Be so good as to pass out by the adjoining door.”

Fawley remained motionless. Berati’s voice was coldly angry.

“There is perhaps some explanation—” he began ominously.

“Explanation enough,” Fawley interrupted. “Some one is holding the handle of this door on the other side. They are even now matching the strength of their fingers against mine.”

“You mean that some one is attempting to enter?”

“Obviously,” Fawley replied. “Shall I let them in?”

“In ten seconds,” Berati directed. “Count ten to yourself and then open the door.”

Fawley obeyed his new Chief literally and it was probably that instinct of self-preservation which had always been helpfully present with him in times of crisis which saved his life. He sprang to one side, sheltering himself behind the partially opened door. A bullet whistled past his ear, so that for hours afterwards he felt a singing there, as though a hot wind was stabbing at him. There was a crash from behind him in the room. Berati’s chair was empty! Down the passage was dimly visible the figure of a woman, whose feet seemed scarcely to touch the polished oak floor. Fawley was barely in time, for she had almost reached the far end before he started in pursuit. He called out to her, hoping that she would turn her head and allow him a glimpse of her face, but she was too clever for any gaucherie of that sort. He passed through a little unseen cloud of faint indefinite perfume, such as might float from a woman’s handkerchief shaken in the dark, stooped in his running to pick up and thrust a glittering trifle into his pocket, and almost reached her before she disappeared through some thickly hanging brocaded curtains. It was only a matter of seconds before Fawley flung them on one side in pursuit and emerged into a large square anteroom with shabby magnificent hangings, but with several wonderful pictures on the walls and two closed doors on either side. He paused to listen but all that he could hear was the soft sobbing of stringed instruments in the distance and a murmur of many voices, apparently from the reception rooms of the palazzo . He looked doubtfully at the doors. They had the air of not having been opened for generations. The only signs of human life came from the corridor straight ahead which obviously led into the reception rooms. Fawley hesitated only for a moment, then he made his way cautiously along it until he arrived at a slight bend and a further barrier of black curtains—curtains of some heavy material which looked like velvet—emblazoned in faded gold with the arms of a famous family…He paused once more and listened. At that moment the music ceased. From the storm of applause he gathered that there must have been at least several hundred people quite close to him on the other side of the curtain. He hesitated, frowning. Notwithstanding his eagerness to track down the would-be assassin, it seemed hopeless to make his way amongst a throng of strangers, however ingenious the explanations he might offer, in search of a woman whose face he had scarcely seen and whom he could recognise only by the colour of her gown. Reluctantly he retraced his steps and stood once more in the anteroom which, like many apartments in the great Roman palaces which he had visited, seemed somehow to have lost its sense of habitation and to carry with it a suggestion of disuse. There were the two doors. He looked at them doubtfully. Suddenly one was softly opened and a woman stood looking out at him with a half-curious, half-frightened expression in her brown eyes. She was wearing a dress the colour of which reminded him of the lemon groves around Sorrento.

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An angry and a frightened woman! Fawley had seen many of them before in his life but never one quite of this type. Her eyes, which should have been beautiful, were blazing. Her lips—gashes of scarlet fury—seemed as if they were on the point of withering him with a storm of words. Yet when she spoke, she spoke with reserve, without subtlety, a plain, blunt question.

“Why are you following me about?”

“Scarcely that,” he protested. “I am keeping you under observation for a time.”

“Like all you Anglo-Saxons, you are a liar and an impudent one,” she spat out…“Wait!”

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—”