William Le Queux - The Day of Temptation

Again a silence fell between them, as a calm-faced elderly waiter, in the most correct garb of the Italian cameriere – a short jacket and long white apron reaching almost to his feet – quickly removed their empty plates. He glanced swiftly from one man to the other, polished Tristram’s plate with his cloth as he stood behind him, and exchanged a meaning look with Romanelli. Then he turned suddenly, and went off to another table, to which he was summoned by the tapping of a knife upon a plate. The glance he had exchanged with the young Italian was one of recognition and mysterious significance.

This man, the urbane head-waiter, known well to frequenters of the Bonciani as Filippo, was known equally well in the remote Rutlandshire village as Doctor Malvano, the man who had expressed fear at the arrival of Vittorina in England, and who, truth to tell, led the strangest dual existence of doctor and waiter.

None in rural Lyddington suspected that their jovial doctor, with his merry chaff and imperturbable good humour, became grave-faced and suddenly transformed each time he visited London; none dreamed that his many absences from his practice were due to anything beyond his natural liking for theatres and the gaiety of town life; and none would have credited, even had it ever been alleged, that this man who could afford that large, comfortable house, rent shooting, and keep hunters in his stables, on each of his visits to London, assumed a badly starched shirt, black tie, short jacket, and long white apron, in order to collect stray pence from diners in a restaurant. Yet such was the fact. Doctor Malvano, who had been so well known among the English colony in Florence, was none other than Filippo, head-waiter at the obscure little café in Regent Street.

“It is still a mystery who the dead girl was,” Tristram observed at last. “The man who told me her name only knew very little about her.”

“What did he know?” Romanelli inquired quickly. “I had often met her at various houses in Livorno, but knew nothing of her parentage.”

“Nobody seems to know who she really was,” Tristram remarked pensively; “and her reason for coming to England seems to have been entirely a secret one.”

“A lover, perhaps,” Arnoldo said.

“Perhaps,” acquiesced his friend.

“But who told you about her?”

“There have been official inquiries through the British Consulate,” the other answered mysteriously.

“Inquiries from the London police?”

The King’s messenger nodded in the affirmative, adding —

“I believe they have already discovered a good many curious facts.”

“Have they?” asked Romanelli quickly, exchanging a hasty glance with Filippo, who at that moment had paused behind his companion’s chair.

“What’s the nature of their discoveries?”

“Ah!” Tristram answered, with a provoking smile. “I really don’t know, except that I believe they have discovered something of her motive for coming to England.”

“Her motive!” the other gasped, a trifle pale. “Then there is just a chance that the mystery will be elucidated, after all.”

“More than a chance, I think,” the Captain replied. “The police, no doubt, hold a clue by that strange letter written from Lucca which was discovered in her dressing-case. And, now that I recollect,” he added in surprise, “this very table at which we are sitting is the one expressly mentioned by her mysterious correspondent. I wonder what was meant by it?”

“Ah, I wonder!” the Italian exclaimed mechanically, his brow darkened by deep thought. “It was evident that the mysterious Egisto feared that some catastrophe might occur if she arrived in England, and he therefore warned her in a vague, veiled manner.”

Filippo came and went almost noiselessly, his quick ears constantly on the alert to catch their conversation, his clean-shaven face grave, smileless, sphinx-like.

“Well,” the Captain observed in a decisive manner, “you may rest assured that Scotland Yard will do its utmost to clear up the mystery surrounding the death of your friend, for I happen to know that the Italian Ambassador in London has made special representation to our Home Office upon the subject, and instructions have gone forth that no effort is to be spared to solve the enigma.”

“Then our Government at Rome have actually taken up the matter?” the Italian said in a tone which betrayed alarm.

Tristram smiled, but no word passed his lips. He saw that his new acquaintance had not the slightest suspicion that it was he who had accompanied Vittorina from Italy to London; that it was he who had escaped so ingeniously through the bar of the Criterion; that it was for him the police were everywhere searching.

At last, when they had concluded their meal, Romanelli paid Filippo, giving him a tip, and the pair left the restaurant to pass an hour at the Empire before parting.

Once or twice the young Italian referred to the mystery, but found his companion disinclined to discuss it further.

“In my official capacity, I dare not say what I know,” Tristram said at last in an attitude of confidence, as they were sitting together in the crowded lounge of the theatre. “My profession entails absolute secrecy. Often I am entrusted with the exchange of confidences between nations, knowledge of which would cause Europe to be convulsed by war from end to end, but secrets entrusted to me remain locked within my own heart.”

“Then you are really aware of true facts?” inquired the other.

“Of some,” he replied vaguely, with a mysterious smile.

The hand of his foppish companion trembled as he raised his liqueur-glass to his pale lips. But he laughed a hollow, artificial laugh, and then was silent.

Filippo, grey-faced, but smart nevertheless, continued to attend to the wants of customers at the Bonciani until nearly ten o’clock. He took their orders in English, transmitted them in Italian through the speaking tube to the kitchen, and deftly handed the piles of plates and dishes with the confident air of the professional waiter.

Evidence was not wanting that to several elderly Italians he was well known, for he greeted them cheerily, advised them as to the best dishes, and treated them with fatherly solicitude from the moment they entered until their departure.

At ten o’clock only two or three stray customers remained, smoking their long rank cigars and sipping their coffee, therefore Filippo handed over his cash, assumed his shabby black overcoat, and wishing “buona notte” to his fellow-waiters, and “good-night” to the English check-taker at the small counter, made his way out and eastward along Regent Street. It was a bright, brilliant night, cool and refreshing after the heat of the day. As he crossed Piccadilly Circus, the glare of the Criterion brought back to him the strange occurrence that had recently taken place before that great open portal, and, with a glance in that direction, he muttered to himself —

“I wonder if the truth will ever be discovered? Strange that Arnoldo’s friend knows so much, yet will tell so little! That the girl was killed seems certain. But how, and by whom? Strange,” he added, after a pause as he strode on, deep in thought – “very strange.”

Engrossed in his own reflections, he passed along Wardour Street into Shaftesbury Avenue, and presently entered the heart of the foreign quarter of London, a narrow, dismal street of high, dingy, uninviting-looking houses known as Church Street, a squalid, sunless thoroughfare behind the glaring Palace of Varieties, inhabited mostly by French and Italians.

He paused before a dark, dirty house, a residence of some importance a century ago, judging from its deep area, its wide portals, and its iron extinguishers, once used by the now-forgotten linkman, and, taking out a latchkey, opened the door, ascending to a small bed-sitting-room on the third floor, not over clean, but nevertheless comfortable. Upon the small side-table, with its cracked and clouded miror, stood the removable centre of his dressing-bag with its silver fittings, and hanging behind the door were the clothes he wore when living his other life.