William Le Queux - The Stretton Street Affair

Day after day I waited in Florence, hoping against hope that Robertson would be able to furnish me with Miss Thurston’s address. But though I saw him several times he reported that the drawer containing the address book was still locked.

Mr. De Gex had gone to Rome, and was away for three days. The British Ambassador was giving some official function and the millionaire had been invited. Indeed, I read all about it in the Nazione .

On the fourth day he returned, for I saw him in his big yellow car driving along the Via Calzajoli. An elegant Italian, the young Marchese Cerretani, was seated at his side, and both were laughing together.

Twice I had been up to the Villa Clementini, and wandered around its high white walls which hid the beautiful gardens from the public gaze. Surely there was no fairer spot in all sunny Italy than that chosen by the rich man as his abode. To the hundreds of visitors of all nations, who came up by train to Fiesole from Florence to lunch or dine at the various pleasant little restaurants, the great imposing place was pointed out as the residence of the rich “Inglese” – the man who possessed more money than any of the most wealthy in the kingdom of Italy.

When I thought of that fateful night in Stretton Street, I waxed furious. Was it possible, that, by the possession of great riches, a man could commit crime with impunity? Perhaps what goaded me to desperation more than anything was the foul trick that had been played upon me – the administration of that drug which had caused me to lose all sense of my own being.

That subtle odour of pot-pourri had gripped me until I felt faint and inert beneath its perfume, and it often returned to me – but in fancy, of course.

In the winter sunshine I wandered about the busy, old-world streets of Florence, idling in the cafés, gazing into the many shop-windows of the dealers in faked pictures and faked antiques, while often my wandering footsteps led me into one or other of the “sights” of the city, all of which I had visited before – the National Museum at the Bargello, the Laurenziana Library, with its rows of priceless chained manuscripts, the Chiostro dello Scalzo, where Andrea del Sarto’s wonderful frescoes adorn the walls, or into the Palazzo Vecchio, or the galleries of the Pitti, or the Uffizi. I was merely killing time in the faint hope that the good-natured Robertson might get for me the information which, in the circumstances, I was naturally most eager to obtain.

In the course of my erratic wanderings through the grand old city, with its host of monuments of a glorious past, I was one morning passing the great marble-built cathedral and noticed a number of people entering. There seemed to be an unusual number of visitors, so having nothing to do I passed through the narrow door into the sombre gloom of the magnificent old place – one of the most noteworthy and most beautiful sacred buildings in the world.

At first, entering from the bright sunshine of the piazza, I could scarcely see, so dim was the huge interior, but slowly my vision, rather bad since my strange adventure, grew accustomed to the half-darkness, and I saw that upon the high altar there were many long candles burning in their brass sconces and before the high altar three priests in gorgeous vestments were kneeling.

In the great cavernous place, with its choir beneath the dome, I heard low prayers in Latin. Men and women who passed me bowed and crossed themselves while many knelt.

The glorious cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, so called from the Lily which figures in the Arms of Florence – hence “the Lily City” – had always an attraction for me, as it has for every visitor to the ancient Tuscan capital. The stained glass of Ghiberti, the wonderful mosaics of Gaddo Gaddi, the frescoes of angels by Santi di Tito, and the beautiful pictures by the great mediæval masters, all are marvellous, and worth crossing the world to see.

From before the altar a long spiral mist of incense was rising, and about me as I stood in the centre of the enormous interior, many visitors were passing out from the dim religious gloom into the light of the open doorway.

Suddenly my eyes caught sight of a countenance.

I held my breath, standing rooted to the spot. What I saw staggered belief. Was it only a chimera of my unbalanced imagination – or was it actual fact?

For a few seconds I remained undecided. Then, aghast and amazed, I became convinced that it was a stern reality.

The mystery of the affair at Stretton Street became in that single moment a problem even more than ever bewildering.

Kneeling before Donatello’s magnificent picture of the Virgin over one of the side altars, her outline dimly illuminated by the light of many candles, was a slim, dark-haired young woman in deep mourning. Her head was bowed in an attitude of great devotion, but a few moments later, when she raised her face, I stood rooted to the spot.

The countenance was that of the dead girl Gabrielle Engledue!

An involuntary exclamation left my lips, and a woman standing near me heard me, and wondered.

Kneeling beside the girl in black was a thin-faced, black-haired Italian of about forty-five. He was somewhat handsome, though a sinister expression played about his lips.

I watched the pair for several minutes, wondering whether in my brain, unbalanced as it had been, the scene was a mere chimera on my part and that, after all, the girl only slightly resembled the victim at Stretton Street.

The latter I had not seen in life, and death always alters the features. Nevertheless, the sudden encounter was most startling, and from where I stood behind a great marble column I watched them.

At last both rose and crossing themselves piously, walked slowly to the door. I followed them. It surely could not be that the girl whose death certificate I had forged, and whose body had been reduced to ashes, was actually alive and well! I recollected that sum of five thousand pounds, and the strange adventures which had befallen me after I had accepted the bribe to pose as a doctor, and certify that death had been due to natural causes.

Outside in the bright sunlight of the Piazza, I obtained a full view of her. Her rather shabby black was evidently of good material, but her face struck me as distinctly strange. The expression in her dark luminous eyes was fixed, as though she were fascinated and utterly unconscious of all about her. She walked mechanically, without interest, and utterly heedless of where she went. Her companion’s hand was upon her arm as she crossed to the Via Calzajoli, and I wondered if she were blind.

I had never before seen such a blank, hopeless expression in a woman’s eyes.

The man, on the contrary, was shrewd and alert. His close-set eyes shot shrewd glances from beneath black bushy eyebrows with a keen, penetrating gaze, as though nothing escaped him. He seemed to be trying to hurry her, in fear of being recognized. He had not noticed me, hence in the bustle of the busy street I managed to get up close behind them, when of a sudden, I heard her exclaim:

“Not so fast! Really I can’t walk so fast!”

She spoke in English!

Her companion, uncouth and heedless, still had his hand upon her arm, hurrying her along without slackening his pace. She seemed like a girl in a dream. Truly, she was very handsome, a strange tragic figure amid all the hubbub of Florence, the old-world city of noise and of narrow streets, where Counts and contadini rub shoulders, and the tradesmen are ever on the look out to profit – if only a few soldi – upon the innocent foreigner.

Firenze la Bella – or Florence as the average Englishman knows it – is surely a city of strange people and of strange moods. By the discordant clanging of its church bells the laughter-loving Florentines are moved to gaiety, or to piety, and by the daily articles in the local journals, the Nazione or the Fieramosca , they can be incited to riot or violence. The Tuscans, fine aristocratic nobles with ten centuries of lineage behind them, and splendid peasants with all their glorious traditions of feudal servitude under the “nobile,” are, after all, like children, with a simplicity that is astounding, combined with a cunning that is amazing.