The Mysterious Mr. Miller. Le Queux William

morning during my absence he had spoken to her in most excellent English! The fact, too, that he had refused to see a priest seemed to point to a fear lest his hiding-place might be discovered.

      But he was dead, and I had, rather unwisely perhaps, accepted a curious responsibility. Even the money he had placed in my charge might be the proceeds of some theft!

      That night I arranged with a neighbouring undertaker that the remains of the stranger should be taken away on the following night when the whole house was asleep, a service for which I received the heartfelt gratitude of Mrs Gilbert.

      About seven o’clock the next evening when I returned from the club, Miss Gilbert met me excitedly in the hall, and asked whether I would mind stepping into her mother’s sitting-room for a moment.

      Seated within, I found a tall, dark-haired, sweet-faced girl in neat black who looked at me with shy inquiry as I entered. I saw she was very beautiful. Her delicately moulded features were perfect, and upon her cheeks was the fresh bloom of youth. I judged her to be about twenty-five, with slim, narrow-waisted, graceful figure, eyes of soft dark brown, well-defined brows and tiny shell-like ears. Her air and manner was of the chic Parisienne, rather than the Londoner. The instant our gaze met I saw that she was a woman of exquisite sweetness – perhaps one of the most attractive I had ever seen in all my wide wanderings over the face of the globe.

      “This lady desires to see you, Mr Leaf,” explained the landlady’s daughter. “She has called with regard to our friend, Signor Massari.”

      I bowed to her, and as I did so she said quickly in English: —

      “I am in active search of Signor Massari, and have come post-haste across Europe in order to find him. This lady says he has been here, but has left. You, I understand, speak Italian and have had several conversations with him?”

      I glanced quickly at Miss Gilbert. She had not told the visitor the sad truth, therefore I was compelled to sustain the fiction that the dead man had left.

      The landlady’s daughter, apparently unable to further evade her visitor’s eager questions, excused herself and left us alone together.

      The instant she had gone the visitor rose with a quick frou-frou of silken underskirts, and closing the door turned to me with a deep earnest look, saying in a low voice scarcely above a whisper: —

      “Let me confess the truth, sir! I am in a most deadly peril, and yet utterly defenceless. I have come direct from Rome in order to overtake the man who has called himself Massari. I must find him, at all hazards. If he chooses to speak – to tell the truth – then he can save my life. If not, I’m lost. Will you help me to discover him? Perhaps you know where he has gone? I throw myself upon your sympathy – upon your mercy. See!” she cried hoarsely, with a wild look in her beautiful eyes, for she was indeed desperate, “I am begging of you, a perfect stranger, begging for my freedom, for my woman’s honour – nay for my life!”

      I stood before her stunned.

      What could I reply? What would you have replied in such circumstances?

      Chapter Three

      Gives some Explanations

      Her voice was soft and refined. She was evidently a lady.

      The mysterious stranger had held the secret which might liberate her, yet he had carried it with him to the grave!

      Who was he? Who was she?

      The situation was certainly one of the most difficult in which a man could find himself. Miss Gilbert, in order to conceal the fact that a death had occurred in her boarding-house, had pretended that Massari had left. I saw, however, that the pale-faced girl before me was desperate, and felt convinced that the melancholy truth should be revealed to her.

      The man’s death sealed her doom. She had made that entirely plain to me.

      I now distinguished that her dress was dusty, her dark hair slightly dishevelled, and she bore traces of long travel. She had evidently, on arrival from the Continent, come straight from Charing Cross out to Shepherd’s Bush. Therefore, by some secret means, she knew of Massari’s intention of hiding himself at Mrs Gilbert’s.

      “You do not reply,” she said, in a voice full of reproach. “Do you really refuse to render me assistance, sir? Remember, I am a helpless woman who begs her life of you. You have seen and spoken with that man. Where is he now?”

      For a moment I hesitated. Then seeing that she must sooner or later know the truth I drew my breath and said: —

      “Come, follow me.” And opening the door we ascended the stairs.

      “Ah!” she cried excitedly. “He is still here! That woman lied when she told me he had gone, eh? He is still in the house!”

      I made no reply, but went on, she following closely behind.

      Then a few moments later, having gained the top landing, I threw open the door of the darkened chamber of death and drew aside the curtains.

      She dashed to the bed and tore the sheet from the dead, white face.

      Then she staggered back as though she had received a blow.

      “My God!” she cried. “Too late! —too late!”

      Dull, dazed, she stood there, with the stare of blank despair in her eyes and pale as ashes. The dead white face seemed to wear a smile – the smile of cheerful resignation, as though his body had parted with its spirit in gladness and in triumph.

      For a little while she stood stock-still and speechless – the living dead! Suddenly – ah! it is nothing in the telling; one should have heard and seen to realise – suddenly there welled up from the depths of her heart the sigh of its aching, the sob of its breaking. Then she shrieked with the ghastly laughter of despair. Then she lashed out to a cursing of the dead man and all his deeds; and her execrations were the most shocking because they proceeded from the tongue of a sweet-mouthed woman.

      Of a sudden her eyes fell upon the stranger’s two portmanteaux, and dashing across she knelt to open them.

      “No,” I said quietly, “I cannot permit you to touch anything there.”

      “You cannot permit —you!” she cried, facing me.

      “And who, pray, are you? Have I not more right to know what he has here than you?”

      And with a sudden wrench she broke the hasp of the weak, foreign-made lock, and next instant turned the whole of the contents, clothes and papers, out upon the floor.

      Quickly she searched among the quantity of papers, as though looking for something. Yet she was disappointed.

      I took up several of the folded documents and found that they were bonds and other securities. It almost seemed as though the mysterious Massari had fled at an instant’s warning and taken all the valuables he had at hand.

      The second portmanteau resisted her efforts to break it open, therefore I handed her the key. If, as she said, that man had held her future in his hands, she certainly had a right to look through what he had left behind.

      In her eagerness she tossed the papers hither and thither, now pausing to scan a letter and now breaking open a sealed envelope and hastily ascertaining the contents.

      “No,” she cried hoarsely at last, turning fiercely to where the dead body lay. “You have left no written record. Brute! coward! assassin!” she hissed between her teeth, shaking her fist in the dead man’s face. “You refused to give me my freedom – to clear my honour – you laughed in my face – you who knew the truth but refused to speak!”

      The scene was terrible, the living execrating the dead. I took her by the arm and tried to lead her away. But she shook me off, crying: —

      “He has died of the terrible disease with which God had afflicted him. He knew, too well, that after his death I should be helpless and defenceless. He was wealthy, but what did all his wealth serve him – compelled to fly at night and hide himself here, hoping that I should not discover him. He little dreamed that I knew of his hiding-place.”

      “Then