In a Single Night

IN A SINGLE NIGHT.

THINK that Archie Somers must have skipped those paragraphs in his newspaper which told of the inexplicable disappearance of some three or four of the English or American tourists who were “doing” Rome that winter and early spring. I know that he usually avoided all such sensational items, confining his interest to the political and literary columns, and only turning his attention to matters criminal or of a legal turn when the culprit was actually in the dock, or plaintiff, or defendant, or whatever the fellows are called who are tried for libel or bigamy or some commercial fraud. Obscure paragraphs dealing with just as obscure visitors to a foreign city meant little or nothing to Archie Somers, until suddenly he read the name of Horace Bligh.

Horace, his dearest and oldest friend, had gone to Italy some three weeks since; and now Horace was the subject of one of those meaningless little paragraphs which, hitherto, Archie, after a cursory glance at the headline, had ruled out of his newspaper. He came to me with the thing—alarmed, pale, distraught. At last he had realised that behind every single name mentioned by the scribes of Fleet Street lurks a tragedy, a comedy, a melodrama, or, perhaps, a farce.

I read the message—and this is what it said:

“Considerable consternation exists among the foreign visitors to Rome this winter, no less than eight or nine of whom, despite the increased watchfulness of the Roman detective service, have mysteriously disappeared. Too little attention has been paid to these unaccountable disappearances, and it 1s notorious that those interested in the tourist industry have done their best to hush them up. But it is time to speak out and warn intending visitors that actually some three or four strangers, chiefly English and Americans, have left their hotels to do the familiar sights of the Eternal City, and that nothing more has been seen or heard of these victims. For as such we must consider them, though actual evidence of murder or foul play is wanting. No other motive than robbery can have prompted these outrages, and there can be little doubt but that a considerable booty must have rewarded the gang concerned, as, in each case, the victim belonged to the well-to-do class; and it is, moreover, a matter of common knowledge that, as often as not, the average tourist in Italy carries a considerable sum of money in his pocket-book.

“The individual or individuals responsible for these outrages do their dastardly work with the utmost cunning; for, in every instance, the tourist who has disappeared is a single traveller, unattached to any party or agency. Thus some days, or even weeks, must elapse before any serious effort or inquiry is made on his behalf, and it is quite conceivable that, outside the hotel or pension at which he has been staying, no notice whatsoever is taken of the missing stranger. The proprietors of the Hotel Monte Giordano, however, yesterday informed the police that a young English visitor, a Mr. Horace Blig (probably Bligh) had gone out after breakfast with his Baedeker, and had not yet returned. He has been missing for thirty-six hours, and there is every reason to fear the worst.”

Somers had rushed round to my chambers, and made me read the news that had so perturbed him.

It was a nasty business, for Bligh had actually put up at the Hotel Monte Giordano; and, curiously enough, he was just such an unattached creature as the message had described. Apart from Somers, there was really no one in the world who was likely to make an immediate fuss about his disappearance. He was unmarried, an orphan, and, though wealthy, his affairs were in professional hands that would hardly bother about him till the next quarter-day. And, by Jove, it struck me, Somers himself was precisely of the same kind! If he chose to go abroad, there was no one who would miss him either, at least for a month or so....

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I'm going to Rome—of course I'm going to Rome!” he almost shouted; “Horace and I were such pals, we were at Repton and the Hall together, and afterwards—we've fished together, shared 'shoots,' read the same books, and gone off together—a dozen times! I would have been in Rome with him this winter if it hadn't been for that cursed cotton boom—you know I've been playing with it and wanted to see it out.”

I try to repeat the broken and rapid ejaculations with which Somers filled my sitting-room. He reproached himself, he revived memories of his lost friend, he praised him, his pluck, his generosity, his fine intelligence, and his extreme simplicity. “He never suspected anybody—a child could have taken him in,” he cried. “Horace was like that—he believed in anybody and anything till he was bitten. But I'm going out there to find him. They won't get him if I can help it—curse them! I'm going now!”... And with that he left me, suddenly, abruptly, as though he could not stand the strain of waiting, of talking, of doing nothing.

“My address'll be the Monte Giordano,” he had said in parting; “but I'll come back to you—with Horace!”

He was so young, so brave, so strong, just like the lost friend he had described to me, and whom I had barely known. And he was simple too, though, like most youngsters, he didn't know it. A child could have “taken him in” as well, I thought, after he had left me.

When he had gone, I got my keys and found a Browning and a Smith and Wesson I had carried in Russia. I cleaned the Smith and Wesson, sent my man out for fifty cartridges, and wrote a note that would go round to young Somers with the revolver. “To be used in case of need,” it said; and ended, “Good luck!”

For a month I heard nothing more of Somers, nor was any further disappearance chronicled in the newspapers. That last message must have alarmed the gang or whatever it was that had perpetrated the preceding outrage; and, moreover, Scotland Yard and the Italian and United States equivalents were all busied now and hard at work ransacking the old city. Rome just then enjoyed an unenviable reputation, and the average tourist was avoiding it. After Easter a German disappeared, and Somers sent me a brief note. But for the affair of this unfortunate German he would have given it up, he wrote. He was going to stay on now; but it was difficult, especially as he knew next to nothing of the language. He had no plan, no system like the police. What he wanted was that the fellows should try and capture him. He was giving them every opportunity. On second thoughts he had not gone to the Hotel Monte Giordano, for the gang would, he suspected, fight shy of a second visitor from there. He was at the Pension Friuli, and very comfortable. He thanked me for the revolver, adding that he had found a farm out in the Campagna where they let him practise on old chianti flasks, and that he could smash them easily at thirty yards. The Smith and Wesson bore a little to the right, but he could correct that with his eye in taking aim.... It was a very boyish letter, yet, for all that, a pretty determined one. He ended with, “I'm rather glad—though it's perhaps brutal to say it—that they got that German, for otherwise I might have given up and come away. I'm staying on till I have found poor Horace. The German, it appears, was a bank manager who had absconded. He hadn't a friend who'd miss him; he was glad to talk to anybody, I suspect. They must have made a fine haul getting him—poor devil! The German police are here with photographs, and, though he'd shaved clean and so forth, there's little doubt but that it's he. As usual no trace of the body.”

Such, in substance, was the first and last letter I received from Archie Somers during those weeks he was away in Rome. Early in May the boy himself came into my rooms. He was back again. I hesitated before I recognised him. He was older by ten years, and had a stoop; and to-day his hair, that had always been so black and glossy, was dull—and white as snow.

“Thanks,” he began, and chucked down the revolver and a half-full box of cartridges; “I only used it once, but if you don't take it away, I may use it again—like that;” and in pantomime he put an imaginary pistol to his head and made a clicking noise with his tongue. It was rather dreadful. “My nerves,” he added, “my infernal nerves!”

I knew from the papers some part of the tragedy and horror of which he had been the unwilling hero; that he had shot a man stone dead, and had recovered all that was left of his poor friend. I knew that he had behaved splendidly; but the newspapers said nothing of the effect of all this on him; said nothing of his whitened hair and broken nerve, and how, a young man, he had suddenly passed to a premature middle age. In their eyes he was still Apollo, or Hercules, or a romantic being who had solved a mystery that had baffled all the police, and himself done summary justice there and then. He had cleaned out the Augean stable, exposed a plague spot and stamped out the plague; but the cost—I realised the cost as I took in the vast and pitiful change that had come cover him—even for me, who had done no more than wish him well and send my man round with the Smith and Wesson, the cost was almost unendurable. The newspapers had overlooked that aspect—but still, he had hardly given them a chance.

Archie was man-shy for many months afterwards, and woman-shy as well. He put his acquaintances from him, refused to be lionised, and took refuge with me and mine—mine, in this instance, being the two children. He was never afraid of them. He stayed with us in the country; he read mathematics; he said the exercise soothed him; he became an expert gardener. One night he spoke out and told me what had happened, exactly as it had happened. The thing came about quite naturally. I had never pressed him; indeed, I had never once referred to Horace Bligh and Rome.

“I wasn't fit to talk about it before,” he had begun, “but now I'm feeling rather as I used to feel. I'm gassing about what happened—out there,” he explained, “last year in Rome. I can look at it now—pretty quietly—almost as though it had happened to some other fellow—Gad, but I wish it had!” He left off speaking for a moment, and then resumed with: “My hair isn't as white as it was at first, is it?”

“It's a shade darker,” said I, honestly enough; for I had noticed a slight change, and so had the two kiddies.

He seemed pleased at that. “All the barbers try to sell me colouring stuff,” he pursued; “but I think I'll wait. I'm rather good at waiting,” he added grimly; “I waited six weeks in Rome before anything happened—I don't count the German; and when it did happen, it happened all at once. They buried poor old Horace in the Protestant Cemetery—that's where it all began.”

“Shelley and Keats are there and young Goethe? I've driven out to it.” A dim memory of august tombs and cypresses had come back to me, as it must come back to anybody who has known that perfect place.

“You remember the cemetery? So do I,” he answered, “as well as though I were standing there to-day. I remember it, and the marble tombs, and the blue sky, and the splendid clouds—they looked like marble, too; and there was a little girl who was crying because she couldn't find her mother's grave, and her father would beat her if she didn't put a wreath on it. She showed me the wreath, and she said it in such queer English, and I was so dashed sorry for her. I'm rather fond of children—always have been. I've even forgiven her—poor little wretch! She didn't know.... 'Your father'll beat you if you take the wreath home again?' I asked; and the kid nodded, and cried worse than ever.

“I tried to find that grave; the child and I hunted for it; and, though we had the mother's name and everything, it was all no go. I gathered that the name was 'Angela Turner'—that's about what the little girl made of it; but no Angela, or any other kind of Turner, could we discover in the whole cemetery. And the child kept on crying and saying that her father would beat her if she came home without having disposed of that white wreath. 'Why not leave it here and be done with it?' I suggested; but she shook her head quickly and answered me with a scared look in her eyes, 'He'd know,' she said; 'he knows everything!'

“I had no suspicions—one doesn't suspect a little kid of eight or nine in a pink frock; indeed, I was almost enjoying the adventure. 'Where do you live?' I asked. She pointed out the direction with her finger. 'Well, I'll take you home and talk to your father. He won't beat you if I talk to him and say we couldn't find the tomb!' Promptly at that she put a tiny hand in mine, and off we trotted down the path and so to the dusty road. We were walking away from the city. Now my little guide ran on in front and seemed quite gay; for to her it was all a game—just a game that she had been put up to. She never knew; she doesn't know to-day. But she must have caught poor Horace—just like that; and the others!”

He paused; and I could see the dusty road with its two figures: the little girl in pink dancing merrily in front of him and holding her white wreath; and Archie, tall, boyish, smiling and amused at her; the blue Italian sky above them, and the wild Campagna reaching south illimitably. They must have made quite a picture.... But now he had continued.

“We reached the house—it was only a short mile distant—a small cream-coloured villa standing some little way from the road and enclosed with walls and a garden. The father was in the garden. He was a young man, very dark, very Italian, and yet his English had barely a trace of any foreign accent. 'Well, Celia,' he greeted us, as the child ran up to him, 'and who is your friend?' Of course, I came forward and answered. 'We met in the cemetery,' I said, 'and this ridiculous little girl was crying'... 'Because she thought I would beat her?' he had interposed; and then, addressing the child: 'Do I ever beat you?'... 'No, father, you are very nice and good to me,' was the reply.... 'She is nervous—nervous; her mother was like that too. She will grow out of it. But it was very kind of you to bring her back.'

“I thought I understood, and I told him so. 'Of course it was ridiculous,' I added, smiling; 'but children are rather ridiculous—that is one of their chief charms.' And we stood there discussing children till he suggested that I should come in and take a cup of tea with him and the little girl. Without a suspicion I accepted the invitation; and soon we were discussing not only children, but the world in general. He proved himself to be a delightful companion, a delightful host. Celia was sent off to her room; an old woman, the only servant of the villa, it appeared, took charge of her. We two sat on, discussing Italy, discussing Rome and its ancient civilisation. His father, an Englishman, had come to Italy, one of the many British volunteers who had fought in the war of liberation, and he himself was a fervent Garibaldian.... Well, to cut a long story short, I stayed on, fascinated, almost spellbound, listening eagerly, asking for information, telling him all about myself as well, and even about Horace and my informal quest. He was charming, he was sympathetic. Reluctantly I rose to leave, and, as I was making my farewells, the old woman announced that dinner was laid for us and ready. He pressed me to stay, and I, after urging that I had already trespassed on his hospitality, thanked him—and consented. And so, as you will guess, we made a night of it. Th at man was the most attractive fellow I have ever met.

“At last it was time to leave, and again I rose to say good-bye. 'But you can't go back to Rome at this hour,' he exclaimed, 'it isn't safe; and besides—I have had a bed made up for you. You will stay, my friend, if you will permit me to call you so. Really, I cannot allow a guest of mine to walk the five miles—it isn't safe!'... I was about to tell him that I carried a revolver—your revolver; and then suddenly an intuition, a providential reserve—call it what you will—smothered the impulse, and I said nothing.

“I accepted the invitation, and he, seeming genuinely pleased, and insisting once more on the dangerous characters that infested the outskirts of the city at this hour of the night refilled my glass and made me light a fresh Minghetti. It was late when we separated, he accompanying me to my room and wishing me pleasant dreams.

“That room,” Somers continued: “I can see it now. Again its close air stifles me; again I see my reflection in the great mirror that filled one wall; again I hold up my candle and try to draw the curtains so that I may breathe fresh air. I get the curtains apart and look for the window that I want to fling wide open. There is no window—only a bricked recess. And then for the first time I feel that I have been trapped. It is only a suspicion; but it grows ... I am at the door now—and there is no handle to it! In very truth I am trapped, just as poor Horace was trapped, and the German, and all those others. I understand the whole game at last—first of all the child, used as a decoy, then this charming fellow who has entertained me, the pressure, ever so gentle, to stay and share his meal, and then the warning against the dangers of the road, and the invitation to stay the night. Piece by piece I fit it all together. I am trapped, just as poor Horace was, just like the German, and God alone knows how many more... I looked under the bed. My candle shook as I cast its light into that gloom; for I was not alone here. On my knees I was, at some small hour of the night; and there, under the bed, I had found a body newly slain. I dragged it out, and it was ghastly; I raised it up, and it was ghastlier still. Quick as lightning a swift, abrupt idea had possessed me. This body should go into the bed instead of my body. I lifted it and put it carefully between the sheets; I tucked it in and arranged it; and now it really looked like a sleeper who had pulled the bedclothes almost up to his eyes. Then I drew my revolver—your revolver I should say —then I drew my revolver, put out the light, and myself crept underneath the bed.

“You don't envy me that vigil?” Somers pursued, the perspiration standing in big beads upon his forehead. “I lay there through eternities, my hair—well, that's the reason it's white now ... I lay there through eternities, and at last the door opened and he came in. He was carrying an electric torch, one of those things that you press, switching on a bead of brilliant light. I could see him in the great mirror that filled one wall. In his other hand he carried a knife—a long, curved thing that glittered as he held it. Five times he plunged that steel into the corpse, mistaking it for me asleep. He moved swiftly and struck swiftly; he was stealthy and silent-footed like some great cat; and his face—I could see it all in the big mirror—God help me!—and at first I was stiff and rigid with the horror of it all. And then I pulled the trigger and hit him, and pulled it again, and hit him once more, and pulled it again and again and again—the last time it clicked, for it was empty. He was on the floor with the electric torch beside him, and we two looked into each other's eyes—both of us on the floor we were; he, as he had fallen, and I who had crawled out to where he lay. He was alive till I beat the life out of him with the butt end, and took the knife out of his hand and stuck it in his heart. It stood there, the hilt erect like one of the stones I had seen in the Protestant Cemetery that afternoon.... I had become a wild beast—I had behaved like one.

“The next thine I remember was being out of doors and running, running, till I came across a couple of carabinieri. They arrested me—luckily, I call it. I had to give an account of myself. The British Consul helped me. We found the house next day, and him. There was the body that had lain under the bed; and in the well outside were all the other bodies thrown down there—Horace with them—poor Horace!... And in the Renaissance cabinet that stood against the dining-room wall were Horace's watch and chain and signet ring. I recognised these among other watches, and pins, and rings, and jewellery, some intact, some with the stones wrenched out, and cigarette cases, and match boxes and silver things—there was quite a hoard—mementoes, apparently, or waiting their turn at the melting-pot. And in a secret drawer—the police, once started, knew their work—were notes all neatly bundled, the bulk of them Italian, with Russian roubles, German marks, our own sovereigns, and American dollars as well, as though kept back for no other reason but that they were curious, and strange, and perfectly safe.”

Archie had finished. So that was the true story, the awful, unrelieved horror that in a single night had changed the boy into a prematurely stricken man.

“And the little girl?” I asked.

“She didn't understand it. She thought it all a peculiar game which he had taught her. When she brought somebody home, he gave her sweets; when she returned alone, he beat her—she was right in that. They've sent her to one of the convents. She really was his daughter, it appears, and much of the account he gave of himself was true. The servant, the old woman who waited on us, was never found. | suspect she was a confederate.”