“Come to the tomb at once,” it read. “There is desperate danger. Tell no one. Burn this.” It was signed, “Il Falcone.”
Instinctively my fingers closed over the note, crumpling it. My heart was beating fast and hard. Something had happened. Had Andrea met the soldiers—had he been wounded again? I did not stop to think twice. I paused only long enough to burn the note and to snatch up a hat and a shawl.
I could not ride. The grooms would have wanted to know where I was going, would probably have insisted on accompanying me. I had to go on foot, and fear made the path seem twice as long as it really was. I was panting and disheveled when I scrambled down the last slope and ran toward the tomb of the princess. Imagine my consternation when I saw that the door was open. I was sure he had fallen unconscious within, unable to close the stone. Gathering my skirts closely around me I descended the steps, calling his name. I had just reached the bottom when the door closed.
By some strange alchemy of thought the whole truth struck me in a single instant, and I believe my first emotion was not fear, but anger at my stupidity. Slowly I went back up the stairs and pushed at the door as hard as I could, but I was not surprised to discover that it did not yield a fraction of an inch. Once again I had been deliberately imprisoned.
My next move was to reach for the ledge on which Grandfather kept the candles. It was bare.
I sat down on the top step with my back against the stone slab that would be my tombstone. Oh, there was a faint chance that someone might look for me here, when my absence was noted; but the chance was not great. Stefano had come for me the first time because Miss Perkins had been suspicious of Grandfather. This time Grandfather was above suspicion. He was not the one who had sent that note. How could I have been so gullible? I had received a message from the Falcon once before. He had not signed his name then, he had used a little hieroglyphic as a signature. Miss Perkins had seen that message; therefore the writer of this note was not Miss Perkins…
I would not have suspected her in any case. But I could no more suspect any of the others. Who could hate me so much? There was no doubt in my mind that I had been the victim of a series of attempts; the falling rock in this very valley, the bullet in the garden—perhaps even the rabid bat. But last night, when Bianca had been caught with her evil little doll, I had assumed it was she who was responsible for the other attempts. Why she hated me I did not know, unless in some twisted way she considered me a rival to Galiana’s happiness. That made as much sense as any other theory I could think of.
I wanted to cling to the idea of Bianca as the culprit, but I realized that even if she had escaped from her prison room in the castle, she could not be responsible for this. She could neither read nor write. She could not have manufactured the false note.
The identity of the villain, the motive for wanting me out of the way…I had a feeling that if I knew one of the answers, I could probably deduce the other. But both were beyond me. I formed and discarded theory after theory, for none made any sense.
I daresay this description sounds as if I behaved in a cool, sensible manner. I was not sensible, I was simply paralyzed with the hopelessness of it all. There was no way I could get out by myself. All I could do was wait and pray that someone would think to look for me before I perished of exposure or lack of air. To sit quietly and use no more oxygen than necessary was the sensible procedure, but as the cold began to seep into my bones, I thought it would kill me before the air was exhausted. Thankful for my shawl, I huddled into it and tried to remain calm. Eventually I fell into a sort of stupor; it certainly was not sleep, and I do not like to think it was unconsciousness, but it had the same result. I was in danger of toppling down the stairs. So I crawled to the bottom and settled myself on the floor. My shawl was not much help. I was chilled to the bone.
I had to believe that rescue would arrive eventually. Without that hope, I could not have kept my sanity. I recited all the poems I had been forced to learn by my dear old teachers. Little did I think that the lines of Cowper and Pope would come back to me in such a setting. I did mathematical problems in my head, but that did not last long, for I had never been very good at mathematics. I repeated the capitals of the countries of Europe and the list of the kings of England from Alfred the Great to Queen Victoria. In a humiliatingly short time I had exhausted my entire stock of knowledge.
And I had solved the puzzle.
It was so simple, really. De Merode had told the household he suspected the Falcon had been hiding in the tomb, but only two people knew that I had been there with him, and that any mention of the place would fetch me as neatly as a tantalizing bait catches a fish. Miss Perkins I scorned to suspect. The other person was Galiana.
Once I thought of her and half accepted her guilt, other facts fit only too well. Bianca might have carried out the other acts of violence, but the poor simple-witted creature could not have planned them. She was only the hands; someone else was the brain. And how had she learned to hate me so? From Galiana, of course; Galiana, who loved Andrea and feared my influence with him. I knew her callousness, her indifference to suffering; I knew her ancestry. Was not Italy the home of the feud? Perhaps the girl hated me for her father’s sake. And I had thought she was fond of me, in her shallow fashion.
Purgatory will be no novelty to me, if I ever arrive there. The timelessness must be the worst of it; time without measure, no way of reckoning its passage, no knowledge of when it will end. When a slit of light appeared at the head of the stairs I could only stare, thinking that my mind had given way altogether. Then I staggered to my feet with a cry. They had found me after all.
Incredulously I realized that it was still daylight—a blustery gray light, but daylight all the same. I had thought I had been in the tomb for hours. The sharp wind felt like heaven after those airless depths. It fluttered the long veil of the woman who stood on the stairs.
Yes, she wore a veil, a black veil. She also carried a dagger in her right hand. It glittered faintly in the dusky light.
Not rescue, then, but another threat. Why had she come back, hiding her face with one of her mother’s veils? Perversely that circumstance gave me a moment of hope. If she troubled to conceal her identity, perhaps she did not mean to murder me after all.
The veiled figure leaned forward and gave its head an impatient shake. It could not see into the darkness of the tomb with the muffling folds dimming its vision. With a sudden movement it flung the veil back.
A coronet of silvery hair gleamed dully like a tarnished nimbus. Slowly but nimbly, her slim figure undistorted by the hoops which would have impeded her movements, the woman descended the stairs. I retreated. My mind, fixed in its preconceptions, still refused to accept reality. The Contessa must have learned of her daughter’s crime, and had rushed to release me.
I was not allowed to cherish the illusion for long. With a sudden lunge she came at me. Backed against the wall, I threw out my hands against the threat of the dagger, and felt a rope drop over my wrists. The Contessa jumped back; the noose tightened. I tugged at it, not believing what was happening.
“Stand still,” she said sharply. “Don’t try to escape. I need you alive. I was in error. I acted too soon. But I thought he would take my word—the word of a Fosilini, and that arrogant young fool dares to doubt! He wants evidence. So you must tell me how you knew. You didn’t tell Galiana the truth. You are the only one who knows—the only one who can identify the Falcon.”
Chapter 11
She had been speaking Italian, of course. I ought to have answered her in the same language, but I was scarcely capable of speech of any kind, I could only stutter, in English.
“What? What are you saying?”
She shook her head in a very natural little movement of mild exasperation.
“Stupid girl,” she said gently. “How stupid they are, these English. She can’t even speak a civilized tongue.”
As some philosopher has said, there is nothing that concentrates a man’s mind so much as knowing he is to be hanged. At that moment I knew, as clearly as if a celestial voice had announced it from heaven, that I must be cleverer, quicker, stronger than I had ever been in my life, or I would die.
The Contessa tugged impatiently at the rope. I pulled back. The noose around my wrists tightened. A slip knot—of course that was what it was. I could free myself of the rope easily enough. But she was between me and the stairs.
Then I seemed to hear, silently repeated, words I had heard before:
“Madness has its own kind of reason…Always there is an underlying motive, an idée fixe. Find that and you have the key to the conduct of the insane.”
“Come,” she insisted. “Avanti. The Captain is waiting.”
“No, wait,” I said. “I will tell you. But first you must tell me why you are doing this. Sempre una ragione…”
A blast of air, funneled down the stairwell, lifted her veil around her like great black wings. She made no attempt to straighten it, but stared at me thoughtfully. I could see her features clearly now, and what I saw made me grow cold with terror. But the fear was not only for myself.
“Una ragione,” she repeated softly. “Yes, yes, there is a reason. But you are so dull! You should have seen it long ago. He must die, you understand. The other times he escaped somehow. It was the protection of Satan, whom he serves, perhaps. But this time—”
“The other times? They were not accidents, then. But I thought I was the one they were aimed at.”
Her exquisite old face was distorted, not by anger, but by a furious contempt.
“You? I would not soil my hands on you. In a sense you are to blame for his death; if he had not come to love you. I would not have to destroy him. But he will not marry my darling girl now. So he must die. He deserves death. He is a traitor to God and his own class, but I would have spared him if Galiana…It is better this way, she will be the Principessa Tarconti; too low a rank for her beauty, but the best I can do. My darling little girl….”
Her voice trailed off in a crooning travesty of maternal love, all the more horrible because of the beauty of the emotion that prompted it. Her speech was confused; even at her best she did not make much sense, but I had heard enough to confirm my worst fears—and they were not for myself. She knew about Andrea and she meant to betray him. The knowledge that I must overcome her for his sake as well as for my own gave me additional strength and cunning. I spoke sharply, hoping to capture her wandering wits for a few more minutes.
“If you don’t care about me, why did you trap me here to die?”
