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"I was steward on the Iris for a year, until I suppose they thought that I began to see too much, and then I was placed in a position ashore." "And what did you see?" "More than I care to tell, signore. If they were arrested I should be arrested, too, you see." "But I mean to solve this mystery, Olinto," I said fiercely, for I was in no trifling mood. "I'll fathom it if it costs me my life."
Now, according to the account I had heard, the police had conveyed the dead man direct from the wood into Dumfries. Was it possible, therefore, that she had seen Olinto before he met with his sudden end? I feared to press her for an explanation at that moment, but, nevertheless, the admission that she had seen him struck me as a very peculiar fact. "You judge him to be a foreigner?"
Then, after luncheon, I went to Albany Road, one of those dreary, old-fashioned streets that were pleasant back in the early Victorian days when Camberwell was a suburb and Walworth Common was still an open waste. I found the house where Olinto lived a small, smoke-blackened, semi-detached place standing back in a tiny strip of weedy garden, with a wooden veranda before the first floor windows.
A man and woman were found murdered up in the wood about a mile and a half from the castle. The man was made up to represent my man Olinto I believe you've seen him in Leghorn?" "What! They've killed Olinto?" he gasped, starting from his chair. "No. The fellow was made up very much like him. But his wife Armida was killed."
Was I never to penetrate that inscrutable and ever-increasing mystery? Throughout the long night I called many times at the hospital, but the reply was always the same. Jack had not regained consciousness, and the doctor regarded his case as hopeless. In the morning I drove in hot haste to Bassett Road, Notting Hill, and at the address Olinto had given me found Muriel.
Had he fallen a victim by the same hand that had attempted so ingeniously to kill me? Why had Leithcourt gone so regularly up to Rannoch Wood? Was it in order to meet the man who was to be entrapped and killed? What was Olinto Santini doing so far from London, if he had not come expressly to meet someone in secret?
Often when alone I reflected upon my curious adventure on that night when I met Olinto, and of my narrow escape from the hands of my unknown enemies. I wondered if that ingenious and dastardly attempt upon my life had really any connection with that strange incident at Leghorn. As day succeeded day, my mind became filled by increasing suspicion. Mystery surrounded me on every hand.
"Ah, signore! why, actually, my padrone!" And looking round, I saw a thin-faced man of about thirty, dressed in neat but rather shabby black, whom I instantly recognized as a man who had been my servant in Leghorn for two years, after which he had left to better himself. "Why, Olinto!" I exclaimed, surprised, as I halted. "You in London eh? Well, and how are you getting on?"
The pair, fearing that I should reveal what I knew, were undoubtedly in London to take my life in secret. Now that Leithcourt was dead, Woodroffe had united forces with Oberg, and intended to silence me because they feared that Elma, besides escaping them, had also revealed her secret. "I trust that the Signorina Leithcourt has explained the story of the yacht and its crew," Olinto remarked.
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