Whosoever Shall Offend Part 37

"Yes. I was dining there. But she only told me half an hour ago, just as I was coming away, and I rushed home to get at the telephone."

It occurred to Marcello that Kalmon need not have driven all the way to Via Sicilia from the Forum of Trajan merely for the sake of telephoning.

"But what is the hurry?" asked Marcello. "Do sit down and explain! I heard this afternoon that you had strong suspicions as to Folco's part in what happened to me."

"Something more than suspicions now," Kalmon answered, settling his big frame in a deep chair before the tire; "but I am afraid he has escaped."

"Escaped? He has not the slightest idea that he is suspected!"

"How do you know? Don't you see that as he is guilty, he must have soon begun to think that the change in your manner toward him was due to the fact that you suspected him, and that you turned him out because you guessed the truth, though you could not prove it?"

"Perhaps," Marcello admitted, in a rather preoccupied tone. "The young lady seems to have repeated to her mother everything I said this afternoon," he added with evident annoyance. "Did the Contessa tell you why I quarrelled with Folco to-day?"

"No. She merely said that there had been angry words and that you had asked him to leave the house. She herself was surprised, she said, and wondered what could have brought matters to a crisis at last."

Marcello's face cleared instantly. Aurora had not told any one that he had quarrelled with his stepfather about her; that was quite evident, for there were not two more truthful people in the world than the Contessa and Kalmon, whose bright brown eyes were at that moment quietly studying his face.

"Not that the fact matters in the least," said the Professor, resting his feet on the fender and exposing the broad soles of his wet walking-boots to the flame. "The important fact is that the man has escaped, and we must catch him."

"But how are you so sure that it was he that attacked me? You cannot arrest a man on suspicion, without going through a great many formalities. You cannot possibly have got an eye-witness to the fact, and so it must be a matter of suspicion after all, founded on a certain amount of rather weak circ.u.mstantial evidence. Now, if it was he that tried to kill me, he failed, for I am alive, and perfectly well. Why not let him alone, since I have got rid of him?"

"For a very good reason, which I think I had better not tell you."

"Why not?"

"I am not sure what you would do if you were told it suddenly. Are your nerves pretty good? You used to be a delicate boy, though I confess that you look much stronger now."

"You need not fear for my nerves," Marcello answered with a short laugh.

"If they are sound after what I have been through in the last two years they will stand anything!"

"Yes. Perhaps you had better know, though I warn you that what I am going to say will be a shock to you, of which you do not dream."

"You must be exaggerating!" Marcello smiled incredulously. "You had better tell me at once, or I shall imagine it is much worse than it is."

"It could not be," Kalmon answered. "It is hard even to tell, and not only because what happened was in a distant way my fault."

"Your fault? For heaven's sake tell me what the matter is, and let us be done with it!"

"Corbario wanted to get possession of your whole fortune. That is why he tried to kill you."

"Yes. Is that all? You have made me understand that already."

"He had conceived the plan before your mother's death," said Kalmon.

"That would not surprise me either. But how do you know it?"

"Do you remember that discovery of mine, that I called 'the sleeping death'?"

"Yes. What has that to do with it?" Marcello's expression changed.

"Corbario stole one of the tablets from the tube in my pocket, while I was asleep that night."

"What?" Marcello began to grow pale.

"Your mother died asleep," said Kalmon in a very low voice.

Marcello was transfixed with horror, and grasped the arms of his chair.

His face was livid. Kalmon watched him, and continued.

"Yes. Corbario did it. Your mother used to take phenacetine tablets when she had headaches. They were very like the tablets of my poison in size and shape. Corbario stole into my room when I was sound asleep, took one of mine, and dropped in one of hers. Then he put mine amongst the phenacetine ones. She took it, slept, and died."

Marcello gasped for breath, his eyes starting from his head.

"You see," Kalmon went on, "it was long before I found that my tablets had been tampered with. There had been seven in the tube. I knew that, and when I glanced at the tube next day there were seven still. The tube was of rather thick blue gla.s.s, if you remember, so that the very small difference between the one tablet and the rest could not be seen through it. I went to Milan almost immediately, and when I got home I locked up the tube in a strong-box. It was not until long afterwards, when I wanted to make an experiment, that I opened the tube and emptied the contents into a gla.s.s dish. Then I saw that one tablet was unlike the rest. I saw that it had been made by a chemist and not by myself. I a.n.a.lysed it and found five grains of phenacetine."

Marcello leaned back, listening intently, and still deadly pale.

"You did not know that I was trying to find out how you had been hurt, that I was in communication with the police from the first, that I came to Rome and visited you in the hospital before you recovered your memory. The Contessa was very anxious to know the truth about her old friend's son, and I did what I could. That was natural. Something told me that Corbario had tried to kill you, and I suspected him, but it is only lately that I have got all the evidence we need. There is not a link lacking. Well, when I came to Rome that time, it chanced that I met Corbario at the station. He had come by the same train, and was looking dreadfully ill. That increased my suspicion, for I knew that his anxiety must be frightful, since you might have seen him when he struck you, and might recognise him, and accuse him. Yet he could not possibly avoid meeting you. Imagine what that man must have felt. He tried to smile when he saw me, and said he wished he had one of those sleeping tablets of mine. You understand. He thought I had already missed the one he had taken, though I had not, and that he had better disarm any possible suspicion by speaking of the poison carelessly. Then his face turned almost yellow, and he nearly fainted. He said it was the heat, and I helped him to his carriage. He looked like a man terrified out of his senses, and I remembered the fact afterwards, when I found that one tablet had been stolen; but at the time I attributed it all to his fear of facing you. Now we know the truth. He tried to murder you, and on the same day he poisoned your mother."

Kalmon sat quite still when he had finished, and for a long time Marcello did not move, and made no sound. At last he spoke in a dull voice.

"I want to kill him myself."

The Professor glanced at him and nodded slowly, as if he understood the simple instinct of justice that moved him.

"If I see him, I shall kill him," Marcello said slowly. "I am sure I shall."

"I am afraid that he has escaped," Kalmon answered. "Of course there is a possibility that he may have had some object in deceiving your coachman by driving to the railway station, but it is not at all likely.

He probably took the first train to the north."

"But he can be stopped at the frontier!"

"Do you think Corbario is the man to let himself be trapped easily if he knows that he is pursued?" asked Kalmon incredulously. "I do not."

He rose from his chair and began to walk up and down, his hands behind him and his head bent.

Marcello paid no attention to him and was silent for a long time, sitting quite motionless and scarcely seeming to breathe. What he felt he never could have told afterwards; he only knew that he suffered in every fibre of his brain and body, with every nerve of his heart and in every secret recess of his soul. His mother seemed to have been dead so long, beyond the break in his memory. The dreadful truth he had just heard made her die again before his eyes, by the hand of the man whom he and she had trusted.

"Kalmon," he said at last, and the Professor stopped short in his walk.

"Kalmon, do you think she knows?"

It was like the cry of a child, but it came from a man who was already strong. Kalmon could only shake his head gravely; he could find nothing to say in answer to such a question, and yet he was too human and kind and simple-hearted not to understand the words that rose to Marcello's lips.

"Then she was happy to the end--then she still believes in him."

Kalmon turned his clear eyes thoughtfully towards Marcello's face.

"She is gone," he answered. "She knows the great secret now. The rest is nothing to the dead. But we are living and it is much to us. The man must be brought to justice, and you must help me to bring him down, if we have to hunt him round the world."