The Czar's Spy: The Mystery of a Silent Love
complicated enigma which had thus culminated in a double crime, it would
be necessary for me to keep my own counsel and remain patient and
watchful.
When Hutcheson replied from Leghorn, and when I discovered where Olinto
was employed, I might perhaps follow up the clues from that end. I might
find his wife Armida and learn something of importance from her. So I
was hopeful, and by reason of that hope remained silent.
Muriel was untiring in her activity. Hither and thither she went,
beating down the high bracken and tangles of weeds, poking with her
stick into every hole and corner, and going further and further into the
wood in the certainty that the body was therein concealed.
For my own part, however, I was not too sanguine of success. The portion
of the wood which we had already exhausted seemed to be the most likely
point. To carry the body far would require assistance, and in my own
mind I believed the crime to have been the work of one person. There was
no path in the wood in that direction, but soon we came to a deep
wooded ravine of the existence of which I was in ignorance. It was a
kind of small glen through which a rivulet flowed, but the banks were
covered with a thick impenetrable undergrowth out of which sprang many
fine old trees, a place that had apparently existed for centuries
undisturbed, for here and there a giant trunk that had decayed and
fallen lay across the bank, or had rolled into the rocky bed far below.
"This is a most likely place," declared my dainty little companion as we
approached it. "Anything could easily be concealed in that high bracken
down there. Let us search the whole glen from end to end," she cried
with enthusiasm.
Acting upon her suggestion and without thought of luncheon, we made a
descent of the steep bank until we reached the rocky bed of the stream,
and then by springing from stone to stone--sometimes slipping into the
water, be it said--we commenced to beat the bracken and carefully
examine every bush. Progress was not swift. Once the girl, lithe and
athletic as she was, slipped off a mossy stone into a hole where the
water was up to her knees. But she only laughed gayly at the accident,
and wringing out her wet skirt, said:
"It doesn't matter in the least, if we only find what we're in search
of."
And then, undaunted, she went on, springing from stone to stone and
steadying herself with her stick. If we could only discover the body of
the dead woman, then the rest would be clear, she declared. She would
openly denounce the assassin.
As we went on I revolved within my mind all the curious circumstances in
connection with the amazing affair, and recollected my old friend Jack
Durnford's words when we stood upon the quarter-deck of the _Bulwark_
and I had related to him the visit of the mysterious yacht. I too had
left one effort untried, and I blamed myself for overlooking it. I had
not sought of that Bond Street photographer the name and address of the
original of the photograph that had been mutilated and destroyed--that
girl with the magnificent eyes that had so attracted me.
The afternoon passed, and yet we were not successful. I was faint with
hunger and thirst, yet my companion did not once complain. Her energy
was marvelous--and yet was she not hunting down a criminal? was she not
determined to obtain such evidence as would enable her to speak the
truth fearlessly, and with confidence that it would have the effect of
convicting the guilty one?
Slowly we toiled on up the picturesque little glen for nearly a mile and
a half. Its beauties were extraordinary, and the silence was unbroken
save for the musical ripple of the water over the stones. Hidden there
in the center of that great wood, no one had visited it perhaps for
years, not even the keepers, for no path led there, and by reason of the
tangle of briars and bush it was utterly ungetatable. Indeed, it had
ruined our clothes to search there, and as we went on with so many
windings and turns we became utterly out of our bearings. We knew
ourselves to be in the center of the wood, but that was all.
The sun had set, and the sky above showed the crimson of the distant
afterglow, warning us that it was time we began to think of how to make
our exit. We were passing around a sharp bend in the glen where the
boulders were so thickly moss-grown that our feet fell noiselessly, when
I thought I heard a voice, and raising my hand we both halted suddenly.
"Someone is there," I whispered quickly. "Behind that rock." She nodded
in the affirmative, for she, too, had heard the voice.
We listened, but the sound was not repeated. That someone was on the
other side of the rock I knew, for in a tree in the vicinity a thrush
was hopping from twig to twig, sounding its alarm-cry and objecting to
being disturbed.
Therefore we crept silently forward together to ascertain who were the
intruders. The only manner, however, in which to get a view beyond the
huge rock that, having fallen across the stream centuries ago, had
diverted its channel, was to clamber up its mossy sides to the summit.
This we did eagerly and breathlessly, without betraying our presence by
the utterance of a single word.
To reach the side of the boulder we were compelled to walk through the
shallow water, but Muriel, quite undaunted, sprang lithely along at my
side, and with one accord we swarmed up the steep rock, gripping its
slippery face with our hands and laying ourselves flat as we came to its
summit.
Then together we peered over, just, however, in time to see two dark
figures of men disappearing into the thicket on the opposite side of the
glen.
"Who are they, I wonder?" I asked. "Do you recognize them?"
"No. They are entire strangers to me," was her answer. "But they seem
fairly well dressed. Perhaps two sportsmen from some shooting-party in
the neighborhood. They've lost their way most probably."
"But I don't think they carried guns," I said. "One of them had
something over his shoulder?"
"Wasn't it a gun? I thought it was."
"No, he wasn't carrying it like he'd carry a gun. It was short--and
seemed more like a spade."
"A spade!" she gasped quickly in a low voice. "A spade! Are you certain
of that?"
"No, not at all certain. We only had an instantaneous glance of them.
We were unfortunately too late to see them face to face."
"The back of one of the men, the tall fellow in the brown suit, was
broad and square--the back of someone who is familiar to me, only for
the moment I can't recollect whose it resembles." She only spoke in a
whisper, fearing lest we should be discovered.
I longed to scramble down and rush after the intruders, only the belief
that one of them carried a spade and the other an iron bar struck me as
curious, while at the same moment my eye caught sight of a portion of
the ground below us at the base of the rock which had evidently been
recently disturbed.
"It is a spade the man is carrying!" I cried excitedly. "Look down
there! They've just been burying something!"
Her quick eyes followed the direction I indicated, and she answered:
"I really believe they have concealed something!"
Then when we had allowed the men to get beyond hearing, we both slipped
down to the other side of the boulder and there discovered many signs
that the earth had been hurriedly excavated and only just replaced.
Quicker than it takes to describe the exciting incident which followed,
we broke down the branch of a tree and with it commenced moving the
freshly disturbed earth, which was still soft and easily removed.
Muriel found a dead branch in the vicinity, and both of us set to work
with a will, eager to ascertain what was hidden there. That something
had certainly been concealed was, to us, quite evident, but what it
really was we could not surmise. The hole they had dug did not seem
large enough to admit a human body, yet leaves had been carefully strewn
over the place which, if approached from any other point than the
high-up one whence we had seen it, would arouse no suspicion that the
ground had ever been interfered with.
Digging with a piece of wood was hard and laborious work and it was a
long time before we removed sufficient earth to make a hole of any size.
But Muriel exerted all her energy, and both of us worked on in dogged
silence full of wonder and anticipation. With a spade we should have
soon been able to investigate, but the earth having apparently been
stamped down hard prior to the last covering being put upon it, our
progress was very slow and difficult.
At last, a quarter of an hour or so after we had commenced, Muriel,
standing in the hole and having dug her stake deeply into the ground,
suddenly cried:
"Look! Look, Mr. Gregg! Why--whatever is that?"
I bent forward as she indicated, and my eyes met an object so unexpected
that I was held dumb and motionless.
By what we had succeeded in discovering, the mystery was increased
rather than diminished.
I gave vent to an ejaculation of complete bewilderment, and looked
blankly into my companion's face.
The amazing enigma was surely complete!
CHAPTER VII
CONTAINS A SURPRISE
The first object brought to light, about two feet beneath the surface,
was a piece of dark gray woolen stuff which, when the mold was removed,
proved to be part of a woman's skirt.
With frantic eagerness I got into the hole we had made and removed the
soil with my hands, until I suddenly touched something hard.
A body lay there, doubled up and crushed into the well-like hole the men
had dug.
Together we pulled it out, when, to my surprise, on wiping away the dirt
from the hard waxen features, I recognized it as the body of Armida, the
woman who had been my servant in Leghorn and who had afterwards married
Olinto. Both had been assassinated!
When Muriel gazed upon the dead woman's face she gave vent to an
expression of surprise. The body was evidently not that of the person
she had expected to find.
"Who is she, I wonder?" my companion ejaculated. "Not a lady, evidently,
by her dress and hands."
"Evidently not," was my response, for I still deemed it best to keep my
own counsel. I recollected the story Olinto had told me about his wife;
of her illness and her longing to return to Italy. Yet the dead woman's
countenance must have been healthy enough in life, although her hands
were rough and hard, showing that she had been doing manual labor.
Armida had been a particularly good housemaid, a black-haired,
black-eyed Tuscan, quick, cleanly, and full of a keen sense of humor. It
was a great shock to me to find her lying there dead. The breast of her
dress was stained with dried blood, which, on examination, I found had
issued from a deep and fatal wound beneath the ear where she had been
struck an unerring blow that had severed the artery.
"Those men--those men who buried her! I wonder who they were?" my
companion exclaimed in a hushed voice. "We must follow them and
ascertain. They are certainly the murderers who have returned in secret
and concealed the evidence of this second crime."
"Yes," I said. "Let us go after them. They must not escape us."
Then, leaving the exhumed body beneath a tree, I caught Muriel by the
waist and waded across the deep channel worn by the stream at that
point, after which we both ascended the steep bank where the pair had
disappeared in the darkness of the wood.
I blamed myself a thousand times for not following them, yet my
suspicions had not been aroused until after they had disappeared. The
back of the man in a snuff-colored suit was, she felt confident,
familiar to her. She repeated what she had already told me, yet she
could not remember where she had seen a similar figure before.
We went on through the gloomy forest, for the light had faded and