CHAPTER I.

It was partly in the pursuit of his fascinating hobby as a student of the darker side of human nature that Douglas Cape came to Milan this September; partly also as one upon whom. in his calling of novelist, Italy always acted as a potent stimulus of imagination.

Like others, he had read about the extraordinary recent occurrences in that city, and he proposed to investigate.

In nine months fixe persons, including a lady, had suddenly been blown to pieces in the city of Milan without the slightest indication of an external agency. One gentleman had exploded, as it were, in the act of purchasing a newspaper at a kiosk; another, on the staircase of his hotel; a third, in his own bedroom, when he had but just put on his right boot; a fourth, the very instant after he had touched the bell for his morning roll and coffee; and the lady, while she stood at the window of her elegant apartment in the Corso Venezia, addressed for a reception. The lady was a notorious beauty, about whose character rumor had much to say. At fifty-nine minutes past seven on a summer evening she waved her hand to a friend at an opposite window; and ere fifty-nine minutes and one second past seven she was shattered into nothingness before the horrified eyes of her friend.

Could any writer of sensational fiction be presented with a more interesting mystery than these five kindred tragedies suggested?

On his journey south Douglas came almost definitely to the conclusion that the murders-for such he judged them to be-were caused by a diabolical pill. He was not chemist enough to guess at the component parts of such a pill; but the more he thought of it the more he

was convinced that molecular energy compressed and let loose by dissolution in the human stomach explained the mischief.

No sooner was he in Milan than he called on the Cavaliere di Barese. He had a letter of recommendation to this gentleman, who was unofficially connected with the Italian secret police system. Few outsiders were better acquainted with the workings of the Mafia and Camorra, and he was known to have these cases of spontaneous combustion in hand. A frivolous newspaper had termed them this.

The cavaliere greeted Douglas as a friend of a friend, and also (much more eagerly) as a volunteer in the campaign he had undertaken.

"No, no, no," he said emphatically, however, when Douglas put forward his plea on behalf of the pill. "That suggestion has been weighed and found untenable. But ecco! Mr. Cape, you arrive to me in the very nick of time. as you say it. You are sure that you have a heart for such a business? You will place yourself truly at my disposal?"

Though disappointed about the pill. Douglas was charmed otherwise by the cavaliere's reception of him.

"Truly and entirely, in this matter," he answered.

"Good! Well, then, I shall tell you a little thing that I learned last night. Of those five miserables, two were at one time associated with a certain small street in this city. Andrea Guisano, the talented sculptor, who was, you will remember, annihilated at his toilet, and La Bella Banti, poor lighthearted creature! both lived for a con siderable period in the Via Corta, near the Piazza d'Armi. It is not much to know, you think? Well, perhaps that is so if it was to do with only one of

them; but when last night at the opera I am told by a friend that he had known the unfortunate Banti seven years ago as the golden-haired daughter of an obscure milliner in this same Via Corta, ecco! I felt the blood make a caper in my veins. My advice to you is, seek a lodging in the Via Corta, as a young artist or what you will, and use your eyes and ears with discretion. Do you see?"

Of course Douglas saw. He grasped the cavaliere's firm brown hand and thanked him.

"And, one more thing, Mr. Cape," said the cavaliere when they had smoked excellent cigars together and talked about side-issues, "you must cut yourself away altogether from that which I presume even such philosophers as you and I may term the upper classes of society. Deny even me the pleasure of your company until-until you have made your discovery. There, Mr. Cape! Many of my own compatriots would be so angry with me if they knew how I was confiding in you, a stranger! But you come from the land of the great Mr. Sherlock Holmes, whose brilliant fairy-tales are all familiar to me. That is enough. You have a brave face. Mr. Cape! I shall wish you God's luck, and for myself the felicity of soon seeing you again."

Douglas obtained rooms in the Via Corta first with a deaf old signora named Colla, who, he learnt at the Three Stars Tavern in the street, had a passion for artists. But four days with this signora were sufficient and to spare. She was so deaf that she was useless to him. Her late husband had been a scene-painter at the Scala Theatre, and it was of this dear departed saint, and him only, that the afflicted old lady loved to prattle in whispers that were themselves alone hard to catch. She was, besides, a negligent old woman in household mat

ters, with an anchorite's tolerance of dust and dirt.

From the Signora Colla, Douglas transferred himself to the house of Cirilo Bassano, a cobbler. He made the acquaintance of the cobbler through the cobbler's daughter Maria, a young lady with Venetian blue eyes and a plait of coal-black hair to her head, thick and strong enough to draw a wagon.

On his second evening in the Via Corta he entered the cobbler's shop, discontented both with an abrupt burst in his left boot and the futility of the Signora Colla; and Maria Bassano stood before him in a galaxy of cheap gold gauds over her blue silk and lace-smiling a welcome, moreover, of the kind the young ladies of Italy are ever ready to offer to handsome masculine youth even at the first time of seeing. "At your service, signore!" she said blithely; and in ten minutes Douglas heard that not only would her father mend his boot, but that there was a delightful apartment upstairs which he sometimes let to strangers. "He is very particular, my father, you must understand," Maria explained, however, with an alluring dimple in her olive cheek. "I am his only child, it is necessary to tell you, signore, and, as your wisdom may perceive, of a marriageable age. Therefore”

He Ma

Her toss of the shoulders and little gesture with her pretty hand, also her coquettish laugh, which well became her, carried Douglas by storm. forgot the hapless exploded five. ria appealed to him as human material; a heart and face, and perhaps even mind, to study for his desk's purposes -appealed irresistibly.

"Do request your father," he begged her, "to come and talk it over. I cannot pay very much"-this was artful"but I am not at all satisfied with my present lodgings."

She asked him his nationality.

"English, truly?" she exclaimed. "Oh, then, perhaps, if you will wait a little moment. One is not disposed to be doubtful about an Englishman. In England every one is very honest and very rich; is it not so? My Marco, to whom I am affianced, cannot be expected to object to an Englishman. And without question, the signore has a spouse of his own in his own country?" All this with enchanting dimples coming and going on both cheeks, and electric flashes in Maria's blue eyes.

Douglas parried the little impertinence about a spouse. He said, with some solemnity, that he was in Milan for art's sake; also, with less solemnity, he congratulated the happy Marco on so desirable a sweetheart. And, solemn again, he informed the girl that he would regularly dine and sup out, so that there might be scant trouble with him on the premises. A room having a good light and a reasonable amount of service were all his requirements. He mentioned the weekly fifteen lire that he was to pay the Signora Colla.

That won the girl.

"Fifteen lire? What extortion!" she cried; and straightway she ran and called to her father.

It was soon settled.

Cirilo Bassano was a meek-and-mild cobbler with spectacles, and pink rims to his eyes under his spectacles. A man of premature wrinkles and nervous lips, with very few words indeed, and much in the hands of his daughter. Her arguments in Douglas's interest, set forth with flattering favor, scarcely seemed needed; and so that evening Signora Colla was indulged with an eternal farewell and a whole week's rent, and Douglas took possession of his new quarters. Maria herself drew his attention to the peep of the Castello in the Piazza d'Armi to be enjoyed from his window; also, to the various highly emblazoned saints on the walls

of his room. The coverlet to his bed was her own workmanship, about the time of her first communion. Andshe hoped he thought her much handsomer now than as she appeared in a certain full-length portrait on the toilet-table, taken eighteen months previously.

Thus prattling about herself and the furniture, she already seemed to Douglas quite precious human material. Her ingenuous-if ingenuous-gossip diverted him so much that he was late in seeking his supper. Yet when he went he carried with him a certain astonishment that cast his mind's energies back into the channel to which he had so lately consecrated them. He had referred almost casually to the affair Banti of seven weeks ago and asked her what she thought of it: and all at once she had clutched his arm and implored him, by his love of God, not to name those hororrs. With the brightness of her blue eyes all clouded as if by a storm-mist of fear, she had further conjured him never. never, never to say another word on that terrible subject either to her or her father.

"There are reasons, caro signore," she had whispered, with the scare still all over her. "Promise, always, to be silent about such calamities, whatever happens."

"Why, yes, naturally, I promise," he had responded, after hesitation.

And now, as he made his way to the Trattoria Bellini in the Via Broletto, he smiled at the absurdity of such a promise. Yet even while he smiled he marvelled why this blue-eyed little Milanese butterfly had been so profoundly moved. Reasons, forsooth! As if such reasons were to be nothing to him! Was her emotion due merely to the extreme sensibility of the Italian temperament and its unwillingness to contemplate the sad or horrible in life? Or had the Bassano family perchance

some blood-relationship with one of the victims?

He ate macaroni and Milanese cutlets and drank good Chianti wine, and was of course no wiser on this head when comfortably repleted. But he determined to be in no hurry to seek a third lodging in the Via Corta.

cess.

CHAPTER II.

Four other days passed, and Douglas was distressed to realize that he still knew no more about the secret history of the exploded five than the average man in Milan's streets. Other investigators were at work with more sucOn his third evening in the house of Bassano the cobbler he read an engrossing column on the subject in the Gazzetta of the day. Andrea Guisano's executors had found among his papers an unsigned letter conveying a distinct warning that something would happen to him if he persisted in refusing a certain demand for money. It was dated three days before his death, and he was given one day to decide his fate. The Gazzetta now boldly charged the Mafia with his murder. There were circumstances, also, connected with the second of the tragedies which seemed to point to similar influences; and the Gazzetta urged the authorities to do their utmost with this one very significant and unquestionable piece of evidence. The article was entitled "Barbarism in Excelsis," and was throughout a plain challenge to the Mafia to deny responsibility for the atrocities, if it dared.

Hitherto Douglas had, greatly against inclination, kept his promise to Maria Bassano about these horrors. He had found her very interesting in other respects. She had introduced him to her lover, Marco Merano, a somewhat simple-faced greengrocer of the Via S. Giuseppe, and also to a certain sleek but not simple-faced Count Enzio Masuccio; and his imagination had easily

seen substance for real drama in the giddy girl's partitioned friendship between two such men. On but very feeble encouragement he believed she would have admitted him as a third sharer in the affections of her too-large heart.

So far from bidding for this privilege, however, he had ventured to point out to her some of the dangers she was, in his opinion, confronting so gaily with the Count. She had told him that he loved her, and that it was an amusement to her.

"Signorino mio," she had said, "one is not young for ever, and why should the rich have the pick of the pleasures? All in good time I shall settle myself down with Marco; but before then I am free to enjoy the sunshine in my own way."

"You like to play with fire-is it not so?" he had asked, shaking his head, yet smiling as he thought of the miraculous luck by which Southern ladies do escape the shipwreck they seem to court.

"Why not?" she had responded, with ready laughter. "One need only warm one's hands at the flame, not scorch them."

"And your Marco-if he were to know?"

"Ah, but what prudence, caro signor!" she had exclaimed, with a reproving click of tongue to teeth, as if he were quite a baby in the ways of a world like hers. "Il Signor Conte has many pairs of boots in his wardrobe. Where there are so many, repairs are always necessary. My Marco does not know the gentleman, but my father is celebrated for his work. There is no more clever repairer of boots in this quarter of the city. You understand, signorino? Masuccio is but a customer like others. He pays me for my smiles, signor, even as he pays my father for his stitches. What would you have?"

Douglas had seen the Count twice in

these four days, the second time with a parcel in his hand. And he had liked his looks less the second time than the first. He had also summed up the simple Marco as a youth of spirit when roused, though his nose was a coarse, thick, snub thing, and his eyes were downright Italian, with immense eye; brows to them which suggested much latent power of action.

But this was all mere castle-building of a sort, and outside his own especial province. Now, with the Gazzetta before him, he rang his bell in the Via Corta, and in spite of his promise meant to show the news to Maria. rang again after a time. Perhaps a customer was keeping the girl.

He

And then, with a deferential murmur, the cobbler himself appeared from his workshop in the attic, with his leather apron on.

"Oh, never mind," said Douglas; "it is not so important. I will not disturb you, Signor Bassano."

"My daughter has gone to the church, signore," said the cobbler, pink-eyed as usual, and with a trembling lower lip. Douglas always felt sorry for the man, and his air as of one silently begging for mercy after judicial or other condemnation. He viewed him somewhat as a genius in his own humble way, whose nerves were ridiculously sacrificed to the task of maintaining his fame as an unrivalled mender of boots -a cobbler with ideals. Well, that was something, even though his constitution might be too weak for an easy pursuit of such excellence in the control of leather.

But in the act of dismissing the cobbler to his last he changed his mind.

"By the way, have you seen this. Signor Bassano?" he asked, pointing to the "Barbarism in Excelsis" column of the paper.

"Your goodness wishes me to read it?" questioned the cobbler, fumbling at his spectacles.

"Well, you might like to glance at it," said Douglas; and, rising. he went to his window and its finger's-breadth view of the Castello in the distance.

He lit a cigarette. A street-seller below sang "Beautiful sardines, fresh from the sea!" and proclaimed his beautiful sardines three times thus ere Douglas turned to look at his landlord. Instantly he saw that something was troubling the man. The cobbler's hands were shaking violently, and the paper between them, as if he and it had become palsied. His face was bent over the sheet, and his lower jaw had fallen so that Douglas could see the very positive ruin of his teeth far back. Then. before Douglas could utter a word, the paper slipped to the floor, and the cobbler pressed his palms to his head. "Mother of God!" he wailed, "protect me and my poor little house! Oh, my daughter! What misery! What mis'

He stopped abruptly, stared at Douglas with his pink-rimmed eyes, and almost regained his composure. "It is nothing, signorino," he whispered. "The signorino will graciously excuse me?" And, with a very humble bow, he sidled away and shut the door behind him.

Douglas heard his irregular footfalls on the staircase, then a shuffling and a thud. And then, hearing other sounds below, and supposing Maria had returned from her devotions, he opened the door and all but collided with a gray-bearded dwarf of a man no higher than his armpits, with large, close-laid ears that deepened the grotesque impression he made. "Oh!" Douglas exclaimed.

But with a curt gesture the little man passed him,

"I am of the family," he said gruffly, and went on up to the cobbler's den.

Feeling excited, he scarcely knew why, Douglas now took his hat and the paper and descended the stairs, this time to find Maria herself, prayer-book in hand, on the threshold of the house.