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The Eternal City, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 8. The King - Chapter 9 |
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_ PART EIGHT. THE KING CHAPTER IX There had been no light in the dining-room except the reflection from the lamp in the sitting-room, and now it fell with awful shadows on the whitening face turned upward on the couch. The pains of death had given a distorted expression, and the eyes remained open. Roma wished to close them, but dared not try, and the image of inanimate objects standing in the light was mirrored in their dull and glassy surface. The dog in the distance was still barking, and a company of tipsy revellers were passing through the piazza singing a drinking song with a laugh in it. When they were gone the clocks outside began to strike. It was one o'clock, and the hour seemed to dance over the city in single steps. Roma's terror became unbearable. Feeling herself to be a murderer, she acted on a murderer's impulse and prepared to fly. When she recalled the emotions with which she had determined to kill the Baron and then deliver herself up to justice, they seemed so remote that they might have existed only in a dream or belonged to another existence. Trembling from head to foot, and scarcely able to support herself, she fixed her hat and veil afresh, put on her coat, and, taking one last fearful look at the wide-open eyes on the couch, she went backwards to the door. She dared not turn round from a creeping fear that something might touch her on the shoulder. The door was open. No doubt Rossi had left it so, and she had not noticed the circumstance until now. She had got as far as the first landing when a poignant memory came to her--the memory of how she had first descended those stairs with Rossi, going side by side, and almost touching. The feeling that she had been fatal to the man since then nearly choked and blinded her, but it urged her on. If she remained until some one came, and the crime was discovered, what was she to say that would not incriminate her husband? Suddenly she became aware of sounds from below--the measured footsteps of soldiers. She knew who they were. They were the Carabineers, and they were coming for Rossi, who had escaped and was being pursued. Roma turned instantly, and with a noiseless step fled back to the door of the apartment, opened it with her latch-key, closed it silently, and bolted it on the inside. This was done before she knew what she was doing, and when she regained full possession of her faculties she was in the sitting-room, and the Carabineers were ringing at the electric bell. They rang repeatedly. Roma stood in the middle of the floor, listening and holding her breath. "Deuce take it!" said a voice outside. "Why doesn't the woman open the door if she doesn't want to get herself into trouble? She's at home, at all events." "So is he, if I know anything," said a second voice. "He drove here anyway--not a doubt about that." "Let's see the porter--he'll have another key." "The old fool is out at the illuminations. But listen...." (the door rattled as if some one was shaking it). "This door is fastened on the inside." There was a chuckling laugh, and then, "All right, boys! Down with it!" A moment afterwards the door was broken open and four Carabineers were in the dining-room. Roma awaited their irruption without a word. She continued to stand in the middle of the sitting-room looking straight before her. "Holy saints, what's this?" cried the voice she had heard first, and she knew that the Carabineers were bending over the body on the couch. "His Excellency!" "Lord save us!" Roma's head was dizzy, and something more was said which she did not follow. At the next moment the Carabineers had entered the sitting-room; she was standing face to face with them, and they were questioning her. "The Honourable Rossi is here, isn't he?" "No," she answered in a timid voice. "But he has been here, hasn't he?" "No," she answered more boldly. "Do you mean to say that the Honourable Rossi has not been here to-night?" "I do," she said, with exaggerated emphasis. The marshal of the Carabineers, who had been speaking, looked attentively at her for a moment, and then he called on his men to search the rooms. "What's this?" said the marshal, taking up a sealed letter from the bureau and reading the superscription: "L'on, Davide Rossi, Carceri Giudiziarie, di Milano." "That's a letter I wrote to my husband and haven't yet posted," said Roma. "But what's this?" cried a voice from the dining-room. "Presented to the Honourable David Rossi by the Italian colony in Zuerich." Roma sank into a seat. It was the revolver. She had forgotten it. "That's all right," said the marshal, with the same chuckle as before. Dizzy and almost blind in her terror, Roma struggled to her feet. "The revolver belongs to me," she said. "Mr. Rossi left it in my keeping when he went away two months ago, and since that time he has never touched it." "Then who fired the shot that killed his Excellency, Signora?" "_I_ did," said Roma. Instinctively the man removed his hat. Within half-an-hour Roma had repeated her statement at the Regina C[oe]li, and the Carabineers, to prevent a public scandal, had smuggled the body of the Baron, under the cover of night, to his office in the Palazzo Braschi, on the opposite side of the piazza. _ |
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