Ronald sat back with a sigh of relief. “It may be so, but you will respect my confidence? You will keep my secret?”
“For the sake of your father — and for yours,” he added, with an old-world bow, laying his hand on his heart. “But I must go. I must not tarry. I have a visit to pay.” He rose hastily, and took his stick — seeming to wish to terminate the interview. He fumbled in his wallet for coins, but Ronald begged to be allowed to pay the few liras for the wine, and olives which the other had steadily munched.
He held out his hand, with a sad old smile. “You will find me in the village — everyone knows my house. That is, if you come soon — I am very old.”
Ronald watched him hobble slowly down the path which joined the road round the little lake. The old woman stood at the door, her eyes shaded with her hand, till he had gone. Then she turned abruptly and went inside. She would not stay in the hot sun like this mad Englishman.
The filmy blue of the Italian sun had changed to a deeper hue, and a cool breeze had sprung up. Ronald had not moved from his seat, except to take a frugal meal which the old woman had provided in the clean, shady room within.
The words of the old priest rang in his ears, and drummed themselves into his brain.
A vision seemed to form itself in his mind and to take living shape: a vision of a lake similar to this, but larger and surrounded by sterner hills. Faintly he heard a chant of singers which in its icy horror held him spellbound. The dark forest beyond the lake was suddenly ablaze with light. Torches flashed in the dark, tossing hither and thither as the procession approached.
And then he saw Diana, and sprang forward.
“Hullo! Still here?” Smart’s cheery voice broke the spell. “Sorry to have been such a time — I’ve had a long search, but not altogether wasted time.”
“Tell me — We’d better go in; it’s getting chilly here.”
With the light of a lamp giving a comfortable radiance, and a pleasant meal before them, Ronald’s spirits rose. Smart was in high fettle.
“I went to the village of Nemi, and made enquiries. I won’t weary you with the whole story. Generally I drew blanks, but at last I learnt that a Greek woman came here many years ago, perhaps twenty-five — a most beautiful creature, but wild and ignorant of the ordinary ways of men. She had travelled far, and was in rags and half-starved when she arrived. She could only talk Greek, and — mark this — she was about to have a child. A very old woman told me. She took the woman in through kindness, and, to a certain extent, superstition. A child was born, a boy. It appears that the mother persuaded the old woman to take it. I believe she must have given her money or valuables; the Italian peasant does not do these things for kindness only. Anyhow, she left the child with her, and went away, saying she would return.”
“That child was Carstairs,” Ronald said with conviction.
“Undoubtedly. He told you he was born here. But what happened afterwards? I am certain the old woman knew more, but every attempt I made to get further information was met with that secretive look which not even money could break through. She had either been sworn to secrecy, by some fearful threat, or has her own reasons. But this place is full of old tales and legends, and it is impossible to find the truth.”
Ronald remained silent. Even to Smart he would not tell the story he had learnt. It touched Diana’s honour.
“Where did the woman come from?” he asked, hoping some link in the chain might have been forged.
“She only said that she had come over the mountains, from the north, and that she had travelled very far. That was all I could get out of my aged dame.”
“Well, to-morrow we must go back for the others, and determine our next move. It’s rather indefinite, isn’t it?”
“We’ve only just begun; don’t get despondent. I think we’ve made a fair start. Now to bed, eh?”
The little room where Ronald slept was small but spotlessly clean. He pushed the window wide open and looked out into the blue night. Restlessness was on him. What weird tragedy had come to that strange, beautiful, proud woman, Diana’s mother, herself a Diana, in this place, which she had haunted? Did the old priest know of the birth of the child? Surely he must have known. But if so, why had he kept if from him? He took off his coat, and flung it on the bed-rail. He was wearing only a flannel shirt and trousers, and lay down as he was. An uneasy sleep came to him at last, mixed with dreams — fleeting, terrible dreams. Half-awake, he fancied someone was moving quietly in his room. There was a creak of a board and the sound of a footfall. He deemed it part of his dreams. Then there came the unmistakable noise of a door silently opening. He sat up in bed. “Is that you, Smart?” he called.
There was no answer, and he turned over to seek sleep again.
How long he slept he had no notion, but when next he woke, he heard the sound of rapid talking. He recognised Smart’s voice in anger and another, which somehow sounded familiar. He sprang from bed and dashed the door open. A light was shining in Smart’s room, and he called to him. “Come here,” Smart answered, in a queer voice.
Ronald opened the door, and stood amazed. Seated on the bed was the trembling figure of Ganzani, his furtive beady eyes fixed on Smart, who was holding a revolver in his hand.
“Come in, Ronald — I can’t take my eyes off him. He’s a desperate brute. Came to rob us, I suppose, or perhaps a little experiment in the murder line. He looks a pretty ruffian.”
Ganzani had not improved in appearance; hair grew on his usually clean-shaven face and his clothes were coarse and dirty. Smart evidently had no idea of his identity.
“Caught him prowling round — I just woke in time,” he said. “The question is, what we are to do with him. Tie him up till the morning would be best.”
“How do you do, Signor Ganzani?” Ronald asked in a mocking tone.
The man shook his head.
“That won’t do, you know. I’ve heard you talk English — don’t start those monkey tricks.”
“Is this the Ganzani you told me about?” Smart asked, all interest at once.
“This is the ruffian. He’s wanted in England, and I expect here, too. You’d better answer properly.” He turned to the Italian. “There’s a good number of things I want to ask you. Now then, are you going to speak?”
The Italian maintained a dogged silence. He only glared at Ronald, his sallow face alive with a hate he could not conceal.
“Speak to him in his own lingo,” Ronald said, losing patience.
Smart nodded and addressed the Italian, who answered volubly enough. The conversation lasted for some minutes, Smart asking curt, short questions, and the other answering in long, rapidly- spoken sentences. Ronald could wait no longer. “What on earth is it all about?” he interrupted.
“He says he saw you in Rome and followed us here. He has something to tell you — to sell, I suppose. He came by night, he says, because the police are after him, and he has to be careful. He wants to get away from this country.”
“I have no doubt he does,” Ronald replied, eyeing the wretched man with disgust. “What is his story, anyway?”
Smart continued his examination at some length. When he had finished he turned to Ronald with a look of wonderment on his face.
“Either this fellow is the biggest liar I’ve ever met, or we’re in for an adventure as strange as anything I’ve ever read about in romances. Briefly, what he says is that he knows where Diana and Carstairs have gone. He was employed by Carstairs, who has thrown him over, and, like all his kind, is only too willing to sell his interests. He says that they have gone to some hidden valley in Bulgaria, among the hills, where a race of people still live who worship Diana. He does not know much about them, but seems scared out of his life at the very idea of going there. Carstairs told him to join them. He will tell us how to get there if we pay him. I expect he knows a good deal more, but if I ask, he will only lie. It seems a remarkable tale, as it is.”
“We can’t afford to let any clue, however
remote, slip us,” Ronald said, thinking of the priest’s story. He drew from his pocket a heavy wallet containing his money; he carried a large sum for emergencies.
“Luckily, I keep my money in my hip pocket, or I should probably have been robbed. I am sure he was in my room.”
A bargain was struck, after much haggling, and a sum of money passed over to Ganzani, though Ronald would rather have given him in charge.
In return, Ganzani produced a greasy map or plan roughly drawn on a piece of paper which had once been white, but was stained with damp and dirt. It was a sketch of the Rhodope Mountains, the wild range which used to separate Bulgaria from Macedonia in the old days, the scene of bloody doings under the Turkish régime, for here the Bulgarians gathered when their homes had been burnt and their women-folk violated or carried off, and formed those bands of Comitadji which have ever since been the terror and menace of these regions, and even now on the borders of Greece and Jugo-Slavia cause ceaseless anxiety.
A pencil-line indicated the route, but stopped abruptly at a point in the mountains without further mark or sign. Smart explained: “He says we are to follow that path as shown, to the point where it ends, and beyond that he has only verbal directions, as Carstairs would not write anything further. How to proceed is a matter of conjecture.”
Suspicion of the fantastic story came to Ronald.
“But surely,” he said, “it’s impossible in these days, when every place in the world has been explored. One could believe such a story of Central America or Africa, but in the heart of Europe — how could such a thing happen?”
“I have asked him that. He says that the people — the lost race — have for centuries bribed the Bulgarians to guard them. And that the place is nearly inaccessible. It is impossible to find it without knowing the way.”
“We’d better get some sleep and think things out in the morning. What about Ganzani?” Ronald remarked drowsily.
“He will stay here, he says. We’d better lock him up, for safety.”
After many protestations of loyalty and objections to being locked up, Ganzani was conducted to a shed at the back of the house used for storing wood, and the key was turned on him. A blanket spread over some hay formed his bed.
Ronald returned to his room, but not to sleep. He lay thinking till the dawn broke.
A brisk walk to the lake and a swim restored him to activity, and he climbed the path in a more hopeful frame of mind. He paused to look back at the lake, over which a thin, gauzy vapour like a bride’s veil hung in the cool morning air, and watched the fleecy clouds lazily moving over the steel-blue of the sky, and casting their shadows on the water and the dark woods beyond. Then he turned into his room, and put on his coat, a rough tweed shooting coat he had brought with him. The next moment he tore the coat off, with an oath, and turned it inside out. The lining had been ripped up and the packet which he had carefully sewn in, containing the sprig of mistletoe which Sinclair had given him, was gone!
He rushed from the room and met Smart in the passage.
The latter was hurrying to him. “Damn! That cursed Italian has slipped it,” he said. “I went to the hut. He’s broken the lock and gone. Hell! We ought to have kept him with us.”
“We’re both fools,” Ronald said bitterly. “When he came into my room last night he stole the packet Sinclair gave me. I never thought of looking. How on earth did he guess it was there?”
“We never ought to have let him have that money,” Smart said, cursing himself.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Ronald replied wearily. “I expect it’s all a pack of lies.”
A small Italian boy tapped at the door, and took off his cap politely. “For the signor,” he said, and handed a note to Ronald, who seized it eagerly, and tore it open. It was written in a small crabbed foreign handwriting, and read as follows:
“It might be of interest to the Signor to know the purpose for which the Greek whom I called Apollo came to Nemi. He came to gather acorns.”
That was all.
Ronald handed the note to Smart, who read it with a perplexed look.
“We must go to Rome and see the others — then we can decide,” Ronald said firmly. “Four minds are better than two.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IN THE MOUNTAINS
“My suggestion is this,” Ronald said, as they sat at a table in the Piazza del Popolo, listening to the band. “You two had better go back to England — we can’t take you on a wild-goose chase — and you must see Simpson and find out whether anything has been heard from Sinclair. If nothing is reported from us for a month, put the whole story before the Foreign Office, and ask advice. Smart and I are going to test the truth of it. After all, we are in the twentieth century and in Europe, not Central Africa.”
Ralph smiled broadly. “Not much, old buck! No, you don’t. We’re just getting to the exciting part, and you want to cut me out. No. Doris better clear off — it’s no expedition for a girl — but we are off after our friend Carstairs. It’s a great stunt; I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Besides, we’ll go by car, and I’ll drive. Do me a pot of good and all — ”
“I’m coming too; don’t argue about it. So there!” Doris declared, her mouth set firmly. “If Diana is in any danger, she will want a woman’s help. Besides, I’ve got more sense than you men. Fancy letting Ganzani get away, and steal your packet! We ought to have gone with them, Ralph.”
“It’s no place for a woman,” Smart began, but Doris cut him short. “Don’t waste time arguing. I’m coming — that’s settled. Now, about plans. You better write to Dr. Simpson and tell him what you have arranged. That’s a good suggestion.”
These two seemed to have completely taken charge of the expedition. They had not so much at stake as Ronald, and anxious as they were about Diana, to them it was a wild and amusing adventure.
Ronald felt a hopeless feeling that fate was driving them on, and they must go blindly, trusting in luck; but in his heart he wished he had carried out Sinclair’s instructions and waited.
The journey through Italy was just a jolly holiday. Ralph and his sister would have stopped at every place on the way, but Ronald urged them on. He had taken the trouble to do some careful reading when in Rome, unknown to the others, and had learnt one fact which somehow disturbed him strangely. The festivities in connection with the worship of Diana used to be held at the hottest part of the year, in August. Diana’s abduction — as he still regarded it — had taken place in November, but the beginning of all their troubles had started last spring.
There would have been time to have got her to the unknown place, if such existed, for August last year. Had the plans of these mysterious people miscarried, or been frustrated? If so, they had lost a year. For there was growing in his mind the idea that in some queer fashion Diana and her mother were mixed up with the cult which once had been practised in the dim past at the Lake of Nemi, and in the sacred grove. The curious “receipt” which Sinclair had taken; the hints he had let out of some coming trial for himself; and the story of the old priest, all pointed one way. Why had the man whom the priest had called Apollo, the god-like person, come to Nemi — for acorns? There was one solution only. The sacred oak, round which the worship of Diana circled, was dying, or in danger of doing so. New oaks were necessary to carry on the worship and only from the grove of Nemi could they be obtained.
In truth, the story had sunk deeper into his mind than he cared to admit. To the others it was a myth — a legend; but from his earliest years his father had taught him Greek, and Greek mythology. Why? Was it because he was a Greek scholar himself, or had some instinct led him to make his son conversant with this old dead language?
A month had passed — a time of toilsome travelling from Sophia, the unattractive modern capital of Bulgaria, whither they had arrived in comfort by the Orient Express. They had decided at once to abandon any idea of a car for the journey beyond, and had hired two strong open droskis drawn by two stout horses apiece, and a villa
inous ex-sergeant of the Bulgarian Army in charge. Radko Savanoff was his poetic name. He used a long whip with discretion on the horses, and without stint on the villagers who happened to get in the way of the carriages.
There were two Bulgars to each carriage, one mounted and one driving, and they carried rifles slung across their backs and bandoliers over their chests. Their costume was a mixture of a military uniform and the native dress, and the inevitable cloak with the bashlik to pull over the head in the biting wind.
The Bulgars were silent, as is their custom, silent in speech and movement. Their soleless boots, formed of onç piece of leather sewn up the front, made no noise. Only at night, when they lit a fire and sat round it, drinking coffee, they would talk in low tones.
Radko spoke a little bastard Greek, as used in the Levant, mixed with Bulgarian and a snatch of French, of which he was proud. In this strange dialect Ronald managed to hold converse with him. They had agreed that the escort should accompany them on their journey. The British Consul at Sophia had made a point of this. He regarded the whole expedition as ridiculous, though they had only told him it was for sport.
“Up in those mountains there is no telling what may happen. Every cut-throat in the land gathers there,” he had warned them.
Now they had arrived at the spurs of the mountains, and the carriages were of no further use.
Ronald sought Radko, with whom he had struck up a queer friendship. His tall, athletic figure and strength appealed to the Bulgars, who are as a rule short and squat, with square shoulders and short legs.
“The carriages can go no further,” he told Ronald.
“We must ride.”
So it was arranged. They mounted their horses, and two of the escort took turns to walk, which they could manage easily, since the horses would only proceed at a walking pace. An ample supply of food-stuffs was packed in the saddle-bags, and a scanty amount of ammunition for guns and revolvers.
The Yellow Mistletoe Page 13