The Fourth Plague by Edgar Wallace Page B

on the stairs, his knees drawn up and his head bent low.
    â€œA pretty sentry! He’s asleep!” said the young man.
    Il Bue leant down, and grasped the man by the neck.
    â€œWake up, you dog,” he hissed. “Is this the way?”
    Then he stopped, for the head fell back jerkily, and a handle of a dagger protruding from his heart gave them a complete explanation of his silence.
    Yes! there he lay—this man, who had perjured himself clear of the scaffold in two countries—this jackal of a villainous confederacy—and the three men stared at him in amazement and horror.
    The former state only could be applied to the young man, who, without any pause, without any sign of emotion, continued buttoning his gloves.
    â€œThere is only one man who could have done that,” he said, thoughtfully, “and that man is Antonio Tillizini.”

VII. —THE GOLDEN ANTONIO
    â€œSIGNOR—FOR THE LOVE of Heaven!” The Strand was crowded with a matinee throng, and the idle folk which promenade that famous thoroughfare before the Easter holiday filled the sidewalks.
    To the man in a hurry the name of the loitering, sauntering pleasure-seekers was anathema. Frank Gallinford was that man in a hurry, for the 6.30 Burboro’ express waits for no man, and, though Charing Cross was in sight, there remained only two minutes to get through the crowd, into the station, and on to the platform.
    He cursed the idlers deeply and earnestly as he elbowed and pushed his way forward. To leave the pavement was to court disaster, for the roadway was blocked with traffic, and moreover an intelligent authority had had it dug up at its busiest portion and railed off to half its width for “repairs.”
    Frank Gallinford had stepped from the kerb into the roadway, and from the roadway on to the kerb again, dodging between the hawkers who vended their wares; he had sprung away from the wheels of devastating motor-cars, and buffeted stout and leisurely gentlemen in his effort to reach the station on time, but he seemed as far from his objective as ever.
    Then he suddenly felt his sleeve clutched and the words—
    â€œSignor, in the name of Mary!”
    They were gasped rather than spoken, and the language employed was Italian.
    Frank stopped and looked round with a bewildered frown. Who spoke to him in Italian in this most English Strand—and who knew that he was acquainted with the language?
    The man at his elbow was unquestionably Latin. His long, cadaverous face, covered with a week’s growth of beard, was working almost convulsively in his agitation. The big black eyes that stared at him from beneath two shaggy brows blazed as only Southern eyes can blaze.
    In a moment the Englishman’s anxiety to catch his train was forgotten. The soft accents which he knew so well, and loved so well, came to his ears like the first sigh of the breeze that ripples the Adriatic on summer nights. It stirred memories of a simple and charming peasantry, it brought visions of the marble palaces of the old Venetian nobility.
    â€œWell, my friend?” he asked, kindly.
    â€œI cannot speak to you here,” said the man, dropping his voice and speaking quickly. “You remember me, Signor?—Romano—I was your foreman on the harbour works at Cattaro.”
    Frank remembered, and his hand dropped in a friendly salute on the other’s shoulder.
    â€œRemember you, Miguelo mio!” he laughed, “why, however could I forget you! You were the man who swam out to me when I was seized with cramp—confound you, you saved my life!”
    A faint smile flickered across the lips of the little Italian, and then the look of anxiety came again.
    â€œFollow me,” he whispered, “this is urgent, you do not know, you cannot understand.”
    With no other word, he plunged into the throng, and Frank Gallinford, keeping him in sight, followed.
    Romano turned the first corner he reached. It was a