CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

      The Café of the Shining Star could have existed nowhere but in Rome, and nowhere in Rome but in that deserted Plaza Vittoria, with its strange little pool of subdued lights. Its decorations were black, its furniture dingy but reminiscent of past magnificence. A broad staircase ascended from the middle of the sparsely occupied restaurant and from the pillars supporting it were suspended two lights enclosed in antique lanterns. As Fawley entered, a weary-looking maître d’hôtel came forward, bowed and without wasting words pointed to the stairs.

      Madame, the patrona, from behind a small counter where, with her head supported between her hands, she studied the pages of her ledger, also glanced up and, with a welcoming smile, pointed upwards. Fawley mounted the stairs to a room in which barely a dozen people were seated at small tables—people of a class which for the moment he found it difficult to place. At the farther end of the room, at a table encircled by a ponderous screen, he found the Princess. A dour-looking woman standing patiently by her side fell back on his arrival.

      “Sit down if you please, Major Fawley,” Elida begged him. “I have ordered wine. You see it here. Drink a glass of it or not, as you please. It is very famous—it has been in the cellars of this café for more years than I have lived—or perhaps you.”

      Fawley obeyed her gestured invitation, seated himself opposite to her and poured out two glasses of the clear amber wine. She laughed a toast across at him.

      “You come in a good humour, I trust,” she said. “You know at least that I am not an ordinary assassin. Perhaps I am sorry already that I raised my hand against my relation-in-law. He is on the point, I fear, of making a great mistake, but to kill—well—perhaps I was wrong.”

      “I am very glad to hear you say so,” Fawley murmured.

      “You have brought the slipper?”

      “I have brought the slipper,” he acknowledged. “It has, in fact, never left my possession.”

      “You will give it to me?” she exclaimed, holding out her hand.

      “Yes, I will give it to you,” Fawley assented.

      The tips of her fingers tapped hard against the tablecloth.

      “I cannot wait,” she prayed. “Give it to me now.”

      “There are terms,” Fawley warned her.

      Disappointment shone in her eyes. Her lips quivered. For a moment his attention wandered. He was thinking that her mouth was the most exquisite thing he had ever seen. He was wondering—

      “Do not keep me in suspense, please,” she begged. “What terms do you speak of?”

      “You will not find them difficult,” he assured her, “especially as you have confessed just now that you are not an assassin at heart. Listen to my proposition.”

      “Proposition,” she sighed, her eyes once more dancing. “I am intrigued. Will you commence? I am all eagerness.”

      “Fold your hands in front of your bosom and swear to me that you will not repeat this afternoon’s adventure and you shall have your slipper.”

      She held out her hands.

      “Please place them exactly as you desire.”

      Fawley crossed them. Like white flowers they were—soft and fragrant, with nails showing faintly pink underneath but innocent of any disfiguring stain of colour. She repeated after him the few words which form the sacred oath of the Roman woman. When she had finished, she treated him to a little grimace.

      “You are too clever, my chivalrous captor,” she complained. “Fancy your being able to play the priest. And now, please, the slipper.”

      Fawley drew it from his pocket and laid it upon the table. The exquisite paste buckle with the strangely set crown flamed out its brilliant colouring into the room.

      “You regret the buckle?” she asked. “It is very beautiful and very valuable. It is quite authentic too. There is Medici blood in my veins. That, I suppose, is why I have the impulse to kill!”

      A single lamp stood upon the table, with a worn shade of rose-coloured silk. Except for its rather fantastic and very dim illumination, they sat amongst the shadows. Her hand touched his, which still rested upon the slipper.

      “You will give it to me?” she whispered.

      “I shall give it to you,” Fawley agreed, “but please do not think that the buckle or even the fact that you have worn it are the only things I have found precious.”

      “What do you mean?” she asked fearfully.

      Fawley lifted the delicate inner sole of the slipper and looked up. Their eyes met across the table. She was breathing quickly.

      “You have read it?” she gasped.

      “Naturally.”

      “You are keeping it?”

      “On the contrary, I am returning it to you.”

      A wave of relief drove the tension from her face. She seemed for the moment speechless. The paper which he handed across the table found its way almost mechanically into the jewelled handbag by her side.

      “At the same time,” he went on gravely, “you must not hope for too much. I am in the service of Berati. I must tell him what I found in the slipper of the woman who tried to kill him.”

      “You will tell him who it was?”

      “I think that I am wrong, but that I propose to forget,” he told her. “You have probably made many men forget themselves in your brief years, Princess. You will make many more. What I read, I shall communicate to Berati. The source of my information I shall keep to myself. Take the slipper.”

      Her hands were drawing it off the table but, as though by accident, they passed over Fawley’s and he felt their shivering warmth. There was a softer light in her eyes than he had ever seen.

      “Princess—Elida—” he whispered.

      She leaned towards him but Fawley swung suddenly around in his chair. Patoni, stark and sinister, was standing by the side of the screen, looking in. His smile was one of composed malevolence.

      “I beg a thousand pardons,” he apologised, with a stiff little bow. “I am here on a mission of great importance.”

      Fawley rose to his feet. He was as tall as Patoni and at that moment his face was as hard and set.

      “It is part of your Italian manners,” he asked, “to play the spy in this way?”

      “I have offered you my apologies,” was the cold retort. “A quarrel between us is not possible, Major Fawley. I am still of the Church and I do not fight duels. I am compelled to ask you to accompany me without a moment’s delay to the Generalissimo.”

      “The Princess—” Fawley began.

      “Has her duenna,” Patoni interrupted.

      Elida leaned forward and suddenly clasped