The Fifth Ace and Fenella

by Joseph Hergesheimer

THE FIFTH ACE AND FENELLA

By JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER

HEATH GANNON, familiarly known to the members of his very special profession as the Fifth Ace, rose from his seat in the little public park for the performance of an unpleasant task. Before him lay an irregular, stone-lipped pond, and Gannon's task was to see how far he could walk about the water without having to seek a bench. The distance he was able to cover had steadily grown shorter. When he had first come to Florence he would have been unconscious of it as a distance at all; then he had been only mildly disturbed by the inability to sleep through the night or so previous, following a slow-gathering exhibition of nerves; but in the week that had ensued his sleeplessness had grown serious, then grave. Now he realized clearly and with increasing indifference that it was killing him.

He had found La Vasca, the pond under the blackened walls of the Fortezza Basso, by chance while driving through the city in a vain endeavor to leave behind him the dark specter of a growing dread. The park was so withdrawn from the stir of the Tornabuoni, so free from the unexpected noises that set his tense nerves shuddering, that, as he had grown worse, he had returned again and again to sit on the deserted benches and measure his flagging vitality. He started forward quite sharply, determined to reach at least the sixth bench from where he stood—but at the second his knees were shaking; at the third the pavement seemed to rock under his feet; and at the fourth he sank down and clutched the iron arm, with a feeling that the world was dropping away from him and that his limbs had become dust.

Four benches! He had lost twenty feet in two days. He sat clinging with emaciated hands to his resting place until the giddiness receded; then signaled with his stick for his cabman. The latter with burly sympathy assisted Heath Gannon into the low, open vehicle and then drove slowly and carefully toward the center of the city.

Gannon wondered, curiously impersonal, how much longer he would last. Perhaps two weeks! He had given up all hope, all thought of sleep. The doctors he had seen, after trying less desperate courses had one and all arrived at the prescription of opiates and the advice to move into the rarer air of Switzerland—or, as he had cynically expressed it, to "die somewhere else."

The cab crawled about a large, depressing square covered with gray pebbles, over which skittered the sere autumnal leaves. A clangoring yellow tram ran along one side and disappeared in an ancient stone way. The monotonous, rectangular façade, gray like the pebbles and sky, held the echo for a moment; and then only the plodding progress of the horse was audible. The silence in the square was so unbroken that Heath Gannon heard distinctly the period suddenly pronounced by a man standing on a box above the pavement a considerable distance away.

His illness had robbed him of all interest, all curiosity, in exterior objects or happenings; and it was with total indifference that he heard the statement made with extraordinary vehemence, in English—or, rather, in American:

"Hasten; for Rome and Constantinople are crying with a great cry for the universal panacea of Zwillerism."

The cab drew opposite the orator, and its driver, fascinated by the unusual spectacle, stopped his complacent horse. The speaker was a tall, heavy man in a funereal frock coat, with a black felt hat in his thick hand. He had a smooth, pallid countenance, small, deeply pouched eyes, and a wide, facile mouth. As he spoke he made suave, inviting gestures; his voice ran with surprising ease over the entire gamut of sentimental appeal—it sank to a heartfelt sob of supplication and rose to a clarion trumpeting toward surprising and glorious consummations.

Its English—or, rather, American—was interpolated with Italian phrases of the most astonishing license of form and pronunciation; and its entire tenor was an amplification of the first statement.

"The ellipse," he declared, "is the only figure that contains within itself the immortal truths. Every soul is an ellipse, but imperfect until completed by Zwillerism. You, my little ellipses, heirs to the flawless oval, may now, in grasping my hand, approach the final form."

His "little ellipses" were a stolid hotel porter, in a linen blouse; a guarda civile, in a cocked hat and sword, hovering at the point of an official diversion and suppression; a fat nurse, in appalling flutings of white, with a broad pink streamer; a second identical, with blue; a man, obviously German, with an uncovered head like the cylinder of a music box; and Heath Gannon and the driver in the low conveyance—the former gaunt and white, with eyes that seemed to have retreated far into his skull.

The orator would have been a commonplace in the rural cities of the United States; but dedicated to the newborn cult of the perfected ellipse in the ancient convention of the Piazza Indipendenza of Florence, the speaker was unique to a degree that pierced even Heath Gannon's leaden consciousness.

As he dully surveyed the scene he recognized that the missioner was not alone; by the side of the box, seated on an unfolded camp chair, was a large woman in gray silk, with a diminutive bonnet secured above a broad and complacent countenance, and elastic-sided boots. Nor, Gannon saw, was that all. As the address was obviously drawing to a close a strikingly pretty girl in a yellow dress with a floating, flowerlike skirt was taking from a large beaded reticule a handful of paper tracts.

She moved with a buoyant grace to the guarda civile and presented him with three booklets, differently colored; next she addressed the German, who received the tracts with a clicking of heels and a formal bow. She approached Heath Gannon by way of the nursemaids, and he saw that she had intensely black hair, cut in a straight bang across her brow, eyes the color of cornflowers, and a pale, delicate mouth and determined chin. She said:

"Won't you take these home and read them?" And she held out the tracts. A pink one was called, Lemuel Zwiller, the Man. An orange, A Diagram of the True Ellipse; or Zwillerism Explicated. And a gray, Drops of Dew from Zwiller's Discourses.

"Thank you," Heath Gannon acknowledged in his spent voice. An instant pity marked the girl's mobile face.

"You must be dreadfully ill," she added. "And you're American too. You won't care for those tracts—wait, I think I have another: Nearing the Shore With Lemuel Zwiller." She gravely searched through the sheaf in her hand, but in vain.

"Don't bother," he told her grimly. "I shall have all the information necessary in a short while."

If the orator was extraordinary in the Piazza Indipendenza, the girl would have been strange, distributing tracts, in any corner of the globe. Her dress, Gannon knew, was beautifully made and of most expensive texture; her hat patently had bloomed in the Rue de la Paix; her feet, in the flimsiest high-heeled kid imaginable, were like little white butterflies; and, finally, on a slim finger hung two loops of the most gorgeous sapphires he had ever seen.

"It can't be that bad," she protested, shocked at the coldness of his tone. "Anyway, you oughtn't to be alone.… It's frightfully depressing. What can your friends or family be about?"

"They're not about; that is, they don't exist."

"But they must! Even if all your family are dead there should be other—friends. Everybody has them."

"Not among——" He stopped abruptly. Then he added: "It's a good job I have neither; they'd fuss and try to take me to Switzerland."

She was about to reply to this, when the lush voice of the orator called:

"Fenella! Your grandmamma is ready to depart."

Heath Gannon thought he could distinguish on the girl's countenance the faintest trace of what might have been called "a nose."

"I have to go," she informed him; "we have a second meeting in the Torrigiani Gardens before dinner. We are dreadfully busy—three to-morrow; the last in the Piazza Signoria at five. It might do you good to attend."

"Fenella!" the apostle of the ellipse called once more.

He assisted the woman in gray silk into the victoria and then stood waiting for the girl. The latter turned with an airy sweep of her scalloped skirt, and Heath Gannon's driver once more urged his horse forward.

I

THE Hotel d'Albion, where Gannon was stopping, overlooked the sluggish, yellow stream of the Arno, and, long past midnight, he stood leaning on the broad stone parapet above the river. It flowed silent and dark in the night, beneath its bridges, through its masoned course, bearing a dim reflection of the lights strung along the Lungarno. An iron bell tolled from across the city, the cracked bell of San Marco responded; and, from the hill beyond the river, the bell of San Miniato jarred in its tower.

The moment was inexpressibly depressing; but it was no darker, no more discordant with its dull sounds, than Heath Gannon's mind. In retrospect all the succeeding stages of his existence, robbed of their stir and color, appeared to have led grayly to the empty present—to this black river moving like a stream of death in its immemorial stones; to perpetual night. The future was equally without light or incentive. Death itself was unremarkable—what followed after life could not be more sterile than the actual hours of his living. A physical numbness fell fleetingly over him, a mocking mirage of sleep; but his mind, as ever, was filled with brilliant, febrile visions. He saw the unctuous form of the orator towering above the lantern of the cathedral; the girl with the tracts whirling like a yellow comet about his feet and followed by a pink and orange avalanche of booklets.

He stood until the dawn lightened drearily on the stone walls and crawling, thick water; and then entered the hotel. In his room, with infinite, painful labor, he shaved and put on fresh linen. It took him an hour to get the links in his cuffs and fold his necktie in place. Then he sat, again waiting, with wet palms, for a decent hour at which to appear in the breakfast room.

He had a supreme indifference for the conventions, the appropriate details of dress, for the decency of cleanness itself; but he observed them all with a mechanical exactness. It was a sort of game he contemptuously played with the forces without, the forces that were dragging him down to dissolution—the last trace of an old, high bravado.

After breakfast he even purchased a waxen camellia from the flower vender at the abutment of the Ponte San Trinita and, with shaking fingers, drew it through his buttonhole.

At ten he drove slowly by the river to the Cascine, where he left the conveyance for a bench facing the broad driveway and bridle path beyond. An officer in a light blue tunic, followed by his orderly, cantered over the path; then a woman in bottle green passed on a tall English thoroughbred; and, in turn, a short, thickset man, with a crimson face and white, spiked mustache, on a sleek cob.

The last saw Heath Gannon and, wheeling, crossed the drive to the bench.

"Didn't know you were within a thousand miles!" he said in a bluff, insular voice. "Delighted! But you have been through a mill, from your face."

"Insomnia," Gannon pronounced shortly.

"That's hardly a disease in our trade," the other added.

Heath Gannon cynically noted the interest fade from the face before him as the man on the horse recognized his condition. "He's afraid I'll want assistance," he thought.

"I was in Paris a while," the other continued; "but the races get it all there. Then I came to Florence and opened up with a sport named Spinelli. He's the real thing, with a palace on the Via Cavour—number twenty-nine. We have a salon on the second floor. Drop in; it's as safe as a church no one admitted but the bloods.… Glad I saw you!" he saluted with his crop and lifted the cob into a canter across the drive to the tanbark.

Lassitude settled over Heath Gannon; his arms felt like lead; his eyes were closed, but behind the lids the cruelly vivid, confused pictures formed and dissolved endlessly. At last he stirred his driver from facile slumber and returned to the Hotel d'Albion.

The hours dragged interminably; the sun seemed fixed in the middle of the sky; people came and went, filled with inexplicable energy, bound on insane errands. Later he drove again, without objective. The thought of the pool, La Vasca, now repelled him—he wished to avoid the measure of his waning vitality. As he progressed through the narrow, somber ways the vaguely insistent thought of the Piazza della Signoria brought back the memory of the speaker and the girl with the sapphires, distributing tracts. She had said they would hold a meeting on the Piazza at five o'clock, suggesting his attendance.

He had not intended to do this; but, because his mind was empty of all else, the mere recurrence of the thought drove him to the voicing of a direction, and soon after they emerged on the paved, irregular place. There were the usual streaming local throng and the eddies of tourists; and he had crossed the square before he saw the prophet of a geometrical perfection on his familiar box, over against the grim façade of the Palazzo Vecchio. Seated on her unfolded chair, the large, placid woman added her impressive bulk; while a flutter of white among the curious half circle about them developed, on approaching, into the girl.

She recognized Heath Gannon immediately and made her way, distributing tracts, to his carriage. She was dressed to-day in webby white, with a broad blue girdle and a flapping lace hat; while her bare, slender throat was circled by a necklace of diamonds and platinum.

"I wondered whether you'd come," she greeted him. "I hoped you would be well enough. We were 'moved on' at our second meeting; it was horribly embarrassing. I'm frightfully tired! Could I sit a moment in your carriage? Thanks." She settled at his side, spilling the tracts on the floor. "They come off," she explained, exhibiting palms stained by the crude coloring of the paper. Her densely black hair, cut across her eyebrows, gave her eyes an astonishing blueness; her mouth, like pale coral, was serious, as befitted the young.

"Is the champion of the flawless oval your parent?" he asked out of his profound indifference.

"He is not!" she retorted with spirit. "That's the Reverend Lemuel Zwiller, and I'm Fenella Lovel; but that's grandmother sitting beside him. She brought the Reverend Lemuel from America to proclaim Zwillerism 'from steppe to tundra.' My father was a portrait painter; there was a sickening row when mother married him.… Now both poor darlings are dead."

"And the mission—is it progressing?"

"Not too well," she confessed. "You see, so many of them here speak Italian."

"You might have reasonably expected that."

"We did think of it, of course; but, in Mount Vernon, the Reverend Lemuel knew a lot of Italian—he said it was just like Latin—yet here he seems to have forgotten it. It's the dialect, he told grandmother; in a week more he'll understand it perfectly. Are you really dreadfully ill?" she queried. "And what do you do?"

"I can't sleep," he said once more. Then he added: "I am a gambler."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, her eyes opening to their bluest extent. "That's as wicked as wicked!" She drew away from him, at the point of a hurried retreat from the carriage; but her curiosity rose above her prudent scruples. "You don't look a bit like you should," she told him; "you're so—so youngish; and you haven't a dyed mustache."

"That sort disappeared with the Mississippi steam packets," he explained.

"You'd be terribly presentable if you weren't so ill. And a gambler——"

"Called the Fifth Ace."

"I suppose you have it up your sleeve."

"No," he replied; "I was named that on account of good luck. It's rather a joke with the men who know me; I'm quite honest. You see, I gamble because I like it; I like to take a chance—the longer, the better; and there's no chance, no excitement, if you stack the game."

"It doesn't sound so wicked when you've explained it," she told him seriously, "but just human."

The broad, expressionless face of the orator appeared suddenly over the side of the carriage.

"Fenella," he said solemnly, "you are aware that, though it is necessary for you to mingle with the throng in the cause, your grandmamma desires you to hold no protracted converse with strangers. Brother!" He saluted Heath Gannon. "A fellow countryman, I perceive. I insinuate nothing; it is necessary to exercise precautions with young ladies in this iniquitous bourne. The horsemen in light blue are a froward lot. Their ellipses are shattered."

Fenella Lovel descended from the carriage.

"Mr. Gannon is interested in your work," she pronounced calmly. "He is coming to the meeting at the Pitti to-morrow afternoon."

It was evident to Gannon that the Reverend Lemuel regarded the girl's statements without enthusiasm. The other gazed at him with a narrowed, suddenly shrewd attention, in which any sentimental fervor was noticeable by its complete absence. Nevertheless he pronounced, with appropriate unction:

"We are happy to think that we are heard.… To the best of our present knowledge we shall speak before the Pitti Palace to-morrow; but our plans are oft necessarily changed—there is some talk of an indoor meeting in another part of the city."

He made the final purpose of his words baldly apparent to Heath Gannon. A wave of insuperable weariness swept over the latter. To-morrow, utterly featureless and undesirable, seemed buried in a future century, eons distant.

Fennella Lovel said sweetly:

"Mr. Gannon can always find us at the Via San Gallo—ten."

"Come, Fenella," the Reverend Lemuel insisted; "your grandmamma will severely reprehend your indiscretions."

II

HEATH GANNON thought of the girl again that night. He was driving through the leafy gloom of the Cascine; the moon hung full and cold above the city, casting a rich, inky pattern about Gannon, through which grotesque and obscurely threatening forms swam before his vision.

Among them Fenella Lovel appeared, natural and crisply delicate and young. The normality of her colorful presence in the distorted company of his sick thoughts brought him a new relief.

A faint activity of rebellion against the empty, dark hours directed his thoughts to the bluff figure he had met that morning, to the place the other had opened in the Via Cavour. It was past midnight and the movement there would now be at the full. In the act of voicing a direction the pall of lassitude, of negation, once more enveloped him, and he sank back in the seat; but his lips mechanically formed his intent. The cabman stirred his horse out of a shuffling walk.

They clattered over the empty Lungarno and, turning aside, crossed the moon-flooded place of Santa Maria Novella, by the stark black and white of its church, finally reaching the shuttered stillness of the Via Cavour. Gannon descended and pulled at a rusted bell wire in a great, iron-bound door that showed not a glimmer of light. There was an audible sliding of bolts and a section of the door, large enough to admit a man, opened. He entered the court within: it was marble-paved and dark, save for a warm blur on the porter's lodge and illuminated windows higher on the smooth wall.

He gave his card to the porter, who retreated and held a short conversation by telephone. Then Gannon mounted a staircase that rose through a square shaft to a second landing. He was forced to rest for a space, giddy and exhausted; then he knocked on the door before him.

The room into which he was admitted, paved in red tiles, was of regal size, with bare, frescoed walls and ceiling. The corners were lost in gloom; but, isolated on a carpet on the great floor, a green-covered table was brightly illuminated and surrounded by people. The proprietor, faultlessly dressed, his face purple above his linen, advanced to meet Heath Gannon.

"Evening!" he shot out, briefly cordial. "Will you play? There is a large bank."

"Nothing noticeably," Gannon replied, unfolding two one-hundred-lire notes. "A trifle for the house."

The other sharply called, "Changeur!" and a man in a blue uniform with silver buttons responded, giving Heath Gannon a small pile of ornamental chips in exchange for the notes.

The latter approached the table. The bank, he saw, was held by a man with a square, gaunt countenance, seamed by long, diagonal scars, and pale, thin hair. Opposite, the croupier, a suave Italian with a mustache like a charcoal line, was dexterously raking in the stakes. The five places allotted for players on each side were filled, and Gannon stood resting on a chair that held a freshly pink English youth with a sprig of verbena in his buttonhole and notable pearl studs. He turned and rose with frank and pleasant courtesy.

"Take my place," he urged; "you look pretty well done. I'm stopping, really—down to my last guinea."

Heath Gannon's seat was beside the banker. On his right sat a man with a finely modeled face, the color of dull yellow wax, a small, carefully tended beard and mustache, and black eyes without a glint of light or kindling of feeling. He wore black gloves and gambled with gold. With him was a slender woman in a medieval gown, with ornaments of heavy carved silver, and a still face as intense as a white flame. Beyond sat a middle-aged Italian, parsimoniously playing small amounts; and then a stolid woman, smoking a formidable cigar. At the other end of the table were two Russians, their coats hung with orders, gambling wildly; a dark youth with platinum bracelets, and an attendant at his side with a leather case of bank notes; and two scented and laced officers.

Gannon divided his chips into three piles and pushed one over the line on the table into play. The cards were dealt—four to each end of the table, four to the banker—and the play made.

The bank won and the agile rake of the croupier gathered the various stakes. The game progressed with subdued murmurs, the clipped speech of the banker, the clicking of chips and the ring of gold; a constant stream of counters and money eddied over the green cloth.

Heath Gannon brought a short good fortune to the players at his side—they won repeatedly. The bank was exhausted, put up for sale, and bought again by the man with the square, gaunt countenance. The latter slowly retrieved his losses. Gannon played without the least interest or response. The element of chance, so compelling in the past, left him completely cold; he was totally indifferent to the cards that were faced, to the loss or gain of his stake.

The thing seemed to him unbearably burdensome, pointless; the covetous or satiated faces of the players unreal; the motive of their deep concentration inexplicable. It was incredible to Heath Gannon that he had ever played baccarat from choice, from desire; that the passion for gambling had ever formed and controlled his living. He staked all his chips at once, lost, and rose from the table. He was suddenly so weary that he could scarcely reach the door; and, descending the stair, he was forced to rest against the wall again and again. Once a black veil swept across his vision.… "Death!" he thought. But he finally made his way to his waiting cab.

He seemed but the shell of a man, from which all feeling, all hope and all desire had departed. The air, musty with countless dead generations, folded him like a shroud. Then he had a fleet vision of Fenella Lovel's countenance, as serene and high as a moon above his pit of darkness.… He should never see her again!

III

BUT he was wrong. On the afternoon following, driving past the vast corner of the Strozzi Palace into the Tornabuoni, he saw a bright young figure suddenly stand and wave in Doney's window; and Fenella Lovel came out.

"Please!" she urged. "Tea and cakes. It will do you worlds of good; and I want to talk to you seriously. I was dreadfully afraid you'd leave, or something, and I shouldn't see you again. Grandmother is in bed with sciatica, there's no meeting this afternoon, and the Reverend Lemuel disappeared directly after lunch—thank heaven!"

He sat opposite her at one of the marble-topped tables within, while she ordered fresh tea. She wore, as usual, a wide hat; and, in its shadow, her eyes were like gentians.

"I think I am getting insomnia too," she informed him seriously; "I haven't slept for three nights—or, at most, only a little hour or so. You see, I have a dreadfully important decision to make. I'll tell you later—it's too nice here to spoil at once with decisions. You're so easy to be with, poor dear; you don't demand anything.… Most men are a large want column.

"The Reverend Lemuel asked me what I knew about you, but I didn't tell him you were a gambler. People who don't know them are prejudiced, and he's a narrow old hairpin anyway." She stopped and wrinkled her brow. "It's funny about him," she went on; "he's terribly religious and Rollo-like; and then you see something in the corner of his eye.… He had some green 'cough syrup' in Paris that the maid said was vermouth. I told her to help herself—she didn't leave a drop; and the Reverend Lemuel never said a word about missing it."

Heath Gannon listened as though from a great distance to the gay flow of her voice—it pierced his apathy with a faint warmth that recalled the old, full days of living; but he had never before known a girl like Fenella Lovel. She combined in an extraordinary degree an ingenuous youth and a poise rarely acquired short of thirty. His heart responded, with a faint throb, to her singular charm.

Her face became grave and she leaned forward with her arms folded on the table's edge. "What I want particularly to ask you is this," she commenced: "Do you think love really exists in life as it does in books? And do you think it's necessary for—for marriage? Couldn't one be nicely married, quite content, without it?"

"I don't know," Heath Gannon admitted.

"I thought you would," she returned wistfully; "I thought you understood everything. I must find out, because—— Well, you see, there's a man who wants to marry me. I haven't known him very long. The Reverend Lemuel introduced him. He's frightfully impressive, with beautiful manners. I like him, I think, a lot; but I'm not wild about him.

"There's no one I can ask but you; and—do you know?—I was certain you'd settle it all. The Reverend Lemuel encourages it in a solemn way and grandmother echoes whatever he thinks. They're not much of a pair to ask about love. He's a Freiherr," she added, at a tangent, "named Von Kammer, and brings me bouquets like pinwheels, tied with wire."

Heath Gannon was vaguely aware of the appeal in her voice, of her precarious isolation on the Continent with the fatuous, inattentive elder woman and the orator with the honeyed voice. Something, he realized, should be done at once for her protection; but his energy and his force were exhausted at the thought; his mind became a bog. He regarded her with a dulling vision and even failed to clearly comprehend her words:

"If you would only see him—at our apartment to-morrow afternoon! I have no one else to depend on."

His head dropped forward and she leaned toward him, laying her firm, young palm on his shoulder.

"Forgive me; I forgot about you. Perhaps you ought to go now. Rest on me; I'm really terribly strong.… The step!" He felt her arm about his shoulders, guiding him to the cab.

She stood outside the confectioner's, less confidently erect than usual, as he moved away.

"Remember," she called; "about four to-morrow! The Via San Gallo—ten."

He sat after dinner in the somber smoking room of the hotel, his chin on his breast, his hands hanging unclasped at his sides. The conversation round him made a thin humming in his ears. Soon everybody but himself had departed on incomprehensible errands of pleasure. He could not endure the mocking waves of gayety that swept over the fatuous theater audience, and stimulants touched him no more than colored and unpleasant waters. He might again visit the baccarat salon in the Via Cavour; but that prospect was so stale, the passion for play lay so dead within him, that the thought almost roused him to the energy of an objurgation.

The disjointed pictures wheeled hectically before his vision. He saw Fenella Lovel, but very dimly. The brightness had faded from her countenance; her eyes sought him with a fixed entreaty from which he tried in vain to escape; her voice carried to him burdened with an appeal from which his every sick faculty rebelled.

He was through with the vexatious problems, the obligations, of life; all responsibility had been transferred from him to more vigorous shoulders. But Fenella Lovel had said there were no others—no one but himself to whom she could go for assistance, advice. She had asked him to meet someone—a man who wanted to marry her. Incongruously he saw the heavy, smooth mask of the Reverend Lemuel Zwiller.… Vermouth! It was too tangled a skein for his leaden mind; yet it persisted like the sting of a thong on raw flesh. Fenella approached him, ineffably blue-eyed, beseeching; holding out her slim, jeweled hands.

He turned away, but she followed. "I'm done!" he said aloud to the drooping vision in the stale, deserted room. The tears of a weak despair stole over his hollow cheeks. Suddenly she disappeared in—it seemed to him—a black cloud. He was confused by the abruptness with which she was blotted from sight; it was ominous.

He rose, peering into the dim corners, at the dingy velvet furniture, palely angry at the trick that had been played on him. He would find her again in spite of—well, he did not know what. It would be simply enough—at the Via San Gallo, number ten, to-morrow afternoon. With that decision a faint stir of warmth crept through his moribund being; he squared his shoulders; his chin rose; he stood swaying but erect, his haggard countenance stamped with new purposes.

IV

WITHOUT difficulty he found, at the hour indicated, the house on the Via San Gallo, a huge stone palace, with its court closed by a formidable iron grille. Above, a contadina, with glowing cheeks and an eager courtesy, admitted him to a formal chamber with a black marble mantel and brocaded chairs ranged stiffly against the walls.

Fenella Lovel entered almost immediately; and when she saw Heath Gannon she went forward and clasped his hand in both her palms.

"I hoped so much you'd come!" She told him. "Don't let's stay in this dreadful room; it's much nicer in the corridor. The Freiherr von Kammer will be here soon."

She led the way to a wide passage, one side of which, largely of glass, faced an interior court planted with trees, and from which lifted the heavy scent of orange blossoms. They stopped where a drawn Venetian blind made a cool shadow against the afternoon sun, and where wicker chairs were ranged about a wheeled table laden with the crystal and silver implements of tea. There the Reverend Lemuel Zwiller rose heavily, solemnly greeting Gannon:

"I am revealed resting from my arduous labors with a stiff-necked and blind generation. The burden laid on me is heavy; but I shall not falter in proclaiming the final form to the peoples of the earth… Am I right in assuming that you are in precarious health? Turn, young man, from the gauds of this world to the contemplation of the next. Are you prepared?"

Fenella said:

"Do let's be cheerful! I promised Mr. Gannon tea and not sermons." She turned to Heath Gannon: "Grandmother asked to be excused—her sciatica. The 'Cause' is dreadfully exhausting."

"Flippant," the Reverend Lemuel murmured; "the vain levity of thoughtless youth."

"I had just begun to think you liked levity," she told him. "Grandmother said she never before saw the illustrated French calendar we found among the things—and it can't be the servants'."

The other rapidly cleared his throat twice and, muttering obscurely of imperiled ellipses, made a deliberate retreat.

"I'm glad he's gone," Fenella told Gannon; "he's always so—so professional. What I told you is quite serious," she continued. "Anton von Kammer is anxious for a decision at once. He has spoken to grandmother and she went to Mr. Zwiller for advice. I know what that was. She says I should have a protector—someone to look after my property. Anton's manner has entirely captivated her. He has secrets with the Reverend Lemuel too—digs him in the ribs; and the old boy gets perfectly red."

"What is it that I can do? " Heath Gannon asked. "What can I tell you?"

"What a man is able—what you think of Anton von Kammer—whether he's nice, and—and—— I suppose that if I loved him in the way one reads in books nothing else would matter; but I am worried—sometimes he has an expression I can't understand; he shuts his mouth in a dark line and his eyes are like ice.… And once he kicked a wretched little dog—he didn't know I was in the window. Yet, in a way, those are such little things. He has papers and everything, and took me to tea at his consul's, where they were frightfully civil to him."

She leaned toward Heath Gannon, her youthful face troubled, her hands clasped. A lustrous pink pearl swung out from her throat on a threadlike gold chain. Pearls like that, he knew, were rare; and, in endeavoring to consider the problem she presented, his thoughts persistently returned to her jeweled necklaces and rings. He was conscious of a growing curiosity to see von Kammer, when the latter was announced. He followed close on the pronouncement of his name, a rigidly erect man in middle life with a square, gaunt countenance.

Gannon viewed the other with an illusive sense of familiarity; he blundered for a moment among his memories, and then the baccarat salon returned to mind—von Kammer had been the banker the night of Gannon's profitless visit there.

Anton von Kammer bowed over the girl's hand and bowed again at his introduction to Heath Gannon. The former's boxlike head gave him a strangely inanimate, oppressive air. His jaw closed with the sharpness of an iron trap; his eyes, almost colorless, were like polished stones.

Gannon waited to see if the other would remember, allude to their mutual presence at the gaming table; but von Kammer gave no sign of having seen him before, and he instinctively avoided all reference to the previous evening.

Gannon contributed little to the conversation that followed, but intently followed von Kammer's deliberate gestures, listened to his slow, courteous periods. The latter's personality evaded him; his cosmopolitan exterior was a complete mask for the man within. Such details as Heath Gannon noted were purely negative. While the cup and saucer in his insecure grasp continually and faintly rattled, the Freiherr held his in a hand as immobile us carved wood; one sinewy brown finger curved about the cup handle as though it were a pistol trigger—his gaze narrowed as though it were directed over a sighted barrel. His English was exact, but lifeless; and his voice, try as he would to make it persuasive, grated in a manner highly unpleasant to Gannon's training nerves.

The tea progressed and cigarettes were lighted. Von Hammer's case bore, engraved in one corner, a small, correct crest. Whatever representations he had made with regard to his birth, Gannon felt, were authentic. A feeling of impotence closed about him; he could do nothing here. In his deleted state of being, the other man's patent force appalled him. The room and the conversation grew oppressive, and he rose in a momentary panic of nerves.

"Freiherr von Kammer will see you to your carriage," the girl replied to his farewell. "I must fly to grandmother."

Von Kammer had walked to the Via San Gallo and accepted Gannon's invitation to share his cab. When they had started the former said:

"Your American girls are charming if Miss Lovel is a fair example."

"Miss Lovel is not an example," Gannon returned; "she is unique and would be exceptional in any country."

Von Kammer swept him with a momentary flicker of his cold gaze.

"You are an admirer, then?" he put in after a short pause.

Gannon answered indirectly: "I'm for death!" And silence fell on them.

The cab turned into the busy Calzioli and von Kammer asked to be put down at the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. He bowed, elevating his hat, at the fringe of iron tables that extended from a café, and then strode rigidly away.

V

HEATH GANNON sat amid the murky velvet of the smoking room of the Hotel d'Albion, lost in a confused tangle of thoughts. Fenella Lovel had asked him to give a man's opinion of von Kammer; there was, he recognized, an extreme need for prescient knowledge, but he was wholly at a loss to place the other man. He rehearsed over and over in his dull, blundering mind what he had observed; but there had been no opening in von Kammer's suave, worldly armor; no significant detail in his formal periods. However, Gannon knew this—Anton von Kammer was not a responsibility to be lightly assumed. He wondered, recalling the other's coldly deliberate being, at the impatience described by Fenella Lovel. Von Kammer was not the type of man to be swept away by passion; marriage, for such individuals, except under the most exceptional material conditions, was a subject for gibing.

Gannon's thoughts returned mechanically to the pink pearl swinging out from Fenella's throat, to the diamonds and platinum, the loops of sapphires. A sudden sense of imminent peril stirred in his profound inertia; he had again the feeling of a black cloud enveloping the girl, the troubled consciousness of something dark afoot. Just as he had grasped a vague outline of plot his thoughts broke, evaded him; his mind slipped impotently, like a wheel in mud. All his shattered being cried out for peace, for rest. He was, he told himself once more, for death; he was done with the vast problems of living.

Yet he was powerless to dismiss Fenella Lovel's wistful countenance from the field of his vision; he felt—as though her hands were plucking at his heart—an answering stir. He dragged himself erect, with a straining gray countenance, dry lips set in a shadowy purpose. The proprietor of the baccarat salon would probably know something of von Kammer; and he would tell Heath Gannon—the latter was certain.

The green-covered table was crowded, as before, with the widely different yet identical gamblers, the gamblers indifferent or avaricious, hopeful or desperate, Gannon drew the man with the empurpled face and spiked white mustache aside; and, without preliminary, he put his question:

"What do you know about Anton von Kammer? This is not idle curiosity."

A sudden blankness fell on the other. "Nothing at all," he replied, "but what, the world knows—a distinguished officer and a man of birth."

"What do you know of Anton von Kammer?" Gannon repeated dully. "You are in many ways bound to tell me. I am still able to send a word to the person who introduced us. I am not yet in the double zero."

The other glanced swiftly behind him; he was palpably ill ease, as though the mere mention of von Kammer held a potential and secret threat

"I'll tell you this," he said finally; "though if it traces back you will find I am not negligible:

"If Anton von Kammer owes you money extend the obligation to infinity; if you owe him pay to-morrow. If he has set his attention on any woman you care for, first discover whether she is absolutely indispensable; and if she is kill him very suddenly. Personally I should surrender her at once."

A sudden vision of the square, long head—not unlike a horse—of the eyes like polished stones, convinced Heath Gannon that the other's flamboyant words were not without adequate foundation. It surprised him that he had not been able to recognize the cold brutality of Von Kammer's countenance. But——

"That is not enough," he persisted; "I must have facts. I must have the man."

The proprietor of the game continued in a low, hurried voice:

"Do you recall when Bonnard, the English prize fighter, was rooked at a professional club in San Sebastian and, after thrashing the owner, was found shot in an alley? … Von Kammer! Did you know Cécile Paduskin, who was done out of her share of a Baku millionaire, and who was going to bleat but disappeared instead? … Von Kammer! Do you remember the punter who blackmailed the Imperial German family, who was challenged by every officer of the Household and offered to meet them in rotation, but was bought off? … Von Kammer!"

"A gamblers' bully," Heath Gannon said; "paid shot!"

He turned and walked heavily from the room. All his vague fears were now gathered, justified, in fact; he faced a grave and immediate problem, the necessity for swift and decisive action. He endeavored to map out a plan of action, but without result. His thoughts became disorganized, fantastic; the pictures wheeled brighter and faster than ever before; the Reverend Lemuel Zwiller regarded him with smug disdain.

This last gave birth to a solitary idea—a single, obvious, slim chance. And in its pursuit, early on the afternoon following, he mounted to the second floor of the Via San Gallo—ten—and asked to see the Reverend Zwiller.

He was shown into the cool gloom of the formal reception chamber, where he waited on one of the uncompromising brocaded chairs, summoning what meager strength he possessed. The Reverend Lemuel finally appeared in a luxurious house coat of regal purple velvet. When Heath Gannon rose the other's countenance swiftly changed to a shrewd blankness; his mouth drew into a hard-bitten fold.

"I have been surveying my modest belongings," he observed. "We shall, I think, leave this obdurate city shortly, brushing its dust from our garments. Verily their ears shall be opened on a latter day! … What is it you wish?"

Heath Gannon plunged directly into the subject that had brought him:

"I have come with some information for your consideration. You have possibly been so absorbed by your—your mission that more worldly affairs have escaped your notice. You are, I take it, by way of being Miss Lovel's guardian at present?" He paused.

The other nodded ponderously.

"Perhaps, then, you have noticed that Freiherr von Kammer has become interested in her? Or have you missed that in the midst of your—your struggle?"

"I have observed and considered him carefully. He is, for the scion of an ancient and noble race, singularly commanding of respect. He impresses me—all of us, in fact—most deeply."

"He is a damned rascal!" Heath Gannon pronounced suddenly and clearly. "A hired cutthroat! He is not fit to touch Fenella Lovel's fingers."

The Reverend Lemuel Zwiller's eyes narrowed to a mere glint of vision; he fitted his thick-jointed fingers together, pursed his pendulous underlip.

"That," he said, "is an astounding statement—and, as I know, totally without foundation. It is deliberately malicious. I am compelled to weigh your motive in bringing it. There I am not at a loss; I have more perception than you have credited me with. You are animated by selfish interest; you——"

"I tell you the man is notorious," Gannon interrupted; "he is making fools of you all. You are walking like rats into his trap."

The Reverend Lemuel tapped his forehead significantly.

"It occurred to me when I first viewed you," he pronounced; "a little addled! Illness, young man, has affected your brain. I shall see our local representative and recommend a fitting restraint. You will work yourself and others an injury."

Heath Gannon was suddenly overcome by the conviction of the uselessness of his protest. The man before him was as smoothly noncommittal as a blank wall. The necessity that had brought Gannon there amplified into a more complicated possibility.

"You are right," he said slowly, erect; "you have a great deal more perception than I thought. All this you already knew. You are probably far more familiar with Von Kammer than myself, and it has made no difference. You are selling Miss Lovel—Von Kammer is going to divide with you! … I have been the fool."

The Reverend Zwiller's face became a dusky red; he wet his lips and then advanced in an overbearing manner.

"You white rag!" he shot out. "I'd break you myself if it were not for—well, certain things; but Von Kammer will care for you. He'll teach you to keep your shrunken face out of the affairs of others."

"You fat crook!" Gannon repeated thinly. "Player of old women and girls! You're worse than Von Kammer. You couldn't break a pretzel."

He grasped his stick more firmly, and the other threw up his arm with a tallowlike face.

"I shall summon assistance," he stuttered. "I shall——"

Heath Gannon heard a stir, a faint gasp, behind him, and, turning, saw Fenella Lovel and the Freiherr von Kammer. The girl came swiftly up to Gannon and laid her hand on his shoulder.

"What is it?" she demanded. "It will hurt you to get excited."

Zwiller answered in the other's place, addressing the man who had entered with her. "Mr. Gannon has been making charges," he said hurriedly; "he tells us that you are a paid murderer, or something ridiculous of the sort. I informed him that you would know what answer to make."

Von Kammer advanced smoothly toward Gannon.

"That is strange!" he observed. "One would have thought that Mr. Gannon, in view of certain facts, would have been more careful in his statements." He turned to the girl, indicating Heath Gannon. "This man," he proceeded, "is a card sharper; a professional gambler called the Fifth Ace. He has imposed on us. With your permission, I shall bring the imposition to an end."

Fenella Lovel said:

"I'm sorry—perhaps I imposed on you. I knew that he was a gambler; he told me at once. And his other name I know that too. He was called the Fifth Ace because of his luck." She addressed Heath Gannon: "I asked you to find out something that I very much wanted to know; I asked you to help me. Can you?"

"Yes," Gannon replied; "you must not marry him.… Notorious!"

The strain of the past few minutes was becoming too great for him. The room swam; he made a racking effort to control his wavering powers.

"This is not to be borne!" Von Kammer declared. "Miss Lovel, I beg——"

Fenella Lovel was gazing into Gannon's haggard face.

"Thank you," she said softly; "I knew I could count on you."

"But, Miss Lovel——" Von Kammer repeated harshly.

Heath Gannon turned wearily.

"Kammer," he said, "it's all over!"

The other surveyed the group with a stony appraisal; then he stepped up to Gannon.

"Von Kammer, please!" he said, and struck Heath Gannon heavily in the face.

Gannon reeled back; his stick fell with a clatter.

"You sweep!" he laboriously articulated. "Before the girl!"

The other showed a glimmer of immaculate teeth and struck the unprotected countenance more brutally than before. With intolerable suffering and jerking in every nerve, Heath Gannon was lost in a black chasm of unconsciousness.

VI

A LIGHTED space widened slowly about him—he saw a high ceiling, the snowy expanse of the bed on which he lay. Through an open door a corridor, principally of glass, was screened with Venetian blinds against the afternoon sun. He stirred, and there was an instant movement without. Fenella Lovel stood in the doorway, a graceful silhouette against the diffused light beyond.

"Grandmother," she called gladly, "he's awake!"

A deep sense of refreshment, of life renewed, coursed through Heath Gannon. He realized that miraculously he had been asleep. Fenella Lovel said severely:

"No questions; you have given us a horrible fright; but the shock really saved your life, the doctor said. I'll tell you a very little: When—when that happened everybody thought you were dead. The Reverend Lemuel raised your head and turned pale green. He said the Freiherr had killed you. Then the Freiherr looked, said something beastly, and they went off together. That was the day before yesterday.… They simply disappeared; but we discovered that the Reverend Lemuel drew all our letter of credit. That's nothing; we have a criminal amount of money, though something else—— No; not one little word more!"

Heath Gannon sank back, and, utterly possessed by Fenella's charm, lulled by the intimate warmth of her voice, fell once more luxuriously asleep.