The boy was asleep, with the moonlight streaming across his pillow. She bent over him hesitatingly, while her heart reproached her at having to wake him and send him out on such an errand. But the next moment she had reflected that it might be the only chance for him as well as for the rest of them, and she laid her hand gently on his forehead.
‘Gervasio,’ she whispered. ‘Wake up, Gervasio. Sh—silenzio! Dress just as fast as you can. No, you haven’t done anything; don’t be frightened. Signor Siberti is going to tell you a secret—un segreto,’ she repeated impressively. ‘Put on these clothes,’ she added, hunting out a dark suit from his wardrobe. ‘And never mind your shoes and stockings. Dress subito, subito, and then come on tiptoe—pianissimo—to Signor Copley’s room.’
Gervasio was into his clothes and after her almost before she had got back. When undirected by Bianca, his dressing was a simple matter.
Sybert drew him across the threshold and closed the door. ‘What shall we tell him?’ he questioned Marcia.
‘Tell him the truth. He can understand, and we can trust him.’ And dropping on her knees beside the boy, she laid her hands on his shoulders. ‘Gervasio,’ she said in her slow Italian, ‘some bad, naughty men are coming here to-night to try to kill us and steal our things. Pietro is one of them’ (Pietro had that very afternoon boxed Gervasio’s ears for stealing sugar from the tea-table), ‘and your stepfather is one, and he will take you back to Castel Vivalanti, and you will never see us again.’
Gervasio listened, with his eyes on her face and his lips parted in horror. Sybert here broke in and explained about the soldiers, and how he was to reach the guard at the corners, and he ended by hiding the note in the front of his blouse. ‘Do you understand?’ he asked, ‘do you think you can do it?’
Gervasio nodded, his eyes now shining with excitement. ‘I’ll bring the soldiers,’ he whispered, ‘sicure, signore, sicurissimo! And if they catch me,’ he added, ‘I’ll say the padrone has whipped me and I’m running away.’
‘You’ll do,’ Sybert said with a half-laugh, and taking the boy by the hand, he led the way back to the middle staircase, and the three crept down with as little noise as possible.
They traversed on tiptoe the long brick passageway that led to the kitchen, and paused upon the threshold. The great stone-walled room was empty and quiet and echoing as on the first day they had come to the villa. The doors and windows were swinging wide and the moonlight was streaming in.
Sybert shook his head in a puzzled frown. ‘What I can’t make out,’ he said in a low tone, ‘is why they should leave everything so open. They must have known that we would find out before we went to bed that the servants were missing. Who usually locks up?’
‘Pietro.’
‘You and I will lock up to-night.’ He considered a moment. ‘We mustn’t let him out within sight of the grove. A window on the eastern side of the house would be best, where the shrubbery grows close to the walls.’
Marcia led the way into a little store-room opening from the kitchen, and Sybert gave Gervasio his last directions.
‘Keep well in the shadow of the trees across the driveway and down around the lower terrace. Creep on your hands and knees through the wheat field, and then strike straight for the cross-roads and run every step of the way. Capisci?’
Gervasio nodded, and Marcia bent and kissed him and whispered in his ear, ‘If you bring the soldiers, Gervasio, you may live with us always and be our little boy, just like Gerald.’
He nodded again, fairly trembling with anxiety to get started. Sybert carefully swung the window open, and the little fellow dropped to the ground and crept like a cat into the shadows. They stood by the open window for several minutes, straining their ears to listen, but no sound came back except the peaceful music of a summer night—the murmur of insects and the songs of nightingales. Gervasio had got off safely.
‘Now we’ll lock the house,’ Sybert added in an undertone, ‘so that when our friends come to call they will have to come the front way.’
He closed the window softly and examined with approval the inside shutters. They were made of solid wood with heavy iron bolts and hinges. The villa had been planned in the old days before the police force was as efficient as now, and it was quite prepared to stand a siege.
‘It will take considerable strength to open these, and some noise,’ he remarked as he swung the shutters to and shot the bolts.
They groped their way out and went from room to room, closing and bolting the windows and doors with as little noise as possible. Sybert appeared, to Marcia’s astonished senses, to be in an unusually light-hearted frame of mind. Once or twice he laughed softly, and once, when her hand touched his in the dark, she felt that same warm thrill run through her as on that other moonlight night.
They came last to the big vaulted dining-room which had served as chapel in the devotional days of the Vivalanti. The three glass doors at the end were open to the moonlight, which flooded the apartment, softening the crude outlines of the frescoes on the ceiling to the beauty of old masters. Sybert paused with his back to the doors to look up and down approvingly.
‘Do you know, it isn’t half bad in this light,’ he remarked casually to Marcia. ‘That old fellow up there,’ he nodded toward Bacchus reclining among the vines in the central panelling, ‘might be a Michelangelo in the moonlight, and in the sunlight he isn’t even a Carlo Dolci.’
Marcia stared. What could he be thinking of to choose this time of all others to be making art criticisms? Never had she heard him express the slightest interest in the subject before. She had been under so great a strain for so long, such a succession of shocks, that she was nearly at the end of her self-control. And then to have Sybert acting in this unprecedented way! She looked past him out of the door toward the black shadow of the ilexes, and shuddered as she thought of what they might conceal. The next moment Sybert had stepped out on to the balcony.
‘Mr. Sybert!’ she cried aghast. ‘They may be watching us. Come back.’
He laughed and seated himself sidewise on the iron railing. ‘If they’re watching us, they’re doubtless wondering why we’re closing the house so carefully. We’ll stop here a few minutes and let them see we’re unsuspicious; that we’re just shutting the doors for fear of draughts and not of burglars.’
‘They’ll shoot you,’ she gasped, her eyes upon his white suit, which made a shining target in the moonlight.
‘Nonsense, Miss Marcia! They couldn’t hit me if they tried.’ He marked the distance to the grove with a calculating eye. ‘There’s no danger of their trying, however. They won’t risk giving their plot away just for the sake of nabbing me; I’m not King Humbert. They don’t hate me as much as that.’ He leaned forward with another laugh. ‘Come out and talk to me, Miss Marcia. Let me see how brave you are.’
Marcia flattened herself against the wall. ‘I’m not brave. Please come back, Mr. Sybert. We must tell Uncle Howard.’
If Marcia did not know Sybert to-night, he did not know himself. He was under a greater strain than she. He had sworn that he would not see her again, and he had weakly come to-night; he had promised himself that he would not talk to her, that he would not by the slightest sign betray his feelings, and he found himself thrown with her under the most intimate conditions. They shared a secret; they were in danger together. It was within the realms of possibility that he would be killed to-night. The Camorrists had attempted it before; they might succeed this time. He actually did not care; he almost welcomed the notion. Ambition was dead within him; he had nothing to live for and he was reckless. He thought that Marcia was in love with another man, but he dimly divined his own influence over her. Once at least, he told himself—once, before she went back to the boy she had chosen, she should acknowledge his power; she should bend her will to his. He knew that she was frightened, but she should conquer her fear. She should come out into the moonlight and stand beside him, hand in hand, facing the shadows of the ilex grove.