The Fourth Plague Read Online Free PDF Page A

Tillizini made no attempt to take the keys from him.
    â€œHe knew more than I have told,” he said slowly. “He indicated to me a hiding-place which I gather is known only to you and to the leaders of your band.”
    He walked to the end of the room, where four long windows lit the apartment. Between the second and the third hung a picture in a deep gold frame. He passed his hand gingerly over the scroll-work on the left side of the frame.
    Presently he found what he wanted, and pressed.
    The bottom half of the rich carving opened like a narrow drawer.
    Festini watched him, motionless, as he took a bundle of papers from the secret recess behind the hinge moulding.
    Tillizini examined them briefly at the window and placed them carefully in the inside pocket of his coat. He looked at Festini long and earnestly, but before he could speak the door was opened and Simone Festini came in quickly.
    He walked to his father.
    â€œWhat is it?” he asked, and bent his angry brows upon the old professor.
    â€œIt is nothing, my son,” said Count Festini.
    He laid his hand upon the boy’s head and smiled.
    â€œYou must go downstairs until I have finished my business with his Excellency.”
    The boy hesitated.
    â€œWhy should I go?” he asked.
    He scented the danger and was hard to move. He looked round from one to the other, alert, suspicious, almost cat-like.
    â€œIf anything should happen to me, Simone,” said Count Festini softly, “I beg you to believe that I have provided for you handsomely, and there is a provision which is greater than any I can offer you—the protection and the friendship, and as I hope one day, the leadership, of comrades who will serve you well. And now you must go.”
    He bent down and kissed the young man on the cheek.
    Simone went out, dry-eyed, but full of understanding. In the hall below he came face to face with his brother, who had returned from the Piazza.
    â€œCome this way, Antonio,” said the boy gravely.
    He walked first into the dining-room where an hour ago they had been seated together at their meal.
    â€œOur father is under arrest, I think,” he said, still coolly, as though he were surveying a commonplace happening. “I also think I know what will happen next. Now, I ask you, which way do you go if I take up our father’s work?”
    His eyes were bright with suppressed excitement; he had grown suddenly to a man in that brief consciousness of impending responsibility.
    Antonio looked at him sorrowfully.
    â€œI go the straight way, Simone,” he said quietly. “Whichever way is honest and clean and kindly, I go that way.”
    â€œBuono!” said the other. “Then we part here unless God sends a miracle—you to your destiny and I to mine.”
    He stopped and went deadly white, and looking at him, Antonio saw the beads of sweat upon his brow.
    â€œWhat is the matter?” he asked, and stepped forward to his side, but the boy pushed him back.
    â€œIt is nothing,” he said, “nothing.”
    He held himself stiffly erect, his beautiful face raised, his eyes fixed on the discoloured decorations of the ceiling.
    For he had heard the pistol shot, muffled as it was by intervening doors and thick walls, that told the end for Count Festini.
    Tillizini, hurrying down to break the news to him, found him fully prepared.
    â€œI thank your Excellency,” said the boy. “I knew. Your Excellency will not live to see the result of your work, for you are an old man, but if you did, you will behold the revenge which I shall extract from the world for this murder, for I am very young, and, by God’s favour, I have many years to live.” Tillizini said nothing, but he went back to Florence a sad man.
    Three months afterwards he again visited Siena, and in the Via Cavour, in broad daylight, he was shot down by two masked men who made good their escape; and, in his chair, at the College of