CHAPTER XXVIII

“Ah, it is my friend Hume,” he purred. “I had thought that Mr. Hume had left Venice.”

I ignored the left hand he extended negligently toward me. He had as many changes of front as a Russian diplomatist. Then I laughed. His cool effrontery was downright amusing.

“And why should I have left Venice?” I asked easily. “Did you think you had frightened me off last night?”

“Ah, ha,” he twirled his mustache with the utmost good-nature, “I know my friend Hume too well to think that he is so easily frightened. But it is a pity that your wit, my friend, is not as great as your courage.”

“And how is my stupidity manifesting itself just at present?”

He threw back his head and laughed silently–at least, insofar as a cat can laugh. Then he lowered himself into a chair by my side, leaned forward, and tapped me lightly on the shoulder.

“I am clairvoyant. Par example, you are waiting for a friend, n’est ce pas? Oh, I do not 280mean myself. Shall we call that friend Mr. St. Hilary?”

“And then––”

“And then,” he continued jocularly, “if this Mr. St. Hilary should not come–if he had not a notion of coming?”

“I should be a fool to sit here–is that the inference?”

His shoulders shook, as if he found the joke amusing. But how should he know anything of St. Hilary’s movements? Or, guessing them, that I could be seriously affected by them?

“Am I to understand,” I demanded, sitting upright, “that you have information as to Mr. St. Hilary’s whereabouts?”

“Very precise information, I assure you, my friend,” he cried, his blue eyes dancing. “When one sees a gondola racing to the railway station, with two rowers, so great is the hurry, one may reasonably infer that the gentleman who sits under the felsa smoking a cigarette is on his way to take a train, hein?”

“So you saw Mr. St. Hilary on his way to the railway station?” I said slowly. “And the time?”

“It was not so late as seven, and certainly not before half-past six.”

My worst fears were realized. Pietro had let 281him slip through his fingers at the eight-thirty train. But at least I would not give this Italian the satisfaction of seeing the consternation the news gave me, and I answered indifferently:

“A little trip to Milan, I suppose. If he had been going far I should certainly have seen him before his departure.”

“But, Mr. Hume,” cried the duke in triumph, “when the gondola is piled high with boxes, is it reasonable to think that our friend simply runs off to Milan? No, no; Naples, perhaps, or Paris, or London.”

“What! You saw his trunks?” I cried.

The duke held up his five fingers.

“So many.”

I turned easily in my seat and looked him over coolly. I had every reason to believe that St. Hilary possessed only two trunks, and that these two trunks were in his room up-stairs.

“Yes, it is strange that he should not have said good-by to me,” I said musingly.

“Is it so strange?” queried the duke, and again he tapped me on the shoulder. “Come, come, Mr. Hume, have I not said that I am clairvoyant?”

“Your proofs have not been convincing. Suppose that you give me a better illustration of this remarkable gift of yours.”

282“Well, then, I could have told you yesterday that your friend would bear watching.”

“You seem to know a good deal about the character of Mr. St. Hilary,” I said, and rose from my seat with a yawn.

The duke rose and took my arm. He had not yet done with me, it appeared.

“You walk toward the Piazza? Permit me to walk with you. Yes, yes, I know a good deal of your friend’s character. We have had many interesting talks together before now; and, let me tell you, Mr. St. Hilary did me the honor of bidding me good-by.”

“And is that the reason you are so happy?” I asked, staring at him. My question had been put seriously. For the first time this afternoon I was interested in his answer.

“So happy?” he retorted, shrugging his shoulders; then, with apparent frankness, “But I am to see Mr. St. Hilary again. Yes; I am to join him presently at Naples, perhaps, or Paris, or London. By the way, you have yet three days in which to prove me a liar,” he added good-humoredly.

“And three days are a long time sometimes,” I said curtly. “Good afternoon; I take a gondola here to my rooms.”

“Adieu,” he purred, but he still held my arm. 283“Do you remember that charming afternoon we spent, all four of us, in my poor palazzo? I presented to each of the ladies a little souvenir. To Mrs. Gordon I gave the useless old clock; to Miss Quintard, the chest that once contained the casket I have found and given to her. But to you I gave nothing. Our dealer, I have reason to think, has consoled himself. To you alone, my friend, I have been remiss.”

“Your regret is touching,” I murmured.

“But there is a little book I came across the other day when I was packing up my few belongings. It is only fourteen pages, but these fourteen pages are interesting. I have known travelers go all the way to St. Petersburg to consult them. Would it amuse you–this little souvenir? Or am I to infer that since the departure of your co-laborer in antiquarian studies you are no longer interested in curiosities?”

If I could have flung him into the muddy waters of the canal I should have been a little less miserable, but I affected the utmost delight. In the first place, I was really interested in seeing those pages. Again, I hoped to understand a little more clearly the drift of this afternoon’s talk. His reference to St. Hilary mystified me.

“I shall be charmed to receive it,” I cried.

284The duke had watched my momentary indecision with evident anxiety. Now he seized my arm again and squeezed it in the warmth of his satisfaction. His face was radiant.

“Good! Good! My rooms are but a few feet from the Capello Nero.”

“So St. Hilary informed me,” I said pointedly.

“Ah, he is a wonderful man, your friend. Such resource, such imagination! And always on the lookout for himself, hein?”

The duke’s apartments were almost empty of furniture. There were no rugs on the floor, no belongings of a personal nature in sight. The pictures were covered, and the chairs formally ranged about the walls. The clock on the mantelpiece had stopped. Some old newspapers and magazines heaped on the library table were the only sign that the room was lived in. Otherwise the room was bare.

“You must excuse the appearance of my poor chambers; I leave Venice this evening.”

“All the world seems to be leaving Venice to-day,” I observed lightly.

“Absolutely. First of all, your friend Mr. St. Hilary, and now Mrs. Gordon, her niece, and myself. My poor friend, you will be lonely, I fear.”

285“Your concern touches me,” I said, and walked to the window. “When I have received from you my souvenir, I am going to my rooms to make preparations for leaving Venice myself.”

The duke was turning over the magazines and papers on the library table.

“Everything is in confusion. I can not find my little book. Old Luigi is an imbecile. Perhaps he has destroyed these precious fourteen pages. May I trouble you to ring the bell near that window? We will ask Luigi.”

I was puzzled, I confess it. Why had he brought me to his apartment? Simply to gloat over me? Or had he some purpose more useful than that?

There was a knock at the door. Instead of bidding the servant enter, the duke himself answered it, stepping out in the hallway, closing the door carefully after him.

I walked over to the table, and turned over carelessly the papers and magazines. The glint of steel caught my eye. He had hidden a revolver under the rubbish while pretending to look for the fourteen pages. In two seconds it was in my pocket and I had taken my stand at the window again, one hand in my coat pocket, the other pulling at my mustache.

“That imbecile Luigi had put away the pages 286for safe keeping in a portfolio. But he is to fetch the portfolio at once.”

He seated himself carelessly on the table, swinging one leg. He picked up an illustrated weekly.

“Are you interested in horses? Here are some capital snap-shots of good riding during the man?uvers at Asti.”

I crossed the room and looked over his shoulder. When we had exhausted the magazines he bethought him of the pictures hanging on the wall. He lifted the muslin coverings and showed them to me, one by one, expatiating on their beauties. Evidently he was trying to kill time. Unconsciously I glanced at the clock, a modern timepiece about three feet high, standing on the mantel. I had forgotten that it had stopped. The hands, I noticed, stood at half-past six.

The duke now took up his position at the window, while I stood with my back to the mantel. It just reached my shoulder. For the first time it occurred to me that he had wished to get me away from the window. He wished the post of observation for himself. I wondered if it were worth while for me to join him.

For perhaps thirty seconds there was silence between us. I say thirty seconds, and I measured that interval by thirty ticks. At first I 287heard them listlessly. They were faint, muffled, and strangely slow. Then I remembered with a start that the clock had stopped. It was impossible for them to come from the watch in my pocket. They sounded close to my ears, and my ears were not two inches away from the clock that had stopped.

For a moment the strange phenomenon bewildered me. Then I understood. The casket was inside the clock; and the mechanism that would release the cover in twelve hours had been set going.

As if the duke were the clairvoyant he had mockingly pretended to be, he turned sharply on his heel. I was gazing up at the ceiling.

“Luigi is a long time,” he muttered. “It is possible that the thieves who broke into my rooms some months ago stole it after all.”

“Thieves!”

“Yes, my friend, thieves. But I am taking precautions for my safety in the future.” He laughed shortly, and looked out of the window again.

That hint was as foolish as my boast a few days before. So he had sent old Luigi for the gendarmes. He was holding me here. Well, I hardly cared to see the gendarmes just now. It was time for me to act.

288I reached swiftly up. I lifted the clock from the mantel to the floor. The jar of the wheels as it touched the floor made him spin about like a mechanical toy. I was pointing the muzzle of his useful weapon at him over the clock.

“Sit down,” I said quietly.

He clutched the edge of the chair, his mouth drooping.

“And quickly!” I cried sharply.

He sank into the chair behind him, his hands trembling violently.

“But–but–this is an outrage!” he gasped.

“My dear duke, you are not the only clairvoyant. In my poor way I can see through a wooden case. But this propensity of yours to play the cat with the poor little mouse is dangerous. Sometimes the little harmless mouse turns out to be a rat. And rats sometimes bite.”