“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 mean 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?”