“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.”
“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 for safe keeping in a portfolio. But he is to fetch the portfolio at once.”