“Perhaps. Eh bien, Mr. Hume, I must bid you good night. I must walk, I suppose, to the Tragetto Ponte del Piccolo for a gondolier. Why, my friend, do you dwell in this barbarous Giudecca?” Then his eyes fell on the table, where the clock ticked loudly. “Ah ha, my old clock, and it goes. Capital! I had quite forgotten my errand.”
“And that is?”
“To deprive you of my clock, my friend. Do you forget that we were to telegraph Madame Gordon in St. Petersburg? Oh, la, la, you did not wait for me at the bureau, I remember. That was not the act of a sportsman.” He shook his head reproachfully.
“I thought it was you who did not wait for me,” I said dryly. “And have you yet received an answer to your telegram?”
“But yes. Behold!” He fumbled in his breast-pocket, and sorted rapidly a package of letters and papers. “Accidenti!” he cried, “it is not here.”
“No doubt you left it at home with the keys,” I said coolly.
“Eh? At home with the keys?” He looked at me with half-shut eyes.
“Why not?” I asked, yawning, and casting a longing eye toward my bedroom.
He began to laugh boisterously. “It is a matter to laugh over that thieves should rob one of a telegram and one’s keys, hein?”
“Decidedly,” I said uneasily.