He lifted his hand, and turned his face aside.
"Hush!" he replied. "I know it."
Signor Salimbeni was a famous Florentine surgeon who lived close by in the Piazza Barberini, and with whom Hugh Girdlestone had been on terms of intimacy for the last four or five months. Almost as his name was being uttered, he arrived;—a tall, dark, bright-eyed man of about forty years of age, with something of a military bearing. His first step was to clear the place of intruders—of the English family from the first floor, of the Americans from the second, of the Italian tenor and his wife, and of the servants who had crowded up en masse from every part of the house. He expelled them all, civilly but firmly; locked the door behind the last; and went alone into the chamber of death. Hugh Girdlestone followed him, dull-eyed, tongue-tied, bewildered, like a man half roused from sleep.
The surgeon bent silently over the corpse; turned the poor white face to the light; held a mirror to the lips; touched the passive hand; lifted first one eyelid, then the other; and felt for the last lingering spark of vital heat on the crown of the head. Then he shook his head.
"It is quite hopeless, my friend," he said gently. "Life has been extinct for some two hours or more."
"But the cause?"
Signor Salimbeni slightly shrugged his shoulders.
"Impossible to tell," he replied, "without a proper examination."
The widower buried his face in his hands and groaned aloud.
"Whether the seat of this mischief be in the brain," continued Signor Salimbeni, "or whether, as I am more inclined to suspect, it should be sought in the heart...."