Franco was about to answer. "Be quiet, you with your tongue a yard long!" said the Receiver, brutally.
The detective passed from the drawing-room into the corridor leading to the stairs. Would he go up or not, Luisa wondered. He went up, and she followed him, not trembling, but imagining with a dizzy rapidity, the many different things that might happen. All the possibilities of the moment, both disastrous and favourable, were whirling, as it were, in her head. If she lingered upon the first, horror carried her with a bound to the second; if she dwelt upon these, fancy returned with perverse eagerness to the first.
Before they had set foot in the corridor of the second floor they heard Maria crying. Franco begged the adjunct to allow his wife to go down to the child, but she protested that she wished to remain. The idea of not being with him when the weapon was discovered, terrified her. Meanwhile the detective had entered a small room where there were some books, and finding a volume printed at Capolago, and bearing the title, Literary Writings of a Living Italian, he said: "Who is this living Italian?" "Padre Cesari," Franco replied boldly. The other, deceived by his prompt answer and the priestly name, assumed the air of a man of culture, saying: "Ah! I am acquainted with his works." Replacing the book, he inquired where the Engineer-in-Chief slept.
Luisa was too completely dominated by the one great dread to sense anything else, but Franco, when he saw the police-agent and his band enter the uncle's room, which was so clean, so neat, so full of his dear, calm spirit, when he reflected what a blow to the poor old man the news of all this would be, was completely overcome, and could have wept with rage. "It seems to me," he said, "that this one room at least should be respected."
"Keep your observations to yourself," the adjunct retorted, and began by ordering the blankets and mattresses stripped from the bed. Then he demanded the key to the chest of drawers. Franco had it, and went down to his room for it, accompanied by a gendarme. The uncle had entrusted it to him before leaving, telling him that in case of need he would find a small amount of cum quibus in the top drawer. They opened it. It contained a roll of svanziche, a few letters and papers, some pocket-books, old note-books, compasses, pencils, and a small wooden bowl in which were several coins.
The detective examined everything carefully, discovering among the coins in the little bowl a five-franc piece of the time of Carlo Alberto, and a forty-franc piece of the Provisory Government of Lombardy. "The Engineer-in-Chief has preserved these coins with extraordinary care," said the detective; "henceforth we will preserve them." He closed the drawer, and, without opening the others, returned the key to Franco.
Then he went out into the corridor and paused, undecided. The Receiver thought he intended to go down, and as the corridor was nearly dark, and the stairs were not visible, he, who was acquainted with the house, started towards the right in the direction of the stairs, saying: "This way." The room where the sabre lay was on the left.
"Wait," said the adjunct. "Let us look in here, also." And turning, he pushed open the fatal door. Luisa, who had been the last in the procession, pressed forward, now that the supreme moment had arrived. Her heart, which had beat furiously while the adjunct hesitated, now became quiet as by a miracle, and she was cool, daring, and ready.
"Who sleeps here?" the detective asked her.
"No one. My uncle's parents used to occupy this room, but they have been dead these forty years, and no one has slept here since."