He went into the front room, in which the gas, fortunately, was alight at the time, and opening the door which gave thence on to the passage, he said pleasantly:
“Oh, Mr. Piatti! is that you? Can I do anything for you?”
“Ah, yes! zank you,” replied the Sicilian, whose voice I could hear was husky and unsteady, “if you would be so kind—I—I feel so fainting and queer to-night—ze warm weazer, I zink. Would you—would you be so kind to fetch me a little—er—ammoniac—er—sal volatile you call it, I zink—from ze apothecary? I would go lie on my bed—if you would be so kind——”
“Why, of course I will, Mr. Piatti,” said Mr. Shuttleworth, who somehow got an intuition of what I wanted to do, and literally played into my hands. “I’ll go at once.”
He went to get his hat from the rack in the hall whilst the Sicilian murmured profuse “Zank you’s,” and then I heard the front door bang to.
From where I was I could not see Piatti, but I imagined him standing in the dimly-lighted passage listening to Mr. Shuttleworth’s retreating footsteps.
Presently I heard him walking along towards the back door, and soon I perceived something moving about in the little bit of ground beyond. He had gone to get his spade. He meant to unearth the coat and the watch and chain which, for some reason or another, he must have thought were no longer safe in their original hiding-place. Had the gang of murderers heard that the man who frequently visited their landlady was the father of Cecil Shuttleworth over at Palermo?
At that moment I paused neither to speculate nor yet to plan. I ran down to the kitchen, for I no longer wanted to watch Piatti. I knew what he was doing.
I didn’t want to frighten Emily, and she had been made to understand all along that she might have to leave the house with me again at any time, at a moment’s notice; she and I had kept our small handbag ready packed in the kitchen, whence we could reach the area steps quickly and easily.
Now I quietly beckoned to her that the time had come. She took the bag and followed me. Just as we shut the area gate behind us, we heard the garden door violently slammed. Piatti had got the coat, and by now was examining the pockets in order to find the watch and chain. Within the next ten seconds he would realise that the coat which he held was not the one which he had buried in the garden, and that the real proofs of his guilt—or his complicity in the guilt of another—had disappeared.