'Ehi!' pondered Carlo; 'it is very evident he has been trained to shy at authority.'
It seemed so, indeed, and that authority knew nothing of him. Otherwise, probably, authority would have resented his interference with its theories of solitary confinement to the extent of trapping and killing him.
The prisoner saw no more of his little sedate visitor that evening; but, with night and sleep, the voice again took up the tale of his haunting; and this time, somehow, to his dreaming senses, Messer Topo seemed to be the medium of its piteous conveyance to him. Once more he woke, and slept, and woke again; and always to hear the faint music gaining or losing body in opposite ratio with his consciousness. He was troubled and perplexed; awake by dawn, and harking for confirmation of his dreams. But daylight plugged his hearing.
He had expected Messer Topo to breakfast. He did not come. He called—and there he was. They exchanged confidences and discussed biscuits. The key grated, and Messer Topo was gone.
This day Carlo set himself to solve the mystery of his visitor's lightning disappearances—Anglicè, to find a rat-hole. Fingering, in the gloom, along the joint of floor and wall, he presently discovered a jagged hole which he thought might explain. Without removing his hand, he called softly: 'Topo! Messer Topo!' Instantly a little sharp snout, tipped with a chilly nose, touched him and withdrew. He stood up, as the key turned in the lock once more.
This time it was Messer Jacopo himself who entered, while his bulldogs watched at the door. He came to bring the prisoner a volume of Martial, which Carlo had once had recommended to him, and of which he had since bethought himself as a possible solace in his gloom. The Provost Marshal advanced, with the book in his hand, and seeing his captive's occupation, as he thought, paused, with a dry smile on his lips. Then, with his free palm, he caressed the wall thereabouts.
'Strong masonry, Messer,' he said; 'good four feet thick. And what beyond? A dungeon, deadlier than thine own.'
Carlo laughed.
'A heavy task for nails, old hold-fast, sith you have left me nothing else. Lasciate ogni speranza, hey, and all the rest? I know, I know. Yet, look you, there should have been coming and going here once, to judge by the tokens.'
He signified, with a sweep of his hand, a square patch on the stones, roughly suggestive of a blocked doorway, wherein the mortar certainly appeared of a date more recent than the rest.