“Very well then! In that case best leave matters as they are. The police will no doubt find him later. Also, no doubt, they will come here, seeing that the murdered man is lying outside this house. But as for me, I know nothing. And best for you also, signor,” he added significantly, “to know nothing. Police proceedings here in Milan are apt to be long drawn out and troublesome.”
So saying, the concierge went back to bed, and I went off upstairs to my room. Sleep, however, for me, was, I need hardly say, out of the question. Softly drawing the curtains aside from the big front windows, which opened, in continental fashion, on a little balcony overlooking the street, I peered out.
There was the body, lying cold and still in the grey dawn. Presently a man roughly garbed, probably a workman on his way to his day’s toil, came along on a bicycle. He stopped on seeing the corpse, and dismounted. But after a very cursory examination he mounted again and rode off, shrugging his shoulders as if to intimate that it was no concern of his.
A little later a man drove up in a cart, and he went off and fetched the police. That day our house was invaded by inspectors and detectives, and I, in common with all the other inmates of the building, was subjected to a searching interrogation.
Acting on the advice of my friend the concierge, however, I replied that I knew nothing whatever about the murder; and there, so far as I was concerned, the matter ended.
But I have often wondered since what was the ultimate upshot of it all, and what was the name and the station in life of the unhappy victim.
CHAPTER VI
PLAYING IN HUNLAND
Vienna and the Viennese—Churls by nature and instinct—How I made “There’s a Girl in Havana” go down there—Chorus men and waiters—Some innocent tricks of the music-hall trade—In Berlin—Death of my giant—Official boorishness—German sharp practice—I engage a Hun giant—Uncomfortable railway travelling—At Buda-Pesth—More sharp practice—I throw up my engagement and return to England in disgust—Litigation and worry—My case is taken up by the Variety Artistes’ Federation—A new “Battle of Prague”—Which I lose—A story of a “misspelled” railway station—Back in Old England—A day’s rabbit shooting—The two “Arthur Carltons.”