He took me to a room on the second floor. There was a bed there and a very old chest of drawers. The floor, everything about the room was spotlessly clean. The walls had been freshly whitewashed. Their smooth whiteness suggested wonderful possibilities for despoliation, the drawing of a picture, the writing of a poem, the careless writhing autograph that caused my relatives so much despair.
"Have all the masters slept here?" I asked carelessly.
"All."
"Was there one by the name of George Seabrook?"
"I think so. But they come and go. I am old and forget."
"And all these masters, none of them ever wrote on the walls?"
"Of a certainty. All wrote with pencil what they desired to write. Who should say they should not? For did not the villa belong to them while they were here? But always we prepared for the new master, and made the walls clean and beautiful again."
"You were always sure that there would be a new master?"
"Certainly. Someone must pay us our wages."
I gravely placed a gold piece in his itching palm, asking, "What did they write on the walls?"