"If his steamboat stopped nowhere between here and Como, we wouldn't need to trouble," he said; "but as it does, and Doria might hop off anywhere and come back in an hour, we'll just drift back to Albert."
"He will be asleep and we can have our yarn out without fear of interruption," answered Mark.
They soon sat together on a shady seat of the villa garden from which the entrance was visible, and Peter, bringing out his notebook, took a great pinch of snuff, set his gold box on a little table before him, and turned to Brendon.
"You shoot first," he said; "there are three things I need to know. Have you seen the red man and what is your present opinion concerning Doria and his wife? Needn't ask if you found Bendigo's diary, because I am dead sure you did not."
"I didn't. I directed Jenny to have a hunt and she invited me to help her. For the rest I have seen Robert Redmayne, for we may safely speak of the unknown by that name, and I have come to a very definite conclusion concerning Giuseppe Doria and the unfortunate woman who is at present his wife."
A shadow of a smile passed over the great features of Peter.
He nodded and Mark proceeded to tell his story, beginning with the adventure on the mountain. He omitted no detail and described his talk with Doria, the latter's departure to join Jenny on their expedition to Colico, and his own subsequent surprise and escape from death. He told how he had been fired at and fallen, hoping to tempt the other to him, how his assailant had disappeared, and how, at a late hour, he had planned a dummy and seen Giuseppe Doria arrive to bury him.
He narrated how Giuseppe and Robert Redmayne had departed after their disappointment, how he had decided to give Giuseppe an account of the adventure, in order that he might not guess that his share in it was known; and he told how, on the morrow, the Dorias and himself had returned to the spot and found the empty grave with foot-marks of native boots about the margin. He added that Jenny, four days later, had reported a glimpse of a man whom she believed to be her uncle; but it was dark at the time and she could not be positive, though she felt morally sure of him. He was standing two hundred yards from the Villa Pianezzo in a lane from the hills and had turned and hastened away as she approached.
To this statement Peter listened with the deepest attention and he did not disguise his satisfaction when Mark made an end.
"I'm mighty glad for two things," he said. "First that you're in the land of the living, my son, and that a certain bullet passed your ear instead of stopping in that fine forehead of yours; and I'm glad to know what you've told me, because it fits in tolerably well and strengthens an argument you'll hear later. Your little trap was quite smart, though I should have worked it a bit different myself. However, you did a very clever thing, and to take Doria into your confidence afterward was up to our best traditions. Your opinion of him needn't detain us now. There only remains to hear what you may have to say on the subject of his pretty dame."