‘This has occurred to me since,’ answered Casalmaggiore gravely. He was silent for a moment, pursuing his favourite scheme. ‘Castiglione,’ he said, rising suddenly and looking at his watch, ‘if you ever let Teresa guess that I have interfered with her plans, I’ll court-martial you!’
‘Never fear!’ The Captain laughed again.
‘As for leave, I’m glad you would not take your two days. There is a general strike again, and we shall certainly have some patrol work to do, if nothing worse. After you had left me I got another message from headquarters.’
CHAPTER XXIII
Two days later Montalto informed Maria after luncheon that he had an appointment with the Chief of Police at three o’clock, and had decided to lay the whole matter before him and to leave it altogether in his hands. It had taken Montalto almost a week to reach this final decision, and Maria had devoutly hoped that he would never act at all. She thought it would be like him to put off doing anything till he convinced himself that the blackmailer’s letter had been an idle threat, never to be put into execution; but she was mistaken in this, for Montalto never left quite undone what he believed that it was his duty to do, and in the present case, though he had been so slow, he was really in much greater apprehension of a scandal than Maria understood.
The people who are the hardest to live with are often those who speak the truth, and nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth. It is never possible to be sure what they are hiding from us out of prudence or shyness, prudishness or delicacy; it is the most difficult thing in the world to find out precisely what they know and what they do not know, without putting direct questions which would be little short of insulting.
Montalto was such a man. His power of keeping his own counsel without telling an untruth was amazing; and his own counsel was not always wise. It was this characteristic of his which had twice suggested to Maria, in moments of despair, that he had come back to revenge himself upon her by systematically torturing her to death. Mediocrity is never so exasperating as when it affects to be inscrutable.