"The Ten will not make new laws nor repeal old ones for the benefit of an unknown Dalmatian."
"Perhaps not," answered Giovanni. "But on the other hand there is no very great penalty if you set up a furnace of your own. If you are discovered, your furnace will be put out, and you may have to pay a fine. It is no great matter. It is a civil offence, not a criminal one."
"What is it that you wish of me?" asked Zorzi with sudden directness. "You are a busy man. You have not come here to pass a morning in idle conversation with your father's assistant. You want something of me, sir. Speak out plainly. If I can do what you wish, I will do it. If I cannot, I will tell you so, frankly."
Giovanni was a little disconcerted by this speech. Excepting where money was concerned directly, his intelligence was of the sort that easily wastes its energy in futile cunning. He had not meant to reach the point for a long time, if he had expected to reach it at all at a first attempt.
"I like your straightforwardness," he said evasively. "But I do not think your conversation idle. On the contrary, I find it highly instructive."
"Indeed?" Zorzi laughed. "You do me much honour, sir! What have you learned from me this morning?"
"What I wished to know," answered Giovanni with a change of tone, and looking at him keenly.
Zorzi returned the glance, and the two men faced each other in silence for a moment. Zorzi knew what Giovanni meant, as soon as the other had spoken. The quick movement of surprise, which was the only indiscretion of which Zorzi had been guilty, would have betrayed to any one that he knew where the manuscript was, even if it were not in his immediate keeping. His instinct was to take the offensive and accuse his visitor of having laid a trap for him, but his caution prevailed.
"Whatever you may think that you have learned from me," he said, "remember that I have told you nothing."
"Is it here, in this room?" asked Giovanni, not heeding his last speech, and hoping to surprise him again.