The manager begged Burrell to excuse him while he went into his shop to ask the question. When he returned he laid a piece of paper before the other. The latter took it up and examined it carefully, though he was not at all prepared to find that the information would be of much value to him. The surprise he received, however, almost took his breath away. It was the work of a moment to whip out his pocket-book and to open it.
He turned the leaves until he arrived at the entry he wanted.
“And am I to understand you to say that Mr. Fensden wrote to you from England for them? Are you quite sure of it?”
“Quite sure,” replied the other, and intimated in exceedingly poor English that he was prepared to show his customer’s letter in proof of the genuineness of his assertion. He did so, and Burrell examined it carefully. Ultimately he prevailed upon the other to permit him to keep the letter.
“I wouldn’t lose it for a thousand pounds,” he said to himself. “Good gracious, this is nothing less than a stupendous piece of luck. It’s the last thing in the world I should have thought of.”
He thanked the little tobacco merchant for his courtesy, and bade him farewell, promising to remember him most affectionately to Zevenboom when next he should see him. After that he went off to make arrangements about his journey from Paris to Naples.
It was at a late hour of the night when he reached that famous Italian city. Tired out he betook himself to his hotel, slept the sleep of the just, and rose in the morning with the pleasant feeling that the day before him was likely to prove a busy and also an exciting one. After he had breakfasted, which he made a point of doing in the solid English fashion, he smoked a contemplative cigar, and interested himself after his own fashion in the billings and cooings of a young newly married couple, who were staying at the hotel awaiting the arrival of the out-going Australian Mail Boat. Then, having discovered the interpreter whom the hotel manager had found for him, he set off for the street in which he had been told Teresina Cardi and her mother had dwelt.
“'See Naples and die’ they say,” he muttered to himself, as he made his way out of one into another tortuous and unsavoury street. “It should have been 'smell Naples and die.’ A connoisseur could discover a hundred fresh unsavouries in every hundred yards.”
At last they found themselves in the street in question, and, after some little hunting, discovered the house in which the murdered girl had resided with her mother. The interpreter questioned the head of the family who lived on the ground floor. With many flourishes and bows, the latter, whose only work in life, it would appear, was to smoke cigarettes upon the doorstep, informed him that the Signora Cardi was dead and that the funeral had been a most imposing one.
“Ask him what has become of the daughter,” said Burrell, who was anxious to discover whether or not the man were aware of the murder.