That the police should attach any importance to so faint a clue was perhaps the best evidence of their admission how completely they were baffled; so at least the public considered and the newspapers jeered the officials for their inefficiency.
Meantime my friend continued his investigation with unabated ardor, and, night after night, in the quiet of my bachelor rooms, we discussed each point of evidence, however slight, and classified or dismissed it according to its value.
Pasquale surrendered everything to the discovery of the dreadful mystery, and he grew thin and anxious-looking as the days passed by without throwing any further light upon it.
These were days ill-suited to hilarity, and much of the gaiety of Pasquale’s sunny ways faded before their chilling influences; still if the efflorescence of his light-hearted disposition seemed shed for the time, the fact only served to reveal the true beauty of soul which was the foundation of all I loved so much.
Save when crossed by the sight of suffering uselessly inflicted upon the lower animals, I think he was the sweetest, gentlest creature God ever made; and the most lovable.
“And yet so inexorable in hunting down the assassin!” the reader will say—and I answer yes. Of the secret of that involved mechanism which formed Pasquale’s soul I had no key; I only know that to me my friend was like the fascinating page of some dearly-loved book—blurred and unintelligible here and maybe there, but still sweeter in its occasional illegibility than all the other volumes on earth combined.
At the end of the third week of search Pasquale’s valet called to explain that his master had suddenly been summoned abroad to a family council, but that his absence would probably not extend beyond a week.
If I could ever have found it in my heart to be vexed with Pasquale it would have been over his habit of obeying those calls so promptly as not even to allow himself time to bid me good-bye.
“Did your master leave no message, Jacques?” I inquired, puzzled to account for the absence of any further explanation.
“No, sir; he left in haste and ordered me to present his apologies to you for his omission to call and say good-bye.”