"Oh, yes," said Cosmo. "Saying good-bye."
The man by his side made a slight movement and preserved a profound silence for a time.
"As I have no demon," he began slowly, "to keep me informed about other people's affairs, I must ask you what you were doing here?"
"Why, taking the air like that other evening. But why don't you try to get away while there is time?"
"Yes, but where?"
"You were going to leave Genoa," said Cosmo. "Either on a very long or a very deadly journey."
Again the man by his side made a movement, of surprise and remained silent for a while. This was very extraordinary, as though some devil having his own means to obtain knowledge had taken on himself for a disguise the body of an Englishman of the kind that travels and stays in inns. The acquaintance of Cosmo's almost first horn in Genoa was very much puzzled and a little suspicious, not as before something dangerous but as before something inexplicable, obscure to his mind like the instruments that fate makes use of sometimes in the affairs of men.
"So you did see two men a little while ago waiting for me?"
"I did not see them. They seemed to think you were late," was the surprising answer.
"And how do you know they were waiting for me?"