“I had half forgotten that I had employed this man in Harold Marchant’s business when the fellow turned up in Tite Street, irrepressibly cheerful, with the most unpleasant information.”
“What information? For God’s sake, come to the point!”
“He had traced Marchant’s career—from Mashonaland to the diamond fields, where he picked up a good bit of money; from the diamond fields to New York, from New York to Venice. For God’s sake, leave those bibelots alone,” as the silver toys leapt and rattled on the fragile table. “Do you think no one has nerves except yourself?”
“Your man traced Marchant to Venice,” said Vansittart, the restless hand suddenly motionless; “and what of him at Venice?”
“At Venice Marchant lived with a girl whom he had taken out of a factory. Pardon me, Mrs. Vansittart, for repeating these unpleasant facts—lived, gambled, drank, and enjoyed life after his own inclination, which always leaned to low company even when he was an undergraduate. From Venice he vanished suddenly, more than three years ago.”
Vansittart fancied they must needs hear that heavily beating heart of his thumping against his ribs. He fancied that, even in that dimly lighted room, they must needs see the ashen hue of his face, the beads of sweat upon his forehead. All he could do was to hold his tongue, and wait for that which was to come.
“Do you happen to remember a murder, or, I will rather say, a scuffle ending in homicide, which occurred at Venice three years ago in Carnival time—an English tourist stabbed to death by another Englishman, who got away so cleverly that he was never brought to book for what he had done? The row was about a woman, and the woman was Harold Marchant’s mistress. Marchant was jealous of the stranger’s attentions to the lady—he had lived long enough in Italy to have learnt the use of the knife—and after a free fight of a few moments he stabbed his man to the heart. Ferrari heard the story from a Venetian, who was present in the Caffè Florian when the thing happened.”
“Did the Venetian know Marchant?”
The words came slowly from dry lips, the voice was husky; but neither Mrs. Vansittart nor Mr. Sefton wondered that Eve Marchant’s lover should be deeply moved.
“I don’t know; but there were people in Venice who knew him, and from whom Ferrari heard his mode of life.”