"The madness is on him at Count von Schulembourg's escape. Is that it?" he asked. "But art even thou excluded?" he continued in surprise, for Giannotto was the one man who could come and go unannounced, unbidden, the one man who knew Visconti's secrets.
The secretary smiled, the slow smile that men's lips learned in the Visconti palace.
"It is best for the Duke to be alone, and for me that he should be," he said. "The news that Count Conrad has escaped hath galled him much; it came at a bad moment too, following on those parchments twice found within the grounds"—he paused. "Thou wert sent to find the writer, or the one who put them there; art thou successful?"
Alberic shook his head. "I return as I went. Beyond finding that doorway forced in the wall, messer secretary, there is no token whatsoever of how the Count escaped. But after so long a fast, messer," Alberic showed his teeth, "it is not likely that it was alone."
"The one who aided him is he who inscribed those parchments?"
"'Twould seem so," answered Alberic. "We have searched anew among the huts from which we drove Count Conrad's German dogs; on the threshold of the largest there was—this."
He drew out of his breast a parchment, a long narrow strip, scrawled across in irregular writing, and handed it to Giannotto.
"What does it say?" he asked.
Giannotto glanced at it hastily, his eyes on the Duke's door.