'I wished to know,' said he feebly, 'if anyone has come to say I had disappeared.'
The inspector took a thick ledger, and turned it over as he smoked.
'Yes, sir,' he said. 'Chiarastella De Feo, living in Centograde Lane, wife of Pasqualino De Feo, stated that her husband was unaccountably absent. She feared imprisonment or misfortune.'
'What misfortune, what imprisonment, could there be?' the medium called out, smiling ironically. 'Women always talk nonsense.'
'She said it had happened to you before, though she could not state under what circumstances.'
'Why should they have shut me up?'
'To drag lottery numbers from you.'
'Did my wife say that I knew lottery numbers?' said the medium with a little laugh.
'Do not believe it, inspector; it is nonsense,' Parascandolo added laughingly.
'I wish to state, to avoid mistakes, that, being at Palma Campania, at Don Gennaro Parascandolo's villa there, I was so ill I had to stay there a month without being able to write to my wife. Then I thought every day I would soon be able to return.'