“Perhaps you will have to if your master takes the place. He has gone to look at it.”
Vincenzo gulped down the last of his coffee. “I must go,” he said, but he was much too Italian to understand that a man in a hurry need not count his change twice over or bite every piece of silver to make sure of it.
It was nearly one o’clock when, having outdistanced the pack of beggars that followed at his heels through the narrow streets of the town, he came out upon the broad, tree-shadowed upper road. He had stopped for a moment in the shelter of the high wall of the Capuchin convent to light a cigarette, and thereafter he went on unseeingly, in a brown study. Had he or had he not paid two soldi more than he should have done for the packet? A Calabrian would cheat, if possible, of course.
When, after much mental arithmetic, Vincenzo solved the problem to his own satisfaction the little scrap of bad tobacco in its paper lining was smoked out. He looked at his watch, a Christmas present from Jean, and seeing that it was past the hour he began to wonder. There were no ghosts, and in any case they were not dangerous in broad daylight. There were no ghosts, but what was the signorino doing all this while in an empty house? The car was there, drawn up at the side of the road under the trees, and Vincenzo fussed round it, pulling the tarpaulin covers more over the seats; he had them in place when it occurred to him to look underneath for the fur rug. It was not there.
“Dio mio!” he cried excitedly. “It has been stolen.”
Someone passing by must have seen it and taken it, probably someone with a cart, as it would be heavy to carry. The thief could not have gone far, and Vincenzo thought that if he drove the car towards Castel Gandolfo he might catch him, whoever he was—charcoal-burner from the woods beyond Rocca di Papa, peasant carting barrels of Frascati wine, or perhaps a frate from the convent. However, he dared not attempt it as the signorino had said “Wait.”
After a few minutes of miserable uncertainty, during which he invoked the assistance of the saints—“Che fare! Che fare! Santa Vergine, aiutatemi!” he decided to go and find the signorino himself. He was half way down the lane when he heard shots. He had been hurrying, but he began to run then, and the last echo had not died away when he reached the gate of the Villino. It creaked on its hinges as he passed in, but no one in the house was listening for it now. He went in at the door, and now he was very swift and silent, very intent. There was a smell of powder in the passage, and someone was moving about in the room beyond. Vincenzo felt for the long sharp knife in his hip pocket before he softly turned the handle of the door.
“Signore! What has happened?”
Filippo Tor di Rocca started violently and uttered a sort of cry as he turned to see the man who stood on the threshold staring at him. There was a queer silence before he spoke, moistening his lips at almost every word.
“I—I—you heard shots, I suppose.”