“From Pesaro? But you are travelling towards it.”
“True. I was making for Cattolica, but I missed my way in seeking to shorten it. I am now returning by the high-road.”
The explanation satisfied him on that point, and being satisfied, he asked me when I had left Pesaro. A moment I hesitated.
“Late last night,” said I at last. He looked, at me, my foolish hesitation having perhaps unslipped a suspicion that was straining at its leash.
“In that case,” said he, “you can scarcely have heard the strange story that is being told there?”
I looked at him, as if puzzled, for a second. “If you mean the story of Madonna Paoia’s end, I heard it yesterday.”
“Why, what story was that?” quoth he in some surprise, his beetling brows coming together in one broad line of fur.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Men said that she had been poisoned.”
“Oh, that,” he cried indifferently. “But men say to-day that her body was stolen from the Church of San Domenico where it lay. An odd happening, is it not?” And his eyes covered me in a fierce scrutiny that again suggested to me those suspicions of his that I might be the man who had anticipated him. I was soon to learn that he had more grounds than at first I thought for those same suspicions.
“Odd, indeed,” I answered calmly, for all that I felt my pulses quickening with apprehension. “But is it true?” I added.