It was a paltry consolation, perhaps, but it was the best that then occurred to me.
“Meanwhile,” I begged him, “do you tell me what you would have me do.”
I urged him to it that he might, thereby, suffer his mind to rest a moment from pondering that ghastly thing that he had witnessed, that scene that would live before his eyes until they closed in their last sleep.
“You heard Lampugnani quip Ramiro with the fact that three messengers have ridden desperately within the week from Citta di Castello to Cesena, and you heard, perhaps, his obscure reference to the hat?”
“I heard both, and both I weighed,” said I. The old man looked at me as if surprised.
“And what,” he asked, “was the conclusion you arrived at?”
“Why, simply this: that whilst the messenger bore some letter from Vitelli to Ramiro that should serve to lull the suspicions of any who, wondering at so much traffic between these two, should be moved to take a peep into those missives, the true letter with which the courier rides is concealed within the lining of his hat—probably unknown even to himself.”
He stared at me as though I had been a wizard.
“Messer Boccadoro—” he began.
“My name,” I corrected him, “is Biancomonte—Lazzaro Biancomonte.”