Now he wasn't exactly in reception costume, the Boss wasn't. When he'd knocked off his runnin' shoes it left him in a pair of salmon trunks that cleared the knees considerable. He'd made a fine ad. for a physical culture school, just as he stood; for he's well muscled, and his underpinning mates up, and he don't interfere when he walks. The cold water had brought out the baby pink all over him, and he looked like one of these circus riders does on the four sheet posters. He had the lime-light, too, for a streak of sun comin' down between the towers just hit him. I see the girl wasn't missin' any of these points. It wasn't any snap-shot she was takin', it was a time exposure.
"Who's your lady friend in the wings?" says I to the Boss.
"Where?" says he.
I jerks my thumb at her. For a minute there wasn't a word said. The Boss wasn't able, I guess, and the girl never moved an eyelash. Then he yells for the bath towel and makes a break inside, me after him. When we'd rubbed down and got into our Broadway togs, we chases back and organizes ourselves into a board of inquiry. Who was she—regular boarder, or just transient? Where did she come from? And why? Likewise how, trolley, subway, or balloon?
But I'm blessed if that whole gang didn't go as mum as a lot of railroad hands after a smash-up. Why, they hadn't seen no such lady, cross their hearts they hadn't. Maybe it was old Rosa, yes? And Rosa a sylph that would fit tight in a pork barrel! A goat, then?
"Let's give 'em the third degree," says I.
So we done it, locked 'em all in a room and put 'em on the carpet one by one. They was scared stiff, too stiff to talk. All but old Vincenzo, the white-haired old pirate the count had left in charge. He was a lovely peagreen under the gills, but he made a stagger at putting up a game of talk. No, he hadn't seen no one. He had been watching their excellencies in their little affair of honor. Still, he couldn't swear that we hadn't seen some one. Folks did see things at the castle; he had seen sights himself, though generally after dark. He remembered a song about a beautiful young lady who, back in the seventeen hundred and something, had—
But I shut him off there. This fairy might have seen seventeen summers, or maybe eighteen, but she was no antique. I could kiss the Book on that. She was a regular Casino broiler. I made a point of this. It didn't feaze the old sinner, though. He went on perjuring himself as cheerful as a paid witness, and he'd have broken the Ananias record if he'd had time.
"That will do for now," says the Boss, in a kind of "step-up-front-there" tone. "If you don't know who she was just now, we'll let it go at that. But by to-morrow you'll know the whole story. It'll be healthier for all hands if you do."
Vincenzo, though, didn't have a proper notion of what he was up against. Next day he knew less than the day before. He was ready to swear the whole outfit, by all the saints in the chapel, that there hadn't been a girl on the premises.