“Oh, no. No surprise at all. You two fit together so perfectly that I knew it right from the first.” Sam mumbled his felicitations, conscious of Tina’s searching glances. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s something I have to take care of immediately. A special sort of wedding present.”
Lew was disconcerted. “A wedding present. This early?”
“Why, certainly,” Tina told him. “It isn’t very easy to get just the right thing. And a special friend like Sam naturally wants to get a very special gift.”
Sam decided he had taken enough. He grabbed the manual and his coat and dodged through the door.
By the time he came to the red stone steps of the boarding house, he had reached the conclusion that the wound, while painful, had definitely missed his heart. He was in fact chuckling at the memory of Lew Knight’s face when his landlady plucked at his sleeve.
“That man was here again today, Mr. Weber. He said he wanted to see you.”
“Which man? The tall, old fellow?”
Mrs. Lipanti nodded, her arms folded complacently across her chest. “Such an unpleasant person! When I told him you weren’t in, he insisted I take him up to your room. I said I couldn’t do that without your permission and he looked at me fit to kill. I’ve never believed in the evil eye myself—although I always say where there is smoke there must be fire—but if there is such a thing as an evil eye, he has it.”
“Will he be back?”
“Yes. He asked me when you usually return and I said about eight o’clock, figuring that if you didn’t want to meet him it would give you time to change your clothes and wash up and leave before he gets here. And, Mr. Weber, if you’ll excuse me for saying this, I don’t think you want to meet him.”