“No, no,” he protested, again bowing and kissing her hand in his courtly manner.
He dared not kiss her upon the lips, though he was sorely tempted.
“Au revoir,” he said. “Return to Rome as soon as ever you can, I beg of you. Fear nothing from either Ghelardi or this spy who has vanished.”
And he hurried out, down the wide stone stairs of the great prison-like old palace, a fortress in the days of the Cinquecento, but now turned into an albergo.
Pucci stood below. A car would be round in ten minutes—the best and most powerful he could obtain. But of hire cars in the remote town of Orvieto not much could be expected, therefore when half an hour later they found themselves speeding in the twilight through the hills and dales of the white, dusty road towards the Lake of Bolsena they were not surprised to find that the engine had a nasty knock, and its firing distinctly bad.
The chauffeur, a dark, beetle-browed young man of the debonair giovanotto type, had, however, entered fully into the spirit of the chase, and was travelling with all speed, following the tracks of Flobecq’s car, which could be distinctly discerned in the thick white dust.
In the little town of Bolsena, beside the lake, they ascertained that a grey car had come swiftly through, and had turned to the right at the water’s edge, taking the road which at the end of the lake branched in two directions, one leading westwards to the sea at Orbetello, forty-five miles or so as the crow flics, or about ninety by road, while the other led direct north, the highway to Siena and Firenze.
It had now grown too dark to see the tracks in the dust, therefore taking their head-lamps they made careful examination of the road, but, alas! upon both they saw motor tracks which seemed in that uncertain light to be exactly similar.
Truly Mijoux Flobecq was an elusive person.
In that, one of the wildest and most unfrequented parts of Italy, where even to-day the motorist is lucky if he is not stoned, and where the peasantry are uncouth and hardly civilised, a night journey was not at all inviting.