For a moment, full of vague regret, I watched her departure, then turned on my heel and strolled down Park Lane into Piccadilly on my return to Dover Street, my mind full of that sweet-faced woman.
Those strange words of hers rang in my ears. At what did she hint? Tragedy, deep and mysterious, was underlying it all, I was confident, yet as a man of action I felt impelled towards that other spot mentioned in The Closed Book—the grim castle of Threave, that scene of foul deeds, that through the Middle Ages was the home of the Black Douglas. That her father intended to go there was evident, and it therefore behooved us to lose no time in going North and making preliminary investigations.
The advisability of going North without delay filled my mind until I had become oblivious to all about me, and indeed I was walking quite unconscious of the hurrying traffic in Piccadilly until I felt a slight touch on the arm and heard a woman’s low voice exclaim in Italian, “Pardon, Signor Kennedy, but I believe we have met before?”
I started and turned quickly aside to recognise in the speaker the very last person whom I expected to meet in that busy London thoroughfare—the dark-eyed, well-dressed woman whom I had encountered in the prior’s study at Florence, the woman in black who had made confession to Father Bernardo.
Chapter Twenty Nine.
Some Explanations.
My first thought, of course, was that the woman was a thief, for it was she who had so cleverly stolen The Closed Book from my study at Antignano and carried it to Paris, there transferring it to the hands of old Mrs Pickard, of Harpur Street.
My first impulse was to tax her with the theft; but fortunately I saw a necessity for careful tact, and therefore responded pleasantly in the same language, “Yes, signorina. It was one afternoon not long ago in Florence, if I remember aright.”