It was on the point of my tongue to tell Hutchinson all that had passed in Florence on the previous day, but I thought it useless to trouble him with what seemed but vague suspicions.
“Why does he want to see me?” I inquired.
“Oh, he has got something or other to sell you, I suppose,” was the consul’s reply. “Somehow, Kennedy, I don’t like the old fellow. Whether it’s his ugliness, his deformity, or his manner, I can’t tell; only, I instinctively dislike him—and more than ever when I met him just now.”
“Why?”
“Well, to me his manner was as though he expected to hear some grave news regarding you.”
“Grave news?” I echoed. Then it occurred to me that the old hunchback was, of course, privy to the mysterious evil following the possession of the “Book of Arnoldus.”
“What grave news did he expect?”
“How do I know, my dear fellow? These Italians, and especially men of his class, are so subtle and cunning that you can never get at the bottom of their motives.”
“But I’ve always given Graniani his price—with a little bargaining, of course. Why, I’ve paid him hundreds of francs. You recollect what I paid for that miniature of the missing dauphin of France?”
“But you obtained a gem, even though you had to pay heavily for it,” was my friend’s answer. “If it had been in old Confessini’s hands you’d have had to pay double, or he would have sent it to London.”