My old servant Nello, standing there beside me, knew something more than he would tell. Of that I felt convinced. Possibly he had participated in the plot, admitting her, well knowing her errand. He had warned me; therefore he must know something. What was the object of it all I utterly failed to conceive.
“That woman is a thief?” I exclaimed angrily a few moments later. “Who is she?”
“I—I do not know her, signor padrone,” stammered the old man.
“She gave no name?”
“None. She said that you expected her.”
“But she could not have taken away a big book like that without your noticing it?” I pointed out suspiciously.
“She had on a big black cloak, signore,” was the crafty old fellow’s response.
I closed my writing-table and locked it, for in that moment I had decided to go straight to Florence and charge Bernardo Landini with being a party to the theft. Having sold the book to me, he wished to repossess himself of it, and on my refusal, had, it seemed, put in motion a kind of conspiracy against me.
The old hunchback was undoubtedly the director of it all.
I thrust a few things into a kit-bag, placed some money in my pocket, and put on an overcoat; and telling Nello that I should not return for a couple of days, perhaps, gave orders that no one was to be admitted to the house except my most intimate friend, Hutchinson, the British consul.