He deftly turned the conversation, though he became more bitter, as if his life was now even more soured than formerly. Then, at midnight, he took his hat and stick, and I opened the gate of the drive and let him out upon the road.
As he left, he grasped my hand warmly, and in a voice full of emotion said—
“Good-night, Ewart. May you be rewarded one day for keeping from starvation a good-for-nothing devil like myself!”
And he passed on into the darkness beneath the trees, on his way back to his high-up humble room down in the heart of the town.
At eight o’clock next morning, when I met Pietro, Bindo’s man, I noticed an unusual expression upon his face, and asked him what had happened.
“I have bad news for you, Signor Ewart,” he answered with hesitation. “At four o’clock this morning the Signor Whitaker was found by the police lying upon the pavement of the Lung Arno, close to the Porta San Frediano. He was dead—struck down with a knife from behind.”
“Murdered!” I gasped.
“Yes, Signore. It is already in the papers;” and he handed me a copy of the Nazione.
Dumbfounded, unnerved, I dressed myself quickly, and driving down to the police-office, saw the head of the detective department, a man named Bianchi.