"Shall you go to Venice and meet me there?" I inquired anxiously.
"Ah, I cannot tell! So much depends upon the inquiries I am making, and upon future occurrences. But we shall meet soon, never fear!"
Certainly it was curious to find in that Italian port, into which, as far as I could gather, we had put on mere chance, a man who had the whole mystery at his fingers' ends, and who, like myself, was sparing no pains to elucidate it. But had we put into Leghorn by mere chance; or had it all been cunningly prearranged?
"Then I am not to write to you?" I said, somewhat dissatisfied.
"No, decidedly not," was his response. "We must in this affair exercise every precaution in order to make certain that our intentions are not discovered by the guilty parties. Return on board, remain ever watchful, allow nothing to escape you, and make Keppel himself your especial study, at the same time seeking for means by which to enter the forbidden deck-house."
"I take it, Signor Branca, that this apartment is not your own?" I said, as I glanced round the place.
"Mine!" he laughed. "Oh, dear no! I am only here temporarily, in order to meet you. In an hour I leave here—whither I know not. I was in Rome last night, I am here to-night; to-morrow night I may be in Milan, or Turin, or Nice—who knows?"
He spoke in French for the first time, and I saw by his excellent accent that, so far from my first estimate of him being correct, he was a thorough cosmopolitan. It seemed a pity that his personal appearance was sufficiently ugly to be remarkable.
I glanced at the watch in my bangle and saw that as it was already past eleven o'clock, it was high time for me to return on board. Therefore I rose to bid my strange host "Addio."
He bowed to me with a courtly grace which rendered his dwarfed figure more than usually grotesque, bending so low that his fringe of grey beard almost touched his knees.