"Addio, signorina," he said. "Do not relax your efforts for a single moment. Accompany the Vispera on the remainder of its cruise, and seek to obtain all the knowledge you can. For my part, I shall do my best; and I have much to do—very much, I assure you. But I am confident that before we meet again we shall both have obtained a clue to the mysterious death of the young Signor Thorne."
"One moment," I said, after some hesitation, for I was reluctant to approach a subject which preyed ever upon my mind. "Answer me truthfully. Do you entertain suspicion that Mr. Thorne's assassin was the man who once loved me—Ernest Cameron?"
He regarded me in profound surprise.
"No," he responded promptly. "I am convinced of the contrary. There could have been no motive, and besides——"
He paused, not finishing the sentence.
"Well?"
"Besides, the inquiries I made in Nice and Monte Carlo gave a result identical with those made by the police, namely, that Signor Cameron was innocent."
"If you have no suspicion of him, then I am content," I declared, breathing more freely.
My dwarfish companion smiled knowingly, for he was aware that I still loved the man who had abandoned me. Yet there was a strange look in his keen dark eyes that I had not before noticed. As I drove back through the silent streets of the Italian city, down to the port, his sinister countenance, with its indescribable expression of craftiness, haunted me incessantly. Why that final glance of his had produced such an impression upon me I was, even after many hours spent in wonderment, utterly at a loss to explain.