One warm afternoon when, without being seen, I was watching the Marchesa’s pretty daughter Flavia who had strolled into the town, I saw her meet, close to the Café Ferrari, that tall, black-bearded, middle-aged banker Pietro Zuccari, whom I had seen at their palazzo. They walked as far as the Piazza San Ferdinando and entered the Gambrinus, where they sat at a little table eating ices, while he talked to her very confidentially. As I idled outside in a shabby suit and battered straw hat which I had bought, I saw this great Italian banker gesticulating and whispering into her ear.
The girl’s attitude was that of a person absorbing all his arguments in order to repeat them, for she nodded slowly from time to time, though she uttered but few words; indeed, only now and then did she ask any question.
I could, of course, hear nothing. But what I was able to observe aroused my curiosity, for the meeting between the girl and the middle-aged banker was palpably a clandestine one.
On emerging, they parted, he walking in the direction of the railway station, while the girl strolled homeward. Was she carrying a message to her mother from the famous financier?
The excitement he had betrayed interested me. I noticed that he had once clenched his fist and brought it down heavily before her as they sat together.
For a whole month we remained at Salerno, and a delightful month it proved, for I had long chats and walks with Lola, and we became even greater and more intimate friends. Madame Duperré noticed it but said nothing.
I went each day to slouch and idle in Naples, to sit before cafés and eat my frugal meal at one or other of the osterie which abound in the city, or to take my apératif at the liquoristi, Canevera’s, Attila’s, or the others’.
I confess that I was mystified why I should have been sent to watch that woman.
So clever, so well-thought-out and so insidious were all Rayne’s methods to obtain information of the intentions and movements of certain people of wealth, that I knew from experience that there was some cleverly concealed scheme afoot which could only be carried out after certain accurate details had been obtained.