On arrival at Zurich, I was not long in rejoining my companions, for we had a rendezvous at the Savoy, when I learnt that Zuccari was staying at the Dolder Hotel, up on the Zurichberg above the Lake.
“A man named Hauser is calling upon him this evening,” Madame told me. “We must watch.”
This we did. More respectably dressed than when in Naples, I was smoking my after-dinner cigar in the handsome hall of the Dolder Hotel when a tall, well-set-up man, whose fair hair and square jaw stamped him as German-Swiss, inquired of the hall porter for Signor Zuccari, and was at once shown up to the banker’s private sitting-room, where they remained together for nearly an hour.
As I sat waiting impatiently below, I wondered what was happening.
I had already reported our movements to Rayne, who had, in a telegram, expressed great surprise that the Deputy should have left Italy and gone to Zurich—of all places.
Zuccari, on descending the stairs with his friend Hauser, confronted me face to face, but it was apparent that he did not recognize me. Hence I took courage and, later on, engaging a room, moved to the same hotel. Next morning I saw the banker meet the man Hauser a second time, and together they took a long walk on the outskirts of the town above the Lake.
From the concierge I extracted certain valuable information in exchange for the hundred-franc note I slipped into his hands. It seemed that the banker Zuccari frequently visited that hotel, and on every occasion the man Hauser came to Zurich to see him.
“They are conducting some crooked business—that is my belief, m’sieur!” the uniformed man told me in confidence.
“Why do you suspect that?” I asked quickly.
“Well,” he said confidentially, “Isler, the commissary of police, who is now at Berne, once pointed him out to me and said he was a friend, and believed to be one of the accomplices, of Ferdinando Morosini, the notorious jewel-thief who was caught in Milan six months ago and sent to fifteen years’ at Gorgona.”