“You know Italy well—don’t you, Hargreave?”
“I lived in the Val d’Arno for several years before the war,” I replied. “My people rented a villa there.”
Then, turning to Lola, he asked:
“Would you like to go for a trip to Italy with Madame and Hargreave?”
“Oh! It would be delightful, dad!” she cried. “Can we go? When?”
“Quite soon,” he replied. “I want Hargreave to go on a mission for me—and you can both go with him. It would be a change for you all.”
“Delightful!” exclaimed the well-preserved Madame Duperré. “Won’t it be fun, Lola?”
“Ripping!” agreed the girl, turning her sparkling eyes to mine, while I myself expressed the greatest satisfaction at returning to the country I had learned to love so well.
That afternoon, as I sat with Rayne in the smoking-room, he explained to me the reason he wished me to go to Italy—to make certain secret inquiries, it seemed. But the motive he did not reveal.
At his orders I took a piece of paper upon which I made certain notes of names and places, of suspicions and facts which he wished me to ascertain and prove—curious and apparently mysterious facts.