I saw that he stood there with knit brows, still glancing at the bracelet, as though mystified.
“Come,” urged Gavazzi, in the brisk businesslike way which appeared to be natural to him. “We have no time to lose if we really intend to be successful.” And he went down upon his knees in the farther corner of the room, carefully feeling the surface of the blue velvet-pile carpet with his hands.
“We’d better have it up,” he declared at last. “I feel sure it’s somewhere in this corner.”
“Then you never actually saw it?” remarked Miller, a trifle disappointed.
“No. But it isn’t likely he would ever reveal to me where he kept his most private secrets. We were friends, intimate friends, but Giovanni Nardini was not the man to reveal to even his own father what he considered was a secret. See this!” And rising he walked to the oak-panelled wainscotting, touched a spring, and there was revealed a small secret door leading down to a short flight of steps in the wall somewhere into the cellars below—a secret mode of egress.
Again he went to a book-case, part of which proved false, and there on pulling it away revealed a large iron safe let into the wall.
“You see I am aware of some of his secrets. The police think they’ve searched the place, but they’ve never discovered either of these, that’s very certain,” he laughed.
Then, with the younger man, he proceeded to tear up the carpet, showing that the floor, unlike that in most Italian houses, was boarded and not of mosaic.
All three moved the furniture and gradually rolled the carpet back until they had half-uncovered the room. It was heavy, exciting work, and the perspiration rolled from their brows in great beads.
Once the chair behind which I was concealed moved a little and the wheel squeaked.