“Bah!” responded the doctor. “They’ll only believe that it’s a ghost. Here the contadini are most superstitious.”
“But the carabinieri are not,” remarked the young accomplice apprehensively. “My own idea is that we’ve been followed. I noticed a man in a dark suit looking very hard at us when we left the train.”
“What kind of man?” the doctor inquired quickly.
“Looked like an Inglese signore, rather tall, about thirty, and wore a dark suit.”
“Why in the name of Fate didn’t you mention it to us at the time?” cried Miller. “An Inglese! Who could he possibly be? Have you ever seen him before?”
“Never.”
“Then he may have followed us here and alarmed the carabinieri!” gasped the doctor. “We must escape—before they arrest us!”
I saw that the young thief had noticed me when I had followed them out into the darkness from the station at Tivoli. He would therefore recognise me if we met again.
They would, no doubt, make a desperate attempt at escape. Yet should I raise the alarm and call the police? Was it policy on my part to do so? If Lucie’s father were arrested, Lucie herself must surely be implicated, and perhaps through Gordon-Wright my own dear love might also find herself in the criminal’s dock.
The mystery had grown so complicated and so inexplicable that I feared to take any step towards the denunciation of the thieves.