“But even she doesn’t know that it was the notorious Nardini who died up stairs.”
“No, but I don’t fancy she’s such a ready liar as I am, old chap,” laughed Sammy. “He started the haw-haw attitude, and with me that don’t pay—as you know. I did the haw-haw likewise, and led him to believe that I was most delighted to be of any assistance to him in helping him to trace his friend.”
“His friend! Did he say that Nardini was his friend?”
“He didn’t mention his name. He only said that an intimate friend of his, an Italian from Rome, had, he knew, arrived in London and suddenly disappeared. He had prosecuted most diligent search, and having ascertained from the registrar of deaths that an Italian had died there he wondered whether it might not be his friend. Whereupon I at once described a man something like Father Christmas without his muff and holly, and at length he went away quite satisfied that the man who died upstairs was not the person he was in search of.”
“He didn’t say where he was living, or leave any address?”
“He wasn’t likely to if he’s one of Miller’s crowd,” my friend exclaimed. “But I wonder what’s in the wind? He has some distinct object in establishing Nardini’s death.”
“Probably fears some revelation which the fugitive might make if he had fallen into the hands of the police,” I suggested. “The ex-Minister wasn’t a very bright specimen himself from all accounts and from those papers we discovered. He was a blackmailer and a brute, as well as an embezzler.”
“Well,” declared Sammy, “if you really have direct evidence against this fellow Gordon-Wright, I should just tell the truth at Scotland Yard. I’d dearly love to see Miller in the dock, too, for if any one deserves to pick oakum for a few years, he does. But he’s such a cunning knave, and passes so well as a gentleman, that nobody ever suspects.”
“They say he’s dined and slept at half the best country-houses in Dorsetshire and Devonshire, and I believe he’s going to hunt from Market Harborough this coming season.”
“The deuce he is! What infernal audacity! I feel myself like denouncing him.”