“Tell me more,” I said eagerly. “This statement of yours is very puzzling, and has aroused my curiosity. Do you mean that Massari had some sinister design upon me?”
She fixed her dark eyes upon me for a few moments, then said:—
“You were once, about three years ago, in Pisa—at the Minerva, I think?”
I stood before her open-mouthed. What did this sweet-faced woman know regarding that closed page of my life’s history?
Mention of that hotel in the quiet old marble-built city where stands the wonderful Leaning Tower recalled to me a certain unsavoury incident that I would fain have forgotten, yet could never put from me its remembrance.
“Well?” I asked at last, summoning all my strength to remain calm. “What of it?”
She was silent for a moment, gazing straight into my eyes.
“Something occurred there, did it not?” she said slowly.
“And he knew of that?”
Then I recollected how the dying man had fixed his eyes upon me with that hard, intense look; how his gaze had followed me about the room, and I saw his fierce hatred and deep regret that while he himself was dying I still lived.