I was compelled therefore to return to the booking-office and obtain a ticket. As, however, there was but one sleeping-car I could not travel in it for fear of detection, and was therefore forced to enter an ordinary first-class carriage, with the prospect of a twelve hours’ tedious journey.
On we travelled until the dawn spread into a grey damp day, then the sun shone, it grew warmer, and I stretched myself upon the cushions and slept. To descend to get anything to eat was to invite detection; therefore I starved upon a pull from my flask and a couple of sandwiches with which I had provided myself at the Calais buffet.
From Bâle I followed them to Lucerne, and from Lucerne by the Gothard railway to Milan, where we arrived late at night, her ladyship driving alone to the Hotel Metropole, opposite the Duomo, and the two men going off in a cab in another direction.
As soon as I had watched the Countess into the Metropole I went along to the Cavour, where I quickly turned in and was very soon asleep. Milan seemed to be their destination, for at the station they had been met by a second foreigner, an Italian evidently, a short ferret-eyed little man, smoking the stump of a cigar, and after the exchange of a few words he parted from them quickly and was lost to sight.
My own idea was that he had met Logan and his friend and had told them to what address to drive. I, however, could not follow them, being bent upon watching Marigold. Next morning I sent a telegram to Keene informing him of my whereabouts, and then set myself to keep observation on the Countess’s movements.
Milan, the most noisy city of modern Italy, was parched and dusty at that season of the year, and save for a few German tourists the hotels seemed empty. There are, of course, visitors from all corners of the earth at all seasons of the year to see the wonders of the cathedral, but to the man who knows his Italy, and who loves it, there is something so incongruous, so ugly, so utterly rasping upon the nerves in Milan that it is decidedly a city to get away from. The place bears the impress of all that is bad in Italian art of to-day, combined with all the worst features of that complex life which is known as Modern Italy.
Opposite the hotel stood the great stucco arcade, the Gallery of Victor Emmanuel, one of the greatest, if not actually the greatest, in Europe, and about eleven o’clock her ladyship emerged from her hotel alone and wandered through the arcade looking into the shop windows, some of those establishments being the best and most expensive in Italy.
She little dreamed of my presence as I followed her. Previously I had bought a grey felt hat of Italian shape in order that my English “bowler” should not be conspicuous, and with my watchful eyes upon her I sauntered on, wondering why she was waiting. She returned to the hotel to lunch, and in the afternoon went for a drive around the bastions, which, planted with limes now, form the passeggiata of the prosperous Milanese.
It surprised me that Logan and his companion did not return to her, and I regretted that I had not ascertained whither they had gone. At seven o’clock that evening, however, she went alone to the large restaurant in the Galleria known as Biffi’s, and entering found the three men seated at table expecting her. Each greeted her with deep deference, then reseated themselves, and she dined with them.
From where I sat, engrossed in my Tribuna—the top of my head concealed by my new grey hat—I could see that now and then the conversation was of a confidential character, and I also noticed certain strange meaning looks exchanged between the men when the woman’s attention was otherwise engaged.