“He might be down this afternoon—about four o’clock,” replied the alert young Englishman who spoke Italian so well. “I’ll look in there at four, if you will be about.”
“I certainly will be there,” I said, and then we went along to Giacosa’s, where we each had that cocktail-like speciality known as a “piccolo.”
At five minutes to four that afternoon I entered the big Gambrinus Café, which was nearly opposite my hotel on the other side of the piazza, and I took a seat just inside the door. The orchestra was playing, and the place was well filled with a gay cosmopolitan crowd, many of them winter idlers.
I looked around, wondering if the butler, Robertson, had arrived, and waited in patience for the coming of my friend.
Punctually at four he appeared, and greeting me, cast his eyes over the many small tables, until suddenly he exclaimed:
“Ah! There he is!”
We walked to a table some distance away, where a stoutish, grey-haired, clean-shaven Englishman was smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper, with a glass of vermouth and seltzer before him.
“Hallo, Arthur!” he exclaimed as he raised his eyes to my friend.
“This is a friend of mine, Mr. Garfield,” my companion said, introducing me, and then we sat down and began to chat. At last I could possess myself in patience no longer, and addressing the millionaire’s butler, told him frankly that I was in search of information concerning the dark-haired young lady who had been guest up at the villa about three months ago.