“Well,” exclaimed the butler, “I’ll see if I can get at the address book. She keeps it in a drawer in her boudoir, which is usually locked. But sometimes she leaves it open. At any rate, I’ll see what I can do and let you know.”
I thanked him and told him that I was staying at the Savoy. Then I was compelled to discuss with the estate-agent’s clerk the pretended renting of an apartment out by the Porta Romana, which, he said, was vacant.
On the following day, in order to still sustain the deception, I went and viewed the place, and found it really quite comfortable and very reasonable. But, of course, I was compelled to express dislike of it. Whereupon my friend promised to find me another.
Day after day I waited in Florence, hoping against hope that Robertson would be able to furnish me with Miss Thurston’s address. But though I saw him several times he reported that the drawer containing the address book was still locked.
Mr. De Gex had gone to Rome, and was away for three days. The British Ambassador was giving some official function and the millionaire had been invited. Indeed, I read all about it in the Nazione.
On the fourth day he returned, for I saw him in his big yellow car driving along the Via Calzajoli. An elegant Italian, the young Marchese Cerretani, was seated at his side, and both were laughing together.
Twice I had been up to the Villa Clementini, and wandered around its high white walls which hid the beautiful gardens from the public gaze. Surely there was no fairer spot in all sunny Italy than that chosen by the rich man as his abode. To the hundreds of visitors of all nations, who came up by train to Fiesole from Florence to lunch or dine at the various pleasant little restaurants, the great imposing place was pointed out as the residence of the rich “Inglese”—the man who possessed more money than any of the most wealthy in the kingdom of Italy.
When I thought of that fateful night in Stretton Street, I waxed furious. Was it possible, that, by the possession of great riches, a man could commit crime with impunity? Perhaps what goaded me to desperation more than anything was the foul trick that had been played upon me—the administration of that drug which had caused me to lose all sense of my own being.
That subtle odour of pot-pourri had gripped me until I felt faint and inert beneath its perfume, and it often returned to me—but in fancy, of course.
In the winter sunshine I wandered about the busy, old-world streets of Florence, idling in the cafés, gazing into the many shop-windows of the dealers in faked pictures and faked antiques, while often my wandering footsteps led me into one or other of the “sights” of the city, all of which I had visited before—the National Museum at the Bargello, the Laurenziana Library, with its rows of priceless chained manuscripts, the Chiostro dello Scalzo, where Andrea del Sarto’s wonderful frescoes adorn the walls, or into the Palazzo Vecchio, or the galleries of the Pitti, or the Uffizi. I was merely killing time in the faint hope that the good-natured Robertson might get for me the information which, in the circumstances, I was naturally most eager to obtain.