“I know,” interrupted the doctor. He pounced upon Spire like a bird of prey. “Come, what do you know about it?”
This reception roused Spire’s dislike of that sour and offhand person like no medical man he had ever seen and certainly no gentleman. On the principle, “like master like man,” Spire was more sensitive to manner than to any trait of personality. He pulled himself together and steadied his voice. “I know nothing, sir, except that you were the last person seen speaking to Mr. Latham.”
“You don’t think I have got him in my pocket, do you?” asked Doctor Martel, noting the hostile stare. “Don’t you attend your master when he retires for the night?”
“I got dismissed early last night. I am sorry to say I sat downstairs after supper very late, listening to tales about one thing and another. I … I went to sleep there,” added Spire with a sort of desperation.
“Listening to tales,” repeated the doctor jeeringly. “Pretty tales they must have been, too. Zillers is no company for a respectable English servant. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Well, and then?”
“I went up, sir, and …”
“In the middle of the night,” suggested the doctor.
“It was pretty late. I …”
He faltered at the remembrance. The waking up in the cold dark kitchen, the cold dark staircase, the light shining through the keyhole of Mr. Cosmo’s bedroom, the first vague feeling that there was something wrong, the empty room. And most awful of all, the bed not slept in, and the candles in the candelabras burning low. He remembered his horror, incredulity, his collapse into an armchair where he sat till broad daylight in a pitiable state of mental agitation.
A slight tremor passed through his portly frame before he forced himself to speak.
“Mr. Latham had emptied his pockets, sir, as if he were making ready to go to bed. All the change and the keys were lying on the mantelpiece. One would think he had been kidnapped. Of course it can’t be,” he added in a low, intense tone.
“Do you mean to say he disappeared without his hat?” asked the doctor.
“No, sir, hat and cloak aren’t there.” And to the doctor’s further questions Spire confessed that he had spoken to no one in the house that morning. He would only have been told lies. He did not think much of the people in the inn.
“So I took the liberty of speaking to you, sir. Mr. Latham may turn up any moment and I don’t know that he would like to find that I have been to the police already.”
“No, perhaps he wouldn’t,” assented the doctor reflectively.
“That’s just it, sir,” murmured Spire. “Mr. Cosmo is a very peculiar young gentleman. He doesn’t like notice to be taken.”
“Doesn’t he? Well then, you had better wait before you go to the police. We had better give him till four o’clock.”
“Very well, sir,” said Spire, fighting down his feeling that nothing in the world would be worse than this waiting. The doctor nodded dismissal, then at the last moment:
“By the by, hadn’t you better look up all the papers that may be lying about?”
Spire was favourably impressed by the suggestion.
“Yes, sir, we have a small strong box with us. I will go and do it at once.”
During that colloquy, conducted in low tones at the foot of the grand staircase, nobody had appeared in the hall. Not even the vigilant Cantelucci. But the elderly lieutenant had raised his head, and his dull uninterested eyes followed the doctor across the hall and out through the door into the sunshine of the square. In all its vast and paved extent only very few figures were moving. The doctor’s tastes and even his destiny had made of him a nocturnal visitor to the abodes of the great. At this time of the day, however, there was almost as little risk of being seen entering the Palace of the Griffins as in the middle of the night. The populace, the shopkeepers, the Austrian garrison, the gendarmes, the sbirri, the spies, and even the conspirators were indulging in midday repose. The very team of dapple-gray horses, harnessed to an enormous two-wheeled cart drawn up in the shade, dozed over their empty nosebags. Dogs slumbered in the doorways in utter abandonment; and only the bronze griffins seated on their narrow pedestals of granite before the doorway of the Palace preserved their alert wide-awake pose of everlasting watchfulness. They were really very fine. And the doctor gave them an appreciative glance before crossing the empty quadrangle. He felt the only wide-awake person in a slumbering world. He wondered if he would succeed in getting admitted to the Palace. If not, he confessed to himself, he would be at a loss what to do next. Very disagreeable. He had, however, the memorandum for the Marquis in his pocket as a pretext for his visit.
All was still without and within; but in the noble anteroom at the foot of the marble staircase he was met by a sight characteristic of the easy Italian ways. Extended face downward on one of the red and gold benches, one of the footmen in shirtsleeves and with his breeches untied at the knees was sleeping profoundly. His dishevelled head rested on his forearm. At an unceremonious poke in the ribs he jumped up to his feet, looking scared and wild. But Doctor Martel was ready for him.
“What’s the matter, my friend?” he asked softly. “Is there a price set on your head?”
The man remained open-mouthed as if paralysed by the caustic enquiry.
“Fetch the majordomo here,” commanded the doctor, thinking that he had seldom seen a more bandit-like figure. While waiting, the doctor reflected that a livery coat was a good disguise. It occurred to him also that in the house of a man having such retainers all sorts of things might happen. This was Italy. The silence as of a tomb, which pervaded the whole house, though nothing extraordinary in the hour of siesta, produced
