Page:Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories Vol.5 (1907).djvu/43



BOUT the middle of the last century there stood, in a side street of Venice, a quiet little street bearing the cheerful name "Della Cortesia," a simple one-story house. The Madonna was enthroned above its low portal, in a niche framed by wooden columns and quaint stone carvings. A tiny lamp, set in a globe of ruby glass, shone out before the statue day and night. Just inside the lower vestibule a steep staircase led to the upper rooms. On its higher landing another little lamp, hanging on chains from the ceiling, gave a dim light in the dark hall. In spite of the eternal twilight that reigned there, the staircase was the favorite place, for rest or work, of the owner, Giovanna Danieli. Since the death of her husband, Madame Giovanna had occupied the little dwelling with her only child, her daughter Marietta, renting some of the rooms she did not need to quiet, well-recommended strangers. Giovanna would explain her love for the stairs by saying that her eyes had become so weakened through weeping for her lost husband that they could no longer endure the full daylight. Her neighbors asserted that she enjoyed the opportunity her position on the stairs gave her for stopping those who went in or out, and chatting with them.

However this might be, her favorite place of sojourn afforded her little chance for amusement on the day and hour when we first make her acquaintance. It was an evening in August of the year 1762. For six months she had had no lodgers, and she was unlikely to have any visitors at so late an hour. Madame Giovanna had sent