Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/19

 “Ah, the signor has taken advantage of the balmy night and been to hear the band concert in the public gardens?”

“I'm fond of music,” said Captain Jimmy evasively. “I had rather hoped for the pleasure of company this evening; but I saw neither of you around when I left the hotel. Were you at the concert?”

The cool directness of his question appeared to cause the guide some slight confusion.

“No, signor,” he said, lowering his eyes to the rug at which he stared contemplatively. “The signorina is—er—planning her further explorations in my beloved Venezia.”

Jimmy saw a slight smile curve the corners of Tommie's most charming mouth and was not surprised when she turned from the writing table after folding up a map of the city and smiled openly at him.

“Yes, Mr. Ware,” she said, “I am still unsatisfied. There is much to be seen in Venice. Don't you think so?”

“I do,” he agreed, feeling all the time that perhaps he was fencing with a very charming antagonist. “The canals, by night, are wonderful. There is a mystery about them, a sort of glamour. Quite as if romance were not yet dead in the greatest home of romance that the world has ever known.”

“Ah! The signor too feels that?” cried Pietro, suddenly enthusing. “He sees it to-day? Then think what it must have been in those past centuries when silks and satins rustled in the gondolas and the gondoliers of the rich and powerful wore velvet and gold! Back in those ages of poetry, and song, and love!”

“And perhaps abduction, and the stiletto, and the vendetta also, eh?”

“Possibly,” said Pietro with a shrug of his shoulders and uplift of his hands. “Men of the medieval ages were hot blooded and quick to act.”

“And I fancy that the Venetians are still hot blooded and quick,” retorted the captain, steadily eying the guide to discern if the latter might not in any way betray himself.

“I suppose we are—if we are crossed,” calmly replied Pietro.

“And perhaps as dangerous to-day as they were years ago—in the Dark Ages?”

“And perhaps as dangerous, signor.”

Miss Cardell looked up at the two men as if suspecting some hidden import in their speech and, almost as if thrusting herself between two combatants, intervened.

“To-morrow afternoon, Mr. Ware, I plan to go to the Lido in my launch. Would you like to come along?”

“Nothing could delight me more,” he said sincerely. “With one reservation—which is that in the evening you are to go as my guest to the gardens to hear the very famous military band that is playing there this week.”

He saw that for a moment she hesitated and that Pietro was staring at her as if to suggest that she decline, and he felt a savage desire to tell that young man that it was not the part of a guide to make suggestions to his employer. She glanced up almost casually at Pietro, intercepted his look and then her lips closed firmly as she replied, “I shall be your guest in the evening, with pleasure, Mr. Ware.”

Pietro arose almost sulkily, recovered his poise, and said: “Then it is planned that we leave the hotel at three o'clock, Signorina Cardell.”

“That is the arrangement. Good night,” she said as he bowed, and after making his salutation to Captain Jimmy retired with a swing of his lithe young shoulders that seemed to express something akin to “washing his hands” of something.

The girl watched him go with an amused look in her eyes and seemed almost unaware of Jimmy's presence. He expected her to make some comment, but she did not. He was tempted, under the lure of her eyes, to bluntly ask her the meaning of the night's episode, but fortunately remembered that although friendship grows with an astonishing rapidity between congenial fellow countrymen when they find themselves alone together in a foreign land, there is a limit to inquisitiveness. Moreover, he was aware that within a week he had formed a most astonishing and perplexing desire for this girl's esteem. He contented himself with a reference to the departed guide.

“That young chap seems to be a most competent sort of person, quite above the average run of guides, doesn't he?”

“Ah, you have noticed that too? Well, he amuses me. He does, actually!” she declared. 'He reminds me of some old poet who, all fire and fervor, had stepped out of a frame. But perhaps you don't know that he is a poet? Well, he is. He gave me to-day a bundle of manuscript and—