Page:The Secret of Chimneys - 1987.djvu/47

 the package of manuscript and put it on the table with the letters.

There was a knock at the door, and the waiter entered with a small table and the accessories of the meal. Anthony had strolled over to the mantelpiece. Standing there with his back to the room, he was directly facing the mirror, and idly glancing in it he noticed a curious thing.

The waiter’s eyes were glued on the parcel of manuscript. Shooting little glances sideways at Anthony’s immovable back, he moved softly round the table. His hands were twitching, and he kept passing his tongue over his dry lips. Anthony observed him more closely. He was a tall man, supple like all waiters, with a clean-shaven, mobile face. An Italian, Anthony thought, not a Frenchman.

At the critical moment Anthony wheeled round abruptly. The waiter started slightly, but pretended to be doing something with the salt cellar.

“What’s your name?” asked Anthony abruptly.

“Giuseppe, Monsieur.”

“Italian, eh?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

Anthony spoke to him in that language, and the man answered fluently enough. Finally Anthony dismissed him with a nod, but all the while he was eating the excellent meal which Giuseppe served to him, he was thinking rapidly.

Had he been mistaken? Was Giuseppe’s interest in the parcel just ordinary curiosity? It might be so, but remembering the feverish intensity of the man’s excitement, Anthony decided against that theory. All the same, he was puzzled.

“Dash it all,” said Anthony to himself, “every one can’t be after the blasted manuscript. Perhaps I’m fancying things.”

Dinner concluded and cleared away, he applied himself to the perusal of the Memoirs. Owing to the illegibility of the late Count’s handwriting, the business was a slow one. Anthony’s yawns succeeded one another with suspicious rapidity. At the end of the fourth chapter, he gave it up.

So far, he had found the Memoirs insufferably dull, with no hint of scandal of any kind.

He gathered up the letters and the wrapping of the manuscript, which were lying in a heap together on the table, and locked them up in the suit-case. Then he locked the door, and