Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/110

98 The victim was the man who had acted as my friend — the Italian waiter, Olinto.

I advanced and peered into the thin inanimate features, scarce able to realize the actual fact. But my eyes had not deceived me. Though death distorts the facial expression of every man, I had no difficulty in identifying him.

"You recognize him, sir?" remarked the officer. "Who is he? Our people are very anxious to know, for up to the present moment they haven't succeeded in establishing his identity."

I bit my lips. I had been an arrant fool to betray myself before that man. Yet having done so, I saw that any attempt to conceal my knowledge must of necessity reflect upon me.

"I will see your inspector," I answered with as much calmness as I could muster. "Where has the poor fellow been wounded?"

"Through the heart," responded the constable, as turning the sheet further down he showed me the small knife wound which had penetrated the victim's jacket and vest full in the chest.

"This is the weapon," he added, taking from a shelf close by a long thin poniard with an ivory handle, which he handed to me.

In an instant I recognized what it was, and how deadly. It was an old Florentine misericordia, a long thin triangular blade a quarter of an inch wide at its greatest width, tapering to a needle-point, with a hilt of yellow ivory, the most deadly and fatal of all the daggers and poniards of the Middle Ages. The blade being sharp on three angles produced a