Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/162

 CHAPTER XV

LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM

NO words of mine can express my absolute and abject amazement when I faced the man, whom I had seen lying cold and dead upon that grey stone slab in the mortuary at Dumfries.

My eye caught the customer who, on the entry of Olinto, had dropped his paper and sat staring at him in wonderment. The detective had evidently been furnished with a photograph of the dead man, and now, like myself, discovered him alive and living.

"Signor padrone!" cried the man whose appearance was so absolutely bewildering. “How did you find me here? I admit that I deceived you when I told you I worked at the Milano," he went on rapidly in Italian. "But it was under compulsion — my actions that night were not my own — but those of others."

"Yes, I understand," I said. "But come out into the street. I don't wish to speak before these people. Your padrone knows Italian no doubt."

"Ah! only a very little," he answered smiling. "Have no fear of him."

"But there is Emilio, the cook?"

"Then you have met him!" he exclaimed