"Danger of having communications cut off," he finished. "I was just thinking the same when you came in. Have you thought of where to go?"
"You have a furnished house at Victoria standing empty till June. I'll go there as a sort of caretaker." She raised her hand. "Don't let's talk any more about it to-day. I feel as though," she was at the door before he had guessed her intention, "I want to be alone, for a while."
She was gone. The colonel mixed himself a stiff drink.
Pointer found Cockburn's car waiting for him at the police station. It had been waiting some time.
"Bond had to get back to town. He went by train, but I wanted to see you about something. You know that shot I heard, or thought I heard, last Thursday night?" Cockburn began briskly.
Pointer nodded.
"Well, Count di Monti's tyre burst coming back from the funeral. I heard the sound again at that moment. It wasn't a shot after all, but one of his tyres I heard go phut. They're a patent, reinforced, balloon type, of a very curious make."
"You're quite sure of this?"
"I'm prepared to swear to it. Such a sound might travel far on a quiet evening just before a storm. Anyway, that's the noise we heard and mistook for a shot." Cockburn's voice was quite definite.
Pointer turned over his latest addition to the puzzle for a minute.
"You see," he explained—Cockburn was talking to him in his own sitting-room, "the trouble is that Count di Monti has a very good alibi for the hours from eight on Thursday till Friday morning. Prince Cornaro and a Signor del Greco are prepared to swear that he was in their company from dinner till the meeting of Italian Fascisti, which took place at eleven, and afterwards till ten the next morning, or a little after. They're both very definite and very positive. The head waiter at Frasati's bears out the dinner hour as eight. The count most certainly spoke at the meeting. For the rest of the time we have to rely on the honour of the two gentlemen."
Cockburn nodded in his turn. He was listening very seriously. "I quite understand all that. But can't the alibi be tested?"
"I don't mind saying that it's so good it's suspicious."
"That's what I think. Now, Mr. Thornton, it seems, knows a Cavaliere Rossi, the London correspondent, for the best Italian papers. An anti-Fascist. He might be able to tell us something about di Monti and Thursday night."
Pointer heartily commended this idea.
Armed with a letter, and preceded by a telephone message from Thornton to the Cavaliere, Cockburn sped up to the Italian's club.
Rossi turned out to be a tall, good-looking young man with a merry, dark eye. He burnt Thornton's little note in the wood fire.
"Have a cocktail of my family Vermouth while we talk. This corner is absolutely safe from eavesdroppers and, what is more difficult to secure in England, and much more important, from draughts. Now, what do you want me to tell you about di Monti?"
"Oh, all sorts of things. First of all, what is his position here?"
"Slippery. If the Ambassador likes, he can disown him. If he likes, he can throw his mantle over him, and then you won't be able to touch him."
"I can hardly imagine a war over that chap! But which way would his Excellency's preferences run?" Rossi bent forward in mock intensity.
"It depends on how much there is to throw his cloak over. A little heap of political trouble or a great mound of it. It would stretch in the one case, but not in the other. At least, that is how things seem to stand. Di Monti is on a mission, straight from our 'Musoon.' Sent to organise the Italian Fascisti in London. The anti-Communists, that is—."
Cockburn glanced meditatively at his glass.
"The pro-'Italia uber alles', eh?" he asked quietly. Rossi shrugged his shoulders, with a laugh at the mixture of tongues.
"Perhaps! After all, every country sings that song. 'Britannia Rules the Waves' sounds so very like it to some ears, my friend. But to continue—the mission is a sort of test. Cangrande did splendidly with d'Annunzio's Arditi in Fiume."
Cockburn made a face.
"That is as may be, but he did well. Then came that Corfu incident. He was partly responsible for the way that was carried out. So he got into semi-disgrace. Now, as it happens, the dream of his life has always been our colonies. Tripoli, and then this Oltrajuba. He wants to be sent out with a free hand to organise the latter. He may get it—if there is no trouble, no hint of disgrace. But he will not get it if he is mixed up publicly in this story. And it is being decided in the Inner Council at Rome even now."
"Tell me, Cavaliere, do you think the man capable of murder?"
"Are we not all capable of murder? I am."
"No," Cockburn said with conviction. "That is one of our catch phrases, that 'Every man is capable of murder.' In reality, few people are. And here it's a question of a young and frightfully, lovely girl. Not one man in a million would have been willing to harm her."
"I know. I've seen her more than once. Madonna, she was beautiful!"
"Do you think the Count capable of murdering her?" persisted Cockburn.
Rossi looked uncomfortable.
"Jealousy is a fearful poison," he confessed.. "I think we of the south feel it more than you can. With us it is something that can change us altogether until it is past. How can I say he would not fall, where so many men have fallen?"
"Look here, did you see him yourself at the meeting on Thursday?"
"I did. He took the chair from eleven till twelve."
"Well, then, was he late?" Cockburn felt sure that all was not as it should be with that alibi. He was convinced that di Monti was in the events of Thursday night for something.
"Not to speak of. Perhaps half an hour, more or less. You know with us Italians—" The hands finished the sentence, gracefully.
"Did he seem as usual at the meeting?" Cockburn probed. He had discussed with Pointer the best questions to ask.
Rossi thought a while, running his slender hands through his hair.
"In no way—no. He is never a magnetic speaker, but he is reliable and very much in earnest. Last Thursday I thought he seemed rather duller than usual."
"Duller!" Cockburn had not expected this.
"Well, then, put it that his thoughts were somewhere else. He had a colour in his face, and a red light in his eyes that I had never seen in him before."
Cockburn sipped his Vermouth.
"You don't like di Monti?" he asked.
Rossi shook his head.
"I don't. But I've told you only the truth, none the less," he added with a slight smile.
"May I ask you why you don't like him?"
Rossi shrugged.
"Why don't I like him? There is something—what shall I say—sinister?—in the man that repels me. Then, too, his name has been mixed up at home with some very savage punitive expeditions, and you know what that means, when the Fascisti—"
Rossi checked himself here.
"I've told you all I know of the man," he finished.
"Thanks ever. I wish some of your facts had been more discreditable," Cockburn said in a low voice, and Rossi chuckled. "Now, a last favour. Just let me have the address of the friend who took di Monti to his rooms, will you? The name was del Greco."
Rossi was able to give it him, and Cockburn put in an hour's work learning, by a few, very shrewdly-placed questions, from a couple of maids in the flat below, that the rooms upstairs had been empty