Watts was not a well-trained waiter, and there was some little confusion and clatter before each man had two soup plates with a thick white mixture set before him, which he had thrust his fist vigorously. Then a basin of water, soap, and piles of towels were brought in, and after a wash, rings were resumed, chairs pushed away, and the meeting was over.
"Are we innocent or guilty?" asked Thornton, getting up.
"Can't tell yet for certain, sir, but I don't see any signs of that little mark I spoke of in any of the plates." Pointer inspected them.
"D'ye mean to say you've got a list of suspects, and once you've scratched us off, you bag the remainder?" asked Bond curiously.
Pointer only made some non-committal answer.
"What about the count?" asked Bellairs.
"I expect to get his impressions myself in Italy," Pointer explained. "I hope to have an interview with him as soon as may be."
He looked at "Bond and Co.," who had forwarded him a most useful cipher cable.
Next morning the Chief Inspector was on his way to Paris and Genoa. Full instructions had been left with the superintendent and Rodman for every eventuality, but Pointer expected nothing startling or showy—until his return.
Genoa shows only its ugly back to the station, and keeps its beautiful face for the sea, its age-old friend. Pointer wasted no time in looking about him. He made his way to an Italian hotel in the heart of the climbing town. After a wash and brush up, he went at once to the Sotutto.
There are many inquiry agencies in Italy, many of them reputable concerns. At the head of all for efficiency and reliability stands the one he had chosen.
Pointer's investigations were backward-reaching. He laid a portrait of Professor Charteris, and one of di Monti, and the portraits of all the people concerned in, the Stillwater case, as far as he knew them, before the manager, a pleasant, clever-faced Genoese.
"This," Pointer pencilled a mark on the back of the professor's picture, "is the man I chiefly want to learn about. Then I want to know if this man—di Monti—or any of the other men have been seen in your town. I am prepared to pay handsomely for the information. I should think the inquiry might start about three weeks to a fortnight ago. But that is only guesswork."
The manager made his notes.
"How long can you give us?"
"I need the information as soon as possible. This is a big case. Put extra men on the job. I want to be away to-night if possible."
It was possible. It is amazing what discreet track is kept on all foreigners in Italy.
When he called again in answer to a telephone message, he learnt this:
Professor Charteris had come to the Hotel Miramare on a Friday, just a week before Rose was found murdered, in company with a very tall, dark, listless-looking man, whom the hall-porter had never seen before, or since. He would judge him to be about thirty. They had breakfasted together in the professor's private sitting-room, and a good deal of low-voiced conversation had gone on between them. Coming down together afterwards, the lift had stuck fast owing to a short circuit, and they had been delayed between floors for nearly a quarter of an hour. The lift boy had had another passenger beside the professor and the professor's companion. That was a visitor, who, like Charteris, was well known to the hotel. He had greeted the professor as an old friend, and the professor, after a pause, as the lift absolutely refused to budge, had hurriedly, and almost under his breath, introduced his companion as Mr. Sayce.
He had added that "Mr. Sayce is interested in my scheme for emeralds, so kindly forget that you've seen either of us here. Some very delicate negotiations are going on."
The lift-boy had particularly remembered the little scene, partly, because he thought that the three men were the last types which he would have connected with business or trade of any sort, and being an American, he had an eye for that well-known species of his fellow man, and partly because of the feeling that neither the professor nor, least of all, the man called Sayce were at all keen on meeting the man who had spoken to Charteris. When the latter got into the lift at the floor below the professor's, the young man had turned his back on him, until the delay had forced the three into a sort of temporary intimacy. When deposited at last on the ground floor, the younger man had had a cab called, and had driven off alone to the station. He had no luggage with him.
"The man who spoke to Professor Charteris in the lift, you have his name?"
The detective had, and his home address. He was a Professor Witherspoon, a Cambridge light, and was staying at the Villa Sole, Obermais, Meranoo.
Pointer put in some hours of strenuous work, at Genoa, tracing, tracking, comparing. Then he got the hall-porter to put him through to Professor Witherspoon.
He heard a thin, cheerful, kindly voice.
"Professor Witherspoon speaking. Who are you?"
"Sayce. You met me in the stuck lift of the Miramare a fortnight ago. I don't know if you remember—"
"Perfectly. Is the Professor with you?"
"No, it's about him I'm 'phoning. Have you heard from him since he left here, the day after we met? I've returned for an appointment, and can't learn where he is."
"How trying. He spoke of Verona, didn't he?"
"He did. But he hadn't turned up to fetch, or send for his fermo posta letters there. You haven't happened to hear of, or from him, then?"
"Yes. He telephoned me the next Monday from Bolzano, the branch station for Meranoo, you know, that he might just possibly drop in for a chat on Wednesday afternoon. He thought of walking over by way of the Mendel Pass. But he didn't come. He was very vague about the trip. Making it dependent on the weather, and how fit he might be feeling."
"Monday, April twenty-eighth?"
"That was the date."
"You haven't heard from him since?"
"Not a word. The weather's been very cold, even here. But wasn't he going to stay with an Italian family? I seem to remember an old Veronese name."
"Di Monti? I might try there. You can't suggest any other likely spot for a cast? The matter's most urgent, or I wouldn't have rung you up."
"I'm only sorry not to be of any help. No. I don't remember hearing our friend mention any other place. We chiefly talked of the wonderful Buru Bhudor finds, you may remember. But I think even the indefatigable Charteris would hardly have gone there."
Pointer had no idea where or what the "wonderful finds" might be.
"You could hardly call them in Italy, could you?" he fished cautiously.
"Hardly," came the smiling reply, "no, hardly."
Pointer dared probe no further, and the whereabouts of the afore-mentioned ruins remained for months a mystery to him.
The next move, then, was clearly Verona. Verona—the mere name was poetry—was Shakespeare.
Incidentally it was also the home of the di Monti. Which was more like duty.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AT Verona, that swarming little ant-heap, Pointer was wakened by the hotel