That day passed long and anxiously. I idled on the Ponte Vecchio and in the dim religious gloom of the Santissima Anunziata, in the afternoon making several calls upon friends I had known, and in the evening dining at Doney’s in preference to the crowded table-d’hôte of English and Americans at the Savoy.

At eleven I awaited old Carlini in the hall of the hotel, and on his arrival took him anxiously in the lift up to my room.

“Well,” he commenced, speaking in his slightly-lisping Florentine tongue, “I have been pursuing inquiries all day, but have discovered very little. The individual you require appears to be a mystery.”

“I expected so,” was my reply. “What have you discovered regarding him?”

“They know him in Via San Cristofano. He has a small apartment on the third floor of number eight, which he only visits occasionally. The place is looked after by an old woman of eighty, whom I managed to question. Discovering that this Melandrini was absent and that a cloth was hanging from the window to dry, I presented myself as an agent of police to explain that the hanging out of a cloth was a contravention of the law and liable to a fine of two francs. I then obtained from her a few facts concerning her padrone. She told me all she knew, which did not amount to much. He had a habit of arriving suddenly, generally at evening, and staying there for one or two days, never emerging in the daytime. Where he lived at other times she did not know. Letters often came for him bearing an English stamp, and she kept them. Indeed, she showed me one that arrived ten days ago and is now awaiting him.”

Could it be from Blair, I wondered?

“What was the character of the handwriting on the envelope?” I inquired.

“An English hand—thick and heavy. Signore was spelt wrongly, I noticed.”

Blair’s hand was thick, for he generally wrote with a quill. I longed to examine it for myself.

“Then this old serving-woman has no idea of the individual’s address?”

“None whatever. He told her that if any one ever called for him to say that his movements are uncertain, and that any message must be left in writing.”

“What is the place like?”

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