That night I arranged with a neighbouring undertaker that the remains of the stranger should be taken away on the following night when the whole house was asleep, a service for which I received the heartfelt gratitude of Mrs Gilbert.

About seven o’clock the next evening when I returned from the club, Miss Gilbert met me excitedly in the hall, and asked whether I would mind stepping into her mother’s sitting-room for a moment.

Seated within, I found a tall, dark-haired, sweet-faced girl in neat black who looked at me with shy inquiry as I entered. I saw she was very beautiful. Her delicately moulded features were perfect, and upon her cheeks was the fresh bloom of youth. I judged her to be about twenty-five, with slim, narrow-waisted, graceful figure, eyes of soft dark brown, well-defined brows and tiny shell-like ears. Her air and manner was of the chic Parisienne, rather than the Londoner. The instant our gaze met I saw that she was a woman of exquisite sweetness—perhaps one of the most attractive I had ever seen in all my wide wanderings over the face of the globe.

“This lady desires to see you, Mr Leaf,” explained the landlady’s daughter. “She has called with regard to our friend, Signor Massari.”

I bowed to her, and as I did so she said quickly in English:—

“I am in active search of Signor Massari, and have come post-haste across Europe in order to find him. This lady says he has been here, but has left. You, I understand, speak Italian and have had several conversations with him?”

I glanced quickly at Miss Gilbert. She had not told the visitor the sad truth, therefore I was compelled to sustain the fiction that the dead man had left.

The landlady’s daughter, apparently unable to further evade her visitor’s eager questions, excused herself and left us alone together.

The instant she had gone the visitor rose with a quick frou-frou of silken underskirts, and closing the door turned to me with a deep earnest look, saying in a low voice scarcely above a whisper:—

“Let me confess the truth, sir! I am in a most deadly peril, and yet utterly defenceless. I have come direct from Rome in order to overtake the man who has called himself Massari. I must find him, at all hazards. If he chooses to speak—to tell the truth—then he can save my life. If not, I’m lost. Will you help me to discover him? Perhaps you know where he has gone? I throw 

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