“Yes; they have taken my keys,” and he looked at me keenly.

“Your keys!” I expostulated. “What would they do with your keys? You must have left them at home.”

“Perhaps. Eh bien, Mr. Hume, I must bid you good night. I must walk, I suppose, to the Tragetto Ponte del Piccolo for a gondolier. Why, my friend, do you dwell in this barbarous Giudecca?” Then his eyes fell on the table, where the clock ticked loudly. “Ah ha, my old clock, and it goes. Capital! I had quite forgotten my errand.”

Eh bien

“And that is?”

“To deprive you of my clock, my friend. Do you forget that we were to telegraph Madame Gordon in St. Petersburg? Oh, la, la, you did not wait for me at the bureau, I remember. That was not the act of a sportsman.” He shook his head reproachfully.

“I thought it was you who did not wait for me,” I said dryly. “And have you yet received an answer to your telegram?”

“But yes. Behold!” He fumbled in his 149breast-pocket, and sorted rapidly a package of letters and papers. “Accidenti!” he cried, “it is not here.”

149

Accidenti!

“No doubt you left it at home with the keys,” I said coolly.

“Eh? At home with the keys?” He looked at me with half-shut eyes.

“Why not?” I asked, yawning, and casting a longing eye toward my bedroom.

He began to laugh boisterously. “It is a matter to laugh over that thieves should rob one of a telegram and one’s keys, hein?”

hein?

“Decidedly,” I said uneasily.

“But it will be the simplest thing in the world for me to get another telegram,” he cried mockingly. “The thieves will not inconvenience me in the slightest. And as to their going to my rooms, bah, I am not so big a fool as to leave anything of interest there for an intruder to gaze at. No, Mr. Hume, not so big a fool as that. By the way, did you find your bibelot, that rare bibelot in the 

 Prev. P 80/162 next