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Updated: September 4, 2025
He kicked away the flowers with his pretty dimpled feet, the false flowers that had betrayed him. The babe cannot reason, but instinct tells him that those painted leaves have wronged him. They are faded now, and lie soiled and crumpled, the ghosts of what they were. Again Gigi tries to rise and run, but he is drawn roughly down by the grass rope.
Gigi Duarte was a small, dapper Frenchman who somehow, in the course of his life, had acquired the nickname "Chicken" and it had been with him ever since. The cadets had met him once before when they rode on a passenger liner from Mars to Venusport and liked the small, stubby spaceman.
Gigi looked up and around the marketplace. There was no one visible. The crowd had melted as if by magic. Every one was at supper, every one but Gigi. What a chance to escape, if he were ever to try! The color leaped into the boy's pale cheeks. Why not? Now or never! He rose to his feet, pulling his cloak closer about him, and looked stealthily up and down.
While Pipa sweeps and sings, Angelo and Gigi are roasting these very chestnuts on a heap of ashes under the window outside. Enrica sat near them a little apart on a low wall, that bordered the summit of the cliff. The zone of mighty mountains rose sharp and clear before her. It seemed to her as if she had only to stretch out her hand to touch them.
Angelo was proud to show his alacrity to his reverence, who had often cuffed him for his mischievous pranks; specially on one occasion, when Fra Pacifico had found him in the act of pushing Gigi stealthily into the marble basin of the fountain, to see if, being small, Gigi would swim like the gold-fish. "Go to the Signorina Enrica, Angelo, and tell her that the marchesa wants her."
"Hello!" cried the woman in her hearty, kind voice, stopping the team. "What are you doing here, little lad?" She did not recognize Gigi at once in his long traveling cloak. But suddenly he threw back the folds of it and showed the green tights underneath. "Do you remember?" he said. "You told me to run away. Well, I have done it!" "It is, the little tumbler!
"The man was a mason, I suppose," suggested Gigi. "Of course. He was working with the others in the morning, and he knew where they would be after dinner. He did not come back with them, and half an hour after they had gone down the water came. How many times have I told you that?" "It is always a new tale," answered Gigi. "It gives me pleasure to hear it.
"Do not speak of it! Hiew, hiew! Go on! go on!" And she urged the oxen faster. But the great beasts would not hasten their pace for her. The noise came nearer. They could hear that it was the trotting of hoofs. "There is only one animal," said Gigi, whose ears were keen. "I can hear his four feet patter. I think it is the donkey!" "I can see him now!" cried Paolo. "It is a little man on a donkey.
He was particularly fond of cases in which doors had to be opened by force, and understood that part of his business thoroughly. The key turned in the lock of the postern, and the porter entered, bringing Gigi with him. They both started and turned pale when they saw the policeman and the detective.
"Should I, sir?" The porter affected great politeness all at once. "You will excuse my ignorance." "We are wasting time," Volterra said to the detective. "The porter knows nothing about it. Let us go upstairs." He led the way, and the others followed, including Gigi, who carried a leathern bag containing a few tools. "It is of no use to ring again," observed Volterra.
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