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Maselli was surprised, and showed it. "Why, sir, you've described him to a nicety," he said. "Very well. Next time he is there to your absolute knowledge, slip out and telephone the fact to me at Scotland Yard. If I'm not in, ask for Mr. Furneaux. You remember Mr. Furneaux?" A sickly smile admitted the acquaintance.
"A well-filled nest," he communed, "and a nice lot of prize birds in it, upon my word!" The last time he had set eyes on a certain notably expert forger and counterfeiter a judge was passing sentence of five years' penal servitude and three years' police supervision on a felon; and the judge had not addressed the prisoner as Giovanni Maselli, but as John Christopher Drake!
"Scores of times in four months?" "Yes, sir, every second or third day. That is, I either meet him or know he is there because Mrs. Maselli and Mrs. Garth are friendly, and there is constant coming and going across the landing." "Is he a man of about thirty, middle height, lanky black hair, smooth dark face, sunken eyes, high cheek bones rather, shall I say, Italian in appearance?"
He wondered whether or not Mortimer Fenley had committed some technical error, such as the common one of creating a trust without appointing trustees. That would be seen in due course, when the will was probated. At any rate, he grinned at his own expense. "The only individual who has scored today," he said to himself, "is John Christopher Drake, alias Giovanni Maselli. I must keep mum about him.
"Now, Maselli," he said, when they were seated at a marble-topped table in a corner of a well-filled room, "since we know each other so well we can converse plainly, eh?" "Yes, sir, but I'm done for now. I've been trying to earn an honest living, and have succeeded, but now " The man spoke brokenly. His spirit was crushed.
He saw in his mind's eye the frowning portals of a convict settlement, and heard the boom of a giant knocker reverberating through gaunt aisles of despair. "If you reflect that I am calling you Maselli, you'll drink that whisky and soda, and listen to what I have to say," broke in Winter severely. The other looked up at him, and a gleam of hope illumined the pallid cheeks.
Vasari speaks of a Nativity, painted for the Cistercian monks of Cestello; a beautiful composition, in which the Madonna adores the holy child, S. Joseph standing near her; S. Francis and S. Jerome kneel in adoration; the landscape was sketched from the hills near "La Vernia," where S. Francis received the stigmata. Maselli says the picture was lost when the monastery changed hands, but Messrs.
Silence on your part will meet with silence on mine.... Oh, dash it, have another drink! Where's your nerve?" Signor Giovanni Maselli was crying. A phantom had brushed close, but was passing; nevertheless, its shadow had chilled him to the bone. Winter walked back to Scotland Yard, and found that Sheldon had gone, leaving a note which read: "Mr.
"Furneaux will jeer at me when he hears of this little episode," thought Winter, smiling as he turned to descend the stairs. Furneaux did jeer, but it was at his colleague's phenomenal luck. The door of No. Twelve, the only other flat on the same landing, opened, and a man appeared. Recognition was prompt on Winter's side. "Hello, Drake!" he said genially. "Are you Signor Maselli?
"Friendly?" he contrived to gasp, giving a ghastly look over his shoulder to ascertain whether any one in the interior of the flat had heard that name "Drake." "Yes. I mean it. Strictly on the q. t.," said Winter, sinking his voice to a confidential pitch. Signor Giovanni Maselli, since that was the name modestly displayed on No. Twelve's card in the hall beneath, closed the door carefully.
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