“I know.  Because you were once convicted at Lucca of using a knife—­eh?  I recollect quite well that affair—­a love affair, was it not?”

“Yes, Signor Commendatore.  But I was a youth then—­a mere boy.”

“Then tell me the circumstances In which Armida has disappeared,” I urged, for I saw quite plainly that his sudden meeting with me had upset him, and that he was trying to hold back from me some story which he was bursting to tell.

“Well, signore,” he said at last in a low tone of confidence, “I don’t like to trouble you with my private affairs after those untruths I told you when we last met.”

“Go on,” I said.  “Tell me the truth.”

After the exciting incidents of our last meeting, I was half inclined to doubt him.

“The truth is, Signor Commendatore, that my wife has mysteriously disappeared.  Last Saturday, at eleven o’clock, she was talking over the garden wall with a neighbor and was then dressed to go out.  She apparently went out, but from that moment no one has seen or heard of her.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him the ghastly truth, yet so strange was the circumstance that his own double, even to the mole upon his face, should be lying dead and buried in Scotland that I hesitated to relate what I knew.

“She spoke English, I suppose?”

“She could make herself understood very well,” he said with a sigh, and I saw a heavy, thoughtful look upon his brow.  That he was really devoted to her, I knew.  With the Italian of whatever station in life, love is all-consuming—­it is either perfect love or genuine hatred.  The Tuscan character is one of two extremes.

I glanced across the road, and saw that the detective who had ordered his chop and coffee had stopped to light his pipe and was watching us.

“Have you any idea where your wife is, or what has induced her to go away from home?  Perhaps you had some words!”

“Words, signore!” he echoed.  “Why, we were the happiest pair in all London.  No unkind word ever passed between us.  There seems absolutely no reason whatever why she should go away without wishing me a word of farewell.”

“But why haven’t you told the police?”

“For reasons that I have already stated.  I prefer to make inquiries for myself.”

“And in what have your inquiries resulted?”

“Nothing—­absolutely nothing,” he said gravely.

“You do not suspect any plot?  I recollect that night in Lambeth you told me that you had enemies?”

“Ah! so I have, signore—­and so have you!” he exclaimed hoarsely.  “Yes, my poor Armida may have been entrapped by them.”

“And if entrapped, what then?”

“Then they would kill her with as little compunction as they would a fly,” he said.  “Ah! you do not know the callousness of those people.  I only hope and pray that she may have escaped and is in hiding somewhere, and will arrive unexpectedly and give me a startling surprise.  She delights in startling me,” he added with a laugh.