“I suppose that before he married Consalvi’s widow he was a gentleman of small means, like many others.  Why should you think that he was ever anything else?”

To this direct question the Superintendent had no answer ready, nor, in fact, had the man who asked it, though he had looked so very wise.  Then they glanced at each other and both laughed a little, and they parted.

Half an hour later, Marcello was carried to an airy room with green blinds, and was made even more comfortable than he had been before.  He slept, and awoke, and ate and slept again.  Twice during the afternoon people were brought to see him.  They were servants from the villa on the Janiculum, but he looked at them dully and said that he could not remember them.

“We do not think it is he,” they said, when questioned.  “Why does he not know us, if it is he?  We are old servants in the house.  We carried the young gentleman in our arms when he was small.  But this youth does not know us, nor our names.  It is not he.”

They were dismissed, and afterwards they met and talked up at the villa.

“The master has been sent for by telegraph,” they said one to another.  “We shall do what he says.  If he tells us that it is the young gentleman we will also say that it is; but if he says it is not he, we will also deny it.  This is the only way.”

Having decided upon this diplomatic course as the one most likely to prove advantageous to them, they went back to their several occupations and amusements.  But at the very first they said what they really thought; none of them really believed the sick youth at the hospital to be Marcello.  An illness of nearly seven weeks and a long course of privation can make a terrible difference in the looks of a very young person, and when the memory is gone, too, the chances of his being recognised are slight.

But the Chief of Police was not disturbed in his belief, and after he had smoked several cigarettes very thoughtfully in his private office, he wrote a telegram to Corbario, advising him to come back to Rome at once.  He was surprised to receive an answer from Folco late that night, inquiring why he was wanted.  To this he replied in a second telegram of more length, which explained matters clearly.  The next morning Corbario telegraphed that he was starting.

The visiting physician came early and examined Marcello’s head with the greatest minuteness.  After much trouble he found what he was looking for—­a very slight depression in the skull.  There was no sign of a wound that had healed, and it was clear that the injury must have been either the result of a fall, in which case the scalp had been protected by a stiff hat, or else of a blow dealt with something like a sandbag, which had fractured the bone without leaving any mark beyond a bruise, now no longer visible.

“It is my opinion,” said the doctor, “that as soon as the pressure is removed the man’s memory will come back exactly as it was before.  We will operate next week, when he has gained a little more strength.  Feed him and give him plenty of air, for he is very weak.”