“You might have watchers here to-night, ready to take him if he appears,” suggested Jenny.

But Albert finally decided against giving any information.

“For the moment I shall do nothing.  We will see what another morning may bring forth.  To feel this awful presence suddenly so close is very distressing and I do not want to think of him any more until to-morrow.  Write the letters and then we will put a few things together and cross the lake before it is evening.”

“You do not fear for your books, Uncle Albert?”

“No, I have no fear for my books.  If there is a homicidal being here, intent upon my life, he will not look to the right or the left.  Even when he was sane, poor Robert never knew anything about books or their value.  He will not seek them—­nor could he reach them if he did.”

“Did he ever visit you here in the past?  Does he know Italy?” she said.

“So far as I am aware he was never here in his life.  Certainly he never visited me.  It is, in fact, so many years since I have seen him that I might have met him and failed to recognize the unhappy man.”

Jenny wrote the letters and posted them; then she packed for her uncle and herself and presently, having warned Assunta and Ernesto that no stranger must be admitted until his return on the following day, Albert Redmayne prepared to cross the lake.  First, however, he locked and barred his library and transferred half a dozen volumes more than commonly precious to a steel safe aloft in his bedroom.

A boatman quickly rowed them to the landing stage of Bellagio and they soon reached the dwelling of Albert’s friend, who welcomed them with an equal measure of surprise and delight.

Signor Poggi, a small, fat man with a bald head, broad brow, and twinkling eyes, grasped their hands and listened with wonder to the reason for their arrival.  He knew English and always delighted in the practice of that language when opportunity offered.

“But this is beyond belief!” he said.  “An enemy for Alberto!  Who should be his enemy—­he who is the friend of every man?  What romance is this, Signora Jenny, that throws danger into the path of your dear uncle?”

“It is the sudden threat and terror of my vanished brother,” explained Mr. Redmayne.  “You are familiar, Virgilio, with the terrible facts concerning Robert’s appearance and Bendigo’s disappearance.  Now, suddenly, when I have long come to believe that my younger brother’s lurid career was ended and that he had ceased to be, he leaps upon the mountains and reappears in his habit as he lived!  Nor can we doubt that he lives indeed.  He is no ghost, my friend, but a solid, shadow-easting man, who may be seeking my life by reason of his distempered mind.”

“It is romance,” declared Virgilio, “but romance of a very grim and painful description.  You are, however, safe enough with me, for I would gladly shed my blood to save yours.”