“What is it that you wish of me?” asked Zorzi with sudden directness.  “You are a busy man.  You have not come here to pass a morning in idle conversation with your father’s assistant.  You want something of me, sir.  Speak out plainly.  If I can do what you wish, I will do it.  If I cannot, I will tell you so, frankly.”

Giovanni was a little disconcerted by this speech.  Excepting where money was concerned directly, his intelligence was of the sort that easily wastes its energy in futile cunning.  He had not meant to reach the point for a long time, if he had expected to reach it at all at a first attempt.

“I like your straightforwardness,” he said evasively.  “But I do not think your conversation idle.  On the contrary, I find it highly instructive.”

“Indeed?” Zorzi laughed.  “You do me much honour, sir!  What have you learned from me this morning?”

“What I wished to know,” answered Giovanni with a change of tone, and looking at him keenly.

Zorzi returned the glance, and the two men faced each other in silence for a moment.  Zorzi knew what Giovanni meant, as soon as the other had spoken.  The quick movement of surprise, which was the only indiscretion of which Zorzi had been guilty, would have betrayed to any one that he knew where the manuscript was, even if it were not in his immediate keeping.  His instinct was to take the offensive and accuse his visitor of having laid a trap for him, but his caution prevailed.

“Whatever you may think that you have learned from me,” he said, “remember that I have told you nothing.”

“Is it here, in this room?” asked Giovanni, not heeding his last speech, and hoping to surprise him again.

But he was prepared now, and his face did not change as he replied.

“I cannot answer any questions,” he said.

“You and my father hid it together,” returned Giovanni.  “When you had buried it under the stones in this room, you carried the earth out with a shovel and scattered it about on a flower-bed.  You took out three shovelfuls of earth in that way.  You see, I know everything.  What is the use of trying to hide your secret from me?”

Zorzi was now convinced that Giovanni himself had been lurking in the garden.

“Sir,” he said, with ill-concealed contempt for a man capable of such spy’s work, “if you have more to say of the same nature, pray say it to your father, when he comes back.”

“You misunderstand me,” returned Giovanni with sudden mildness.  “I had no intention of offending you.  I only meant to warn you that you were watched on that night.  The person who informed me has no doubt told many others also.  It would have been very ill for you, if my father had returned to find that his secret was public property, and if you had been unable to explain that you had not betrayed him.  I have given you a weapon of defence.  You may call upon me to repeat what I have said, when you speak with him.”