“Indeed?  I did not know that.  What was the result?”

“The workmen came across the ‘lost water.’  It rose suddenly one day and one of them was drowned.  I believe his body was never recovered.  Everything was filled in again after that.  For my own part I do not think the building is in any danger.”

“Perhaps not,” said Malipieri, suddenly looking bored.  “I only carry out the Senator’s wishes,” he added, as if with an afterthought.  “It is my business to find out whether there is danger or not.”

He took his leave and went away, convinced that the old agent knew about other things besides Sabina’s friendless condition, but unwilling to question him just then.  The information Sassi had volunteered was interesting but not useful.  Malipieri thought he himself knew well enough where the “lost water” was, under the Palazzo Conti.

It was not far from Sassi’s house to the palace, but he walked very slowly through the narrow streets, and stopped more than once, deliberately looking back, as if he were trying to keep the exact direction of some point in his mind, and he seemed interested in the gutters, and in the walls, at their base, just above the pavement.  At the corner of the Vicolo dei Soldati he saw a little marble tablet let into the masonry and yellow with age.  He stopped a moment and read the inscription.  Then he turned away with a look of annoyance, for it set forth that “by order of the most Eminent Vicar all persons were warned not to empty garbage there, on pain of a fine.”  It was a forgotten document of the old papal administration, as he could have told without reading it if he had known Rome better.  From the corner he counted his paces and then stopped again and examined the wall and the pavement minutely.

There was nothing to be seen at all different from the pavement and the wall for many yards further on and further back, and Malipieri apparently abandoned the search, for he now walked on quickly till he reached the entrance of the palace, on the other side, and went in.

From the low door of the wine shop, Toto, the mason, had seen him, and stood watching him till he was out of sight.

“He does not know where it is,” Toto said, sitting down again opposite Gigi.

“Engineers know everything,” retorted the carpenter.

“If this one knew anything, he would not have stood there looking at the stones.  I do not suppose the municipality is going to put up a monument to my grandfather, whom may the Lord preserve in glory!”

At this Gigi laughed, for he knew that Toto’s grandfather had been drowned in the “lost water” somewhere deep down under that spot, and had never been found.  The two men drank in silence.  After a long time Toto spoke again.

“A woman,” he said, with a shrug of the shoulders.

“A woman drowned him?” asked Gigi.  “How could a woman do it?”

“A man did it.  But it was for jealousy of a woman.”