d be, the manager of the hotel presented himself,
with a message from Lady Rollinson.

"It is no affair of mine, sir," said the man, who was extremely polite
and business-like; "but the lady declares that she will not see you on
any account, or receive any communication from you. I am to tell you
that if you persist in attempting to see her she will leave the hotel.
I can't afford to have my customers troubled in this way, and I must ask
you to go."

I told him I should decline to go. I asked him to sit down, and I
related to him the whole story, so far as it was necessary that any
outside person should hear it, in order that he might judge of the
situation. The man became interested, and even in a way sympathetic.

"It's a very curious case; sir," he admitted; "but I can't allow my
customers to be disturbed, all the same. If I were in your place, sir,"
he added, "I should appeal to the police."

This advice was so hopelessly astray from the point that I dismissed the
man, though I had to promise him that Lady Rollinson should suffer no
further annoyance. Hinge was hard to pacify, for in his loyalty to me
and the affection that had grown up between us, he was almost as much
interested as I was, and he kept breaking in with a "Look 'ere, sir,
this is Captain Fyffe, my master. It was him as rescued Count Rossano
from the fortress of Itzia--you must have seen it in the papers." The
man was got rid of at last, and the promise was given. And now there was
nothing to be done but to await the arrival of some one or two of the
patriotic _societaires_ from London. Even in the extremity at which
things had arrived, I more than half dreaded their coming. If they came
at all, they would come with a full knowledge of the facts, and their
arrival meant nothing less than murder. It would have been the wildest
of dreams to suppose for an instant that any one of them would allow
his beloved chief to be handed over to the Austrians at any cost; and
though I was willing to pay almost any price to save the count, I had a
horror of bloodshed in a case like that.

"Let us leave no stone unturned," I said to Hinge.

"I will go to the railway station to meet any friends of mine that may
arrive, and in the meantime you can go to the docks and ascertain what
vessels sail for any Italian port to-morrow. Find out if it is possible
for me to get berths aboard the boat by which Brunow and Roncivalli
sail."

"You trust me, sir," Hinge returne