became
at once eager and somewhat excited.

"Ring up the Majestic," he said. "See if you can get hold of the
Cavaliere, and tell him I will see him at any hour he likes
to-morrow."

I could see that after reading the letter brought by the Italian, he
was most eager to learn something further.

After two attempts I succeeded in speaking with the Cavaliere
Graniani, and fixed an appointment for him to call on the following
morning at half-past eleven.

What actually occurred during the interview I do not know.

Across the table at luncheon, Rayne suddenly asked me:

"You know Italy well--don't you, Hargreave?"

"I lived in the Val d'Arno for several years before the war," I
replied. "My people rented a villa there."

Then, turning to Lola, he asked:

"Would you like to go for a trip to Italy with Madame and Hargreave?"

"Oh! It would be delightful, dad!" she cried. "Can we go? When?"

"Quite soon," he replied. "I want Hargreave to go on a mission for
me--and you can both go with him. It would be a change for you all."

"Delightful!" exclaimed the well-preserved Madame Duperre. "Won't it
be fun, Lola?"

"Ripping!" agreed the girl, turning her sparkling eyes to mine, while
I myself expressed the greatest satisfaction at returning to the
country I had learned to love so well.

That afternoon, as I sat with Rayne in the smoking-room, he explained
to me the reason he wished me to go to Italy--to make certain secret
inquiries, it seemed. But the motive he did not reveal.

At his orders I took a piece of paper upon which I made certain notes
of names and places, of suspicions and facts which he wished me to
ascertain and prove--curious and apparently mysterious facts.

"Lola and Madame will go with you in order to allay any suspicions,"
he added. "I place this matter entirely in your hands to act as you
think fit."

A week later, with Lola and Madame, I left Charing Cross and duly
arrived in the old marble-built city of Pisa, with its Leaning Tower
and its magnificent cathedral, and while my companions stayed at the
Hotel Victoria I went up the picturesque Valley of the Arno on the
first stage of my quest.

At last, having climbed the steep hill among the olives and vines
which leads from the station of Signa--that ancient little town of the
long-ago Guelfs--I came to the old Convent of San Domenico, a row of
big sun-blanched buildings with a church and crumbling tower set upon
the conical hill which ove