ce, you must get to Brussels. There
you will receive letters at the Poste Restante in the name of Godfrey
Brown. That, indeed, is the name you will use here."

"Well, all this is very strange!" remarked Hugh, utterly bewildered as
he glanced at the forbidding-looking chauffeur and the dust-covered car.

"I agree, signore," the man laughed. "But get in again and I will drive
to the Via della Maddalena."

Five minutes later the car pulled up at the end of a narrow stuffy
ancient street of high houses with closed wooden shutters. From house
to house across the road household linen was flying in the wind, for the
neighbourhood was certainly a poverty-stricken one.

The place did not appeal to Hugh in the least. He, however, recollected
that he was about to hide from the police. Italians are early risers,
and though it was only just after dawn, Genoa was already agog with life
and movement.

Leaving the car, the mysterious chauffeur conduced the young Englishman
along the street, where women were calling to each other from the
windows of their apartments and exchanging salutations, until they came
to an entrance over which there was an old blue majolica Madonna. The
house had no outer door, but at the end of the passage was a flight of
stone steps leading up to the five storeys above.

At the third flight Hugh's conductor paused, and finding a piece of cord
protruding from a hole in a door, pulled it. A slight tinkle was heard
within, and a few moments later the sound of wooden shoes was heard upon
the tiles inside.

The door opened, revealing an ugly old woman whose face was sallow and
wrinkled, and who wore a red kerchief tied over her white hair.

As soon as she saw the chauffeur she welcomed him, addressing him as
Paolo, and invited them in.

"This is the English signore," explained the man. "He has come to stay
with you."

"The signore is welcome," replied the old woman as she clattered into
the narrow, cheaply furnished little sitting-room, which was in half
darkness owing to the _persiennes_ being closed.

Truly, it was an uninviting place, which smelt of garlic and of the
paraffin oil with which the tiled floors had been rubbed.

"You will require another certificate of identity, signore," said the
man, who admitted that he had been engaged in smuggling contraband
across the Alps. And delving into his pocket he produced an American
passport. It was blank, though the embossed stamp of the United States