e
breaking of the lantern in his hand had checked the orderly as he was
about to spring at the miscreant, who thus gained a sufficient start
to ensure his escape.

In a few seconds the officer on duty and three or four of the men were
on the spot with lights.

'You will have to carry me,' said the Captain calmly enough. 'I am
shot in the foot and something is broken. Turn out the guard,
Lieutenant, as a matter of principle and have the neighbourhood
searched, though you will not find any one now. The fellow has got
clean away.'

The men lifted him and carried him towards his house. Before they
reached the door Pica met them, breathing hard and muttering Sicilian
imprecations on the man who had wounded his master and got away; but
while the Captain was being taken upstairs the orderly lit a candle
and went to the telephone in the hall. He glanced at the address-book
and then without hesitation he asked the central office to give him
Princess Chiaromonte's number. His reason for doing so was simple: she
was the only person in Rome who had ever appeared in the light of a
friend of the Captain's family; she would do the right thing at once,
Pica thought, and would send the best surgeon in Rome out to
Monteverde in a motor in the shortest possible time. She was at home
that evening, as it turned out, and at Pica's request she came to the
telephone herself and heard his story.

She answered that she would try and get Doctor Pieri to go at once in
her own motor, as he had the reputation of being the best surgeon in
the city, but that if he could not be found she would send another
doctor without delay. Pica went upstairs and found the Captain
stretched on his bed in his wet clothes, while the three soldiers who
had carried him up were trying to pull his boot off instead of cutting
it. One of the younger officers from the magazine was already scouring
the neighbourhood in obedience to Ugo's orders.

Pica sent the men away at once with the authority which a favourite
orderly instinctively exercises over his less fortunate comrades. He
was neither stupid nor quite unskilled, however, and in a few minutes
he had slit the Captain's boot down the seam at the back and removed
it almost without hurting him, as well as the merino sock. The small
round wound was not bleeding much, but it was clear that the bone of
the ankle was badly injured and the whole foot was already much
swollen. The revolver had evidently been of small cal