his
appearance. Then I began to be anxious. I returned to the hotel,
resolved to wait for a few hours longer. He might have altered his mind
and gone to Eastbourne in search of Muriel; yet, had he done so, he
would surely have telegraphed to me.

About four o'clock, as I was passing through the big hall of the hotel,
I heard a voice behind me utter a greeting in Italian, and turning in
surprise, found Olinto, dressed in his best suit of black, standing hat
in hand.

In an instant I recollected what Jack had told me, and regarded him with
some suspicion.

"Signor Commendatore," he said in a low voice, as though fearing to be
overheard, "may I be permitted to speak in private with you?"

"Certainly," I said, and I took him in the lift up to my room.

"I have come to warn you, signore," he said, when I had given him a
seat. "Your enemies mean harm to you."

"And who are they, pray?" I asked, biting my lips. "The same, I suppose,
who prepared that ingenious trap in Lambeth?"

"I am not here to reveal to you who they are, signore, only to warn you
to have a care of yourself," was the Italian's reply.

"Look here, Olinto!" I exclaimed determinedly, "I've had enough of this
confounded mystery. Tell me the truth regarding the assassination of
your poor wife up in Scotland."

"Ah, signore!" he answered sadly in a changed voice, "I do not know. It
was a plot. Someone represented me--but he was killed also. They
believed they had struck me down," he added, with a bitter laugh. "Poor
Armida's body was found concealed behind a rock on the opposite side of
the wood. I saw it--ah!" he cried shuddering.

"Then you are ignorant of the identity of your wife's assassin?"

"Entirely."

"Tell me one thing," I said. "Did Armida possess any trinket in the form
of a little enameled cross--like a miniature cross of cavaliere?"

"Yes; I gave it to her. I found it on the floor at the Mansion House,
where I was engaged as odd waiter for a banquet. I know I ought to have
given it up to the Lord Mayor's servants, but it was such a pretty
little thing that I was tempted to keep it. It probably had fallen from
the coat of one of the diplomatists dining there."

I was silent. The faint suspicion that Oberg had been at that spot was
now entirely removed. The only clue I had was satisfactorily accounted
for.

"Why do you ask, Signor Commendatore?" he added.

"Because the cross was found at the spot, and was believed to have been
drop