Contrary to my usual custom of going to the Grand, I put up at the Athenee, which is greatly patronised by Americans, and where I had a New York friend staying at that moment. Then, after dinner, I telegraphed to Leghorn to Lucie Miller telling her that I had left Italy, and that if she wished to communicate with me she should write or telegraph. My idea was that if her father had been arrested, as he most probably had been, she would certainly require the assistance of some friend, and might probably prefer me. Of course she would not willingly admit to me her father's disgrace, yet by her own actions I should be pretty well able to judge what had taken place. I was eager to be back near Ella, yet before I crossed to England I determined to await a reply to my message to Lucie. For three days I remained in suspense, idling with my American friend in cafes and restaurants, and showing him Paris in a mild kind of way. I had searched the French and English newspapers diligently to learn any details of the affair at the Villa Verde, but in vain, until one evening in the reading-room of the hotel I came across a copy of the _Corriere della Sera_, the journal of Milan, in which was a long telegram from Rome, headed: "The Escape of the Minister Nardini: Mysterious Tragedy at the Villa Verde." In breathless eagerness I read how the police, on going in the morning to relieve the guard placed at the villa, found the unfortunate man lying dead with a knife-wound in his heart. Thieves had evidently entered the house by the window of the study which looked out upon the roadway, for the iron bars had been filed through and a space made sufficient to admit a man. Nothing, however, had been taken, as far as could be ascertained. The study was in complete order, and the police theory was that the man in charge, hearing the noise, had entered the room only to be confronted by several men. He then fled across the house intending to get out and raise the alarm, when he was overtaken in the passage and stabbed. The theory was, of course, quite a natural one. The thieves had, it seemed, before their escape placed the room in order, closed the secret cupboard, replaced the panel, and put down the carpet as they had found it. The action of reclosing the panel had, of course, released the bolts that held the door, but they had already, by some means or other, cut through the bars. Probably they escaped without knowing that the door had been automatically released. In any case they were clear away with a sum amounting to many thousands of pounds sterling--probably the greatest haul Miller had made in all his career. There was, however, a second telegram which stated that two carabineers patrolling the road near the villa had stopped and questioned a mysterious Englishman who was now suspected to be one of the assassins, and after whom the police were in active search. Miller and his companions were actually scot-free--and with their enormous booty!