"Hush!" cried Miller suddenly. "We mustn't make a noise like that. There are probably _contadini_ living in the vicinity, and it will awaken them." "Bah!" responded the doctor. "They'll only believe that it's a ghost. Here the _contadini_ are most superstitious." "But the _carabinieri_ are not," remarked the young accomplice apprehensively. "My own idea is that we've been followed. I noticed a man in a dark suit looking very hard at us when we left the train." "What kind of man?" the doctor inquired quickly. "Looked like an Inglese signore, rather tall, about thirty, and wore a dark suit." "Why in the name of Fate didn't you mention it to us at the time?" cried Miller. "An Inglese! Who could he possibly be? Have you ever seen him before?" "Never." "Then he may have followed us here and alarmed the _carabinieri_!" gasped the doctor. "We must escape--before they arrest us!" I saw that the young thief had noticed me when I had followed them out into the darkness from the station at Tivoli. He would therefore recognise me if we met again. They would, no doubt, make a desperate attempt at escape. Yet should I raise the alarm and call the police? Was it policy on my part to do so? If Lucie's father were arrested, Lucie herself must surely be implicated, and perhaps through Gordon-Wright my own dear love might also find herself in the criminal's dock. The mystery had grown so complicated and so inexplicable that I feared to take any step towards the denunciation of the thieves. My only policy was to wait and to watch. I recollected Ella's appeal to me to remain silent concerning the scoundrel under whose banal thrall she had so mysteriously fallen, and I feared that if I made my statement it might lead to the fellow's arrest. What, I wondered, was the true explication of the mystery of the unknown girl being found in that room wherein the three thieves were entrapped? Who was she? What did Lucie know concerning her? A great fear possessed me that the police, in searching, would discover Lucie in Leghorn, though in Italy the detectives always find more difficulty in tracing foreigners than the Italians themselves. Every Italian, when he moves his habitation even from one street to the other, is compelled to give notice to the police. But not so the large foreign floating population who are for ever moving over the face of what is essentially a tourists' country. Another great crash upon the door awakened me to a sense of my peril, should these men succeed in escaping. With as little compunction as they had struck down the guard, they would, I knew, strike me down, and even though I had a revolver they were three to one. Besides, a pistol is no use against a knife in the hands of such an expert as the young thief in the grey hat whom they had so swiftly taken into their confidence.