Obeying the guards, I walked with them down to the light at the town gateway where they read the official permit, closely scrutinising me as they reached each individual description, colour of hair and eyes, shape of nose, forehead and head, and the dozen other small details, all of which they found tallied with the licence. "Born in London and domiciled in Milan, I see," remarked the carabineer. "I was living in Milan when I applied to the Public Security Department for the permit." "Well," he said, "it's lucky for you you had it upon you, otherwise you might have spent a day or two in prison for the untruth you told us." And he handed back the licence to me with a grim smile. "Perhaps you'll tell me now where you really have been?" I saw it necessary to alter my tactics, therefore I answered with a laugh:-- "To tell the truth I came out from Rome last night to keep an appointment--a secret one--with a lady--if you really must know." "Then you'd better go back again to Rome," was his answer, apparently well satisfied, and believing that story more probable. "There's a train in twenty minutes or so, and we'll see you into it. We are on our way to the station." From that moment we grew friendly, for the carabineers are a splendid body of picked men, and are always polite to the foreigner. "You were coming down from the villa yonder," explained the man who had interrogated me half apologetically. "Therefore we had to ascertain who you were." "What villa do you mean?" "The Onorovele Nardini's. He's absconded, as I daresay you've heard." "Ah?" I said, "I did read in the English journals something about it. And did he live up there?" "Yes. At the big villa. You must have passed it. He used to live here a great deal, and every one believed him to be an honest man." "Wasn't he?" "_Dio_ no! He got a million francs of the public money, and no one knows what has become of it." Was either of these men the son of the old concierge in the Via del Tritone, I wondered? I longed to ask them, but dare not. They, of course, told me nothing regarding the mysterious discovery of a woman's body in the ex-Minister's study. Perhaps, indeed, they, like all others outside the confidential branch of the police service, were ignorant of it. "And doesn't any one know where he is?" I asked, as we strolled at length upon the dark platform of the railway station. "Oh! He's _in estero_ somewhere. We shall never get him, you may be sure. When once a man like that gets over the frontier he's gone for ever." What, I wondered, would these two men think when, on the morrow, the truth of what had occurred at the Villa Verde became revealed! The body of the detective would be found, and another mystery would succeed the one which was being so carefully suppressed.