William Le Queux - The Closed Book - Concerning the Secret of the Borgias

My old servant Nello, standing there beside me, knew something more than he would tell. Of that I felt convinced. Possibly he had participated in the plot, admitting her, well knowing her errand. He had warned me; therefore he must know something. What was the object of it all I utterly failed to conceive.

“That woman is a thief?” I exclaimed angrily a few moments later. “Who is she?”

“I – I do not know her, signor padrone ,” stammered the old man.

“She gave no name?”

“None. She said that you expected her.”

“But she could not have taken away a big book like that without your noticing it?” I pointed out suspiciously.

“She had on a big black cloak, signore,” was the crafty old fellow’s response.

I closed my writing-table and locked it, for in that moment I had decided to go straight to Florence and charge Bernardo Landini with being a party to the theft. Having sold the book to me, he wished to repossess himself of it, and on my refusal, had, it seemed, put in motion a kind of conspiracy against me.

The old hunchback was undoubtedly the director of it all.

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