"If you mean the story of Madonna Paoia's end, I heard it yesterday." "Why, what story was that ?" quoth he in some surprise, his beetling brows coming together in one broad line of fur.
I shrugged my shoulders.

"Men said that she had been poisoned." "Oh, that," he cried indifferently.

"But men say to-day that her body was stolen from the Church of San Domenico where it lay.

An odd happening, is it not ?" And his eyes covered me in a fierce scrutiny that again suggested to me those suspicions of his that I might be the man who had anticipated him.

I was soon to learn that he had more grounds than at first I thought for those same suspicions.
"Odd, indeed," I answered calmly, for all that I felt my pulses quickening with apprehension.