Chapter 8
LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIMNo words of mine can express my absolute and abject amazement
when I faced the man, whom I had seen lying cold and dead upon that
gray stone slab in the mortuary at Dumfries.
My eye caught the customer who, on the entry of Olinto, had
dropped his paper and sat staring at him in wonderment. The
detective had evidently been furnished with a photograph of the
dead man, and now, like myself, discovered him alive and
living.
"Signor Padrone!" cried the man whose appearance was so
absolutely bewildering. "How did you find me here? I admit that I
deceived you when I told you I worked at the Milano," he went on
rapidly in Italian. "But it was under compulsion—my actions that
night were not my own—but those of others."
"Yes, I understand," I said. "But co
