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By Root 1466 0

kidneyed syncretism of a dish of kid, or of lamb, in pieces as it was, had allowed to roll out, on the whiteness amid the silver and the crystal, of a goblet, or no, of a glass, the tuft of spinach: receiving, from Signora Liliana, that heartbroken reproof of a glance, and a name: "Assunta!" Tina, with her face, as in other times, severe, a little pale, but with an inflection of dismay in her eyes, looked at him nonetheless proudly, and he thought she recovered herself: two dark flashes, her pupils, again, bright in the shadow, in the odor of the closed entranceway to the house. "Doctor," she said, with an effort: and was about to add something else. But Di Pietrantonio alarmed her, even though she had already noted him from the window, after the policeman who seemed to be leading the whole row of overcoats. Tall, and wordless, police-like in his moustache, was he not the punishment feared? comminated by the law? But for what guilt, for what crime, she argued to herself, officially, could they punish her? For having solicited too many gifts, for having received them, from Signora Liliana?

"Officer Ingravallo, sir, what is it?"

"Who lives here, in your house?" Ingravallo asked her, harsh: harsh as he was required to be, at that moment, his "other" soul: to which Liliana seemed to address herself, calling to him desperately, from her sea of shadows: with her weary, whitened face, her eye dilated in terror, still, forever, on the atrocious flashes of the knife. "Let me in; I have to see who's here."

"There's my father, sir; who's sick; he's bad off, poor soul!" and she was slightly breathless, in disdain, very beautiful, pallid. "He's going to die on me any minute."

"And then, besides your father, who is there?"

"Nobody, Signor Incravalli: who could there be? You tell me, if you know. There's a woman, a neighbor, from Tor di Gheppio, who helps me take care of the sick man . . . and maybe some other neighbor woman, you may have seen outside."

"Who is this one? What's her name?"

Tina thought a little. "She's Veronica. Migliarini. Hereabouts we call her la Veronica."

"Let me in anyway. Come on. Let's go. I have to search the house." And he examined her face, with the steady, cruel eye of one who wants to unmask deceit. "Search?":

Tina frowned: wrath whitened her eyes, her face, as if at an unforeseen outrage. "Yeah, search, that's what I said." And thrusting her aside, he came into the darkness toward the little wooden stairway. The girl followed him. Di Pietrantonio after her. It occurred to him, then and there, that Liliana's murderer, in addition to having received from Tina information which was useful to him "or rather indispensable: did I say useful?" could have also entrusted the jewels to her: . . . "to his fiancee?" They went upstairs. The steps creaked. All around, outside, the house was observed: three policemen, not counting the little man who had guided them there. Those two black and furious eyes of Tina—Ingravallo felt them aimed at his nape; he felt them piercing his neck. He tried, he tried to sum up, rationally; to pull the threads, one might say, of the inert puppet of the Probable. "How was it that the girl didn't rush to Rome? Didn't she feel it was her duty?": this was a compulsory idea, now, in his atrociously wounded spirit: "to the funeral at least? . . . Doesn't she have any heart or soul in her, after all the kindness she received?" It was the painful bookkeeping of the humble, the ingenuous, perhaps. The horrible news, perhaps, hadn't reached Tor di Gheppio until too late, and in that solitude ... terror had paralyzed the poor girl. But no, a grown woman! And news flies, even in the jungle, in the wastelands of Africa. For a Christian heart the inspiration would have been another. Although, the father, dying . . .

The wood of the steps continued to creak, more and more, under the rising weight of the three. Ingravallo, once at the top, pushed the door, with a certain charitable prudence.

He went in, followed by Tina and by Di Pietrantonio, into a large room. A stink, there, of dirty clothing