The Baron twisted the ends of his moustache, and said, with a smile,
"David Leone disappeared from New York. From that time forward no trace
of him has yet been found. He was as much gone as if he had ceased to
exist. David Leone was dead."
Roma's hands had come down from her face, and she was picking at the
buttons of her blouse with twitching fingers.
"Fact six," said the Baron, ticking off the thumb of his other hand.
"Twenty-five or six years after the registration of the child David
Rossi in Rome, a man, apparently twenty-five or six years of age, giving
the name of David Rossi, arrived in England from America. He called at a
baker's shop in Soho to ask for Roma Roselli, the daughter of Doctor
Roselli, left behind in London when the exile returned to Italy. They
told him that Roma Roselli was dead and buried."
Roma's face, which had been pale until now, began to glow like a fire on
a gloomy night, and her foot beat faster and faster.
"Fact seven. David Rossi appeared in Rome, first as a waiter at the
Grand Hotel, but soon afterwards as a journalist and public lecturer,
propounding precisely the same propaganda as that of David Leone in New
York, and exciting the same interest."
"Well? What of it?" said Roma. "David Leone was David Leone, and David
Rossi is David Rossi--there is no more in it than that."
The Baron clasped his hands so tight that his knuckles cracked, and
said, in a slightly exalted tone:
"Eighth and last fact. About that time a man called at the office of the
Campo Santo to know where he was to find the grave of Leonora Leone, the
woman who had drowned herself in the Tiber twenty-six years before. The
pauper trench had been dug up over and over again in the interval, but
the officials gave him their record of the place where she had once been
buried. He had the spot measured off for him, and he went down on his
knees before it. Hours passed, and he was still kneeling there. At
length night fell, and the officers had to warn him away."
Roma's foot had ceased to beat on the floor, and she was rising in her
chair.
"That man," said the Baron, "the only human being who ever thought it
worth while to look up the grave of the poor suicide, Leonora Rossi, the
mother of David Leone, was David Rossi! Who was David Leone?--David
Rossi! Who was David Rossi?--David Leone! The circle had closed around
him--the evidence was complete."