"
The Professor glanced at him and nodded slowly, as if he understood the
simple instinct of justice that moved him.
"If I see him, I shall kill him," Marcello said slowly. "I am sure I
shall."
"I am afraid that he has escaped," Kalmon answered. "Of course there is
a possibility that he may have had some object in deceiving your
coachman by driving to the railway station, but it is not at all likely.
He probably took the first train to the north."
"But he can be stopped at the frontier!"
"Do you think Corbario is the man to let himself be trapped easily if he
knows that he is pursued?" asked Kalmon incredulously. "I do not."
He rose from his chair and began to walk up and down, his hands behind
him and his head bent.
Marcello paid no attention to him and was silent for a long time,
sitting quite motionless and scarcely seeming to breathe. What he felt
he never could have told afterwards; he only knew that he suffered in
every fibre of his brain and body, with every nerve of his heart and in
every secret recess of his soul. His mother seemed to have been dead so
long, beyond the break in his memory. The dreadful truth he had just
heard made her die again before his eyes, by the hand of the man whom he
and she had trusted.
"Kalmon," he said at last, and the Professor stopped short in his walk.
"Kalmon, do you think she knows?"
It was like the cry of a child, but it came from a man who was already
strong.
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