Avon Modern Short Story Monthly #36 — page 88: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

going forward alone, he opened the gate and called softly to the waiting groom: “Hither to me!” . Promptly the man surged before him in the gloom, and as ‘promptly Giovanni sank -his dagger in the fellow’s breast. He de- . the necessity for the deed, but it was unavoidable, and your cinquecentist never shrank from anything that necessity imposed upon him. To let the lackey live would be to have the bargelli in the house by morning. The man sank with a half-uttered cry, and lay still. Giovanni dragged him aside under the shelter of the wall, where the others would not see him, then called softly to them to follow. When the grooms emerged from Pico’s garden, the Lord of Pesaro was astride of the fine white horse on which Gandia had ridden to his death. : : “Put him across the crupper,” he bade them. Bie And they so placed the body, the head dangling on one side, the | legs on the other. And Giovanni reflected grimly how he had re- versed the order in which Gandia and he had ridden that same horse an hour ago. At a walk they proceeded down the lane towards the river, a groom on each side to see that the burden on the crupper did not jolt off, another going ahead to scout, At the alley’s mouth Giovanni drew rein, and let the man emerge upon the river-bank and look to right and left to make sure that there was no one about. He saw no one. Yet one there was who saw them—Giorgio, the timber merchant, who lay aboard his boat moored to the Schiavoni, and who, three days later, testified to what he saw. You know his testimony. It has been repeated often—how he saw the man emerge from the alley, and look up and down, then retire, to emerge again, accompanied now by the horseman with his burden, and the other two; how he saw them take the body from the crupper of the horse, and, with a “one, two, and three,” fling it into the river; how he heard the horseman ask them had they thrown it well into the middle, and their answer of, “Yes my lord”; and finally, when asked why he had not come earlier to report the matter, how he had an- swered that he had thought nothing of it, having in his time seen RAFAEL SABATINI- i EOMmiIchooks (E) TA ee