Neale was repeating to himself, in mortal terror of forgetting it, "Pierleoni. Pierleoni." He drank his coffee and ate his roll as though he had a train to catch, and, rushing back to his room, seized his hat and made off to the nearest café to consult the directory. With a sigh of relief he found that there was only one Pierleoni, and that the address was indeed as Livingstone had said, far away in the rich, new, fashionable quarter. He set off on foot, but before he had walked five minutes he was overcome with panic lest he be late, and hailed a rickety cab. Thinking of nothing but the precious address which he had committed to memory; he shouted it out to the cabman. Halfway there, he suddenly remembered that he had no possible business at that address. He had a horrid vision of driving up to the door, having the portiere ask him his errand, perhaps of having Miss Allen look out of the window and see the scene.
This threw him into such a fright that for an instant he could think of no escape and sat passive, borne along to his fate by the unconscious cabman. Then his wits came back to him, he called out to the cabman to drive to number seventy-five and not a hundred and twenty; and having thus snatched himself from destruction, perceived that they were even then turning into the street. At number seventy-five he descended, hastily paid the driver a good deal more than was due him, stepped into the house, inquired if a gentleman by the name of Robinson lived there, professed surprise and regret on hearing that he did not and walked on, settling his neck-tie nervously.
He told himself that he was acting like an imbecile, but he could not seem to consider that important fact seriously. Having started in to do anything, naturally he liked to put it through. Everybody did. And he really would like to know how under the sun a dark-eyed girl in Rome happened to know anything about his Great-uncle Burton. Any one would feel a natural human curiosity on that score. And he had only five days in Rome.
The idea that he had only five days in Rome fell on him like a thunderbolt, as though he had had no idea of it
