"Then quick! Fly from this house this instant. If you are stopped, then
use your revolver. Don't hesitate. In a moment they will be here upon
you."

"But who are they, Olinto? You must tell me," I cried in desperation.

"_Dio!_ Go! Go!" he cried, pushing me violently towards the door. "Fly,
or we shall both die--both of us! Run downstairs. I must make feint of
dashing after you."

I turned, and seeing his desperate eagerness, precipitately fled, while
he ran down behind me, uttering fierce imprecations in Italian, as
though I had escaped him.

A man in the narrow dark passage attempted to trip me up as I ran, but I
fired point blank at him, and gaining the door unlocked it, and an
instant later found myself out in the street.

It was the narrowest escape from death that I had ever had in all my
life--surely the strangest and most remarkable adventure. What, I
wondered, did it mean?

Next morning I searched up and down Oxford Street for the Restaurant
Milano, but could not find it. I asked shopkeepers, postmen, and
policemen; I examined the London Directory at the bar of the Oxford
Music Hall, and made every inquiry possible. But all was to no purpose.
No one knew of such a place. There were restaurants in plenty in Oxford
Street, from the Frascati down to the humble coffeeshop, but nobody had
ever heard of the "Milano."