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apologize for the disturbance,’ he said. He was entirely unruffled. Broke noticed that he was not even breathing hard. ‘The gentleman will be all right. He is in the back of his own car, asleep.’
    ‘As long as he doesn’t try to drive home,’ said Comber.
    ‘I have taken the precaution of removing the keys.’
    ‘He sounds just like Jeeves, doesn’t he?’ said Comber. They turned into the main road, and drove slowly down towards Florence, asleep and cradled in the mist at their feet.

4
     
    Wednesday: A Busy Day
     
    Despite the fact that he had had less than three hours of sleep, Broke was at the Gallery at the usual time next morning.
    He went to the section of the bookshop which dealt with Etruria, took down half a dozen books, told Francesca to attend to any customers who came in, and retired to the office. This was so full of filing cabinets and clutter that there was barely room for a small table and chair, but it was private.
    He started his search. In the big book edited by Poulsen, recording the work done by the Swedish Institute in Rome at the San Giovenale excavations; dipped into a work by P T Riis of Denmark, and then switched to Die menscliche Gestalt in der Rundplastik bis zum Ausgang der orientalisierenden Kunst by the German Haufmann.
    It was a vagrant memory, a fleeting likeness that he was trying to track down; a bronze statue, not more than twelve or fifteen inches high, and forming, he thought, the upright of an incense burner or a candelabrum.
    His search had traversed five centuries of Etruscan civilization before he found what he was looking for, and found it where he might well have looked in the first place, in the illustrated catalogue of the greatest of all collections, at the Museo Nazionale of the Villa Giulia, at Rome.
    The likeness to the statue he had seen the night before was unmistakable. But it was a likeness in style and conception. The one was not a carbon copy of the other. On the other hand any disinterested expert, looking at the statuette in the Bronzini treasure house, would have pledged his reputation that it was genuine Etruscan work.
    But since Mercurio had said, with that embarrassed giggle of his, ‘That’s me,’ the implication clearly was that he had posed for it. Which made the statuette a modern reproduction; or Mercurio a liar. Curious either way.
    As he was turning the pages another picture jumped out at him. It was the head of the young man from Veii, known from its petulant expression as Malvolta, and bearing such a curious resemblance to Donatello’s youthful St George. There was a good deal of Mercurio in the pouting mouth and the eyes that were young and old at the same time.
    ‘Signor Broke. Scusi. ’
    A pair of pebble brown eyes in a yellow and wrinkled peasant face was peering at him round the door.
    ‘Come in, Milo.’
    ‘I have brought the frames.’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘I regret that I could not finish them earlier. I have had trouble with my stomach.’ He patted the part of his body which a lot of people wrongly suppose to be the organ in question. ‘Much trouble.’
    ‘Tina told me.’
    ‘Tina is a good girl. It commences after meals, with a burning pain, which travels slowly, first across, and then downwards. There.’ He placed his hand on the bottom of his shabby waistcoat. ‘There it rests. Sometimes it passes away. Sometimes not.’
    Broke, who was fairly certain he knew what was wrong with old Milo Zecchi, had nothing to say. He grunted, in what he hoped was a sympathetic manner, and opened the parcel which had been laid on the table.
    Inside were three small wooden frames, carved and gilded. He held the first one up to the light, and said, ‘This is very good, Milo. Your hand has not lost its cunning.’
    The old man opened his almost toothless mouth in a smile. ‘You are right there,’ he said. ‘Milo Zecchi is still the finest carver in Florence. Wood, bronze, marble, although there is small demand for marble