The Thief of Venice Read Online Free PDF

Signorina Pastora at the agency would speak to the other people about repairing the wall.
 
    Doctor Richard Henchard sat again in the client's chair in the office of the realtor from whom he had rented the dingy apartment on the Rio della Sensa. "I'll take it for another six weeks," he said grandly.
    "Oh, I'm sorry, but it's been rented to someone else for a year." Signorina Pastora frowned. "You said you wanted it for only a week."
    "What?" Henchard stared at her in horror. "You mean you showed it to someone else while I was out?"
    "No, as a matter of fact I didn't." She was on the defensive. "I loaned this person a key and said take a look for yourself, only knock first, so the client went over there and decided to take it and came back and signed a lease and gave me a month's rent."
    Henchard stood up from his chair and leaned over her desk. "I'll take it for a year. I'll give you a year's rent. Now, right now."
    Signorina Pastora was surprised into telling the truth. "But why? The place isn't worth it."
    Henchard slapped his checkbook down on the desk and looked at her.
    "Oh well, all right." She shook her head as if reluctant. "I'll have to tell the other party that I got the papers mixed up, and you already had a lease. But—" She laughed, and watched him scribble the check. God, he was attractive.
    Thrusting it at her, he said, "Who was it? Tell me. What's his name? "
    The phone rang. "Excuse me." Signorina Pastora talked and listened and talked, radiating charm. "Oh, yes, signor, there are many delightful properties, but of course they're all very expensive. Yes, of course I'll be happy to show you one or two. Yes, certainly, I'm free this afternoon. I'll meet you by the monument to Goldoni at two. Oh, don't you know it? Let me explain." It was another two minutes before she put down the phone, while Henchard controlled his rage. At last she looked up at him and said, "I'm sorry, what was your question?"
    "His name! What is the name of the person who wanted to rent that apartment for a year?"
    "Oh, I can't tell you that. These things are strictly confidential." The phone rang again. "I'm sorry, excuse me."
    The call was apparently intimate. She swung around in her revolving chair and faced away from Henchard and whispered into the phone.
    Delicately he reached for the papers on her desk and fingered them silently until he found the name he wanted, complete with the address. The handwriting was strong and distinctive, the hand of somebody of importance like himself. Probably he too wanted a place for his girlfriend.
    When Signorina Pastora swung around again to face Henchard, the papers were back where they belonged.
    "Anything else?"
    Then he remembered that Giovanna still needed an apartment. The idiot kept whimpering and complaining, insisting that if she didn't have something better than the cathouse she'd move in with his wife. "Yes," said Henchard, "as a matter of fact, there is. I need another apartment. Cheap, really cheap."
    By the time he had made an appointment to see another rental it was late. He was in a panic. What if the man to whom Signorina Pastora had loaned a key had opened the closet door of the apartment while inspecting the place? What if he had seen the opening at the back? What if he had looked through the gap and seen what was hidden behind it? Jesus Christ!
    Henchard plunged across the bridge over the Rio della Sensa, which was still a muddy crevasse, and turned right at the figure of the Moor on the corner of the Campo dei Mori. Swiftly he bounded past the Casa del Tintoretto and the three neighboring houses.
    Then he floundered to a stop. A woman was coming out of the apartment door. She was well dressed, and handsome in a statuesque kind of way.
    He gaped at her, and babbled, " Mi displace, signora , but this is my house."
    She looked at him kindly. "You are mistaken." She nodded at the next house. "Perhaps you have the wrong door."
    Ah, of course, it was the girlfriend! Her