Galileo departed without a word and walked back the way he came. As he crossed the market place he came face to face with Giovanni de Medici. The young prince looked at him haughtily and laid his hand negligently upon his sword.
“Look at you now, Galileo Galilei — you are as mired as my machine at Leghorn! How much longer will you strut to your classes, amico?”
The prince’s malice was like a dash of cold water. Galileo took a deep breath, and his mind took firm rein over his emotions.
He tried to pass on, but de Medici caught hold of his arm.
“Listen,” he whispered, “I want you to know this, and it shall remain just between us. You can thank me for your predicament. I wrote those notes!”
“In Heaven’s name, why?”
“I trusted to your hotheadedness. I knew that if you thought someone of the faculty wrote them, you would be sure to make yourself even more unpopular with some ill-considered defiance.”
Instead of anger, Galileo felt only a curious relief. For now his course lay clearly ahead of him. He pulled himself away from de Medici’s grasp.
“Then I have much work to do to mend the results of my own folly,” he said softly.
Galileo went at once to the bell-ringer’s small stone house, just outside the walls of the Campo Santo, and was admitted by the little man. Inside, at the fireplace, stood the law student, Paolo Salviati.
“Don’t look surprised, signore,” he said. “Guiseppe Aproino, the bell-ringer, is my uncle.”
“I’m in great trouble, Salviati,” Galileo said. “I wish to ask your uncle some questions, but I’m afraid he resents my presence.”
“Uncle!” the young man said sharply. “You help the maestro, understand?”
The bell-ringer turned the palms of his hands upwards, and shrugged.
“Si, maestro?”
“I came to you before dawn this morning to ask for the keys to the tower, and returned them to you after the rehearsal. Has anyone else borrowed them since?”
“No, maestro.”
“But the door of the tower is left open during the day?”
“Si. I open it at sunrise, when I ring the first bells, and close it at sunset when I ring the last.”
“And are you there all the time?”
“No, no. Between sunrise and noon I work in the gardens.”
Galileo nodded with satisfaction. “The rector says you heard the Devil stomp his foot.”
“Si — twice I heard him.”
“Twice?” Galileo paused, frowning. “Did you see me throw the balls from the tower, Signor Aproino?”
“No. A little girl ran into the tower and I went after her. I was inside when the Devil stomped.”
“Now think carefully,” Galileo said. “When did you hear the Devil stomp the second time?”
The bell-ringer scratched his chest thoughtfully. “Not much later.”
“Before I came down from the tower?”
“No, just afterwards. I remember I was sitting on the bench outside.”
“Before the students fell from the tower?”
“Si, before that.”
“One more thing. The rector said that when the students fell from the tower you did not leave the door untended. But did you not run to see them?”
“The poor ragazzos? Si! But always I am in sight of the door. Nobody comes out, I swear! It was the Devil who pushed them — the Devil!”
Galileo bowed formally. “Thank you, Signor Aproino. I would like now to examine the tower again — with your permission.”
The bell-keeper frowned.
“I will take him, Uncle,” Salviati said.
The old man grumbled and produced a large key, and the student, after lighting a lanthorn, led Galileo out of the house.
Inside the tower, which was far more draughty and dank in the night than in the day, they paused and looked at the maze of ropes that led upwards through the dark floor, but two of them were tied to cleats upon a heavy, solid oaken frame.
“Why are those ropes cleated?” Galileo asked.
“To distinguish them. This one leads to a bell that is rung only on feast days, the other to a cracked bell my uncle does not ring at all.”
Galileo seized the latter rope and gave it a tug. Nothing happened.
“It seems to be fastened,” Galileo said.
“To a bar in the belfry — so that my uncle does not ring it by accident.”
Galileo took the lanthorn from Salviati and led the way to the top of the tower where, his feet gritting on sand, he started a slow circuit of the gallery.
“May I ask, maestro, if you think Vincenzio and Pettirosso were murdered?”
“I know it.”
The law student was silent a moment, then he said, “Two others came to-night to ask for admittance to the tower.”
“Who?”
“The rector, and Giovanni de Medici. Uncle had to oblige them, and he climbed the tower with them. All they did was to walk round and round the balcony. De Medici seemed certain the Devil had been here.”
“Ah,” Galileo exclaimed suddenly, and holding his lanthorn close to a narrow gutter that drained the gallery, he plucked from the channel a small piece of thin leather.
“That tells you something, maestro?”
Galileo nodded, then rose quickly and ascended the iron ladder that led up into the belfry, where his lanthorn winked fitfully as he stepped among the dark shapes of the bells. A little later he descended.
“I’m ready to go now,” he said.
The professor and the student walked back to the bell-ringer’s house in silence, and as they were about to part, Galileo held up the lanthorn.
“I’d like to borrow this, Salviati. I have much yet to look for tonight.”
“Of course. But where do you go?”
“To the Campo Santo.”
“But what will you do in the cemetery?”
“Search.”
“You may be in danger, I think. Let me come with you.”
Galileo looked keenly at the gaunt face of his companion.
“Last week you pressed a sword to my chest, Salviati. Why now do you offer to befriend me?”
“You might have told the rector about my attacking you, and yet you held your tongue.”
“Very well,” Galileo said after a moment. “You may come along.”
The moonlight was bright upon the urns and effigies in the cemetery, the grass soft and springy underfoot — grass growing from sanctified soil that had been brought in shiploads from the Holy Land. Galileo threaded his way among the graves and stopped finally in the shadow of the Leaning Tower.
“This would be the area, I think.”
“What are you looking for?”
“The second set of iron shot.”
Galileo searched until finally he discovered a hole in the turf, and embedded in it, the ten-pound shot. A few feet farther away he discovered the one-pound shot. He lifted the latter gingerly and examined it by the lamplight. Suddenly he pointed to some brownish stains on the surface of the iron ball.
“Blood.”
“What does it mean?”
“It demonstrates the truth of my reasoning. Listen. Before dawn this morning, the murderer watched our rehearsal — we heard his footsteps in the Duomo — and he knew exactly what we were going to do. At sunrise, just after your uncle left to do his gardening, the murderer crept into the tower and hid himself in the belfry. At noon he watched me drop the two iron balls. Then after I left Vincenzio and Pettirosso at the top of the tower, he came out of his hiding place and struck the two students from behind with a sandbag he had brought with him. He must have succeeded in stunning little Pettirosso at once, but with Vincenzio, the larger one, he had trouble. His sandbag burst open in the struggle — I found a piece of the bag in the gutter a while ago. He managed to seize the smaller iron ball and struck Vincenzio’s head—”