Free 078 The Phantom Of Venice by Carolyn Keene Page A

adjusted, she peered intently in both directions, but there was no sign of the ghostly midnight marauder.
    With a sigh of relief, she closed the door. “Whatever, or whoever, it was—is gone now!”
    Apparently the inner walls of the old palazzo were solid enough to have muffled Tara’s screams. They seemed not to have disturbed the household.
    “What should we do, Nancy?”
    “Good question. We could wake up the servants, I suppose, but I doubt if they’d appreciate it.”
    The two were feeling calmer now. In the end,they settled back on their pillows and pulled up the covers. Tara kept her bedside light on as they chatted drowsily. Minutes later, both girls had fallen asleep.
    Next morning, a maid brought them coffee and croissants. Tara tried to ask her if the palazzo was haunted, but the maid’s English was too poor to carry on a conversation.
    Soon after the girls finished dressing, there was a knock on the door. It was Domenic, the butler. “The maid, Eufemia,” he grumbled in his hollow, heavily accented voice, “she say you see something last night.”
    “We certainly did,” said Nancy.
    Tara described the spook and repeated her question about the palazzo being haunted.
    Domenic seemed both sullen and upset. “This is foolish talk,” he scolded. “Only girls and women see any ghost.”
    “This wasn’t just ’any ghost’,” Nancy retorted. “We’re talking about a terrifying figure that came into our room last night. Into this room right here!” She was determined not to let him evade the issue, as he had done yesterday afternoon when she wanted him to serve tea in the courtyard.
    “Si, si, capisco,” Domenic nodded impatiently. “You tell me you see a ghost. What can I say?” He shrugged his bony shoulders. “This Palazzo Falcone, it is very old. Many times donne think they see somethingin the dark. Some see death’s-head, like you say now. Maybe it is true, maybe they just imagine so. Who knows?”
    The butler rambled on, shrugging and lapsing into Italian. The girls finally gave up. But on the way down to breakfast, they encountered the Marchese himself on the staircase.
    “Is your palazzo haunted?” Nancy asked.
    “Haunted?” The Marchese’s face went blank. But when the girls described the apparition they had seen, and the butler’s reaction to their story, he nodded understandingly. “Ah, si, the ghost! So Domenic has told you our old family legend, eh?”
    “Not really. You mean the Palazzo Falcone has a legendary ghost?”
    “Indeed it does.” He explained that, centuries ago, a member of the Falcone family had been accused of plotting against the Doge, the elected head of the Most Serene Republic. So the dreaded- Council of Ten, which controlled the secret police, had sentenced him to death.
    The Falcones’ kinsman was never seen again. It was assumed that he had been executed by the official strangler. But rumors persisted that he had been glimpsed at the palazzo, at first as a fugitive in hiding and later as a ghost with a death’s-head.
    Tara shuddered. “Are you saying that’s what Nancy and I saw last night?”
    “No, no, my dear, I’m only telling you the legend. Iam devastated that you have suffered such an unnerving experience, whatever the reason, and I apologize deeply. If it will help at all,” he added, “I can assure you that there has never been any report of my restless ancestor harming anyone!”
    The last remark was spoken with a sympathetic smile. Clearly, he was inclined to write off the weird specter as a figment of their imagination.
    After breakfast the girls set out for a day of sightseeing and shopping. Nancy proposed that they go first to see the Ca d’Oro, or House of Gold. It had caught her eye when she arrived in Venice and seemed to her the loveliest palace on the Grand Canal. “The guidebook says it was built for a pair of wealthy newlyweds,” she told Tara. “Once upon a time, it was actually covered with gold.”
    “Wow! They