Part 47 (1/2)

”You are sanguine, Signor Calabressa,” said the other.

”Besides, the thirty thousand lire!”' said Calabressa, eagerly. ”Do you know what that is? Ah, you English have always too much money!”

”No doubt,” said Edwards, with a smile. ”We are all up to the neck in gold.”

”Thirty thousand lire a year, and the favor of the Vatican; what fools Granaglia and I were to laugh! But perhaps we will find that the Council were wiser.”

They had now got out to Posilipo, and the stormy sunset had waned, leaving the sky overclouded and dusk. Calabressa, having first looked up and down the road, stopped by the side of a high wall, over which projected a number of the broken, gray-green, spiny leaves of the cactus--a hedge at the foot of the terrace above.

”_Peste!_” said he. ”How the devil is one to find it out in the dark?”

”Find what out?”

”My good friend,” said he, in a whisper, ”you are not able by chance to see a bit of thread--a bit of red thread--tied round one of those big leaves?”

Edwards glanced up.

”Not I.”

”Ah, well, we must run the risk. Perhaps by accident there may be a meeting.”

They walked on for some time, Calabressa becoming more and more watchful. They paused to let a man driving a wagon and a pair of oxen go by; and then Calabressa, enjoining his companion to remain where he was, went on alone.

The changing sky had opened somewhat overhead, and there was a wan twilight s.h.i.+ning through the parted clouds. Edwards, looking after Calabressa, could have fancied that the dark figure had disappeared like a ghost; but the old albino had merely crossed the road, opened the one half of a huge gate, and entered a garden.

It was precisely like the gardens of the other villas along the highway--cut in terraces along the steep side of the hill, with winding pathways, and marble lions here and there, and little groves of orange and olive and fig trees; while on one side the sheer descent was guarded by an enormous cactus hedge. The ground was very unequal: on one small plateau a fountain was playing--the trickling of the water the only sound audible in the silence.

Calabressa took out his pocket-book, and tore a leaf from it.

”The devil!” he muttered to himself. ”How is one to write in the dark?”

But he managed to scrawl the word ”Barsanti;” then he wrapped the paper round a small pebble and approached the fountain. By putting one foot on the edge of the stone basin beneath he could reach over to the curved top, and there he managed to drop the missive into some aperture concealed under the lip. He stepped back, dried his hand with his handkerchief, and then went down one of the pathways to a lower level of the garden.

Here he easily found the entrance to an ordinary sort of grotto--a narrow cave winding inward and ending in a piece of fancy rockwork down which the water was heard to trickle. But he did not go to the end--he stopped about half-way and listened. There was no sound whatever in the dark, except the plash of the tiny water-fall.

Then there was a heavy grating noise, and in the black wall before him appeared a vertical line of orange light. This sudden gleam was so bewildering to the eyes that Calabressa could not see who it was that come out to him; he only knew that the stranger waited for him to pa.s.s on into the outer air.

”It is cooler here. To your business, friend Calabressa.”

The moment Calabressa recognized this tall, military-looking man, with the closely cropped bullet-head and long silver-white mustache, he whipped off his cap, and said, anxiously,

”A thousand pardons, Excellency! a thousand pardons! Do I interrupt? May not I see Fossati?”

”It is unnecessary. There is much business to-night. One must breathe the air sometimes.”

Calabressa for once had completely lost his _sang-froid_. He could not speak for stammering.

”I a.s.sure you, your Excellency, it is death to me to think that I interrupt you.”

”But why did you come, then, my friend? To the point.”