Sunrise Part 40

"He says, 'Take it away, or you will make me a thief. It is worth more than all the diamonds in the world.'"

Calabressa did not laugh this time. He regarded the man with a look in which there was as much pity as curiosity.

"The poor devil!" he said. "Tell him I will ask the beautiful saint whom he worships so to send him a portrait of herself with her own hands. I will. She will do as much as that for her friend Calabressa."

This had scarcely been translated to Kirski when, in his sudden grat.i.tude, he caught Calabressa's hand and kissed it.

"Tell him, also," Calabressa said, good-naturedly, "that if he is hungry before dinner-time there is sausage and bread and beer in the cupboard.

But he must not stir out till we come back. Allons, mon bon camarade!"

Calabressa lit another cigarette, and the two companions sallied forth.

They stepped into a gondola, and presently they were being borne swiftly over the plain of light-green water. By-and-by they plunged into a varied and picturesque ma.s.s of shipping, and touched land again in front of a series of stores. The gondola was ordered to await their return.

Calabressa pa.s.sed without question through the lower floor of this particular building, where the people were busy with barrels of flour, and led the way up-stairs until he stopped at a certain door. He knocked thrice and entered. There was a small, dark man seated at a table, apparently engaged with some bills of lading.

"You are punctual, Brother Calabressa."

"Your time is valuable, Brother Granaglia. Let me present to you my comrade Signor Edouarts, of whom I wrote to you."

The sallow-faced little man with the tired look bowed courteously, begged his guests to be seated, and pushed toward them a box of cigarettes.

"Now, my Calabressa," said he, "to the point. As you guess, I am pressed for time. Seven days hence will find me in Moscow."

"In Moscow!" exclaimed Calabressa. "You dare not!"

Granaglia waved his hand a couple of inches.

"Do not protest. It may be your turn to-morrow. And my good friend Calabressa would find Moscow just about as dangerous for him as for me."

"Monsieur le Secretaire, I have no wish to try. But to the point, as you say. May one ask how it stands with Zaccatelli?"

Granaglia glanced at the Englishman.

"Of course he knows everything," Calabressa explained instantly. "How otherwise should I have brought him with me?"

"Well, Zaccatelli has received his warning."

"Who carried it?"

"I."

"You! You are the devil! You thrust your head into the lion's den!"

The black-eyed, worn-faced little man seemed pleased. An odd, dry smile appeared about the thin lips.

"It needed no courage at all, friend Calabressa. His Eminence knows who we are, no one better. The courage was his. It is not a pleasant thing when you are told that within a certain given time you will be a dead man; but Zaccatelli did not blanch; no, he was very polite to me. He paid us compliments. We were not like the others, Calabressa. We were good citizens and Christians; even his Holiness might be induced to lend an ear; why should not the Church and we be friends?"

Calabressa burst out laughing.

"Surely evil days have fallen on the Pope, Brother Granaglia, when one of his own Cardinals proposes that he should at last countenance a secret society. But his Eminence was mad with fear--was it not so? He wanted to win you over with promises, eh? Idle words, and no more. He feeds you on wind, and sends you away, and returns to his mistresses and his wines and his fountains of perfume?"

"Not quite so," said the other, with the same dry smile, "His Eminence, as I say to you, knows as well as any one in Europe who and what we are, and what is our power. The day after I called on him with my little message, what does he do--of his own free-will, mind you--but send back the daughter of old De Bedros to her home, with a pledge to her father that she shall have a dowry of ten thousand lire when she marries. The father is pleased, the daughter is not. She sits and cries. She talks of herself getting at him with a stiletto."

He took a cigarette, and accepted a light from Calabressa.

"Further," he continued, "his Eminence is so kind as to propose to give the Council an annual subsidy from his own purse of thirty thousand lire."

"Thirty thousand lire!" Calabressa exclaimed.

But at this point even Granaglia began to laugh.

"Yes, yes, my friend," he said, apparently apostrophizing the absent Cardinal. "You know, then, who we are, and you do not wish to give up all pleasures. No; we are to become the good boy among secret societies; we are to have the blessing of the Pope; we are to fight Prince Bismarck for you. Prince Bismarck has all his knights and his castles on the board; but what are they against an angelic host of bishops and some millions of common p.a.w.ns? Prince Bismarck wishes to plunge Europe again into war. The church with this tremendous engine within reach, says, No.

Do you wish to find eight men--eight men, at the least--out of every company of every regiment in all your _corps d'armee_ throw down their rifles at the first onset of battle? You will shoot them for mutiny? My dear fellow, you cannot, the enemy is upon you. With eight men out of each company throwing down their weapons, and determined either to desert or die, how on earth can you fight at all? Well, then, good Bismarck, you had better make your peace with the Church, and rescind those Falk laws. What do you think of that scheme, Calabressa? It was ingenious, was it not, to have come into the head of a man under sentence of death?"

"But the thirty thousand lire, Brother Granaglia. It is a tremendous bribe."

"The Council does not accept bribes, Brother Calabressa," said the other, coldly,

"It is decided, then, that the decree remains to be executed?"

"I know nothing to the contrary. But if you wish to know for certain, you must seek the Council. They are at Naples."

He pulled an ink-bottle before him, and made a motion with his forefinger.

"You understand?"

"Yes, yes," Calabressa answered. "And I will go on to Naples, Brother Granaglia; for I have with me one who I think will carry out the wishes of the Council effectively, so far as his Eminence the Cardinal is concerned."

"Who is he?" said the other, but with no great interest.

"Yakov Kirski. He is a Russian."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A CLIMAX.

It was a momentous decision that George Brand had to arrive at; and yet he scarcely seemed to be aware of it. The man had changed so much during these past six months.

"Do you know, Evelyn," he was saying to his friend, on the very evening on which his answer was to be given to Ferdinand Lind, "I am beginning to look on that notion of my going to America with anything but dislike.

Rather the opposite, indeed. I should like to get rid of a lot of old a.s.sociations, and start in a new and wider field. With another life to lead, don't you want another sort of world to live it in?"

Lord Evelyn regarded him. No one had observed with a closer interest the gradual change that had come over this old friend of his. And he was proud of it, too; for had it not been partly of his doing?

"One does not breathe free air here," Brand continued, rather absently--as if his mental vision was fixed on the greater s.p.a.ces beyond the seas. "With a new sort of life beginning, wouldn't it be better to start it under new conditions--feeling yourself unhampered--with nothing around to disturb even the foolishness of your dreams and hopes? Then you could work away at your best, leaving the result to time."