up a fine uncut emerald, one of
Falco's chief treasures.

A qualm of apprehension shot through me. I pushed the door, entered and
swept the room with a glance. A confusion of jewel-trays cluttered the
floor, no sign of Falco. Nor was he in the left-hand room, which had been
similarly rifled.

But, when I turned and peered through the right-hand inner door I saw,
across the marble center-table, horridly sprawled, what I instantly knew
for his corpse, so unmistakably did the head hang loose, the arms dangle,
the legs trail: he was manifestly a corpse, even without sight of the
dagger-hilt projecting from his back.

I rushed to him and touched him.

He was yet warm, the blood still trickled from about the dagger, driven
deep under the left shoulder blade, slanting upwards, the very stroke
Agathemer had drilled me in early in our flight, the stroke with which I
had slaughtered two of the five bullies at Nona's hut!

I plucked out the dagger, gazing at it in horror.

As I did so I heard footsteps behind me and turned to face Casperius
Asellio, and Vespronius Lustralis, two of the most persistent of the
toadies who hung about Falco, both of whom hated me consumedly.

In a flash I realized my situation. Had I been a freeman I should have
been commiserated by all as a gentleman who had had the misfortune to find
his best friend foully murdered; as a slave I would be assumed by all Rome
to have been caught in the act of assassinating my kind and indulgent
master; and, recalling Tanno's invectives against me at my last dinner at
Villa Andivia, I knew I was liable to be tortured until I confessed my
guilt!

Asellio and Lustralis flung themselves on me with execrations and their
yells brought the entire household. My protestations were unheeded. No one
would listen to my valet's assertion that he had found the janitor asleep
in his cell and roused him just before Lustralis and Asellio reached the
entrance, that he had but just finished dressing me when he went down to
the vestibule. No one heeded my denials or my urgings that I could not
have rifled the collection, that the looters and the murderers must be the
same individuals, that I was clearly innocent. Asellio and Lustralis not
merely seized me, but rained blows on me. I knew I could knock both
senseless without half trying, but, in my character of effeminate oriental
exquisite, I must not advertise my real strength. I struggled, but half-
heartedly.

The house-boy