with his face still somewhat pale. "You suggest there has been a trick.
That is why you have come from Naples? What do you know? What is about
to happen? For God's sake, Calabressa, don't have any mystification
about it: what is it that you know--that you suspect--that you have
heard?"

"My dear friend," said Calabressa, with some anxiety, "perhaps I have
been indiscreet. I know nothing: what can I know? But I show you a
trick--if only to prepare you for any news--and you think it is very
serious. Oh no; do not be too hopeful--do not think it is serious--think
it was a foolish trick--"

And so, notwithstanding all that Brand could do to force some definite
explanation from him, Calabressa succeeded in getting away, promising to
carry to Natalie any message Brand might send in the evening; and as for
Brand himself, it was now time for him to go up to Lisle Street, so that
he had something else to think of than idle mystifications.

For this was how he took it in the end: Calabressa was whimsical,
fantastic, mysterious; he had been playing with the notion that Brand
had been entrapped into this service; he had succeeded in showing
himself how it might have been done. The worst of it was--had he been
putting vain hopes into the mind of Natalie? Was this the cause of her
message? In the midst of all this bewildering uncertainty, Brand set
himself to the work left unfinished by Reitzei, and found Ferdinand Lind
as pleasant and friendly a colleague as ever.

But a few days after he was startled by being summoned back to Lisle
Street, after he had gone home in the afternoon. He found Ferdinand Lind
as calm and collected as usual, though he spoke in a hard, dry voice. He
was then informed that Lind himself and Beratinsky were about to leave
London for a time; that the Council wished Brand to conduct the business
at Lisle Street as best he could in their absence; and that he was to
summon to his aid such of the officers of the Society as he chose. He
asked no explanations, and Lind vouchsafed none. There was something
unusual in the expression of the man's face.

Well, Brand installed himself in Lisle Street, and got along as best he
could with the assistance of Gathorne Edwards and one or two others. But
not one of them, any more than himself, knew what had happened or was
happening. No word or message of any kind came from Calabressa, or Lind,
or the Society, or any one. Day after day Brand get through his work
with pati