once or twice. What was she?"

"There you ask me a pretty question. My belief is that she was either
one of those Nihilist madwomen, or else the devil himself in a new
shape. At any rate, she had some good cognac."

"I should like some coffee now, Signor Calabressa; and you?"

"I would not refuse it."

Indeed, during all this journey to Naples, Calabressa and his companion
talked much more of the commonplace incidents and wants of travel than
of the graver matters that lay before them. Calabressa was especially
resolute in doing so. He did not like to look ahead. He kept reminding
himself that he was simply the agent of the Council; he was carrying out
their behests; the consequences were for others to deal with. He had
fulfilled his commission; he had procured sufficient proof of the
suspected conspiracy; if evil-doers were to be punished, was he
responsible? _Fiat justitia!_ he kept repeating to himself. He was
answerable to the Council alone. He had done his duty.

But from time to time--and especially when they were travelling at
night, and he was awake--a haunting dread possessed him. How should he
appear before these two women in Naples? His old friend Natalie
Berezolyi had been grievously wronged; she had suffered through long
years; but a wife forgets much when her husband is about to die. And a
daughter? Lind had been an affectionate father enough to this girl;
these two had been companions all her lifetime; recent incidents would
surely be forgotten in her terror over the fact that it was her own
appeal to the Council that had wrought her father's death. And then he,
Calabressa, what could he say? It was through him she had invoked these
unknown powers; it was his counsel that had taken her to Naples; and he
was the immediate instrument that would produce this tragic end.

He would not think of it. At the various places where they stopped he
worried about food and drink, and angrily haggled about hotel-bills: he
read innumerable stupid little newspapers from morning till night; he
smoked Reitzei nearly blind. At last they reached Naples.

Within an hour after their arrival Calabressa, alone, was in Tommaso's
wine-vaults talking to the ghoul-like occupant. A bell rung, faint and
muffled, in the distance; he passed to the back of the vaults, and lit a
candle that Tommaso handed him; then he followed what seemed, from the
rumble overhead, some kind of subterranean corridor. But at the end of
this long sub