; or shall I?"

"Yes, yes. It has been too much for me, Brand. You see, I had no
business to tell him about Lind--"

"The poor wretch would have ended his days miserably anyhow, no doubt in
a mad-house, and probably after killing some quite innocent person.
By-the-way, they will ask you how you came to suspect. Where is that
letter?"

Edwards took it from his pocket.

"Tear it up."

He did so; but Brand took the fragments and put them in his own pocket.

"You can tell them he wrote to you, and from the madness of the letter
you thought something was wrong. You destroyed the letter. But where is
Natalie's portrait?--that must not fall into their hands."

He instantly went up-stairs again, leaving his companion alone. There
was something strange in his entering this room where the corpse lay; it
seemed necessary for him to walk on tiptoe: he uncovered his head. A
glance round the almost empty room speedily showed him what he wanted;
there was a small wooden casket in a dusky corner by the window, and
that, he made no doubt, was the box the unhappy Kirski had made to
contain Natalie's portrait, and that he had quite recently dug out from
its place of concealment. Brand was surprised, however, to find the
casket empty. Then he glanced at the fireplace; there was a little dust
there, as of burnt card-board. Then he made sure that Kirski himself had
taken steps to prevent the portrait falling into alien hands.

Beside the box, however, lay a piece of paper, written over in pencil.
He took it up and made out it was chiefly ill-spelled Italian:
"_Whatever punishment may be decreed against any Officer, Companion, or
Friend of the Society, may be vicariously borne by any other Officer,
Companion, or Friend, who, of his own full and free consent, acts as
substitute--the original offender becoming thereby redeemed, acquitted,
and released._" Then followed some words which he could not make out at
all.

He carried the paper down-stairs.

"He appears to have burnt the photograph, Edwards; but he has left
this--see."

Edwards glanced at the trembling scrawl with a slight shiver; the
handwriting was the same as that he had received half an hour before.

"It is only Article V.," he said. "The poor fellow used to keep
repeating that, after Calabressa and I taught him in Venice."

"But what is written below?"

Edwards forced himself to take the paper in his hands, and to scan more
carefully its contents.

"It is Russia