en _signore_, the prince, has cut the strings
and left the purse empty."

"Furthermore?" The official twirled his mustache with an air of
incredulity.

"Furthermore, the great Raphael disappears! Her excellency's renovation
story was a little weak for my digestion, and, unless my eyes played me
false, she was well frightened. I'll take my oath she was at a loss what
to answer."

"You say you taxed her with it?"

"As I told you. She answered that the picture was being renovated. An
answer for an idiot--the picture is one of the best canvases extant; in
perfect repair."

"Did you tell her that?"

"Partially. I am sure she saw my suspicion."

"I should doubt her carrying out the sale after that. There is where
your story fails."

"Ah, but it had already gone! It was perhaps by then in the house of a
foreign millionaire. No, no, my story hangs together: The great picture
disappears! A month later--time exactly for its arrival in America and
the payment for it to be sent over here--her excellency of no money
comes out in such a motor-car as that! And sables! I have an eye for
furs. My father was in the business. The value of those she has on runs
easily into the seventy or eighty thousand _lire_. Here she comes now,
out of the banker's where American money is most often paid! Do you want
better evidence?"

He had been punctuating all he said with his fingers, and now, with a
final snap of arms and a shrug of shoulders, he looked up in keen
triumph at his companion.

The other--slower and less excited than the narrator (probably because
he was not the discoverer of the plot)--nevertheless showed lively
interest. "It is very grave," he admitted at last. "But the Sansevero
family is illustrious. We may not proceed against them without due
consideration. I shall report the case to the chief of our secret
service, and the prince must be----"

A tall, athletic young man who had been changing some foreign gold into
Italian, came into the open doorway of the office. A carriage, passing
at that moment close to the curb, had prevented the two men from hearing
the stranger's footfall, and as the latter stood on the top step,
searching in his pocket for matches, he happened to catch the name
"Sansevero." At once his attention was arrested, but as the conversation
was carried on in an undertone, he caught only vague, detached words.
Still, he was sure that he had heard "Raphael" after the name,
"Sansevero," "disappearance