who had admitted
him. She handed him his hat and stick, and turned to unbar the door. As
the bolt slipped back he felt a touch on his arm.

"You have a letter?" she said in a low tone.

"A letter?" He stared. "What letter?"

She shrugged her shoulders, and drew back to let him pass.

II

As Wyant emerged from the house he paused once more to glance up at
its scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically above
the entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed into the
passiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its hidden meaning.
But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious thing about Doctor
Lombard's house. What were the relations between Miss Lombard and her
father? Above all, between Miss Lombard and her picture? She did not
look like a person capable of a disinterested passion for the arts; and
there had been moments when it struck Wyant that she hated the picture.

The sky at the end of the street was flooded with turbulent yellow
light, and the young man turned his steps toward the church of San
Domenico, in the hope of catching the lingering brightness on Sodoma's
St. Catherine.

The great bare aisles were almost dark when he entered, and he had to
grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary evocation of the
sunset, the saint's figure emerged pale and swooning from the dusk, and
the warm light gave a sensual tinge to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed to
glow and heave, the eyelids to tremble; Wyant stood fascinated by the
accidental collaboration of light and color.

Suddenly he noticed that something white had fluttered to the ground
at his feet. He stooped and picked up a small thin sheet of note-paper,
folded and sealed like an old-fashioned letter, and bearing the
superscription:--

To the Count Ottaviano Celsi.

Wyant stared at this mysterious document. Where had it come from? He was
distinctly conscious of having seen it fall through the air, close
to his feet. He glanced up at the dark ceiling of the chapel; then he
turned and looked about the church. There was only one figure in it,
that of a man who knelt near the high altar.

Suddenly Wyant recalled the question of Doctor Lombard's maid-servant.
Was this the letter she had asked for? Had he been unconsciously
carrying it about with him all the afternoon? Who was Count Ottaviano
Celsi, and how came Wyant to have been chosen to act as that nobleman's
ambulant letter-box?

Wyant laid his hat a