r place, in a finer work of fiction than you are ever likely to
write, Bunny, it was 'gloomy at noon, dark as midnight at dusk, and
black as the ninth plague of Egypt at midnight.' I won't swear to my
quotation, but I will to those stairs. They were as black that night
as the inside of the safest safe in the strongest strong-room in the
Chancery Lane Deposit. Yet I had not got far down them with my bare
feet before I heard somebody else coming up in boots. You may imagine
what a turn that gave me! It could not be Faustina, who went barefoot
three seasons of the four, and yet there was Faustina waiting for me
down below. What a fright she must have had! And all at once my own
blood ran cold: for the man sang like a kettle as he plodded up and up.
It was, it must be, the short-winded Count himself, whom we all
supposed to be in Rome!

"Higher he came and nearer, nearer, slowly yet hurriedly, now stopping
to cough and gasp, now taking a few steps by elephantine assault. I
should have enjoyed the situation if it had not been for poor Faustina
in the cave; as it was I was filled with nameless fears. But I could
not resist giving that grampus Corbucci one bad moment on account. A
crazy hand-rail ran up one wall, so I carefully flattened myself
against the other, and he passed within six inches of me, puffing and
wheezing like a brass band. I let him go a few steps higher, and then
I let him have it with both lungs.

"Buona sera, eccellenza, signori!' I roared after him. And a scream
came down in answer--such a scream! A dozen different terrors were in
it; and the wheezing had stopped, with the old scoundrel's heart.

"'Chi sta la?' he squeaked at last, gibbering and whimpering like a
whipped monkey, so that I could not bear to miss his face, and got a
match all ready to strike.

"'Arturo, signori.'

"He didn't repeat my name, nor did he damn me in heaps. He did nothing
but wheeze for a good minute, and when he spoke it was with insinuating
civility, in his best English.

"'Come nearer, Arturo. You are in the lower regions down there. I want
to speak with you.'

"'No, thanks. I'm in a hurry,' I said, and dropped that match back
into my pocket. He might be armed, and I was not.

"'So you are in a 'urry!' and he wheezed amusement. 'And you thought I
was still in Rome, no doubt; and so I was until this afternoon, when I
caught train at the eleventh moment, and then another train from Naples
to P