"Your time is valuable, Brother Granaglia. Let me present to you my comrade Signor Edouarts, of whom I wrote to you." The sallow-faced little man with the tired look bowed courteously, begged his guests to be seated, and pushed toward them a box of cigarettes. "Now, my Calabressa," said he, "to the point. As you guess, I am pressed for time. Seven days hence will find me in Moscow." "In Moscow!" exclaimed Calabressa. "You dare not!" Granaglia waved his hand a couple of inches. "Do not protest. It may be your turn to-morrow. And my good friend Calabressa would find Moscow just about as dangerous for him as for me." "Monsieur le Secretaire, I have no wish to try. But to the point, as you say. May one ask how it stands with Zaccatelli?" Granaglia glanced at the Englishman. "Of course he knows everything," Calabressa explained instantly. "How otherwise should I have brought him with me?" "Well, Zaccatelli has received his warning." "Who carried it?" "I." "You! You are the devil! You thrust your head into the lion's den!" The black-eyed, worn-faced little man seemed pleased. An odd, dry smile appeared about the thin lips. "It needed no courage at all, friend Calabressa. His Eminence knows who we are, no one better. The courage was his. It is not a pleasant thing when you are told that within a certain given time you will be a dead man; but Zaccatelli did not blanch; no, he was very polite to me. He paid us compliments. We were not like the others, Calabressa. We were good citizens and Christians; even his Holiness might be induced to lend an ear; why should not the Church and we be friends?" Calabressa burst out laughing. "Surely evil days have fallen on the Pope, Brother Granaglia, when one of his own Cardinals proposes that he should at last countenance a secret society. But his Eminence was mad with fear--was it not so? He wanted to win you over with promises, eh? Idle words, and no more. He feeds you on wind, and sends you away, and returns to his mistresses and his wines and his fountains of perfume?" "Not quite so," said the other, with the same dry smile, "His Eminence, as I say to you, knows as well as any one in Europe who and what we are, and what is our power. The day after I called on him with my little message, what does he do--of his own free-will, mind you--but send back the daughter of old De Bedros to her home, with a pledge to her father that she shall have a dowry of ten thousand lire when she marries. The father is pleased, the daughter is not. She sits and cries. She talks of herself getting at him with a stiletto." He took a cigarette, and accepted a light from Calabressa. "Further," he continued, "his Eminence is so kind as to propose to give the Council an annual subsidy from his own purse of thirty thousand lire." "Thirty thousand lire!" Calabressa exclaimed. But at this point even Granaglia began to laugh.