Five minutes after ringing the clanging bell at the monastery door and being inspected by a brother through the small iron grill, I found myself with Fra Pacifico in his scrupulously clean narrow cell, with its truckle bed and its praying stool set before the crucifix, but on hearing hurried footsteps in the stone corridor outside I rose, and my strange friend exclaimed in Italian: "No, Signor Hargreave! Remain seated. I am excused from attendance in the chapel. I had to meet you." The narrow little cubicle was bare and whitewashed. Fra Pacifico, of the Capuchin Order, with his shaven head, his brown habit tied around the waist with a hempen rope, and his well-worn sandals, had long been my friend. Of his past I could never ascertain anything. He had called humbly upon my father when we first went to live at old-world Signa, years before, and he had asked his charity for the poor down in the Val d'Arno. "You will always have beggars around you, signore," I remembered he said. "We up at the monastery keep open house for the needy--soup, bread, and other things--to all who come from eight to ten o'clock in the morning. If you grant us alms we will see that those who beg of you never go empty away. Send them to us." My father saw instantly an easy way out of the great beggar problem, hence he promised him a fixed subscription each month, which Fra Pacifico regularly collected. So though I had returned to live in London and afterwards played my part in the war, we had still been friends. On my arrival at Pisa I had made an appointment to see him, and as we now sat together in his narrow cell, I questioned him whether, by mere chance, he had ever heard of a certain lady named Yolanda Romanelli. It was quite a chance shot of mine, but I knew that he came from the same district as the lady. He was evasive. He had heard of her, he admitted, but would go no further. His attitude concerning the lady I had mentioned filled me with curiosity. In his coarse brown habit and hood he had always been a mystery to me. He was about forty-five years of age. He knew English, and spoke it as well as he did French, for, though a monk, he was a classical scholar and a keen student of modern science. "Now, Fra Pacifico," I said, as I reseated myself. "I know you are cognizant of something concerning this lady, Yolanda Romanelli. What is it? Tell me." Thus pressed, he rather reluctantly told me a strange story. "Well!" I exclaimed at last when he had finished. "It is all really incredible. Are you quite certain of it?" "Signor Hargreave, what I have told you is what I really believe to be true. That woman is in a high position, I know. She married the Marchese, but I am convinced that she is an adventuress--and more. She is a wicked woman! God forgive me for telling you this." "But are you quite certain?" I repeated.