“Oh, shut up, Lew!” growled one of his friends. “If that crazy man hadn’t been shouting your name, we should not have gone back! He’d have wakened the dead. And our orders were to retire at the first serious sign of an alarm. That’s right, doctor, isn’t it?” “Sure it’s right,” said the doctor blandly. “Never be caught—that is a good motto. Cuccini was caught.” “And I’d give a year of my life to meet that Dago again,” said Cuccini, between his teeth. He was delightfully inconsistent, for he came into the category, having been born in Milan, and had had his early education in the Italian quarter of Hartford, Connecticut. “He’d have tortured me too . . . he was going to put lighted wax matches between my fingers——” “And then you spilled it!” accused one of the three hotly. “You talk about us bolting!” “Silence!” roared the doctor. “This is unseemly! I have forgiven everything. That shall be enough for you all. I will hear no other word.” “Where is Gurther?” Cuccini asked the question. “He has gone away. To-night he leaves for America. He may return—who knows? But that is the intention.” “Snaking?” asked somebody, and there was a little titter of laughter. “Say, doctor, how do you work that stunt?” Cuccini leaned forward, his cigar between his fingers, greatly intrigued. “I saw no snakes down at Rath Hall, and yet he was bitten, just as that Yankee was bitten—Washington.” “He will die,” said the doctor complacently. He was absurdly jealous for the efficacy of his method. “He was alive yesterday, anyway. We shadowed him to the station.” “Then he was not bitten—no, that is impossible. When the snake-bites,”—Oberzohn raised his palms and gazed piously at the ceiling—“after that there is nothing. No, no, my friend, you are mistaken.” “I tell you I’m not making any mistake,” said the other doggedly. “I was in the room, I tell you, soon after they brought him in, and I heard one of the busies say that his face was all wet.” “So!” said Oberzohn dully. “That is very bad.” “But how do you do it, doctor? Do you shoot or sump’n’?” “Let us talk about eventual wealth and happiness,” said the doctor. “To-night is a night of great joy for me. I will sing you a song.” Then, to the amazement of the men and to their great unhappiness, he sang, in a thin, reedy old voice, the story of a young peasant who had been thwarted in love and had thrown himself from a cliff into a seething waterfall. It was a lengthy song, intensely sentimental, and his voice held few of the qualities of music. The gang had never been set a more difficult job than to keep straight faces until he had finished. “Gee! You’re some artist, doctor!” said the sycophantic Cuccini, and managed to get a simulation of envy into his voice. “In my student days I was a great singer,” said the doctor modestly.