‘Uncle Howard, don’t speak to him! It’s the tattooed man,’ Marcia cried. ‘There’s a plot. He wants to kill you.’ An expression approaching amusement flitted over Mr. Copley’s face as he looked his visitor over. ‘I wish to speak to the signore alone, in private, on urgent business,’ the man reiterated, looking scowlingly from one face to the other. He did not understand the foreign language they spoke among themselves, and he felt that it gave them an advantage. ‘Don’t speak to him alone,’ Sybert warned. ‘He’s dangerous.’ ‘Well, what do you want?’ Copley demanded peremptorily. ‘Say whatever you have to say here.’ The man glanced at Marcia and Sybert, and then, shrugging his shoulders in true Italian fashion, turned to Copley. ‘I wish the money of the poor,’ he said. ‘The money of the poor? I haven’t any money of the poor.’ ‘_Si, si_, signore. The money you stole from the mouths of the poor—the wheat money.’ Marcia shuddered at the word ‘wheat.’ It seemed to her that it would follow her to her dying day. ‘Ah! So it’s the wheat money, is it? Well, my good man, that happens to be my money. I didn’t steal it from the mouths of the poor. I bought the wheat myself to give to the poor, and I sold it for half as much as I paid for it; and with the money I intend to buy more wheat. In the meantime, however, I shall keep it in my own hands.’ ‘You don’t remember me, signore, but I remember you. We met in Naples.’ Copley bowed. ‘On which occasion I put you in jail—a pleasure I shall avail myself of a second time if you trouble me any further.’ ‘I have come for the money.’ ‘You fool! Do you think I carry thirty thousand lire around in my pockets? The money is in the _Banca d’Italia_ in Rome. You may call there if you wish it.’ The man put his hands to his mouth and whistled. ‘Ah! It’s a plot, is it!’ Copley exclaimed. ‘_Si_, signore. It is a plot, and there are those who will carry it out.’ He turned with an angry snarl, and before Sybert could spring forward to stop him he had snatched a stiletto from his girdle. Copley threw up his arm to protect himself, and received the blow in the shoulder. Before the man could strike again, Sybert was upon him and had thrown him backward across the balustrade. At the same moment half a dozen men burst from the ilex grove and ran across the terrace; and one of them—it was Pietro—levelled the stolen rifle as he ran. ‘Back into the house!’ Sybert shouted, ‘and bar the salon windows.’ He himself sprang back to the threshold and snatched out his revolver. ‘You fools!’ he cried to the Italians in front. ‘We’re all armed men. We’ll shoot you like dogs.’ For answer Pietro fired the rifle, and the glass of an upper window crashed. Sybert closed the door and dropped the bar across it. He faced the excited group in the hall with a little laugh. ‘If that’s a specimen of his marksmanship, we haven’t much to fear from Pietro.’