“I am yours, and hers, Calabressa.”

* * * * *

The letter was handed to Gathorne Edwards with a proud air; and he read it, and handed it back.

“This man Kirski is not so much of a savage as you imagine,” he said.  “He learns quickly, and forgets nothing.  He can repeat all the articles of membership; but it is No. 5 that he is particularly fond of.  You have not heard him go over it, Calabressa?”

“I?  No.  He does not waste my time that way.”

“His pronunciation,” continued the younger man, with a smile, “is rather like the cracking of dry twigs.  ’Article 5.  Whatever punishment may be decreed against any Officer, Companion, or Friend of the Society may be vicariously borne by any other Officer, Companion, or Friend who of his own full and free consent acts as substitute; the original offender becoming thereby redeemed, acquitted, and released.’  And then he invariably adds:  ’Why not make me of some use?  To myself my life is nothing.’”

At this moment there was a tapping at the door.

“It is himself,” said Edwards.

“Enter!” Calabressa called out.

The man who now came into the room was a very different looking person from the wild, unkempt creature who had confronted Natalie Lind in Curzon Street.  The voluminous red beard and mustache had been cropped; he wore the clothes of a decent workman, with a foreign touch here and there; he was submissive and docile in look.

“Well, where have you been, my friend?” Calabressa said to him in Italian.

Kirski glanced at Gathorne Edwards, and began to speak to him in Russian.

“Will you explain for me, little father?  I have been to many churches.”

“The police will not suspect him if he goes there,” said Calabressa, laughing.

“And to the shops in the Piazza San Marco, where the pictures are of the saints.”

“Well?”

“Little father, I can find no one of the saints so beautiful as that one in England that the Master Calabressa knows.”

Calabressa laughed again.

“Allons, mon grand enfant!  Tell him that if it is only a likeness he is hunting for, I can show him one.”

With that he took out from his breast-pocket a small pocket book, opened it, found a certain photograph, and put it on the table, shoving it over toward Kirski.  The dim-eyed Russian did not dare to touch it; but he stooped over it, and he put one trembling hand on each side of it, as if he would concentrate the light, and gazed at this portrait of Natalie Lind until he could see nothing at all for the tears that came into his eyes.  Then he rose abruptly, and said something rapidly to Edwards.

“He says, ’Take it away, or you will make me a thief.  It is worth more than all the diamonds in the world.’”

Calabressa did not laugh this time.  He regarded the man with a look in which there was as much pity as curiosity.