“Oh yes, yes, truly,” Calabressa said.  “I only wished to know a little more about the Cardinal.  You see he cannot give himself up like Mesentskoff, though he might confess to a hundred worse things than the Russian ever did.  Provana—­well, you know the Society has always been inexorable with regard to its own officers:  and rightly, too, Reitzei, is it not so?  If one finds malversation of justice among those in a high grade, should not the punishment be exemplary?  The higher the power, the higher the responsibility.  You, for example, are much too shrewd a man to risk your life by taking any advantage of your position as one of the officers—­”

“I don’t understand you, Calabressa,” the other said, somewhat hotly.

“I only meant to say,” Calabressa observed, carelessly, “that the punishment for malversation of justice on the part of an officer is so terrible, so swift, and so sure, that no one but a madman would think of running the risk—­”

“Yes, but what has that to do with me?” Reitzei said, angrily.

“Nothing, my dear friend, nothing,” said Calabressa, soothingly.  “But now, about this selection of Mr. Brand—­”

Reitzei turned rather pale for a second; but said instantly, and with apparent anger,

“I tell you that is none of my business.  That is Mr. Lind’s business.  What have I to do with it?”

“Do not be so impatient, my friend,” said Calabressa, looking at his coffee.  “We will say that, as usual, there was a ballot.  All quite fair.  No man wishes to avoid his duty.  It is the simplest thing in the world to mark one of your pieces of paper with a red mark:  whoever receives the marked paper undertakes the commission.  All is quite fair, I say.  Only you know, I dare say, the common, the pitiful trick of the conjurer who throws a pack of cards on the table, backs up.  You take one, look at it privately, return it, and the cards are shuffled.  Without lifting the cards at all he tells you that the one you selected was the eight of diamonds:  why?  It is no miracle:  all the cards are eight of diamonds; though you, you poor innocent, do not know that.  It is a wretched trick,” added Calabressa, coolly.

Reitzei drank off the remainder of his soda-water at a gulp.  He stared at Calabressa in silence, afraid to speak.

“My dear friend Reitzei,” said Calabressa, at length raising his eyes and fixing them on his companion, “you could not be so insane as to play any trick like that?—­having four pieces of paper, for example, all marked red, the marks under the paper?  You would not enter into any such conspiracy, for you know, friend Reitzei, that the punishment is—­death!”

The man had turned a ghastly gray-green color.  He was apparently choking with thirst, though he had just finished the soda-water.  He could not speak.

Calabressa calmly waited for him; but in his heart he was saying exultingly, “Ha! the dagger quivers in the board:  his eyes are starting from his head; is it Calabressa or Cagliostro that has paralyzed him?”