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CHAPTER XXIII
THE BANQUET

SINCE I was not to play host that evening, I decided to let Arsenio be first on the gaudy scene which he had prepared. He should receive the other guests; he should take undivided responsibility for the decorations. I waited until I heard him come down and speak to Louis, and even until I heard – as I very well could, in my little bedroom adjoining the salon– Louis announcing first “Monsieur Froost,” and then – no, it was fat old Amedeo who effected the second announcement, arrogating to himself the rights of an old family servant – that of the most excellent and noble Signora Donna Lucinda Valdez. Thereupon I entered, Amedeo favoring me with no laudatory epithets, but leaving me to content myself with Louis’ brief “Monsieur Reelinton.”

Lucinda was in splendor; she was – as I, at least, had never before seen her – a grown woman in a grown woman’s evening finery. Through all her wanderings she must have dragged this gown about, a relic of her pre-war status – for all I knew, part of the trousseau of the prospective Mrs. Waldo Rillington! But it did not look seriously out of fashion. (If I remember right, women dressed on substantially the same lines just before the war as they did in the first months after it.) It was a white gown, simple but artistic, of sumptuous material. She wore no ornaments – it was not difficult to conjecture the reason for that – only her favorite scarlet flower in her fair hair; yet the effect of her was one of magnificence – of a restrained, tantalizing richness, both of body and of raiment.

Whether she had arrayed herself thus in kindness or in cruelty, or in some odd mixture of the two, indulging Arsenio’s freak with one hand, while the other buffeted him with a vision of what he had lost, I know not; but a glance at her face showed that her tenderer mood was now past. Arsenio’s decorations had done for it! She was looking about her with brows delicately raised, with amusement triumphant on her lips and in her eyes. If Arsenio’s frippery had been meant to appeal to anything except her humor, it had failed disastrously. It had driven her back to her scorn, back to her conception of him as a trickster, a mountebank, a creature whose promises meant nothing, whose threats meant less; an amusing ape – and there an end of him!

But perhaps the plate and the festoons might impress the third guest, who completed Arsenio’s party. Godfrey Frost did not, at first sight, seem so much as to notice them, to know that they were there. His eyes were all for Lucinda. Small wonder, indeed! but they did not seek or follow her in frank and honest admiration, nor yet in the chivalrous though sorrowful longing of unsuccessful love. There was avidity in them, but also anger and grudge; rancor struggling with desire. He was not looking amiable, the third guest. He set me wondering what had passed on the Lido that afternoon.

Arsenio sat down with the air of a man who had done a good day’s work and felt justified in enjoying his dinner and his company. He set Lucinda to his right at the little square table, Godfrey to his left, myself opposite. He gave a glance round the three of us.

“Ah, you’re amused,” he said to Lucinda, with his quick reading of faces. “Well, you know my ways by now!” His voice sounded good-humored, free from chagrin or disappointment. “And, after all, it’s my first and last celebration of the bit of luck that Number Twenty-one at last brought me.”

“The first and last bit of luck too, I expect,” she said; but she too was gay and easy.

“Yes, I shall back it no more; its work is done. Not bad champagne, is it, considering? Louis got it somehow. I told you he’d bring luck, Julius! Louis, fill Mr. Frost’s glass!” He sipped at his own, and then went on. “The charm of a long shot, of facing long odds – that’s what I’ve always liked. That’s the thing for us gamblers! And who isn’t a gambler – willingly or malgré lui? He who lives gambles; so does he who dies – except, of course, for the saving rites of the Church.”

“You were a little late with that reservation, Arsenio,” I remarked.

“You heretics are hardly worthy of it at all,” he retorted, smiling. “But, to gamble well, you must gamble whole-heartedly. No balancing of chances, no cutting the loss, no trying to have it both ways. Don’t you agree with me, Frost?”

“I don’t believe that Mr. Frost agrees with you in the least,” Lucinda put in. “He thinks it’s quite possible to have it both ways. Don’t you, Mr. Frost? To win without losing is your idea!”

He gave her a long look, a reluctant sour smile. She was bantering him – over something known to them, only to be conjectured by Arsenio and me; something that had passed on the Lido? She had for him a touch of the detached scornful amusement which Arsenio’s decorations had roused in her, but with a sharper tang in it – more bite to less laughter.

“I’m not a gambler, though I’m not afraid of a business risk,” he answered.

She laughed lightly. “A business risk would never have brought the splendor of to-night!” She smiled round at the ridiculously festooned walls.

We were quickly disposing of an excellent, well-served dinner; Louis was quick and quiet, fat Amedeo more sensible than he looked, undoubtedly a good cook was in the background. Growing physically very comfortable, I got largely rid of the queer apprehensions which had haunted me; I paid less heed to Arsenio, and more to the secret subtle duel which seemed to be going on between the other two. Arsenio played more with his topic – birth, death, life, love – all gambles into which men and women were involuntarily thrown, with no choice but to play the cards or handle the dice; all true and obvious in a superficial sort of way, but it seemed rather trifling – a mood in which life can be regarded, but one in which few men or women really live it. That he was one of the few himself, however, I was quite prepared to concede; the magnitude of his gains – and of his loss – as convincing.

Louis and Amedeo served us with coffee and Louis set a decanter of brandy in front of Arsenio.

Then they left us alone. Arsenio poured himself out a glass of brandy, and handed the decanter round. Holding his glass in his hand, he turned to Lucinda. “Will you drink with me – to show that you forgive my sins?”

Her eyes widened a little at the suddenness of the appeal; but she smiled still, and answered lightly, “Oh, I’ll drink with you – ” She sipped her brandy – “in memory of old days, Arsenio!”

“I see,” he said, nodding his head at her gravely. She had refused to drink with him on his terms; she would do it only on her own. “Still – you shall forgive,” he persisted with one of his cunning smiles. Then he turned suddenly to Godfrey Frost with a change of manner – with a cold malice that I had never seen in him before, a malice with no humor in it, a straightforward viciousness. “Then let us drink together, my friend!” he said. “It was with that object that I brought you here to-night. We’ll drink together, as we have failed together, Godfrey Frost! A business risk you spoke of just now! It wasn’t a bad speculation! A couple of hundred or so – Oh, I had more from your cousin, but her motives were purely charitable, eh? – just a beggarly couple of hundred for a chance at that!” A gesture indicated Lucinda. His voice rose; it took on its rhetorical note, and the words fell into harmony with it. “To buy a man’s honor and beauty like that for a couple of hundred – not a bad risk!”

Godfrey looked as if he had been suddenly hit in the face; he turned a deep red and leant forward towards his host – his very queer host. He was too shaken up to be ready with a reply. Lucinda sat motionless, apparently aloof from the scene. But a very faint smile was still on her lips.

“What the devil’s the use of this sort of thing?” I expostulated – in a purely conventional spirit, with one’s traditional reprobation of “scenes.” My feeling somehow went no deeper. It seemed then an inevitable thing that these three should have it out, before they went their several ways; the conventions were all broken between them.

“Because the truth’s good for him – and for me; for both of us who trafficked in her.”

Lucinda suddenly interposed, in a delicate scorn, an unsparing truthfulness. “It’s only because you’ve failed yourself that you’re angry with him, Arsenio. Let him alone; he’s had enough truth from me this afternoon – and a lot of good advice. I told him to go home – to Nina Dundrannan. And for Heaven’s sake don’t talk about ‘trafficking,’ as if you were some kind of a social reformer!”

She turned to me, actually laughing; and I began to laugh too. Well, Godfrey looked absurd – like a dog being whipped by two people at once, not knowing which he most wanted to bite, not sure whether he dared bite either – possibly thinking also of a third whipping which would certainly befall him if he followed Lucinda’s good advice. And Arsenio, cruelly let down from his heroics, looked funnily crestfallen too. He was not allowed to be picturesquely, rhetorically indignant – not with Godfrey, not even with himself!

“Besides,” she added, “he did offer to stick to his engagement to lunch with me that day at Cimiez!”

The mock admiration and gratitude with which she recalled this valiant deed – to which she might, in my opinion, well have dedicated a friendlier tone, since it was no slight exploit for him to beard his Nina in that fashion – put a limit to poor Godfrey’s tongue-tied endurance.

“Yes, you were ready enough to take my lunches, and what else you could get!” he sneered.

Lucinda gave me just a glance; here was a business reckoner indeed! Of course he had some right on his side, but he saw his right so carnally; why couldn’t he have told her that they’d been friends – and who could be only a friend to her? That was what, I expect, he meant in his heart; but his instincts were blunt, and he had been lashed into soreness.

Still, though I was feeling for him to that extent, I could not help returning Lucinda’s glance with a smile, while Arsenio chuckled in an exasperating fashion. It was small wonder really that he pushed back his chair from the table and, looking round at the company, groaned out, “Oh, damn the lot of you!”

The simplicity of this retort went home. I felt guilty myself, and Lucinda was touched to remorse, if not to shame. “I told you not to come to-night,” she murmured. “I told you that he only wanted to tease you. You’d better go away, perhaps.” She looked at him, and his glance obeyed hers instantly; she put out her hand and laid it on one of his for just a moment. “And, after all, I did like the lunches. You’re quite right there! Arsenio, can’t we part friends to-night – since we must part, all of us?”

“Oh, as you like!” said Arsenio impatiently. A sudden and deep depression seemed to fall upon him; he sat back, staring dejectedly at the table. He reminded one of a comedian whose jokes do not carry. This banquet was to have been a great, grim joke. But it had fallen flat – sunk now into just a wrangle. And at last his buoyant malice failed to lift it – failed him indeed completely. We three men sat in a dull silence; I saw Lucinda’s eyes grow dim with tears.

Godfrey broke the silence by rising to his feet, clumsily, almost with a stumble; I think that he caught his foot in the tablecloth, which hung down almost to the floor.

“I’ll go,” he said. “I’m sorry for all this. I’ve made a damned fool of myself.”

Nobody else spoke, or rose.

“If it’s any excuse” – he almost stumbled in his speech, as he had almost stumbled with his feet – “I love Lucinda. And you’ve used her damnably, Valdez.”

“For what I’ve done, I pay. For you – go and learn what love is.” This, though as recorded it sounds like his theatrical manner, was not so delivered. It came from him in a low, dreary voice, as though he were totally dispirited. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece; it had gone ten o’clock; he seemed to shiver as he noted the hour. He looked across at me with a helpless appeal in his eyes. He looked like an animal in a trap; a trap bites no less deeply for being of one’s own devising.

Godfrey was staring at him now in a dull, uncomprehending bewilderment. Lucinda put her elbows on the table, and supported her chin in her hands, her eyes set inquiringly on his face. I myself stretched out my hand and clasped one of his. But he shook off my grasp, raised his hands in the air and let them fall with a thud on the table; all the things on it rattled; even the heavy plate that he had bought or hired – I didn’t know which – for his futile banquet. Then he blurted out, in the queerest mixture of justification, excuse, defiance, bravado: “Oh, you don’t understand, but to me it means damnation! And I can’t do it; now – now the time’s come, I can’t!” There was no doubt about his actual, physical shuddering now.

Lucinda did not move; she just raised her eyes from where he sat to where Godfrey stood. “You’d better go,” she said. “Julius and I must manage this.” Her tone was contemptuous still.

I got up and took Godfrey’s arm. He let me lead him out of the room without resistance, and, while I was helping him on with his hat and coat, asked in a bewildered way, “What does it mean?”

“He meant to go out in a blaze of glory – with a beau geste! But he hasn’t got the pluck for it at the finish. That’s about the size of it.”

“My God, what a chap! What a queer chap!” he mumbled, as he began to go downstairs. He turned his head back. “See you to-morrow?”

“Lord, I don’t know! I’ve got him to look after. He might find his courage again! I can’t leave him alone. Good-night.” I watched him down to the next landing, and then went back towards the salon. I did not think of shutting the outer door behind me.

Just on the threshold of the salon I met Arsenio himself in the act of walking out of the room, rather unsteadily. “Where are you going?” I demanded angrily.

“Only to get some whisky. I’ve a bottle in my room. I want a whisky-and-soda. It’s all right; it really is now, old fellow.”

“I shall come with you.” I knew of a certain thing that he had in his own room upstairs, and was not going to trust him alone.

He shrugged his shoulders slightly, but made no further objection. “We’ll be back in a minute,” I called out to Lucinda, who was still sitting at the table, her attitude unchanged. Then Arsenio and I passed through the open door and went up the stairs together. As we started on our way, he said, with a curious splutter that was half a sob in his voice, “Lucinda knows me best, and you see she’s not afraid. She didn’t try to stop me.”

“She’s never believed you meant it at all; but I did,” I answered.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE MASCOT

ARSENIO opened the door of the apartment with his latchkey and stood aside to let me pass in first. The door of his sitting room, the long, narrow room which I have described before, stood slightly ajar, and a light shone through it. I advanced across the passage – the hall could hardly be called more – and flung the door wide open as I entered, Arsenio following just behind.

There, in the middle of the room, two or three paces from the big bureau, one side of which flapped open, showing shelves and drawers, stood Louis the valet, the waiter from that “establishment” of Arsenio’s at Nice, the seller of the winning ticket, the author of Arsenio’s luck. In his left hand he held, clasped against his body, a large black leather portfolio or letter case; in his right was the revolver which his master had given him to clean.

He stood quite still, frightened, as it seemed, into immobility, glaring at us with a terrified face. He had thought that we were safely bestowed, round the table downstairs, for some time to come. Our footsteps on the stairs had disturbed him when his work was almost finished; our entrance cut off his retreat. Even if he had had the presence of mind to bar the door, it would have given him only a brief respite; escape by the window was impossible; but he did not look as if he were capable of reckoning up the situation, or his chances, at all. He was numb with fear.

“Drop that thing, you scoundrel!” I cried; and it is my belief to this day that he would have obeyed me, put down his weapon, and meekly surrendered, if he had been let alone. He was certainly not built for a burglar or for deeds of violence, though I suppose the possession of the revolver had nerved him to this enterprise of his.

But Arsenio did not let him alone, or wait to see the effect of my order. Even as I spoke, he dashed forward in front of me, uttering a wild cry; it did not sound like fear – either for his money or for his life – or even like rage; really, it sounded more like triumph than anything else. And he made straight for the armed man, utterly regardless of the weapon that he held.

Thus put to it, Louis fired – once, twice. Arsenio ran, as it were, right on to the first bullet. I had darted forward to support his attempt to rush the thief – if that really was what he had in his mind – and he fell back plump into my arms, just as the second bullet whizzed past my head. Then with a yell of sheer horror – at what he had done, I suppose – Louis dropped the revolver with a bang on the floor, dropped the fat portfolio too with a flop, and, before I, cumbered with Arsenio’s helpless body, could do anything to stop him, bolted out of the room like a scared rabbit. I heard his feet pattering down the stairs at an incredible pace.

Arsenio was groaning and clutching at his chest. I supported him to his shabby old sofa, and laid him down there. Then I violently rang the bell which communicated with the ground floor where Amedeo abode.

The next moment Lucinda came into the room – very quickly, but calmly. “Did he do it himself, after all?”

“No, Louis; he’d been rifling the bureau; and the revolver – ”

“Ah, it was Louis that I heard running downstairs! I’ll look after him. Go for a doctor.” There were no telephones in the old palazzo; the owner had not spent his precarious gains in that fashion!

“I thought of sending Amedeo – ”

“You’ll be quicker. Go, Julius.” She knelt down by Arsenio’s sofa.

As I went on my errand – I knew of a doctor who lived quite close – I met old Amedeo, lumbering upstairs, half-dressed, and told him what had happened. “He looks very bad,” I added.

Amedeo flung up his hands with pious ejaculations. “As I go by the piano nobile I’ll call Father Garcia, and take him up with me. Don Arsenio’s a good Catholic.”

Yes! That fact perhaps had something to do with the course which events had ultimately taken that night!

When I got back with the doctor – he had gone to bed, and kept me waiting – Arsenio had been moved into his bedroom. The priest was still with him, but, when he was informed of the doctor’s arrival, he came out and Amedeo took the doctor in to the patient, on whom Lucinda was attending.

Father Garcia was a tall, imposing old ecclesiastic, of Spanish extraction, and apparently a friend of the Valdez family, for he spoke of “Arsenio” without prefix. “I have done my office. The doctor can do nothing – Oh, I’ve seen many men die in the war, and I can tell! He’s just conscious, but he can hardly speak – it hurts him to try. Poor Arsenio! His father was a very worthy man, and this poor boy was a good son of the Church. For the rest – !” He shrugged his ample shoulders; he was probably reflecting the opinions of the aristocratic and antiquated coterie which Arsenio had been in the habit of laying under requisitions when he was in Venice. “But a curious event, a curious event, just after his prodigious luck!” Father Garcia’s eyes bulged rather, and they seemed to grow bulgier still as, between sniffs at a pinch of snuff, he exclaimed slowly, “Three million francs! Donna Lucinda will be rich!”

The old fellow seemed disposed to gossip; there was nothing else to do, while we awaited the verdict.

“A gamester, I’m afraid, yes. His father feared as much for him – and a good many of my friends had reason to suspect the same. You’re a friend of his, Mr. – er – ?”

“My name’s Rillington, sir,” I said.

He raised his brows above his bulging eyes. “Oh! – er – let me see! Wasn’t Donna Lucinda herself a Rillington – or am I making a mistake?”

“Only just,” said I. I couldn’t help smiling. “Donna Lucinda all but became a Rillington – ”

“Ah!” he interrupted. “Now I remember the story. Some visitors from London brought it over in the early days of the war – I think they were propaganda agents of your nation, in fact. It was before Italy made the mis – it was before Italy joined in the war.”

“Donna Lucinda’s maiden name was Knyvett. Her mother and she once rented this very apartment from Arsenio, I believe.”

“Yes, and I think I remember that too.” However, he did not seem to remember too much about it, for he went on. “And so the romance started, I suppose! She’s a very beautiful woman, Mr. Rillington.”

The expression in his eyes justified my next remark. “Whatever else one may say about the poor fellow, he was a devoted lover to his wife, and she was – absolutely true to him.”

“I’m old-fashioned enough to think that that covers a multitude of sins. She’s not, I gather, a Catholic?”

“No, I believe not.”

“A pity!” he said meditatively; whether he was thinking of Lucinda’s soul or of her money, I didn’t know – and I will forbear from speculating. If he was thinking about the money, it was, of course, only with an eye – a bulging eye – on other people’s souls – as well as Lucinda’s.

“Pray, sir,” I asked, on a sudden impulse, “do you know anything of a friend of Arsenio’s here – Signor Alessandro Panizzi?”

“I know what everybody knows,” he replied with a sudden fierceness – “that he’s a pestilent fellow – a radical, a freemason, an atheist! Was he a friend of Arsenio’s?”

“Oh, well, I really don’t know. I happened to meet them walking together on the Piazza this afternoon, and Arsenio introduced me.”

“Then he kept worse company than any of us suspected,” the old priest sternly pronounced. If the opinion thus indicated was a just one, Signor Panizzi must be a very bad man indeed! I was just adding hastily that I knew nothing of the man myself (he had looked the acme of respectability) when Lucinda opened the door of the room and beckoned to me. With a low bow to Father Garcia, who was still looking outraged at the thought of Signor Panizzi, I obeyed her summons.

“He has only a few minutes to live,” she whispered hurriedly, as we crossed the passage. “He seems peaceful in mind, and suffers little pain, except when he tries to speak. Still I’m sure there’s something he wants to say to you; I saw it in his eyes when I mentioned your name.”

He was in bed, partly undressed. The end was obviously very near. The doctor was standing a yard or two from the bed, not attempting any further ministration. I bent over Arsenio, low down, nearly to his pale face, and laid my hand gently on one of his. He did look peaceful; and, as he saw me, the ghost of his monkeyish smile formed itself on his lips. He spoke, with a groan and an effort: “I told you – Julius – that fellow would – bring me luck. But you never believed – you never believed – in my – ” His voice choked, his words ended, and his eyes closed. It was only a few minutes more before we left him to the offices of old Amedeo and the old wife whom he summoned from their cupboard of a place on the ground floor.

By this time the police were on the scene; there is no need to detail their formalities, though they took some time. The case appeared a simple one, but Lucinda and I were told that we must stay where we were, pending investigations, and the arrest and trial of Louis; we knew him by no other name, and knew about him no more than what Arsenio had told me. They let Lucinda retire to her apartment soon after midnight, and me to mine half an hour later; one of them remained on duty in the hall of the palazzo; and, of course, they took that portfolio away with them.

In the end the formalities proved to be just that, and no more. Two days later a body was found in the Grand Canal, having been in the water apparently about thirty hours. Amedeo and I identified it. The inference was that, although Louis had no stomach for fighting, he had that form of courage in which his master had at the last moment failed; it is probable that he was not a good Catholic. I felt indebted to him for the manner of his end; it saved us a vast deal of trouble. Poor wretch! I do not believe that he had any more intention of killing Arsenio than I had myself. The knowledge of all that money overcame his cupidity; perhaps he felt some proprietary right in it! The possession of the revolver probably screwed him up to the enterprise. But the actual shooting was, I dare swear, an instinctive act of self-defense; Arsenio’s furious, seemingly exultant, rush terrified him. Anyhow, there was an end of him; the mascot had brought the luck and, having fulfilled its function, went its appointed way.

But by no means yet an end of Don Arsenio Valdez! That remarkable person had prepared posthumous effects, so characteristic of him in their essence, yet so over-characteristic, that he seemed to be skillfully burlesquing or travestying himself: in those last days he must have been in a state of excitement almost amounting to light-headedness (he had seemed barely sane at the banquet), a complete prey to his own vanity and posturing, showing off on the brink of the grave, contriving how to show off even after it had closed over him; and speculating – I do not in the least doubt – how all the business would impress Lucinda. One thing fails to be said about it: he succeeded in stamping it with that vinegary comedy which was the truest hall mark of Monkey Valdez.

Quite early on the morning after the catastrophe – if that be the right word to use – I was sitting in my room, musing over it and awaiting a summons from Lucinda, when I was favored with a call from that eminently respectable (?), most pestilent (?) person, Signor Alessandro Panizzi. After elaborate lamentations and eulogies (it would have warmed Arsenio’s heart to hear them), and explanations of how he, in his important position, was in close touch with the police authorities, and so heard of everything directly it happened, and consequently had heard of this atrocious crime as soon as he was out of his bed – he approached the object of his visit. I was, he had understood from the deceased gentleman, his confidential friend; also an intimate family friend of Donna Lucinda; was I aware that Don Arsenio had made a disposition of his property on the afternoon of the very day of his death? – “a thing which might impress foolish and superstitious people,” Signor Panizzi remarked with a sad but superior smile. He himself, as a notary, had drawn up the document, which Don Arsenio had executed in due form; it was in his custody; he produced from his pocket a copy, or rather an abstract, of the operative part of it. To sum up this instrument as briefly as possible, Arsenio bequeathed: First, ten thousand lire to the Reverend Father Garcia, in trust to cause masses to be said for his soul, should Holy Church so permit (it sounded as if Arsenio had his doubts, whether well-founded or not, I do not know, and, as things had turned out, immaterial); secondly, the entire residue of his estate to his wife, the most excellent Signora Donna Lucinda Valdez, his sole surviving near relative; but, thirdly, should the said most excellent Lady, being already fully provided for (!), accept only the palazzo– as it was his earnest wish that she should accept it, his ancestral residence – and renounce the inheritance of his personal estate, then and in that case, he bequeathed the whole of that personal estate to Signor Alessandro Panizzi and two other gentlemen (I forgot their names, but they were both, I subsequently learnt from Father Garcia, “pestilent” friends of Panizzi’s, one may suppose, and naturally pestilent), on a trust to apply the same, in such ways as the law permitted, to the use and benefit of the City of Venice and its inhabitants, which and who were so dear to the heart of the adopted but devoted son of the said City, Arsenio Valdez.

“It is prodigious!” said Signor Alessandro Panizzi. He handed me the abstract, adding, “You will perhaps like to show it to the Excellent Lady?” He paused. “It is, of course, a question what course she will adopt. The sum is a large one, I understand.”

The anxiety that showed itself in his voice was natural and creditable to a Venetian patriot – and quite intelligible too in a gentleman who saw himself with the chance of handling an important public trust. There would be kudos to be got out of that! But I did not pay much attention to his anxiety.

“You’re right. It is prodigious,” I said, smiling broadly in spite of myself. How Arsenio must have enjoyed giving those instructions! No wonder he had looked complacent when I met him with Panizzi on the Piazza; and no wonder that Panizzi had been so deferential. A foretaste for Arsenio of the posthumous praise which he was engineering – the talk of him after his death, the speculation about him! Because, of course, he was quite safe with Lucinda – and he knew it. He was obliged, I believe, though I do not profess to know the law, to leave her part of his property. But it was handsome, more gallant and chivalrous, to give it all to her – in the sure and certain knowledge that she would not take the money brought by the winning ticket! And, next to her in his heart came his dear City of Venice! If not beloved Lucinda, then beloved Venice! The two Queens of his heart! What a fine flourish! What an exit for himself he had prepared! The plaudits would sound loud and long after he had left the stage.

“It is, of course, possible,” I found Signor Panizzi saying, “that our lamented friend had discussed the matter with his wife and that they had – ”

“Well, that’s not at all unlikely. You’d like me to tell her about this?”