"One moment," I interrupted, "how do you know all these details?"
"These things are child's play. In France, everyone knows them; one need only purchase some suitable book, like that of the Abbe de Vallemont, which I think I have already mentioned to you."
"The one of which you spoke to me at the Vessel?" I asked, vaguely troubled.
"Exactly."
The artifice that followed, Abbot Melani went on to explain, worked, not in the presence of fire, but if one lit a candle and then extinguished it. And our lantern, as those who organised all that machinery could easily foresee, reached the bottom of the slide still lit but was smashed upon contact with the ground. If the room had been well impregnated with the vapours of the mixture of spirits and salt, faces seen through that artificial atmosphere would take on the pallid, livid, deathly semblance of exhumed corpses, or lost souls. And that is what happened.
"Excuse me," I then asked, realising that our ascent through utter darkness was practically at an end, and we were again walking on flat ground. "Why did you not realise at once that this was all an artifice?"
"Surprise. They organised everything to perfection: first, the dancing fire, then our faces turned into spectres, and lastly the army of devils and the flaming sword, in reality heated up on some stupid fireplace… Unfortunately, in a state of shock, I too was slow to recognise the smell of camphor, otherwise I'd have warned you in time."
"Then, what made you realise what was happening?"
"When that idiot Ugonio, alias the German, opened his mouth. It was impossible not to recognise him, even after all this time. He, too, knew you. He said 'periculous blunderbungle', realising that he was on the point of committing a dangerous blunder. I'd say that his eyes and his memory are better than yours, heh!" guffawed Atto.
"Was that why he did not strike me?"
"I never bestrike," interrupted Ugonio's offended voice from the end of the line.
"Never?" I asked, not without a trace of anger in my voice, recalling those terrifying moments at the mercy of the incandescent dagger.
"All trespissers emergency profoundamentally pissified," grunted Ugonio, stifling with great difficulty an outburst of malign, conceited laughter.
He was right. Before fainting, I too had involuntarily wet myself like a terrified infant.
The purpose or all that infernal theatre was quite plain. Down there among the tunnels in and around the Baths of Agrippina, the German had his lair and no one was to enter there uninvited; the point was that anyone foolhardy enough so to do was to be subjected to that carousel of terror so that he would run for his life, ejected like a dog, soaked in his own urine.
It was the first time for seventeen years that I had ventured into the subterranean city beneath Rome, and here again I had found Ugonio, just as when I last emerged from that labyrinth. What had brought me there? The investigations into the theft perpetrated against Abbot Melani: loot consisting of papers, a telescope and the relic of the Madonna of the Carmel with my three little Venetian pearls. Yes, the relic. I had almost forgotten it. I should have realised earlier, I thought with a little smile: relics and tunnels… the daily bread of the corpisantari. Now it only remained for us to find the place where the stolen goods were stored.
By this time, we had come to the end of the stairway that had led us away from the second infernal chamber. Here we met with a surprise.
We found ourselves in a spacious storeroom, at least thirty yards long by thirty wide, with a good level floor and walls reinforced with bricks, equipped with a number of exit doors (leading, presumably, to other tunnels) and a spiral staircase leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Here reigned indescribable chaos: piles and piles of objects of every imaginable and unimaginable shape and form made of the storeroom a mad pandemonium of knicknacks, remnants, relics, trifles, hardware, ornaments, toys, souvenirs, sweet nothings, playthings, scrap, builders' waste, shards and splinters, antique junk, food leftovers, bagatelles, detritus, rubbish and much other vile material regurgitated from burglaries and robberies in the city's most sordid back streets.
Thus, I saw heaps of coins half-eaten by time, immeasurable piles of paper pressed together and tied up with string, baskets of filthy, greasy clothes, moth-eaten furniture piled up to the ceiling, dozens, indeed hundreds of pairs of shoes of all kinds, from rustic boots to courtesans' finest slippers, sashes and belts, books and exercise books, pens and inkstands, pots and pans, distorts and alembics, stuffed eagles and embalmed foxes, mousetraps, bear skins, crucifixes, missals, sacred vestments, tables large and tables small, hammers, saws and scalpels, entire collections of nails of all sizes, and then arrays of wooden planks, bits of old iron, brooms and brushes, rags and cloths, bones, skulls and ribs, buckets of oil, balsams, ointments and innumerable other disgusting things.
All these, however, were mixed with vases full of rings, bracelets and golden pendants, boxes of Roman medals and coins, frames and ornaments of the finest quality, silverware, porcelain dinner and coffee services, jewel cases, carafes, bowls and glasses of the finest Bohemian crystal, tablecloths from Flanders, velvets and upholstery materials, arquebuses, swords and daggers, entire collections of precious paintings, landscapes, portraits of ladies and of popes, nativities and annunciations, all roughly piled up one against the other and covered in layer upon layer of dust.
"Good heavens," exclaimed Sfasciamonti despite himself. "This seems almost like…"
"I know what you are about to say," interrupted Atto. "The proceeds of the last three hundred thousand thefts committed in Rome during the Jubilee."
"It turns one's stomach," replied the catchpoll.
"What they said about you was true," continued Atto, addressing Ugonio. "During the Holy Year, your business prospers even more than usual. You will, I imagine, have made some special vow to the Blessed Virgin."
The corpisantaro did not respond to the Abbot's irony. I, meanwhile, was looking around prudently in the midst of all that vile chaos, taking care not to knock anything over. One had to proceed down narrow aisles between one heap and the next, without disturbing anything. Failure to do so might result, not only in breaking a vase but getting oneself buried under an avalanche of books, or a pyramid of amphorae, clumsily stacked on top of some rickety old cupboard. Something in a dark corner, half hidden beneath a tumulus of old sheets and a precious golden pyx, attracted my attention. It was a strange ironwork device, like a bush made up of curved pieces of tin and iron sheeting. I took it in my hand and showed it to Atto, who was approaching. He picked up the tangle of iron and his eyes opened wide as he examined it.
"This once was two armillary spheres. Or perhaps three, I cannot tell. These beasts have succeeded in reducing it to mere wreckage."
There were in fact two or three of these special devices in the form of a globe, consisting of several iron hoops rotating concentrically around an axis and fixed on a pedestal, which are used by scientists to calculate the movement of heavenly bodies.
"The expropriament was complicationed by an unforesightable," said Ugonio in an attempt to justify himself. "Unfortuitously, the objectivities got jammied one against t'other."
"Yes, jammied," murmured Atto in disgust, casting aside the little tangle of metal and exploring the mass of junk. "I have no difficulty in imagining what happened. After the theft, you will have gone off and got drunk somewhere. I suppose that here there will also be… Oh, here we are."
It was a row of cylindrical objects, standing vertically on the flagstones, one beside the other. Atto picked up one that seemed a little less dusty and ill-used than the others.