Venetian Masque

'This is very serious,' he said.

Again the Frenchman was incisively laconic. 'It is, Lebel.'

Swiftly Marc-Antoine stepped close up to the table. He lowered his voice until it was little more than a whisper, but a whisper sibilant with fury.

'You fool! Have I not warned you against using that name?' His eyes played briskly round to the door, and back to Lallemant's big face. 'With a spy in your household, you talk without the least circumspection. God of God! Do you think I want to end like your Rocco Terzi? How do you know that Casotto is not outside that door at this moment?'

'Because he is not in the house,' said Lallemant.

Marc-Antoine gave visible signs of relief.

'Was he in the house the other day, when you told me about Terzi?'

'Not to my knowledge.'

'Oh! So you don't even know when he comes and goes?' Marc-Antoine was carrying the war into the enemy's territory. 'Anyway, whether he is here or not, I should prefer to talk to you in that inner room. I don't know why you should lately have grown careless.'

'I am not careless, my friend. I know what I do. But have it your own way.' He heaved himself up, and they passed into the farther chamber.

This gave Marc-Antoine time to think. And the need to think had rarely been more imperative. He stood, he realized, on the very edge of discovery. And he most certainly would be hurled over that edge unless he could completely stifle Lallemant's well-founded suspicions. To accomplish it some ultra-Jacobin gesture was necessary at whatever cost.

Before they had come to rest in that inner room the memory of Barras' last letter came to suggest a course. Odious and repellent though it was, yet he must take it if he was to restore and consolidate his shaken credit.

'Do you know,' Lallemant attacked him, 'that I find it more than odd that when a secret matter passes between us here, it should be followed by almost immediate publication. There was that business of Sir Richard Worthington. You explained it. But the explanation seems to me less plausible today than at the time.'

'Why so?' Marc-Antoine was dry and haughty, very much the citizen-representative of their first interview.

'Because of this affair of Rocco Terzi. Until I told you four days ago, not a soul in Venice knew of it but Terzi and myself. And then that very night Rocco is arrested, his papers seized, and by now, if I know their methods at all, he will have been strangled.'

Accusation could hardly have been plainer.

Marc-Antoine stood before him, stiff and cool.

'Not a soul but Terzi and yourself, eh? And the Vicomtesse whom you employed to corrupt Terzi? Does she count for nothing?'

'That is brave! That is clever! You accuse her, do you?'

'I do not. I merely indicate to you the general looseness of your statements.'

'My statements are not loose. The Vicomtesse did not know the purpose for which I employed Terzi. She did not know, do you hear? Do you think I tell all my business to my spies? She did not know.'

'You never doubt, do you? No, you are just the man to make sure of things. How do you know that Terzi did not tell her?'

'That is unthinkable.'

'Why? Because you don't choose to think it. There's stout reasoning, on my soul. And how do you know that one or another of the men working for Terzi did not blab? I must suppose they knew what they were doing?'

Lallemant showed exasperation. 'They were being well paid. Would any of them cut off a supply of money easily earned?'

'One of them may have taken fright. It would not be surprising.'

'Is there anyone else upon whom you can cast suspicion?'

'Upon whom do you prefer to cast it, Lallemant?' Marc-Antoine's voice had grown hard as steel.

Lallemant gulped. His eyes were furious. But he hesitated.

'Well?' quoth Marc-Antoine. 'I am waiting.'

The other took a turn in the room, his double chin in his hand. The aspect of the representative was a little terrifying. Lallemant swayed helplessly between doubts.

'Will you frankly answer me a question?' he asked at last.

'I should welcome a direct one.'

'Will you tell me why you went to the Ducal Palace on Monday evening, with Count Pizzamano, and whom you went to see there?'

'Do you set spies upon me, Lallemant?'

'Answer my question. Then I will answer yours. What were you doing at the Ducal Palace a few hours before Terzi's arrest?'

'I went to see the inquisitors of state.'

As once before the immediate frankness of the admission was like a blow.

Lallemant rallied. 'For what purpose?' he insisted, but already he had lost half his fierce assurance.

'For a purpose which I came here to discuss with you today. Sit down, Lallemant.' All at once he was peremptory, the hectoring official in authority. 'Sit down,' he repeated, more harshly, and Lallemant, almost mechanically, obeyed him.

'If you kept your wits about you, and addressed yourself to the real interests of the Nation instead of frittering away your energies and resources on trivialities, what I have now had to do would have been done long ago. You will have known in your time, Lallemant—you must have done, for they are to be met everywhere—chicken-witted men of law, who run cackling after the small grains of detail so diligently that they lose sight of the main issues. You are like those, Lallemant. You sit here so intent upon the little foolish webs of intrigue that you are spinning with such self-complacency that you have no eyes for the things that matter.'

'For instance?' growled Lallemant, whose face was turning purple.

'I am coming to the instance. In Verona there is a fat slug of a man, the ci-devant Comte de Provence, who calls himself Louis XVIII, keeps a court that in itself is an insult to the French Republic, and is actively in correspondence with all the despots in Europe, weaving every kind of intrigue to sap our credit. That man is a menace to us. Yet for months he has been suffered to continue unmolested in the enjoyment of Venetian hospitality, abusing it to our constant detriment. Have you really been blind to the harm that he is doing us? It seems you must have been, since it has been necessary for me to take in hand the work you should have done.'

His level gaze was steadily, almost hypnotically, upon the ambassador, whom he had now cast into bewilderment.

'Here was the chance to serve two purposes at once: on the one hand, to put an end to an intolerable interference; on the other, to establish a sound grievance against the Serenissima; to create a pretext for the measures which our arms may presently find desirable. Thoroughly to establish this a written ultimatum would not serve. That is to follow. It shall go from here today. It was necessary—or I judged it so—that I should first attend before the inquisitors and test the extent of their awareness of the monarchist activities of this so-called Louis XVIII.'

Lallemant interrupted him. 'Do you mean that you went in your own person? As the Representative Lebel?'

'Since I am here and alive, you may be sure that I did not. I went in the character of a friendly mediator, who had been informed by you of what was proposed, and requested by you to see the inquisitors first, so as to mitigate the blow. That is why I enlisted the assistance of Count Pizzamano. You understand?'

'No. That is—not yet. Not quite. But continue.'

'The inquisitors met me with the assertion that the gentleman to whom they had given shelter in Verona was known to them only as the Comte de Lille. I pointed out as politely as I could that a change of name does not imply a change of identity. I pointed out to them, speaking as a friendly onlooker holding certain commissions from the British Government, that by his intrigues this unfortunate exile had put them in an extremely false position. I informed them that it was within my knowledge that an ultimatum from France on the subject would reach them almost at once. I urged them in their own interest to conciliate France by an immediate compliance with the terms of this ultimatum when it came.'