An hour later Castiglione was admitted to the little house in Via Belsiana by a small man with eyes like a ferret and reddish hair, who shut the street door at once but did not seem inclined to let the visitor pass beyond the narrow hall without some further formality.

‘The club is not open yet,’ he said, civilly enough. ‘You probably do not know the hours, as this is the first time you have been here, though you have the pass words.’

Castiglione understood that it was the doorkeeper’s business to know the faces of those who frequented the place. He gave the man twenty francs by way of making acquaintance.

‘Thank you,’ said the fellow, who had not failed to notice that the pocket-book from which the notes were produced was well filled. ‘I presume you wish to join the club, sir?’

He knew his business and was a judge of men at first sight; a glance had assured him that the newcomer was an officer in civilian’s clothes, and was therefore perfectly eligible to the ‘club.’

Castiglione only hesitated for a moment.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I should like to see the proprietor.’

‘The treasurer, sir,’ said the man, correcting him politely, but with some emphasis, ‘is upstairs. If you will kindly step into the reading-room I will ask whether he can see you. I believe he has just finished his breakfast.’

Castiglione followed him through a long passage that turned to the left, and the man unlocked the door of a room that smelt of stale cigarette smoke. It was dark, but in a moment the doorkeeper turned up a number of electric lights. The walls were full of mirrors, and the furniture was of the description which must be supposed to suit the taste of the wicked, as it is only found in their favourite resorts. There was a vast amount of gilding, red plush and sky-blue satin, and the table was covered with dark green cotton velvet, fastened to the edges with gilt nails, below which hung a green and pink fringe.

As the place was a reading-room it was natural that there should be something in it to read. The literature was on the table, and consisted of a new railway guide, a small framed and glazed price-list of ‘refreshments,’ in which ‘Cognac’ was offered for the modest sum of twenty-five francs the bottle, and an old number of a disreputable illustrated paper.

Castiglione was not familiar with low places of any sort, and he looked about him with surprised disgust. He was not left to himself very long; the door opened and a broad-shouldered man with a white face entered and shut it behind him. He wore a dark morning coat, very well cut, and the fashionable collar and tie, but he smelt of patchouli and his light hair curled on his forehead. Castiglione felt an instant desire to throw him out, and would certainly have done so at sight if the man had appeared in his own rooms.

‘Good morning. You wish to become a member of the club? Yes? A little formality is necessary. The committee, which I usually represent, decides upon the eligibility of candidates. There is no election, no subscription, and no entrance fee, so that it is a mere form.’

Castiglione watched the man attentively during this speech, which was delivered in a glib and oily manner, and he wondered to what nation the keeper of the gambling-hell belonged, for he had never seen a specimen of the breed before, though it flourishes from Port Said and Constantinople to San Francisco by way of Paris, London, and New York. Like the cholera, it appears to have its origin in the East. The specimens speak every language under the sun with equal fluency and correctness, but always with a slightly foreign accent, and they are neither Christians, Jews, nor Turks, but infidels of some other kind. He who has not had business with a Levantine blackleg or a Hindu money-lender does not guess what guile dwells in the human heart.

Castiglione looked at the ‘treasurer’ and sat down on a gilt chair. The man followed his example, and they faced each other with the table between them.

‘Yes,’ said the Captain, as if agreeing to the conditions of membership, which indeed seemed extremely easy to fulfil, ‘I quite understand. But before joining your club I should like to ask for a little information. I am told that the members sometimes play games of chance. Am I right?’

‘Occasionally,’ replied the treasurer, ‘they do.’

‘Just so. I am an officer, as you may have guessed. Now, in the other clubs to which I belong, you must be aware that we generally play with counters, and that we settle once a week. Is that the practice in your club, too?’

The treasurer smiled. Castiglione thought his face was like a mask of Mephistopheles modelled in whitish ice-cream.

‘No. We play only for cash here.’

‘A very good way, too,’ said Castiglione in a tone of approval. ‘But I will suppose a case. If, for instance, a member of the club loses all the cash he has brought with him, and if it is rather late in the evening, and he wishes to go on playing in the hope of winning back something, is there no way by which he can borrow a little money without going home to get it?’

‘Oh, yes,’ answered the treasurer, falling into the snare. ‘When the committee is quite sure that a member is able to pay we are always glad to accommodate him with whatever he needs.’

‘I see! That is just as convenient as our system of counters. The member merely signs a receipt for the money, I suppose, and settles at the end of the week.’

‘Not exactly. The committee prefers a stamped draft at eight days, and charges a small interest. You see an accident might happen to the member——’

‘Quite so,’ interrupted Castiglione, ‘and the draft protects the club, of course. There is only one more case about which I should like to ask. Suppose, for instance, that the member in question did not live in Rome, and that you did not know much about him. He might be a rich foreigner, who had joined for a few days, and though he might have come to the end of his cash, he might have something very valuable about him, such as a handsome diamond or ruby. Does the committee make an exception for him and accept anything of that sort as security?’

‘Occasionally,’ replied the treasurer, ‘it does.’

‘Yes,’ said Castiglione in a thoughtful tone, leaning back in his chair with his hands thrust into the deep pockets of his overcoat. ‘The committee lends money on valuables. That is very convenient.’

He glanced at the treasurer, who was smoking a huge Egyptian cigarette, which he held with his left hand, while the fingers of his right played a noiseless little tattoo on the green cotton velvet of the table; they were white and unhealthy-looking, and loaded with rings.

‘The object of the committee,’ said the man, ‘is to meet the wishes of the members as far as possible, and to study their convenience.’

‘As in the case of Orlando Schmidt,’ observed Castiglione, keeping his eye on the treasurer’s right hand.

The fingers at once stopped playing the noiseless tattoo and lay quite still, though the treasurer gave no other sign of intelligence; but that alone might mean a good deal.

‘Who is Orlando Schmidt?’ he asked, apparently unmoved.

‘Surely you remember him,’ answered Castiglione. ‘You cannot have already forgotten Orlando Schmidt, and Carlo Pozzi of Palermo, and Paolo Pizzuti of Messina!’

The treasurer’s face did not change, but his right hand moved and disappeared below the edge of the green velvet to get at his pistol. Castiglione was ready, and was too quick for him.

‘Keep your hands on the table and don’t call, or I’ll fire,’ he said sternly.

The treasurer looked down the barrel of a full-sized army revolver, and beyond it he saw Castiglione’s eyes and resolute jaw. There is one point in which the breed to which he belonged does not resemble that of the European adventurer; it is a breed of cowards always ready with firearms but never able to face them. Moreover, Castiglione had the advantage.

‘Don’t shoot!’ cried the man in manifest terror.

‘Sign this or I shall,’ answered Castiglione, not lowering his revolver. With the other hand he pushed across the table a sheet of paper on which he had previously written something; he then took a fountain pen from an inner pocket and laid it before the treasurer. ‘Sign,’ he said.

The treasurer offered no resistance, and his fingers shook visibly as he took up the pen and bent over the paper.

‘Under protest,’ he said feebly.

‘If you write anything but your own name I will kill you. I’m watching the point of the pen. Never mind reading what is there. That is my affair. Your business is not to be shot. Don’t sign an assumed name either, or I’ll pull the trigger.’

In sheer terror of his life the man wrote his own name, or at all events the one he went by in his business: ‘Rodolfo Blosse.’

‘You have lost the money you lent to Orlando Schmidt,’ said Castiglione, withdrawing the paper, and quietly waving it to and fro to dry the signature, ‘but you have the advantage of being a live man.’

The revolver did not change its position.

‘You seem to think there are no laws in your country,’ said the treasurer, who was afraid to move.

‘On the contrary we have excellent ones, many of which are made for people like you. Now I am going. I shall walk slowly backwards to the door, and if you move before you hear it shut after me you will never move again. Stay where you are, facing the table, and keep both hands on it.’

All doors in the resorts of the wicked have good locks, and Castiglione turned the key after him and went back to the street entrance, where the ferret-eyed porter was waiting.

‘Always after three o’clock, is it not?’ Castiglione asked carelessly.

The man nodded as he let him out.

‘Yes, sir,’ he answered respectfully, thinking of the twenty francs he had just received from the new member.

Castiglione walked briskly to the Piazza di Spagna, and then slackened his pace and drew a long breath before he lit a cigar, and repeated to himself the words that were written on the paper in his pocket. He walked slowly home, and when he was in his own room he spread the sheet out and wrote below Rodolfo Blosse’s signature: ‘Witness, Baldassare del Castiglione, Piedmont Lancers.’ Then he folded the sheet again, placed it in an envelope, which he sealed and addressed to the ‘Reverend Father Bonaventura of the Capuchins.’

He got into his uniform again, and having placed the envelope in the inner pocket of his tunic, he went to see his colonel, to whom he had telephoned before going to Via Belsiana, asking to be received on urgent business at three in the afternoon. The great clock in the hall rang the Westminster chimes as he entered; it was a remembrance of the time when Casalmaggiore had been military attachÉ at the Italian Embassy in London.

He gave Castiglione an enormous Havana as they sat down by the fire, and he lit one himself and offered to have Turkish coffee made. Castiglione had forgotten to eat anything since he had come in from riding in the morning, and he accepted gladly.

‘Is it about that mare?’ asked the Duca when he had rung and given the order.

‘No, not this time.’ Castiglione laughed. ‘I have come for advice in an affair of honour.’

‘Oh!’ The Colonel seemed annoyed. ‘What a nuisance!’ he observed with some emphasis. ‘Wait till the man has brought the coffee. Meanwhile, about that other matter—you have heard of my last offer?’

The Count of Montalto’s Andalusian mare happened to be the only thing, animate or inanimate, which the Duca di Casalmaggiore wanted and could not get; for he did not even hanker after promotion. There was not an officer in his regiment, old or young, whom he had not employed in some piece of diplomacy in the hope of getting possession of the coveted animal, and he began talking about her at once, showing little inclination to listen to Castiglione’s story, even when the servant had come and gone and they were drinking their coffee. He quite ignored the fact that Castiglione and Montalto were not on speaking terms, or he pretended to do so, for which the younger man was, on the whole, grateful to him.

‘I am very sorry to change the subject,’ said the Captain, at last, ‘but this affair of mine is rather urgent.’

‘I had quite forgotten it! Pray excuse me and tell me what the matter is.’

The Colonel settled himself with a bored expression and listened. He greatly disliked duelling in his regiment, and invariably hindered an encounter if he could. In his young days a great misfortune had happened to him; in a senseless quarrel he had severely wounded a brother officer, who had become consumptive in consequence and had died two years later.

He listened patiently to Castiglione’s story, and then delivered himself of a general prediction.

‘That infernal cousin of mine will be the death of one of us yet!’ He sent an inch of heavy ash from his cigar into the fire with a vicious flick. ‘Why the devil did you go to see her?’ he asked, very unreasonably.

Castiglione smiled but said nothing. He knew well enough that Teresa Crescenzi had tried to marry Casalmaggiore, and that the latter had been forced to make a regular defence.

‘There’s only one way to deal with such women,’ he observed. ‘Marry them and separate within six months. Then you need never see them again! What are you going to do?’

‘That is precisely what I have come to ask you, as my chief. The honour of the regiment is the only question that matters to me. I shall do whatever you advise. De Maurienne expects to hear from me after five o’clock. As for the cause of the quarrel, Donna Teresa must be quite mad.’

‘Mad?’ Casalmaggiore laughed. ‘You don’t know her! Don’t you see that it is all a trick to make de Maurienne compromise her by fighting a duel for her, and that he will be forced to marry her afterwards, for decency’s sake?’

Castiglione looked at his colonel with sincere admiration, for such tortuous reasoning could never have taken shape in his own rather simple brain, though he now saw that no other explanation of Teresa’s conduct was possible. The Duca smiled and pushed his delicate grey moustaches from his lips with the dry tip of his cigar, which he never by any chance placed between them. He seemed able to draw in the smoke by some mysterious means without even touching the tobacco, for in smoking, as in everything else, he was a thorough epicure.

‘I hope,’ he said, his words following the fresh cloud he blew, ‘that de Maurienne will at least have the sense to act as I suggested just now. In France he can do better. He can be divorced without difficulty. Fancy the satisfaction of divorcing Teresa! Can you see her expression? And she would be “a defenceless woman” again in no time. Of all the offensive forms of defencelessness!’

He laughed softly to himself.

‘Meanwhile,’ said Castiglione, trying to bring him back to the subject in hand, ‘I am afraid something very disagreeable may happen.’

‘What is that?’ asked the Colonel, following his own amusing thoughts and still smiling.

‘You see, I have never fought a duel, and as I am not inclined to let de Maurienne run me through, I might kill him. There would be very serious trouble if an Italian officer killed a French diplomatist, I suppose, not to mention the fact that I should have to spend a couple of years in a fortress.’

‘You are afraid you might upset the European concert, are you?’ The Colonel seemed much amused at the idea. ‘But it is all nonsense, Castiglione. There is not going to be any fight.’

‘But the man called me a coward to my face, Colonel! What am I to do?’

‘Go home and go to bed. It’s the only safe place when Teresa is on the war-path. If you want an excuse, I’ll put you under arrest in your rooms, but that seems useless. Go home and go to bed, I tell you!’

‘It’s rather early,’ objected Castiglione, smiling. ‘And meanwhile Monsieur de Maurienne will be sitting up waiting for my friends.’

‘Dear Captain,’ said Casalmaggiore, ‘I have not the least idea what Monsieur de Maurienne will do. If I say that I will be responsible for your honour as for my own, and for that of the Piedmont Lancers, and if I tell you that there will be no duel, Monsieur de Maurienne may sit up all night, for weeks and weeks, so far as you are concerned.’

‘That is a very different matter,’ answered Castiglione gravely. ‘I have nothing more to say. If my honour can be safer anywhere than in my own keeping, it will be so in your hands. Do you really wish me to stay at home this evening?’

‘Yes, unless you want a couple of days’ leave, though we have a general order from headquarters not to allow officers or men leave to go further than three hours by railway. Trouble is expected owing to these strikes, and we shall probably be doing patrol duty next week! You may have two days if you like.’

‘Thank you, no. I’ll go home.’

Castiglione made a movement to get up.

‘No, no!’ objected Casalmaggiore. ‘I have not told you everything about that mare yet. Stay a little longer.’

‘Certainly; with pleasure. But first, if it’s not indiscreet, may I ask how in the world you are going to settle my affair?’

‘You may ask, Castiglione,’ replied the Colonel with great gravity, ‘but it is beyond my power to answer you; for I give you my word of honour that I have not the slightest idea. Montalto knows perfectly well,’ he continued without a break and in precisely the same tone of voice, ‘that I will pay twenty thousand francs for the mare whenever he likes, and that’s a large price in Italy.’

After that Castiglione made no further attempt to talk about de Maurienne, and his colonel kept him till after four o’clock.