Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/43

 had at least some of your own medicine back, thanks to good old Tomaso.”

Pietro got up, stretched himself, massaged his wrists and ankles to restore circulation, readjusted his necktie with a touch of vanity, smoothed his mop of hair and took a seat at the little marble-topped center table opposite Ware.

“You think I'm not, as the Americans say, wise to you, eh?” he growled. “You can't talk Italian, eh? You said so on the first night I ever saw you there in St. Mark's Square, and you took pains never to speak it in front of me after that. Then you pretended to be a tourist and came to the Danieli to stop! You, the master of the ship Adventure lying out there in the Giudecco! And you wormed your way into the confidence of my lady like a cheap detective. Bah! You got her to tell you things. Bah! And you and that old water rat followed us one night when we were going about our project and studying the situation, and you didn't take warning when we ran you down—my lady and I! Yes, we did it, and I wish you had both been drowned! I tell you this to your face.”

“So it was you? I thought so at the time, but wasn't certain,” Jimmy commented, with a grin. “I suppose she knew it was me who got tipped into the canal and had to swim?”

“My lady did not—God bless her sweet soul. I kept your perfidy from her,” Pietro exclaimed with a fervency that reached melodrama. “I knew that she might show pity to you and disbelieve your baseness, but I, her guardian, thought I could take care of you!”

“And you darned near did it, Pietro. You darned near did it!” Jimmy conceded, still smiling at this wild Latin fervor, this unconscious acting, this overdeveloped sense of drama that in any other than Pietro would have seemed absurdly ridiculous. The only element that saved Pietro, Jimmy decided, was his profound and fiery earnestness and his chivalric determination to be of service, come what might, to his much-admired employer.

It was these ameliorating conditions that caused him to ask, curiously and almost inconsequentially, “Pietro, how old are you?”

“I'll be twenty-one next month,” the boy blurted and then, impatiently: “But what's that got to do with it?”

“I just wished to know; but go on with your arraignment,” Jimmy said with a faint and tolerant smile.

“All right, I will. I'll make you admit that you're a Judas. You think I don't know, but I do. I've had lots of ways of finding out all you did. If you think a Venetian guide hasn't ways of finding everything out about everybody—bah!—you don't know Venezia. What are you going to say when I tell you that you are nothing but a tool of that old villain; that wretched old American who has more money than he ever deserved; that old man Harnway? Ah-ha! You are surprised at my knowledge! You went to his house to report your perfidy. You did! Don't deny it. He likes you so well that he put his arm around your shoulder and called you by your first name. You can't deny that either because the door man saw it. Ah-ha! I see you are at last ashamed of yourself. And he took you up into the salon and showed you that little casket that he stole and that I have taken a solemn oath before the shrine of Our Lady to recover for its rightful owner, who is the sweetest, finest lady that ever came from the town of Kentucky, in a State called Rocky Crossing, United States of America. Now I ask you—are you a Judas or are you not, Signor Ware?”

He jumped to his feet, sputtering, glaring, and with the backs of his hands resting on the top of the table, bent forward as he must have thought an accusing angel might bend to confront and utterly demolish a quivering and stripped malefactor. It seemed to increase his anger when Jimmy gave a low whistle, rammed his hands in his pockets, tilted his chair back, elevated his feet to the table and quietly grinned.

“Well, Pietro,” he drawled at last, “from your point of view it does look pretty bad, doesn't it? I'll be hanged if, from your view-point, you haven't made out rather an admirable case against me! I'll admit it! In a way you've got the makings of a first-class lawyer in you, I should say.”

Pietro could not altogether resist this praise. But as if to harden himself for the performance of a stern duty he chased away that slight trace of self-satisfaction and assumed a highly judicial air.

“Since you have admitted your baseness, your treachery, your vile masquerading, and that you have led the most wonderful lady that the State of Rocky Crossing, U. S. A., ever produced, into perhaps giving you her