But a more delicate part of Parkinson’s undertaking remained.  He approached it with a double cough.

“As regards Mr. Carlyle’s personal appearance, sir—­”

“No, enough!” cried the gentleman concerned hastily.  “I am more than satisfied.  You are a keen observer, Parkinson.”

“I have trained myself to suit my master’s requirements, sir,” replied the man.  He looked towards Mr. Carrados, received a nod and withdrew.

Mr. Carlyle was the first to speak.

“That man of yours would be worth five pounds a week to me, Max,” he remarked thoughtfully.  “But, of course—­”

“I don’t think that he would take it,” replied Carrados, in a voice of equally detached speculation.  “He suits me very well.  But you have the chance of using his services—­indirectly.”

“You still mean that—­seriously?”

“I notice in you a chronic disinclination to take me seriously, Louis.  It is really—­to an Englishman—­almost painful.  Is there something inherently comic about me or the atmosphere of The Turrets?”

“No, my friend,” replied Mr. Carlyle, “but there is something essentially prosperous.  That is what points to the improbable.  Now what is it?”

“It might be merely a whim, but it is more than that,” replied Carrados.  “It is, well, partly vanity, partly ennui, partly”—­certainly there was something more nearly tragic in his voice than comic now—­“partly hope.”

Mr. Carlyle was too tactful to pursue the subject.

“Those are three tolerable motives,” he acquiesced.  “I’ll do anything you want, Max, on one condition.”

“Agreed.  And it is?”

“That you tell me how you knew so much of this affair.”  He tapped the silver coin which lay on the table near them.  “I am not easily flabbergasted,” he added.

“You won’t believe that there is nothing to explain—­that it was purely second-sight?”

“No,” replied Carlyle tersely:  “I won’t.”

“You are quite right.  And yet the thing is very simple.”

“They always are—­when you know,” soliloquised the other.  “That’s what makes them so confoundedly difficult when you don’t.”

“Here is this one then.  In Padua, which seems to be regaining its old reputation as the birthplace of spurious antiques, by the way, there lives an ingenious craftsman named Pietro Stelli.  This simple soul, who possesses a talent not inferior to that of Cavino at his best, has for many years turned his hand to the not unprofitable occupation of forging rare Greek and Roman coins.  As a collector and student of certain Greek colonials and a specialist in forgeries I have been familiar with Stelli’s workmanship for years.  Latterly he seems to have come under the influence of an international crook called—­at the moment—­Dompierre, who soon saw a way of utilizing Stelli’s genius on a royal scale.  Helene Brunesi, who in private life is—­and really is, I believe—­Madame Dompierre, readily lent her services to the enterprise.”