“What is this?” he asked.

“The token,” answered Zorzi.

He had scarcely spoken when he felt Contarini’s arms round him, holding him fast.  He was wise enough to make no attempt to escape from them.

“Friends,” said Contarini quickly, “the man who just came in is a spy.  I am holding him.  Help me!”

It seemed to Zorzi that a hundred hands seized him in the dark; by the arms, by the legs, by the body, by the head.  He knew that resistance was worse than useless.  There were hands at his throat, too.

“Let us do nothing hastily,” said Contarini’s voice, close beside him.  “We must find out what he knows first.  We can make him speak, I daresay.”

“We are not hangmen to torture a prisoner till he confesses,” observed some one in a quiet and rather indolent tone.  “Strangle him quickly and throw him into the canal.  It is late already.”

“No,” answered Contarini.  “Let us at least see his face.  We may know him.  If you cry out,” he said to Zorzi, “you will be killed instantly.”

“Jacopo is right,” said some one who had not spoken yet.

Almost at the same instant a door was opened and a broad bar of light shot across the hall from an inner room.  Zorzi was roughly dragged towards it, and he saw that he was surrounded by about twenty masked men.  His face was held to the light, and Contarini’s hold on his throat relaxed.

“Not even a mask!” exclaimed Jacopo.  “A fool, or a madman.  Speak, man I Who are you?  Who sent you here?”

“My name is Zorzi,” answered the glass-blower with difficulty, for he had been almost choked.  “My business is with the Lord Jacopo alone.  It is very private.”

“I have no secrets from my friends,” said Contarini.  “Speak as if we were alone.”

“I have promised my master to deliver the message in secret.  I will not speak here.”

“Strangle him and throw him out,” suggested the man with the indolent voice.  “His master is the devil, I have no doubt.  He can take the message back with him.”

Two or three laughed.

“These spies seldom hunt alone,” remarked another.  “While we are wasting time a dozen more may be guarding the entrance to the house.”

“I am no spy,” said Zorzi.

“What are you, then?”

“A glass-worker of Murano.”

Contarini’s hands relaxed altogether, now, and he bent his ear to Zorzi’s lips.

“Whisper your message,” he said quickly.

Zorzi obeyed.

“Angelo Beroviero bids you wait by the second pillar on the left in Saint Mark’s church, next Sunday morning, at one hour before noon, till you shall see him, and in a week from that time you shall have an answer; and be silent, if you would succeed.”

“Very well,” answered Contarini.  “Friends,” he said, standing erect, “it is a message I have expected.  The name of the man who sends it is ’Angelo’—­you understand.  It is not this fellow’s fault that he came here this evening.”