“There are rumors now agitating people over here and likely to become public property, that the Sansevero Madonna has been smuggled out of the country.  I have reason to believe that the Raphael you showed me in New York is not the duplicate you were led to suppose, but the Sansevero picture.  How it was sold, I have not yet discovered, though I do not believe the prince guilty of violating the laws.  But I know the Government has its secret agents at work upon the case because of the seeming luxury of the princess, whose new furs and automobile are known to be far beyond her present income.  I more than suspect that these luxuries are the result of Nina’s generosity, but if the Sansevero picture is the one you have, the affair will end badly for the prince.  At all events, I consider it best to carry the matter direct to you.”

While Derby was writing to Mr. Randolph, an animated conversation was taking place in a little room on the ground floor of the gigantic palace of the Scorpas.  The doors were bolted, and the two inmates of the apartment talked in whispers.

“You understand your instructions?”

“Yes, Excellency.”

“Repeat them.”

“I take the boat to-morrow—­go to Vencata.  Keep watch upon the Americano—­the one whose name I have here.”

“John Derby, yes.  But he is very big—­a giant.  Make no mistake, find the one who is the padrone!  And——?  Continue!”

“I am to watch if it is true that he begins working the ‘Little Devil,’ and if so—­I know the rest.  It is nothing!  A pig’s skin is thick—­a man’s thin!” As he said this he glanced at the duke, and there was a sinister gleam in the man’s deep-set eyes, and beneath the sharp nose the mouth was hard and straight, like a seam across the face.

The duke nodded as though satisfied.  “It may be well for you to remember,” he observed impressively, “that the reward will make you and yours easy for life.”

The man saluted respectfully, but with a dogged surliness that revealed no loyalty.  Yet there was in his look a hint of fanatical intensity.  Outside in the passageway he smiled grimly.  For once the errand on which the duke had sent him fell in with his own inclinations.  He opened a window and looked out through the gratings into the night.  In his heart he bore no love for the duke, but he was by race and inheritance a dependent of the house of Scorpa.  It had always been so—­the dukes had been masters since time immemorial.  The present duke had made the lives of Sicilians terrible enough, but he, Luigi Calluci, would have no stranger Americano forcing his people to work that hell-mine of the “Little Devil”!

CHAPTER XX

HIS EMINENCE THE ARCHBISHOP OF VENCATA

Barely two days after the evening at the Palazzo Sansevero, Derby was driving up the Sicilian hills towards the palace—­courtesy gave it the name—­of the venerable Archbishop of Vencata.  Porter, in company with Tiggs and Jenkins—­Derby’s American assistants—­had been left at the inn in the town, but Derby was anxious to present his letter as soon as possible, in order that there might be no delay in commencing work at the mines.