have left.  You have cleaned me out.  I still have a little house in Norfolk, with servants and a cellar, and if you want more from me you must take that.  Come and take possession if you like, and I will live there quietly as your friend or agent or anything.’  He knew that the Sicilian had never seen the Saradine brothers save, perhaps, in pictures; he knew they were somewhat alike, both having grey, pointed beards.  Then he shaved his own face and waited.  The trap worked.  The unhappy captain, in his new clothes, entered the house in triumph as a prince, and walked upon the Sicilian’s sword.

“There was one hitch, and it is to the honour of human nature.  Evil spirits like Saradine often blunder by never expecting the virtues of mankind.  He took it for granted that the Italian’s blow, when it came, would be dark, violent and nameless, like the blow it avenged; that the victim would be knifed at night, or shot from behind a hedge, and so die without speech.  It was a bad minute for Prince Paul when Antonelli’s chivalry proposed a formal duel, with all its possible explanations.  It was then that I found him putting off in his boat with wild eyes.  He was fleeing, bareheaded, in an open boat before Antonelli should learn who he was.

“But, however agitated, he was not hopeless.  He knew the adventurer and he knew the fanatic.  It was quite probable that Stephen, the adventurer, would hold his tongue, through his mere histrionic pleasure in playing a part, his lust for clinging to his new cosy quarters, his rascal’s trust in luck, and his fine fencing.  It was certain that Antonelli, the fanatic, would hold his tongue, and be hanged without telling tales of his family.  Paul hung about on the river till he knew the fight was over.  Then he roused the town, brought the police, saw his two vanquished enemies taken away forever, and sat down smiling to his dinner.”

“Laughing, God help us!” said Flambeau with a strong shudder.  “Do they get such ideas from Satan?”

“He got that idea from you,” answered the priest.

“God forbid!” ejaculated Flambeau.  “From me!  What do you mean!”

The priest pulled a visiting-card from his pocket and held it up in the faint glow of his cigar; it was scrawled with green ink.

“Don’t you remember his original invitation to you?” he asked, “and the compliment to your criminal exploit? `That trick of yours,’ he says, `of getting one detective to arrest the other’?  He has just copied your trick.  With an enemy on each side of him, he slipped swiftly out of the way and let them collide and kill each other.”

Flambeau tore Prince Saradine’s card from the priest’s hands and rent it savagely in small pieces.

“There’s the last of that old skull and crossbones,” he said as he scattered the pieces upon the dark and disappearing waves of the stream; “but I should think it would poison the fishes.”

The last gleam of white card and green ink was drowned and darkened; a faint and vibrant colour as of morning changed the sky, and the moon behind the grasses grew paler.  They drifted in silence.