Five minutes, under ordinary circumstances, were wont to elapse ere an item of private news could percolate out of the post office and become public property.  Such was the portentous import of this message that it did not percolate at all.  It flashed, and produced forthwith a feeling of joyous elation at the prospect of lively events in the near future—­of a battle between the Vatican and the Quirinal.  Coming on the top of Muhlen’s murder—­which was a decided improvement upon his alleged flight—­it caused the citizens to talk in excited and almost random fashion about what was coming next.  Alone, the members of the Alpha and Omega Club, thanks to the benign influence of Parker’s poison, received the successive waves of information with composure, and preserved from beginning to end their sense of proportion.

“Heard the news?  Muhlen’s bolted.”

“I thought he would.”

“They say he owes a good deal.”

“Obviously.  Else he wouldn’t have bolted.  Good riddance, anyhow.”

“That’s what I say.  But he owes me a lot of whiskies, the blighter.”

“You’re lucky.  Gone off with thirty francs of mine.”

“Damn his eyes.  I expect we’re not the only ones.”

“Not by a long chalk.  Come and have a drink.”

“Heard the news?  Muhlen’s murdered.”

“Serve him bloody well right.  The blackguard owes me two francs fifty.  I’ll bet it was some money business.”

“Not a bit of it.  A little girl, you know.  Got a knife in the stomach.  About eleven at night, from all accounts.  They heard him squealing a mile off.”

“I don’t believe it.  He was not that kind.”

“Not that kind?  What do you mean?”

“Not that kind.”

“Not that kind?  Really?  Go on.  You don’t say so, by Jove!  What makes you think it?”

“Think?  I don’t think.  I happen to know.  You pay for my peg and I’ll tell you all about it. . . .”

“Heard the news?  Don Giustino’s coming over.”

“The old assassin.  What of it?”

“Good business!  One in the eye for Mali—­what’s his name.  There’ll be the hell of a row.  We ought to be grateful to Muhlen for this amusement.”

“Damned if we ought.  Unless he got himself killed on purpose to amuse us.  And even then it would have amused me more if he had paid me back those seventeen francs.”

“You’re very hard to please to-day.”

“So would you be, if you’d been as raddled as I was last night.  You ought to see the inside of my head, you ought.  There’s room for a coal barge, in there.”

“That’s easily remedied.  Toss up for drinks.”

“Don’t mind if I do. . . .”

Signor Malipizzo heard the news as he was sitting down to luncheon.  At first he thought the priest had gone crazy.  Don Giustino—­good God!  Five thousand francs.  Where had he found the money?  Then he remembered hearing about old Koppen’s cheque for the organ.  Those confounded foreigners, always mixing themselves up in local concerns!  If the parroco were really poor, as these hypocrites of Christians professed to be, he could never have run to it.  Don Giustino.  What an awful turn of events.  And all because Muhlen got himself murdered.  These confounded foreigners!