“Brave man! But let me remind you, my squeamish friend, that it may be necessary for you and me to use the jimmy before we get possession of those gems. Do you think we shall find them on the pavement? Hardly! They are hidden in one of these hundreds of palaces, and they will not be given up for the asking.”
“I suppose not,” I admitted reluctantly. “All the same, it has an ugly sound, the word criminal.”
“I warned you that this was no task for the dilettante.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” I replied hastily. “But I am going to show you that I can be a bit unscrupulous, as well as you, on occasions.”
“That’s better,” replied he, grinning at me. “Now about that book. As I said, it mentions da Sestos and his clock. But the Inquisition of Venice, I need not remind you, concerned itself not so much with the religious conscience of the individual as with affairs of the state. It is da Sestos, the criminal, who comes into this book; and only incidentally, da Sestos, the atheist, who made a clock that was inhabited by an evil spirit.”
“And the story of Sanudo is substantiated?”
“Fairly well. And in this book we learn what became of the clock after his death. It was forfeited by the Inquisition as a thing unclean. It was hidden away in the Ducal Palace for nearly two hundred years.”
“And afterward?”
“In a long foot-note the editor of the Annals tells us that at the entry of Napoleon it was looted by a captain of artillery, who afterward sold it to a dealer in Paris. It remained in the shop of the dealer for nearly half a century, when a learned antiquarian, who was writing an elaborate monograph on automaton clocks, came across it. This antiquarian, our editor tells us, bought the clock and studied it. How it came into the possession of the uncle of the present Duke da Sestos is not known. This uncle, as the duke himself told us the other day, lived in Paris. He recognized the timepiece as that made by his remote ancestor nearly four hundred years ago.”
“Recognized it? But how?”