The Title Market

by Emily Post

"Ah, but it had already gone! It was perhaps by then in the house of a foreign millionaire. No, no, my story hangs together: The great picture disappears! A month later—time exactly for its arrival in America and the payment for it to be sent over here—her excellency of no money comes out in such a motor-car as that! And sables! I have an eye for furs. My father was in the business. The value of those she has on runs easily into the seventy or eighty thousand lire. Here she comes now, out of the banker's where American money is most often paid! Do you want better evidence?"

He had been punctuating all he said with his fingers, and now, with a final snap of arms and a shrug of shoulders, he looked up in keen triumph at his companion.

The other—slower and less excited than the narrator (probably because he was not the discoverer of the plot)—nevertheless showed lively interest. "It is very grave," he admitted at last. "But the Sansevero family is illustrious. We may not proceed against them without due consideration. I shall report the case to the chief of our secret service, and the prince must be——"

A tall, athletic young man who had been changing some foreign gold into Italian, came into the open doorway of the office. A carriage, passing at that moment close to the curb, had prevented the two men from hearing the stranger's footfall, and as the latter stood on the top step, searching in his pocket for matches, he happened to catch the name "Sansevero." At once his attention was arrested, but as the conversation was carried on in an undertone, he caught only vague, detached words. Still, he was sure that he had heard "Raphael" after the name, "Sansevero," "disappearance," and then something like "secret service." But his presence evidently had become known, for as he passed on out into the street the two in blue coats were talking loudly about the excursion to Tivoli and the scenery en route.

Walking out into the middle of the square where the cabs stand, he jumped into the first one, but he looked cautiously back toward the men in front of Cook's, before telling the driver to take him to the Palazzo Sansevero.

Here the portiere in his morning clothes, very different from the gorgeous apparel of afternoon, was sweeping out the courtyard. Holding his broom handle with exactly the same dignity with which, later in the day, he would hold his mace, he informed the stranger that his excellency the prince was not at home—neither was her excellency the princess. Upon being asked whether Miss Randolph were perhaps at home, he altogether forgot his imperturbability. That a signore should send in his card to a signorina was so far outside the range of his experience that the man stood with his mouth open, unable even to think what answer to give. As though he were a somnambulist, the man took the card and slowly read the name on its face; then he looked the stranger over from head to foot, read the name a second time, and finally entered the palace.

The young man watched his retreating figure, and then, throwing back his head, laughed long and heartily. After which he fell to studying the details of the courtyard. He noted with keen interest the deep ruts worn in the solid stone paving under the massive arches of the gateways, and glanced up at the bas-reliefs between the windows. At the sound of footsteps he turned and encountered Nina's maid, Celeste.

Mademoiselle had sent her to bid him mount to the salon. Through the green baize doors—it was the shorter way—and then, if monsieur would go straight on to the very last of the rooms— His striding pace made Celeste fairly trot along at his heels. He went through room after room. Was there no end to them? At last Nina's slight, girlish figure was seen silhouetted against a broad window at the end—the light at her back hazing the gold of her hair, like a nimbus, about her face.

She ran toward him, both hands out. "Jack! Dear Jack! Is it you, really, or am I dreaming? When did you come? Oh, I am so glad to see you; but what a surprise! Why did you not send word?"

For a moment a light leaped into Derby's eyes. It seemed as though Nina was looking at him exactly as he, in his day dreams, had seen her. But his prudence steadied his first impulse, and he put down her gladness as merely the joy of a person who, far from home, sees suddenly a familiar face in the midst of strangers; and they sat on the sofa just as they had sat on the railing of the veranda in the country, ever since they were children.