Minardi wheeled upon Rodrigo. "So—it was you! Ah. Why did you not say so before, eh?" And he launched into a fresh flood of indignation.
Rodrigo raised a hand to stop him. He perceived that this fellow could not be easily overawed. Minardi wanted money and would probably continue to be a howling nuisance until he got it. Rosa, Rodrigo suspected shrewdly, was in the plot with her father. Certainly she would not otherwise have revealed her love affair with Rodrigo to Minardi and, instead of keeping her rendezvous at the Café Del Mare, allowed the noisy old man to come on a blackmailing expedition in her place. Any tenderness Rodrigo had previously felt for Rose Minardi disappeared. His lips curled as he looked at her dark head, cast down in assumed modesty.
When Minardi had calmed down, Rodrigo snapped, "How much do you want?"
Minardi's anger faded. His eyes lighted up with greed. "Five thousand lira," he replied in a business-like tone.
"You come high," said Rodrigo.
Minardi's hand went to his greasy inside coat pocket, "I have here letters that are worth more than that," he said. "Letters you have written to my Rosa. There are such things as breach of promise suits. The newspapers would like them, eh? The Torrianis are not popular at Naples, eh?"
In spite of himself, Rodrigo winced a little. This fat, futile old reprobate began to assume the proportions of a real danger. Rodrigo essayed frankness. "You know so much about the Torrianis," suggested he, "you perhaps know that I have not five thousand liras at the moment."
Minardi shrugged his stooped shoulders. "Even if that is true, you can get them," he said. And he looked significantly at John Dorning, an interested and somewhat disgusted spectator at the scene.
Rodrigo's slim fingers were drumming nervously upon the Beniti cabinet which he had just been displaying to his guest. In their nervous course over the top of the cabinet the finger points met the smooth surface of an elaborately wrought silver vase standing there. Rodrigo looked down. He hesitated an instant, then caught up the vase in his hand.
"This was made by the great Cellini himself," he remarked to Minardi. "It is worth at least twice the amount you are blackmailing me for. You can easily dispose of it in Naples. I do not, of course, admit any of your silly accusations. However, take this vase—and go at once."