The bent form raised the knife.
Three drops of blood dripped, one by one, into the hollow of the stone.
Bessarion chanted some words in an unintelligible jargon as, with a claw-like hand, he bound up the wound in Basil's arm.
"At midnight—in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus—you will stand face to face with the Presence," the apparition spoke once more.
The next moment, after a fantastic salutation, he had vanished, as if the earth had swallowed him, behind a projecting rock.
Basil remained for a time in deep rumination. The Molossian hound rose up from the ground as soon as the adept of the black arts had disappeared, and, sitting on its haunches, gazed inquisitively into its master's face.
Suddenly it uttered a growl.
At the next moment the misshapen form of an African Moor crouched at the feet of the Grand Chamberlain. Noiselessly and swiftly as a panther he had sped through the waste spaces of the amphitheatre, and even Basil could not overcome a feeling of revulsion as he gazed into the hairy, bestial features of Daoud, whom he employed when secrecy and despatch were essential to the success of a venture.
Red inflamed eyelids gleamed from a face whose cadaverous tints seemed enhanced by wiry black hair that hung in disordered strands from under a broad Spanish hat. Daoud was undersized in stature, but possessed prodigious strength, and the size of his hands argued little in favor of him who had incurred the disfavor of his master or his own.
This monster in human guise Basil had acquired from a certain nobleman in the suite of the Byzantine ambassador extraordinary to the Holy See.