So saying, he girded his loins for the fray, walked in person to the post office and wrote out a lengthy telegram to the redoubtable Don Giustino Morena, the parliamentary representative of Nepenthe who, as readers of the newspapers were aware, happened to be taking a brief holiday among his own people in the South. It was a judiciously flattering dispatch. It prayed the famous lawyer-politician to undertake the defence of a relation, an orphan, a mere child, unjustly accused of murder and arbitrarily imprisoned, and to deign to accept a pitiful honorarium of five thousand francs—the largest sum which a parish priest, poor but jealous of the honour of his family, could scrape together. If the great man accepted the offer, he might arrive by the nest day's boat. There was a chance, thought the PARROCO, of his doing so. Don Giustino was an ardent Catholic; he might be favourably impressed by the modest petition of a clergyman in his constituency. He had promised over and over again to visit his Nepenthean constituents. He would now be killing two birds with one stone.
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."