"Maruffi has been arrested."
"Is it possible?—this long nightmare ended at last like this? Maruffi is arrested? You are safe? No one has been killed?"
"It is all right. O'Neil telephoned me and I came here at once to tell you and Oliveta."
"When did they find him? Where?"
"Not half an hour ago—at his house. We have been watching the place ever since he disappeared, feeling sure he'd have to return sooner or later, if only for a moment. He is under lock and key at this instant."
Blake attributed a stir in the hall outside to the presence of the maid-servant; Margherita, whose eyes were fixed upon him, failed to detect a figure which stood in the shadow just beyond the open door.
"Does he know of our part in it—Oliveta's part?" she asked.
"O'Neil didn't say. He'll learn of it shortly, in any event. Do you realize what his capture means? I—hardly do myself. For one thing, there's no further need of concealment. I—I want people to know who you are. It seems hardly conceivable that Belisario Cardi has gone to meet his punishment, but it is true. Lucrezia has her revenge at last. It has been a terrible task for all of us, but it brought you and me together. I don't intend ever to let you go again, Margherita. I loved you there in Sicily. I've loved you every moment, every hour—"
Blake turned at the sound of a door closing behind him. He saw Margherita start, then lean forward staring past him with a look of amazement, of frightened incredulity, upon her face. Some one, a man, had stepped into the dim-lit room and was fumbling with the lock, his eyes fixed upon them, meanwhile, over his shoulder. The light from the windows had faded, the faint illumination from the taper before the shrine was insufficient fully to pierce the gloom. But on the instant of his interruption all triumph and hope, all thoughts of love, fled from Norvin's mind, bursting like iridescent bubbles, at a touch. The flesh along his back writhed, the hair at his neck lifted itself; for there in the shadow, huge, black, and silent, stood Caesar Maruffi.