THE RISEN DEAD
BY MAX PEMBERTON
CHAPTER I
The sun was setting on the second day of June, in the year 1701, when
Pietro Falier, the Captain of the Police of Venice, quitted his office
in the Piazzetta of St. Mark and set out, alone, for the Palace of
Frà Giovanni, the Capuchin friar, who lived over on the Island of the
Guidecca.
"I shall return in an hour," he said to his subordinate as he stepped into the black gondola which every Venetian knew so well. "If any has need of me, I am at the house of Frà Giovanni."
The subordinate saluted, and returned slowly toward the ducal palace. He was thinking that his Captain went over-much just then to the house of that strange friar who had come to Venice so mysteriously, and so mysteriously had won the favor of the republic.
"Saint John!" he muttered to himself, "that we should dance attendance on a shaven crown—we, who were the masters of the city a year ago! What is the Captain thinking of? Are we all women, then, or have women plucked our brains that it should be Frà Giovanni this and Frà Giovanni that, and your tongue snapped off if you so much as put a question. To the devil with all friars, say I."
The good fellow stopped a moment in his walk to lay the flat of his sword across the shoulders of a mountebank, who had dared to remain seated at the door of his booth while so great a person passed. Then he returned to his office, and whispered in the ear of his colleague the assurance that the Captain was gone again to the island of the Jews, and that his business was with the friar.
"And look you, Michele," said he, "it is neither to you nor to me that he comes nowadays. Not a whisper of it, as I live, except to this friar, whom I could crush between my fingers as a glass ball out of Murano."
His colleague shook his head.