"Do not be so impatient, my friend," said Calabressa, looking at his coffee. "We will say that, as usual, there was a ballot. All quite fair. No man wishes to avoid his duty. It is the simplest thing in the world to mark one of your pieces of paper with a red mark: whoever receives the marked paper undertakes the commission. All is quite fair, I say. Only you know, I dare say, the common, the pitiful trick of the conjurer who throws a pack of cards on the table, backs up. You take one, look at it privately, return it, and the cards are shuffled. Without lifting the cards at all he tells you that the one you selected was the eight of diamonds: why? It is no miracle: all the cards are eight of diamonds; though you, you poor innocent, do not know that. It is a wretched trick," added Calabressa, coolly.
Reitzei drank off the remainder of his soda-water at a gulp. He stared at Calabressa in silence, afraid to speak.
"My dear friend Reitzei," said Calabressa, at length raising his eyes and fixing them on his companion, "you could not be so insane as to play any trick like that?—having four pieces of paper, for example, all marked red, the marks under the paper? You would not enter into any such conspir
acy, for you know, friend Reitzei, that the punishment is—death!"
The man had turned a ghastly gray-green color. He was apparently choking with thirst, though he had just finished the soda-water. He could not speak.
Calabressa calmly waited for him; but in his heart he was saying exultingly, "Ha! the dagger quivers in the board: his eyes are starting from his head; is it Calabressa or Cagliostro that has paralyzed him?"
At length the wretched creature opposite him gasped out,
"Beratinsky—"
But he could say no more. He motioned to a waiter to bring him some soda-water.
"Yes, Beratinsky?" said Calabressa, calmly regarding the livid face.