"Good Heavens," he muttered, "we ought to have stumbled on something by this time."
Biddy might have answered: "I"ve done some stumbling, thank you, and thanks to you." But she didn"t. Instead, she lifted her head and ears, looked to the left, snorted, and shied. She shied very carefully, however, because she did not know what she might shy into; and Asabri laughed.
There was a glimmering point of light off to the left, and he urged Biddy toward it. He saw presently that it was a fire built against a ruined and unfamiliar tomb.
The fire was cooking something in a kettle. There was a smell of garlic.
Three young men sat cross-legged, watching the fire and the kettle.
Against the tomb leaned three long guns, very old and dangerous.
"Brigands!" smiled Asabri, and he hailed them:
"Ho there! Wake up! I am a squadron of police attacking you from the rear."
He rode unarmed into their midst and slid unconcernedly from his saddle to the ground.
"Put up your weapons, brothers," he said; "I was joking. It seems that I am in danger, not you."
The young men, upon whom "brigand" was written in no uncertain signs, were very much embarra.s.sed. One of them smiled nervously and showed a great many very white teeth.
"Lucky for us," he said, "that you weren"t what you said you were."
"Yes," said Asabri; "I should have potted the lot of you with one volley and reported at head-quarters that it had been necessary, owing to the stubborn resistance which you offered."
The three young men smiled sheepishly.
"I see that you are familiar with the ways of the police," said one of them.
"May I sit with you?" Asabri asked. "Thanks."
He sat in silence for a moment; and the three young men examined with great respect the man"s splendid round head, and his face of a Roman emperor.
"Whose tomb is this?" he asked them.
"It is ours," said the one who had first smiled. "It used to hallow the remains of Attulius Cimber."
"Oho!" said Asabri. "Attulius Cimber, a direct ancestor of my friend and a.s.sociate Sullandenti. And tell me how far is it to Rome?"
"A long way. You could not find the half of it to-night."
"Brothers," said Asabri, "has business been good? I ask for a reason."
"The reason, sir?"
"Why," said he, "I thought, if I should not be considered grasping, to ask you for a mouthful of soup."
Confusion seized the brigands. They protested that they were ungrateful dogs to keep the n.o.ble guest upon the tenterhooks of hunger. They called upon G.o.d to smite them down for inhospitable ne"er-do-weels. They plied him with soup, with black bread; they roasted strips of goat"s flesh for him; and from the hollow of the tomb they fetched bottles of red wine in straw jackets.
Presently Asabri sighed, and offered them cigarettes from a gold case.
"For what I have received," said he, "may a courteous and thoughtful G.o.d make me truly thankful.... I wish that I could offer you, in return for your hospitality, something more substantial than cigarettes. The case?
If it were any case but that one! A present from my wife."
He drew from its pocket a gold repeater upon which his initials were traced in brilliants.
"Midnight. Listen!"
He pressed a spring, and the exquisite chimes of the watch spoke in the stillness like the bells of a fairy church.
"And this," he said, "was a present from my mother, who is dead."
The three brigands crossed themselves, and expressed the regrets which good-breeding required of them. The one that had been the last to help himself to a cigarette now returned the case to Asabri, with a bow and a mumbling of thanks.
"What a jolly life you lead," exclaimed the banker. "Tell me, you have had some good hauls lately? What?"
The oldest of the three, a dark, taciturn youth, answered, "The gentleman is a great joker."
"Believe me," said Asabri, "it is from habit--not from the heart. When I rode out from Rome to-day, it was with the intention never to return.
When I came upon you and saw your long guns and suspected your profession in life, I said: "Good! Perhaps these young men will murder me for my watch and cigarette case and the loose silver in my breeches pocket, and save me a world of trouble----""
The three brigands protested that nothing had ever been farther from their thoughts.
"Instead of which," he went on, "you have fed me and put heart in me. I shall return to Rome in the morning and face whatever music my own infatuated foolishness has set going. Do you understand anything of finance?"
The taciturn brigand grinned sheepishly.
He said that he had had one once; but that the priest had touched it with a holy relic and it had gone away. "It was on the back of my neck,"
he said.
Asabri laughed.
"I should have said banking," said he, "stocks and bonds."
The brigands admitted that they knew nothing of these things. Asabri sighed.
"Two months ago," he said, "I was a rich man. To-day I have nothing. In a few days it will be known that I have nothing; and then, my friends--the deluge. Such is finance. From great beginnings, lame endings. And yet the converse may be true. I have seen great endings come of small beginnings. Even now there is a chance for a man with a little capital...."
He raised his eyes and hands to heaven.
"Oh," he cried, "if I could touch even five thousand lire I could retrieve my own fortunes and make the fortunes of whomsoever advanced me the money."
The sullen brigand had been doing a sum on his fingers.
"How so, excellency?" he asked.
"Oh," said Asabri, "it is very simple! I should buy certain stocks, which owing to certain conditions are very cheap, and I should sell them very dear. You have heard of America?"
They smiled and nodded eagerly.
"Of Wall Street?"