confidence, I should now like to know what you are going to do about it?”
Jimmy brought his feet down with a bang as a solution of the situation, somewhat whimsical, was formulated in his mind.
“Suppose I make a bargain with you. There are certain reasons why I don't wish to have Miss Cardell”—he tripped, almost using her true name of Powell—“your employer, know that I am merely the master of a tramp freighter, or that I am acquainted with Mr. Harnway. Suppose I agree to help lift that box myself in return for your keeping those matters silent? Are you a very good burglar, Pietro? I dare say you're not! I don't believe you ever robbed even a—church, or a collection box, or a blind man, did you? Well, if you never have, my experience might prove valuable. I come from a long line of people who have been accused, openly, of grabbing things that didn't belong to them. It's in the blood, I tell you. Could we make that bargain?”
As he spoke he saw Pietro's eyes widen with astonishment at such a brazen confession of heredity.
“The signor is not jesting, is he?” Pietro asked with a perplexed stare.
“Not at all. I'll make that bargain and I'll carry it out, too! Was never more in earnest in my life. I've a particular reason, come to think of it, why I should like to steal that box myself and hand it to Miss—er—Cardell.”
“If, as you say, you are expert in such matters, which neither my lady nor I are, your offer is attractive,” Pietro said, staring first at the lamp, then at the stolid Tomaso, then back at Jimmy. “But I wonder if I dare trust you? Your record so far as I know is—bad. Very bad, signor. The one thing in your favor is that to-night you tried, as you believed, to save my life. I heard you and my heart softened a little at that.”
“Of course, if you don't agree to my terms,” Ware said thoughtfully, “there is nothing for me to do but hand you and that hired brigand of yours there on the floor over to the police. I'd be sorry to do that, because I understand that brigandage in Italy is now punishable with life imprisonment or death, and as our case is so clear, and Tomaso such a good witness, and this man of yours would undoubtedly confess—well, I'd hate to think of your being hanged, shot, beheaded, or whatever it is they do to them down here, Pietro.”
He shook his head sorrowfully, but from the corner of his eye saw Pietro's long, slender fingers suddenly clutch the edge of the table as if, for the first time, the gravity of his predicament was impressed upon him.
“You—you wouldn't do that, would you, signor?” he gasped in a dry voice as if from a suddenly restricted throat.
“I'm afraid I would. I don't see any other way out of it, Pietro,” Jimmy asserted with an assumption of profound gravity. “I think we'd better strike that bargain, hadn't we?”
Pietro wriggled and twisted in his chair, then put both elbows on the table and thrust his fingers through his mop of hair as if distracted. At last he groaned, “I've got to! I can do nothing else!”
“Good! Then we'll shake on it, eh?” said Jimmy with great alacrity.
Pietro accepted the proffered hand in a cold grasp of formality and with evident reluctance.
“Now,” said Jimmy cheerfully, “you might dump what's left of that pitcher of water on the head of your hired man there and see if that'll bring him out of dreamland. That's all you need do. I'll reserve to myself the pleasure of kicking him down two flights of stairs.”
But when the ruffian with the gold earrings was restored to a dripping consciousness and his hands liberated he was in such a pitiable state of funk, and clung to his head with such a genuine air of holding it together after the battering it had received, that Jimmy relented.
“Humph! Guess he's had enough to last some time,” he said, standing above the man and glowering down at him. Then peremptorily he growled, in Italian, “Get up and get out of this! And move fast, because if you don't I'll tell Tomaso to take another go at you, you lop-eared, murderous thug! And if you're not out of Venice in twelve hours the police will get you. I'll see to that, too. Get out!”
With all his former truculence and braggadocio gone, fearful not only of this American who threatened him but of the savagely grinning old gondolier who had already administered punishment that he was not likely to forget in many moons, the man crawled to the doorway on his hands and knees, then got to his feet and with a sud-
