"You understand your instructions?"
"Yes, Excellency."
"Repeat them."
"I take the boat to-morrow--go to Vencata. Keep watch upon the
Americano--the one whose name I have here."
"John Derby, yes. But he is very big--a giant. Make no mistake, find the
one who is the _padrone_! And----? Continue!"
"I am to watch if it is true that he begins working the 'Little Devil,'
and if so--I know the rest. It is nothing! A pig's skin is thick--a
man's thin!" As he said this he glanced at the duke, and there was a
sinister gleam in the man's deep-set eyes, and beneath the sharp nose
the mouth was hard and straight, like a seam across the face.
The duke nodded as though satisfied. "It may be well for you to
remember," he observed impressively, "that the reward will make you and
yours easy for life."
The man saluted respectfully, but with a dogged surliness that revealed
no loyalty. Yet there was in his look a hint of fanatical intensity.
Outside in the passageway he smiled grimly. For once the errand on which
the duke had sent him fell in with his own inclinations. He opened a
window and looked out through the gratings into the night. In his heart
he bore no love for the duke, but he was by race and inheritance a
dependent of the house of Scorpa. It had always been so--the dukes had
been masters since time immemorial.
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