The picture might too easily have been sold and
paid for through her. Unless it can be produced _here in Italy_, the
end may be bad. Somehow we must find a way to do that."
Nina was getting every moment more and more nervous--she could not
understand Derby's delay. Why did he not come? Since she telephoned, he
could have covered the distance from the Excelsior half a dozen times.
Every second of glancing at the door seemed a minute, and the minutes
hours. After the disillusionments she had suffered she actually was
beginning to think that he, too, would fail her in the crucial moment,
when, at last, the _portieres_ parted, and Derby entered carrying--the
celebrated Sansevero Madonna!
The princess and the marchese were so astonished that only Nina seemed
to notice Derby himself. With a cry of "_Jack!_ How _did_ you do it?"
she sprang up, staring at him in bewilderment.
The sound of Nina's voice drew the princess's attention to Derby, and
she, too, started toward him.
"John! What does it all mean?" she exclaimed, quite unconscious that she
had called him by his first name.
"It means a rotten plot--neither more nor less--to ruin Prince
Sansevero, concocted by a man whom the prince believed to be his friend!
The Duke Scorpa has just died, which ends the affair for him, but I have
the whole chain of evidence that clears the prince.
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