Ricci nodded. He recollected well how the Minister, then only a few months in office, had allowed him to resign from the army and complete his studies as an advocate, and how, by a clever stroke of political jobbery, he had been elected deputy for Asti, in order that he should serve the Minister as his secret agent in the Camera. He had become rich in a few years, owing to the various grants and concessions His Excellency had made to him, yet somehow his personal extravagance kept him always poor, always in want of money. He feared to calculate how much of the secret service funds had already found its way into his pocket, and yet with wily ingenuity he was there again for a grant, not from the secret service fund--for he knew well that the sum voted for the present year was already exhausted--but from Camillo Morini's own private purse.

Vito Ricci, with all the outward appearance of a gentleman, was utterly unscrupulous. He worked in the Camera for the master who paid him best--a fact which Morini knew too well. If the Socialists were prepared to pay his price, then the man whom he had trained so cleverly and promoted to place and power would calmly throw him over, and hound him down with just as great an enthusiasm as he now supported him.

"I suppose," he went on at last, "it is, as usual, a matter of price with you--eh, Vito?"

"Well, I must live, just as you must," responded the other with a faint smile as he discerned how terrified the Minister had become at the information he had just given him. "I have no private income, and therefore must make money somehow."

"You have made plenty of it," the other remarked. "Only three months ago you had fifty thousand lire out of the secret service fund."

"And I am now badly in want of an exactly similar amount," the deputy declared.

"Ah! so that is the price--eh? Fifty thousand?"

"Yes. But of course I cannot guarantee success for that sum. It may cost more. I have to bribe the leaders of each of the groups in the Chamber, and I flatter myself that I am the only man who can work them in favour of the Ministry."

"I admit that, my dear Vito. You are a marvel of tact and cunning.

What a pity you did not enter the Diplomatic service! But the price.

It is too high. I can't really afford to pay so much. Ah! if you knew how heavy my personal expenses are, and how--"

"Of course," the other cried, interrupting. "You made the same excuse last time, but you paid these screaming hounds all the same. It is surely useless to waste breath upon argument. The facts are quite plain, as I've already told you. If you pay for triumph you will probably receive it; if you don't, you must fall, and Angelo Borselli will be given your portfolio. Pardon me for saying it, Camillo, but of late you have lived with your eyes shut. I have watched, and I have observed certain things. Recently you have held me aloof from you, just at a moment when I could be of greatest service. This, I confess, has hurt me. I believed you reposed confidence in me, but it seems that you mistrust me."

"I mistrust all blackmailers," was the Minister's quick reply, his dark eyes flashing at the speaker.

"Because you are one yourself," the other retorted quickly, with a grin.

"You yourself taught me the gentle art of blackmailing. But no! do not let us revile each other. Rather let us face the critical situation. I tell you that you are blind--otherwise you would realise how cleverly and with what devilish ingenuity your power is being undermined. You must bribe the groups--you must pay the sum I ask. It is your duty, not only for your own sake, but for that of your family--the signora and the Signorina Mary."

The Minister of War stood undecided. Mention of his family brought home to him the terrible responsibility upon him. Ruin, exposure, condemnation, disgrace, all stared him in the face. Yet by paying what his creature demanded he could once again steer clear of the shoals of the stormy parliamentary waters, and the country would have renewed confidence in Camillo Morini.

He knew that he was--as indeed he had been for years--entirely at the mercy of this man whom he had trained as his secret agent both in the Camera and out of it.

"Well," he answered at last in a deep, hoa.r.s.e, broken voice, "and suppose I pay? What then?"

"Then I shall do my best," was Vito's response. "I can't, of course, be certain that I shall succeed, but as the groups require my influence in another quarter, they will probably render me a.s.sistance in this."

Morini was pacing the room again. His appearance was that of a man filled with apprehension. He saw that the situation was most critical, and recognised that ruin was before him. He glanced across at his writing-table, when his lips compressed and a strange, half-triumphant smile overspread his grey countenance.

"Very well," he exclaimed, and his sigh ran through the great old chamber. "I suppose you must have the money to throw to those howling dogs. Call at the Ministry to-morrow and you shall have a draft."

"For sixty thousand," said the deputy quickly. "Better be on the safe side. I shall have to distribute money freely this time, you know."

But the Minister refused, knowing that the extra ten thousand lire would go into Vito's pocket. Then they argued, long and hotly, Ricci, the accomplished blackmailer, refusing openly to lend his influence for any less sum, until at length the man who was so completely in his power was reluctantly compelled to yield--for the sake of his wife and Mary, he said in sheer desperation.

"And now that you are again reposing confidence in me, my dear friend,"

said the deputy, "let me give you a word of warning."

"Speak. I am all attention."

"Last season there was here in Rome a man named Dubard. You introduced us one night when I dined here. I have since heard that he is aspiring to your daughter's hand."

"Well?"

"Watch him, and you will discover something that will surprise you. I shall say no more. The future is in your own hands."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE SECRET AGENT.

A fat waiter conducted a well-dressed, lady-like girl up the great marble staircase of the Hotel Brun, in Bologna, rapped lightly at the door of a private sitting-room, and ushered her in.

Angelo Borselli, who rose to meet her, bowed politely, with a smile on his sallow face, and welcomed his visitor.

She was about twenty-three, with very dark hair, fine big eyes, and a well-formed figure, rather stout, as are most of the Bolognese.

"I had given you up, signorina," he said. "I have waited for you over an hour."

"I could not get away before," she replied somewhat timidly. "At home they seemed suspicious, and I had the greatest difficulty in coming here." And she smiled, a faint flush suffusing her sunburnt cheeks.

"You came in a closed cab?"

"No, I went to the station and drove here in the hotel omnibus, as though I had arrived by train. I thought it would excite less suspicion."

"Excellent!" laughed the Under-Secretary, glancing to see that the door was closed. "You are clever--always clever, Filomena. You will make a first-cla.s.s agent of the Ministry some day," he added approvingly.

She laughed as she seated herself in the chair he politely offered, and laid the little fan she carried upon the table, replying--

"I always do my best. But my mother watches so closely that I have to be most cautious."

"You have done exceedingly well," declared the schemer. "In this last affair you have rendered me the greatest a.s.sistance. Without you we should have failed. But I have invited you here to learn all the details. I was in Paris at the time, and all I have gathered is from the official reports of the court-martial. They did not call you up to Turin, I hope?"

"No. They took my evidence in secret at the barracks here."

"And what did you tell them?"

"I described exactly what had happened. How the captain had a year ago declared his love for me, and how he came to Bologna from Paris."

"And what else?"

"I described how I had received in confidence the mysterious packet from him, with instructions to hand it to a friend of his, a Frenchman, who would make an appointment to meet me. What I told the three officers who took down my statement seemed to create a great impression upon them."

"Of course it would, because it is your statement that has condemned Solaro."

"Condemned!" she gasped in blank surprise. "What, has he already been tried?"

"Yes, and dismissed the army."

"But he is--"

"There are no buts, signorina," he quickly interrupted in a hard voice.