"What service?"

"I would save your life."

"How is that-how can it be?"

"You are under the ban of the Terrible Ten," whispered the stranger, leaning forward in the darkness, and sending the words down the steps at the gondolier.

"How know you that unless you are my enemy-unless you are the a.s.sa.s.sin sent to do the deed?" demanded Reggio.

"I know many things, but my means of knowledge I keep in my own breast.

You doubt me? I swear to you that I can save you, and will-on a certain condition."

"No one condemned by the Ten has ever escaped," retorted Reggio.

"You shall be the first-if you agree to terms I will offer."

"What are the terms?" doubtingly inquired the doomed man.

"Will you accept them?"

"I will not become a murderer and a thief!" was the fierce retort. "I will not plunder and slay, and give one-half my evil gain to those criminals who hide their faces and are growing wealthy through the black crimes other men commit out of fear of them. I am a man! My ancestors were of the Castellani-the aristocrats of the red hoods. Never one of them has descended to the ranks of crime. It is because of that thing that I am now condemned to the a.s.sa.s.sin. The Ten claim they are the descendants of the black-hooded Nicolletti, and that they are avenging the old wrongs of their cla.s.s. It is a lie! They are thieves and murderers, banded together for plunder. They strike no blows with their own hands, but they frighten others into doing the dark work and giving them half the plunder. Not even their tools know who compose the Ten, whose faces are always hidden. No man dares betray them by confessing.

If he is caught red-handed, he takes all the blame, and tells it not that those who drove him to his crimes, and have shared his plunder, are the Ten, for if he should speak, he knows the ban of death will fall on all his family and all his blood relations."

Repeatedly the stranger had tried to check the torrent of words flowing from Reggie's lips, but his efforts had been unavailing. The speaker was aroused to a pitch of desperation, and he would not be silenced until he had finished.

"I fear not to speak!" he exclaimed. "I know I must die, for I have received the iron ring."

"You fool!" hissed the other. "Do you not think of Teresa? What will happen to her if you talk like this?"

Reggie's aspect of defiant rage suddenly departed, his shoulders drooped and he lifted his shaking hand to his eyes.

"Teresa!" he whispered. "Teresa, my sister! What have I done?"

"You have spoken like a crazy fool in the presence of foreigners,"

declared the other man. "Still, besides them, I am the only one who has heard your words, and I am your friend. Their lips must be silenced, for if they speak one word of this, Teresa is doomed!"

Once more Reggio straightened himself somewhat defiantly.

"What mean you?" he demanded. "Their lips must be silenced, you say.

What mean you?"

"You know."

"They shall not be harmed while with me!" exclaimed the gondolier. "No man I have ever served has come to harm through me."

"Oh, Lord, boys! Oh, Lord!" palpitated Zenas Gunn, almost overcome by horror. "Do you hear? Do you understand? They are speaking of murder-of killing us!"

"But Reggio is on the level," said d.i.c.k.

"Great howling coyotes!" exclaimed Buckhart. "It begins to look some as if we were going to get mixed up with this Ten, whoever they are."

"Tortora," said the stranger, "you are a great fool! You will be slain, the strangers will disappear, and Teresa-it will be left for me to save her."

"For you?"

"Yes."

"Why, you?"

"Because she is the fairest flower of Venice! Because my sleeping dreams of her and my waking thoughts of her have brought me back to Venice from America, far over the seas."

"By the saints!" cried Reggio, "you are Nicola Mullura!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

WHEN STEEL MEETS STEEL.

"At last you have named me!" laughed the mysterious man.

"You wretch!" panted the gondolier. "How dare you again show your face in Venice?"

"I am not showing it very much," was the cool retort. "Even here, as near as we are, you could not see it well enough to recognize me. By day you might rake the city with a fine comb, and still you would not find me."

"You are a thief, a murderer, and death will be yours if you are discovered!"

"Never fear, my Reggio," was the mocking a.s.surance. "I have friends far more powerful than the authorities of this city. My friends are of the Ten."

"For whom you committed a hundred crimes before you were compelled to flee the country in order to save yourself from the hand of justice.

Well might they be your friends!"

"You are very careless in your speech, Tortora," said the one accused, still with perfect self-possession. "I will take good care of Teresa when you are gone. Trust her to me, my Reggio. In my arms she will be safe."

"Rather than think she might become yours would I slay her with my own hand!" panted the gondolier. "What have you been doing? You have frightened her!"

"I knocked at the door and asked admission. She should have welcomed me with open arms."

"I knew you had frightened her. She loathes you, Nicola Mullura."

"She shall adore me."

"In her room she has been shuddering and praying since you knocked at the door and demanded admission."

"You shall soothe her and tell her I have come to take her with me to America, where, in the city of New York, I am already a great man with my people."