companion. Yet no swift retribution stayed his steps; no shot rang
out to arrest his progress. He leaped away, dodging and bounding
like a deer to escape the expected bullet and then disappeared
behind the boulder. But neither rascal delayed a moment. Their
mingled steps instantly rang out; then the clatter faded swiftly
upon the night and silence returned.

For ten minutes nothing happened. Next, out of a lair not fifteen
yards from the distorted dummy, rose a figure that shone white as
snow under the moon. Mark Brendon approached the snare that he
himself had set, shook the grass out of his coat, lifted his hat
from the ball of leaves it covered, and presently drew on his
knickerbockers, having emptied them of their stuffing. He was cold
and calm. He had learned more than he expected to learn; for that
startled exclamation left no doubt at all concerning one of the
grave-diggers. It was Giuseppe Doria who had come to move the body,
and there seemed little doubt that Brendon's would-be murderer was
the other.

"'Corpo di Bacco,' perhaps, but not corpo di Brendon, my friend,"
murmured Mark to himself. Then he turned northward, traversed some
harsh thickets that barred the plateau, and reached a mule track, a
mile beneath, which he had discovered before daylight waned. It led
to Menaggio through chestnut woods.

The operations of the detective from the moment that he fell
headlong, apparently to rise no more, may be briefly chronicled.

When his enemy drew up and fired pointblank upon him, the bullet
passed within an inch of Brendon's ear and the memory of a similar