His Worship retired to luncheon, reasonably satisfied with the
morning's work. And yet not altogether delighted. Both the Messiah and
Peter the Great had eluded his wrath. Peter was able to prove, beyond
the shadow of a doubt, that he had spent the last twenty-four hours on
Madame Steynlin's premises and knew nothing whatever of occurrences in
the outside world. In the face of such a fact--so comfortable to common
knowledge, so inherently probable--Malipizzo gave way. He was too good a
lawyer to spoil his case. Sooner or later, he foresaw, that bird would
be caged with the rest of them. Regarding the Messiah, an unexpected
and breathless appeal for mercy was lodged by the Communal doctor,
atheist and freemason like the judge, who implored, with tears in his
eyes, that the warrant for his arrest should be rescinded. By means of
a sequence of rapid and intricate Masonic signs, he explained that
Bazhakuloff was a patient of his; that he was undergoing a daily
treatment with the stomach-pump; that the prison diet being notoriously
slender, he feared that if he, the Messiah, were confined in captivity,
than it, the stomach-pump, would be no longer required and therefore
he, the physician, a family man, deprived of a small but regular source
of income. Again the astute judge relented. This is how the Messiah and
his disciple escaped.

They escaped, but not for long.

And all this happened while Mr. Keith and his companion, drowsily
ensconced among the morocco cushions of their boat, were being wafted
over the blue sea, far away, under the cliffs.