“You would say that, of course. He cannot recall such a conversation. And yet, alas, he managed to survive your malicious abuse and lives to testify against you! A tough as well as a courageous young man!”

“But inclined to sycophantic prevarication.”

“I have two witnesses to your sorcery yesterday. My colleagues were very distressed to hear of this outrage when I reported to them last night. They were inclined to give some credit to your youth and lay most of the blame on the evil old man who has perverted you. These things would come out at the trial.”

He smiled again. Likely the job offer had come from his two fellow inquisitors. He had delivered it and I had refused it. Now I was fair game.

I had my shoes on, I was ready. “But you admit that one witness is a hysterical juvenile. Shall we go and see if Doctor Nostradamus has managed to silence the other one yet?”

O ut in the salone, I detected mouth-watering odors from the kitchen. Noemi was hovering there anxiously. Noemi is so delicate she could almost hover literally, and I can never meet her eye without smiling.

“Ready?”

She nodded vigorously.

“I shall tell the Maestro,” I said. “It seems our feast is ready, Your Excellency.”

Gritti walked on without comment, ignoring the statuary and paintings. Back at the atelier we found Vasco sitting on a chair-not one of the best-and sipping a glass of wine. Loss of blood always imparts a strong thirst and the redness of wine makes it the best fluid to help the body replace the loss. He was huddled under a blanket, which at least hid his bandaged arm and blood-ruined garments. His pallor was less marked than before, but with a grotesquely swollen nose trailing wisps of packing and two rapidly developing black eyes, he looked as if he had fallen headfirst off a bell tower. I don’t say he had earned all that. I don’t say he hadn’t, either.

Beside him stood Missier Grande, who was a surprise but not much of one, for he would have heard from the fante about his deputy’s injury. The look he gave me conveyed little appreciation of the work I had done to bring the man back alive.

The Maestro was wiping his hands on a damp cloth. He scowled approvingly at me. “If you must waste so much money on clothes, they deserve to be worn in good company. I was just telling Missier Grande that his vizio owes his life to you yet again, Alfeo.”

“Again?” murmured the inquisitor. “You mean again after yesterday?”

“No.” The Maestro’s smirk told me that he had been dragging bait, although Gritti might not realize that. “I was thinking of the time when the gondola overturned and Alfeo had to tow the vizio to shore.”

“Our prima colazione is ready, master,” I said hopefully.

“Your Excellency,” Missier Grande said, “I should see the vizio home.”

“Not just yet.” Gritti walked over to one the green chairs and turned it so he could include Vasco in his field of view. “First I want answers to a couple of questions.”

“As you please,” the Maestro said with unusual amiability.

He hobbled to his red chair, leaning on furniture because he had left his staff there. I went to my side of the desk and sat. Missier Grande remained standing. The two fanti were out in the androne, watching through the open door and within easy hail.

“Doctor Nostradamus,” Gritti said, staring intently at him, “yesterday you did not know who Algol was. Do not interrupt me! If you had known you would have said so, and you didn’t. You merely said you would tell me today, and this morning you sent your boy all the way to the Giudecca to accost a man who had not previously been mentioned in this case. To the best of my recollection, the name of Francesco Guarini has never been brought before the Ten. I grant you that his reaction to Zeno’s summons was suspicious and his violence against the vizio will send him to the galleys, but where is your evidence that he has anything to do with either the Algol matter or the death of Danese Dolfin? Explain.”

The Maestro leaned back, rested his elbows on the arms of his chair, and put his fingertips together, five and five. That almost always means that he is about to start lecturing, but for once it did not.

“The revered and mighty Council of Ten does not reveal all its methods, Your Excellency. I have my own professional secrets and need them to earn my living. I assure you that you have your man and a couple of witnesses are available. With a little encouragement, Guarini will confess to everything.”

Inquisitors do not take kindly to defiance. Indeed, they take very cruelly to it, and Gritti’s smile clotted my blood like butter. “But it is you I am presently encouraging. You will tell me how you learned his name. I will know who told you, and when. I am prepared to go to great lengths to get the truth.”

There was the ultimatum. We were back to the question of how much torture a frail octogenarian could stand, and who else might be questioned in his stead. Gritti meant what he was saying. He was clearly prepared to accept as a working hypothesis that Guarini was Algol and would solve both the espionage case and the murder for him. Now he was investigating the problem of black magic. He had the scent of witchcraft in his nostrils and a true fanatic sees witchcraft as much worse than espionage.

“I am not prepared to tell you at this time,” the Maestro said calmly, making as if to rise. “After we have eaten I may say more on the topic, but I believe it is irrelevant.”

“It is relevant if I say it is!” The inquisitor’s rubicund face darkened a few shades.

“But I know the details and you do not.” If the Maestro was deliberately trying to get both himself and me arrested, he was certainly proceeding in the correct manner.

“Filippo Nostradamus, I am aware of your international reputation as a doctor. I am also aware of your reputation as a philosopher who dabbles in the dark arts, and I fear that this time you have dabbled much deeper than any Christian should, or can without selling his soul to the Enemy. I am aware that you have served La Serenissima well in the past, but I will not and cannot tolerate Satanism. How did you learn that Algol was Francesco Guarini?”

“Black magic,” said Filiberto Vasco.

Heads turned. Now who was the life of the party?

“You have our attention, Vizio,” the inquisitor said.

Judging by his gleeful expression, Vasco was rising above his pain. “When Zeno knocked on Guarini’s door, Guarini called out to ask who he was.” His voice was muffled and slurred by all the wine that he had consumed, but he was not too drunk to know what he was saying, and he was looking at me, not Gritti, gloating over worse tales he had yet to tell. “Zeno wouldn’t tell him. First he asked for Guarini by name. Then he asked for ‘Mirphak.’ And finally he said that the dead man sent him!”

“Mirphak?” Gritti looked to me.

I hope my smile was debonair and not grotesque. “A shot in the dark, Your Excellency. Algol is the second brightest star in the constellation of Perseus. Mirphak is the brightest. If one was a code name, then the other might be. I was hoping it might provoke a guilty reaction.”

Undeceived, the inquisitor shook his head contemptuously and looked back to Vasco, who probably tried to smile, because he winced with sudden pain.

“But when Zeno said, ‘Danese Dolfin sent me,’ Guarini threw the door open and attacked him.”

“That one worked,” I explained brightly.

And that one worked for Gritti, too. It would have been a believable ruse for me to try, and it had produced a convincing indication of guilt. He shrugged.

“It was true,” Vasco protested. “Dolfin did send him! That was how they learned the name. Last night, Nostradamus and Zeno raised the ghost of Danese Dolfin and made it tell them who murdered him.”