when, being defied by her whom the Prefect terms 'a certain personage,' he is reduced to opening the letter which I left for him in the card-rack." [31] "How? did you put anything particular in it?" "Why, it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank; that would have been insulting. D——, at Vienna once, did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humouredly, that I should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clew. He is well acquainted with my MS.,[32] and I just copied into the middle of the blank sheet the words [32] "'—Un dessein si funeste, S'il n'est digne d'Atrée, est digne de Thyeste.' "'—Un dessein si funeste, They are to be found in Crébillon's Atrée." [33] [33] II THE BLACK HAND Arthur B. Reeve[A] Arthur B. Reeve Kennedy and I had been dining rather late one evening at Luigi's, a little Italian restaurant on the lower West Side. We had known the place well in our student days, and had made a point of visiting it once a month since, in order to keep in practice in the fine art of gracefully handling long shreds of spaghetti. Therefore we did not think it strange when the proprietor himself stopped a moment at our table to greet us. Glancing furtively around at the other diners, mostly Italians, he suddenly leaned over and whispered to Kennedy: "I have heard of your wonderful detective work,
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