rd-box, marked in print on the outside: "Selections from Faust,"
and in pencil on the inside of the lid: "For the hands of D. L. only--to
be destroyed if Deputy David Rossi does not know where to find him."

The heavy rain had darkened the room, but by the red light of a dying
fire he could see that her face had turned white.

"And this contains my father's voice?" she said.

"His last message."

"He is dead--two years dead--and yet...."

"Can you bear to hear it?"

"Go on," she said, hardly audibly.

He took back the cylinder, put it on the phonograph, wound up the
instrument, and touched the lever. Through the strokes of the rain,
lashing the window like a hundred whips, the whizzing noise of the
machine began.

He was standing by her side, and he felt her hand on his arm.

Then through the sound of the rain and of the phonograph there came a
clear, full voice:

"David Leone--your old friend Doctor Roselli sends you his dying
message...."

The hand on Rossi's arm clutched it convulsively, and, in a choking
whisper, Roma said:

"Wait! Give me one moment."

She was looking around the darkening room as if almost expecting a
ghostly presence.

She bowed her head. Her breath came quick and fast.

"I am better now. Go on," she said.

The whirring noise began again, and after a moment the clear voice came
as before:

"My son, the promise I made when we parted in London I fulfilled
faithfully, but the letter I wrote you never came to your hands. It was
meant to tell you who I was, and why I changed my name. That is too long
a story now, and I must be brief. I am Prospero Volonna. My father was
the last prince of that name. Except the authorities and their spies,
nobody in Italy knows me as Roselli and nobody in England _as_
Volonna--nobody but one, my poor dear child, my daughter Roma."

The hand tightened on Rossi's arm, and his head began to swim.

"Little by little, in this grave of a living man, I have heard what has
happened since I was banished from the world. The treacherous letter
which called me back to Italy and decoyed me into the hands of the
police was the work of a man who now holds my estates as the payment for
his treachery."

"The Baron?"

Rossi had stopped the phonograph.

"Can you bear it?" he said.

The pale young face flushed with resolution.

"Go on," she said.

When the voice from the phonograph began again it was more tremulous and
husky than before.

"After he had