For a week St. Hilary scarcely left my room. He ate little; he smoked boxes of cigarettes; he consumed pots of black coffee. Such sleep as he had he snatched for an hour at a time in my armchair. And always in front of him were the photographs of the backgrounds of the twelve hours.

As for me, I waited on him hand and foot. I was a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. Now I went to Rosen’s to buy some volume, now to Organia’s to borrow a collection of rare prints, now to the Museo Civico to consult the director. The archives of the Frari, the Academy of Arts, each of them saw me often. In the morning, perhaps I looked at a picture of Carpaccio or Bellini; in the afternoon I explored an obscure canaletto.

I was content to take the humbler position. St. Hilary had a right to command. His had been the discovery that made the search possible. Again, it seemed fit that his quicker brain 160should catch the fire, the inspiration. I did not doubt but that sooner or later from the mass of lifeless evidence, which he was heaping about him, he would surely draw forth the secret.

But now, after a week of fruitless searching, his chin a reproach, his hands trembling, and his temper a thing to be respected, he leaned back in the chair and despaired.

“It is useless,” he sighed. “The thing is not to be done in a day or a week. I have not the art of divination. Sometimes I feel that I am on the right track. I grope; I touch something; I clutch at it, but it eludes me, always. There stands the ticking, mocking braggart. It laughs at us with its brazen wheels; it mocks us with its silver tongue. I believe that the spirit of the mad goldsmith actually dwells in its hollow sides.”

And yet, in spite of St. Hilary’s despair, we had accomplished something.

Of the original automata of the twelve hours we had found four only to be in actual working order. In three of the hours, some of the figures were intact, and some were broken. In the five remaining hours, the figures were completely lacking.

To consider the four hours with the figures intact, namely, 1, 2, 6, 7:

1611.–A robed figure and a lion. The lion nods once.

2.–A figure standing over a kneeling slave in an attitude of menace, twice strikes the neck of the slave with a sword.

6.–A dancing figure advances ten steps forward and retreats ten steps.

7.–A dove appears at the window of a tower.

In hours 3, 8, 9, some of the figures were intact, some broken:

3.–A robed figure seated in a chair. Before this figure, designedly motionless, ten disks appear in succession, and are ranged in a row. The figures are broken off the disks.

8.–A crowned figure standing on a dais before a throne. A second figure at the foot of the throne is broken off.

9.–A seated figure with a scepter.

In hours 4, 5, 10, 11, 12 there was not the slightest fragment of the figures remaining.

So much for the automata.

The scenes of the bas-reliefs of the backgrounds were as follows:

1.–A palace, plainly the Doge’s palace. Seven arches of the palace are seen. Beneath six of these arches groups of men are standing–ten figures in each group, or sixty in all.

2.–A hanging.

1623.–A gate.

4.–Three trees; a beast of burden, probably a camel; a well.

5.–Badly mutilated.

6.–Two figures seated on the balcony over the doorway of San Marco. One figure wears the Doge’s cap; the other is crowned with a wreath of laurel.

7.–A barge on a stormy sea.

8.–An empty room in a palace. The door is open; no figures are seen.

9.–Thirteen kneeling figures with outstretched hands.

10.–Six gondolas in procession; tritons spouting.

11.–Mutilated.

12.–Three figures holding out bags.

Such were the automata and the bas-reliefs in the backgrounds of the twelve hours.

As to the scenes they represented, St. Hilary had made a rough guess at most of them. Four or five of the scenes he thought he had identified unmistakably. All twelve of them were scenes out of Venetian history. When I urged him for the results he had gained so far, he declared at first that they were too meager to be suggestive. But I was not to be balked.

“I have been running your errands for a week, 163St. Hilary,” I reminded him. “I have been your obedient messenger–an intelligent messenger, if you will–and I have left you to do the piecing together of the different parts of the puzzle. Now I want to know what you have accomplished.”

“There is very little to tell,” he said sulkily. “Scene one represents St. Mark and his lion, the tutelary saint of Venice. As to the second scene, the story is in every guide-book. The artist Gentile Bell............