Chapter 12

"I'm going to move my desk, for one thing, then I'm going to run down this writer. O'Connell is going through the stationery-stores now, trying to match the water-mark on the paper. The post-office is on the lookout for the next letter and will try to find which mail-box it is dropped into."

"Then you think there will be other letters to follow this one?"

"Certainly! When they see that I've moved away from that window they'll think they've got me going, then I'll be warned of another plot, and another, and another. It might work with some people." The speaker's lips curled in a wintry smile.

"You no longer think it came from one of the Pallozzo gang?"

"No! There's nobody in the outfit who can write a letter like that. It's from the Mafia."

"How can you say that when the same writer betrayed Narcone?"

"Oh, I've asked myself the same question," Donnelly answered with a trace of exasperation, "and I can't answer it unless that was merely a case of revenge. Take it from me, I'll get another letter inside of ten days. See if I don't."

True to his prediction, the tenth day brought another warning. The writer advised him that his enemies had changed their plans once more, but would strike, when the first opportunity offered. As to where or when this would occur, no information was given. The Chief was merely urged in the strongest terms to remove himself beyond the possibility of danger.

Naturally the recipient took this as proof positive that the whole affair was no more than a weak attempt to frighten him. Unfortunately, the postal authorities could not determine where the letter had been mailed, and O'Connell reported that the paper on which it was written was of a variety in common use. There seemed to be little hope of tracing the matter back to its source, so Donnelly dismissed the whole affair from his mind and went about his duties undisturbed.

Norvin Blake, however, could not bring himself to take the same view. As usual, he attributed his fears to imagination, yet they preyed upon him so constantly that he was forced to heed them. His one frightful experience with La Mafia had marked him, it seemed, like some prenatal influence, and now the more he dwelt upon the subject, the more his apprehension quickened. He was ashamed to confess to Donnelly, and at the same time he was loath to allow the Chief to expose himself unnecessarily. Therefore he made it a point to be with him as much as possible. This, of course, involved a considerable risk to himself, and he recalled with misgiving what Caesar Maruffi had said that night in the Red Wing Club. Donnelly alone had been warned, but that did not argue that vengeance would be confined to him.

October had come; the lazy heat of summer had passed and New Orleans was awakening under its magic winter climate. The piny, breeze-swept Gulf resorts had emptied their summer colonies cityward, the social season had begun.

The preparations for the great February Carnival were nearing completion, and Blake had the satisfaction of knowing that Myra Nell Warren was to realize her heart's desire. He had forced a loan upon Bernie sufficient to meet the requirements of any Queen, and had spent several delightful evenings with the girl herself, amused by her plans of royal conquest.

It was like a tonic to be with her. Norvin invariably parted from her with a feeling of optimism and a gayety quite reasonless; he had no fears, no apprehensions; the universe was peopled with sprites and fairies, the morrow was a glad adventure full of merriment and promise.

He was in precisely such a mood one drizzly Wednesday night after having made an inexcusably long call upon her. Nothing whatever had occurred to put him in this agreeable humor, yet he went homeward humming as blithely as a barefoot boy in springtime.

As he neared the neighborhood in which Donnelly lived he decided to drop in on him for a few moments and smoke a cigar. Business had lately kept him away from the Chief, and he felt a bit guilty.

But Donnelly had either retired early or else he had not returned from Headquarters, for his windows were dark, and Norvin retraced his steps, a trifle disappointed. In front of a cobbler's shop, across the street, several men were talking, and as he glanced in their direction the door behind them opened, allowing a stream of light to pour forth. He recognized Larubio, the old Italian shoemaker himself, and he was on the point of inquiring if Donnelly had come home, but thought better of it.

Larubio and his companions were idling beneath the wooden awning or shed which extended over the sidewalk, and in the open doorway, briefly silhouetted against the yellow light, Blake noted a man clad in a shining rubber coat. Although the picture was fleeting, it caught his attention.

The thought occurred to him that these men were Italians, and therefore possible Mafiosi, but his mood was too optimistic to permit of silly suspicions. To-night the Mafia seemed decidedly unreal and indefinite.

He found himself smiling again at the memory of an argument in which he had been worsted by Myra Nell. He had taken her a most elaborate box of chocolates and she had gleefully promised to consume at least half of them that very night after retiring. He had remonstrated at such an unhygienic procedure, whereupon she had confessed to a secret, ungovernable habit of eating candy in bed. He had argued that the pernicious practice was sure to wreck her digestion and ruin her teeth, but she had confounded him utterly by displaying twin rows as sound as pearls, as white and regular as rice kernels. Her digestion, he had to confess, was that of a Shetland pony, and he had been forced to fall back upon an unconvincing prophecy of a toothless and dyspeptic old age. He pictured her at this moment propped up in the middle of the great mahogany four-poster, all lace and ruffles and ribbons, her wayward hair in adorable confusion about her face, as she pawed over the sweets and breathed ecstatic blessings upon his name.

Near the corner he stumbled over a boy hiding in the shadows. Then as he turned north on Rampart Street he ran plump into Donnelly and O'Connell.

"I just came from your house," he told Dan. "I thought I'd drop in and smoke one of your bad cigars. Is there anything new?"

"Not much! I've had a hard day and there was a Police Board meeting to-night. I'm fagged out."

"No more letters, eh?"

"No. But I've heard that Sabella is safe in Sicily. That means his finish. I'll have something else to tell you in a day or so; something about your other friend, Cardi."

"No! Really?"

"If what I suspect is true, it'll be a sensation. I can't credit the thing myself, that's why I don't want to say anything just yet. I'm all up in the air over it."

A moment later the three men separated, Donnelly and O'Connell turning toward their respective homes, Blake continuing his way toward the heart of the city.

But the Chief's words had upset Norvin's complacency. His line of thought was changed and he found himself once more dwelling upon the tragedy which had left such a mark upon his life. Martel had been the finest, the cleanest fellow he had ever known; his life, so full of promise, had just begun, and yet he had been ruthlessly stricken down. Norvin shuddered at the memory. He saw the road to Martinello stretching out ahead of him like a ghost-gray canyon walled with gloom; he heard the creaking of saddles, the muffled thud of hoofs in the dust of the causeway, the song of a lover, then--

Blake halted suddenly, listening. From somewhere not far away came the sound again; it was a gunshot, deadened by the blanket of mist and drizzle that shrouded the streets. He turned. It was repeated for a third time, and as he realized whence it came he cried out, affrightedly:

"Donnelly! Donnelly! Oh, God!"

Then he began to run swiftly, as he had run that night four years before, with the lights of Terranova in the distance, and in his heart was that same sickening, horrible terror. But this time he ran, not away from the sound, but towards it.

As he raced along the slippery streets the night air was ripped again and again with those same loud reverberations. He saw, by the flickering arc-lamp above the crossing where he had just left Donnelly, another figure flying towards him, and recognized O'Connell. Together they turned into Girod Street.

They were in time to see a flash from the shed that stood in front of Larubio's shop, then an answering spurt of flame from the side of the street upon which they were. The place was full of noise and smoke. At the farther crossing a man in a shining rubber coat knelt and fired, then rose and scurried into the darkness beyond. Figures broke out from the shadows of the wooden awning in front of Larubio's shop and followed, some turning towards the left at Basin Street, others continuing on through the area lighted by the sputtering street light and into the night. One of them paused and looked back as if loath to leave the spot until certain of his work.

Side by side Blake and O'Connell raced towards the Chief, whom they saw lurching uncertainly along the banquette ahead of them. The detective was cursing; Blake sobbed through his tight-clenched teeth.

Donnelly was down when they reached him, and his empty revolver lay by his side. Norvin raised him with shaking arms, his whole body sick with horror.

"Are you badly--hit, old man?" he gasped.

"I'm--done for!" said the Chief, weakly. "And the dagos did it."

From an open window above them a woman began to scream loudly:

"Murder! Murder!"

The cry was taken up in other quarters and went echoing down the street.

Doors were flung wide, gates slammed, men came hurrying through the wet night, hurling startled questions at one another, but the powder smoke which hung sluggishly in the dark night air was sufficient answer. It floated in thin blue layers beneath the electric lights, gradually fading and melting as the life ebbed from the mangled body of Dan Donnelly.

It was nearing dawn when Norvin Blake emerged from the hospital whither Donnelly had been taken. The air was dead and heavy, a dripping winding-sheet of fog wrapped the city in its folds; no sound broke the silence of the hour. He was sadly shaken, for he had watched a brave soul pass out of the light, and in his ears the words of his friend were ringing:

"Don't let them get away with this, Norvin. You're the only man I trust."

XIII

THE BLOOD OF HIS ANCESTORS

At the Central Station Norvin found a great confusion. City officials and newspaper men were coming and going, telephones were ringing, patrolmen and detectives, summoned from their beds, were reporting and receiving orders; yet all this bustling activity affected him with a kind of angry impatience. It seemed, somehow, perfunctory and inadequate; in the intensity of his feeling he doubted that any one else realized, as he did, the full significance of what had occurred.

As quickly as possible he made his way to O'Neil, the Assistant Superintendent of Police, who was deep in consultation with Mayor Wright. For a moment he stood listening to their talk, and then, at the first pause, interposed without ceremony:

"Tell me--what is being done?"

O'Neil, who had not seemed to note his approach, answered without a hint of surprise at the interruption:

"We are dragging the city."

"Of course. Have you arrested Larubio, the cobbler?"

"No!" Both men turned to Blake now with concentrated attention.

"Then don't lose a moment's time. Arrest all his friends and associates. Look for a man in a rubber coat. I saw him fire. There's a boy, too," he added, after a moment's pause, "about fourteen years old. He was hiding at the corner. I think he must have been their picket; at any rate, he knows something."

The Assistant Superintendent noted these directions, and listened impassively while Norvin poured forth his story of the murder. Before it was fairly concluded he was summoned elsewhere, and, turning away abruptly, he left the room, like a man who knows he must think of but one thing at a time. The young man, wiping his face with uncertain hand, turned to the Mayor.

"Dan was the second friend I've seen murdered by these devils," he said. "I'd like to do something."

"We'll need your help, if it was really the dagoes."

"What? There's no doubt on that score. Donnelly was warned."

"Well, we ought to have them under arrest in short order."

"And then what? They've probably arranged their alibis long ago. The fellows who did the shooting are not the only ones, either. We must get the leaders."

"Exactly. O'Neil understands."

"But he'll fail, as Donnelly failed."

"What would you have us do?"

Blake spoke excitedly, his emotions finding a vent.

"Do? I'd rouse the people. Awaken the city. Create an uprising of the law-abiding. Strip the courts of their red tape and administer justice with a rope. Hang the guilty ones at once, before delay robs their execution of its effect and before there is time to breed doubts and distrust in the minds of the people."

"You mean, in plain words--lynch them?"

"Well, what of that? It's the only--"

"But, my dear young man, the law--"

"Oh, I know what you're going to say, well enough, yet there are times when mob law is justified. If these men are not destroyed quickly they will live to laugh at our laws and our scheme of justice. We must strike terror into the heart of every foreign-born criminal; we must clean the city with fire, unless we wish to see our institutions become a mockery and our community overridden by a band of cutthroats. The killing of Dan Donnelly is more than a mere murder; it is an attack on our civilization."

"You are carried away by your personal feelings."

"I think not. If this thing runs through the regular channels, what will happen? You know how hard it is to convict those people. We must fight fire with fire."

"Personally, I agree with a good deal you say; officially, of course. I can't go so far. You say you want to help. Will you assume a large responsibility? Will you take the lead in a popular movement to help the enforcement of the law--organize a committee?"

"If you think I'm the right man?"

"Good! Understand"--the Mayor spoke now with determined earnestness--"we must have no lynchings; but I believe the police will need help in the search, and I think you are the man to stir up the public conscience and secure that aid. If you can help in apprehending the criminals we shall see that the courts do their part. I can trust you in so delicate a matter where I couldn't trust--some others."

O'Neil appeared at that moment with two strange objects in his hands.

"See what we've just found on the Basin Street banquette."

He displayed a pair of sawed-off shotguns the stocks of which were hinged in such a manner that the weapons could be doubled into a length of perhaps eighteen inches and thus be concealed upon the person. Blake examined them with mingled feelings. Having seen the body of the Chief ripped and torn in twenty places by buckshot, slugs, and scraps of iron, he had tried to imagine what sort of firearms had been used. Now he knew, and he began to wonder whether death would come to him in the same ugly form.

"Have you sent for Larubio?" he asked.

"The men are just leaving."

"I'll go with them."

O'Neil intercepted the officers at the door, and a moment later Norvin was hurrying with them toward Girod Street. Mechanically his mind began to review the events leading up to the murder, dwelling on each detail with painful and fruitless persistence. He repictured the scene that his eye had so swiftly and so carelessly recorded; he saw again the dark shed, the dumb group of figures idling beneath it, the open door and the flood of yellow light behind. But when he strove to recall a single face or form, or even the precise number of persons, he was at a loss. Nothing stood out distinctly but the bearded face of Larubio, the silhouette of a man in a gleaming rubber coat, and, a moment later, a slim stripling boy crouched in the shadows near the corner.

As the party turned into Girod Street he saw by the first streaks of dawn that the curious had already begun to assemble. A dozen or more men were morbidly examining the scene, re-enacting the assassination and tracing the course of bullets by the holes in wall and fence--no difficult matter, since the ground where Donnelly had given battle had been swept by a fusillade.

Larubio's shop was dark.

The officers tried the door quietly, then at a signal from Norvin they rushed it. The next instant the three men found themselves in an evil-smelling room furnished with a bench, some broken chairs, a litter of tools and shoes and leather findings. It was untenanted, but, seeing another door ahead of him, Blake stumbled toward it over the debris. Like the outer door, it was barred, but yielded to his shoulder.

It was well that the policemen were close upon his heels, for they found him locked in desperate conflict with a huge, half-naked Sicilian, who fought with the silent wickedness of a wolf at bay.

The chamber was squalid and odorous; a tumbled couch, from which the occupant had leaped, showed that he had been calmly sleeping upon the scene of his crime. Through the dim-lit filth of the place the cobbler whirled them, struggling like a man insane. A table fell with a crash of dishes, a stove was wrecked, a chair smashed, then he was pinned writhing to the bed from which he had just arisen.

"Close the front door--quick!" Norvin panted. "Keep out the crowd!"

One of the policemen dashed to the front of the hovel barely in time to bar the way.

Larubio, as he crouched there in the half-light, manacled but defiant, made a striking figure. He was a patriarchal man. His hairy, naked chest rose and fell as he fought for his breath, a thick beard grew high upon his cheeks, lending dignity to his fierce aquiline features, a tangled mass of iron-gray hair hung low above his eyes. He looked more like an Arab sheik than a beggarly Sicilian shoemaker.

"Why are you here?" he questioned, in a deep voice.

Blake answered him in his own language:

"You killed the Chief of Police."

"No. I had no part--"

"Don't lie!"

"As God is my judge, I am innocent. I heard the shooting; I looked out into the night and saw men running about. I was frightened, so I went to bed. That is all."

Norvin undertook to stare him down.

"You will hang for this, Larubio," he said.

The fierce gray eyes met his unflinchingly.

"You had a hand in the killing, for I saw you. But you acted against your will. Am I right?"

Still the patriarch flung back his glance defiantly.

"You were ordered to kill and you dared not disobey. Where is Belisario Cardi?"

The old man started. Into his eyes for the briefest instant there leaped a look of terror, then it was gone.

"I do not know what you are talking about," he answered.

"Come! The man with the rubber coat has confessed."

Larubio's gaze roved uncertainly about the squalid quarters; but he shook his head, mumbling:

"God will protect the innocent. I know nothing, your Excellency."

They dragged him, still protesting, from his den as dogs drag an animal from its burrow. But Norvin had learned something. That momentary wavering glance, that flitting light of doubt and fear, had told him that to the cobbler the name of Cardi meant something real and terrible.

Back at headquarters O'Neil had further information for him.

"We've got Larubio's brother-in-law, Caspardo Cressi. It was his son, no doubt, whom you saw waiting at the corner."

"Have you found the boy?"

"No, he's gone."

"Then make haste before they have time to spirit him away. These men won't talk, but we might squeeze something out of the boy. He's the weakest link in the chain, so you _must_ find him."

The morning papers were on the street when Norvin went home. New Orleans had awakened to the outrage against her good name. Men were grouped upon corners, women were gossiping from house to house, the air was surcharged with a great excitement. It was as if a public enemy had been discovered at the gates, as if an alien foe had struck while the city slept. That unformed foreign prejudice which had been slowly growing had crystallized in a single night.

To Norvin the popular clamor, which rose high during the next few days, had a sickening familiarity. At the time of Martel Savigno's murder he had looked upon justice as a thing inevitable, he had felt that the public wrath, once aroused, was an irresistible force; yet he had seen how ineffectually such a force could spend itself. And the New Orleans police seemed likely to accomplish little more than the Italian soldiers. Although more than a hundred arrests were made, it was doubtful if, with the exception of Larubio and Cressi, any of the real culprits had been caught. He turned the matter over in his mind incessantly, consulted with O'Neil as to ways and means, conferred with the Mayor, sounded his friends. Then one morning he awoke to find himself at the head of a Committee of Justice, composed of fifty leading business men of the city, armed with powers somewhat vaguely defined, but in reality extremely wide. He set himself diligently to his task.

There followed through the newspapers an appeal to the Italian population for assistance, and offers of tremendous rewards. This resulted in a flood of letters, some signed, but mostly anonymous, a multitude of shadowy clues, of wild accusations. But no sooner was a promising trail uncovered than the witness disappeared or became inspired with a terror which sealed his lips. It began to appear that there was really no evidence to be had beyond what Norvin's eyes had photographed. And this, he knew, was not enough to convict even Larubio and his brother-in-law.

While thus baffled and groping for the faintest clue, he received a letter which brought him at least a ray of sunshine. He had opened perhaps half of his morning's mail one day when he came upon a truly remarkable missive. It was headed with an amateurish drawing or a skull; at the bottom of the sheet was a dagger, and over all, in bright red, was the life-size imprint of a small, plump hand.

In round, school-girl characters he read as follows:

"Beware! You are a traitor and a deserter, therefore you are doomed. Escape is impossible unless you heed this warning. Meet me at the old house on St. Charles Street, and bring your ransom. "THE AVENGER."

At the lower left-hand corner, in microscopic characters, was written:

"I love chocolate nougat best."

Norvin laughed as he re-read this sanguinary epistle, for he had to admit that it had given him a slight start. Being a man of action, he walked to the telephone and called a number which had long since become familiar.

"Is this the Creole Candy Kitchen? Send ten pounds of your best chocolate nougat to Miss Myra Nell Warren at once. This is Blake speaking. Wait! I have enough on my conscience without adding another sin. Perhaps you'd better make it five pounds now and five pounds a week hereafter. Put it in your fanciest basket, with lots of blue ribbon, and label it 'Ransom!'"

Next he called the girl himself, and after an interminable wait heard a breathless voice say:

"Hello, Norvin! I've been out in the kitchen making cake, so I couldn't get away. It's in the oven now, cooking like mad."

"I've just received a threatening letter," he told her.

"Who in the world could have sent it?"

"Evidently some blackmailing wretch. It demands a ransom."

"Heavens! You won't be cowardly enough to yield?"

"Certainly. I daren't refuse."

He heard her laughing softly. "Why don't you tell the police?"

"Indeed! There's an army of men besieging the place now."

"Then you must expect to catch the writer?"

"I've been trying to for a long time."

"I'm sure I don't know what you are talking about," she said, innocently.