Chapter 19

As he turned swiftly into Royal Street he encountered O'Connell, who, noting his haste and something unusual in his bearing, detained him to ask the cause.

"Haven't you heard?" exclaimed Norvin. "Maruffi's captured at last."

"You don't mean it!"

"Yes. O'Neil told me over the wire not ten minutes ago."

O'Connell fell into step with him, saying, incredulously: "And he came without a fight? Lord! I can't believe it."

"Nor I. I expected trouble with him."

"Sure! I thought he was a bad one, but that's the way it goes sometimes. I reckon he saw he had no chance." The officer shook his red head. "It's just my blamed luck to miss the fun." O'Connell was one of the few who had been first trusted with the news of Maruffi's identity, and for the past fortnight he had been casting high and low for the Sicilian's trail. Ever since that October night when he had supported Donnelly in his arms as the life ebbed from the Chief, ever since he had knelt on the soft banquette with the sting of powder smoke in his nostrils, he had been obsessed by a fanatical desire to be in at the death of his friend's murderers. He left Blake at his destination and hurried on toward St. Phillip Street in the vague hope that he might not be too late to take a hand in some part of the proceedings.

Blake's hand was upon Oliveta's bell when the door opened and she confronted him. Her start, her frightened cry, gave evidence of the nervous dread under which she labored.

"Don't be afraid, Oliveta," he said, quickly. "I come with news--good news."

She swayed and groped blindly for support. He put out his hand to sustain her, but she shrank away from him, saying, faintly: "Then he is captured? God be praised!"

In spite of the words, her eyes filmed over with tears, a look of abject misery bared itself upon her face.

"Where is the Countess?"

"Above--resting. Come; she, too, will rejoice."

"Let me take her the news. You were going out, and--I think the air will do you good. Be brave, Oliveta; you have done your share, and there's nothing more to fear."

She acquiesced dully; her olive features were ghastly as she felt her way past him; she walked like a sick woman.

He watched her pityingly for a moment, then mounted the stairs. As he laid his hand upon the door it gave to his touch and he stood upon the threshold of the parlor. Vittoria's name was upon his lips when, by the dim evening light which came through the drawn curtains and by the faint illumination from the solitary shrine candle, he saw her recumbent form upon the couch.

She was lying in an attitude of complete relaxation, her sun-gilded hair straying in long thick braids below her waist, Those tawny ropes were of a length and thickness to bind a man about the body. Her lips were slightly parted; her lashes lay like dark shadows against her ivory cheeks.

He was swept by a sudden awed abashment. The impulse to retreat came over him, but he lacked the will. The longing which had remained so strong in him through years of denial, governing the whole course of his life, blazed up in him now and increased with every heartbeat. He found that without willing it he had come close to the couch. The girl's slim hand lay upon the cushions, limply upturned to him; it was half open and there sprang through him an ungovernable desire to bury his lips in its rosy palm. He knelt, then quailed and recovered himself. At the same instant she stirred and, to his incredulous delight, whispered his name.

A wild exultation shot through him. Why not yield to this madness, he asked himself, dizzily. The long struggle was over now. For this woman's sake he had repeatedly played the part of bravery in a fever of fear. He had done what he had done to make himself worthy of her, and now, at the last, he was to have nothing--absolutely nothing, except a memory. Against these thoughts his notions of honorable conduct hastily and confusedly arrayed themselves. But he was in no state to reason. The same enchantment, half psychic, half physical, ethereal yet strongly human, that had mastered him in the old Sicilian days, was at work upon him now. Dimly he felt that so mighty and natural a thing ought not to be resisted. He stood stiffly like a man spellbound.

It may have been Oliveta's accusation that affected the course of the sleeping woman's thoughts, it may have been that she felt the man's nearness, or that some influence passed from his mind to hers. However it was, she spoke his name again, her fingers closed over his, she drew him toward her.

He yielded; her warm breath beat upon his face; then the last atoms of self-restraint fled away from him like sparks before a fierce night wind. A fiery madness coursed through his veins as he caught her to him. Her lips were fevered with sleep. For a moment the caress seemed real; it was the climax of his hopes, the attainment of his longings. He crushed her in his arms; her hair blinded him; he buried his face in it, kissing her brow, her cheek, the curve where neck and shoulder met, and all the time he was speaking her name with hoarse tenderness.

So strangely had the fanciful merged into the real that the girl was slow in waking. Her eyelids fluttered, her breast rose and fell tumultuously, and even while her wits were struggling back to reality her arms clung to him. But the transition was brief. Her eyes opened, and she stiffened as with the shock of an electric current. A cry, a swift, writhing movement, and she was upon her feet, his incoherent words beating upon her ears but making no impression upon her brain.

"_You_! God above!" she cried.

She faced him, white, terror-stricken, yet splendid in her anger. She was still dazed, but horror and dismay leaped quickly into her eyes.

"Margherita! You called me. You drew me to you. It was your real self that spoke--I know it."

"You--kissed me while--I slept!"

He paled at the look with which she scorched him, then broke out, doggedly:

"You wanted me; you drew me close. You can't undo that moment--you can't. My God! Don't tell me it was all a mistake. That would make it unendurable. I could never forgive myself."

She hid her face with a choking cry of shame. "No, no! I didn't know--"

He approached and touched her arm timidly. "Margherita," he said, "if I thought you really did not call me--if I were made to believe that I had committed an unpardonable offense against your womanhood and our friendship--I would go and kill myself. But somehow I cannot believe that. I was beside myself--but I was never more exalted. Something greater than my own will made me do as I did. I think it was your love answering to mine. If that is not so--if it is all a delusion--there is nothing left for me. I have played my part out to the end. My work is done, and I do not see how I can go on living."

There was an odd mingling of pain and rapture in the gaze she raised to his. It gave him courage.

"Why struggle longer?" he urged, gently. "Why turn from love when Heaven wills you to receive it and learn to be a woman? I was in your thoughts and you longed for me, as I have never ceased, all these years, to hunger for you. Please! Please! Margherita! Why fight it longer?"

"What have you done? What have you done?" she whispered over and over. She looked toward the open door as if with thought of escape or assistance, and despite his growing hope Blake was miserable at sight of her distress.

"How came you here, alone with me?" she asked at length. "Oliveta was here only a moment ago."

"I came with good news for both of you. I met Oliveta as she went out, and when I had told her she sent me to you. Don't you understand, dear? It was good news. Our quest is over, our work is done, and God has seen fit to deliver our enemy--"

She flung out a trembling hand, while the other hid itself in the silk and lace at her breast.

"What is this you tell me? Maruffi? Am I still dreaming?"

"Maruffi has been arrested."

"Is it possible?--this long nightmare ended at last like this? Maruffi is arrested? You are safe? No one has been killed?"

"It is all right. O'Neil telephoned me and I came here at once to tell you and Oliveta."

"When did they find him? Where?"

"Not half an hour ago--at his house. We have been watching the place ever since he disappeared, feeling sure he'd have to return sooner or later, if only for a moment. He is under lock and key at this instant."

Blake attributed a stir in the hall outside to the presence of the maid-servant; Margherita, whose eyes were fixed upon him, failed to detect a figure which stood in the shadow just beyond the open door.

"Does he know of our part in it--Oliveta's part?" she asked.

"O'Neil didn't say. He'll learn of it shortly, in any event. Do you realize what his capture means? I--hardly do myself. For one thing, there's no further need of concealment. I--I want people to know who you are. It seems hardly conceivable that Belisario Cardi has gone to meet his punishment, but it is true. Lucrezia has her revenge at last. It has been a terrible task for all of us, but it brought you and me together. I don't intend ever to let you go again, Margherita. I loved you there in Sicily. I've loved you every moment, every hour--"

Blake turned at the sound of a door closing behind him. He saw Margherita start, then lean forward staring past him with a look of amazement, of frightened incredulity, upon her face. Some one, a man, had stepped into the dim-lit room and was fumbling with the lock, his eyes fixed upon them, meanwhile, over his shoulder. The light from the windows had faded, the faint illumination from the taper before the shrine was insufficient fully to pierce the gloom. But on the instant of his interruption all triumph and hope, all thoughts of love, fled from Norvin's mind, bursting like iridescent bubbles, at a touch. The flesh along his back writhed, the hair at his neck lifted itself; for there in the shadow, huge, black, and silent, stood Caesar Maruffi.

XXI

UNDER FIRE

Blake heard Margherita's breath release itself. She was staring as if at an apparition. His mind, working with feverish speed, sought vainly to grasp the situation. Maruffi had broken away and come for his vengeance, but how or why this had been made possible he could not conceive. It sufficed that the man was here in the flesh, sinister, terrible, malignant as hell. Blake knew that the ultimate test of his courage had come.

He felt the beginnings of that same shuddering, sickening weakness with which he was only too familiar; felt the strength running out from his body as water escapes from a broken vessel. He froze with the sense of his physical impotency, and yet despite this chaos of conflicting emotions his inner mind was clear; it was bitter, too, with a ferocious self-disgust.

There was a breathless pause before Maruffi spoke.

"Lucrezia Ferara!" he said, hoarsely, as if wishing to test the sound of the name. "So Oliveta is the daughter of the overseer, and you are Savigno's sweetheart." His words were directed at Margherita, who answered in a thin, shrill, broken voice:

"What--are you doing--here?"

"I came for that wanton's blood. Give her to me."

"Oliveta? She is--gone."

The Sicilian cursed. "Gone? Where?"

"Away. Into the street. You--you cannot find her."

"Christ!" Maruffi reached upward and tore open the collar of his shirt.

Blake spoke for the first time, but his voice was dead and lifeless.

"Yes. She's gone. You're wanted. You must go with me!"

Maruffi gave a snarling, growling cry and his gesture showed that he was armed. Involuntarily Blake shrank back; his hand groped for his hip, but, half-way, encountered the pile of silken cushions upon which Margherita had been lying; his fingers sank into them nervously, his other hand gripped the carven footboard of the couch. He had no weapon. He had not dreamed of such a necessity.

In this imminent peril a new fear swept over him greater than any he had ever known. It was not the fear of death. It was something far worse. For the moment, it seemed to him inevitable that Margherita Ginini should, at last, learn the truth concerning him, should see him as he was that night at Terranova. Swift upon the heels of his long-deferred declaration of love would come the proof that he was a craven. Then he thought of her danger, realizing that this man was quite capable in his fury of killing her, too, and he stiffened in every fiber. His cowardice fell away from him like a rotten garment, and he stood erect.

Maruffi, it seemed, had not heard his last words, or else his mind was still set upon Oliveta. "Gone!" he exclaimed. "Then I shall not see her face grow black within my fingers--not yet. God! How I ran!" He cursed again. "But I shall not fare so badly, after all." He stirred, and with his movement Blake flew to action. Swiftly, with one sweep of his right hand, he brought the silken cushions up before his breast and lunged at his enemy. At the same instant Maruffi fired.

In the closed room the detonation was deafening; it rattled the windows, it seemed to bulge the very walls. Blake felt a heavy blow which drove the floss-filled pillows against his body with the force of a giant hammer, it tore them from his grip, it crushed the breath from his lungs and spun him half around. Seeing that he did not fall, Maruffi cocked and fired a second time without aiming, but his victim was upon him like a tiger and together they crashed back against the wall, locked in each other's arms.

Blake's will propelled him splendidly. All that indecision with which fear works upon the mind had left him, but the old contraction of his nerves still hampered his action. The blaze from Maruffi's second shot half blinded him and its breath smote him like a blow.

"Two!" he counted, wonderingly. A pain in his left side, due to that first sledge-hammer impact, was spreading slowly, but he had crossed the room under the belching muzzle of the revolver and was practically unharmed.

There began a struggle--the more terrible since it was unequal--in which the weaker man had to drive his body at the cost of tremendous effort. Blake was like a leader commanding troops which had begun to retreat. But more power came to him under the spur of action and the pressing realization that he must give Margherita a chance to get safely away. If he could not wrest the weapon from Maruffi's hands he knew that he must receive those four remaining bullets in his own body. He rather doubted that he could take that weight of lead.

He shouted to her to run, while he wrestled for possession of the gun. He had flung his right arm about his adversary's body, his other hand gripped his wrist; his head was pressed against Maruffi's chest. The weapon described swift circles, jerking parabolas and figures as the men strained to wrest it from each other. Maruffi strove violently to free his imprisoned hand, and in doing so he discharged the revolver a third time. The bullet brought a shower of plaster from the ceiling, and Blake counted with fierce exultation,

"Three!"

He gasped his warning to the woman again, then twined his leg about his antagonist's in a wrestler's hold, striving mightily to bear Maruffi against the wall. But Caesar was like an oak-tree. Failing to move him, Blake suddenly flung himself backward, with all his weight, lifting at the same instant in the hope of a fall. In this he was all but successful. The two reeled out into the room, tripped, went to their knees, then rose, still intertwined in that desperate embrace. The odd, stiff feeling in Blake's side had increased rapidly; it began to numb his muscles and squeeze his lungs. His eyes were stinging with sweat and smoke; his ears were roaring. As they swayed and turned he saw that Margherita had made no effort to escape and he was seized with an extraordinary rage, which for a brief time renewed his strength.

She was at the front window crying for help.

"Jump! For--God's sake, jump!" he shouted, but she did not obey. Instead she ran toward the combatants and seized Maruffi's free arm, in a measure checking his effort to break the other man's hold. Her closeness to danger agonized Blake, the more as he felt his own strength ebbing, under that stabbing pain in his side. He centered his force in the grip of his left hand, clinging doggedly while the Sicilian flung his two assailants here and there as a dog worries a scarf.

Blake fancied he heard a stamping of feet in the hall outside and the sound of voices, of heavy bodies crashing against the door. Maruffi heard it, too, for with a bellow of fury he redoubled his exertions. A sweep of his arm flung the girl aside; with a mighty wrench of his body he carried Blake half across the room, loosening his hold. Then he seized him by the throat and forced his head back.

The shouting outside was increasing, the pounding was growing louder. Blake's breath was cut off and his strength went swiftly; his death grip on the Sicilian's body slackened. As he tore at the fingers which were throttling him, his left hand slipped, citing to Maruffi's sleeve, and finally began clawing blindly for the weapon. The next moment he was hurled aside, so violently that he fell, his feet entangled in the cushions with which he had defended himself against the first shot.

He rose and renewed his attack, hearing Margherita cry out in horror. This time Maruffi took deliberate aim, and when he fired the figure lurching toward him was halted as if by some giant fist.

"Four!" Blake counted. He was hit, he knew, but he still had strength; there were but two more shots to come. Then he was dazed to find himself upon his knees. As if through a film he saw the Italian turn away and raise his weapon toward the girl, who was wrenching at the door.

"Maruffi!" he shouted. "Oh, God!" then he closed his eyes to shut out what followed. But he heard nothing, for he slipped forward, face down, and felt himself falling, falling, into silence and oblivion.

As O'Connell made his way toward St. Phillip Street he nursed a growing resentment at the news Norvin Blake had given him. His feeling toward Caesar Maruffi had all the fierceness of private hatred, calling for revenge, and he considered himself ill-used in that he had not even been permitted to witness the arrest. He knew Maruffi's countrymen would be likely to make a demonstration, and he was grimly desirous of being present when this occurred.

As he neared the heart of the Italian section he saw a blue-coated officer running toward him.

"What's up?" he cried. "Have the dagoes started something?"

"Maruffi was pinched, but he got away," the other answered. "Johnson is hurt, and--"

O'Connell lost the remaining words, for he had broken into a run.

A crowd had gathered in front of a little shop where the wounded policeman had been carried to await the arrival of an ambulance, and even before O'Connell had heard the full story of the escape Acting-Chief O'Neil drove up behind a lathered horse. He leaped from his mud-stained buggy, demanding, hoarsely:

"Where is he--Maruffi?"

Officer Dean, Johnson's companion, met him at the door of the shop.

"He made his break while I was 'phoning you," he answered.

"Hell! Didn't you frisk him?" roared the Chief.

"Sure! But we missed his gun."

"Caesar carries it on a cord around his neck--nigger-fashion," briefly explained O'Connell.

Dean was running on excitedly: "I heard Johnson holler, but before I could get out into the street Maruffi had shot him twice and was into that alley yonder. I tried to follow, but lost him, so I came back and sent in the alarm."

The Acting Chief cursed under his breath, and with a few sharp orders hurried off the few officers who had reached the scene. Then as an ambulance appeared he passed into the room where Johnson lay. As he emerged a moment later O'Connell drew him aside.

"Maruffi won't try to leave town till it's good and dark," he said. "He's got a girl, and I've an idea he'll ask her to hide him out."

"It was his girl who turned him up--she and Blake--"

O'Connell cried, sharply: "Wait! Does he know she did that? If he does, he'll make for her, sure."

"That may be. Those two women are all alone, and I'd feel better if they were safely out of the way. I'll leave you there on the way back."

An instant later they were clattering over the uneven flags while their vehicle rocked and bounded in a way that threatened to hurl them out.

Even before they reached their destination they saw people running through the dusk toward the house in which the two girls lived and heard a shot muffled behind walls. O'Neil reined the horse to his haunches as the shrill cry of a woman rang out above them, and the next moment he and O'Connell were inside, rushing up the stairs with headlong haste. They were brought to a stop before a bolted door from behind which came the sounds of a furious struggle.

"Blake! Norvin Blake!" shouted O'Connell.

"Break it down!" O'Neil ordered. He set his back against the opposite wall, then launched himself like a catapult. The patrolman followed suit, but although the panels strained and split the heavy door held.

"By God! he's in there!" the Chief cried, as he set his shoulder to the barrier for a second time. "Once more! Together!" Through a crevice which had opened in the upper panels they caught a glimpse of the dimly lighted room. What they saw made them struggle like madmen.

Another shot sounded, and O'Neil in desperation inserted his fingers in the opening and tore at it. Through the aperture O'Connell saw Maruffi run to an open window at the rear, then pause long enough to snatch the taper from its sconce at the foot of the little shrine and, stooping, touch its flame to the long lace curtains. They promptly flashed into a blaze. Parting them, he bestrode, the sill, lowered himself outside, and disappeared. It was an old but effective ruse to delay pursuit.

"Quick! He's set fire to the place," O'Connell gasped, and dashed down the hall.

A tremendous final heave of O'Neil's body cleared his way, a few strides and he was at the window, ripping the blazing hangings down and flinging them into the court below. When he turned it was to behold in the dim twilight Vittoria Fabrizi kneeling beside Blake. Her arms were about him, her yellow hair entwined his figure.

"A light! Somebody get a light!" the Chief roared to those who had followed him up the stairs, then seeing a lamp near by he lit it hurriedly, revealing the full disorder of the room. He knelt beside Vittoria, who drew the fallen man closer to her, moaning something in Italian which O'Neil could not understand. But her look told him enough, and, rising, he ordered some one to run for a doctor. Strangers, white-faced and horrified, were crowding in; the sound of other feet came from the stairs outside, questions and explanations were noisily exchanged. O'Neil swore roundly at the crowd and drove it ahead of him down into the street, where he set a man to guard the door. Then he returned and helped the girl examine her lover's wounds. Her fingers were steady and sure, but in her face was such an abandonment of grief as he had never seen, and her voice was little more than a rasping whisper. They were still working when the doctor came, followed a moment later by a disheveled, stricken figure of tragedy which O'Neil recognized as Oliveta.

At sight of her foster-sister the peasant girl broke into a passion of weeping, but Vittoria checked her with an imperious word, meanwhile keeping her tortured eyes upon the physician. She waited upon him, forestalling his every thought and need with a mechanical dexterity that bore witness to her training, but all the while her eyes held a pitiful entreaty. Not until she heard O'Neil call for an ambulance did she rouse herself to connected speech. Then she exclaimed with hysterical insistence: