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."