Several days later Vittoria Fabrizi led Bernie Dreux into the room
where Norvin lay. The little man walked on tiptoe and wore an
expression of such gloomy sympathy that Blake said:
"Please don't look so blamed pious; it makes me hurt all over."
Bernie's features lightened faintly; he smiled in a manner bordering
upon the natural.
"They wouldn't let me see you before. Lord! How you have frightened us!"
"My nurse won't let me talk."
Blake's eyes rested with puzzled interrogation upon the girl, who
maintained her most professional air as she smoothed his pillow and
admonished him not to overtax himself. When she had disappeared
noiselessly, he said:
"Well, you needn't put a rose in my hand yet awhile. Tell me what has
happened? How is Myra Nell?"
"She's heartbroken, of course. She came here that first night; but the
smell of drugs makes her sick."
"I suppose Maruffi got away?"
Dreux straightened in his chair; his face flushed proudly; he put on at
least an inch of stature. "Haven't you heard?" he inquired,
incredulously.
"How could I hear anything when I'm doctored by a deaf-mute and nursed
by a divinity without a tongue?"
"Maruffi was captured that very night. Sure! Why, the whole country
knows about it." Again a look of mellow satisfaction glowed on the
little man's face. "My dear boy, you're a hero, of course,
but--there--are--others."
"Who caught him?"
"I did."
"_You!_" Norvin stared in open-mouthed amazement.
"That's what I said. I--me--Mr. Bernard Effingwell Dreux, the prominent
cotillion leader, the second-hand dealer, the art critic and amateur
detective. I unearthed the notorious and dreaded Sicilian desperado in
his lair, and now he's cooling his heels in the parish prison along
with his little friends."
"Why--I'm astonished."
"Naturally! I found him in Joe Poggi's house. Mr. Poggi also languishes
in the bastille."
"How in the world--"
"Well, it's quite a story, and it all happened through the woman--"
Bernie flushed a bit as he met his companion's eye. "When I told you
about Mrs. Poggi I didn't exactly go into all the
intimate--er--details. The truth is she became deeply interested in me.
I told you how I met her--Well, she wasn't averse to receiving my
attentions--Heavens, no! She ate 'em up! Before I knew it I found
myself entangled in an intrigue--I had hold of an electric current and
couldn't let go. When I didn't follow her around, she followed me. When
I didn't make love, she did. She learned about Felicite, and there
was--Excuse me!" Bernie rose, put his head cautiously outside the door
to find the coast clear, then said: "Hell to pay! I tried to back out;
but you can't back away from some women any more than you can back away
from a prairie fire." He shook his head gloomily. "It seems she wasn't
satisfied with Poggi; she had ambitions. She'd caught a glimpse of the
life that went on around her and wanted to take part in it. She thought
I was rich, too--my name had something to do with it, I presume--at any
rate, she began to talk of divorce, elopement, and other schemes that
terrorized me. She was quite willing that I murder her husband, poison
her relatives, or adopt any little expedient of that kind which would
clear the path for our true love. I was in over my depth, but when I
backed water she swam out and grabbed me. When I stayed away from her
she looked me up. I tried once to tell her that I didn't really care
for her--only once." The memory brought beads of sweat to the
detective's brow. "Between her and Felicite I led a dog's life. If I'd
had the money I'd have left town.
"I'd been meeting her on street corners up to that point; but she
finally told me to come to the house while Poggi was away--it was the
day you were hurt. I rebelled, but she made such a scene I had to agree
or be arrested for blocking traffic. She carries a dagger, Norvin, in
her stocking, or somewhere; it's no longer than your finger, but it's
the meanest-looking weapon I ever saw. Well, I went, along about dark,
determined to have it out with her once for all; but those aristocrats
during the French Revolution had nothing on me. I know how it feels to
mount the steps of the guillotine.
"The Poggi's parlor furniture is upholstered in red and smells musty. I
sat on the edge of a chair, one eye on her and the other taking in my
surroundings. There's a fine crayon enlargement of Joe with his
uniform, in a gold frame with blue mosquito-netting over it to
disappoint the flies--four ninety-eight, and we supply the frame--done
by an old master of the County Fair school. There's an organ in the
parlor, too, with a stuffed fish-hawk on it.
"She seemed quite subdued and coy at first, so I took heart, never
dreaming she'd wear her dirk in the house. But say! That woman was
raised on raw beef. Before I could wink she had it out; it has an ivory
hilt, and you could split a silk thread with it. I suppose she didn't
want to spoil the parlor furniture with me, although I'd never have
showed against that upholstery, or else she's in the habit of preparing
herself for manslaughter by a system of vocal calisthenics. At any
rate, we were having it hot and heavy, and I was trying to think of
some good and unselfish actions I had done, when we heard the back door
of the cottage open and close, then somebody moving in the hall.
"Mrs. Poggi turned green--not white--green! And I began to picture the
head-lines in the morning papers! 'The Bachelor and the Policeman's
Wife,' they seemed to say. It wasn't Poggi, however, as I discovered
when the fellow called to her. He was breathing heavily, as if he had
been running. She signaled me to keep quiet, then went out; and I heard
them talking, but couldn't understand what was said. When she came back
she was greener than ever, and told me to go, which I did, realizing
that the day of miracles is not done. I fell down three times, and ran
over a child getting out of that neighborhood." Blake, who had listened
eagerly, inquired:
"The man was Maruffi?"
"Exactly! I got back to the club in time to hear about his arrest and
escape and your fight here. The town was ringing with it; everybody was
horrified and amazed. What particularly stunned me was the news that
Maruffi, not Poggi, was the head of the Mafia; but my experience in
criminal work has taught me to be guided by circumstances, and not
theory, so when I learned more about Caesar's escape I fell to
wondering where he could hide. Then I recalled his secret meetings with
Joe Poggi and that scalding volcano of emotion from whom I had just
been delivered. Her fright, when she let me out, something familiar in
the voice which called to her, came back, and--well, I couldn't help
guessing the truth. Maruffi was in the house of one of the officers who
was supposed to be hunting him."
"But his capture?"
"Simple enough. I went to O'Neil and told him. We got a posse together
and went after him. We descended in such force and so suddenly that he
didn't have a chance to resist. If I'd known who he was at first I'd
have tried to take him single-handed."
"Then it's well you didn't know." Blake smiled.
"What bothers me," Dreux confessed, "is how Mrs. Poggi regards my
action. I--I hate to appear a cad. I'd apologize if I dared."
Vittoria appeared to warn Dreux that his visit must end. When the
little man had gone Norvin inquired:
"You knew of Maruffi's arrest?"
"Oh, yes!"
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"You were in no condition to hear news of importance."
"Is that why you have been so silent?"
"Hush! You have talked quite enough for the present."
"You act strangely--differently," he insisted.
"I am your nurse. I am responsible for your recovery, so I do as I am
ordered."
"And you haven't changed?" he inquired, wistfully.
"Not at all, I am quite the same--quite the same girl you knew in
Sicily!" He did not relish her undertone, and wondered if illness had
quickened his imagination, if he was forever seeing more in her manner,
hearing more in her words than she meant. There was something
intangibly cold and distant about her, or seemed to be. During the
first feverish hours after his return to consciousness he had seen her
hanging over him with a wonderful loving tenderness--it was that which
had closed his wounds and brought him back toward health so swiftly;
but as his brain had cleared and he had grown more rational this vision
had disappeared along with his other fancies.
He wondered whether knowledge of his pseudo-engagement to Myra Nell had
anything to do with her manner. He knew that she was in the girl's
confidence. Naturally, he himself was not quite at his ease in regard
to Miss Warren. The rumor about his advancing the money for her
Carnival expenses had been quieted through Bernie's efforts, and the
knowledge of it restricted to a necessary few. Although Myra Nell had
refused his offers of marriage and treated the matter lightly, he could
not help feeling that this attitude was assumed or exaggerated to cover
her humiliation--or was it something deeper? It would be terrible if
she really cared for him in earnest. Her own character protected her
from scandal. The breaking-off of his supposed engagement with her
could not hurt her--unless she really loved him. He closed his eyes,
cursing Bernie inwardly. After a time he again addressed Vittoria.
"Tell me," he said, "how Maruffi came to spare you. My last vision was
of him aiming--"
"He had but four shots."
"Four?"
"Yes, he had used two in his escape from the officers--before he came
here."
"I see! It was horrible. I felt as if I had failed you at the critical
moment, just as I failed--"
"As you failed whom?"
"Martel!" The word sounded in his ears with a terrible significance; he
could hardly realize that he had spoken it. He had always meant to tell
her, of course, but the moment had taken him unawares. His conscience,
his inmost feeling, had found a voice apart from his volition. There
was a little silence. At length she said in a low, constrained tone.
"Did you fail--him?"
"I--I did," he said, chokingly; and, the way once opened, he made a
full and free confession of his craven fear that night on the road to
Terranova, told her of the inherent cowardice which had ever since
tortured and shamed him, and of his efforts to reconstruct his whole
being. "I wanted to expiate my sin," he finished, "and, above all, I
have longed to prove myself a man in your sight."
She listened with white, set face, slightly averted. When she turned to
him at last, he saw that her eyes were wet with tears.
"I cannot judge of these matters," she said. "You--you were no coward
the other night, amico mio. You were the bravest of the brave. You
saved my life. As for that other time, do not ask me to turn back and
judge. You perhaps blame yourself too much. It was not as if you could
have saved Martel. It is rather that you should have at least
tried--that is how you feel, is it not? You had to reckon with your own
sense of honor. Well, you have won your fight; you have become a new
person, and you are not to be held responsible for any action of that
Norvin Blake I knew in Sicily, who, indeed, did not know his own
weakness and could not guard against it. Ever since I met you here in
New Orleans I have known you for a brave, strong man. It is
splendid--the way in which you have conquered yourself--splendid! Few
men could have done it. Be comforted," she added, with a note of
tenderness that answered the pleading in his eyes--"there is no
bitterness in my heart."
"Margherita," he cried, desperately, "can't you--won't you--"
"Oh," she interposed, peremptorily, "do not say it. I forbid you to
speak." Then, as he fell silent, she continued in a manner she strove
to make natural: "That dear girl, Myra Nell Warren, has inquired about
you daily. She has been distracted, heartbroken. Believe me, caro
Norvin, there is a true and loving woman whom you cannot cast aside.
She seems frivolous on the surface, I grant you. Even I have been
deceived. But at the time of Mr. Dreux's dreadful faux pas she was so
hurt, she grieved so that I couldn't but believe she felt deeply."
Norvin flushed dully and said nothing.
Vittoria smiled down upon him with a look that was half maternal in its
sweetness.
"All this has been painful for you," she said, "and you have become
over-excited. You must not talk any more now. You are to be moved soon."
"Aren't you going to be my nurse any more?"
"You are to be taken home."
His hand encountered hers, and he tried to thank her for what she had
done, but she rose and, admonishing him to sleep, left the room
somewhat hurriedly.
In the short time which intervened before Norvin was taken to his own
quarters Vittoria maintained her air of cool detachment. Myra Nell came
once, bringing Bernie with her, much to the sick man's relief; his
other friends began to visit him in rapidly increasing numbers; he
gradually took up the threads of his every-day life which had been so
rudely severed. Meanwhile, he had ample time to think over his
situation. He could not persuade himself that Vittoria had been right
in her reading of Myra Nell. Perhaps she had only put this view forward
to shield herself from the expression of a love she was not ready to
receive. He could not believe that he had been deluded, that there was
in reality no hope for him.
Mardi Gras week found him still in bed and unable to witness Myra
Nell's triumph. During the days of furious social activity she had
little time to give him, for the series of luncheons, of pageants, of
gorgeous tableaux and brilliant masked balls kept her in a whirl of
rapturous confusion, and left her scant leisure in which to snatch even
her beauty sleep.
Since she was to be the flower of the festival, and since her beauty
was being saved for the grand climax of the whole affair, she had no
idea of sacrificing it. Proteus, Momus, the Mistick Krewe of Comus, and
the other lesser societies celebrated their distinctive nights with
torch and float and tableau; the city was transformed by day with
bunting and flags, by night it was garlanded with fire; merrymakers
thronged the streets, their carnival spirit entered into every breast.
It was a glad, mad week of gaiety, of dancing, of laughter, of flirting
and love-making under the glamour of balmy skies and velvet torch-lit
nights; and to the pleasure of the women was added the delicious
torture of curiosity regarding those mysterious men in masks who came
through a blaze of fire and departed, no one knew whither.
As the spirit of the celebration mounted, Myra Nell abandoned herself
to it; she lived amid a bewilderment of social obligations, through
which she strove incessantly to discover the identity of her King.
Finding herself unsuccessful in this, her excitement redoubled. At last
came his entrance to the city; the booming cannon, the applauding
thousands, his royal progress through the streets toward the
flower-festooned stand where she looked down upon the multitude. Miss
Warren's maids of honor were the fairest of all this fair city, and yet
she stood out of that galaxy as by far the most entrancing.
Her royal consort came at length, a majestic figure upon a float of
ivory and gold; he took the goblet from her hand; he pledged her with
silent grace while the assembled hordes shouted their allegiance to the
pair. She knew he must be very handsome underneath his mask; and he was
bold also, in a quite unkingly way, for there was more in his glance
than the greeting of a monarch; there was ardent love, a burning
adoration which thrilled her breast and fanned her curiosity to a
leaping flame. This was, indeed, life, romance, the purple splendor for
which she had been born. She could scarcely contain herself until the
hour of the Rex ball, when she knew her chance would come to match her
charm and beauty against his voiceless secrecy. She was no longer a
make-believe queen, but a royal ruler, beloved by her subjects, adored
by her throne-mate. Then the glittering ball that followed!--the
blazing lights, the splendid pantomime, the great shifting kaleidoscope
of beauteous ladies and knightly men in gold and satin and coats of
mail! And, above all, the maddening mystery of that king at her side
whose glances were now melting with melancholy, now ablaze with
eagerness, and whose whispered words, muffled behind his mask, were not
those of a monarch, but rather those of a bold and audacious lover! He
poured his vows into her blushing ear; he set her wits to scampering
madly; his sincere passion, together with the dream-like unreality of
the scene, intoxicated her. Who could he be? How dared he say these
things? What faint familiar echo did his voice possess? Which one of
her many admirers had the delightful effrontery to court her thus
ardently beneath a thousand eyes? He was drunk with the glory of this
hour, it seemed, for he whispered words she dared not listen to. What
preposterous proposals he voiced; what insane audacity he showed! And
yet he was in deadly earnest, too. She canvassed her many suitors in
her mind, she tried artfully to trap him into some betrayal; the game
thrilled her with a keen delight. At last she realized there was but
one who possessed such brazen impudence, and told him she had known him
from the first, whereat he laughed with the abandon of a pagan and
renewed the fervor of his suit.
Blake learned from many sources that Myra Nell had made a gorgeous
Queen. The papers lauded her grace, her beauty, the magnificence of her
costumes. Bernie was full of it and could talk of nothing else when he
dropped in as usual.
"She's all tired out, and I reckon she'll sleep for a week. I hope so,
anyhow."
"I'm sorry I couldn't see her, but I'm glad I escaped the Carnival. The
Mardi Gras is hard enough on the women; but it kills us men."
"I should say so. Look at me--a wreck." After a moment he added: "You
think Myra Nell is all frivolity and glitter, but she isn't; she's as
deep as the sea, Norvin. I can't tell you how glad I am that you
two--" Blake stirred uneasily. "I--I admire you tremendously, for you're
just what I wanted to be and couldn't. I'm talking foolishly, I know,
but this Carnival has made me see Myra Nell in a new light; I see now
that she was born for joy and luxury and splendor and--and those things
which you can give her. She's been a care to me. I've been her mother;
I've actually made her dresses--but I'm glad now for all my little
sacrifices." Two tears gathered and trickled down Mr. Dreux's cheeks,
while Blake marveled at the strange mixture of qualities in this
withered little beau. Bernie's words left him very uncomfortable,
however, and the hours that followed did not lessen the feeling.
Although Myra Nell sent him daily messages and gifts--now books, now
flowers, now a plate of fudge which she had made with her own hands and
which he was hard put to dispose of--she nevertheless maintained a shy
embarrassment and came to see him but seldom. When she did call, her
attitude was most unusual: she overflowed with gossip, yet she talked
with a nervous hesitation; when she found his eyes upon her she
stammered, flushed, and paled; and he caught her stealing glances of
miserable appeal at him. She was very different from the girl he had
known and had learned to love in a big, impersonal way. He attributed
the change to his own failure in responding to her timid advances, and
this made him quite unhappy.
Nor did he see much of Vittoria, although Oliveta came daily to inquire
about his progress.
He was up and about in time for the Mafia trial; but his duties in
connection with it left him little leisure for society, which he was
indeed glad to escape. New Orleans, he found, was on tiptoe for the
climax of the tragedy which had so long been its source of ferment; the
public was roused to a new and even keener suspense than at any
time--not so much, perhaps, by the reopening of the case as by the
rumors of bribery and corruption which were gaining ground. A startling
array of legal talent had appeared for the defense; the trial was
expected to prove the greatest legal battle in the history of the
commonwealth.
Maruffi, with his genius for control, had assumed an iron-bound
leadership and laughed openly at the possibility of a conviction. He
had struck the note of persecution, making a patriotic appeal to the
Italian populace; and the foreign section of the city seethed in
consequence.
On the opening day the court-room was packed, the halls and corridors
of the Criminal Court building were filled to suffocation, the
neighboring streets were jammed with people clamoring for admittance
and hungry for news from within. Then began the long, tedious task of
selecting a jury. Public opinion had run so high that this was no easy
undertaking. As day after day went by in the monotonous examination and
challenge of talesmen, as panel after panel was exhausted with no
result, not only did the ridiculous shortcomings of our jury system
become apparent, but also the fact that the Mafia had, as usual, made
full use of its sinister powers of intimidation. In view of the
atrocious character of the crime and the immense publicity given it,
those citizens who were qualified by intelligence to act as jurors had
of necessity read and heard sufficient to form an opinion, and were
therefore automatically debarred from service. It became necessary to
place the final adjudication of the matter in the hands of men who were
either utterly indifferent to the public weal or lacked the
intelligence to read and weigh and think.
A remarkable wave of humanity seemed to have overwhelmed the city. Four
out of every five men examined professed a disbelief in capital
punishment, which, although it merely covered a fear of the Mafia's
antagonism, nevertheless excused them for cause. Day after day this
mockery went on.
As the list of talesmen grew into the hundreds and the same
extraordinary antipathy to hanging continued to manifest itself, it
occasioned remark, then ridicule. It would have been laughable had it
not been so significant. The papers took it up, urging, exhorting,
demanding that there be a stiffening of backbone; but to no effect.
More than this, the Mafia had reigned so long and so autocratically, it
had so shamefully abused the courts in the past, that a large
proportion of honest men declared themselves unwilling to believe
Sicilian testimony unless corroborated, and this prevented them from
serving.
A week went by, and then another, and still twelve men who could try
the issue fairly had not been found. Some few had been accepted, to be
sure, but they were not representative of the city, and the list of
talesmen who had been examined and excused on one pretext or another
numbered fully a thousand.
Meanwhile, Maruffi smiled and shrugged and maintained his innocence.