Kennedy and I had been dining rather late one evening at Luigi's, a
little Italian restaurant on the lower West Side. We had known the place
well in our student days, and had made a point of visiting it once a
month since, in order to keep in practice in the fine art of gracefully
handling long shreds of spaghetti. Therefore we did not think it strange
when the proprietor himself stopped a moment at our table to greet
us. Glancing furtively around at the other diners, mostly Italians, he
suddenly leaned over and whispered to Kennedy:
“I have heard of your wonderful detective work, Professor. Could you
give a little advice in the case of a friend of mine?”
“Surely, Luigi. What is the case?” asked Craig, leaning back in his
chair.
Luigi glanced around again apprehensively and lowered his voice. “Not
so loud, sir. When you pay your check, go out, walk around Washington
Square, and come in at the private entrance. I'll be waiting in the
hall. My friend is dining privately upstairs.”
We lingered a while over our Chianti, then quietly paid the check and
departed.
True to his word, Luigi was waiting for us in the dark hall. With a
motion that indicated silence, he led us up the stairs to the second
floor, and quickly opened a door into what seemed to be a fair-sized
private dining-room. A man was pacing the floor nervously. On a table
was some food, untouched. As the door opened I thought he started as if
in fear, and I am sure his dark face blanched, if only for an instant.
Imagine our surprise at seeing Gennaro, the great tenor, with whom
merely to have a speaking acquaintance was to argue oneself famous.
“Oh, it is you, Luigi,” he exclaimed in perfect English, rich and
mellow. “And who are these gentlemen?”
Luigi merely replied, “Friends,” in English also, and then dropped off
into a voluble, low-toned explanation in Italian.
I could see, as we waited, that the same idea had flashed over Kennedy's
mind as over my own. It was now three or four days since the papers
had reported the strange kidnapping of Gennaro's five-year-old daughter
Adelina, his only child, and the sending of a demand for ten thousand
dollars ransom, signed, as usual, with the mystic Black Hand--a name to
conjure with in blackmail and extortion.
As Signor Gennaro advanced toward us, after his short talk with Luigi,
almost before the introductions were over, Kennedy anticipated him by
saying: “I understand, Signor, before you ask me. I have read all about
it in the papers. You want someone to help you catch the criminals who
are holding your little girl.”
“No, no!” exclaimed Gennaro excitedly. “Not that. I want to get my
daughter first. After that, catch them if you can--yes, I should like
to have someone do it. But read this first and tell me what you think
of it. How should I act to get my little Adelina back without harming a
hair of her head?” The famous singer drew from a capacious pocketbook a
dirty, crumpled, letter, scrawled on cheap paper.
Kennedy translated it quickly. It read:
Honourable sir: Your daughter is in safe hands. But, by the saints, if
you give this letter to the police as you did the other, not only she
but your family also, someone near to you, will suffer. We will not fail
as we did Wednesday. If you want your daughter back, go yourself, alone
and without telling a soul, to Enrico Albano's Saturday night at the
twelfth hour. You must provide yourself with $10,000 in bills hidden in
Saturday's Il Progresso Italiano. In the back room you will see a man
sitting alone at a table. He will have a red flower on his coat. You
are to say, “A fine opera is 'I Pagliacci.'” If he answers, “Not without
Gennaro,” lay the newspaper down on the table. He will pick it up,
leaving his own, the Bolletino. On the third page you will find
written the place where your daughter has been left waiting for you.
Go immediately and get her. But, by the God, if you have so much as the
shadow of the police near Enrico's your daughter will be sent to you in
a box that night. Do not fear to come. We pledge our word to deal fairly
if you deal fairly. This is a last warning. Lest you shall forget we
will show one other sign of our power to-morrow. La MANO NERA.
The end of this ominous letter was gruesomely decorated with a skull
and cross-bones, a rough drawing of a dagger thrust through a bleeding
heart, a coffin, and, under all, a huge black hand. There was no doubt
about the type of letter that it was. It was such as have of late years
become increasingly common in all our large cities, baffling the best
detectives.
“You have not showed this to the police, I presume?” asked Kennedy.
“Naturally not.”
“Are you going Saturday night?”
“I am afraid to go and afraid to stay away,” was the reply, and the
voice of the fifty-thousand-dollars-a-season tenor was as human as that
of a five-dollar-a-week father, for at bottom all men, high or low, are
one.
“'We will not fail as we did Wednesday,'” reread Craig. “What does that
mean?”
Gennaro fumbled in his pocketbook again, and at last drew forth a
typewritten letter bearing the letter-head of the Leslie Laboratories,
Incorporated.
“After I received the first threat,” explained Gennaro, “my wife and
I went from our apartments at the hotel to her father's, the banker
Cesare, you know, who lives on Fifth Avenue. I gave the letter to the
Italian Squad of the police. The next morning my father-in-law's butler
noticed something peculiar about the milk. He barely touched some of it
to his tongue, and he has been violently ill ever since. I at once
sent the milk to the laboratory of my friend Doctor Leslie to have it
analysed. This letter shows what the household escaped.”
“My dear Gennaro,” read Kennedy. “The milk submitted to us for
examination on the 10th inst. has been carefully analysed, and I beg to
hand you herewith the result:
Specific gravity 1.036 at 15 degrees Cent.
Water............................... 84.60 per cent
Casein.............................. 3.49 “ ”
Albumin............................. .56 “ ”
Globulin............................ .32 “ ”
Lactose............................. 5.08 “ ”
Ash................................. .72 “ ”
Fat................................. 3.42 “ ”
Ricin............................... 1.19 “ ”
“Ricin is a new and little-known poison derived from the shell of the
castor-oil bean. Professor Ehrlich states that one gram of the pure
poison will kill 1,500,000 guinea pigs. Ricin was lately isolated by
Professor Robert, of Rostock, but is seldom found except in an impure
state, though still very deadly. It surpasses strychnine, prussic acid,
and other commonly known drugs. I congratulate you and yours on escaping
and shall of course respect your wishes absolutely regarding keeping
secret this attempt on your life. Believe me,
“Very sincerely yours,
“C. W. LESLIE.”
As Kennedy handed the letter back, he remarked significantly: “I can see
very readily why you don't care to have the police figure in your case.
It has got quite beyond ordinary police methods.”
“And to-morrow, too, they are going to give another sign of their
power,” groaned Gennaro, sinking into the chair before his untasted
food.
“You say you have left your hotel?” inquired Kennedy.
“Yes. My wife insisted that we would be more safely guarded at the
residence of her father, the banker. But we are afraid even there since
the poison attempt. So I have come here secretly to Luigi, my old
friend Luigi, who is preparing food for us, and in a few minutes one
of Cesare's automobiles will be here, and I will take the food up to
her--sparing no expense or trouble. She is heart-broken. It will kill
her, Professor Kennedy, if anything happens to our little Adelina.
“Ah, sir, I am not poor myself. A month's salary at the opera-house,
that is what they ask of me. Gladly would I give it, ten thousand
dollars--all, if they asked it, of my contract with Herr Schleppencour,
the director. But the police--bah!--they are all for catching the
villains. What good will it do me if they catch them and my little
Adelina is returned to me dead? It is all very well for the Anglo-Saxon
to talk of justice and the law, but I am--what you call it?--an
emotional Latin. I want my little daughter--and at any cost. Catch the
villains afterward--yes. I will pay double then to catch them so that
they cannot blackmail me again. Only first I want my daughter back.”
“And your father-in-law?”
“My father-in-law, he has been among you long enough to be one of you.
He has fought them. He has put up a sign in his banking-house, 'No money
paid on threats.' But I say it is foolish. I do not know America as well
as he, but I know this: the police never succeed--the ransom is paid
without their knowledge, and they very often take the credit. I say, pay
first, then I will swear a righteous vendetta--I will bring the dogs to
justice with the money yet on them. Only show me how, show me how.”
“First of all,” replied Kennedy, “I want you to answer one question,
truthfully, without reservation, as to a friend. I am your friend,
believe me. Is there any person, a relative or acquaintance of yourself
or your wife or your father-in-law, whom you even have reason to suspect
of being capable of extorting money from you in this way? I needn't say
that that is the experience of the district attorney's office in the
large majority of cases of this so-called Black Hand.”
“No,” replied the tenor without hesitation: “I know that, and I have
thought about it. No, I can think of no one. I know you Americans often
speak of the Black Hand as a myth coined originally by a newspaper
writer. Perhaps it has no organisation. But, Professor Kennedy, to me
it is no myth. What if the real Black Hand is any gang of criminals who
choose to use that convenient name to extort money? Is it the less real?
My daughter is gone!”
“Exactly,” agreed Kennedy. “It is not a theory that confronts you. It is
a hard, cold fact. I understand that perfectly. What is the address of
this Albano's?”
Luigi mentioned a number on Mulberry Street, and Kennedy made a note of
it.
“It is a gambling saloon,” explained Luigi. “Albano is a Neapolitan,
a Camorrista, one of my countrymen of whom I am thoroughly ashamed,
Professor Kennedy.”
“Do you think this Albano had anything to do with the letter?”
Luigi shrugged his shoulders.
Just then a big limousine was heard outside. Luigi picked up a huge
hamper that was placed in a corner of the room and, followed closely by
Signor Gennaro, hurried down to it. As the tenor left us he grasped our
hands in each of his.
“I have an idea in my mind,” said Craig simply. “I will try to think it
out in detail to-night. Where can I find you to-morrow?”
“Come to me at the opera-house in the afternoon, or if you want me
sooner at Mr. Cesare's residence. Good night, and a thousand thanks
to you, Professor Kennedy, and to you, also, Mr. Jameson. I trust you
absolutely because Luigi trusts you.”
We sat in the little dining-room until we heard the door of the
limousine bang shut and the car shoot off with the rattle of the
changing gears.
“One more question, Luigi,” said Craig as the door opened again. “I have
never been on that block in Mulberry Street where this Albano's is. Do
you happen to know any of the shopkeepers on it or near it?”
“I have a cousin who has a drug-store on the corner below Albano's, on
the same side of the street.”
“Good! Do you think he would let me use his store for a few minutes
Saturday night--of course without any risk to himself!”
“I think I could arrange it.”
“Very well. Then to-morrow, say at nine in the morning, I will stop
here, and we will all go over to see him. Good night, Luigi, and many,
thanks for thinking of me in connection with this case. I've enjoyed
Signor Gennaro's singing often enough at the opera to want to render him
this service, and I'm only too glad to be able to be of service to all
honest Italians; that is, if I succeed in carrying out a plan I have in
mind.”
A little before nine the following day Kennedy and I dropped into
Luigi's again. Kennedy was carrying a suit-case which he had taken over
from his laboratory to our rooms the night before. Luigi was waiting for
us, and without losing a minute we sallied forth.
By means of the tortuous twists of streets in old Greenwich village
we came out at last on Bleecker Street and began walking east amid
the hurly-burly of races of lower New York. We had not quite reached
Mulberry Street when our attention was attracted by a large crowd on
one of the busy corners, held back by a cordon of police who were
endeavouring to keep the people moving with that burly good nature
which the six-foot Irish policeman displays toward the five-foot
burden-bearers of southern and eastern Europe who throng New York.
Apparently, we saw, as we edged up into the front of the crowd, here was
a building whose whole front had literally been torn off and wrecked.
The thick plate-glass of the windows was smashed to a mass of greenish
splinters on the sidewalk, while the windows of the upper floors and
for several houses down the block in either street were likewise broken.
Some thick iron bars which had formerly protected the windows were now
bent and twisted. A huge hole yawned in the floor inside the doorway,
and peering in we could see the desks and chairs a tangled mass of
kindling.
“What's the matter?” I inquired of an officer near me, displaying my
reporter's fire-line badge, more for its moral effect than in the hope
of getting any real information in these days of enforced silence toward
the press.
“Black Hand bomb,” was the laconic reply.
“Whew!” I whistled. “Anyone hurt?”
“They don't usually kill anyone, do they?” asked the officer by way of
reply to test my acquaintance with such things.
“No,” I admitted. “They destroy more property than lives. But did they
get anyone this time? This must have been a thoroughly overloaded bomb,
I should judge by the looks of things.”
“Came pretty close to it. The bank hadn't any more than opened when,
bang! went this gaspipe-and-dynamite thing. Crowd collected before the
smoke had fairly cleared. Man who owns the bank was hurt, but not badly.
Now come, beat it down to headquarters if you want to find out any
more.--You'll find it printed on the pink slips--the 'squeal book'--by
this time. 'Gainst the rules for me to talk,” he added with a
good-natured grin, then to the crowd: “G'wan, now. You're blockin'
traffic. Keep movin'.”
I turned to Craig and Luigi. Their eyes were riveted on the big gilt
sign, half broken, and all askew overhead. It read: