"De seguro, I tell. I make swear on Libro Santo to say true and I tell. Ecco."
Roger's body sagged against the steel bars with the hopelessness of this man's case. He had done this thing and confessed it. No twisting of ethics, no pointing of advantage, could make him change one comma. His code was dearer to him than all the complications of the law that might set him free. As long as Giuseppe Morelli lived and threw the fish into the sea, Angelo Sabatini would try to kill him. And Giuseppe Morelli would continue to throw fish into the sea and keep up prices, as long as society permitted him to do it.
On the cot, Angelo Sabatini was leaning again with his face in his hands, the tiny gold hoop in his right ear twinkling through the black curls. He had told his story again, in spite of his lawyer's warnings, because Angelo Sabatini saw no reason to withhold the truth. In time, perhaps, some one would believe, understand that he had done this thing because he had been chosen to do it and his children needed as many shoes and as much food as the children of Giuseppe Morelli. But, the quiet form of Roger, leaning against the bars, his chin on his breast, Sabatini understood. This man was only another with the right to ask him many things and go away and leave him.
Roger wanted to put his hand on the bowed shoulder and say something. But there was nothing to say. Tell him to hope? Against the United Fish Company? To brace up? Before twenty, thirty years in prison walls? Angelo Sabatini, who had lived all his life in the sun on the sea, ever since as a tiny boy in the old country he had gone out before dawn in his father's blue painted boat. Roger moved and the man looked up. Already the hope had gone from him. His small, black eyes were dead embers in the dull, brown face. He looked at Roger, stupid, dumb, confused. In five years, in less, he would be scarcely human.
Roger beckoned the turnkey and without another word, went out. Angelo Sabatini did not move. As Roger passed the desk, a woman with a baby in her arms and a little boy of ten beside her was trying to make the man behind the desk understand. The little boy translated, in an awed whisper, what his mother said. The man behind the desk shook his head:
"Tell her not to keep coming here. She can't see him except on visitors' day and if she keeps up this pestering she won't see him then."
The child translated. The woman wrung her hands and pleaded. Under the torrent of harsh Sicilian dialect, the man behind the desk rose.
"Get out!"
The child pulled his mother's skirts and they hurried away.
Roger went straight home. It was dusk, the wood fire was lighted, and the dinner table spread before it. Anne came quickly at the sound of Roger's key and he kissed her.