Outside, the thief informed us that we would not be required to go back to the Capitaneria just yet, but I did not believe him until I had asked one of the guards, for I mistrusted the thief because he had not asked for the pay for the job done by the gang. Now he asked us to leave the vicinity of the Capitaneria and go to a nice place with him to get something to eat. I refused, and then he demanded his money. If we had gone with him he would have put up some game that would have wrung a few lire from us at least, and, if we had been as stupid as his usual victims, perhaps all that we had. He not only demanded the amount agreed upon, but three times as much. He threatened to get us arrested for having fraudulent labels on our baggage. Antonio was scared to the rigidity of a poker, and all the others were trembling like leaves. But his bluff was not equal to American aplomb, and in a few minutes he went off with ten lire and no more. I knew we would have no trouble from him, and was anxious to get rid of him so as to be able to communicate with the American consul and secure the arrests I had in mind.
Even though the capo had left us, I observed that we were duly watched, and, try as I would, I could not get a message away unobserved. I could not leave the party myself, nor could I send any of them, they being strange to the city. I began to despair.
It was now time to return to the Capitaneria for the final examination, and to go aboard if we passed. I knew I should see St. Ledger there, but it might be too late.
We made our way in at the front entrance, and were compelled to stand for a long time in the crowd. There the capo joined us once more. He had shed his ill humor as a snake sheds its skin. One of the boys brought to me the report of a case in which I was interested. It was that of Mrs. Vincenzo Tortora, a woman who had been in New York and lived with her husband at No. 3 Elizabeth Street, and had returned to visit her home in a village back of Naples. She had with her a two-and-a-half-year old boy born in the United States. Some time before, she had endeavored to return to the States, but the doctors had refused to allow her to do so because the child had contracted trachoma. I saw the woman and talked with her, and found that she had come down to Naples to see the “underground men,” who had agreed to put her through for 300 lire. They had told her to go back, that she could not go on a North German Lloyd steamer, but must go by a certain line when they sent for her. While I was talking to her the capo came over, having heard the boy who had reported the case to me telling Antonio about it, and he assured the woman that if she had come twenty-four hours sooner he would have sent her over on the Prinzessin Irene for 100 lire.
I drew him into talk about the underground system for diseased emigrants, and he said that there were doctors in Naples who could so relieve trachoma in forty-eight hours that if the emigrant kept up the treatment he or she could get by the doctors at New York or Boston. The eyes would be worse than before after the treatment was stopped, and, if continued too long, would cause blindness. Those emigrants who could not be doctored up temporarily were sent through, however.
“How sent through?”
For answer a shrug of the shoulders and—“Oh, pay some money to some people!” Always that evasive, baffling answer.
However, having heard of the system in Messina, on the steamer, and in the city of Naples, and now seeing such palpable signs of it right in the shelter of the Capitaneria, I began for the first time to believe what I could scarcely credit before,—that the “gold-paved avenue” leading into my beautiful, healthy home country, for the loathsomely and contagiously diseased, did exist. I set on foot at that point some investigations not yet ripe, and I may never harvest them; but if I do not some one else will sooner or later “get on the inside.” I shall later prove beyond a doubt that there is a door for diseased aliens.
Another flagrant abuse which I should mention here was that of supposed bankers’ agents inducing emigrants to buy New York drafts for the safety of their money. One man was going about cautioning the emigrants to invest in drafts, and another followed him offering drafts. The first man came up to me, after some of our boys had been approached by him and had referred him to me.
“Who are you?” I asked, feigning stupidity.