The sun went down in a riot of gold and crimson, and the search parties began to filter back through the gray-blue dusk. By ten o’clock, when the night was a vaulted bowl of dark glass studded with silver pin points, they were all gathered together at the inn, and the sheriff, with Intuccio and Urselli, came in last while they were all waiting.
There was no need for questions. A silence that was its own answer hung in the room, mirroring itself in the glazed tension of the yellow highlights smeared by the single oil lamp on the circle of leathery faces. The angles of black shadow in the far corners held the strained heaviness of a mounting thunderstorm.
The sheriff read through the ransom notice again, and raised his eyes to Intuccio’s face. The nervous scrape of a man’s feet on the bare floor rasped a nerve-stabbing discord into the stillness before he spoke.
“You wasn’t aimin’ to pay this money, was you, Salvatore?”
The old man stared back at him haggardly. Before he came in, the alternatives had been discussed by the reassembled search parties in measured low-pitched voices that scarcely ruffled the texture of the air. Organized help could not come from the nearest big town before midnight — it might not come before morning. What would the sophisticated city police think of Black Hand threats?
“ Buon Dio! ” said Intuccio, in a terrible voice, “I have not so much money in the world.”
Urselli started.
“But you said yesterday—”
“I lied.”
The innkeeper’s great fists were clenched at his sides, his powerful shoulders quivering under his soiled shirt.