“I have always failed. Everything I touched has been under a curse. You all know how the farm ate up my money until it was nearly all lost, and the land was sold for the mortgages. You all know how I bought this inn to try and make a living, but none of you came here. Perhaps you were afraid of me because I never laughed with you. Dio mio, as if a man who has suffered as much as I have could laugh! You thought I had the evil eye, some black secret that made me unfit to be one of you. Yes, I had. But the only secret was one which you all knew — that I had failed... But when that cousin of mine came back from Chicago, with his fine clothes and his jewels, and boasted of the money he made — I lied. I did not want to see him despise me. I told him I had thirty thousand dollars. I have not got five hundred.”
Urselli lighted a cigarette mechanically.
“That looks bad,” he said. “I tell you, those guys mean business.”
“You know a great deal about them, Amadeo? You speak from experience?”
The innkeeper’s burning eyes were bent rigidly on the smaller man’s face. There were red notes glinting in them, hot swirling sparks from a fire that was breaking loose deep within them. In the core of the soft voice was a deep vibrant note like the premonitory rumble of a volcano. “Perhaps you know more than any of us?”
Urselli looked right and left, with a sudden widening of his rat-like eyes. Not one of the ring of faces painted in the lamplight moved an eyelash. They waited.
He sucked at his cigarette, the tip flickering abruptly to the uncertain inhalation.
“In the cities, you hear things,” he gabbled shakily. “You read newspapers. I’m only tellin’ you—”
“Now I will tell you!”
Intuccio’s restraint broke at last; the fire that was in him seethed through in a jagged roar. His iron hands crushed into the other’s shoulders, half lifting, half hurling him round.