“Fools!” cried the old man bitterly. “If it were as easy as that, should I not have asked your company long ago? Lucia will not be there. They will keep her until the money is paid.” The fire smoldered again in his dark eyes. “But when I return, you, Amadeo, will still be here. And death pays for treachery. If Lucia does not come home, I will kill you myself.”
He tore off Urselli’s belt and flung it to the sheriff. Pack after pack of new crisp bills came from it, and the sheriff counted the pile and stacked it together.
“It is my duty to forbid this,” he said gravely. “But it’s — your daughter.”
Intuccio nodded stonily.
“Yes,” he said. “It is my daughter.”
He scanned their faces once, his eyes resting last on the trembling figure of Urselli held by two pairs of strong hands, and then he passed through them to the door, with the circle opening to let him through. And again the stillness began to be broken, voice by voice.
“I have an idea,” said the Saint.
He stood by the wall, a little apart from them, cigarette poised between lean brown fingers. The very quiescence of his lounging suppleness had the electric quality of a smoothly humming dynamo, but the light was too dim for them to see the reckless blue twinkle of his eyes. Yet they all looked at him.
“All of you couldn’t go,” he said quietly. “But one man might. I’ve done plenty of night hunting. I could follow — and see where the money was taken.”
“Could you be sure no one would know?” asked the sheriff, and Simon smiled.