She stared at him, a sort of dawning dismay in her eyes.
“You mean,” she said, and the words seemed to come in a hard, forced way from her lips, “you mean that if he gets that money again, you are to have a share?”
“A share! Ha, ha!” The old Italian was rocking backward and forward in glee. “No, my little one, not a share—Nicolo Capriano does not deal in shares any more. All—my little one—all! One hundred thousand dollars—all! And my little black-eyes will have such gowns as——”
“Father!” It came in a startled, broken cry of amazed and bitter expostulation.
Nicolo Capriano stopped his rocking, and looked at her. A sudden glint of fury leaped from the smoldering eyes.
“Bah!” he said angrily. “Am I mistaken after all? Is it that you are your mother—and not a Capriano! Perhaps I should not have told you; but now you will make the best of it, and behave yourself, and not play the child—eh? Do you think I risked myself with the police for nothing! Yes—all! All—except that I must pay that leech Dago George something for looking after our young friend—con amore—con amore, Nicolo Capriano—eh?—since I signed the letter so.”
She stood an instant, straight and tense, but a little backward on her heels, as though she had recoiled from a blow that had been struck her—and then she bent swiftly forward, and caught both her father's wrists in her strong young grasp, and looked into his eyes for a long minute, as though to read deep into his soul.
“You signed that letter con amore!” Her voice was colorless. “You signed it—con amore—the code word of the old, horrible, miserable days when this house was a den of outlaws, the code word that marked out the victim who was to be watched and hounded down!”
The old bomb king wrenched himself still further up in bed. He shook his wrists free.
“What is it to you!” he screamed in a blaze of fury—and fell into a second, and more violent paroxysm of coughing—and now caught at his breast with his thin, blue-tipped fingers, and now in unbridled passion waved his arms about like disjointed flails. “Yes—I signed it that—con amore. And it is the old signal! Yes, yes! And Dago George will obey. And he will watch our young friend—watch—watch—watch! And in the end—bah!—in the end our young friend will supply Nicolo Capriano with that hundred thousand dollars. Ha! And in the end we will see that our young friend does not become troublesome. He is a pawn—a pawn!” Old Nicolo's face, between rage and coughing, had grown a mottled purple. “A pawn! And when a pawn has lost its usefulness—eh?—it is swept from the board—eh? Con amore! The old days again! The finger of Nicolo Capriano lifted—and the puppets jump! Con amore! I will see that Dago George knows what to do with a young man who brings him Nicolo Capriano's letter! Ha, ha! Yes, yes; I will take care of that!”