“One moment,” cried Pizzuti, with the door in his hand. “I don’t mean for the money for the bitters; that I have given you freely, because you are my friends; but listen, between ourselves, eh? If you are successful, mind, I am here, and my house. You know I’ve a room at the back, big enough to hold a ship-load of goods, and nobody likely to think of it, for Don Michele and his guards are hand-and-glove with me. I don’t trust Cousin Goosefoot; the last time he threw me over, and put everything into Don Silvestro’s house. Don Silvestro is never contented with a reasonable profit, but asks an awful price, on the ground that he risks his place; but I have no such motive, and I ask no more than is reasonable. And I never refused Goosefoot his percentage, either, and give him his drinks free, and shave him for nothing. But, the devil take him! if he plays me such a trick again I’ll show him that I am not to be fooled in that way. I’ll go to Don Michele and blow the whole business.”
“How it rains!” said Spatu. “Isn’t it going to leave off to-night?”
“With this weather there’ll be no one at the Rotolo,” said La Locca’s son. “Wouldn’t it be better to go home?”
’Ntoni, Rocco, and Cinghialenta, who stood on the door-step listening in silence to the rain, which hissed like fish in the frying-pan, stopped a moment, looking into the darkness.
“Be still, you fool!” cried Cinghialenta, and Vanni Pizzuti closed the door softly, after adding, in an undertone:
“Listen. If anything happens, you did not see me this evening. The bitters I gave you out of good-will, but you haven’t been in my house. Don’t betray me; I am alone in the world.”
The others went off surlily, close to the wall, in the rain. “And that one, too!” muttered Cinghialenta. “And he’s to get off because he has nobody in the world, and abuses Goosefoot. At least Goosefoot has a wife. And I have a wife, too. But the balls are good enough for me.”
Just then they passed, very softly, before Cousin Anna’s closed door, and Rocco Spatu murmured that he had his mother, too, who was at that moment fast asleep, luckily for her. “Whoever can stay between the sheets in this weather isn’t likely to be about, certainly,” concluded Cousin Cinghialenta.
’Ntoni signed to them to be quiet, and to turn down by the alley, so as not to pass before his own door, where Mena or his grandfather might be watching for him, and might hear them.
Mena was, in truth, watching for her brother behind the door, with her rosary in her hand; and Lia, too, without saying why she was there, but pale as the dead. And better would it have been for them all if ’Ntoni had passed by the black street, instead of going round by the alley. Don Michele had really been there a little after sunset, and had knocked at the door.