“But I’m alive! I am only legally dead.”
The clerk smiled tolerantly. With a pencil he drew a circle on a sheet of paper.
“Here,” said he, “is a cipher. It is the symbol of nothing, but, as a circular pencil mark, it is still something.”
He erased every trace of the pencil and exhibited the blank piece of paper.
“This,” he explained, “illustrates your status. In human affairs, you are a cipher with the rim rubbed out. A man legally dead is less than nothing.”
VII.
Luigi Romano, who had succeeded Guisseppi in Rosina’s affections, was among the first to hear of the abduction.
Blazing with passion, he laid his plans with quick decision and took the trail. Without great difficulty, he traced the route of the taxicab, block by block, to its destination.
Depressed by his fruitless mission in search of a marriage license, Guisseppi was hurrying toward the building in which Rosina was imprisoned. His eyes were bent upon the ground in deep thought. His face was white and drawn.
Luigi stepped from the shelter of a doorway with a sawed-off shotgun in his hands....