"Like rats in a trap!" There it was again! "The wages of sin is more sinning!" Good heavens, what was his novel to him, now?
"Still people don't believe me. They can't credit that a single criminal gang has its feet in the slums, its hand in the pocket of Fifth Avenue, and its head—well, for instance, on Broadway. Naturally, it wants a connecting thread. I was so keen after that, even before I came into office, that they used to call me The Blackhander and say I ought to write a comic opera. Well, Italy's an operatic nation! And this great brat of a city, that thinks there's nothing doing in the world but Anglo-Saxon temperaments, embezzling and baseball games, doesn't know what it may get up against! I'm sure if I can nab either end of the skein it will carry conviction. But unfortunately even the Eastsiders never gave us a map of their whereabouts. There are about seven hundred Italians in New York who might be called professional gangsters and very likely a cozy, private little affair like the A. of J. but murmurs, 'We are seven.' So I've never been able to put the slightest Italian accent on those illustrious letters till I saw the body of your gunman from Central Park. Encouraging though not overwhelming evidence! But the knife that stuck in Denny's arm is a bigger business."
He might well congratulate himself, Herrick inwardly groaned, over the color and the emphasis liberally supplied him in the story of Mrs. Deutch.
"Of course, you understood what had happened? The farmer had refused toll to the brigands who governed the south so capably in those days. They killed his child, leaving their mark on it as a warning that toll must be paid. The poor wine-merchant attempted to set the authorities on that sign. The authorities were too weak to take up the gage, and, of course, a stranger and a Jew made an easy scape-goat. But the brother didn't take warning from the father's fate. Then the mark on him warned the countryside that the family was taboo. They became simply lepers. Not, this time, because the people were religious bigots nor social asses but because they were scared stiff. Every one connected with the tabooed strangers must have dreaded some brigand dictum. Every Gabrielli may have squirmed under that thumb for many a year. Whatever she romantically believes, her fiancé's family simply dared not, for their lives, receive Henrietta. Nobody dared, except, apparently, our little friend, Hermann Deutch. Hats off—I salute Hermann! Really, for an excited man—! But how's that for the nationality of the three-cornered knife? The nation's pitched it out, over there; and now, to-day, in the city of New York, in the city's jail, in broad daylight, some descendant of this agreeable Sicilian clan uses the same weapon to silence a wiry gentleman who turns out a bit too much for him—being a little on the Sicilian order himself! But isn't that a sign of something doing between the slums and Broadway? For what were they afraid Denny would tell? Why did they wish to silence him except for what he could tell of a certain lady?"
Herrick rose, lighted a cigar and flicked out the match with steady fingers. "And you picture Miss Hope as The Queen of the Black Hand?"
This pleasantry was delivered with such a raucous and guttural attempt at quiet satire that Kane returned to earth and smiled.
"Put in that way it's comic opera, indeed. But it's the tune that makes the song. I know how crass the thing seems. Good heavens, says common sense, in what century are we living? And who believes in comic opera? What's the clue? What's the connecting thread that can reach from the lowest dives of the East Side, out of another country and another race, and mix with the grandeurs of so extremely well-known and high-flying a young lady, on the very day that she becomes a world-celebrity? What's the answer?"
The extreme nonchalance of Herrick's voice shook a little as he remarked, "That's up to you, isn't it?"
"It's bound to lie in some dangerous indiscretion of her youth. She's had hard struggling years, in which her temper was still luxurious—a youth that's ambitious is never too scrupulous—if she had a friend unscrupulous by profession—And yet I was so sure they had got hold of her by some secret of her mother's! The Hope honeymoon took place in Italy—but, in that day, so did everybody's! After all, perhaps they had a closer clutch. What do we inevitably find in the pasts of all very young, very beautiful and very successful actresses? We find a dark and early husband. Italians whose humbler connections still sojourn in tenements are often highly ornamental and blackmailers aren't branded, you know, to keep them out of matrimony. Well, whatever the start, whether she was coaxed in or threatened or married, forced by poverty or blackmail, she's made them a wonderful—Do you know the thieves' slang of Naples? And the term 'basista'?"
"A basista's a sort of fence, isn't he? A confederate on the outside?"