"Do you think that is news to me?" asked the girl, with a kind of fury. "But my fairness has done all it can! What's to do, now?"
"You are fair. But you are the devil. You brought police to the river, who will return with more. You have plunged this night in the blood of your brothers. There was one who was like a little sister. Where is she?"
Christina started; half in appeal, half in defense against the omen of his tones, she stretched out her hands. The Sicilian lowered his mouth to the bosom of his shirt and brought forth in his teeth a little hoop of silver which he shook before Christina's eyes. "Where is she now? Of her tokens she has lost the third!" It was Nancy's bracelet that he dropped at Christina's feet.
"Devil of fine fairness," he said, "I shall pick it up again, when you are lying low! When not one shot is left for our hurt we there, without, will come quietly in! Then shall I bear this to my chief. I took it from the hand of Beppo, who lay bleeding in the grass. Were Chigi and Pepe caught in the fire? They reached her late, for they had rowed their boat back, to escape those policemen on the river. Only when Alieni jumped and swam they must follow him and tramp to the house for boats along the shore. But they reached her! I was against it always—she was not of our nation. Ah, she was pretty! Had you not let her know too much she need not have been put to sleep!"
Christina made no outcry. If his attack on herself bewildered her, her imagination caught the significance of the Camorrist phrase. "Where," asked she slowly, "does she sleep?"
"In the dead ashes of the house of boats." His malignant sneer took in the stricken, threatened group, as well as his own bondage. And turning once more to Christina he smilingly informed her, "I seek in the house for boats Nicola Pascoe. I hear him talking as at a telephone. They have brought a lamp and in the window I see a pretty girl, young and not so tall, with a face very sweet but sick and the hair falls curling and red. She has in her hands a tiny bottle filled with a dark liquid. She throws it from the window where it fills the air with laudanum smell. And at that up runs to her Nicola—and she, away! They must have knocked over the lamp, for next the house for boats is blazing high. And, as the smoke comes in the window, there she runs again—just as I see the woman's figure and in the fiery smoke one light of her red hair at that out from the bushes a bullet springs. She clasps her hands over her breast with a small cry and down she sinks. And Alieni flies out of the bushes with Beppo and Chigi and Pepe at his back and he races into the flaming house. It is after that down plunges Nicola, down and past us, running here to this place, and I follow him, sure that past him I shall come, too, upon his sister. Before we reach here, through the dark, comes a horse with two men on its back—one is yelling 'I have killed her! I have killed her!' and he passes. The other falls off. It is Beppo, who dies at my feet, giving me the bracelet. He had it from Pepe, the Parmesan, whom he saw meet with Alieni in the doorway of the house for boats. By this time all, everywhere, is fighting and the house for boats blows up in a puff and falls in upon itself in crumbling fire."
Christina had never taken her eyes from his face and in those eyes alone there now seemed any life to hold her body upright. "It's not true!" said she, gently and at length. "Life's not so silly!" But she stretched out a blind hand to Herrick and leaned on him a little.
"Ah!" mocked the Sicilian, "it made a beautiful grave! You will not have so fine! But yours gapes for you now as well as for your lover, and for your husband, who caused all the death! Do not pity the girl who died. Exult not over Giuseppe Gumama. Read, instead, the writing in your golden pistol—of Alieni—and the Signora Alieni—" He stopped with a gratified gasp. The handle of the door into the hall had been softly turned from the outside.
No one moved. In a strange voice the sheriff called to know if this were one of his men. There was no answer. "Where are they? Why don't they—"
Gumama the Sicilian laughed aloud. "The long cellar-way, where by night we carried out to the river our broken press—It has let us in—so quietly—Many went upstairs—"