Persons Unknown Part 45

Therefore, the Society, yet a little while, suspends your execution."

Pachotto was thrust into the background and Mr. Gumama, who all this time had been seated at the table, rose and leaned forward, indicating that the meeting had reached its climax.

"Dear friends, you observed well what Pachotto said? For this have we come together. We of the Fifth paranza, Hands of the Arm, we, in particular, must take heed to ourselves." He paused, collecting attention. But it was already in his pocket. "He who used the Arm of Justice to shelter a traitor, is its long-time chief, Nicola Pascoe--called in the country from which he carried his bowed head, Nicola Ansello! Ah, you know the name! Then you know well that the serpent whom he nourished in our bosom is the traitor at whose word, ten years ago in Italy, four members perished!"

A shudder shook the a.s.sembly. Many crossed themselves. Mr. Gumama, in the relish of his own rhetoric, grew increasingly impressive. He was, moreover, extremely pale. "The Society pa.s.ses sentence--that Arm still enfolds the traitor!"

The a.s.sembly cried out as against a sacrilege and its cry was menacing.

The Hands of the Arm were now easily distinguishable by their very long faces.

"Ah, my friends," wailed Mr. Gumama with a sudden shrillness, "the Society falters not, but strikes--Fifth paranza, Hands of the Arm, it condemns us, every one!"

A horrible yelling broke loose like a storm. Sobs and hysterical curses strangled together amidst the revilements of the now inimical district.

One man was seized with convulsions and had to have wine and water dashed over him, another fainted and got stepped on. Mr. Gumama remained superior and at last made himself heard. "But was it not from the Society I learned lenience to Pachotto? Does it not, in wisdom, leave me in place to address you? On one condition the Society withdraws its condemnation."

The very melody of howling rose. "The condition! Tell! Tell!"

"First, lest too great the shock, listen a moment. You know well how in this America where, since Italy drove her forth, she grows so great, the conditions of the Mother Society are greatly relaxed; so that, in a new country, she may strengthen herself with all her children. When heads of small societies, existing ere here she had waxed great, came to be absorbed in her she accepted the members for whom they vouched without requiring the apprentices.h.i.+p nor the novitiate. So it was with the Arm of Justice. Of all the small societies we were the most distinguished.

It was not seemly so superior a collection should exist outside the Honorable Society. So much truth do I speak that in accepting us it made our chief, Nicola Pascoe, chief of this district, made ourselves into one paranza where we are yet a unit with our own rules, fifth paranza of the eighth district. The Society decrees that after to-day this paranza shall be broken up and scattered among the others and that name, the Arm of Justice, be spoken no more. So shall the true forget the traitor!"

His breath failed him. But fortunately his audience came to his rescue with a hissing snarl--"Traditore! Traditore!"

"Fellow members, it is nothing. We who are innocent expect to suffer for the guilt of friends. What I entreat, it is that you examine what kind of a friend Nicola Pascoe has been to us. It is true he found us little and made us great. It is true he taught us, formed us and was our leader. But knew we who he was? Did he tell us he had fled from Naples to this place carrying in his arms a traitor? Now that we know, to us what is he?--Ah, we, guileless, true shoot of the parent vine, branch of her root, of the Honorable Society the pious children!" Mr. Gumama, sincerely overcome by this pastoral vision, rolled up his eyes for a long pause. But as he had to sneeze he continued, "Hands of the Arm, for to-day we are still ourselves. For to-day I might have called one last meeting of the fifth paranza and we, all alone, have discussed our own affairs. But that there may be no stain on us of secret counsel we show our hand to the whole district.--How may we again be dear children of the Mother from Naples, held safe in her embrace? Hands of the Arm, to save the Arm cut off always the Hand, one, three, how many, it is no matter! Hear the one condition of the Honorable Society: We divulge the whereabouts this night of Nicola Pascoe, the basista and all their house; we offer them neither warning, shelter nor defense; we lead, ourselves, this district in their suppression!" And he leaned towards them, glaring and sweating, his voice still cautiously lowered and waited their answer with open mouth.

They who never yet had disobeyed Nicola Pascoe stared at him a trifle wanly, huddling one on the other. Astonished gutturals mingled hoa.r.s.ely with shrill peeps; "Body of Bacchus!" "Woe, woe! Beware!" "Presence of the devil!" clashed with gobs of thieves' slang and the less amiable expressions that were overwhelmed by the general a.s.surances of the district that the paranza had no choice.

Then a well-to-do little soul with a black beard rose to speak. "Listen to the voice of reason. If we condemn ourselves, can we save Nicola Pascoe? But if we condemn Nicola Pascoe, we still do save ourselves! All must not die--a few it is better to die! It is well I should say this, for I am a man of gentle speech. I do not wish to be thought like a bad murderer nor the companion of murderers. I am a business-man--a dealer in tortoise-sh.e.l.ls which I send mostly to Chicago, and I am unique for the perfection of my wares. I have now the one hope for the support of my family and small children--that the Society if it suppresses us all will leave upon each of us its mark. That would cause a sensation and perhaps advertise my unique tortoise-sh.e.l.ls to improve the business for my wife. But this hope is not enough. Nicola Pascoe, the basista, all, all, suppress them! Me, I wish to live!" He sat down.

But then, from Nicola's closer brethren immediate and violent opposition arose, with arguments that Nicola himself had done no wrong and pleading for a lighter sentence. The meeting was in scarcely less than an apoplectic fit when, from its outskirts, a young farmhand shrieked out that they must take the counsel of the good priest, the Angel of the Society.

A tall man at once began to weep and to utter horrible invectives against the last speaker, while Mr. Gumama exhorted him to be more calm.

It turned out that the Angel of the Society was in jail for perjury and that the tall man was his brother. "I must leave the room! I must have air! How could he, the bad of heart, the pig, mention my brother before me--"

"Angelo, you are a man and must show more strength! Antonio was not aware of the trouble of your brother--"

"Not aware of--He who celebrated ma.s.ses for the soul of King Humbert, he who remained tender to us though all other fathers refused us absolution while we practised our profession, he who among us was best for plausible defenses, that holy man!"

"We revere him. But it is impossible to allow you to leave the room every time he is mentioned! You have disordered in that way the last four meetings!"

Angelo threw himself on the ground with cries of injustice, and an equally angry person started up from his corner. "What is he screaming about? Has he the only feelings to be considered? Do I thus weep like a woman? I, too, have a brother in a dark prison--and if I were with him I would be more safe! While that one there s...o...b..rs do I wish to die? And to thus make a martyr not only of me, but of that holy soul, my mother!

Who, at eighty-four would weep for me and tear her sacred hair, all gray!" A chorus of sympathetic wails responded to this touching reference. "Me, I see in this room one who once took my lock of that hair for another woman's!" Hisses arose. "Yet do I ask to leave the room? Let it be the house of Pascoe which forever leaves this room.

Rather than meet in the dark with the agent of the Honorable Society I will surrender me to the police!"

This, indeed, achieved tumult, breaking into personal rancors in which the issue of Nicola seemed to vanish.

"You are a liar! He did not--"

"I will swear on the ashes of my father and of my dead son!"

"You would swear on anything!"

"Beware! Beware the anathema!"

"I am sorry for you--I take you to my bosom!"

"I curse you down to the seventh generation!"

"Once you dug, quiet, in my sewer! But now you are proud and a gentleman--"

"I was always more of a gentleman than you are!"

"I remind you that you must die!"

At last the voice of Mr. Gumama was able to make itself heard.

"Beautiful friends, the vote, the vote!--Ah! Now, attention! This is what you do not know. Who thinks to be faithful to Nicola Pascoe, is Nicola Pascoe faithful to him? Nicola Pascoe flees away! A-a-ah! Doubt you that the Society will have _some_ atonement? He flees to Brazil, this coming sunrise, he and his, and leaves us to bear his blame!"

It was enough. The meeting could not speak; it could only shake and froth in one united epilepsy. As the fifth paranza found voice it groaned, "We have been betrayed! We are innocent! We have been cast like lambs to the slaughter! He has trampled not only on the human but the divine law! He leaves us to perish in this infamous market--" And a very old man, as he called down upon the Pascoes all the curses of heaven mixed with descriptions of his sufferings from nightmare as a child, put up insane appeals for their punishment. He rose from hysteria to hysteria; sobbing with exhaustion he buried his face in his hands after summoning G.o.d, personally, to convince Nicola's friends; suddenly he raised his head and, plucking at one of his wild eyes, with a sweeping movement he cast a small object apparently at Jehovah's feet.

His magnificent gesture defying their mercies, he lifted to their gasp of amazement the seared, empty, gaping socket in his ancient, bearded face, and, uttering a choking shriek, he fell to the ground. A stampede of horror was averted by Mr. Gumama, who picked up the eye-ball, cast it down again and ground it under foot. It was gla.s.s.

There being no hope of capping this climax they got down to business and surrendered Nicola in a wink. There remained to be dealt with a flourish of Mr. Gumama's. "This is all demanded by our kind Mother. But shall we not give a little more? Shall she herself be obliged to slay the serpent that we have fed and made strong? Will she not be pleased by a little more zeal on our part, while still we are ourselves? My friends, I have made a little arrangement." Fortunately for Mr. Gumama's climax as he now sent another of his impatient glances out of the window he gave an uncontrollable cry of relief. "Here they come!"

Strolling along the sidewalk appeared three men, all evidently Italians; but two, in their rough clothes, lumpish sailors. The slenderer and finer-made came sauntering between them; he had a charming smile with which he listened attentively to some oath embroidered anecdote. As they entered the garage one of the sailors, looking up, caught the eye of Mr.

Gumama and made a quick signal. "Bene! They have not been followed!" Mr.

Gumama exclaimed. "By the grace of heaven they have not been followed!

And he has no suspicion!" The confidential aides purred aloud, the whole meeting slightly relaxed and the man with the knife decided to sit down.

But he kept his knife in his hand.

Mr. Gumama stationed two men at the window to watch the sidewalk and then motioned half a dozen distinguished members to the stairs.

Crouching forward they could see the slight man leaning in the doorway, whistling, and glancing up and down the swarming street with quick, dark eyes. Mr. Gumama squatted until he was in danger of falling through the opening and pointing a long, soiled finger at the slight man, "Il traditore," hissed Mr. Gumama. "He whom Nicola and the basista shelter in our midst! Alieni, o' n'infama! Traditore! He, Filippi Alieni!"

CHAPTER XIII

"WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR?": A CRIMINAL PERFORMANCE

Once more a hand had touched the spring. Once more the meeting vibrated to a universal shock. Mr. Gumama signed to the fruit-peddler and a brace of laborers that they provide themselves with lengths of rope and the three withdrew to a position across the stairhead from the man with the knife, where they, too, waited in the shadow of the walls. Confiding in the sharpshooters at the window Mr. Gumama had the sailors called upstairs.

Meanwhile the man at the door, happily unaware of the preparations for receiving him above, came lounging inside with his hands in his pockets; and Mrs. Pascoe, whose greeting had shown some slight surprise at his appearance, laughed aloud. "It's funny how it does become you! I can't deny it!"

For he had doffed his gentleman's attire and was dressed like the shabbiest laborer, the tawny, earth-stained s.h.i.+rt open at his throat against a red cotton handkerchief; his loose, frayed, dingy jacket had once been of square, seafaring cut.

"I bet she picked them out fur yeh!" Mrs. Pascoe jeered. "She ain't one to miss the artistic touch!" Her mockery took him all in. "She'd be sure t' have yeh more uv a Dago organ-grinder 'n any Dago organ-grinder ever was! But I will say you wear 'em t' the manner born!"

Well, truly, the swinging gold earrings, rounder than Mr. Gumama's, had been carefully tarnished; his bracelet shot its golden gleam from under a ragged cuff; the cord of a scapular, scarlet against his olive skin, had been torn and knotted, and a handkerchief in the Sicilian colors was thrust into a belt supple with age. But, truly again, they became him mightily. For in those weathered boots, of which the soles were almost gone, his feet gripped the earth with a loping, elastic tread like a young animal's; and when, at the disconcerting coldness of her greeting, he s.n.a.t.c.hed off his old cap and stood with it crushed flat in his nervous fingers the smooth and coal-black glitter of his head called her attention to the alertness of its carriage, like some prowler's scouting in the woods. Doubtless morning-coats and starched British linen are very discreet garments. But the worn softness of those old borrowed properties, in loosing the movement and the poise of his lithe body, had released some other change in him; something wild, light and strong, with the strength of a hound and the lightness of a cat, which, in the dense jungle where he was about to enter, might yet stand him in good stead. After all, one does not dress as a Sicilian for nothing!

Particularly when there are ladies about! Mrs. Pascoe was as much a woman as any silkier petticoat and it must have been some such momentary glimmer of the national presence, of the primitive equation, which had won her forgotten girlhood as it had once wooed and won her daughter's fancy. "Well, I vum!" said she again with tart amus.e.m.e.nt. Was he going to turn out a man? She leaned toward him all intentness. _Was he?_