“Those who have tried have found themselves followed, and by me. You will pardon me if I suggest your Italian Squad requires maintenance.”
“I had hoped, by making it small, that I should be in a position to keep an eye upon its members; but as I said, this spawn’s pockets are deep. Fantonetti has a wife and children. Perhaps he was not corrupted, but cooperated in return for his family’s safety. My original intention was to ban married men from the squad, but it’s the nature of my people to marry young and take comfort in old age from their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Most of the single men I interviewed were either incompetent or easily compromised.” He placed a finger alongside his Roman nose. “One develops a sense for these things.”
“I can smell out a traitor myself or I wouldn’t be here.” Holmes groped inside the sling on his shoulder, which I had fashioned from a towel borrowed from Mrs. L’Azour, and withdrew his brier and travelling pouch. “Now that you’re here, we may as well have our meeting. I gave you the particulars of the Venucci affair in my cable. What can you tell me about the Black Hand in England?”
“My acquaintances with the Italian language newspapers in London assure me that it hasn’t the foothold there it has in America. Much as I would admire to credit the excellence of your law enforcement, Il Mano Negro scarcely bothered with England. Some one hundred sixty thousand Italians enter this country annually, bringing with them a healthy respect for Il Mano Negro from the old country: Little training is necessary, you see. A barbershop is fire-bombed, a tailor’s is broken into and acid poured on the inventory, and the lesson is understood. Sometimes no demonstration is necessary, just that friendly little note with a childlike drawing of a hand and the directive, ‘Pay or die.’ You have received no such communication?”
“None.”
“That is unusual. Can it be our Cousin Giovanni—for want of another name—jumped the gun, so to speak?”
“A contractor’s eagerness speaks volumes. Either these fellows suspect I know more than I do, or wish to keep me in the dark. At all events, someone considered the problem important enough for our Uncle Umberto to send a cable.”
“Imbecille!” Petrosino slapped his forehead. “All this talk of cables, and I forget. This awaited you at the hotel.” He drew a yellow envelope from his sleeve and began to rise. Holmes, yawning, signaled him to be still.
“Read it, will you, Watson? I’m not the inexhaustible traveller you are.”
“I begin to wonder.” I took the envelope from our guest and opened it:
HAVE ARRESTED STRIPED SUIT PAOLO ROSSI STOP NOT TALKING STOP CANNOT HOLD LONG LEST PAST REPEAT ITSELF
G LESTRADE
“Good old Lestrade,” said Holmes. “He never passes up an opportunity to pour salt into an open wound. But with the billiards player accounted for I can endeavor to place a face upon this new enemy.”
“We have a name, at least,” I said. “Lungo.”
CHAPTER XII.
WE ARE GIVEN A HAND
Holmes drew upon his pipe. “Lieutenant, I should like your permission to investigate this incident.”
“Were I you, I would consider an attempt upon my life more than just an incident.”
“The late Macedonian presidential candidate might argue the point. I have narrowed the practical range in this neighbourhood to two hundred metres. Reason tells us the man capable of bringing down a national figure at three times that distance would have dealt a tourist more than a flesh wound, if murder were his intention. He seeks to frighten me back to my cosy digs. I must make his acquaintance, if only to inform him I’m not the quaking sparrow he thinks me.”
I said, “I hardly think your vanity is worth the risk of death.”
“My friend, if that’s the construction you placed on what I said, I’ve misspoken myself. This was a feint, which has told me a little about him. In order to know more, I must observe him when he swings in earnest.”
“I cannot offer protection,” said Petrosino. “My responsibility is to my neighbors in Little Italy.”
“It wouldn’t be necessary.” Holmes smiled at me. “This isn’t the first time Dr. Watson has assisted in my preservation. Without a sharp-eyed fellow in the bush, a staked goat is nothing but a tit-bit for lions.”
“Forgive me, but you don’t know these lions. A tit-bit only whets their appetites.”
“To know them is my intention.”
“You have my permission to investigate independently. I suspect to withhold it would be to waste my breath.”
“Thank you. One more question, and then you may regard your responsibility to our welfare as discharged. Who pulls the criminal strings in your jurisdiction?”
“That would be Gabriele Medusa, who holds court in his tonsorial parlour. Anyone in Little Italy can direct you there. But you will find him unhelpful, if not precisely discourteous. I have interviewed him many times, and all I can get from him is quotations from classical literature. He taught himself English in the New York Public Library.”
The lieutenant rose. “I shall place an officer outside this room. I do not share your faith in these vermins’ motives. Having failed to kill you at far range, their next attempt will be close up. They are artists with knives.”
“You carry one yourself, I perceive.” Holmes removed his pipe from his mouth and pointed the stem at an uncharacteristic snag in Petrosino’s tidy uniform. “Are you a Rembrandt or just a Sunday painter?”
“Leonardo, if you please.” Our guest twitched an arm; that was all it seemed. In the instant, a thin blade with a pearl handle appeared in his hand.
Holmes’s reaction was no more tardy. In a trice, he snatched up his leaded stick from where it leaned against the night-table, and in the next moment the knife lay on the floor, its owner gripping the hand in which it had been held.
“Golze, the Austrian fencing master, taught me the trick,” Holmes said. “I added a refinement of my own, pulling the punch to avoid shattering your hand. He wouldn’t approve; Teutons do nothing by half-measures. We are not defenceless, Lieutenant. You cannot spare an extra man upon our account.”
Petrosino shook the hand and worked his fingers. His smile was pained. “Very well. The proverbial house need not fall upon me.” He stooped to reclaim his knife—and in the space of a half-second it was buried to its hilt in the wall a few centimetres to the right of Holmes’s head.
“I would be honoured,” said the lieutenant, “if you would include the item among your famous souvenirs. The squad confiscates them at the rate of a dozen per week.”
Overcoming his surprise, Holmes chuckled and worked the blade loose from the plaster with the hand belonging to his good arm. He blew the powder off the blue steel and tested the edge with his thumb. “I shall use it to open all my correspondence henceforth, and think of you, Tenente, whenever I pay a bill.”
“And I of you, when old age creeps up on me and settles in these bruised bones.” He flexed his fingers, executed a smart little bow, and left.
From the landing, we heard a brief polite exchange between our departing visitor and the landlady. When presently I opened the door to her tapping, she looked sympathetically at Holmes. “Is the gentleman well?”
I had explained the situation to her when I’d asked to use the telephone. She had been stoicism personified, asking only after our welfare. “As his doctor, I can assure you he’ll recover.”
“This will help.” She drew the cover off a china bowl on the tray she was holding. It smelled strongly of potato. “Vichyssoise,” said she; “the French response to the chicken soup of the Hebrew. I am no cook, but the chef in the café on the corner is a friend. He delivered it himself, all dressed up as you see.”
I thanked her and took the tray.
“If there is anything else, please call. That two gentlemen under my roof should be attacked: Scandaleux!”
“An estimable woman,” said I, when we were alone. “The Gallic version of Mrs. Hudson.” I stooped to place the tray ac
ross Holmes’s lap, but he waved it away.
“Pray sustain yourself, Doctor. The digestive process murders sleep. Be alert, and wake me at midnight, when I shall take up the watch. To ignore Petrosino’s warning would be inane.” He knocked out his pipe in the tray on the night-table and drew the covers to his chin.
“I say, Holmes. There’s more on this tray than cold potato soup.”
“Oyster crackers?”
“No.”
Sitting in the chair Petrosino had vacated, I had snapped open the folded napkin, whereupon a fold of stiff paper fluttered to the floor. I put the tray aside and got up to retrieve and unfold it. The contents froze me to the marrow.
“You needn’t read it aloud, Watson.” Holmes was sitting up now, eyes bright, face flushed with excitement. “‘Pay or die.’ Is it in English or Italian?”
“Neither. I mean to say, that isn’t the message.” I turned the paper round and held it out so that he could see it for himself. It was blank but for the crude drawing of a human hand, dark with ink, and beneath it the legend:
BEQUEATH YOUR SOUL TO GOD
CHAPTER XIII.
ADVICE FROM A BARBER
“Better and better.” Holmes moved to clap his hands, then forbore when his sling impeded the gesture. “They paraphrase Bacon. If I am to follow this advice, it would be worth it to be slain by a literary man.”
“There are times when your sinister sense of humour wears upon one,” I said, handing him the paper.
He turned up the lamp on the night-table and studied the item at close hand. He sniffed. “Hum. The singular smell of lampblack, the chief agent in the manufacture of India ink. If I thought Mrs. L’Azour untrustworthy, I’d suspect eavesdropping upon our conversation with the lieutenant. I refer to our friend the Bengalese hunter.”
“A stretch, certainly. I assume the compound is hardly more in short supply here than back home. It need have nothing to do with the villain’s old hunting grounds. I begin to think you’ve transferred your obsession to Sebastian Moran from—”
“Tut! If you expect me to honour my resolution, you must refrain from taunting me. However, the name is a misnomer. The ink is a product of China and Japan. The paper, interestingly, is a rice derivative. I spent some time in India after Reichenbach, directly I left Lhasa. It’s as common there as foolscap, and nowhere else.”
“Tiger Jack is dead, Holmes. We saw him cut down from the scaffold, and heard the physician’s declaration.”
“And yet these hands itch for a spade, to settle the thing in toto. But we needn’t book passage yet, when Gabriele Medusa is so convenient.”
“It’s a worthy supposition,” I said. “Petrosino said he knows his English-language classics.”
“Well, we shall give him his orals tomorrow. Meanwhile, we must disturb our landlady once more. Fetch her, will you?”
I won’t belabour the reader’s patience with a detailed account of our interview with Mrs. L’Azour. She knew nothing of the note, swearing upon the crucifix she wore, and she was believable. The café proprietor who provided the vichyssoise, one Monsieur Blanc, was a compatriot, a “pious man” whose enterprise was extremely successful: Greenwich’s bohemian population queued up into the street regularly to enjoy his simple but tasty country fare. He was assisted by his widowed daughter-in-law, who had lost her husband in the late war with Spain; she, too, was described as above reproach.
“I accept this prima facie, for the time being,” said Holmes. “Monsieur Blanc seems impregnable. As to the daughter, our dangerous friends are patriarchal, disinclined to trust the fair sex in such matters. Merci, ma bon femme. We shan’t disturb you again this night.”
“Ne pensez pas, monsieur.” She curtsied and took herself out.
“You are wide awake?” Holmes asked me.
“I always am, after receiving a death threat.”
“Indeed. I have the opposite reaction. This breed has a distorted concept of my life’s value. Redundancy and warm bland milk are the same to me. Look sharp, Watson. Your fate is infinitely more important in my view.”
Within five minutes, he was asleep, leaving me to sit up with my revolver at my elbow and every sound in that slumbering household increased tenfold.
We were undisturbed, however, during my vigil and then Holmes’s, Eley in his lap. He insisted I douse the lamp, but I slept fitfully, and whenever I awoke I saw the strong planes of his face reflected in the minimal light leaking round the curtains, eyes aglow, like a cat’s in the shaft from a lantern.
In the morning, he was as fresh as if he’d been the one resting, whilst I felt old and used. He made quite the dashing figure with his overcoat slung over his shoulders cloak-fashion, his arm in its sling, and the brim of his soft hat tugged rakishly down above one eye. Mrs. L’Azour could manage eggs and coffee; after breakfast we set out for Little Italy.
As Petrosino had promised, we found Medusa’s lair without difficulty. The whole neighborhood knew of La Perla, a spacious shop with a spotless plate-glass window through which the winter sun shone strongly, with black-and-white tiles spotless and all the instruments of the barber’s trade a-glitter: ranks of razors, clippers, brushes, personalized mugs in wooden racks, and three white porcelain chairs raised, lowered, and tilted by means of chrome handles. It was early. No customers occupied the corner where stacks of Italian periodicals stood within reach of the oaken bench and only one chair in use, by an absolutely stout man who set aside his newspaper and got up as we entered. He wore striped shirtsleeves, a boiled collar, braces supporting woolen trousers, and yellow gaiters on gleaming black shoes.
“Buongiorno, signores!” he greeted heartily, in a booming voice that seemed to be regulated by the counterweight of an enormous pair of black moustaches. His cheeks were red and round as apples and his hair slicked back and parted exactly in the centre. “My first customers of the day! Gabriele Medusa at your service. Who will be first?”
Holmes looked amused. “Are we so obviously not paisan, that you should speak to us so confidently in English?”
“No. There are Northern Italians here, some whiter than you; but they do not dress like Englishmen, and I know everyone in the neighborhood besides. By the process of elimination, I shall greet you as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, distinguished visitors to this shore.”
“Good Lord!” said I. “I’m in the presence of two detectives.”
“Elementare!” His eyes were as black and shiny as his shoes. “Ours is a small village surrounded by mountains of brick and steel. There are no secrets here, and when famous men from across the sea enter it—well, what use is there of newspapers? I myself read them only to improve my English.”
“It bears little improvement,” Holmes said. “I understand you learnt at the feet of its masters.”
“I have been pleased to include Dr. Watson among them. His accounts of your exploits—”
Holmes produced the grim message we’d received during the night.
Medusa’s jovial façade vanished, as if it had been painted on a canvas curtain jerked up into the flies by a zealous stagehand. He strode to the door, turned the key in the lock, drew the shade down over the glass, and beckoned us to follow him through a curtained doorway at the back of the shop.
This room was an office, banked with wooden file drawers, a solid desk with a green baize top, a tufted leather chair on a swivel, and lower chairs, leather also.
“Sigaros?” He twisted a fat palm toward a great humidor on the desk.
We declined. When we were seated, Medusa selected a pontoon-shaped cigar, bit off the end, spat it into a cuspidor, and set fire to it with a square wooden match. Wreaths of aromatic smoke filled the room. “‘Bequeath your soul to God.’ A travesty, to misquote a great writer deliberately.”
“You deny any knowledge of it?” Holmes asked.
“Understand, I make no apologies for the life I live. In the village where I was born, a man without a title was a beast of burden, to be discarded the moment h
e was no longer useful. There were only two ways he could prosper, as a prizefighter or a criminal, and then only in America. I am no good with my fists, signores.”
“Do you deny you sent someone to fire a bullet into our room in Greenwich Village?”
“I have heard of this intolerable thing. Yes, I deny it. There is no percentage in victimizing white men. Here, a peasant, a greasy wop, brings upon his death through arrogance or ignorance or stupidity; an investigation follows, another peasant is arrested, or perhaps the man to blame is never found: Either way, the police lose interest and apply themselves to the next case of arrogance or ignorance or stupidity. ‘They come transfigured back, secure from change in their high-hearted ways.’”
“‘Beautiful evermore, and with the rays of morn on their white shields of expectation.’ Odd to cite Lowell on the subject of such creatures.”
Medusa beamed, his garrulity restored. “You cannot know what it means to have this kind of conversation. I have pockets filled with pearls, and I live among swine; hence La Perla, the name of my establishment.”
“Petrosino warned me you’d try to turn away my questions with cant. What do you know of a man called Lungo?”
“A fiction, invented by local housewives to frighten their children into bed. The Tenente is grasping at straws if he mentioned this chimera.”
“As a matter of fact he adheres to your view on the subject. This is no fiction.” Holmes put two fingers in a pocket of his waistcoat and dropped a small misshapen object onto the green baize.
The barber studied the spent bullet without touching it. “No evidence was necessary. If I doubted the rumor, your testimony confirmed it. I do not possess a firearm, Signor Holmes. If I found that any man I employ possesses one, he is fired. Some of these wretches have spent time in jail; petty offences all, caused by poverty and desperation, I make no judgment. To be searched by the police with such a weapon on one’s person would mean further imprisonment, and a stain upon my reputation.”
Sons of Moriarty and More Stories of Sherlock Holmes Page 19