Kennedy and I had been dining rather late one evening at Luigi's, a little Italian restaurant on the lower West Side.We had known the place well in our student days, and had made a point of visiting it once a month since, in order to keep in practice in the fine art of gracefully handling long shreds of spaghetti.
Therefore we did not think it strange when the proprietor himself stopped a moment at our table to greet us.Glancing furtively around at the other diners, mostly Italians, he suddenly leaned over and whispered to Kennedy:
"I have heard of your wonderful detective work, Professor.Could you give a little advice in the case of a friend of mine?""Surely, Luigi.What is the case?" asked Craig, leaning back in his chair.
Luigi glanced around again apprehensively and lowered his voice.
"Not so loud, sir.When you pay your check, go out, walk around Washington Square, and come in at the private entrance.I'll be waiting in the hall.My friend is dining privately upstairs."We lingered a while over our Chianti, then quietly paid the check and departed.
True to his word, Luigi was waiting for us in the dark hall.With a motion that indicated silence, he led us up the stairs to the second floor, and quickly opened a door into what seemed to be a fair-sized private dining-room.A man was pacing the floor nervously.On a table was some food, untouched.As the door opened I thought he started as if in fear, and I am sure his dark face blanched, if only for an instant.Imagine our surprise at seeing Gennaro, the great tenor, with whom merely to have a speaking acquaintance was to argue oneself famous.
"Oh, it is you, Luigi," he exclaimed in perfect English, rich and mellow."And who are these gentlemen?"Luigi merely replied, "Friends," in English also, and then dropped off into a voluble, low-toned explanation in Italian.
I could see, as we waited, that the same idea had flashed over Kennedy's mind as over my own.It was now three or four days since the papers had reported the strange kidnapping of Gennaro's five-year-old daughter Adelina, his only child, and the sending of a demand for ten thousand dollars ransom, signed, as usual, with the mystic Black Hand--a name to conjure with in blackmail and extortion.
As Signor Gennaro advanced toward us, after his short talk with Luigi, almost before the introductions were over, Kennedy anticipated him by saying: "I understand, Signor, before you ask me.I have read all about it in the papers.You want someone to help you catch the criminals who are holding your little girl.""No, no!" exclaimed Gennaro excitedly."Not that.I want to get my daughter first.After that, catch them if you can--yes, Ishould like to have someone do it.But read this first and tell me what you think of it.How should I act to get my little Adelina back without harming a hair of her head?" The famous singer drew from a capacious pocketbook a dirty, crumpled, letter, scrawled on cheap paper.
Kennedy translated it quickly.It read:
Honourable sir: Your daughter is in safe hands.But, by the saints, if you give this letter to the police as you did the other, not only she but your family also, someone near to you, will suffer.We will not fail as we did Wednesday.If you want your daughter back, go yourself, alone and without telling a soul, to Enrico Albano's Saturday night at the twelfth hour.You must provide yourself with $10,000 in bills hidden in Saturday's Il Progresso Italiano.In the back room you will see a man sitting alone at a table.He will have a red flower on his coat.
You are to say, "A fine opera is 'I Pagliacci.'" If he answers, "Not without Gennaro, lay the newspaper down on the table.He will pick it up, leaving his own, the Bolletino.On the third page you will find written the place where your daughter has been left waiting for you.Go immediately and get her.But, by the God, if you have so much as the shadow of the police near Enrico'a your daughter will be sent to you in a box that night.
Do not fear to come.We pledge our word to deal fairly if you deal fairly.This is a last warning.Lest you shall forget we will show one other sign of our power to-morrow.La MANO NERA.
The end of this ominous letter was gruesomely decorated with a skull and cross-bones, a rough drawing of a dagger thrust through a bleeding heart, a coffin, and, under all, a huge black band.
There was no doubt about the type of letter that it was.It was such as have of late years become increasingly common in all our large cities, baffling the best detectives.
"You have not showed this to the police, I presume?" asked Kennedy.
"Naturally not."
"Are you going Saturday night?"
"I am afraid to go and afraid to stay away," was the reply, and the voice of the fifty-thousand-dollars-a-season tenor was as human as that of a five-dollar-a-week father, for at bottom all men, high or low, are one.
"'We will not fail as we did Wednesday,'" reread Craig."What does that mean"Gennaro fumbled in his pocketbook again, and at last drew forth a typewritten letter bearing the letter-head of the Leslie Laboratories, Incorporated.
"After I received the first threat," explained Gennaro, "my wife and I went from our apartments at the hotel to her father's, the banker Cesare, you know, who lives on Fifth Avenue.I gave the letter to the Italian Squad of the police.The next morning my father-in-law's butler noticed something peculiar about the milk.
He barely touched some of it to his tongue, and he has been violently ill ever since.I at once sent the milk to the laboratory of my friend Doctor Leslie to have it analysed.This letter shows what the household escaped.""My dear Gennaro," read Kennedy."The milk submitted to us for examination on the 10th inst.has been carefully analysed, and Ibeg to hand you herewith the result:
Specific gravity 1.036 at 15 degrees Cent.
