Persons Unknown
CHAPTER V
CARNAGE: A COMIC OPERA CLIMAX
The door from the hall opened, letting in a flood of light. At the sametime a man stepped through one of the windows. He was the first of anumber whom the halls and staircases instantly absorbed. Out ofHerrick's very hold Christina slipped and caught this man by the arm andhung away from him as she was wont to hang upon the arm of HermannDeutch. "Oh, heaven and our fathers!" cried she in a faint wail. "Butyou were a little late!"
The man, standing tense in the shadow, was examining the room withappraising eyes. Christina, blind to something rigid in him, hurried on."And I did so depend on a quick curtain! But all's well that endswell--I've got it! Mr. District-Attorney, your mail!"
"Who's that with you?" said the voice of Henry Kane.
As he took, from the hand that had never once resigned them, thescorched and torn sheets and buttoned them beneath his coat he glancedover his shoulder, expectantly.
"You'll go to the Governor, yourself, to-morrow? To-morrow!"
"Please God! Ah, Herrick, you make one more! Hear anything, Sheriff?" hecalled into the hall.
Kane had turned to close the shutters at his back but Christina, blindwith triumph, continued to Herrick: "He saw my shadow at Riley's. I toldhim all that I suspected and he believed me. He spoke to the Governor.They promised me if I could give Mr. Kane that man and the headquartersof the others I should have Will's life in exchange. I knew from Nancy'sholding that letter and it's being addressed in Allegra's hand that itmust be the story which caused his feeling against Ingham--that Nancy,as well as I, must have hoped it might even set him free. Mr. Kane gotme a doctor and as soon as I had my voice he sent me to a little hotelup the river here, kept by Ten Euyck's old servants whom he would knowmust recognize him, and there I sent for him. He was afraid to comethere, of course, into my disreputable company. But he was fine andeager to meet me somewhere. We hoped he would name that stronghold ofAllegra's where he would feel safe and when he named this house ourhopes leaped.--Oh, I'm so tired!" cried Christina, sitting down on thefloor like a worn-out child and snuggling her head forward in her lap.
"Are those doors fast?" called Kane from his second window. "Thatshutter's loose! What's that balcony? This room won't stand a siege!You, Herrick, the sheriff and I and five men--can we hold this house?"
Sheriff Buckley had just limped in with his bruised, cut face furtherdiscolored by the blood from a scalp-wound which he was binding with ahandkerchief. Herrick had already noticed that Kane's arm was tiedtight, just above the elbow, with a gaily flaunting necktie and aroundthis necktie the torn sleeve was soaked and stained.--"Against howmany?" he replied.
It was not till then that, lifting a face of weary dismay, "Are we stillfighting?" Christina almost sobbingly demanded.
"Now, don't frighten the lady!" The sheriff turned to Kane. "We just gotinto a mix-up at the gate with the whole Dago gang. They'll never comeup here after us."
All three men, none the less, were busy latching shutters, locking,barricading. They were not interrupted and no alarm but their ownseemed in the air. As they worked Kane said, "There's something up wedon't understand. This is something more than any bunch of Pascoes. Weexpected a fight. We had over a dozen men. We were attacked by ahundred. They had made an obstacle race for the motors. One they put outfor good. But the sheriff got this one through."
"We've left 'em a mile behind!" said the sheriff. "Before they can gethere the river police'll have taken the yacht. They'll be up here beforelong. We're safe here awhile, all to ourselves, and they can't getwithin a hundred feet of the house without being picked off by our boysupstairs!"
As he spoke the pane above Herrick's head, where he struggled with theloose shutter, cracked into flying splinters. A small hard object hadhurtled into the room and thumped at Kane's feet. A bewildermentludicrous as hysteria came over Herrick. For the object that carried abit of paper rolled in its mouth was a little golden pistol--whichthough sufficiently valued to carry on its handle a monogram of threecapital A's, picked out in jewels, was yet no pistol at all. It was adummy made all in one piece!
"So!" said the District-Attorney. "Now we know!"
"What?"
"I asked you, Herrick, if we could hold this house. And you asked meagainst how many. I can't tell you against how many but I can now tellyou against what. Against an army of which you have read, not so longsince, a considerable deal in the papers. Against the Camorra."
"Here!"
"After us?"
"The Italian Camorra!"
"In America!"
"Yes," Kane insisted, "and under those trees."
"In costume!" cried Christina, with rising spirits and flitting to thewindow.
"A skeleton pistol is its badge. The owner of this trinket is a member.Please, Miss Hope, translate us this paper."
She read aloud, "Alieni the infamous and all his house die here to-nightthe death of traitors."
"Well, the information's dear, but we're getting plenty of it! There'san advance guard, evidently, set hereabouts!--Alieni! And capital A's!It's their traitor's badge they've stolen to threaten him. If we onlyknew who Alieni is? And where he is! And what they think he has to dowith us!"
Herrick told them where he had seen the pistol before. To no one didthis, at that time, bring any light. Kane's mind was busy with thefortunes of the police-boat. "The Camorra easily swarms thick enough tooverpower that!" He paused, surveying their fortress. If they had neededanything to tell them they were doomed they might have found it in thecolloquial, dry calm of Kane's voice as he said, "We should, perhaps,have sent Miss Hope upstairs."
"Oh, I beseech you--anything but a trap. Let me stay where I can run!"
"The more as they may try to smoke us out!"
Silence grew up in their midst.
The great front doors were barred and chained; through the house fivemen were on watch; the door into the hall was barricaded with the giltpiano, whence still the Cupids smiled, stacked above and below with thelittle table and the chairs; down the room's long front the five greatwindows, three more crossing at the farther end, were dark with thelatched shutters of which the second on the front was the suspected. Sofrail were the defenses! So short a time from the first blow must theslats give and the glass crash in!
"I think you'd best take the end, Mr. Kane; me and Mr. Herrick the frontwindows--Lord, who's this?"
The black figure with gleaming shirt-front was seated in a little giltchair in the wall's darkest angle; with outstretched legs and tiltedhead it confronted them from very glassy eyes. But it was only the deadbody of Ten Euyck, who must have reared up thus with his last breath andjoined their council.
"Well," cried the sheriff, gaily, "you make another--if they think so!"Seizing the chair he trundled it across the room; on the floor he foundTen Euyck's gun and propped it into the passive fingers. "There! If thisblind falls down, you'll be better 'n the piano--they'll waste a lot ofattention on you! Now, if they only make noise enough, down by theriver--Oh, you mustn't let him make you whimper, miss!"
Herrick was mainly aware of a terrible impatience. The surprise andconfusion of their peril made its expectation a raging fever, as if onlya horrible scarecrow in a mirror waited to be smashed. Despite the wholeweek's frenzied pulse, despite the happenings of the last four hours,Herrick could not believe in what lay before and all about them. Thesewere men he knew, with whom he had put through other adventures; thegirl beside him had never seemed so much a girl as in this failure ofher hardihood--he saw her for the first time with loosened hair thattouched her face with a childish softness, made for cherishing--ittightened something in his heart as though to crack it, but it wasabsurd to suppose that in half an hour, in ten or twenty minutes, theywould be there on the floor, unconscious of each other, ended, wipedout! Christina lifted her arms in a gesture instinctive with allwomankind and gathering up this tumble of hair her dear, quick fingerstwined and thrust till it was heaped into its place--why, of course not!This strang
e night camp amid broken furniture, the spreading pool ofoil, the jewels lying mixed with the supper's wreckage, Christina silentagain and holding his hand tight, the two wounded, haggard men, allthese his mind admitted, all these were conceivable. But what was soonto come was not conceivable! Yet--hark! Was that--No, only some creak ofthe old house! What sound would be the last before the deluge? How longmust they wait? Already the air seemed thick and hard to breathe, thetwilight of the room hung on them like a solid weight and the one candleChristina had lighted made scarce a twinkle of sane, human comfort inthe vast yellowish gloom.--
"If you please, miss, put out that light!"
"Oh!"
"We can't afford to advertise!"
The light was gone.
In the pitch-black airlessness Herrick could feel Christina kneelingagainst him, quiet but for the broken breathing that told him she wasstill afraid of the dark. As he put his left arm round her shoulders shepressed her cold cheek to his hand.
"It's funny, isn't it? We never even had time to get anengagement-ring!--Here they come!"
A sound as of excited animals plunged through the groves about thehouse; with tramplings and scufflings a great herd seemed to surge outupon the vacant drive. As it confronted the empty automobile, thetranquil terraces and the blank front of the locked house it paused,uncertainly; then a high, prolonged whistle sounded, shorter whistlesresponded from every stretch and nook of woodland and there fell again,to the stupefaction of those within, a perfect silence.
This continued unbroken, baffling, interminable, inscrutable, and solidas the walls of a cell. Christina in her endeavor for control gave aslight, nervous cough, no more than a rough catch of the breath, suchas Herrick had heard her give many a time when their taxi skimmed tooclose to a trolley in the safe, crowded, far-off streets. And with thisfamiliar little sound apprehension awoke in him, full-armed. Themerciful veil was torn from his imagination, his soul gaped to theknowledge of death and of direr things that precede death. On theinstant all he had ever known of struggle changed; chivalry,civilization, restraint, vanished like things that never were; if, atthat moment, the bodies of a hundred other women as sweet, asdefenseless, as tender as his love's had stood in her way he could haveset his heel upon them all to save her. Then, close at hand, as if fromsomewhere within the wall, came the imperative, prolonged tingle of atelephone!
They turned, dumbfounded, shaken with incredulous, mad hope. But whencecame it? Where was it? Christina stirred and slid to her feet; her dresswent whispering across the room; the men, not daring to leave theirposts, knew she must be feeling along the rear wall and still throughthe darkness the telephone rang. Then she gave a low cry--a narrow doorin the glass paneling had slipped sideways so that she stretched herhands into a kind of pantry; the instrument's shrill call was nowdirectly in her ears--"It's Nicola!"
The three questioning whispers sprang at her at once.
"He wants to speak to Mr. Ten Euyck."
Blankness answered. The ringing became more impatient.
"Take the message."
But no message was to be had. Nicola's party was at the boathouse, ingreat trouble, in danger--never mind what! He wanted to speak to Mr. TenEuyck. "He says, 'Get him to pass me his word to shelter us or what willyou give--what will you give for news of Nancy Cornish?'"
"Tell him I, Kane, 'll buy his news."
Christina dropped back against the wall. "When he has spoken to Mr. TenEuyck."
Perhaps, in the helpless pause, the glassy face taking aim behind theshutter smiled to itself in the dark. Before they had time to try if thewire connected only with the boathouse, a single shot sprang from acrossthe drive.
There was a sharp crack and splintering, a hot puff on Christina'scheek, and the shattered telephone hung crazily on the wall. Thebesieging force had misinterpreted what seemed the reinforcement of theworld and used its best marksman. Having done so it was content andreassumed its patient crouching. "Rifles!" cried the sheriff. "And yetthey don't attack!"
Kane peered through the broken slat and with a very grim expression drewback for the others. "Look under the trees, there. Is it just dark? Oris it dark with men?"
"Looks like Birnam Wood!" said Herrick.
It was that blackest hour before the morning when darkness takes onweight and bulk so that the eye must carve a way through. But theblazing dazzle of the entrance porch broke and distorted the besiegingdark, exaggerating, multiplying the forces that it held. Beyond thebrightness of the steps the stone and then the grassy terraces fellindistinct and shallow to the lawns, beyond which, perhaps a hundredfeet away, the drive was rather known than discerned; twenty feet or sofarther still the wood lay shapeless and invisible but filled by themonstrous darkness as close as with a great tide. There the moststraining eye could see nothing whatever; now and again the night camealive with snapping twigs, every grove would wake and rustle; then not aleaf would stir. But through all the intermediate borderland shadowsseemed to loom, to creep, dissolve and disappear; then to their moreaccustomed eyes these shadows began to take on form--they were theshadows of softly moving men, individuals and small groups, unknownpersons on unknown errands which carried them here and there but closerand closer about the house. "Queer the boys upstairs don't spot them!"One group passed so close to the end windows that Kane fired at it andproduced a commotion which he followed by another shot. There was noresponse, but from all directions the fringe of figures drew nearer, acrouching, irregular line behind its faggot-like shields of brokenboughs. The defenders spent their shots recklessly, now, for the samethought was in all their minds; it seemed to take form from its ownapprehension when, as the invaders drew back their wounded, those withinbecame aware of something across the tree-tops, down toward the river; aruddier dusk, a glow that was not morning, far against the sky.
Close at their backs Christina's voice murmured with an icy softness,"The boathouse! It's afire!" Her tone told Herrick that the telephonehad stolen all her weakness, she was strung like a bow; side by sidewith his her glance strained out and forward as the knots of mencontinued to advance with velvet stealth. The fire of the defendersceased. Automatically, for they had nothing left to fire with. "What'sbecome of my fellows?" Sheriff Buckley wondered. The first foam of thetide began to lap the terraces. Christina looked beyond it toward theflames that flared on the horizon. And from that way Herrick, too, hearda new sound, the thudding of a horse galloping clumsily on soft turf.The shadows blotted themselves to the ground. The hoofbeats began to runamuck as though the horse had lost its rider. Hither and yon round thecorners of the house shapeless movements hurried, there came the step ofa heavy runner and the cursing of a deep voice in some Italian patois.The long, single whistle darted out again and once more there fell thatmotionless waiting of the profoundly brooding night. It was Christinawho first said, "Some one else is in this room!"
As they listened they, too, could hear the sound of crawling. Somethingwas creeping into the room. It was coming through the pantry door whichChristina had left open and it advanced with a dragging sound as awounded beast drags on its stomach. Kane, dropping on it, found hishands in a man's hair. The man sank under him with a deathly groan andnow it was Kane who called for a candle. "Nicola!" Christina breathed.
He was making horrible motions with his mouth; Christina found someunspilled wine and thrust the edge of the glass between his lips. "Tellme! Nancy--?"
Kane held up his hand. Beyond, in the pantry, a step sounded--backingfrom Nicola's trail. Herrick and the sheriff dragged in between them atall Sicilian whose triangular knife was still wet. The embroideredtable-cloth with which they bound him to the piano strained under hisrenewed efforts to attack the dying man whom Christina still entreated,"Is she with my sister? Is she?"
A hoarse sob raged through Nicola and gasped past his last grin of prideand hate. "You fool of hers! Fool of us all! _Your_ sister? _My_ sister,mine! You think _you_ ever have a sister like that?"
The girl stood above him, tranced and wide
-eyed, with distendednostrils; as she turned to Herrick a face which release and knowledgewere even then palely lighting the figure of a man darted into thegallery where Herrick had lain; a slim, soft man whose pretty littleface was all flecked and sweated with the insane hate and courage whichcome of insane fear. The Sicilian greeted what he took for reinforcementwith a cry of triumph and encouragement; but it was not Nicola, it wasHerrick at whom this tremulous assassin, yelling "Spy! Spy! Will youshow me again to the Camorra?" extended his revolver. At the samemoment, Nicola, turning on his side and aiming upward, shot him dead.The slim, soft figure doubled over the rail and the refined, pretty,convulsed face swung there with open mouth. At this Nicola spat the winewhich he had sucked as he lay: "Thus my sister salutes thee!" Then hishead knocked back upon the floor and he lay still.
The tall Sicilian, who had watched the action without fullyunderstanding the quick English words, now strained forward, peeringwith a kind of gratified thirst into Christina's face. He said to her inItalian that was almost a whisper, "You are very fair!"
"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 ofyour brothers. There was one who was like a little sister. Where isshe?"
Christina started; half in appeal, half in defense against the omen ofhis tones, she stretched out her hands. The Sicilian lowered his mouthto the bosom of his shirt and brought forth in his teeth a little hoopof silver which he shook before Christina's eyes. "Where is she now? Ofher tokens _she has lost the third_!" It was Nancy's bracelet that hedropped at Christina's feet.
"Devil of fine fairness," he said, "I shall pick it up again, when youare 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 fromthe hand of Beppo, who lay bleeding in the grass. Were Chigi and Pepecaught in the fire? They reached her late, for they had rowed their boatback, to escape those policemen on the river. Only when Alieni jumpedand swam they must follow him and tramp to the house for boats along theshore. But they reached her! I was against it always--she was not of ournation. Ah, she was pretty! Had you not let her know too much she neednot have been put to sleep!"
Christina made no outcry. If his attack on herself bewildered her, herimagination 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 inthe stricken, threatened group, as well as his own bondage. And turningonce more to Christina he smilingly informed her, "I seek in the housefor boats Nicola Pascoe. I hear him talking as at a telephone. They havebrought a lamp and in the window I see a pretty girl, young and not sotall, with a face very sweet but sick and the hair falls curling andred. She has in her hands a tiny bottle filled with a dark liquid. Shethrows 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 knockedover the lamp, for next the house for boats is blazing high. And, as thesmoke comes in the window, there she runs again--just as I see thewoman's figure and in the fiery smoke one light of her red hair at thatout from the bushes a bullet springs. She clasps her hands over herbreast with a small cry and down she sinks. And Alieni flies out of thebushes with Beppo and Chigi and Pepe at his back and he races into theflaming 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 shallcome, 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 killedher! I have killed her!' and he passes. The other falls off. It isBeppo, who dies at my feet, giving me the bracelet. He had it fromPepe, the Parmesan, whom he saw meet with Alieni in the doorway of thehouse for boats. By this time all, everywhere, is fighting and the housefor boats blows up in a puff and falls in upon itself in crumblingfire."
Christina had never taken her eyes from his face and in those eyes alonethere 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 stretchedout a blind hand to Herrick and leaned on him a little.
"Ah!" mocked the Sicilian, "it made a beautiful grave! You will not haveso fine! But yours gapes for you now as well as for your lover, and foryour husband, who caused all the death! Do not pity the girl who died.Exult not over Giuseppe Gumama. Read, instead, the writing in yourgolden pistol--of Alieni--and the Signora Alieni--" He stopped with agratified gasp. The handle of the door into the hall had been softlyturned from the outside.
No one moved. In a strange voice the sheriff called to know if this wereone 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 nightwe carried out to the river our broken press--It has let us in--soquietly--Many went upstairs--"
Herrick translated. With one impulse the three men turned toward theslide in the paneling. It was closed. But their intent listening madesure of more than one soft touch, straying in search of the mechanism.Of crowding whispers they could not be so sure. Herrick reached forNicola's gun. But it had only one charge and then, indeed, thoughwithout turning her head, Christina closed her hand on his and took itfrom him. "That's mine, you know!" No man gainsaid her and she put it inher breast. Undisguised, unhurried footsteps sounded overhead. An alienpresence pervaded all that house. Caged in their shelter, they drewtogether, close under the balcony. Christina suffered herself to bedrawn with them, but she was considering aloud the Sicilian's words.
"My golden pistol!" Christina looked from the little femininely jeweleddummy to the script, "'Filippi Alieni and all his house'--And all hishouse! 'The death of traitors'--My husband, you say? The SignoraAlieni--A. A. A. Alieni, of course! But--Allegra?--Allegra?--Alieni?"
"Signora Alieni!" Gumama smilingly repeated.
The girl gave him one glance, sprang past him and flung herself againstthe shuttered windows. "Whom do you mean by traitors?" she called. "Forwhom do you take us? Answer! Answer!"
At the sound of her voice a deep-bayed, many-throated yell roared outderision and victory. As the men dragged Christina back a coarse laughmocked loudly from across the road. "Signora Alieni, we rejoice at thelast to salute you!" And the whole woodland took up his phrase inchorus, "Buona sera, Signora Alieni!"
Then, uncontrollably, at length the darkness volleyed, the earth wasrived with sound and fire, the flashes of it scorching their skin whileglass, plaster, woodwork, split and spattered round them as through thewindows the hail beat.