The Popular Magazine/Volume 72/Number 1/The Crusader's Casket/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
JIMMY could not in the least conjecture what had been the cause of this personal outrage, what the project of profit by his capture, or what had become of Pietro. The sole concrete fact was that he was a prisoner in a tower somewhere in Venice, and that, somewhere in that same building, was Pietro, whose life he had possibly saved. Jimmy, when not excited, was inclined to be a philosopher; hence, convinced that he could do nothing to effect his escape, he calmly threw himself down on the not uncomfortable bed in the circular room and in less than a minute was asleep.
“Rattlety-bang! Thumpety-thump!” A terrific noise in the hallway, accompanied by loud grunts, some perfervid oaths, and more banging against the door aroused Jimmy and brought him to his feet listening.
“Sounds like a dog fight in the fo'c's'le,” he muttered, “only this time it's not dogs. Go to it, whoever you are!”
Then as suddenly as they had begun the sounds ceased, there was silence, and then some one was fumbling at the huge bolts of the heavy door. It swung open a crack and a voice growled, “Are you in there, Signor Ware?”
“Yes, I am here,” Jimmy replied as he edged to the side of the door with a chair that he had hastily seized and held upraised and ready to strike. “Who are you?”
“Tomaso, signor. Your gondolier, Tomaso. May I come in now without being smashed with that chair I think you are holding?”
Astonished at the old gondolier's night vision Jimmy laughed, dropped the chair and swung the door open. He could hear Tomaso panting heavily in the darkness and then, “Have you a light, signor?”
“Yes,” Jimmy said. “Just a moment. But I've no match.” He felt two or three thrust into his fingers, struck one, crossed the room, found the lamp and with it in his hand turned and stared at Tomaso.
“Good Lord! You're hurt!” Jimmy exclaimed. “What's all that blood on your face?”
“I don't think it amounts to much, signor. Knife thrust in the dark. Fought it off with my arm. Grazed my head.”
“You look as if you'd been half scalped, instead of grazed,” Jimmy remarked solicitously. 'Come over here and let me have a look at it.”
“The signor capitano had perhaps better have a look at the other fellow first. He may need attention more than I,” Tomaso remarked, stepping back and looking downward. Jimmy advanced, bent over with the light, and discovered the man with earrings, his chief abductor, lying doubled up in a grotesque attitude, with clothing as badly rent and torn as Tomaso's, while some disheveled blankets on the floor proved that he must have been either asleep or lying down on guard when Tomaso attacked him.
“How did you do it to him?” Jimmy asked.
“Why, when he tried to knife me I got him by the ears and banged his head against the wall. I don't think he's dead. His skull ought to be too thick for that. I think I know who he is. He's mostly a loafer and not much good, so it won't matter much if he is dead.”
Jimmy dragged the man with the earrings inside, came to the conclusion that he was merely knocked out, so tied his hands with the handkerchief from around his neck and then examined his henchman's wound. He assisted Tomaso to cleanse it in the wash basin in the room, and bound it up with a towel, turbanwise.
“Ah, that's better. A million thanks, signor. You are a good man and kind master. I feel all right now. So, if you'll wait here, I'll bring in the other one from far down the hall. I left him there when I came to this one,” and he indicated the bound brigand with a careless kick in the ribs.
“I'll bring the light. You seem to have had rather a merry party of it, Tomaso. Good old sport! I'll come along with the light.”
“No, you remain here and watch this one, signor. I don't need the light. I can manage alone.”
He disappeared, Jimmy heard his bare feet slapping down the hallway, then after a time heard them returning. He came through the door carrying a man so bound with ropes and so wrapped with a gagging cloth that he appeared helpless to do more than give an occasional soundless wriggle. Tomaso carried his burden over to the bed, dumped it casually thereon and then said, “If the signor will hold the light so I can see to cut away this gag, our friend may feel better.”
Jimmy promptly obeyed. Tomaso slipped a knife from its sheath and said to his victim, “Best lay still or I might make a mistake and slice off an ear or two.” He gave a quick slash, and the lamp almost fell from Jimmy's hand as he recognized Pietro.
“Good heavens! What's this? You've made a mistake, Tomaso.”
“Not I, signor,” the old gondolier declared.
“Where did you get him?” Jimmy demanded. “Out of another room in this crib?”
“Not at all. I nailed him when he was on his way to his hotel—down near the landing of the rio.”
“But—but Pietro is my friend!” Jimmy insisted. “Cut those ropes and let me help him limber up.”
“You'll most likely help him to limber up with your fists, or your boots, after I tell you how I happened to get him,” Tomaso asserted. “Suppose, my master, you don't liberate him until I've explained.”
He was so certainly in earnest that Jimmy hesitated and looked at Pietro. That young gentleman shut his mouth tightly, as if refusing to speak, and turned his head away.
“Pietro, haven't you anything to say?” Jimmy asked, bending over the poetical guide.
“You know I haven't,” Pietro snapped. “Let this old water rat squeak. I'd like, myself, to hear his story.”
Jimmy, mystified by this turn of conversation, turned to Tomaso and nodded. The old gondolier sat down on the foot of the bed and grinned mirthlessly at the prostrate Pietro.
“Why, to-day, signor—or yesterday now—I saw this scalawag talking to that big lump over there on the floor, and I knew there must be something wrong afoot, from the confidential way in which they talked and because the lump is no good. It bothered somewhat, and so when to-night I saw this Pietro take you off in a gondola that's not a public one, but a private one owned by this lump's pal, I made up my mind there was something wrong, and I followed you. I got into that passageway too late to help, but I saw that something like a lively play was going on, Pietro here pretending to be struggling and fighting, and you down. Him fighting? All he was doing was to boss the job and fool you so that if you got away there could be no evidence against him! Then when they carried you into this building they left the lower door open. So I slipped inside, took off my shoes and watched and listened. Pietro paid off all but one man, this lout with earrings, and they shoved off. If they hadn't been in such a hurry to reach the nearest grog shop they'd have seen me; because I had barely time to slip into one of the empty rooms a few feet ahead of them.
“Then Pietro waits in the hall with his ear to a crack of the door until the decorated brigand here and his pal come out and lock the door. They all go downstairs, where Pietro pays off the stevedore who carried you in, and he too shoves off. Then Pietro gives his instructions to old Earrings to make sure that you don't get away for at least four days, but—I'll say this for him!—he made it plain that you weren't to be hurt in any way that could be helped unless you cut up ugly, and that you were to be well fed and watered. He gives Earrings a key and tells him that he needn't come down to lock the outer door because he's got another key for himself. When I heard that I ran down and out. I waited quite a while and then comes Master Pietro down the street and I took him in before he knew what happened; fixed him up with the spare mooring line of my gondola; got the key out of his pocket; brought him back; dumped him in the hallway and slipped up on Earrings. I waited quite a while and thought Earrings ought to be asleep. But when I struck a match to find him, he jumped up and we had a very nice little party. A very nice party, signor, and, if I do not boast, I'll say that for a man of my years there's quite a lot of good stuff left in me yet. However, that's all I know about it—and there they are. Nice pair of 'em!”
For a long time Jimmy looked at Pietro, who eyed him back with a scowl as black as the night outside. Jimmy could not in the least conjecture the whys and wherefores of this conspiracy and suddenly felt sorry that Pietro, who had so often amused him, should prove so black a traitor to friendship.
“Pietro, my lad,” he said in English, “I can't understand this at all. I thought you were my friend. You are the last one in the world I would have classed as a Judas Iscariot!”
“You're a nice one to call any one a Judas. I should say so!” Pietro cried, breaking his long, stubborn silence with such indignant and vehement anger that his face whitened. He tried to sit up, struggling like a trussed fowl, and then limply chucked himself back on the pillow with an air of helpless exasperation.
“Go ahead and talk,” Jimmy said.
“How can I talk—freely, and express myself when—lying here like this, with my hands tied?” Pietro demanded.
Jimmy suddenly burst into a roar of laughter at the absurdity of Pietro's speech, but the latter appeared to discern nothing funny in his remark and scowled all the more.
“All right. We'll loosen your hands so you can express yourself,” said Jimmy, and then in Italian told Tomaso to go over and close the door and stand guard by it.
“My lad,” said Jimmy as he proceeded to unbind the rope lashings, “you're laboring under some sort of delusion. If you think I ever played the part of a Judas in anything, I'd like to have you tell me what it is. We'll have to get that straightened out first. So, with a little patience, I don't doubt but what we'll come to a better understanding. There you are! Free! Now you'd probably feel more comfortable if you got up and sat in a chair. It's no fun being tied up like a boneless ham. I've been through it myself this evening—by your orders. So you've had at least some of your own medicine back, thanks to good old Tomaso.”
Pietro got up, stretched himself, massaged his wrists and ankles to restore circulation, readjusted his necktie with a touch of vanity, smoothed his mop of hair and took a seat at the little marble-topped center table opposite Ware.
“You think I'm not, as the Americans say, wise to you, eh?” he growled. “You can't talk Italian, eh? You said so on the first night I ever saw you there in St. Mark's Square, and you took pains never to speak it in front of me after that. Then you pretended to be a tourist and came to the Danieli to stop! You, the master of the ship Adventure lying out there in the Giudecco! And you wormed your way into the confidence of my lady like a cheap detective. Bah! You got her to tell you things. Bah! And you and that old water rat followed us one night when we were going about our project and studying the situation, and you didn't take warning when we ran you down—my lady and I! Yes, we did it, and I wish you had both been drowned! I tell you this to your face.”
“So it was you? I thought so at the time, but wasn't certain,” Jimmy commented, with a grin. “I suppose she knew it was me who got tipped into the canal and had to swim?”
“My lady did not—God bless her sweet soul. I kept your perfidy from her,” Pietro exclaimed with a fervency that reached melodrama. “I knew that she might show pity to you and disbelieve your baseness, but I, her guardian, thought I could take care of you!”
“And you darned near did it, Pietro. You darned near did it!” Jimmy conceded, still smiling at this wild Latin fervor, this unconscious acting, this overdeveloped sense of drama that in any other than Pietro would have seemed absurdly ridiculous. The only element that saved Pietro, Jimmy decided, was his profound and fiery earnestness and his chivalric determination to be of service, come what might, to his much-admired employer.
It was these ameliorating conditions that caused him to ask, curiously and almost inconsequentially, “Pietro, how old are you?”
“I'll be twenty-one next month,” the boy blurted and then, impatiently: “But what's that got to do with it?”
“I just wished to know; but go on with your arraignment,” Jimmy said with a faint and tolerant smile.
“All right, I will. I'll make you admit that you're a Judas. You think I don't know, but I do. I've had lots of ways of finding out all you did. If you think a Venetian guide hasn't ways of finding everything out about everybody—bah!—you don't know Venezia. What are you going to say when I tell you that you are nothing but a tool of that old villain; that wretched old American who has more money than he ever deserved; that old man Harnway? Ah-ha! You are surprised at my knowledge! You went to his house to report your perfidy. You did! Don't deny it. He likes you so well that he put his arm around your shoulder and called you by your first name. You can't deny that either because the door man saw it. Ah-ha! I see you are at last ashamed of yourself. And he took you up into the salon and showed you that little casket that he stole and that I have taken a solemn oath before the shrine of Our Lady to recover for its rightful owner, who is the sweetest, finest lady that ever came from the town of Kentucky, in a State called Rocky Crossing, United States of America. Now I ask you—are you a Judas or are you not, Signor Ware?”
He jumped to his feet, sputtering, glaring, and with the backs of his hands resting on the top of the table, bent forward as he must have thought an accusing angel might bend to confront and utterly demolish a quivering and stripped malefactor. It seemed to increase his anger when Jimmy gave a low whistle, rammed his hands in his pockets, tilted his chair back, elevated his feet to the table and quietly grinned.
“Well, Pietro,” he drawled at last, “from your point of view it does look pretty bad, doesn't it? I'll be hanged if, from your view-point, you haven't made out rather an admirable case against me! I'll admit it! In a way you've got the makings of a first-class lawyer in you, I should say.”
Pietro could not altogether resist this praise. But as if to harden himself for the performance of a stern duty he chased away that slight trace of self-satisfaction and assumed a highly judicial air.
“Since you have admitted your baseness, your treachery, your vile masquerading, and that you have led the most wonderful lady that the State of Rocky Crossing, U. S. A., ever produced, into perhaps giving you her confidence, I should now like to know what you are going to do about it?”
Jimmy brought his feet down with a bang as a solution of the situation, somewhat whimsical, was formulated in his mind.
“Suppose I make a bargain with you. There are certain reasons why I don't wish to have Miss Cardell”—he tripped, almost using her true name of Powell—“your employer, know that I am merely the master of a tramp freighter, or that I am acquainted with Mr. Harnway. Suppose I agree to help lift that box myself in return for your keeping those matters silent? Are you a very good burglar, Pietro? I dare say you're not! I don't believe you ever robbed even a—church, or a collection box, or a blind man, did you? Well, if you never have, my experience might prove valuable. I come from a long line of people who have been accused, openly, of grabbing things that didn't belong to them. It's in the blood, I tell you. Could we make that bargain?”
As he spoke he saw Pietro's eyes widen with astonishment at such a brazen confession of heredity.
“The signor is not jesting, is he?” Pietro asked with a perplexed stare.
“Not at all. I'll make that bargain and I'll carry it out, too! Was never more in earnest in my life. I've a particular reason, come to think of it, why I should like to steal that box myself and hand it to Miss—er—Cardell.”
“If, as you say, you are expert in such matters, which neither my lady nor I are, your offer is attractive,” Pietro said, staring first at the lamp, then at the stolid Tomaso, then back at Jimmy. “But I wonder if I dare trust you? Your record so far as I know is—bad. Very bad, signor. The one thing in your favor is that to-night you tried, as you believed, to save my life. I heard you and my heart softened a little at that.”
“Of course, if you don't agree to my terms,” Ware said thoughtfully, “there is nothing for me to do but hand you and that hired brigand of yours there on the floor over to the police. I'd be sorry to do that, because I understand that brigandage in Italy is now punishable with life imprisonment or death, and as our case is so clear, and Tomaso such a good witness, and this man of yours would undoubtedly confess—well, I'd hate to think of your being hanged, shot, beheaded, or whatever it is they do to them down here, Pietro.”
He shook his head sorrowfully, but from the corner of his eye saw Pietro's long, slender fingers suddenly clutch the edge of the table as if, for the first time, the gravity of his predicament was impressed upon him.
“You—you wouldn't do that, would you, signor?” he gasped in a dry voice as if from a suddenly restricted throat.
“I'm afraid I would. I don't see any other way out of it, Pietro,” Jimmy asserted with an assumption of profound gravity. “I think we'd better strike that bargain, hadn't we?”
Pietro wriggled and twisted in his chair, then put both elbows on the table and thrust his fingers through his mop of hair as if distracted. At last he groaned, “I've got to! I can do nothing else!”
“Good! Then we'll shake on it, eh?” said Jimmy with great alacrity.
Pietro accepted the proffered hand in a cold grasp of formality and with evident reluctance.
“Now,” said Jimmy cheerfully, “you might dump what's left of that pitcher of water on the head of your hired man there and see if that'll bring him out of dreamland. That's all you need do. I'll reserve to myself the pleasure of kicking him down two flights of stairs.”
But when the ruffian with the gold earrings was restored to a dripping consciousness and his hands liberated he was in such a pitiable state of funk, and clung to his head with such a genuine air of holding it together after the battering it had received, that Jimmy relented.
“Humph! Guess he's had enough to last some time,” he said, standing above the man and glowering down at him. Then peremptorily he growled, in Italian, “Get up and get out of this! And move fast, because if you don't I'll tell Tomaso to take another go at you, you lop-eared, murderous thug! And if you're not out of Venice in twelve hours the police will get you. I'll see to that, too. Get out!”
With all his former truculence and braggadocio gone, fearful not only of this American who threatened him but of the savagely grinning old gondolier who had already administered punishment that he was not likely to forget in many moons, the man crawled to the doorway on his hands and knees, then got to his feet and with a sudden access of fear-stimulated strength ran through the hallway and pattered down the stairs as if there was danger of reconsideration behind.
“Now, Pietro, my friend,” Jimmy said quietly, “we'll light ourselves out with this lamp. You can lock this old crib that you doubtless rented for this festive night—the night when the Fratelli Nero celebrate, you remember—and we'll get Tomaso to lend us his gondola. You can row it, since you are so handy with an oar. Tomaso and I both know that. We've seen you work. And you, Tomaso, will then go to one of the night dispensaries and get a few stitches taken in your scalp. Tell them it was an accident. We've all agreed to keep our mouths shut about to-night. Come on!”