we are afraid even there since
the poison attempt. So I have come here secretly to Luigi, my old
friend Luigi, who is preparing food for us, and in a few minutes one
of Cesare's automobiles will be here, and I will take the food up to
her--sparing no expense or trouble. She is heart-broken. It will kill
her, Professor Kennedy, if anything happens to our little Adelina.

"Ah, sir, I am not poor myself. A month's salary at the opera-house,
that is what they ask of me. Gladly would I give it, ten thousand
dollars--all, if they asked it, of my contract with Herr Schleppencour,
the director. But the police--bah!--they are all for catching the
villains. What good will it do me if they catch them and my little
Adelina is returned to me dead? It is all very well for the Anglo-Saxon
to talk of justice and the law, but I am--what you call it?--an
emotional Latin. I want my little daughter--and at any cost. Catch the
villains afterward--yes. I will pay double then to catch them so that
they cannot blackmail me again. Only first I want my daughter back."

"And your father-in-law?"

"My father-in-law, he has been among you long enough to be one of you.
He has fought them. He has put up a sign in his banking-house, 'No money
paid on threats.' But I say it is foolish. I do not know America as well
as he, but I know this: the police never succeed--the ransom is paid
without their knowledge, and they very often take the credit. I say, pay
first, then I will swear a righteous vendetta--I will bring the dogs to
justice with the money yet on them. Only show me how, show me how."

"First of all," replied Kennedy, "I want you to answer one question,
truthfully, without reservation, as to a friend. I am your friend,
believe me. Is there any person, a relative or acquaintance of yourself
or your wife or your father-in-law, whom you even have reason to suspect
of being capable of extorting money from you in this way? I needn't say
that that is the experience of the district attorney's office in the
large majority of cases of this so-called Black Hand."

"No," replied the tenor without hesitation: "I know that, and I have
thought about it. No, I can think of no one. I know you Americans often
speak of the Black Hand as a myth coined originally by a newspaper
writer. Perhaps it has no organisation. But, Professor Kennedy, to me
it is no myth. What if the real Black Hand is any gang of criminals who
choose to use that convenient name to extor