The Title Market Part 26

"It is not in this world," he mused, "that we shall journey, thou and I, to the land of the Americanos, the miracle workers; but a.s.suredly the Santa Vergine sent the young Signore Americano to bless our people with his miracles--even as he has sent this one to thee and me."

But beyond the bright radius of the good archbishop's lamp a figure waited and watched in the darkness--the figure of a man with a sinister face and across it a mouth that looked like a seam.

CHAPTER XXII

BEFORE DAYLIGHT

In the purple dawn of a morning two or three days later, Derby emerged from the house of Donna Marcella, saddled his horse and for the first time without his attendant _carabinieri_, started for the mines. The faint light showed him only a blurred and indistinct landscape; and in the crisp stillness the leather of his saddle creaked a monotonous accompaniment to the horse's hoofs, which struck the road with clean-cut staccato sharpness.

Meanwhile, in the big best room on the ground floor of Donna Marcella's house, Porter slept. A man's step outside and the fingering of a shutter-latch disturbed him not at all; even when there came a nervous tap on the window frame, Porter slept on. A moment of silence followed, and then a voice breathed stridently, "_Signore!_" Porter stirred in his sleep. A man's head and shoulders appeared over the sill of the open window. "_Signore! Signore l'Americano!_" The tone was louder and very urgent. Porter awoke with a start and seized his revolver. "_Pax, pax!_"

came the voice as the man dropped out of sight.

"_Signore, Signore._ It is a friend who would speak to the _Signore l'Americano_!" The syllables were whispered with ringing distinctness.

Porter jumped out of bed, revolver in hand. Close to the window, he demanded who was there.

"It is a matter of life and death! May I show myself?"

"Certainly!" said Porter. "For heaven's sake, stand up and let me have a look at you! And give an account of why you are getting a Christian out of his bed at this unearthly hour!" In the glimmering dawn he could see the outline of the man's figure, but he could not recognize him.

"_Signore_, I would speak with the big _Americano_, the one who sent the daylight miracle to the palace of the archbishop. I am sent by His Eminence the Archbishop. I am Teobaldo his servant. See, I carry the archbishop's holy ring to show I speak the truth."

Porter saw the ring distinctly, held between the man's fingers--"Yes! I believe you. Be quick!"

"I have ridden through the night, but I arrive late because I lost my path in the blackness. Last night by chance it became known to the archbishop that there is a plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate the Americano. I am come secretly to warn him. The a.s.sa.s.sin is waiting along the road to the mine; it is to be there, and the hour is now!"

Porter sprang back into the room. "Jack, Jack! For G.o.d's sake, are you there?" He tore back the covers of Derby's bed, but it was empty. He remembered with horror that the _carabinieri_ were not to accompany Derby that morning. He had insisted that they were no longer necessary.

Scrambling into his clothes any fashion--his trousers over his pajamas, his shoes over stocking less feet--he strapped on his revolvers, and took the window ledge at a bound.

He jumped astride his horse without stopping for a saddle, and beat and kicked the poor beast along the road as though the very fiends were after him. The horse rocked on his legs and breathed hard, but Porter had no consideration for that. The pale dawn revealed an empty road, along which he sped at breakneck pace, while beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead in his impatience at the seeming slowness of his progress. At last the road cut through a tangled bit of forest with a sharp bend at the end. Just as he reached the turn two shots rang out in quick succession. With his heart almost frozen, he dashed around the corner in time to see Derby plunging into the underbrush. Like a wild man Porter shouted, "I'm coming, Jack, I'm coming!"--impelling his already spent horse to the spot where Derby had disappeared into the thicket.

Derby, like all men who live much in the woods, had almost an animal's instinct for danger, and his ears, supersensitive to wood sounds, had caught a moving in the bushes. To get his revolver in hand and drop forward behind his horse's shoulders had been the act of a second, and the bullet whistled over his head. But the immediate effect of the attack had been to enrage him out of all prudence. Firing point-blank at the smudge of smoke, he jumped from his horse and rushed in pursuit of his a.s.sailant.

A second shot Derby thought had grazed his coat; he emptied two barrels of his revolver in the direction from which it came. Another bullet whistled close to his ear, then two shots went entirely wide of him, and the next moment he reached a man lying p.r.o.ne--with blood gushing from his head. Derby knocked the rifle out of his hands, but there was no further danger of its being fired, for the man had fainted.

In a second Porter dashed up, in a frenzy of terror. When he found Derby safe, his fright turned to rage, and he was impatient to put the prisoner into the hands of the _carabinieri_. "Our friend Ba.s.so will make short work of him, I'm thinking!" he said grimly.

But Derby had no intention of making such a disposition of his prisoner.

"Not at all," he said deliberately; "we will hand him over to Padre Filippo. Priests are better for such creatures than police. Come, help me tie up his head--my shirt will do!" Suiting the action to his words, he pulled off his coat. His shirt was scarlet!

"Great Heavens, man, why didn't you say you were hit?" Porter gasped.

Derby looked down at his shirt and then quizzically at Porter. "Funny,"

he remarked indifferently; "I thought the bullet had only grazed my coat. It can't be much, as I didn't even feel it; however, you might tie me up, too." He pulled off his shirt. Porter tore it up and bound Derby's shoulder. Then together they made a bandage for the bandit's head.

"He's got an ugly mug!" said Porter, as he wiped the man's face. "By Jove--it's the brigand I noticed coming down on the boat! I told you he looked like a cutthroat."

"Your natural intuition for character?" Derby smiled, but the next minute added soberly enough: "If he came from the mainland we must be up against a good deal more than the poor devils here! Who the deuce can he be? He's no miner, that's certain!"

They had dragged their prisoner out to the side of the road and laid him down. And as Derby insisted, Porter rode off for the priest. Derby sat near his charge, who showed no signs of returning consciousness. His own shoulder ached now, and he gradually became aware of slight weakness. He felt in his pockets for a flask, but found he had forgotten to carry one, so he lit his pipe instead, and fell to scrutinizing the man before him. He was of small stature, but there was great endurance in the long, pointed nose, the strong, lantern jaw; and the face, sinister though it was, retained, even in unconsciousness, an expression of grim fort.i.tude. The more Derby studied the man, the more certain he became that he was no mere skulking coward.

At last Porter and the _padre_ appeared over the hill. No sooner had the priest caught sight of the prisoner than he exclaimed, "_Per l'amor di Dio!_ It is Luigi Calluci!" There was added horror in his tone as he whispered, "Signore, Signore, he is the body servant of the Duca di Scorpa!"

At this even Derby started, but he said quite calmly, "Poor devil! The question is, what will you do with him?"

"He must be put under the arrest----"

"Well, naturally," chimed in Porter.

But Derby interposed: "He shall be put under nothing of the kind until he can give an account of himself. There is no knowing what fancied grievance he may have against me. Wait until he has been heard. The question of punishment can be considered then. But in the meantime he must be nursed!"

"You have his brother in the settlement--Salvatore Calluci, the man to whom you have given special duty in the night shaft." The priest's red head wagged mournfully: "It was to the wife of Salvatore you gave an extra goat because of her children!" But then he added, brightening a little at the thought, "I am sure--of a truth I am sure, Signore, that the brother had no hand in this!"

"Very well, then; we will take him to the house of Salvatore. We will say merely that an accident has happened--do you hear? I do not want the story of an attempted a.s.sa.s.sination to get about." Derby's voice had grown quite weak as he spoke, and the priest and Porter were both too concerned for him to think of opposing any wish he might express in regard to the prisoner. So they laid the man across the saddle of Padre Filippo's horse, and Porter and the _padre_ walked on either side of him into camp. Derby rode his own horse, but by the time he reached the mine, he had lost so much blood that he was pretty fit for the doctor himself. Tiggs, a lean, wiry Yankee, sandy-haired and resourceful, was a tolerable surgeon, and he plastered Derby up, p.r.o.nouncing the injury nothing more serious than a flesh wound.

Luigi Calluci meanwhile was carried into the hut of his brother and put to bed. If Salvatore and his wife had any idea of the cause of his "accident," they said nothing. They were among the most intelligent of the miners, and their grat.i.tude to Derby for the change in their condition, was proportionate.

But it was not alone the Callucis who had made fast strides. The whole settlement had undergone a change that was nothing short of transformation. One reason for the rapid improvement was doubtless the influence exerted by the Sicilian carpenter who had been to America and who had returned a "great man" and rich. Through him as interpreter, all things the American did were good; and the "land of plenty" lost nothing in the telling. The people began to look upon the new mining process as a miracle, and the American as sent by the Blessed Virgin.

The wages were stupendous--as much as sixty cents a day! But best of all, they were wages for work that a human being could do. Around the miners' houses were the beginnings of gardens, and several families had, in addition to the goat, a few chickens.

Every day Derby went to the hut of the Calluci. Gradually consciousness came back to Luigi. Slowly, as reason returned, the events of the past weeks formed themselves in distinct sequence. He knew where he was now--at the "Little Devil." Had he not himself descended its ladders into the mine's burning pits? Was not that why he was undersized and weak of lungs? He bore scars that had seared even deeper than through the flesh. He knew the huts, too: caves in which men lived like beasts.

It was all clear except the surroundings in which he found himself. The haggard faces of his brother and his sister-in-law were familiar, yet not as he remembered them. The withered bodies of the children seemed not nearly so pathetic! Then, full of bewilderment, he heard his sister-in-law singing. Singing! Could it be possible that a voice could sing in the "Little Devil" settlement! Distinctly he heard another sound, the voices of children at play.

Thinking all this must be merely the creation of his brain, he raised himself on his elbow and made a careful survey of the room. There was no doubt that he was in a good bed, covered by a thick new quilt, and the walls were cleanly white-washed. The air held none of the foul and strangling odors which never had been, and never could be, forgotten.

That his brother had moved and had become a well-to-do peasant of the mountain slopes and vineyards was the only explanation possible. He tried to get out of bed, but fell back dizzy, and his mind wandered off again to the semi-conscious vagaries of illness.

In this state of mind, he had become used to a new presence--a very big, very kind personality that hauntingly resembled the Americano--it was, of course, one of those phantoms that appear before fevered imaginations. He realized that, and now he made an effort to detach the dream from the reality.

But even as he was trying to put his thoughts in order, the door opened--and he vividly saw the figure of his vision followed by his sister-in-law. Thinking that his mind was wandering, he lay quite still.

Then he heard a kindly voice saying, "I have brought soup for him with me--in this jar. You have only to heat it."

Luigi felt a strong hand clasp his wrist and feel for his pulse. Then came the full belief that this was no dream, but reality, and that it was the Tyrant, the Americano himself, who laid hands on him. With a frantic effort he sprang up and tried to close his fingers around his enemy's throat! But firm, powerful hands gripped his shoulders and forced him quietly down in his bed. Then he lost consciousness.

When he came to, he thought he had dreamed the whole occurrence. His brother and Padre Filippo were sitting beside him, and they would not let him talk. But gradually, as his strength returned, he took in the story. From his brother, from the neighbors, from the priest most of all, he heard, bit by bit, of the work that the Americano had accomplished--the Americano whom he, Luigi, had nearly slain. Slowly, slowly, he understood that the "Little Devil" mine had been re-christened "The Paradise"--not by the n.o.bles who owned it, but by the people who worked in it. And then little by little the resentment, the bitterness, the grievances of his long, hard life turned him against the Duke Scorpa just as his realization of what Derby was doing won him over to the American.

That Scorpa should have sent a man to stab him was, curiously enough, a fact that did not seem to trouble Derby in the least. It was, after all, no more than he might have expected. Before he had left Rome, Scorpa had warned him. He rather admired him for that.

Derby was heart and soul interested in his settlement. In the short s.p.a.ce of time since he had arrived in Sicily, the incredible had already come to pa.s.s--and to Derby, as he looked forward, there was every reason to feel a.s.sured that the settlement would develop as he had planned. The output of the mines promised to be up to the most sanguine expectation. The whole scheme was organized and started--there was nothing to do now but to keep it going.

In the meantime he received a cable which, when deciphered, ran:

"Telegraph _Celtic_ at Gibraltar, giving Hobson instructions where to find you. Put package he carries in safe keeping. In case of serious development use own judgment."

Hobson was one of J. B. Randolph's secretaries. Derby at once wired to Hobson to await him in Naples. Then, leaving Tiggs and Jenkins in charge, he and Porter embarked.

As they leaned over the deck rail watching the blue shallows where the waters of the Mediterranean curled away from the ship's prow, Porter said: