The Popular Magazine/Volume 72/Number 1/The Crusader's Casket/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
CAPTAIN JIMMY, coming out of his hotel on the morning after his avuncular visit, scowled as he saw the trim figure of his first officer approaching with that unmistakable swing of the sailor ashore. Captain Jimmy hastily glanced behind him to see if either Miss Tommie, or Pietro, was in sight, then advanced to meet the man, who was undoubtedly coming to him.
“Hello, Barton,” the captain greeted him. “I suppose you want to see me about something.” He scarcely veiled his annoyance, somewhat to his chief officer's surprise.
“Yes, sir, I did come ashore to see you. Knew you were still in the hotel because that gondolier of yours that's always hanging about”
“How did you know I had a regular gondolier of my own?” the captain demanded, surprised by the chief's knowledge of his movements.
“Why, sir, the old chap's that proud of being your man that he brags about it, and every man along the water front knows it now. I hope, sir, that you're not forgetting that we have a launch of our own aboard the Adventure and”
“No, Barton. I'm not forgetting. But—what is it you want?”
“That shipping agent has been aboard again and made a new offer. Splendid chance, I call it. About twenty per cent above regular rate. You remember his being aboard, and offering a cargo of cement from Spalato over to Alexandria? Well, it's that again. It seems that some big contractor in Heliopolis, Egypt, who is putting up an enormous hotel, or something like that, is going to be stuck unless he can get material, and our agent can't get hold of another boat to make”
“Oh, to blazes with the big contractor! His funeral, not mine!”
“Very well, sir,” Barton said, turning away with a look of disappointment. “I thought it only right to tell you, and”
He stopped and hesitated, then shut his firm lips again as if it were useless to appeal to such an owner.
“Good heavens! You look disappointed about my refusal,” Jimmy remarked.
“Oh—I am, sir! You see, it's this way. This contractor works a few hundred men—poor devils, you know. We've seen them, sir, you and I have, the kind of men who have to work for a living in Egypt—and at this time of the year, too. Nearly all of 'em have big families dependent on 'em, and it'll be hard on those few hundred men to be laid off. Perhaps-it's because I've got a family of my own that depends on my wages that—that makes me think so much about those poor devils.”
Captain Jimmy had an immense respect for Barton. “Barton,” he had once said, “is the best chief officer and the most humane man I've ever known.” And now the humane side of the man appealed to him. Barton, glancing up at him, read the new look of thoughtfulness and consideration in his owner's face, and dared to make a further suggestive remark.
“The agent tells me there has been a breakdown in the cement mill at Spalato, and we'd not have to clear from Venice for four days yet because the cargo couldn't be ready for us before then. If it were possible, sir, that this four days' delay here in the Giudecco might make any difference in your decision, I could tell the agent.”
Captain Jimmy could not suppress the smile that he turned upon this man for whom he had such a distinct liking.
“Barton, you're a wonder!” he exclaimed impulsively. “You're the greatest man to take on the troubles and perplexities of other people that I've ever met. Me—I'm selfish and thoughtless, I'm afraid. And”
“No, Captain Ware. You're neither, only—only you have never been put up against it yourself and you don't know as well as I do what being laid off indefinitely, when every penny counts, means to a man who has to work for a living. I can't help but think about those others.”
Captain Jimmy looked into the unflinching eyes for a moment and then laid a hand on his chief officer's shoulder and laughed.
“You win, Barton,' he said. “You can tell the agent that we'll take that cargo. Also that I've authorized you to make the terms.”
“And when shall I send the boat to bring you aboard, sir?” the chief asked, striving to suppress his satisfaction.
“Maybe I'll not come aboard at all. If I don't I'll give notice as owner, to the port authorities, that you are master of the ship. You've got a master's certificate, so that is easy. You will wait here until the last minute, then if I don't come aboard proceed to Spalato and take on that cement, carry it to Alexandria, deliver and collect. I'll cable you orders to Alexandria in case I don't go along.”
“Thank you, Captain Ware,” Barton said. “Not that I care to be master if you are aboard, because I'm satisfied to be your first mate; but because—well, you understand. I'll hold the ship until the last minute in the hope that you'll take over the bridge. And I'll be ready to clear, sir, if you come aboard.”
“Nobody could kick at that! You're what I might call 'The Complete Sailor,'” Jimmy remarked with an entirely lost pun upon “The Compleat Angler.” “But, in any event, on the fourth night the Adventure sails; the cement reaches Alexandria; the contractor, who is doubtless robbing his clients and bloated with fat, gets it, and the work continues; the hundred or so of poor laboring men don't get laid off; their wives and families don't miss a meal of mutton stew—and there you are! We become benefactors—at so much per ton for cargo.”
“I can't take it as a joke, sir,” Barton said, gravely wagging his head. “But I thank you for your confidence in me. I'll do my best.”
“Barton,” said Jimmy suddenly impressed with this unbreakable modesty and fidelity, “I shouldn't ever make a joke of anything with you. You're so confoundedly serious. But you go ahead and make the contract. We'll see it through, one way or the other. I'm too busy to look after it myself because I'm head over ears in something here that seems to take all my time.”
He grinned to himself at the thought of what really was absorbing his time, and wondered if he was a hopeless idiot at the age of thirty years. No, he decided, the pursuit of Tommie Powell couldn't be classed as idiocy. It was far more important to him than anything else. The movements of a steamship or the acquisition of a dull gold box that had been the cause of a Kentucky feud were all mere incidentals. He would miss the sight of his ship lying off there in the mouth of the Giudecco when he emerged by mornings from the Hotel Danieli, but the pang would be small in comparison with missing the sight of his family enemy on any morning of any week.
“We'll let it go at that, Barton,” he said, resuming his habitual attitude. “You've got your orders and understand?”
“Yes, sir. I've got 'em. We're to take the contract and I'm to lay off until the last minute; then, if you don't come aboard, I'm to go to Spalato and”
“That's it. Maybe I'll come and maybe I shan't. That depends. Anyhow, carry on as if I weren't coming. So long.”
He turned and walked back to the hotel entrance, observing as he did so that the guide Giuseppe had put in an appearance and with a palpably evident pretense of absorption was staring at a weather-beaten amusement notice tacked to a hotel bill-board. Just at that moment, with an air of prodigious importance, Pietro walked out of the hotel and waved his hand with something of condescension to his friend Giuseppe, caught sight of Jimmy, and suddenly frowned. Jimmy was secretly amused at the boyish fervor of the young poet-guide and would have passed him had not Pietro, as if come to a sudden resolve, checked his progress.
“Signor,” he said in his fluent but staccato English, “you are accompanying my lady this afternoon when she makes purchases for the decoration of her launch for the water parade of the Féte of the Rendetori, are you not?”
“Yes, I have been honored by an invitation. Why?” Jimmy asked, staring down at the handsome youngster who seemed perpetually and terribly in earnest.
For a moment Pietro appeared at a loss and then asked, “Would you perhaps care to go with me to-night to see one of the quaintest of Venetian ceremonies, but one in which, I fear, the signorina would not be interested?”
Jimmy asked, almost disinterestedly, “What is this—er—ceremony?”
“It is what is known as the midnight meeting of the Fratelli Nero,” Pietro explained. “You have heard of the Misericordi?—well, this is a similar organization and confined to our most noble city. You will be interested, signor, I promise.”
“All right,” said Jimmy, “I'll come.”
“Just a moment more, signor.” Pietro stopped him as he was about to move away. Coming closer to confidential range the guide added, “And I suggest that you tell no one of our proposed excursion, because it might get me into trouble among some of the Venetians and a word dropped anywhere in Venice is no longer unspoken, for it becomes a butterfly with swiftly beating wings.”
Jimmy laughed and said, “Oh, that'll be all right. I'll tell no one,”
“Not even the signorina?” Pietro insisted with absurd apprehensions.
“No, not any one,” Jimmy asserted, smiling as he turned away. “Beginning to show his true colors. Just like all of the guide fraternity. Wants to make me think I'm getting some treat so rare and so seldom privileged that I'll be there with the big liberal fee when the time comes for settlement.”
In the pleasure of the afternoon he forgot his proposed trip and assisted in working out a wonderful scheme for the decoration of the launch. He even contributed with some rather reckless purchasing on his own behalf, and bought a complete set of storage batteries for special illumination, declaring that the launch would prove unworthy of its owner unless illuminated with more lights than could be provided from its permanent batteries.
“But you see, Mr. Ware, how do you know I wish to have so many lights?” his companion objected. “Perhaps—maybe I'd rather have no lights at all, on that night.”
Puzzled, he turned and looked at her and saw that she was frowning, perplexed and serious.
“Why?” he insisted, wondering at the change that had so abruptly come over her.
To his further mystification she answered, “I'd rather not tell you.”
His disappointment was so obvious that she immediately displayed a wish to placate him. She turned, glanced about to see that Pietro was not too close and no others observing, and laid a hand on his sleeve.
“I'll tell you why,” she said. “The night of the fête is to be very important for me. I haven't yet decided that I want you involved, although—you're a dear. I believe—I believe—I think too much of you to get you into what may prove to be an awful mess. But the fact is that on the Saturday of the Fête of the Rendetori, when all of Venice will be on the Grand Canal, I'm going to get my casket.”
“Heavens! You don't mean it!” he exclaimed, and then, troubled, shook his head and remonstrated. “See here. I think you should not be too hasty about attempting anything rash. Can't I dissuade you from trying to go after that foolish malicious little box?”
She shook her head obstinately and the contour of her mouth that was customarily a tender and mobile arch, became set and firm. He read the danger signs and hastened to make his peace.
“Well, then, if you're intent on going after that fool thing I insist on being a fellow criminal. I don't care to—good Lord!—I don't care to have you take the risk of being shot at. You don't know what you are attempting,” he declared distractedly, recalling the unrelenting old guardian of the casket, the man whom she did not in the least surmise to be a kinsman of his own, his only one. Again she shook her head with that same air of determination.
Captain Jimmy, much distressed, looked away from her and upward as if seeking help or inspiration. They were standing at the head of the Merceria, that great Venetian shopping street and thoroughfare from St. Mark's to the Rialto, just within the shadow of the arch of the Clock Tower. He saw above him against the clear blue sky the whirling pigeons and then, closer at hand, the sculptured relief in perpetual memory of that harsh old woman who slew the chief conspirator of the plot against the Doge Gradenigo by hurling from the window above a marble mortar board, bringing horse and rider to the ground, and thus wrecking a great uprising. It seemed to him that this terrible old woman of the thirteenth century could have been no more desperately courageous and determinedly intent than this very modern girl here at his side. Argument was futile.
“Well,” he declared, “if there's anything doing in the burglary line on Saturday night it is I who must make the attempt. Not you! If I can't dissuade you, I insist that I'll do it myself. I can't let you take such a risk.”
His eyes came back from the marble woman above to the living one at his side and he surprised that in her lock which made him start; as if she had fathomed his great regard and glowed with appreciation and understanding. Standing there in the crowded thoroughfare, oblivious to the hurrying, jostling movement that surrounded them, forgetting all others, they were as isolated as if they had stood alone in a deserted street, and, confused at thus being caught unawares, she flushed and turned away with self-impatience.
“I'm not going to tell you any more about my plans—not now, at least,” she said. “Come on. I want to visit an artificial flower shop, and there's Pietro coming back to see what has detained us.”
“But what I said goes!” he muttered hurriedly. “Don't keep me out of your confidence.”
“I'll not, my friend,” she said, abruptly turning, looking up at him, and resting a hand for an instant on his coat sleeve.
“But you'll have to make it soon, won't you?” he insisted with equal haste as the obtrusive guide came toward them. “This is Thursday, remember, and Saturday comes quickly.”
“I thought I had lost you, signorina,” the musical but unwelcome young voice broke in upon them, and Jimmy could have turned and said things to Pietro that would have caused that patriot's hair to blanch. He looked his thought at the guide, perhaps, and encountered a scowl that was as harsh as his own. “Can't quite get him,” he thought to himself as they started onward in momentarily enforced single file through the narrow street. “To-night I'm going to try to learn why it is that he dislikes me. Hello! Who is that? Looks like that lean boob—what's this—his name is—Giuseppe! That's it, Giuseppe!”
The man who had so unexpectedly distracted his attention dodged into a doorway. Jimmy turned, shouldered his way through the crowd, and on the pretext of looking at a window filled with walking sticks stared inward. There could be no mistake. It was Giuseppe again. Giuseppe who always appeared wherever he went.
“I'll be hanged if it doesn't look as if—as if he might be following me,” Jimmy ruminated as he turned away to overtake Tommie Powell, alias Cardell. “Something darned funny about this. Got to keep an eye out for that swab.”
But not again throughout the afternoon could he find opportunity for renewing confidences with Miss Powell. It had now become a fixed appointment that he and Tommie should dine together; so he hoped, when they sat opposite each other at the table in the cozy side of the hotel, to resume that broken conversation. To his chagrin, after he had seated himself at the table she avoided it by sending word that she could not be with him that evening and he dined alone in anything but contented solitude. He did not see her leave the hotel. Furthermore, he did not see Giuseppe. The only man he saw whom he knew was the patient old gondolier whom he had retained, sitting, half asleep, in his repaired and revarnished craft, stolidly awaiting orders. At sight of him Captain Jimmy grinned and thought, “If I don't fire that old crab he'll keep on waiting forever. I don't know which one is the worst, he, Pietro, or that Giuseppe person.”
Then he loitered over the newspapers, was bored by their inanities, strolled out along the Schiavi, yawned, wished he had not made the appointment with Pietro, and finally dozed in a corner of the lounge until awakened by the guide, who came in, gently aroused him and said, “It's time we were going, signor, to see that very interesting, that remarkable, ceremony. I hope you are not annoyed because I was compelled to disturb you.”
“Oh, no. That is, not much.” Jimmy yawned as he arose and sought his hat.
“This way, sir. I've got a gondola waiting up here in the mouth of the first rio,” said Pietro when they reached the street, which at that hour had but few pedestrians. It was on the tip of Jimmy's tongue to suggest that they might as well take Tomaso, the veteran gondolier who sat expectantly waiting but who made no sign of recognition.
In silence they boarded the gondola. Pietro made a gesture as if their destination had already been fixed and the man adjusted the sash round his lean hips and bent his broad shoulders to the oar. Jimmy, still drowsy, was in no mood for conversation, and Pietro seemed for once to be content with silence, save that now and then he hummed a plaintive little Venetian love song as he stared thoughtfully upward into the velvet of the starlit skies that seemed far and obscure in a night of darkness. The gondola came to a stop, and Pietro briskly stepped out, offering his hand to Captain Jimmy to assist him up the landing steps opening into a narrow passageway, and then after a moment's pause said to the gondolier, “It is best for you to continue on through this rio and out into the Grand Canal by the Straw Bridge, where we will meet you in half or three quarters of an hour.”
And then: “This way, Signor Ware. It is so dark that you may have to guide yourself with a hand on either side, but the distance is not far.”
Jimmy plunged ahead into a passage between walls so high and dark that he might have believed his way led through a cellar but for the narrow belt of stars high overhead and the regularity of the cobblestones over which now and then he stumbled.
“This would have been a grand little place for a murder in the good old days,” he thought, and just then as if to remind him that perhaps the good old days hadn't entirely vanished something like the wings of a huge bat enveloped his head and shoulders, he heard a hoarse, muffled shout from Pietro, as if the poet-guide also had been attacked, and was jerked to the pavement and fallen upon by two men, one of whom deftly threw a loop around his legs and despite his hearty kicks succeeded in tightening it. Jimmy fought with all his strength to release his head, striking blindly with an arm that he got free and once bringing a grunt and a curse from the man with the cape.
“He hits hard and is strong. Help me here at his head,” he heard the man growl and then, as he tried to twist over to free his other arm a menacing voice: “Signor, if you don't surrender I'll knock your cursed skull in!”
The other man now had found that free arm in the darkness, pinioned it, and panting and perspiring, Jimmy's assailants got him down, forced his arms to his sides and bound them with anything but gentleness. Recognizing the futility of further effort, Jimmy suddenly lay still and listened. But a few yards away in the darkness he heard muffled oaths in a chorus, indicating that the agile Pietro had wriggled and twisted so alertly that he was still putting up a valiant fight; but one of Jimmy's captors suddenly slithered away into the darkness, there was an added explosive voice to the mêlée, then all was still save for one voice that kept insisting on haste.
“Bunglers! If you don't hurry the watch will be here! Pick them up and run! Run!” the voice insisted, and Jimmy suddenly was hoisted in arms that were as hard and strong as those of a stevedore, thrown across a broad shoulder, and felt himself carried along as if he were of no weight at all. There was a halt, the sound of a door being thrust open, a cool draft and he felt that he was being carried down moist steps between damp walls, and tales that he had heard of old murders, of subterranean entrances to waterways where victims were drowned and secreted for days flashed through his mind. Behind him he could hear, first, the closing and barring of a great door, then other heavy steps indicating that Pietro, as helpless as himself, was a companion in his enforced journey.
Much to Jimmy's satisfaction, after a considerable distance had been traversed in that damp atmosphere the man carrying him began to ascend, and Jimmy recovered his presence of mind and began to count the steps. They climbed twenty, then took a short, level walk in a drier atmosphere, climbed twenty more, turned, climbed another twenty, made that same regular turn and did still twenty more, indicating to Jimmy that they must be ascending some sort of a tower, or at least scaling to the top of some high structure. Then there came a halt and a whispered consultation which lasted for a minute or so, until that same directing voice commanded, “Never mind. Do as I say. Put the American in that room by himself.” There was an instant's pause, some more hurried whispering, and the voice spoke again, impatiently, “No, the American by himself. Put the other in a room at the far end and if necessary to keep him quiet when he comes to, cut his throat. Give him the stiletto instantly if he lets out a single shout. Wait a moment! Perhaps it's better to do that anyway. We can keep his cadaver in the water basement for a week, or until we can slip it out to sea and with a few weights dump it over.”
Jimmy gave a violent twist, caught his bearer unawares and came down upon the stone floor with a jolt that knocked him half unconscious. Before he could do more he was seized by his bound and kicking heels and dragged forward with as little regard for his struggles or discomforts and frequent bumps as if he had been something inanimate. A door banged shut and he felt himself alone. Recovering somewhat, he rolled quickly in its direction, with his head found what he took to be the bottom of the door, and tried to listen through the folds of the cape that by now almost smothered him. He could not be certain whether it was the violent rush of blood through his own veins and arteries, or vague whisperings that he heard, and he groaned with helplessness. It seemed horrible to think that perhaps out there, even now, that handsome, fiery, temperamental, jealous youngster, Pietro, was being as callously slaughtered as if he were but a trussed sheep. In something of a fury of unreasoning impotence he rove to and fro, straining every muscle of arms and feet to break his bonds, biting savagely at the smothering folds of the cape and beating his feet helplessly on the stone floor.
The opening of the door brought a pause to his efforts and he heard that same heavy and unmistakable voice of command.
“Shut that door and stand by it, outside, one of you. And you others get that cape off his head lest he smother to death. Don't wait to untie it! Slash it away with a knife.”
Jimmy felt the cold, creeping, menacing touch of steel between his cheek and the cloth. It slid upward, suggesting that it could slit him even more easily than it cut the heavy cape, there was a swift, final slash, a tug, a jerk, the rending of fabric, and his eyes were blinded by light even while his lungs struggled to make up for lost air. He blinked the sweat from his eyes, rested quietly, though panting, and looked upward.
A broad-shouldered, burly ruffian in gondolier's garb was bending over him and holding a lamp as if to make certain that he still was alive. Gold earrings under the man's black hat swung restlessly, twinkling sharp reflections of light. His sharp eyes stared from beneath bushy eyebrows, eyebrows black as a raven's wings. If a buccaneer of old had bent above a victim the picture would have been unchanged.
“Um-mh!” the man grunted. “He's alive enough. No doubt of that.” For a long time his unblinking eyes studied Jimmy's face as impersonally as if he were merely looking at a curio, an object of worth, or a stone dog in a garden.
“He doesn't look either dangerous, or worth much,” he finally commented, somewhat to Jimmy's dislike. He grunted again, straightened up, carried the lamp to a rickety table and placed it thereon, fumbled in the pocket of his blue shirt for tobacco and papers and with these in his hands preparatory to making a cigarette returned to his victim.
“You understand Italian?” he said, and when Jimmy, striving to preserve at least a slight advantage shook his head in the negative, blurted, “Bah! You do. Or, if you don't, you're not going to learn much! But I say you do. You must. Now, listen. It will be worth your—ummmh!—your life, maybe. Will you be quiet if I let them liberate your feet and get you into a chair? Not that it makes much difference, because if you had the lungs of a man ape from Africa you couldn't make yourself heard outside this room.”
Jimmy saw the futility of further assumption of ignorance and answered, “All right! I'll be quiet! You seem to have the best of it—so far.”
The man grinned and gestured, and some one behind Jimmy cut the bonds that confined his legs and he stretched his cramped tendons, and sat up. Another gesture and he was lifted to his feet by two men who swung him around until he could see a chair. He walked to it and seated himself. A swift appraisement of his surroundings showed him that he was in a circular chamber, justifying his earlier surmise that he had been carried upward from the basement to a tower. There were narrow windows on all sides, but they were at least fifteen feet above the possibility of reach, and barred. The construction of the dome proved that he was in a room with a rounded, peaked roof, a place built for, or at least admirably adapted for, a prison chamber; one that doubtless had held many prisoners before ever he had been brought there. One that might have witnessed anything from mere sequestration to tortures manifold.
“Well,” Jimmy asked in English, “what's it all about? What do you want with me? What's the answer?”
The man's ready grin proved that he understood.
“I spika da Ingleese too. Learna da Ingleese when run a da shine shop in New York; but—spika da Italiano better. So—we spika da Italiano, signor.”
His cheerful grin had given Jimmy a momentary hope of good will that might be cultivated, but it was instantly dashed by the man's next words which were in Italian, harsh, uncompromising, and—without the grin.
“Signor Ware, captain of the ship Adventure, I am paid to capture you. I am paid to hold you up to the time when your ship is to sail for Spalato. If you do not resist you shall suffer no harm. You will be well fed and can sleep well here! I am paid to be careful and considerate of you. But I am paid to see that you do just as I say. Otherwise—if you prove troublesome—it is left to me! I don't wish to adopt—let us be kind in word—extreme measures. But this, understand, you are to be kept here until your ship sails with you aboard or—your stay may be long. Which is it to be? I ask you? Peacefully, unharmed, and quietly, or must I make you forever still?”
Jimmy, amazed and perplexed by this astounding decree, could not immediately reply. As if impatient of delay the man shifted, again eyed him, and added, “Personally you are of no importance to me. I dislike destroying anything which is of no importance to me, because I always know that it may be of use to some other than myself. For that reason I should regret having to destroy you. But, captain, you are going to stay here one way or the other, until the boat sails, and it is for you to say whether you sail with it or never sail again. I have contracted and never yet have I taken a contract that I didn't carry through. Now, which is it to be?”
For a long time Ware stared into the unblinking, expressionless eyes before he asked, “And Sordillo? What of that young man Pietro Sordillo? I'll not leave him out of the bargain. What have you done with him? Is he to be included in this agreement?”
His captor suddenly displayed signs of amusement. He twisted in his chair, then beat his hands upon his knees and abruptly burst into hoarse laughter. He knuckled his eyes as if they had been involuntarily dimmed by the moisture of mirth at a cause so insignificant.
“What has he to do with it—this guide, this little man you call Sordillo?”
“He's got a lot to do with it,” stoutly asserted Jimmy. “I'll make no compromise and no agreement until I'm assured that he is treated as well as myself, and cared for and kept unharmed. Also that if I'm liberated in four days he is liberated, unharmed, with me.”
“And if I don't agree to this”
“You can go to blazes! I'll agree to nothing! For some reason I but half guess you don't want to hurt me if you can help it. But I tell you this, Sordillo and I leave or finish together. So you can take it or leave it!”
Again the man with the earrings rocked to and fro with personal amusement before he sobered enough to ask, “This Sordillo. Pietro Sordillo. The guide and bad poet—very bad poet! Is he, may I ask, a friend of yours?”
“He is!” Jimmy declared with extra vehemence. “I overheard your instructions regarding him, and if you're going to knife that boy as if he were nothing better than a troublesome dog in your way—well, sharpen the knife plenty because you'll have to use it on me too! Pietro and I came together and—one way or the other—we go together. I'll be quiet, peaceable, unresisting, and stand for the game, whatever it is, if Pietro is turned loose when I am.”
For a long time the burly man regarded him, first with an air of amusement as if surprised that any one should object to the taking of a mere guide's life, and then with an air of perplexity, as if this were a new manifestation of humanity to which he was unaccustomed. He finally shifted his eyes and stared at the door as if not quite certain what answer to make.
“Do you think,” he asked curiously, “that Sordillo would make the same insistence for you if the positions were reversed? That he would demand your safety before making certain of his own?”
“That doesn't matter. He might or he might not. I don't know. But I do know what I'm demanding, and I'm positive that I'm the one you expect to get money out of, or paid for, so—that's my answer.”
The man got to his feet, consulted his watch, glanced about the room and said, “All right! That's an agreement. You are to remain tranquil, and—no harm shall come to Sordillo.” He turned and stared again at his prisoner, then grinned and wagged his head. “I'm certain,” he said, “that I can take your word. You Yankees are a funny tribe. If I hadn't lived with a lot of you, I'd—no, I wouldn't take your promise! But as it is” He turned toward the man who stood quietly by and ordered: “Cut loose his hands. Then see to it that everything is comfortable—that his bed is all right—that he has water, or, if he prefers it, wine, and after that lock the door and keep it guarded outside. I'll see you out there!”
He jerked a head and thumb in the direction of the hallway, glanced around the room as if to reassure himself of its strength then walked to the door, opened it and carelessly strode away through the empty and resonant corridor.
The broad-shouldered man liberated Jimmy with another stroke of that knife that had never been sheathed, grinned in a purely impersonal way, sheathed the knife and followed. But he bolted the door from the outer side after he had closed it and Jimmy proved this by immediately walking across the chamber and testing it.