“Surely, Luigi.  What is the case?” asked Craig, leaning back in his chair.

Luigi glanced around again apprehensively and lowered his voice.  “Not so loud, sir.  When you pay your check, go out, walk around Washington Square, and come in at the private entrance.  I’ll be waiting in the hall.  My friend is dining privately upstairs.”

We lingered a while over our chianti, then quietly paid the check and departed.

True to his word, Luigi was waiting for us in the dark hall.  With a motion that indicated silence, he led us up the stairs to the second floor, and quickly opened a door into what seemed to be a fair-sized private dining-room.  A man was pacing the floor nervously.  On a table was some food, untouched.  As the door opened I thought he started as if in fear, and I am sure his dark face blanched, if only for an instant.  Imagine our surprise at seeing Gennaro, the great tenor, with whom merely to have a speaking acquaintance was to argue oneself famous.

“Oh, it is you, Luigi,” he exclaimed in perfect English, rich and mellow.  “And who are these gentlemen?”

Luigi merely replied, “Friends,” in English also, and then dropped off into a voluble, lowtoned explanation in Italian.

I could see, as we waited, that the same, idea had flashed over Kennedy’s mind as over my own.  It was now three or four days since the papers had reported the strange kidnapping of Gennaro’s five-year-old daughter Adelina, his only child, and the sending of a demand for ten thousand dollars ransom, signed, as usual, with the mystic Black Hand—­a name to conjure with in blackmail and extortion.

As Signor Gennaro advanced toward us, after his short talk with Luigi, almost before the introductions were over, Kennedy anticipated him by saying:  “I understand, Signor, before you ask me.  I have read all about it in the papers.  You want someone to help you catch the criminals who are holding your little girl.”

“No, no!” exclaimed Gennaro excitedly.  “Not that.  I want to get my daughter first.  After that, catch them if you can—­yes, I should like to have someone do it.  But read this first and tell me what you think of it.  How should I act to get my little Adelina back without harming a hair of her head?” The famous singer drew from a capacious pocketbook a dirty, crumpled letter, scrawled on cheap paper.

Kennedy translated it quickly.  It read: 

* * * * *

Honorable sir:  Your daughter is in safe hands.  But, by the saints, if you give this letter to the police as you did the other, not only she but your family also, someone near to you, will suffer.  We will not fail as we did Wednesday.  If you want your daughter back, go yourself, alone and without telling a soul, to Enrico Albano’s Saturday night at the twelfth hour.  You must provide yourself with $10,000 in bills hidden in Saturday’s Il Progresso Italiano.  In the back room you