“Very sincerely yours,

“C.W.  Leslie.”

As Kennedy handed the letter back, he remarked significantly:  “I can see very readily why you don’t care to have the police figure in your case.  It has got quite beyond ordinary police methods.”

“And to-morrow, too, they are going to give another sign of their power,” groaned Gennaro, sinking into the chair before his untasted food.

“You say you have left your hotel?” inquired Kennedy.

“Yes.  My wife insisted that we would be more safely guarded at the residence of her father, the banker.  But 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 organization.  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 extort money?  Is it the less real?  My daughter is gone!”