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"Of course you have," she said with complete conviction. "You're not a quitter, and you can't hide here like a criminal." "We'll have to be moving, Bee," her father reminded her. "You know we have an appointment to meet the district attorney." Beatrice nodded. With a queer feeling of repulsion she patted her fianc�'s cheek with her soft hand and whispered a word of comfort to him. "Buck up, old boy. It won't be half as bad as you think. Nobody is going to blame you." They were shown out by the valet. "You don't want to be hard on Bromfield, honey," Whitford told his daughter after they had re�ntered their car. "He's a parlor man. That's the way he's been brought up. Never did a hard day's work in his life. Everything made easy for him. If he'd ever ridden out a blizzard like Clay or stuck it out in a mine for a week without food after a cave-in, he wouldn't balk on the job before him. But he's soft. And he's afraid of his reputation. That's natural, I suppose." Beatrice knew he was talking to save her feelings. "You don't need to make excuses for him, Dad," she answered gently, with a wry smile. "I've got to give up. I don't think I can go through with it." "You mean--marry him?" "Yes." She added, with a flare of passionate scorn of herself: "I deserve what I've got. I knew all the time I didn't love him. It was sheer selfishness in me to accept him. I wanted what he had to give me." Her father drew a deep breath of relief. "I'm glad you see that, Bee. I don't think he's good enough for you. But I don't know anybody that is, come to that." "That's just your partiality. I'm a mean little bounder or I never should have led him on," the girl answered in frank disgust. Both of them felt smirched. The behavior of Bromfield had been a reflection on them. They had picked him for a thoroughbred, and he had failed them at the first test. "Well, I haven't been proud of you in that affair," conceded Colin. "It didn't seem like my girl to--" He broke off in characteristic fashion to berate her environment. "It's this crazy town. The spirit of it gets into a person and he accepts its standards. Let's get away from here for a while, sweetheart." "After Clay is out of trouble, Dad, I'll go with you back to Denver or to Europe or anywhere you say." "That's a deal," he told her promptly. "We'll stay till after the annual election of the company and then go off on a honeymoon together, Bee." CHAPTER XXXI INTO THE HANDS OF HIS ENEMY Durand waited alone for word to be flashed him that the debt he owed Clay Lindsay had been settled in full. A telephone lay on the desk close at hand and beside it was a watch. The second-hand ticked its way jerkily round and round the circle. Except for that the stillness weighed on him unbearably. He paced up and down the room chewing nervously the end of an unlit cigar. For the good tidings which he was anxious to hear was news of the death of the strong young enemy who had beaten him at every turn. Why didn't Collins get to the telephone? Was it possible that there had been a slip-up, that Lindsay had again broken through the trap set for him? Had "Slim's" nerve failed him? Or had Bromfield been unable to bring the victim to the slaughter? His mind went over the details again. The thing had been well planned even to the unguarded door through which Collins was to escape. In the darkness "Slim" could do the job, make his getaway along with Dave, and be safe from any chance of identification. Bromfield, to save his own hide, would keep still. If he didn't, Durand was prepared to shift the murder upon his shoulders. The minute-hand of the watch passed down from the quarter to the half and from the half to the three quarters. Still the telephone bell did not ring. The gang leader began to sweat blood. Had some one bungled after all the care with which he had laid his plans? A door slammed below. Hurried footsteps sounded on the stair treads. Into the room burst a man. "'Slim' 's been croaked," he blurted. "What!" Durand's eyes dilated.. . . . . . .
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Maranzano sent a call to Capone for his two best gunmen to come to New York to eliminate the upstart. The Corleone Family had friends and intelligence in Chicago who relayed the news that the two gunmen were arriving by train. Vito Corleone dispatched Luca Brasi to take care of them with instructions that would liberate the strange man�s most savage instincts. Brasi and his people, four of them, received the Chicago hoods at the railroad station. One of Brasi�s men procured and drove a taxicab for the purpose and the station porter carrying the bags led the Capone men to this cab. When they got in, Brasi and another of his men crowded in after them, guns ready, and made the two Chicago boys lie on the floor. The cab drove to a warehouse near the docks that Brasi had prepared for them. The two Capone men were bound hand and foot and small bath towels were stuffed into their mouths to keep them from crying out. Then Brasi took an ax from its place against the wall and started hacking at one of the Capone men. He chopped the man�s feet off, then the legs at the knees, then the thighs where they joined the torso. Brasi was an extremely powerfull man but it took him many swings to accomplish his purpose. By that time of course the victim had given up the ghost and the floor of the warehouse was slippery with the hacked fragments of his flesh and the gouting of his blood. When Brasi turned to his second victim he found further effort unnecessary. The second Capone gunman out of sheer terror had, impossibly, swallowed the bath towel in his mouth and suffocated. The bath towel was found in the man�s stomach when the police performed their autopsy to determine the cause of death. A few days later in Chicago the Capones received a message from Vito Corleone. It was to this effect: �You know now how I deal with enemies. Why does a Neapolitan interfere in a quarrel between two Sicilians? If you wish me to consider you as a friend I owe you a service which I will pay on demand. A man like yourself must know how much more profitable it is to have a friend who, instead of calling on you for help, takes care of his own affairs and stands ever ready to help you in some future time of trouble. If you do not wish my friendship, so be it. But then I must tell you that the climate in this city is damp; unhealthy for Neapolitans, and you are advised never to visit it.� The arrogance of this letter was a calculated one. The Don held the Capones in small esteem as stupid, obvious cutthroats. His intelligence informed him that Capone had forfeited all political influence because of his public arrogance and the flaunting of his criminal wealth. The Don knew, in fact was positive, that without political influence, without the camouflage of society, Capone�s world, and others like it, could be easily destroyed. He knew Capone was on the path to destruction. He also knew that Capone�s influence did not extend beyond the boundaries of Chicago, terrible and all pervading as that influence there might be. The tactic was successful. Not so much because of its ferocity but because of the chilling swiftness, the quickness of the Don�s reaction. If his intelligence was so good, any further moves would be fraught with danger. It was better, far wiser, to accept the offer of friendship with its implied payoff. The Capones, sent back word that they would not interfere. The odds were now equal. And Vito Corleone had earned an enormous amount of �respect� throughout the United States underworld with his humiliation of the Capones. For six months he out generaled Maranzano. He raided the crap games under that man�s protection, located his biggest policy banker in Harlem and had him relieved of a day�s play not only in money but in records. He engaged his enemies on all fronts. Even in the garment centers he sent Clemenza and his men to fight on the side of the unionists against the enforcers on the payroll of Maranzano and the owners of the dress firms. And on all fronts his superior intelligence and organization made him the victor. Clemenza�s jolly ferocity, which Corleone employed judiciously, also helped turn the tide of battle. And then Don Corleone sent the held back reserve of the Tessio regime after Maranzano himself. By this time Maranzano had dispatched emissaries suing for a peace. Vito Corleone refused to see them, put them off on one pretext or another. The Maranzano soldiers were deserting their leader, not wishing to die in a losing cause. Bookmakers and shylocks were paying the Corleone organization their protection money. The war was all but over. And then finally on New Year�s Eve of 1933. Tessio got inside the defenses of Maranzano himself. The Maranzano lieutenants were anxious for a deal and agreed to lead their chief to the slaughter. They told him that a meeting had been arranged in a Brooklyn restaurant with Corleone and they accompanied Maranzano as his bodyguards. They left hum sitting at a checkered table, morosely munching a piece of bread, and fled the restaurant as Tessio and four of his men entered. The execution was swift and sure. Maranzano, his mouth full of half chewed bread, was riddled with bullets. The war was over. The Maranzano empire was incorporated into the Corleone operation. Don Corleone set up a system of tribute, allowing all incumbents to remain in their bookmaking and policy number spots. As a bonus he had a foothold in the unions of the garment center which in later years was to prove extremely important. And now that he had settled his business affairs the Don found trouble at home. Santino Corleone, Sonny, was sixteen years old and grown to an astonishing six feet with broad shoulders and a heavy face that was sensual but by no means effeminate. But where Fredo was a quiet boy, and Michael, of course, a toddler, Santino was constantly in trouble. He got into fights, did badly in school and, finally, Clemenza, who was the boy�s godfather and had a duty to speak, came to Don Corleone one evening and informed him that his son had taken part in an armed robbery, a stupid affair which could have gone very badly. Sonny was obvidusly the ringleader, the two other boys in the robbery his followers. It was one of the very few times that Vito Corleone lost his temper. Tom Hagen had been living in his home for three years and he asked Clemenza if the orphan boy had been involved. Clemenza shook his head. Don Corleone had a car sent to bring Santino to his offices in the Genco Pura Olive Oil Company. For the first time, the Don met defeat. Alone with his son, he gave full vent to his rage, cursing the hulking Sonny in Sicilian dialect, a language so much more satisfying than any other for expressing rage. He ended up with a question. �What gave you the right to commit such an act? What made you wish to commit such an act?� Sonny stood there, angry, refusing to answer. The Don said with contempt, �And so stupid. What did you earn for that night�s work? Fifty dollars each? Twenty dollars? You risked your life for twenty dollars, eh?� As if he had not heard these last words, Sonny said defiantly, �I saw you kill Fanucci.� The Don said, �Ahhh� and sank back in his chair. He waited. Sonny said, �When Fanucci left the building, Mama said I could go up the house. I saw you go up the roof and I followed you. I saw everything you did. I stayed up there and I saw you throw away the wallet and the gun.� The Don sighed. �Well, then I can�t talk to you about how you should behave. Don�t you want to finish school, don�t you want to be a lawyer? Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks.� Sonny grinned at him and said slyly, �I want to enter the family business.� When he saw that the Don�s face remained impassive, that he did not laugh at the joke, he added hastily, �I can learn how to sell olive oil.� Still the Don did not answer. Finally he shrugged. �Every man has one destiny,� he said. He did not add that the witnessing of Fanucci�s murder had decided that of his son. He merely turned away and added quietly, �Come in tomorrow morning at nine o�clock. Genco will show you what to do.� But Genco Abbandando, with that shrewd insight that a Consigliere must have, realized the true wish of the Don and used Sonny mostly as a bodyguard for his father, a position in which he could also learn the subtleties of being a Don. And it brought out a professorial instinct in the Don himself, who often gave lectures on how to succeed for the benefit of his eldest son. Besides his oft repeated theory that a man has but one destiny, the Don constantly reproved Sonny for that young man�s outbursts of temper. The Don considered a use of threats the most foolish kind of exposure; the unleashing of anger without forethought as the most dangerous indulgence. No one had ever heard the Don utter a naked threat, no one had ever seen him in an uncontrollable rage. It was unthinkable. And so he tried to teach Sonny his own disciplines. He claimed that there was no greater natural advantage in life than having an enemy overestimate your faults, unless it was to have a friend underestimate your virtues. The caporegime, Clemenza, took, Sonny in hand and taught him how to shoot and to wield a garrot. Sonny had no taste for the Italian rope, he was too Americanized. He preferred the simple, direct, impersonal Anglo Saxon gun, which saddened Clemenza. But Sonny became a constant and welcome companion to his father, driving his car, helping him in little details. For the next two years he seemed like the usual son entering his father�s business, not too bright, not too eager, content to hold down a soft job. Meanwhile his boyhood chum and semiadopted brother Tom Hagen was going to college. Fredo was still in high school; Michael, the youngest brother, was in grammar school, and baby sister Connie was a toddling girl of four. The family had long since moved to an apartment house in the Bronx. Don Corleone was considering buying a house in Long Island, but he wanted to fit this in with other plans he was formulating. Vito Corleone was a man with vision. All the great cities of America were being torn by underworld strife. Guerrilla wars by the dozen flared up, ambitious hoodlums trying to carve themselves a bit of empire; men like Corleone himself were trying to keep their borders and rackets secure. Don Corleone saw that the newspapers and government agencies were using these killings to get stricter and stricter laws, to use harsher police methods. He foresaw that public indignation might even lead to a suspension of democratic procedures which could be fatal to him and his people. His own empire, internally, was secure. He decided to bring peace to all the warring factions in New York City and then in the nation. He had no illusions about the dangerousness of his mission. He spent the first year meeting with different chiefs of gangs in New York, laying the groundwork, sounding them out, proposing spheres of influence that would be honored by a loosely bound confederated council. But there were too many factions, too many special interests that conflicted. Agreement was impossible. Like other great rulers and lawgivers in history Don Corteone decided that order and peace were impossible until the number of reigning states had been reduced to a manageable number. There were five or six �Families� too powerful to eliminate. But the rest, the neighborhood Black Hand terrorists, the free lance shylocks, the strong arm bookmakers operating without the proper, that is to say paid, protection of the legal authorities, would have to go. And so he mounted what was in effect a colonial war against these people and threw all the resources of the Corleone organization against them. The pacification of the New York area took three years and had some unexpected rewards. At first it took the form of bad luck. A group of mad dog Irish stickup artists the Don had marked for extermination almost carried the day with sheer Emerald Isle elan. By chance, and with suicidal bravery, one of these Irish gunmen pierced the Don�s protective cordon and put a shot into his chest. The assassin was immediately riddled with bullets but the damage was done. However this gave Sanrtino Corleone his chance. With his father out of action, Sonny took command of a troop, his own regime, with the rank of caporegime, and like a young, untrumpeted Napoleon, showed a genius for city warfare. He also showed a merciless ruthlessness, the lack of which had been Don Corleone�s only fault as a conqueror. From 1935 to 1937 Sonny Corleond made a reputation as the most cunning and relentless executioner the underworld had yet known. Yet for sheer terror even he was eclipsed by the awesome man named Luca Brasi. It was Brasi who went after the rest of the Irish gunmen and single handedly wiped them out. It was Brasi, operating alone when one of the six powerful families tried to interfere and become the protector of the independents, who assassinated the head of the family as a warning. Shortly after, the Don recovered from his wound and made peace with that particular family. By 1937 peace and harmony reigned in New York City except for minor incidents, minor misunderstandings which were, of course, sometimes fatal. As the rulers of ancient cities always kept an anxious eye on the barbarian tribes roving around their walls, so Don Corleone kept an eye on the affairs of the world outside his world. He noted the coming of Hitler, the fall of Spain, Germany�s strong arming of Britain at Munich. Unblinkered by that outside world, he saw clearly the coming global war and he understood the implications. His own world would be more impregnable than before. Not only that, fortunes could be made in time of war by alert, foresighted folk. But to do so peace must reign in his domain while war raged in the world outside. Don Corleone carried his message through the United States. He conferred with compatriots in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, and Boston. He was the underworld apostle of peace and, by,1939, more successful than any Pope, he had achieved a working agreement amongst the most powerful underworld organizations in the country. Like the Constitution of the United States this agreement respected fully the internal authority of each member in his state or city. The agreement veered only spheres of influence and an agreement to enforce peace in the underworld. And so when World War II broke out in 1939, when the United States, joined the conflict in 1941, the world of Don Vito Corleone was at peace, in order, fully prepared to reap the golden harvest on equal terms with all the other industries of a booming America. The Corleone Family had a hand in supplying black market OPA food stamps, gasoline stamps, even travel priorities. It could help get war contracts and then help get black market materials for those garment center clothing firms who were not given enough raw material because they did not have government contracts. He could even get all the young men in his organization, those eligible for Army draft, excused from fighting in the foreign war. He did this with the aid of doctors. who advised what drugs had to be taken before physical examination, or by placing the men in draft exempt positions in the war industries. And so the Don could take pride in his rule. His world was safe for those who had sworn loyalty to him; other men who believed in law and order were dying by the millions. The only fly in the ointment was that his own son, Michael Corleone, refused to be helped, insisted on volunteering to serve his own country. And to the Don�s astonishment, so did a few of his other young men in the organization. One of the men, trying to explain this to his caporegime, said, �This country has been good to me.� Upon this story being relayed to the Don he said angrily to the caporegime, �I have been good to him.� It might have gone badly for these people but, as he had excused his son Michael, so must he excuse other young men who so misunderstood their duty to their Don and to themselves. At the end of World War II Don Corleone knew that again his world would have to change its ways, that it would have to fit itself more snugly into the ways of the other, larger world. He believed he could do this with no loss of profit. There was reason for this belief in his own experience. What had put him on the right track were two personal affairs. Early in his career the then young Nazorine, only a baker�s helper planning to get married, had come to him for assistance. He and his future bride, a good Italian girl, had saved their money and had paid the enormous sum of three hundred dollars to a wholesaler of furniture recommended to them. This wholesaler had let them pick out everything they wanted to furnish their tenement apartment. A fine sturdy bedroom set with two bureaus and lamps. Also the living room set of heavy stuffed sofa and stuffed armchairs, all covered with rich gold threaded fabric. Nazorine and his fiancee had spent a happy day picking out what they wanted from the huge warehouse crowded with furniture. The wholesaler took their money, their three hundred dollars wrung from the sweat of their blood, and pocketed it and promised the furniture to be delivered within the week to the already rented flat. The very next week however, the firm had gone into bankruptcy. The great warehouse stocked with furniture had been sealed shut and attached for payment of creditors. The wholesaler had disappeared to give other creditors time to unleash their anger on the empty air. Nazorine, one of these, went to his lawyer, who told him nothing could be done until the case was settled in court and all creditors satisfied. This might take three years and Nazorine would be lucky to get back ten cents on the dollar. Vito Corleone listened to this story with amused disbelief. It was not possible that the law could allow such thievery. The wholesaler owned his own palatial home, an estate in Long Island, a luxurious automobile, and was seeding his children to college. How could he keep the three hundred dollars of the poor baker Nazorine and not give him the furniture he had paid for? But, to make sure, Vito Corleone had Genco Abbandando check it out with the lawyers who represented the Genco Pura company. They verified the story of Nazorine. The wholesaler had all his personal wealth in his wife�s name. His furniture business was incorporated and he was not personally liable. True, he had shown bad faith by taking the money of Nazorine when he knew he was going to file bankruptcy but this was a common practice. Under law there was nothing to be done. Of course the matter was easily adjusted. Don Corleone sent his Consigliere, Genco Abbandando, to speak to the wholesaler, and as was to be expected, that wide awake businessman caught the drift immediately and arranged for Nazorine to get his furniture. But it was an interesting lesson for the young Vito Corleone. The second incident had more far reaching repercussions. In 1939, Don Corleone had decided to move his family out of the city. Like any other parent he wanted his children to go to better schools and mix with better companions. For his own personal reasons he wanted the anonymity of suburban life where his reputation was not known. He bought the mall property in Long Beach, which at that time had only four newly built houses but with plenty of room for more. Sonny was formally engaged to Sandra and would soon marry, one of the houses would be for him. One of the houses was for the Don. Another was for Genco Abbandando and his family. The other was kept vacant at the time. A week after the mall was occupied, a group of three workmen came in all innocence with their truck. They claimed to be furnace inspectors for the town of Long Beach. One of the Don�s young bodyguards let the men in and led them to the furnace in the basement. The Don, his wife and Sonny were in the garden taking their ease and enjoying the salty sea air. Much to the Don�s annoyance he was summoned into the house by his bodyguard. The three workmen, all big burly fellows, were grouped around the furnace. They had taken it apart, it was strewn around the cement basement floor. Their leader, an authoritative man, said to the Don in a gruff voice, �Your furnace is in lousy shape. If you want us to fix it and put it together again, it�ll cost you one hundred fifty dollars for labor and parts and then we�ll pass you for county inspection.� He took out a red paper label. �We stamp this seal on it, see, then nobody from the county bothers you again.� The Don was amused. It had been a boring, quiet week in which he had had to neglect his business to take care of such family details moving to a new house entailed. In more broken English than his usual slight accent he asked, �If I don�t pay you, what happens to my furnace?� The leader of the three men shrugged. �We just leave the furnace the way it is now.� He gestured at the metal parts strewn over the floor. The Don said meekly, �Wait, I�ll get you your money.� Then he went out into the garden and said to Sonny, �Listen, there�s some men working on the furnace, I don�t understand what they want. Go in and take care of the matter.� It was not simply a joke; he was considering making his son his underboss. This was one of the tests a business executive had to pass. Sonny�s solution did not altogether please his father. It was too direct, too lacking in Sicilian subtleness. He was the Club, not the Rapier. For as soon as Sonny heard the leader�s demand he held the three men at gunpoint and had them thoroughly bastinadoed by the bodyguards. Then he made them put the furnace together again and tidy up the basement. He searched them and found that they actually were employed by a house improvement firm with headquarters in Suffolk County. He learned the name of the man who owned the firm. Then he kicked the three men to their truck. �Don�t let me see you in Long Beach again,� he told them. �I�ll have your balls hanging from your ears.� It was typical of the young Santino, before he became older and crueler, that he extended his protection to the community he lived in. Sonny paid a personal call to the home improvement firm owner and told him not to send any of his men into the Long Beach area ever again. As soon as the Corleone Family set up their usual business liaison with the local police force they were informed of all such complaints and all crimes by professional criminals. In less than a year Long Beach became the most crime free town of its size in the United States. Professional stickup artists and strong arms received one warning not to ply their trade in the town. They were allowed one offense. When they committed a second they simply disappeared. The flimflam home improvement gyp artists, the door to door con men were politely warned that they were not welcome in Long Beach. Those confident con men who disregarded the warning were beaten within an inch of their lives. Resident young punks who had no respect for law and proper authority were advised in the most fatherly fashion to run away from home. Long Beach became a model city. What impressed the Don was the legal validity of these sales swindles. Clearly there was a place for a man of his talents in that other world which had been closed to him as an honest youth. He took appropriate steps to enter that world. And so he lived happily on the mall in Long Beach, consolidating and enlarging his empire, until after the war was over, the Turk Sollozzo broke the peace and plunged the Don�s world into its own war, and brought him to his hospital bed. Book Four Chapter 15 In the New Hampshire village, every foreign phenomenon was properly noticed by housewives peering from windows, storekeepers lounging behind their doors. And so when the black automobile bearing New York license plates stopped in front of the Adams� home, every citizen knew about it in a matter of minutes. Kay Adams, really a small town girl despite her college education, was also peering from her bedroom window. She had been studying for her exams and preparing to go downstairs for lunch when she spotted the car coming up the street, and for some reason she was not surprised when it rolled to a halt in front of her lawn. Two men got out, big burly men who looked like gangsters in the movies to her eyes, and she flew down the stairs to be the first at the door. She was sure they came from Michael or his family and she didn�t want them talking to her father and mother without any introduction. It wasn�t that she was ashamed of any of Mike�s friends, she thought; it was just that her mother and father were old fashioned New England Yankees and wouldn�t understand her even knowing such people. She got to the door just as the bell rang and she called to her mother, �I�ll get it.� She opened the door and the two big men stood there. One reached inside his breast pocket like a gangster reaching for a gun and the move so surprised Kay that she let out a little gasp but the man had taken out a small leather case which he flapped open to show an identification card. �I�m Detective John Phillips from the New York Police Department,� he said. He motioned to the other man, a dark complexioned man with very thick, very black eyebrows. �This is my partner, Detective Siriani. Are you Miss Kay Adams?� Kay nodded. Phillips said, �May we come in and talk to you for a few minutes. It�s about Michael Corleone.� She stood aside to let them in. At that moment her father appeared in the small side hall that led to his study. �Kay, what is it?� he asked. Her father was a gray haired, slender, distinguished looking man who not only was the pastor of the town Baptist church but had a reputation in religious circles as a scholar. Kay really didn�t know her father well, he puzzled her, but she knew he loved her even if he gave the impression he found her uninteresting as a person. Though they had never been close, she trusted him. So she said simply, �These men are detectives from New York. They want to ask me questions about a boy I know.� Mr. Adams didn�t seem surprised. �Why don�t we go into my study?� he said. Detective Phillips said gently, �We�d rather talk to your daughter alone, Mr. Adams.� Mr. Adams said courteously, �That depends on Kay, I think. My dear, would you rather speak to these gentlemen alone or would you prefer to have me present? Or perhaps your mother?� Kay shook her head. �I�ll talk to them alone.� Mr. Adams said to Phillips, �You can use my study. Will you stay for lunch?� The two men shook their heads. Kay led them into the study. They rested uncomfortably on the edge of the couch as she sat in her father�s big leather chair. Detective Phillips opened the conversation by saying, �Miss Adams, have you seen or heard from Michael Corleone at any time in the last three weeks?� The one question was enough to warn her. Three weeks ago she had read the Boston newspapers with their headlines about the killing of a New York police captain and a narcotics smuggler named Virgil Sollozzo. The newspaper had said it was part of the gang war involving the Corleone Family. Kay shook her head. �No, the last time I saw him he was going to see his father in the hospital. That was perhaps a month ago.� The other detective said in a harsh voice, �We know all about that meeting. Have you seen or heard from him since then?� �No,� Kay said. Detective Phillips said in a polite voice, �If you do have contact with him we�d like you to let us know. It�s very important we get to talk to Michael Corleone. I must warn you that if you do have contact with him you may be getting involved in a very dangerous situation. If you help him in any way, you may get yourself in very serious trouble.� Kay sat up very straight in the chair. �Why shouldn�t I help him?� she asked. �We�re going to be married, married people help each other.� It was Detective Siriani who answered her. �If you help, you may be an accessory to murder. We�re looking for your boy friend because he killed a police captain in New York plus an informer the police officer was contacting. We know Michael Corleone is the person who did the shooting.� Kay laughed. Her laughter was so unaffected, so incredulous, that the officers were impressed. �Mike wouldn�t do anything like that,� she said. �He never had anything to do with his family. When we went to his sister�s wedding it was obvious that he was treated as an outsider, almost as much as I was. If he�s hiding now it�s just so that he won�t get any publicity, so his name won�t be dragged through all this. Mike is not a gangster. I know him better than you or anybody else can know him. He is too nice a man to do anything as despicable as murder. He is the most law abiding person I know, and I�ve never known him to lie.� Detective Phillips asked gentiy, �How long have you known him?� �Over a year,� Kay said and was surprised when the two men smiled. �I think there are a few things you should know,� Detective Phillips said. �On the night he left you, he went to the hospital. When he came out he got into an argument with a police captain who had come to the hospital on official business. He assaulted that police officer but got the worst of it. In fact he got a broken jaw and lost some teeth. His friends took him out to the Corleone Family houses at Long Beach. The following night the police captain he had the fight with was gunned down and Michael Corleone disappeared. Vanished. We have our contacts, our informers. They all point the finger at Michael Corleone but we have no evidence for a court of law. The waiter who witnessed the shooting doesn�t recognize a picture of Mike but he may recognize him in person. And we have Sollozzo�s driver, who refuses to talk, but we might make him talk if we have Michael Corleone in our hands. So we have all our people looking for him, the FBI is looking for him, everybody is looking for him. So far, no luck, so we thought you might be able to give us a lead.� Kay said coldly, �I don�t believe a word of it.� But she felt a bit sick knowing the part about Mike getting his jaw broken must be true. Not that that would make Mike commit murder. �Will you let us know if Mike contacts you?� Phillips asked. Kay shook her head. The other detective, Siriani, said roughly, �We know you two have been shacking up together. We have the hotel records and witnesses. If we let that information slip to the newspapers your father and mother would feel pretty lousy. Real respectable people like them wouldn�t think much of a daughter shacking up with a gangster. If you don�t come clean right now I�ll call your old man in here and give it to him straight.� Kay looked at him with astonishment. Then she got up and went to the door of the study and opened it. She could see her father standing at the living room window, sucking at his pipe. She called out, �Dad, can you join us?� He turned, smiled at her, and walked to the study. When he came through the door he put his arm around his daughter�s waist and faced the detectives and said, �Yes, gentlemen?� When they didn�t answer, Kay said coolly to Detective Siriani, �Give it to him straight, officer.� Siriani flushed. �Mr. Adams, I�m telling you this for your daughter�s good. She is mixed up with a hoodlum we have reason to believe committed a murder on a police officer. I�m just telling her she can get into serious trouble unless she cooperates with us. But she doesn�t seem to realize how serious this whole matter is. Maybe you can talk to her.� �That is quite incredible,� Mr. Adams said politely. Siriani jutted his jaw. �Your daughter and Michael Corleone have been going out together for over a year. They have stayed overnight in hotels together registered as man and wife. Michael Corleone is wanted for questioning in the murder of a police officer. Your daughter refuses to give us any information that may help us. Those are the facts. You can call them incredible but I can back everything up.� �I don�t doubt your word, sir,� Mr. Adams said gently. �What I find incredible is that my daughter could be in serious trouble. Unless you�re suggesting that she is a�� here his face became one of scholarly doubt� �a �moll,� I believe it�s called.� Kay looked at her father in astonishment. She knew he was being playful in his donnish way and she was surprised that he could take the whole affair so lightly. Mr. Adams said firmly, �However, rest assured that if the young man shows his face here I shall immediately report his presence to the authorities. As will my daughter. Now, if you will forgive us, our lunch is growing cold.� He ushered the men out of the house with every courtesy and closed the door on their backs gently but firmly. He took Kay by the arm and led her toward the kitchen far in the rear of the house, �Come, my dear, your mother is waiting lunch for us.� By the time they reached the kitchen, Kay was weeping silently, out of relief from strain, at her father�s unquestioning affection. In the kitchen her mother took no notice of her weeping, and Kay realized that her father must have told her about the two detectives. She sat down at her place and her mother served her silently. When all three were at the table her father said grace with bowed head. Mrs. Adams was a short stout woman always neatly dressed, hair always set. Kay had never seen her in disarray. Her mother too had always been a little disinterested in her, holding her at arm�s length. And she did so now. �Kay, stop being so dramatic. I�m sure it�s all a great deal of fuss about nothing at all. After all, the boy was a Dartmouth boy, he couldn�t possibly be mixed up in anything so sordid.� Kay looked up in surprise. �How did you know Mike went to Dartmouth?� Her mother said complacently, �You young people are so mysterious, you think you�re so clever. We�ve known about him all along, but of course we couldn�t bring it up until you did.� �But how did you know?� Kay asked. She still couldn�t face her father now that he knew about her and Mike sleeping together. So she didn�t see the smile on his face when he said, �We opened your mail, of course.� Kay was horrified and angry. Now she could face him. What he had done was more shameful than her own sin. She could never believe it of him. �Father, you didn�t, you couldn�t have.� Mr. Adams smiled at her. �I debated which was the greater sin, opening your mail, or going in ignorance of some hazard my only child might be incurring. The choice was simple, and virtuous.�. . . . . . .
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again. A nigger had come out of the cabin companion on the run for the rail and gone down in the middle of it. The cabin must have been full of them. I counted twenty. They came up one at a time and jumped for the rail. But they never got there. It reminded me of trapshooting. A black body would pop out of the companion, bang would go Saxtorph's rifle, and down would go the black body. Of course, those below did not know what was happening on deck, so they continued to pop out until the last one was finished off. "Saxtorph waited a while to make sure, and then came down on deck. He and I were all that were left of the DUCHESS'S complement, and I was pretty well to the bad, while he was helpless now that the shooting was over. Under my direction he washed out my scalp wounds and sewed them up. A big drink of whiskey braced me to make an effort to get out. There was nothing else to do. All the rest were dead. We tried to get up sail, Saxtorph hoisting and I holding the turn. He was once more the stupid lubber. He couldn't hoist worth a cent, and when I fell in a faint, it looked all up with us. "When I came to, Saxtorph was sitting helplessly on the rail, waiting to ask me what he should do. I told him to overhaul the wounded and see if there were any able to crawl. He gathered together six. One, I remember, had a broken leg; but Saxtorph said his arms were all right. I lay in the shade, brushing the flies off and directing operations, while Saxtorph bossed his hospital gang. I'll be blessed if he didn't make those poor niggers heave at every rope on the pin-rails before he found the halyards. One of them let go the rope in the midst of the hoisting and slipped down to the deck dead; but Saxtorph hammered the others and made them stick by the job. When the fore and main were up, I told him to knock the shackle out of the anchor chain and let her go. I had had myself helped aft to the wheel, where I was going to make a shift at steering. I can't guess how he did it, but instead of knocking the shackle out, down went the second anchor, and there we were doubly moored. "In the end he managed to knock both shackles out and raise the staysail and jib, and the Duchess filled away for the entrance. Our decks were a spectacle. Dead and dying niggers were everywhere. They were wedged away some of them in the most inconceivable places. The cabin was full of them where they had crawled off the deck and cashed in. I put Saxtorph and his graveyard gang to work heaving them overside, and over they went, the living and the dead. The sharks had fat pickings that day. Of course our four murdered sailors went the same way. Their heads, however, we put in a sack with weights, so that by no chance should they drift on the beach and fall into the hands of the niggers. "Our five prisoners I decided to use as crew, but they decided otherwise. They watched their opportunity and went over the side. Saxtorph got two in mid-air with his revolver, and would have shot the other three in the water if I hadn't stopped him. I was sick of the slaughter, you see, and besides, they'd helped work the schooner out. But it was mercy thrown away, for the sharks got the three of them. "I had brain fever or something after we got clear of the land. Anyway, the DUCHESS lay hove to for three weeks, when I pulled myself together and we jogged on with her to Sydney. Anyway those niggers of Malu learned the everlasting lesson that it is not good to monkey with a white man. In their case, Saxtorph was certainly inevitable." Charley Roberts emitted a long whistle and said: "Well I should say so. But whatever became of Saxtorph?" "He drifted into seal hunting and became a crackerjack. For six years he was high line of both the Victoria and San Francisco fleets. The seventh year his schooner was seized in Bering Sea by a Russian cruiser, and all hands, so the talk went, were slammed into the Siberian salt mines. At least I've never heard of him since." "Farming the world," Roberts muttered. "Farming the world. Well here's to them. Somebody's got to do it--farm the world, I mean." Captain Woodward rubbed the criss-crosses on his bald head. "I've done my share of it," he said. "Forty years now. This will be my last trip. Then I'm going home to stay." "I'll wager the wine you don't," Roberts challenged. "You'll die in the harness, not at home." Captain Woodward promptly accepted the bet, but personally I think Charley Roberts has the best of it. THE SEED OF McCOY The Pyrenees, her iron sides pressed low in the water by her cargo of wheat, rolled sluggishly, and made it easy for the man who was climbing aboard from out a tiny outrigger canoe. As his eyes came level with the rail, so that he could see inboard, it seemed to him that he saw a dim, almost indiscernible haze. It was more like an illusion, like a blurring film that had spread abruptly over his eyes. He felt an inclination to brush it away, and the same instant he thought that he was growing old and that it was time to send to San Francisco for a pair of spectacles. As he came over the rail he cast a glance aloft at the tall masts, and, next, at the pumps. They were not working. There seemed nothing. . . . . . .
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