Tuesday's Serial: “Scarface” by Armitage Trail (in English) - VII.

 

CHAPTER XIII

Tony read the newspapers next morning with unusual interest and a mounting fury. "GANG LEADER FLEES" was the big, black headline on all of them. Beneath that was a chronicle of Johnny Lovo's abdication and departure and of the succession of Tony Camonte, a young, little known gangster to his place as commander of the mob. And all the papers carried an interview with Cap­tain Flanagan, chief of detectives, in which he calmly assumed credit for having run Lovo out of the city. The captain also intimated in the interview that the Lovo mob had been so thoroughly harassed by the men in his department that it was completely disorganized and would soon be a thing of the past. The captain closed with a trite, high-sounding but really meaningless statement as to the inevitable triumph of law and order when properly administered and promised the people that he would continue to exert his utmost efforts to rid the city of gangs. It was easy to see where the papers had received their information; the temptation to grab unearned glory had been too much for the captain.

"That ———" Tony's voice crackled with venom as he spat out the epithet between clenched teeth. "I'll get him yet."

Tony drove to his headquarters with a ferocity that brought down upon him the profane maledic­tions of innumerable pedestrians and other motor­ists. But by the time he reached his desk his fury had cooled to an icy, wordless anger infinitely more dangerous. Never yet had he failed to get even with a betrayer.

"The D.A.'s been callin' up every five minutes for the last hour," said Al, the little, rat-faced door­-man. "Said you was to give him a ring the minute you come in. Sounds like he's awful upset about somep'm."

"To hell with him!” snarled Tony. "If he wants to talk to me, he knows where to find me. We ought to get some service out of that ‘bit’ we pay him every month."

"Better be careful with him. Chief," warned Al. "He's more dangerous than any mob leader in town. He's got a strong-arm squad that's took many a poor guy for a ride."

Tony considered a moment then, with an angry grunt, reached for the telephone and called the Dis­trict Attorney's office. At last there came to him over the wire a gruff voice that he recognized from that conference long ago to which he had accom­panied Johnny Lovo.

“Camonte?” barked this voice brusquely. “This is District Attorney Crowder. I see in the morn­ing papers that Lovo's left town.”

"Yeah."

"And that you're in command of his mob now."

"Yeah, that's right."

"Well, I presume you are familiar with his—er—arrangement with me?"

"Yeah, I got a complete ‘pay-off’ list of the ‘bits’ and I'll keep takin' care of 'em just as he did."

"Don't say things like that over the phone," commanded the D.A, sharply, in his voice such con­cern that Tony grinned. "Then things are going to go right ahead?"

“Yeah, only more so. This mob's been too quiet lately.”

"Well, keep things out of the papers."

"That'd be easy, if the ‘dicks’ wasn't so damn mouthy."

“I know. All right, then. I'll send Moran out to see you to-morrow afternoon."

Tony hung up, his lips curved in a sneering smile. The D.A. had been worried about his monthly bit, now that Lovo had gone. And he was sending Moran out for it the next afternoon. Moran was one of his younger assistants, a bril­liant prosecutor when he and his chief wanted him to be, but in the meantime the collector for his superior.

Reporters besieged the headquarters all morning but Tony refused to see them or even to send out a statement. The less publicity he got, the better he liked it.

Shortly before noon Al brought in a note to him. It was written on cheap white paper in a graceful feminine hand and read:

 

Dear Mr. Camonte:—

May I see you for five minutes? Thanks!

Katherine Merton.

 

Tony looked up, frowning in annoyance.

"Who's this dame?" he demanded.

"Don't know, chief. Never saw her before. But she sure is a swell looker."

"Yeah?" Tony seemed to brighten up a bit. "She don't look like a gun girl or anything?"

"Naw. A dame with eyes like this one's got couldn't hurt a kitten."

"All right, I'll take a chance. Send her in."

A moment later Miss Merton came in and Tony's first glimpse of her made him glad that he had granted the interview. Al's description of “a swell looker” was all right as far as it went but it did not take into account her dignity and charm. She was the sort of girl that immediately and un­ consciously made a young man ambitious for more intimate acquaintance and an old man regretful for his age. Tall, with an athletic figure and an easy, graceful stride, she walked into the office with a calm, unbrazen assurance. She was dressed in a gray tweed suit and a small gray and black hat that fitted closely the fine contour of her head.

"How do you do, Mr. Camonte," she said, and extended her hand. "I'm Miss Merton."

Tony accepted the hand and felt sorry that he had no right or excuse for holding it longer than he did. Her voice was rich and soothing, well-placed and completely poised, and her frank blue eyes held an engaging twinkle of understanding good humor.

"I want to ask a favor of you, Mr. Camonte," she began. "I've found that men of your type are almost always chivalrous if they have the oppor­tunity to be."

"Yeah, sure," mumbled Tony, embarrassed. "Be glad to do anything I can."

"I thought so. Now, the problem is this: I have a job that I very much want to keep. And right now you are the only person in the city who can help me keep that job."

"Yeah? How's that?"

"I'm with the Examiner," continued the girl gently, almost regretfully. "And the city editor told me this morning that if I didn't succeed in getting an interview with you he'd fire me."

"A reporter!" exclaimed Tony in amazement and his expressive black eyes flashed angrily. "I'm not seeing any reporters."

"I knew you wouldn't, of course. And I under­stand just how you feel. But you see how it was with me—I had to come out here and try to see you or lose my job. I guess, though, that I'll lose it anyway."

She sighed and, succeeding in looking small and miserable for a moment, sniffed audibly. Tony growled under his breath and lit a cigarette.

"Well, miss, I can't tell anything about my busi­ness," he objected doggedly.

"Of course you can't." She seemed amazed at the mere idea. "And I wouldn't think of asking you anything like that, even to save my job. All I wanted to know was if Mr. Lovo really had left and if you really were going to be the commander from now on—my, I should think it would require unlimited brains and nerve to manage an—er—operation like this. And you look so young to have such an important position."

During the ensuing twenty minutes Miss Mer­ton secured her interview. Her questions were adroitly harmless on the surface, dealing only with things which were already known or soon would be known about the gang and its operations, and Tony had no realization of how much he had said.

"I'll bet you'd make a wonderful husband," she said finally, her eyes sparkling in a way that gave him an unaccountable thrill. "Men who lead ad­venturous lives always do; they like the relief of a quiet, comfortable home."

Thus she steered the conversation into romantic channels and for some little time they dealt with love, marriage and so on. Mostly they talked in generalities but occasionally she elicited from him a personal opinion that would be "meat" for a sen­sational newspaper story on "A Gang Leader's Ideas of Love" or some such "shop-girl-appeal" topic.

"By the way," she said at last, "did you ever know a girl named Vyvyan Lovejoy?"

The question gave Tony such a shock that he almost cried out. Only his iron reserve enabled him to keep from betraying himself by an obvious reaction. Did he know Vyvyan Lovejoy? Did Romeo know Juliet? Vyvyan was the burlesque leading woman who had been his first love. He had killed Al Spingola, the city's most important gang leader at that time, in order that he might have her for himself. It was his reckless love for her that had started him on his career beyond the law. And when he had come back from the war and found her living with another man he had killed them both. At the mention of her name, all these events had rushed through his mind like a private mental movie. As it came to an end, his eyes narrowed and his mouth set grimly.

"No," he said. "Why do you ask?"

"I interviewed her once," answered the girl smoothly. "And you look a great deal like a pic­ture she had. There's something about the eyes—"

Tony felt considerably upset. To his knowledge, Vyvyan had never had a picture of him. Nor had any one else. In fact, he didn't know of his picture ever having been taken. He didn't believe in pictures; they were too liable to fall into the wrong hands and some time be a means of identi­fication.

"And by the way," continued Miss Merton smoothly, "do you ever see that stunning brunette who was with you at the Embassy Club the night Jerry Hoffman was shot?"

At this question, Tony did start. Even his iron-like nerves could not withstand a shock like that. He and Jane Conley, "The Gun Girl," the girl with whom he was now living, had killed Jerry Hoffman, then leader of the North Side gang, that night at the Embassy Club, the city's most exclusive night resort. Johnny Lovo had given the orders and paid for the job being done. And so far as Tony knew, Lovo was the only other person besides him­self and Jane who even knew that they had been in the club that fatal night.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"You see, I was there that night and my escort pointed out all the notables to me. You were among them. He said he thought you would make a great success in your chosen profession." She laughed lightly.

"Who was your escort that night?" demanded Tony.

"Oh, I don't think it would be fair to tell." She rose, smilingly, and extended her hand. "I won't take up any more of your valuable time now, Mr. Camonte. But perhaps some other time we can chat a bit. Anyway, thanks so much for a very interest­ing interview; it will enable me to keep my job."

And she departed, leaving behind her a much perturbed gang leader. Now that he was no longer under the influence of her personality—and her ex­pert flattery—he realized that she was a smooth worker, that she had attained her objective in spite of him. And how had she known so much? And what could possibly have been her object in mentioning those past occurrences to him? The more he thought about it the more worried he became. At last, in response to a sudden awful suspicion, he picked up the telephone and, calling the Ex­aminer, asked to speak to Miss Katherine Merton. A moment later he hung up slowly, feeling dazed and very uneasy. The Examiner had no one by that name. Then who was the girl? And what had been her object?

 

 

CHAPTER XIV

Charlie Martino, the “alky” truck driver, who had been hi-jacked and shot the night before, died during the afternoon, without regaining sufficient strength to relate the details of what had occurred to him or to give a description of his assailants. Tony looked down at the boy a moment, then, using again that uncanny yet unconscious knowledge of psychology which he possessed, ordered every mem­ber of the gang who could be reached to come in a few at a time and view the body. He felt that the sight of one of their own dead would put the spirit of battle in them. At last he ordered a fine funeral for the boy and went back to his private office in grim silence, vowing vengeance on the North Side gang.

Tony, in a savage humor from the day’s events, was just ready to go home shortly after ten that night when Mike Rinaldo, the dapper gunman, ar­rived. And the three men who followed him into Tony’s office proved that he had succeeded in his quest. For the man in the center was obviously a prisoner.

"Got him, Chief," announced Mike with an ele­gant gesture toward the glowering captive.

"Who is he?" demanded Tony. His manner in­dicated that nothing short of Caesar himself would be acceptable.

"Benny Peluso, one of the 'big shots' in the North Side crowd."

"Frisk him?"

"Certainly," answered Rinaldo, evidently ag­grieved at the query. "Found a nice load of gats too."

"Well, frisk him again here. Strip him to the hide."

From his vantage point behind the big desk Tony surveyed the captive while his three hench­ men stripped the man and searched every inch of his clothing for possible weapons. The fellow was short and slightly stocky, with a heavy brutal face that instantly bred distrust. His black eyes, now blazing with anger, were shifty and set far too close together.

Tony removed a heavy automatic from the desk drawer and laid it on the desk conveniently close to his practiced right hand.

"All right," he said when the three men had completed their fruitless search and the prisoner was indignantly donning his coat. "You," point­ing the pistol at the captive, "sit down there. The rest of you wait outside until I call you."

He toyed silently with the weapon until the door had closed behind his men. Then he looked at Peluso and stared at him until the man's glance dropped.

"Do you know where you are?" demanded Tony suddenly.

"Yeah," snarled the prisoner.

"Speak nicer if you expect to get out of here alive," snapped Tony. "Do you know who I am?"

"No."

“Well, I'm Scarface Tony Camonte, the new chief of the Lovo mob. And I'm just about ten times as hard-boiled as Johnny Lovo ever thought of bein'. I've bumped off six or eight myself and another one—especially a rat like you—wouldn't mean a thing in my young life. Get me?”

“Yeah.” But the man's tone now had changed from defiant anger to sullenness and his glance re­mained riveted hypnotically to that pistol.

"There's some things I want to know. And you're goin' to tell me."

"You got the wrong man, brother. I won't spill nothin'."

"The hell you won't!" Tony leaned across the desk, the pistol pointed unwaveringly at the hapless captive. "Do you want a load of that in you?"

"Naw, course not. But if I talked, my own crowd would bump me off."

"Maybe not." Tony leaned back. "How much jack do you make with your mob?"

"'Bout three ‘C’s’ a week. Sometimes more."

"Three ‘C’s,’ eh? That's not very much, is it, for all the work you do and the chances you take?"

"I'm wort' more," agreed the man darkly.

"Yeah. But you'll never get it, not with this Bruno guy, from what I hear of him. Where do you think he got that name Schemer anyhow? When a guy has a monicker like that hung on him there's a reason for it. Now, Benny, I'm not a bad guy when you don't cross me. And I'm always willing to see the boys get a piece of change for themselves." He leaned across the desk. How would you like to have fifteen grand—in one chunk?"

The prisoner's eyes sparkled and he licked his lips.

"Jeez!" he exclaimed. "Dat's a lotta jack, even if y'ain't got it."

"I've got it. And it's yours if you want to talk."

"What do you want to know?"

"That's more like it," smiled Tony. "I want to know a lot of things about the Bruno mob, where their warehouses are, and their breweries and their main alky cooking plants. I want to know what garages they keep their trucks in and what roads they use mainly in haulin' their stuff in and out of town. I'll think of a few more things as we go along."

"God! I couldn't tell you all dat stuff."

"Why not?"

"Dey'd bump me off sure."

"Well, if you don't tell me what I want to know, I'll bump you off."

"An' if I do tell you, dey will. What chance has a poor guy got?"

"Listen, mug!" snapped Tony. "Don't you know that fifteen grand's a lot of dough? That's as much as you make in a year with the mob, and if you stay here with them you'll never have that much in one chunk. If you had that much jack, you could go to Frisco or New York or even Mexico or some other crazy place and open a gambling house or get in some kind of a racket and be set for life."

"Yeah, I know. I—I'd like to have it, all right. But dem guys would follow me any place."

"They wouldn't know where you was. They'd think you'd been took for a ride. Don't plenty of mugs from these mobs around here disappear every year?"

"Yeah, I guess they do. But I couldn't do it. They'd get me sure. And what good's dough to a dead man?"

"Come on, now, don't be a fool!" snarled Tony menacingly and aimed the pistol again. "Either you talk or you get it."

The man's eyes glittered against the background of his ghastly pale face and he licked his lips con­stantly.

"Well, I know I'm goin' to get it if I do talk," he answered doggedly. "So I guess I'll have to take my chances of gettin' it if I don't."

"So you won't spill it, eh?" gritted Tony.

The hole in the muzzle of that automatic must have looked as big as a barrel to the prisoner. But he caught his breath suddenly, closed his eyes and shook his head.

"I think you will!" said Tony. "Get up!"

He called in his henchmen from the other room.

"He's a hard nut," he explained. "Got to take him to the cellar."

Rinaldo paled. He could shoot a man down without even giving serious thought to the matter but the mere thought of what was in that cellar made him weak.

"Come on!" snapped Tony and included them all with a comprehensive gesture of the automatic.

"Ya takin' me for a ride?" asked the prisoner as they descended in the elevator.

"No," retorted Tony grimly. "Not yet."

The place to which they took him was a sub­-cellar beneath the regular cellar under the hotel. It was reached by a rather rickety wooden stairway and proved to be a large square room with con­crete walls from which were suspended by chains various strange-looking iron appendages. Before Peluso could hardly realize what was happening he had been stripped to the waist and rigged up against the wall, his arms stretched high overhead, his body suspended from the wrists which were en­circled by tight iron bands. Tony motioned to one of his men who stepped over to a small, furnace­ like arrangement. Tony himself caught up a large, razor-edged knife and, fingering it significantly, looked at his prisoner.

"You know, Benny," he said grimly, "a lot of these mugs they find out on the road somewhere after they've been took for a ride don't look so pretty; ears off, tongue out, and other little details like that. And all those things always happen before the guy is actually bumped off. Nice to think about, ain't it?"

Tony turned back toward the furnace. Rinaldo followed him.

"I don't like to say nothin'. Chief," said the gun­ man hoarsely in a low tone, "but, honest to God, I don't believe I can stand this."

"Then look the other way or get out. I don't like it any better than you do but it's got to be done. Makin' this bird talk means that our mob will control the city before long. And don't forget this, Mike; Bruno or any of that North Side mob of his would do this same thing to you or me or any of us in a minute if they had the chance." He turned abruptly to the other man. "Ready?" he demanded brusquely.

"Here you are, Chief." From within the furnace, the gangster drew out a long, thin iron bar. One end of it was red hot. Tony caught it up by the cold end and approached the trussed prisoner.

"Now, damn you," he snarled, "you'll either talk or I'll ram a hole clear through you with this."

And he started the sizzling iron bar slowly but surely toward the gangster's bare flesh. The man cringed and his eyes widened with terror. Finally he yelled, though the iron had not yet touched him.

"Go ahead and yell," said Tony grimly. "Nobody'll hear you."

Facing a pistol is one thing; facing red hot iron against one's bare flesh and other unknown tortures is another. Peluso cracked.

"I'll talk! I'll talk! I'll talk!" he gibbered when the iron was yet half an inch from him. "God! take that away."

For an hour they cross-examined him, Rinaldo and the others jotting down details while Tony asked the questions. The leader's eyes were spar­kling; he was gaining a complete knowledge of the operations of his most important enemy.

"Well, do I get the dough?" asked Peluso when he finally had convinced them that he knew no more.

"Yes," retorted Tony. "After we've checked up on this story of yours and carried out a plan or two I'm hatching up right now. In the meantime, you stay here; I'm not takin' any chances with you rushin' to Bruno and blabbin' everything to him so that he could change his whole line-up be­fore I can ruin it for him."

Tony immediately selected his half dozen clever­est men—including Mike Rinaldo—and sent them out to investigate what Peluso had told. For over a week they worked day and night, circulating around the city, spying, asking apparently aimless questions, doing a great deal of motoring, snooping carefully but efficiently in many quarters. And they reported back that every detail of the pris­oner's story seemed correct.

Elated, Tony at once set in motion the machinery over which he now had control. A dozen new machine guns were imported from New York by devious methods. And certain members of the gang who were acknowledged experts in that line were set to work constructing powerful bombs, or "pineapples" as they are known in gang circles. Tony was a veritable dynamo of energy during these preparations and his vigorous―and murderous―enthusiasm gradually communicated itself to the others until the entire gang was a real fighting machine anxious to get a chance at the enemy.

Libati came swaggering into Tony's private office late one afternoon.

"Well, I guess we're about all ready for the war to start. What's the first move?"

"I'll let you know when I've decided," retorted Tony coolly.

"How about this mug, Peluso? What are we goin to do with him?"

"Do with him! Why, as soon as the campaign on the North Side gang is well opened up, I'm goin' to give him the jack I promised him and have him taken to a train for the West. I imagine he'll be glad enough to blow town."

"I'd think so. But surely you're not goin' to be such a sap as to pay him off now. He's told us all he knows. Why not take him for a ride and save the dough?"

Tony, unaccountably shocked by the cold­-blooded proposal, looked up with flashing eyes.

"I keep my word, Steve, whether to friend or enemy, and no matter what I've promised, either good or bad," he retorted grimly. "The other day I gave you an assignment to get a certain man. You haven't done it yet. Do you remember what I promised you if you didn't carry it out?"

Steve's glance shifted uneasily. "Yes."

"Well, that stands. And I don't intend to wait all Summer either. Better get a move on."

Monday's Illustrated Word: "The Monster God of Rogor" by unknown writer (in English)

art by Wally Wood - Captain Science #1 - Youthful Magazines, November 1950.

 

 

Saturday's Good Reading: "Phantom" by Mary Ann Hammer Dodd (in English)

 

Life is but a changeful story,

 Of its end we little know;

All its years are but a moment,

 Shadow-like they come and go.

 

Careless, thoughtless, of the future,

 To its dark revealings blind;

Phantoms we are ever chasing;

 Phantoms of the eye or mind.

 

Does the heart delight in beauty?

 Rosy cheeks, and sparkling eyes?

Ah, the form they are adorning,

 Is a spectre in disguise.

 

All the pleasure we are-seeking,

 All the charms we sigh to clasp,

Are no sooner to us given,

 Than they perish in our grasp.

 

Hope and joy we vainly follow,

 By their smiles deceiving led;

When at last we seem to reach them,

 Hope is gone, and joy is dead.

 

Faith and love awhile deceive us;

 But their trial is at hand;

Faith's fond promises are broken,

 Love is written in the sand.

 

Shall we thus be mocked with shadows?

 Beauty changing into dust!

Is there nothing real to bless us?

 Nothing to reward our trust?

 

Nothing here! each dream shall vanish,

 Like the wave from off the shore,

Which, borne onward to the ocean,

 Laves the same green spot no more.

 

But when life's short day is ended,

 And our phantom race is o'er,

We shall taste and see the blessings,

 Which were but a shade before.

 

Beauty will be made immortal;

 Time shall nothing more destroy;

While beside us dwell forever,

 Faith, and hope, and love, and joy.

Friday's Sung Word: "Edelweiss" by Oscar Hammerstein II (in English)

 music by Richard Rodgers for the musical "The Sound of Music".

Edelweiss, Edelweiss
Every morning you greet me
Small and white clean and bright
You look happy to meet me
Blossom of snow may you bloom and grow
Bloom and grow forever
Edelweiss,Edelweiss
Bless my homeland forever.

 

 

 You can listen  "Edelweiss" sung by The von Trapp Children (Sofia, Melanie, Amanda, and August von Trapp) here.

Thursday's Serial: “The Centaur” by Algernon Blackwood (in English) - XVIII

 

CHAPTER XLI

Summer blazed everywhere and the sea lay like a blue pool of melted sky and sunshine. The summits of the Caucasus soon faded to the east and north, and to the south the wooded hills of the Black Sea coast accompanied the ship in a line of wavy blue that joined the water and the sky indistinguishably.

The first-class passengers were few; O'Malley hardly noticed their existence even. An American engineer, building a railway in Turkey, came on board at Trebizond; there were one or two light women on their way home from Baku, and the attaché of a foreign embassy from Teheran. But the Irishman felt more in touch with the hundred peasant-folk who joined the ship at Ineboli from the interior of Asia Minor and were bound as third-class emigrants for Marseilles and far America. Dark-skinned, wild-eyed, ragged, very dirty, they had never seen the sea before, and the sight of a porpoise held them spellbound. They lived on the after-deck, mostly cooking their own food, the women and children sleeping beneath a large tarpaulin that the sailors stretched for them across the width of deck. At night they played their pipes and danced, singing, shouting, and waving their arms--always the same tune over and over again.

O'Malley watched them for hours together. He also watched the engineer, the over-dressed women, the attaché. He understood the difference between them as he had never understood it before. He understood the difficulty of his task as well. How in the world could he ever explain a single syllable of his message to these latter, or waken in them the faintest echo of desire to know and listen. The peasants, though all unconscious of the blinding glory at their elbows, stood far nearer to the truth.

"Been further east, I suppose?" the engineer observed, one afternoon as the steamer lay off Broussa, taking on a little extra cargo of walnut logs. He looked admiringly at the Irishman's bronzed skin. "Take a better sun than this to put that on!"

He laughed in his breezy, vigorous way, and the other laughed with him. Previous conversations had already paved the way to a traveler's friendship, and the American had taken to him.

"Up in the mountains," he replied, "camping out and sleeping in the sun did it."

"The Caucasus! Ah, I'd like to get up there myself a bit. I'm told they're a wonderful thing in the mountain line."

Scenery for him was evidently a commercial commodity, or it was nothing. It was the most up-to-date nation in the world that spoke--in the van of civilization--representing the last word in progress due to triumph over Nature.

O'Malley said he had never seen anything like them. He described the trees, the flowers, the tribes, the scenery in general; he dwelt upon the vast uncultivated spaces, the amazing fruitfulness of the soil, the gorgeous beauty above all. "I'd like to get the overcrowded cities of England and Europe spread all over it," he said with enthusiasm. "There is room for thousands there to lead a simple life close to Nature, in health and peace and happiness. Even your tired millionaires could escape their restless, feverish worries, lay down their weary burden of possessions, and enjoy the earth at last. The poor would cease to be with us; life become true and beautiful again--" He let it pour out of him, building the scaffolding of his dream before him in the air and filling it in with beauty.

The American listened in patience, watching the walnut logs being towed through the water to the side of the ship. From time to time he spat on them, or into the sea. He let the beauty go completely past him.

"Great idea, that!" he interrupted at length. "You're interested, I see, in socialism and communistic schemes. There's money in them somewhere right enough, if a man only could hit the right note at the first go off. Take a bit of doing, though!"

One of the women from Baku came up and leaned upon the rails a little beyond them. The sickly odor of artificial scent wafted down. The attaché strolled along the deck and ogled her.

"Get a few of that sort to draw the millionaires in, eh?" he added vulgarly.

"Even those would come, yes," said the Irishman softly, realizing for the first time within his memory that his gorge did not rise, "for they too would change, grow clean and sweet and beautiful."

The engineer looked sharply into his face, uncertain whether he had not missed a clever witticism of his own kind. But O'Malley did not meet his glance. His eyes were far away upon the snowy summit of Olympus where a flock of fleecy clouds hung hovering like the hair of the eternal gods.

"They say there's timber going to waste that you could get to the coast merely for the cost of drawing it--Caucasian walnut, too, to burn," the other continued, getting on to safer ground, "and labor's dirt cheap. There's every sort of mineral too God ever made. You could build light railways and run the show by electricity. And water-power for the asking. You'd have to get a Concession from Russia first though," he added, spitting down upon a huge floating log in the clear sea underneath, "and Russia's got palms that want a lot of greasing. I guess the natives, too, would take a bit of managing."

The woman beyond had shifted several feet nearer, and after a pause the Irishman found no words to fill, his companion turned to address a remark to her. O'Malley took the opening and moved away.

"Here's my card, anyway," the American added, handing him an over-printed bit of large pasteboard from a fat pocket-book that bore his name and address in silver on the outside. "If you develop the scheme and want a bit of money, count me in."

He went to the other side of the vessel and watched the peasants on the lower deck. Their dirt seemed nothing by comparison. It was only on their clothes and bodies. The odor of this unwashed humanity was almost sweet and wholesome. It cleansed the sickly taint of that other scent from his palate; it washed his mind of thoughts as well.

He stood there long in dreaming silence, while the sunlight on Olympus turned from gold to rose, and the sea took on the colors of the fading sky. He watched a dark Kurd baby sliding down the tarpaulin. A kitten was playing with a loose end of rope too heavy for it to move. Further off a huge fellow with bared chest and the hands of a colossus sat on a pile of canvas playing softly on his wooden pipes. The dark hair fell across his eyes, and a group of women listened idly while they busied themselves with the cooking of the evening meal. Immediately beneath him a splendid-eyed young woman crammed a baby to her naked breast. The kitten left the rope and played with the tassel of her scarlet shawl.

And as he heard those pipes and watched the grave, untamed, strong faces of those wild peasant men and women, he understood that, low though they might be in scale of evolution, there was yet absent from them the touch of that deteriorating something which civilization painted into those other countenances. But whether the word he sought was degradation or whether it was shame, he could not tell. In all they did, the way they moved, their dignity and independence, there was this something, he felt, that bordered on being impressive. Their wants were few, their worldly possessions in a bundle, yet they had this thing that set them in a place apart, if not above, these others:--beyond that simpering attaché for all his worldly diplomacy, that engineer with brains and skill, those painted women with their clever playing upon the feelings and desires of their kind. There was this difference that set the ragged dirty crew in a proud and quiet atmosphere that made them seem almost distinguished by comparison, and certainly more desirable. Rough and untutored though they doubtless were, they still possessed unspoiled that deeper and more elemental nature that bound them closer to the Earth. It needed training, guidance, purifying; yes; but, in the last resort, was it not of greater spiritual significance and value than the mode of comparatively recently-developed reason by which Civilization had produced these other types?

He watched them long. The sun sank out of sight, the sea turned dark, ten thousand stars shone softly in the sky, and while the steamer swung about and made for peaked Andros and the coast of Greece, he still stood on in reverie and wonder. The wings of his great Dream stirred mightily ... and he saw pale millions of men and women trooping through the gates of horn and ivory into that Garden where they should find peace and happiness in clean simplicity close to the Earth....

 

 

CHAPTER XLII

There followed four days then of sea, Greece left behind, Messina and the Lipari Islands past; and the blue outline of Sardinia and Corsica began to keep pace with them as they neared the narrow straits of Bonifacio between them. The passengers came up to watch the rocky desolate shores slip by so close, and Captain Burgenfelder was on the bridge.

Grey-headed rocks rose everywhere close about the ship; overhead the seagulls cried and circled; no vegetation was visible on either shore, no houses, no abode of man--nothing but the lighthouses, then miles of deserted rock dressed in those splendors of the sun's good-night. The dinner-gong had sounded but the sight was too magnificent to leave, for the setting sun floated on an emblazoned sea and stared straight against them in level glory down the narrow passage. Unimaginable colors painted sky and wave. The ruddy cliffs of bleak loneliness rose from a bed of flame. Soft airs fanned the cheeks with welcome coolness after the fierce heat of the day. There was a scent of wild honey in the air borne from the purple uplands far, far away.

"I wonder, oh, I wonder, if they realized that a god is passing close...!" the Irishman murmured with a rising of the heart, "and that here is a great mood of the Earth-Consciousness inviting them to peace! Or do they merely see a yellow sun that dips beneath a violet sea...?"

The washing of the water past the steamer's sides caught away the rest of the half-whispered words. He remembered that host of many thousand heads that bowed in silence while a god swept by.... It was almost a shock to hear a voice replying close beside him:--

"Come to my cabin when you're ready. My windows open to the west. We can be alone together. We can have there what food we need. You would prefer it perhaps?"

He felt the touch of that sympathetic hand upon his shoulder, and bent his head to signify agreement.

For a moment, face to face with that superb sunset, he had known a deep and utter peace in the vast bosom of this greater soul about him. Her consciousness again had bruised and fringed his own. Across that delicately divided threshold the beauty and the power of the gods had poured in a flood into his being. And only there was peace, only there was joy, only there was the death of those ancient yearnings that tortured his little personal and separate existence. The return to the world was aching pain again. The old loneliness that seemed more than he could bear swept icily through him, contracting life and freezing every spring of joy. For in that single instant of return he felt pass into him a loneliness of the whole travailing world, the loneliness of countless centuries, the loneliness of all the races of the Earth who were exiled and had lost the way.

Too deep it lay for words or tears or sighs. The doctor's invitation came most opportunely. And presently in silence he turned his back upon that opal sky of dream from which the sun had gone, and walked slowly down the deck toward Stahl's cabin.

"If only I can share it with them," he thought as he went; "if only men will listen, if only they will come. To keep it all to myself, to dream alone, will kill me."

And as he stood before the door it seemed he heard wild rushing through the sky, the tramping of a thousand hoofs, a roaring of the wind, the joy of that free, torrential passage with the Earth. He turned the handle and entered the cozy room where weeks before they held the inquest on the little empty tenement of flesh, remembering how that other figure had once stood where he now stood--part of the sunrise, part of the sea, part of the morning winds.

They had their meal almost in silence, while the glow of sunset filled the cabin through the western row of port-holes, and when it was over Stahl made the coffee as of old and lit the familiar black cigar. Slowly O'Malley's pain and restlessness gave way before the other's soothing quiet. He had never known him before so calm and gentle, so sympathetic, almost tender. The usual sarcasm seemed veiled in sadness; there was no irony in the voice, nor mockery in the eyes.

Then to the Irishman it came suddenly that all these days while he had been lost in dreaming the doctor had kept him as of old under close observation. The completeness of his reverie had concealed from him this steady scrutiny. He had been oblivious to the fact that Stahl had all the time been watching, investigating, keenly examining. Abruptly he now realized it.

And then Stahl spoke. His tone was winning, his manner frank and inviting. But it was the sadness about him that won O'Malley's confidence so wholly.

"I can guess," he said, "something of the dream you've brought with you from those mountains. I can understand--more, perhaps, than you imagine, and I can sympathize--more than you think possible. Tell me about it fully--if you can. I see your heart is very full, and in the telling you will find relief. I am not hostile, as you sometimes feel. Tell me, my dear, young clear-eyed friend. Tell me your vision and your hope. Perhaps I might even help ... for there may be things that I could also tell to you in return."

Something in the choice of words, none of which offended; in the atmosphere and setting, no detail of which jarred; and in the degree of balance between utterance and silence his world of inner forces just then knew, combined to make the invitation irresistible. Moreover, he had wanted to tell it all these days. Stahl was already half convinced. Stahl would surely understand and help him. It was the psychological moment for confession. The two men rose in the same moment, Stahl to lock the cabin doors against interruption, O'Malley to set their chairs more closely side by side so that talking should be easiest.

And then without demur or hesitation he opened his heart to this other and let the floodgates of his soul swing wide. He told the vision and he told the dream; he told his hope as well. And the story of his passion, filled in with pages from those notebooks he ever carried in his pocket, still lasted when the western glow had faded from the sky and the thick-sown stars shone down upon the gliding steamer. The hush of night lay soft upon the world before he finished.

He told the thing complete, much, I imagine, as he told it all to me upon the roof of that apartment building and in the dingy Soho restaurant. He told it without reservations--his life-long yearnings: the explanation brought by the presence of the silent stranger upon the outward voyage: the journey to the Garden: the vision that all life--from gods to flowers, from men to mountains--lay contained in the conscious Being of the Earth, that Beauty was but glimpses of her essential nakedness; and that salvation of the world's disease of modern life was to be found in a general return to the simplicity of Nature close against her mothering heart. He told it all--in words that his passionate joy chose faultlessly.

And Heinrich Stahl in silence listened. He asked no single question. He made no movement in his chair. His black cigar went out before the half of it was smoked. The darkness hid his face impenetrably.

And no one came to interrupt. The murmur of the speeding steamer, and occasional footsteps on the deck as passengers passed to and fro in the cool of the night, were the only sounds that broke the music of that incurable idealist's impassioned story.

Wednesday's Good Reading: “Sagrado Coração de Jesus” by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (in Portuguese)

 

    Legionário, N.º 458, 22 de junho de 1941

    Insistentemente, tem os Santos Padres recomendado que a humanidade intensifique o culto que presta ao Sagrado Coração de Jesus a fim de que, regenerado o homem pela graça de Deus e compreendendo que deve ser Deus o centro de seus afetos, possa reinar novamente no mundo aquela tranquilidade da ordem, da qual mais distante estamos, quanto mais o mundo descamba pela anarquia.

    Assim, não poderia um jornal católico deixar despercebida a festa que há dias transcorreu do Sagrado Coração. Não se trata apenas de um dever de piedade imposto pela própria ordem das coisas, mas de um dever que a tragédia contemporânea torna mais tragicamente premente.

* * *

    Não há quem não se alarme com os extremos de crueldade a que pode chegar o homem contemporâneo. Essa crueldade não se atesta apenas nos campos de batalha. Ela transparece a cada passo, nos grandes e nos pequenos incidentes da vida de todo o dia, através da extraordinária dureza e frieza de coração com que a generalidade das pessoas trata seus semelhantes. As mães em cujas entranhas decresce de intensidade o amor pelos filhos; os maridos que atiram à desgraça um lar inteiro, com o único intuito de satisfazer seus próprios instintos e paixões; os filhos que, indiferentes à miséria ou ao abandono moral em que deixam seus pais, voltam todas as suas vistas para a fruição dos prazeres desta vida; os profissionais que se enriquecem às custas do próximo, mostram muitas vezes uma crueldade fria e calculada, que causa muito mais horror do que os extremos de furor a que a guerra pode arrastar os combatentes.

    Realmente, se bem que na guerra os atos de crueldade se possam mais facilmente aquilatar, os que os praticam tem, se não a desculpa, ao menos a atenuante de que são impelidos pela violência do combate. Mas aquilo que se trama e se realiza na tranquilidade da vida quotidiana não pode muitas vezes beneficiar-se de igual atenuante. E isto sobretudo quando não se trata de ações isoladas, mas de hábitos inveterados que multiplicam indefinidamente as más ações.

    A guerra, tal qual ela é hoje feita, é um índice de crueldade, mas está longe de ser a única manifestação da dureza moral contemporânea.

* * *

    Quem diz crueldade diz egoísmo. O homem só prejudica seu próximo por egoísmo, por desejar beneficiar-se de vantagens a que não tem direito. Assim, pois, o único meio de extirpar a crueldade consiste em extirpar o egoísmo.

    Ora, a teologia nos ensina que o homem só pode ser capaz de verdadeira e completa abnegação de si mesmo quando seu amor ao próximo é baseado no amor de Deus. Fora de Deus não há, para os afetos humanos, estabilidade nem plenitude. Ou o homem ama a Deus a ponto de se esquecer de si mesmo, e neste caso ele saberá realmente amar o próximo; ou o homem se ama a ponto de se esquecer de Deus, e, neste caso, o egoísmo tende a dominá-lo completamente.

    Assim, é só aumentando nos homens o amor de Deus, que se poderá conseguir deles uma profunda compreensão de seus deveres para com o próximo. Combater o egoísmo é tarefa que implica necessariamente em “dilatar os espaços do amor de Deus”, segundo a belíssima frase de Santo Agostinho.

    Ora, a festa do Sagrado Coração de Jesus é, por excelência, a festa do amor de Deus. Nela, a Igreja nos propõe como tema de meditações e como alvo de nossas preces o amor terníssimo e invariável de Deus que, feito homem, morreu por nós. Mostrando-nos o Coração de Jesus a arder de amor a despeito dos espinhos com que O circundamos por nossas ofensas, a Igreja abre para nós a perspectiva de um perdão misericordioso e largo, de um amor infinito e perfeito, de uma alegria completa e imaculada, que devem constituir o encanto perene da vida espiritual de todos os verdadeiros católicos.

    Amemos o Sagrado Coração de Jesus. Esforcemo-nos por que essa devoção triunfe autenticamente (e não apenas através de alguns simbolismos da realidade) em todos os lares, em todos os ambientes e, sobretudo, em todos os corações. Só assim conseguiremos reformar o homem contemporâneo.

* * *

    “Ad Jesum per Mariam”. Por Maria é que se vai a Jesus. Escrevendo sobre a festa do Sagrado Coração, como não dizer uma palavra de comoção filial ante esse Coração Imaculado que, melhor do que qualquer outro, compreendeu e amou o Divino Redentor? Que Nossa Senhora nos obtenha algumas faíscas daquela imensa devoção que tinha ao Sagrado Coração de Jesus. Que Ela consiga atear em nós um pouco daquele incêndio de amor com que Ela ardeu tão intensamente, são nossos votos dentro desta oitava suave e confortadora.