George Kibbe Turner

“ The police discipline was perfect. The great hall, blazing with flags, held an expectant and resolute body of citizens of Italian and American birth, who, though not unnaturally nervous, showed themselves unaffected by any threats which would keep them from doing honor to a great national enthusiasm. It was without doubt the greatest single demonstration in ail the history of the international ward politics of this great American metropolis. ”

“ The postal service of Chibosh was on the alert; the police force straining every nerve; an officer stood at nearly every letter box. The underground agents of the Black-Hand Bureau and the business detective agencies had made no arrests as yet. Both old Mike Boogan and Detective Doheney were still holding back, biding their time, it was thought, for the arrests which might occur now any minute.
In the meanwhile the great city was one step nearer the test—the mass meeting of welcome of Italian-Americans to the hero of Fiume in Great Coliseum Gardens on the next, or Saturday, evening. ”

“ I've got my one good eye still right on them, and they know it,” said old Mike Boogan, of the Chibosh Black-Hand Squad, to a Peoples Pictures representative, laying down the last Black-Hand bomb he was examining. “Without a doubt we've got their number, and they know it. Our men are with them now—right down in amongst them, in the nests of highbinders and dope fiends and desperate panhandlers that these big Black-Handers frequent. ”

“ What is it that they do? What is that movement that they say will always make an Italian fight?”
The other showed him—the simple two-handed gesture of double shame, at which he explained, the Italian spirit, as he knew it, could not fail to rise up and drink blood.
“If anybody should do that to the Italian flag anywhere,” asked Mr. Melody, “what would happen?”
“You'd have the whole lot of them biting their thumbs off, climbing up to stick you full of knives.” ”

“ Most any time I'm liable to get a call from one of my men on the telephone saying he's made the pinch.
“Now I can tell you this,” said the old bomb expert, looking up at the cabinet which contains his bomb collection, “and that's all I can tell you now. They're the worst in the business! But we know where they are, and we've got our eye right on them—every minute. And it won't be long before you'll see another Black-Hander's scalp hanging in the headquarters of the old Black-Hand Squad of the city of Chibosh, And that's all, boys, for today.” ”

“ DEATH!
On the second page were pictures of Mayor True, smiling steadily as he perused the missive and as he handed it to Chief Charley Spoofenberger, head of the great Chibosh Police Department, standing at attention in full uniform a portrait of old Mike Boogan, standing in his bomb laboratory, holding in his hand the remains of the Black Hand bomb of 1907, which cost him his right eye. ”

“ And Mayor True deserves a lot of credit for standing out and fighting this, and going right after it with all the police department of Chibosh, and if the merchants and manufacturers of this country would do the same—come out as a unit and employ some competent agency to fight this thing—the future wouldn't look so dark as it does today, to those on the inside, who know what's threatening the Constitution and industries and everything else in this country that all good Americans love and cherish and revere. ”

“ Etna—these Italians—talking with the Russians in the Ural Mountains and the notorious mountain headquarters of the outlaw anarchists from all nations in Switzerland, framing up the downfall of the world day after day; planning out the downfall of our land and our country and everything we hold dear, while the merchants and bankers and manufacturers in this country, who should be out fighting this tooth and nail, sit dreaming in their armchairs—waiting till it is too late. ”

“ The Morning Truth, first of all the newspapers of Chibosh, has at last induced Francis X. Doheney, the great detective, to lay bare the secrets of the motives and agencies which lie behind the strange thumbless Black-Hand warning to Mayor True not to attend the welcome to be extended at Coliseum Gardens on Saturday night to Gen Giuseppe Gonfardino, the world-acclaimed hero of Fiume. ”

“ How much longer can this nation afford to ignore the fact, patent to all the remainder of the world, that, through the simple process of assumption by this country of a proper responsibility for the peace, debts and food supply of Europe and Asia, the possibility of international hostilities will at once automatically disappear and war become, as it should be now, a horrid anachronism? ”

“ Although the mayor still insists that nothing will prevent his attendance at this great patriotic festival of Italian-American citizens, yet the statement of this country's great expert on crime will explain clearly the dangerous situation as it stands today, following the receipt of a second death warning to the mayor, and should be read with attention by every thinking citizen of Chibosh. ”

“ The great international wireless of the anarchists! It came about by accident in a way, you might say, in the first place, like so many things do. They were always meeting—the anarchists—in out-of-the-way, God-forsaken places—woods and seashores and mountains; especially mountains. Take Switzerland, for instance—you must have noticed how they always get together in Switzerland, in the mountains. ”

“ Melody.
“They tell you right, boss,” said his informant earnestly. “And more, too, when a man like General Gonfardino speaks in Italian—on Italia Irredenta and stuff like that he believes in and they're proud of. ”

“ You know how the Italians are when they're set going; when anybody talks in Italian to them about themselves, and how good they are, and about their country!”
Dismissing him, after further researches concerning the sentiment of Italy upon the great national enthusiasm of redawning glory, of retrieving ancient shores and regal memories, Mr. Melody, the unseen publicity agent of the great and complex interests which lay behind the much-seen mayor of Chibosh, called by his push button for his assistant, Mr. ”

“ In the morning, Peoples Pictures had published an authentic picture—which was afterward denied by the Morning Truth—of a piece of iron pipe, found beneath the speakers' stand in the midst of Great Coliseum Gardens, which old Lieut. ”