V.  —  The Story of the Red Hand

 PROFESSOR ANTONIO TILLIZINI is a name around which has centred the fiercest controversy. No scientist is ever likely to forget his extraordinary paper read before the Royal Society at Sheffield. It was entitled prosaically, "Some Reflections upon the Inadequacy of the Criminal Code," and was chiefly remarkable from the layman's point of view in that the professor in the course of his address calmly admitted that he had found it necessary to kill ten criminals at various stages of his career. He was sufficiently discreet to offer no further information on the subject, and, though his enemies endeavoured, on the clue he had offered them, to bring at least one crime home to the Italian, they were unsuccessful.

More significant of the trend of public opinion, Tillizini was not deprived of his chair of Anthropology at the Florence University, nor did London society bar its doors to the foreigner who was a self-confessed slayer of men.

More than this, it is known that in preparing their Criminal Law Amendment Bill of 19—, the Government sought the advice of this extraordinary man.

But it was in connexion with the remarkable outburst of crime of a peculiar character that the young man who spent six months of the year in England and six months in his beloved Italy, and of whom the epigram had been perpetrated, that he thought in English and acted in Italian, that he first came largely into the public eye.

It was said of him that all the secrets of the Borgias were known to him; there were dark hints amongst the superstitious of necromancy, and this reputation, generally held among the Italian colony in London, served him in good stead when the days came for him to tackle the "Red Hand."

The organization known as the "Red Hand" had been driven from America by the heroism and resourcefulness of Teum, the famous Cincinnati detective. Laws, drastic to the point of brutality, had been instituted; the system of inquiry known as the "Third Degree" had been elaborated so that it only stopped short of the more extreme methods of the Spanish Inquisition, to cope with the increase in blackmail and murder in which the "Red Hand" specialized.

There was a lull in this type of crime after the electrocution of the Seven Men of Pittsburg, but the silence of the "Red Hand" was broken at last.

It was in December, 19 — , that Carlo Gattini, a wealthy Italian living in Cromwell Square Gardens, received a curt type-written request that he should place a thousand pounds in banknotes under a certain seat in Hyde Park. The hour and the date were mentioned, and the letter was signed by a small red hand, evidently impressed by a rubber stamp.

Mr. Gattini smiled and handed the letter to the police.

At their suggestion he replied through the agony columns of The Times, agreeing to the request; a package was made up and placed beneath the seat described, and four Scotland Yard men waited through the whole of one dismal evening for the "Red Hand" messenger. He did not come. He either suspected or knew; so there the matter should have ended by the severe and unromantic police code.

But on the following morning another letter came to the Italian. It was brief: —

"We give you another chance. Go to the police again and you are a dead man. Place £2,000 in notes in an envelope and leave it under the first bush in your garden."

In alarm, Gattini went to the police. They pooh-poohed any suggestion of danger. Plain-clothes men were concealed in the house and in the garden; other secret service men were stationed in the house opposite, but again the messenger did not come, nor did the Italian receive any further communication.

On Christmas Eve Mr. Gattini returned from the City after a busy day. He was a widower, and lived alone, save for four servants — an elderly woman who acted as cook, a housemaid, and two menservants.

At 7.30 his valet went to his room to announce dinner. Gattini's door was locked.

The man knocked, but received no answer. He knocked again, without result.

He returned to the servants' hall and announced his failure, and he and the chauffeur went to the front of the house and looked up at the window of Mr. Gattini's room.

It was in darkness.

It happened providentially that a Scotland Yard man had called in at that moment in connexion with the threatening letters, and the servants confided their apprehensions.

The three men went to the door of Gattini's room and knocked loudly. There was no reply, and, putting their shoulders to the door, they burst it open.

One of them switched on a light.

At first they saw nothing; the room was apparently empty... then they saw.

The unfortunate man had been struck down as he sat at his dressing-table. The knife that had cut short his life was missing, but it was evident that he had died without a cry.

This was the first murder — there were others to follow.

The request for money came to Sir Christoforo Angeli, a rich banker, and a naturalized Britisher. He treated the threat as lightly as Gattini had done ... he was shot dead as he stood at his window one Spring afternoon, and no man but he saw the murderer.

Again there came a lull, but it was evident to the police, ransacking Europe for a clue, that the apparent inactivity was less significant of a cessation on the part of the gang, as it was of their successes. Men in terror of their lives were paying and keeping information away from the police. A reign of terror was in progress, when, exhausting the wealthier members of the Italian colony, the gang turned its attention to other sources of income.

Henry S. Grein, a wealthy Chicago broker, and known throughout Europe for his art collections, received the stereotyped demand. He 'phoned the police, and Scotland Yard sent its best man to interview the millionaire at the Fitz Hotel, where he was staying.

"I pay nothing," said the millionaire. He was tall and hard-faced, with a mouth like a rat trap, and the secret service man knew that here the "Red Hand" had come up against a tough proposition. "It is your business to see that I do not get killed; you may make what arrangements you like, but I am going to offer a reward of $20,000 for the arrest of the gang, or the leader."

Then began that extraordinary feud which first opened the eyes of the public to the condition of affairs which existed.

The history of Grein's fight with his assassins on the roof of the Fitz Hotel, his shooting down of the man Antonio Ferrino who had gained admission to his bedroom, the abortive attempt to blow up the Fitz Hotel by dynamite; all these facts are so much history. It was on the morning that Henry S. Grein's body was found floating on the Thames off Cleopatra's Needle that the Government turned to Tillizini.

On the evening of his return from Burboro' Tillizini sat at his broad desk working out a side issue of the problem. The red glow from the shaded lamp by his side gave his face a sinister appearance which ordinarily it did not possess. It was a thin and deeply-lined face, a little sallow and a shade bluish about the jaw and upper lip; the nose was long and pinched, the eyebrows black and arched; but whatever unpleasant impression the somewhat Mephistophelean features may have produced, that impression was forgotten in the pleasant shock which came to the observer who saw Tillizini's eyes.

Italian as he was in every feature, his eyes were almost Irish in their soft greyness; big and clear and luminous, the long black lashes which shaded them gave them an added beauty.

With his left hand resting on his book to keep the stiff volume open at the page, he reached across the table to a gold cigarette box, took a long, thin cigarette, and lit it at the small electric lamp which stood at his elbow.

The room wherein he sat was lofty and spacious. The ceiling and the fireplace were as Adam's magic art had left them. The walls were half panelled in dark oak and, save for a small water-colour sketch of a woodland scene on the left of the fireplace, they were innocent of pictures.

Along one wall ran a bookshelf that stretched from the outer wall to a door near the window.

The windows were long and narrow and were hung with dull red curtains. There was cosiness in the big gilt screen by the fire, in the roomy club chair, the soft thick carpet and the tiny clock that ticked musically over the mantelshelf.

Tillizini read steadily, the smoke of his cigarette rising in blue coils to the ceiling.

Suddenly he closed the book with a snap and rose noiselessly.

He glanced at the clock: it was an idle glance, for he knew the time. He had an eerie sub-consciousness of the hour, be it day or night.

He walked to one of the three windows and looked out upon the Embankment.

He saw a crescent of cold lights that stretched towards Blackfriars and was intersected dimly by the bulk of Waterloo Bridge. Across the river was an illuminated sign imploring him to drink somebody's wine at his own expense; farther down a tall tower of reappearing and vanishing light urged him to the consumption of the only whisky worth while.

The professor watched without a smile.

Suddenly a bright splash of light started, and was as suddenly extinguished. Again it flamed — dazzling, white, palpitating light —  and again vanished.

Tillizini stepped back quickly. From a cupboard he took a strange-looking lamp and a coil of wire. He rapidly affixed the plugged end with a connexion in the wall, then he switched out all the lights of the room, and waited. Again the bright light flickered on the opposite bank.

The professor touched a key at the base of the lamp, and from its conical-shaped projector shot a swift beam of soft blue light.

Twice he did this, when the light on the other bank began to wink furiously and at a breakneck pace. Long wink, short wink, long, short; without a pause it raced onward with its urgent message.

As the lamp spoke Tillizini answered it shortly. He read the message as easily as though it were in a printed book, for he knew English as well as he knew his mother tongue, and, moreover, he was an expert in such matters.

The light on the other shore ceased talking, and Tillizini closed the window at which he had been standing, replaced his projector in his cupboard, and the little table on which it had stood against the wall. Then he drew down the blind and switched on the ceiling light.

He stood over his desk and wrote rapidly the purport of the message he had received. It was written in small cramped signs which might have been, and probably were, a shorthand which he alone understood. He had scarcely finished when the musical thrill of an electric bell arrested him. He pressed an electric push inserted in the leg of the table, hastily slipped his notebook into a drawer, and turned as the door opened.

The neatly-dressed manservant ushered in a visitor.

"Inspector Crocks," he announced.

Crocks was short and stout and jovial. His head was as bald as a billiard ball, his peaked beard was shot with grey; he was a bourgeois of the bourgeois; yet, for all his unpromising appearance, Tillizini had no delusions where this smart policeman was concerned.

"Sit down, inspector" — he indicated a chair. "A cigarette?"

The inspector smiled.

"Too subtle for me," he said, "I'm a pipe smoker."

"Fill up," said the professor, with a little smile.

He did not insult his visitor by offering him tobacco, for he knew that it was an attention which all pipe-smokers resent, calling into question as it does their own discrimination and judgment.

"Well?" he asked, as the other slowly filled his polished briar.

"Your countrymen — if you will pardon me — are not helpful, they are a little — er — "

"They are liars," said the young professor calmly. "All men are liars when they are afraid, and I tell you these poor devils are afraid in a way you cannot understand. Not for themselves, but for their children, their wives and their old mothers and fathers." He rose from the table and walked slowly up and down the room.

"These men you want are merciless — you don't know what I mean by merciless. It is a word which to you signifies a certain unjust harshness, cruelty, perhaps. But, my friend... cruelty!" He laughed, a bitter little laugh. "You don't know what cruelty is, not the type of cruelty which flourishes on the shores of the Adriatic. I won't tell you, it would spoil your night's sleep."

The detective smiled.

"I know — a little," he said quietly, puffing a cloud of smoke and watching it disperse with a thoughtful eye.

"Your idea," the professor continued, "is to catch them — very good. And when you have caught them to secure evidence against them — very good again," he said drily; "one is as easy as the other. Now my view is that they are vermin, society's rats, to be exterminated without trial and without remorse."

He spoke quietly; there was no trace of emotion in his voice nor in his gesture. The hand that went searching for a cigarette in the gold box was steady; yet Crocks, no sentimentalist, shivered.

"I know that is your view," he said, with a forced smile, "yet it is not the view which finds favour in this country; it is a view which would get you into serious trouble with the authorities and might even bring you to the Old Bailey on the capital charge."

The professor laughed — a low, musical laugh. He ran his fingers through his grey-streaked hair with a characteristic gesture, then sank into the padded chair by the desk.

"Well!" he said briskly, "what have you discovered?"

The detective shook his head.

"Nothing," he said, "that is, nothing worth while. The gang is unreachable — the people who can give information are dumb brutes; they are either afraid, or in league with the 'Red Hand.' I've tried threatening them; I've tried bribing them; neither is of the least use."

Tillizini laughed softly.

"And the 'Red Hand' — have they made any further move?"

The detective's hand went to his pocket. He drew forth a bundle of papers enclosed in an elastic band. From this he extracted a letter.

"This has been addressed to the Sa' Remo Ambassador," he said. "I won't trouble to read it to you; it is the usual sort of thing. Only this time it is a child who is threatened."

"A child!"

Tillizini's black brows met in an ugly frown. "That is their principal card," he said slowly, "I wondered how long they would keep their hands off the children; what does he threaten, our unknown?"

"Abduction first — murder afterwards, if the abduction fails."

Tillizini took the letter from the other's hand and read it carefully. He held the paper to the light.

"This is the American gang — I thought we'd wiped them out, but it was evidently a bigger organization than I credited."

The musical little bell rang overhead. Tillizini raised his eyes, listening. After the shortest interval the bell rang again.

The professor nodded. A big black box stood at one corner of the table — he unlocked it, the detective watching him curiously. With the turning of the key and the lifting of the lid, the front fell away, revealing three sedate rows of crystal phials.

Tillizini took one from the front, slipped it in his pocket, then bent down and pressed the bell in the table.

The door opened to admit a servant, followed by a fresh-coloured young man evidently of the working class. Crocks looked at him, saw he was an Englishman, and wondered in what way the two men had become acquainted. The young man accepted a seat at the invitation of Tillizini.

"Well, my friend," said the professor pleasantly, "you are willing to go on with this matter?"

"Yes sir," said the other, firmly.

Tillizini nodded.

"I got your message," he said. He turned to the detective.

"This man's name is Carter," he said briefly; "he is an out-of-work plumber, unmarried, without family, and prepared to take risks. You have been in the army, I think?" he said.

The newcomer nodded. He sat uneasily on the edge of his chair as though unused to good society, and with obvious embarrassment.

"I advertised," Tillizini went on, "for a man who was willing to risk his life; I'm paying him two hundred pounds, and he is earning it."

Crocks was mystified.

"Exactly what does he do?" he asked.

"That," said Tillizini, with a slow smile, "is exactly what he does not know."

He turned to the other man, who grinned sheepishly.

"I carry out instructions," he said, "and I've had a hundred pounds."

"Lucid enough, Mr. Crocks; he does nothing except live in a lodging in Soho, make his way to a wharf over there," he pointed out of the window, "every evening at about this hour, signal to me a fairly unintelligible message, and afterwards walk slowly across Westminster Bridge, along the Embankment, up Vilhers Street, and so to my house."

He paced the room with long swinging strides.

"He has taken his life in his hands, and he knows it," he said. "I have told him that he will probably be assassinated, but that does not deter him."

"In these hard times," said the soldier, "a little thing like that doesn't worry you; it is better to be assassinated than to be starved to death, and I have been out of work for twelve months until Mr. Tillizini gave me this job."

"He receives two hundred pounds," Tillizini went on, "by contract. I have paid him one hundred, I shall pay him another hundred to-night and his expenses. Probably," he said, with a little smile, "he may escape with minor injuries, in which case I shall congratulate him heartily."

He turned briskly to the man.

"Now let me have all the papers you have got in that pocket. Put them on the table."

The man dived into his various pockets and produced scraps of paper, memorandum, pocket-books — all the literary paraphernalia of his class.

From his pocket Tillizini took the phial he had removed from the medicine chest. He unstoppered it, and a pungent, sickly odour filled the room. With the moist tip of the stopper he touched each article the man had laid on the table.

"You will get used to the smell," he said, with a smile; "you won't notice it after a while."

"What is it?" asked Crocks, curiously.

"You will be surprised when I tell you," said the other. "It is double distilled attar of roses, the vilest smell in the world in its present stage, and this bottle I have in my hand is worth commercially, twenty-five pounds."

At a nod from Tillizini, Carter gathered up his papers and replaced them in his pockets.

"You have a revolver?" asked the professor.

"Yes, sir," replied the man. "I'm just getting used to it. I don't understand these automatic pistols, but I went down to Wembley the other day and had some practice."

"I hope that no occasion will arise for you to have practice nearer at hand," said Tillizini, dryly.

He rang the bell, and the servant came.

"Get Mr. Carter some supper," he ordered. He nodded to the man as he left.

"What is the meaning of this?" asked Crocks.

"That you shall see," said the other.

"But I don't understand," said the bewildered detective. "Why should you give this man so large a sum to do nothing more than send electric signals to you every evening?"

Tillizini sat down at his desk.

"Mr. Crocks," he said, "it would be false modesty on my part if I pretended that my movements escape the notice of the 'Red Hand.' I am perfectly satisfied in my own mind that I do not go in or out of this house without the organization being aware of the fact. Every step I take is watched; every action of mine is considered in the light of a possible menace to the society.

"This society knows that every evening I am engaged in the exchange of messages with a man south of the Thames. The very mysteriousness will naturally appeal to the Latin temperament, and its significance will be magnified. On the second night you may be sure that Carter was located. You may also be sure that he was watched from the wharf and followed to this house."

A light began to dawn upon the detective. "Then Carter is a decoy?"

"A two hundred pound decoy," said the other, gravely. "He knows the risk, I am paying him a big sum; fortunately he is something of a signaller, and so he is able to tell me through a code of our own what is happening on the other side of the river. I freely admit," he smiled, "that so far nothing has happened worth recording."

"They will kill him," said Crocks.

"They will try," said the other quietly; "he is a pretty resourceful man, I think. I am hoping that nothing worse will happen than that they will seek a gentler method of solving the mystery which surrounds him. Hallo!" The door was thrust open suddenly, and the servant flew in.

"I'm very sorry, sir —— " he stammered.

"What's the matter?" Tillizini was on his feet. "Is it Carter?"

"No, sir — he's in the kitchen. I heard a ring at the bell, and the girl" — he went on incoherently — "a girl sort of fell in. What am I to do, sir?"

"Fell in?" Tillizini stepped quickly past him, and went down the broad stairs, two at a time, to the hall.

The man had had sufficient presence of mind to close the door after the strange visitor's appearance.

Lying on the carpeted floor of the hall was the form of a woman. Tillizini, practised as he was in every subtle move of the gang, stepped forward cautiously. She lay under an overhanging light, and he was able to see her face. He lifted her and walked quickly back up the stairs with his burden.

Crocks was standing in the doorway of the room.

"What is it?" he asked.

Tillizini made no reply. He carried the limp figure and laid it on the settee by the wall.

"What happened?" he asked the man shortly.

"I heard the bell ring, sir," said the agitated servant, "and I went to the door thinking it was — "

"Never mind all that — be brief," said Tillizini.

"Well, I opened the door, sir, and she must have fainted against it. I'd just time to catch her and to drag her into the hall before she went off."

"Did you see anybody outside?"

"No, sir," said the man.

"You closed the door behind you, I see," said Tillizini approvingly. "Really, I shall make something of you, Thomas."

From his medicine case he took a slender phial, removed the stopper, and wetted the tip of his finger with the contents. He brushed this along the lips of the unconscious girl.

"She has only fainted," he said, while with a quick, deft hand he felt the pulse, and his sensitive fingers pressed the neck ever so slightly.

The drug he had given her had a marvellously rapid effect.

She opened her eyes almost immediately and looked round. Then she caught sight of Tillizini's face.

"Don't try to speak," he said, gently. "Just wait. I will get you a little wine, though I don't think you will require it."

She tried to sit up, but his firm hand restrained her.

"Lie quietly for a little while," he said. "This gentleman is a detective from Scotland Yard. You need have no fear."

"Are you Dr. Tillizini?" she asked.

He nodded.

"My husband — you've seen him?" she whispered.

Tillizini nodded again.

"Yes, yes. He was the man who was sentenced at Burboro'."

A look of pain passed across the white-faced girl.

"Yes, he was sentenced," she said, weakly. "He was innocent, but he was sentenced." Tears welled into her eyes.

Tillizini had the narrow blue phial in the palm of his hand. Again he tilted it, and again the tip of his little finger swept across the lips of the girl. She knit her brows.

"What is that?" she said. "It is very sweet stuff."

The professor smiled.

"Yes, it is very sweet, my child," he said, "but it will do you a lot of good."

His prediction was verified, for in a few minutes she sat up — calm and collected.

"I heard you had been to see my husband," she said. "I wanted to talk to you, but you had gone; and then I thought I would write to you, and I was starting my letter when a gentleman came."

"Which gentleman?" asked Tillizini.

"The Italian gentleman," she replied — "the one my husband said had asked him to go to Highlawn. Oh, I knew it wasn't true that he burgled Sir Ralph. Poor as we were, he would never have done such a thing."

Tillizini nodded, he raised his hand with a reproving little smile.

"Yes, the Italian came, and what did he want?"

She was calm again.

"He gave me some money," said the girl, "and told me that he would see that my husband was released, and I was so grateful because I felt so sure that he would go to Sir Ralph and tell him, and George would be let out of gaol."

She was little more than a child, and the men who listened were too full of pity to smile at her naive conception of Sir Ralph's power.

"And then," she went on, "he asked me a dreadful thing."

She shuddered at the thought.

"He asked me to do that for which my husband was convicted."

"To go to the house?"

"Yes," she nodded.

"And to take a package?"

Again the girl nodded.

"And you were to do this on Friday night?"

His eyes were blazing with excitement.

"Yes," she said. "How do you know?"

A little look of fear came into her face. She was out of her depth in these plots and machinations, this simple country girl, who had entered into the responsibilities and trials of marriage at an age when most girls were at school.

"I know," said Tillizini.

He walked up and down the apartment, his hands thrust in his pockets, his head bent.

"You won't be able to do it now. They've watched you come up here; I suppose that's why you came to me?"

"Yes," she said. "I am so afraid of these men. We are quiet country folk. We have never been mixed up in anything like this."

Tillizini considered a moment; then he took down the telephone receiver and gave a number. He had a brief conversation with somebody in Italian and he spoke with an air of authority. He hung the receiver up again.

"I have telephoned for a lady to come here to take you to her house," he said. "I don't think these people will bother you at all, because you know nothing which can possibly affect them one way or the other. I suppose," he said, turning to Crocks, "that you can give me a couple of men to look after this girl till she reaches the house where I am sending her?"

Crocks nodded.

"I'll take her myself," he said, jovially. "I am worth two men."

Tillizini smiled.

"I sometimes think," he said, "that you are worth three. The one you are, the one you can be, and the one you never appear to be!"

Crocks chuckled.