VII
Luigi Romano, who had succeeded Guisseppi in Rosina’s affections, was among the first to hear of the abduction.
Blazing with passion, he laid his plans with quick decision and took the trail. Without great difficulty, he traced the route of the taxicab, block by block, to its destination.
Depressed by his fruitless mission in search of a marriage license, Guisseppi was hurrying toward the building in which Rosina was imprisoned. His eyes were bent upon the ground in deep thought. His face was white and drawn.
Luigi stepped from the shelter of a doorway with a sawed-off shotgun in his hands....
When the police arrived, a little crowd of Italians had gathered.
They shrugged their shoulders and spread their palms. Nobody had seen anything; nobody had heard anything; nobody knew anything. But one thing was plain—the dead man, sprawled on the sidewalk, was dead this time to stay dead.
“O yes,” said Attorney Malato, who had looked after Luigi’s case, “they arrested Luigi all right. But they turned him loose. Why not? This boy Guisseppi could not be punished by the law, but neither could he claim in the slightest degree the protection of the law. Since he had no legal life, it was no crime to kill him. He was a legal problem, and Luigi solved it in about the only way it could be solved—with a sawed-off shotgun.”’
It is often wondered why the earth is round instead of being some other shape. This is because of the attraction of gravity, which tends to pull everything toward the center of the world. It can be seen that even if the earth was originally some other shape, in the course of a few years this influence would have pulled it into its present shape.
A Gripping, Powerful Story by a Man Who Always Tells a Good Tale