South Wind

by Norman Douglas

  “Ah!” said the friendly policeman. “And your mother, now—could she perhaps tell us when she gave it to you?”

  “My mother is in Paradise.”

  “Dead, is she? H’m. That looks queer, my young friend. Very fishy. You should be more careful in little things like that. She ought to have been kept alive, you know. Anybody can say they had gold coins given them by dead mothers, don’t you see? Rather a thin trick. Can’t you suggest something better? Cheer up, boy! You needn’t tremble all over. Look, I am writing it down, and you must put your name to it afterwards. Think—little. A living uncle, for instance—if he came into Court and testified that he had given you the coin, why, it might make all the difference and get you out of a nasty scrape. Surely you’ve got an uncle or something? How about His Reverence the PARROCO? Couldn’t he swear—?”

  “My mother is in Paradise.”

  “In Paradise, is she? That’s where you ought to be, my son. Just sign this declaration, please. Then perhaps you will meet your mother sooner than you expect. Can’t read or write? Well, put your cross to it and may the Madonna help you! For I can’t. I’ve done my best to be impartial, but God alone can steer a fool. He makes a specialty of it, they tell me. If so, you’ve got a sporting chance….”

  Overjoyed with this incriminating deposition, His Worship gave orders for the prisoner’s formal arrest. Aloud he remarked:

  “What have I always said? Beware of wimple folks. They are the deep ones. Their naivete is nothing but a disguise. Here we have a case in point. This boy, from all accounts, is the pure type of the callous murderer. He stutters. He makes uncalled-for gurglings of a bestial nature. He has pendulous ears, and certain other stigmata of degeneration which are familiar to all conversant with criminal anthropology. Of course he denies everything. But mark my words! After six or seven months, when the prison diet begins to take effect, he will confess. I know the species; it is all too common. Meanwhile we must congratulate ourselves on having tracked down the culprit so soon.”

  To condemn for homicide the cousin of a Catholic priest warmed the cockles of his free-thinking heart. In fact, on second thoughts, it was better than if he had caught the real murderer who might have turned out to be an atheist, which would have been bad enough—or possibly a freemason, which would have been really awkward. The news spread rapidly over the island, and caused wild rejoicings among the anti-clericals.

  The rejoicings were of brief duration.

  Torquemada, as usual, was in fighting trim. Like all God-fearing ascetics, he was a man-eater at heart. He made up his mind long ago to eat the judge, whom he considered an offence to Heaven and earth—the official mouthpiece of the devil. Up to the present he had bided his time, waiting for a good opportunity. The time was now ripe.

  Not that he greatly loved his cousin. The family to which the unhappy youth belonged was of no credit or use to himself, and this particular member was worse than useless, being afflicted with an unpardonable vice—lack of judgment. His stupidity had already got him into a number of minor scrapes. As a child he annoyed foreigners by ingenuous requests for money, stole flowers from neighbours’ gardens because they were so irresistibly pretty, tied saucepans to their cats because they had such irresistibly long tails and made such irresistibly droll movements and noises in order to get rid of them, frightened old ladies by making faces at them; sometimes, by way of a change, he threw off a fit; later on, he had taken to smashing crockery, mooning about the vineyards, forgetting errands entrusted to him, throwing stones at passing carriages and making a general nuisance of himself. The PARROCO knew that he had been dismissed as incompetent by tradespeople to whom he was apprenticed, by farmers who had employed him as a labourer. He could not even repeat his Ave Maria without producing sinister crepitations from his gullet. And now he had crowned all by this surpassing act of imprudence. If he had only kept his mouth shut, like everybody else. But there! What could you expect from a fool?

  A genuine murderer—it was most irreligious, of course. Still, some homicides were fairly justifiable, others almost meritorious; and a criminal of this kind showed, in every case, undeniable traces of manliness; one could not help respecting him in an oblique sort of fashion. But a fool! Torquemada, the zealous priest, the man of God, could never quite repress the promptings of his blood. He had all the fanatic’s appreciation of violent methods; all the Southerner’s fondness for a miscreant, and contempt for a simpleton. A mere fool—what’s the use of him on earth? Had the culprit been any ordinary Christian, His Reverence would not have dreamt of interfering; gladly would he have let him spend the remainder of his day sin prison which everybody knew to be the best place for stupid people—it kept them out of mischief.

  But this was not an ordinary Christian. He was a relation. A relation! That meant that one must show fight for him, if only for the sake of public appearances.

  He held a hurried council with his family and, half an hour later, a second one with the more influential members of the priesthood. It was decided, in both cases, that the occasion was favourable for a long-deferred contest between the Powers of Light and the powers of darkness, the Catholic Church and modernism, the Clergy of Nepenthe and the secular authority of law and order as personified by that judge in whom all evil, public and private, flowed together. A noble parting cheque which he had just received from Mr. van Koppen for some urgent repairs to the parish organ came in handy. It would enable him to face the adversary with good hopes of success. To his friends he said:

  “An insult to my family! I shall not take it lying down. Let them see what a humble servant of God can do.”

  So saying, he girded his loins for the fray, walked in person to the post office and wrote out a lengthy telegram to the redoubtable Don Giustino Morena, the parliamentary representative of Nepenthe who, as readers of the newspapers were aware, happened to be taking a brief holiday among his own people in the South. It was a judiciously flattering dispatch. It prayed the famous lawyer-politician to undertake the defence of a relation, an orphan, a mere child, unjustly accused of murder and arbitrarily imprisoned, and to deign to accept a pitiful honorarium of five thousand francs—the largest sum which a parish priest, poor but jealous of the honour of his family, could scrape together. If the great man accepted the offer, he might arrive by the nest day’s boat. There was a chance, thought the PARROCO, of his doing so. Don Giustino was an ardent Catholic; he might be favourably impressed by the modest petition of a clergyman in his constituency. He had promised over and over again to visit his Nepenthean constituents. He would now be killing two birds with one stone.

  Five minutes, under ordinary circumstances, were wont to elapse ere an item of private news could percolate out of the post office and become public property. Such was the portentous import of this message that it did not percolate at all. It flashed, and produced forthwith a feeling of joyous elation at the prospect of lively events in the near future—of a battle between the Vatican and the Quirinal. Coming on the top of Muhlen’s murder—which was a decided improvement upon his alleged flight—it caused the citizens to talk in excited and almost random fashion about what was coming next. Alone, the members of the Alpha and Omega Club, thanks to the benign influence of Parker’s poison, received the successive waves of information with composure, and preserved from beginning to end their sense of proportion.

  “Heard the news? Muhlen’s bolted.”

  “I thought he would.”

  “They say he owes a good deal.”

  “Obviously. Else he wouldn’t have bolted. Good riddance, anyhow.”

  “That’s what I say. But he owes me a lot of whiskies, the blighter.”

  “You’re lucky. Gone off with thirty francs of mine.”

  “Damn his eyes. I expect we’re not the only ones.”

  “Not by a long chalk. Come and have a drink.”

  “Heard the news? Muhlen’s murdered.”

  “Serve him bloody well right. The blackguard owes me two francs fifty.
I’ll bet it was some money business.”

  “Not a bit of it. A little girl, you know. Got a knife in the stomach. About eleven at night, from all accounts. They heard him squealing a mile off.”

  “I don’t believe it. He was not that kind.”

  “Not that kind? What do you mean?”

  “Not that kind.”

  “Not THAT kind? Really? Go on. You don’t say so, by Jove! What makes you think it?”

  “Think? I don’t think. I happen to know. You pay for my peg and I’ll tell you all about it….”

  “Heard the news? Don Giustino’s coming over.”

  “The old assassin. What of it?”

  “Good business! One in the eye for Mali—what’s his name. There’ll be the hell of a row. We ought to be grateful to Muhlen for this amusement.”

  “Damned if we ought. Unless he got himself killed on purpose to amuse us. And even then it would have amused me more if he had paid me back those seventeen francs.”

  “You’re very hard to please to-day.”

  “So would you be, if you’d been as raddled as I was last night. You ought to see the inside of my head, you ought. There’s room for a coal barge, in there.”

  “That’s easily remedied. Toss up for drinks.”

  “Don’t mind if I do….”

  Signor Malipizzo heard the news as he was sitting down to luncheon. At first he thought the priest had gone crazy. Don Giustino—good God! Five thousand francs. Where had he found the money? Then he remembered hearing about old Koppen’s cheque for the organ. Those confounded foreigners, always mixing themselves up in local concerns! If the PARROCO were really poor, as these hypocrites of Christians professed to be, he could never have run to it. Don Giustino. What an awful turn of events. And all because Muhlen got himself murdered. These confounded foreigners!

  His heart sank within him. He had looked forward to keeping the priest’s cousin for a year or two in gaol, previous to his trial. That would have to be altered. If Don Giustino came, the proceedings must be fixed for next morning—it was the merest act of courtesy towards a man of his standing, a man whom one must conciliate at any cost. He blamed himself for arresting that young idiot. It threatened to bring him into undesired prominence. Hitherto, by reason of his sheer insignificance, he had escaped the great Catholic deputy’s eye. As Magistrate of Nepenthe, who cared what political or religious views he professed or in what manner he administered the law? All this was now changed. He was in the limelight. It might end—who knows where? He had other enemies on the island beside the clericals; the arrival of Don Giustino might lead to a general revision of his judicial labours. To-morrow perhaps he would have to confront the monster. Don Giustino! He knew him by reputation. A Camorrista of the blackest dye. He took no chances. He never threatened; he performed. Everybody knew that. Signor Malipizzo did not like the prospect of losing his lucrative job. Still less did he fancy the notion of receiving a charge of buck-shot in his liver, one evening from behind a wall. That was Don Giustino’s cheerful way with people who annoyed him. Those infernal clericals; their sanguinary, out-of-date methods! Papacy and Camorra—interconvertible terms—who could plumb their depths? The Masons were different. They fought for the enlightenment of a people deluded by priestly snares and intimidated by the threats of assassins. Don Giustino. Holy Mother of God! What would to-morrow bring?

  Thinking thus, the judge eyed his victuals resentfully. His appetite was gone—he was beginning to feel sick. Suddenly he pushed his plate away from him and hobbled out of the room, even forgetting to finish his wine. He limped across the broiling market-place to give the necessary orders to his faithful and experienced clerk who, having likewise got wind of that telegram, was not unprepared for some change of mind on the part of his chief.

  “The young idiot must come up for trial to-morrow, if the assassin arrives.”

  “A sound suggestion,” the grey-haired one replied. “It will take the wind out of his sails. It will prove—”

  “Of course it will. And now, Don Carlo, go and take your little nap. I will stay here, to put my papers in order. May your dreams be happy.”

  The judge was dowered with extreme irascibility of temper, due to his chronic valetudinarian condition. He, too—within the limits of propriety—was not going to take things lying down. So much was certain. At first he was too agitated to be able to collect his thoughts. Gradually, as he moved about those rooms, calmness and confidence returned. He was alone. It was very warm and quiet here, amid these scenes of his many little triumphs. The look of the archives, the familiar smell of the place, was reassuring. He began to feel at ease once more. Ideas came to him.

  He signed warrants for the arrest of the Messiah, Krasnojabkin and some fifteen others of those who had escaped his wrath on the previous occasion. They would be under lock and key within two hours. Don Giustino would never interfere on behalf of these aliens. Nor would any one else. An inspiration! It would proclaim his zeal for the public order—his official independence of mind.

  And—yes. There was one other little thing.

  He hobbled to where the various PIECES JUSTIFICATIVES were lying in their sealed envelopes. He took up the receptacle containing the gold talisman which had been sequestrated from the priest’s nephew, and broke it open. It could always be sealed up again. The coin, attached to its string, fell out; it was an old-fashioned medal—Spanish, apparently. He fingered it awhile. Then, opening the packet which held Muhlen’s gold, he carefully examined the contents. Five or six of these coins were of the same kind. French Napoleons. That was lucky. Any stick was good enough to beat a dog with. This was a particularly good stick. He bored a hole through one of the Napoleons and placed it on the culprit’s string, after removing the original talisman, which he bestowed in his own pocket. That done, he sealed up the two parcels again, conscientiously.

  “There!” he said. “He laughs best who laughs last. Don Giustino is a clever man. But the devil himself could not prove the prisoner innocent, in the face of evidence like this. Down with the Pope!”

  Never had he felt so enlightened, so gloriously freemasonish.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  The commendatore Giustino Morena—familiarly known as Don Giustino or, by his enemies, as “the assassin”—was a Southerner by birth, a city product. From low surroundings he had risen to be a prominent member of the Chamber of Deputies and one of the most impressive figures in the country.

  As a child he was apprenticed to a cobbler. There, bending over his work on the pavement outside the shop-door, his blue eyes and curly fair hair, his rosy cheeks, his winning smile, his precocious retorts, attracted the most favourable comment from the passers-by and secured him an unfailing supply of chocolates and cigarettes. People liked him so much that he quickly learned not only how to mend shoes but a good many other things which they were anxious to teach him. His grown-up friends vied with one another for a place in his affections and a certain scandalous affair with knives, which somehow or other got into the daily press where it had no business to be, put the seal on his reputation in the quarter.

  “That boy will go far!” the old men and women used to say. “Only look at his blue eyes. Blessed the mother that bore him, whoever she was”—for nobody even pretended to know.

  They were right; as old folks are apt to be. The victor in the disreputable affray happened to be a gentleman of middle age, a distinguished ornament of the Black Hand. No happier fate could have been devised for Giustino than to live under the patronage of such an individual. He took charge of the little fellow, and was not slow in discovering that his protege possessed not only a muscular framework and ready wit, but the malice, the concentrated ruthlessness and rapacity of fifty devils rolled into one. Something could be made out of that boy, he concluded; the Society, always ready to adopt promising neophytes on the recommendation of a qualified practitioner like himself, would doubtless enrol him in due course. Meanwhile he instructed him, by precept and example, how to be rel
igious in the manner most pleasing to the Madonna. He narrated the Lives of the Saints, forced him to attend Mass and confess himself to one of the Society’s trusted priests and taught him, above all things, to hate the Government because it oppressed the Pope and the poor. One day he said:

  “You must now attend evening classes. I think you will do well at our school of the Holy Cross. Your outfit is exceptional. Among other things you have the great advantage that the first and second fingers of both your hands are of equal length. That augurs well! God has favoured you, for many lads have to lengthen the first one artificially, which is apt to weaken the joints.”

  The Master and Director drew good salaries from the numerous pupils at this institution. Everything useful to young boys was taught here save only religion. Seeing that all the scholars were drawn from families distinguished for their piety and adherence to the Pope, the Director considered a religious training to be superfluous—his pupils learnt these things on their mothers’ knees. Giustino soon acquired the jargon; he passed his examination in fifteen articles, in secrecy, swiftness of foot and nimbleness of hand. The latter was taught on a clothed wooden figure out of whose pockets the students were obliged to extract handkerchiefs, gold watches and jewelry with such dexterity that not one of the little bells, which dangled from its hat, gave forth the slightest sound; that stage passed, the art was practised on the person of the Director himself who, walking through the streets as an ordinary citizen, was supposed to have his pockets picked in the approved professional manner. Those who failed to come up to the standard were thrashed savagely three or four times; if they still failed, they were sent back to their parents with a polite recommendation that they should be taught some other trade. Giustino was seldom punished. On the contrary, the Director was so enamoured of his progress and blue eyes that he entered him as a fox long before the regular three years’ course was up, and offered to tattoo the symbol of proficiency, a cross, on the back of his right hand.