The Fourth Plague Read Free Page B

fool—why doesn’t he keep to his books and his lectures?”
    â€œHe has been very kind to me,” said the younger man. He spoke thoughtfully, reflectively. “I am sorry he has annoyed you, father; but it is his business—this investigation of crime.”
    â€œCrime!” roared the old man. “How dare you, a son of mine, sitting at my own table, refer to the actions of the ‘Red Hand’ as crime!”
    His face went red with rage, and he cast a glance of malevolence at his heir which might well have shocked a more susceptible man.
    But Antonio Festini was used to such exhibitions. He was neither embarrassed nor distressed by this fresh exhibition of his father’s dislike. He knew, and did not resent, the favouritism shown to Simone, his brother. It did not make him love his brother less, nor dislike his father more.
    Antonio Festini had many qualities which his countrymen do not usually possess. This phlegmatic, philosophical attitude of mind had been bred in him. Some remote ancestor, cool, daring, possibly with a touch of colder blood in his ancestry, had transmitted to this calm youth some of the power of detachment.
    He knew his father hated the old professor of anthropology at Florence; for the Festinis, even to this day, preserved the spirit of antagonism which the Sienese of half a thousand years ago had adopted to the Florentine.
    There were schools enough in Siena; a college most famous for its lawyers and its doctors.
    Simone was graduating there, and what was good enough for Simone should surely be good enough for Antonio.
    But the elder son had chosen Florence with that deliberation which had always been his peculiarity, even from his earliest childhood, and in face of all opposition, in defiance of all the Festini tradition, it was to Florence he went.
    Tillizini, that remarkable scientist, had conceived a friendship for the boy; had taken him under his wing, and had trained him in his own weird, irregular, and inconsequent way.
    Tillizini was a master of crime, and he possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of men. He was at the beck and call of the secret police from one end of Italy to the other, and, so rumour said, was in receipt of retaining fees from the governments of other nations.
    It was Tillizini who had set himself to work to track down the “Red Hand” which had terrorized the South of Italy for so many years, and had now extended its sphere of operations to the north.
    And it was a hateful fact that his work had been crowned with success. His investigations had laid by the heels no less a person than the considerable Matteo degli Orsoni, the Roman lawyer, who, for so many years, had directed the operations of one of the most powerful sections of the “Red Hand.”
    There was something like fear in the old man’s breast, though he was too good a Festini to display it; and it was fear which leavened his rage.
    â€œYou shall hear a different tale of this Tillizini,” he growled, “mark you that, Antonio. Some day he will be found dead—a knife in his heart, or his throat cut, or a bullet wound in his head—who knows? The ‘Red Hand’ is no amusing organization.” He looked long and keenly at his son. Simone leant over, his elbows on the table, his chin resting on his hands, and eyed his brother with dispassionate interest.
    â€œWhat does Tillizini know of me?” asked the old man suddenly. “What have you told him?”
    Antonio smiled.
    â€œThat is an absurd question, father,” he said; “you do not imagine that I should speak to Signor Tillizini of you?”
    â€œWhy not?” said the other gruffly. “Oh! I know your breed. There is something of your mother in you. Those Bonnichi would sell their wives for a hundred lira!”
    Not even the reference to his mother aroused the young man to anger. He sat with his hands thrust into the pockets of his riding breeches, his head bent a