nals who
are holding your little girl."

"No, no!" exclaimed Gennaro excitedly. "Not that. I want to get my
daughter first. After that, catch them if you can--yes, I should like
to have someone do it. But read this first and tell me what you think
of it. How should I act to get my little Adelina back without harming a
hair of her head?" The famous singer drew from a capacious pocketbook a
dirty, crumpled, letter, scrawled on cheap paper.

Kennedy translated it quickly. It read:

Honourable sir: Your daughter is in safe hands. But, by the saints, if
you give this letter to the police as you did the other, not only she
but your family also, someone near to you, will suffer. We will not fail
as we did Wednesday. If you want your daughter back, go yourself, alone
and without telling a soul, to Enrico Albano's Saturday night at the
twelfth hour. You must provide yourself with $10,000 in bills hidden in
Saturday's Il Progresso Italiano. In the back room you will see a man
sitting alone at a table. He will have a red flower on his coat. You
are to say, "A fine opera is 'I Pagliacci.'" If he answers, "Not without
Gennaro," lay the newspaper down on the table. He will pick it up,
leaving his own, the Bolletino. On the third page you will find
written the place where your daughter has been left waiting for you.
Go immediately and get her. But, by the God, if you have so much as the
shadow of the police near Enrico's your daughter will be sent to you in
a box that night. Do not fear to come. We pledge our word to deal fairly
if you deal fairly. This is a last warning. Lest you shall forget we
will show one other sign of our power to-morrow. La MANO NERA.

The end of this ominous letter was gruesomely decorated with a skull
and cross-bones, a rough drawing of a dagger thrust through a bleeding
heart, a coffin, and, under all, a huge black hand. There was no doubt
about the type of letter that it was. It was such as have of late years
become increasingly common in all our large cities, baffling the best
detectives.

"You have not showed this to the police, I presume?" asked Kennedy.

"Naturally not."

"Are you going Saturday night?"

"I am afraid to go and afraid to stay away," was the reply, and the
voice of the fifty-thousand-dollars-a-season tenor was as human as that
of a five-dollar-a-week father, for at bottom all men, high or low, are
one.

"'We will not fail as we did Wednesday,'" reread Craig. "What does that
me