penly, but, between themselves, each is on the look-out for an
opportunity to annihilate the other's influence.

One Saturday, in the street at Caltanissetta, Beppe showed me marks of
bullets on the wall. He said that only a week before there had been a
row among a score of men with revolvers about some question of precedence
among the mafiosi in a neighbouring mine arising out of the terms
proposed for ending a strike. One of the men was killed and several were
wounded, but the question of precedence could not be settled that day
because the survivors were all put into prison.

According to the plays, the prisons are to the mafiosi what the ganglia
are to the nerves, and give the prisoners an opportunity for talking
matters over, thus providing an effective means of continuing the plot of
the drama. And though the criminals feel secure in the knowledge that
omerta will prevent their confederates from giving information, yet the
police, of course, know who is who all the time, just as the police in
London know who are the criminals; the law, however, is jealous of the
rights of the people and does not move on suspicion. And too much of the
modern police methods would not combine well with the requirements of
melodrama.

Beppe assured me that in his mine the mafiosi are mostly good fellows and
do not do any harm, except among themselves when they quarrel, get drunk
and murder one another. He admits that the making use of them in the
management of the men is like playing with fire, but he agrees with all
who have gone into the matter that a stranger falling among them,
wherever he might meet them, would be treated with the most extreme
respect and courtesy. This is not because they are afraid of giving
themselves away, distrusting the stranger's omerta, it is because they
have a real self-respect and wish to pass in the eyes of the world for
men of good position. The presence of a stranger among them is a
challenge to their chivalry and to their oriental sense of hospitality.

Anyone wishing to study the mafia from books might begin with _La Mafia e
I Mafiosi_, by Antonio Cutrera, Delegato di Pubblica Sicurezza (Palermo.
Alberto Reber, 1900), and continue with _La Mala Vita di Palermo_ (_I
Ricottari_), by the same author. If he will also read all the numerous
books by other authors cited in the notes to these two works he ought to
gain a fair knowledge of the subject.

CHAPTER XIV
MALA VITA

Sicilians