Holmes drew upon his pipe. “Lieutenant, I should like your permission to investigate this incident.”
“Were I you, I would consider an attempt upon my life more than just an incident.”
“The late Macedonian presidential candidate might argue the point. I have narrowed the practical range in this neighbourhood to two hundred metres. Reason tells us the man capable of bringing down a national figure at three times that distance would have dealt a tourist more than a flesh wound, if murder were his intention. He seeks to frighten me back to my cosy digs. I must make his acquaintance, if only to inform him I’m not the quaking sparrow he thinks me.”
I said, “I hardly think your vanity is worth the risk of death.”
“My friend, if that’s the construction you placed on what I said, I’ve misspoken myself. This was a feint, which has told me a little about him. In order to know more, I must observe him when he swings in earnest.”
“I cannot offer protection,” said Petrosino. “My responsibility is to my neighbors in Little Italy.”
“It wouldn’t be necessary.” Holmes smiled at me. “This isn’t the first time Dr. Watson has assisted in my preservation. Without a sharp-eyed fellow in the bush, a staked goat is nothing but a tit-bit for lions.”
“Forgive me, but you don’t know these lions. A tit-bit only whets their appetites.”
“To know them is my intention.”
“You have my permission to investigate independently. I suspect to withhold it would be to waste my breath.”
“Thank you. One more question, and then you may regard your responsibility to our welfare as discharged. Who pulls the criminal strings in your jurisdiction?”
“That would be Gabriele Medusa, who holds court in his tonsorial parlour. Anyone in Little Italy can direct you there. But you will find him unhelpful, if not precisely discourteous. I have interviewed him many times, and all I can get from him is quotations from classical literature. He taught himself English in the New York Public Library.”
The lieutenant rose. “I shall place an officer outside this room. I do not share your faith in these vermins’ motives. Having failed to kill you at far range, their next attempt will be close up. They are artists with knives.”
“You carry one yourself, I perceive.” Holmes removed his pipe from his mouth and pointed the stem at an uncharacteristic snag in Petrosino’s tidy uniform. “Are you a Rembrandt or just a Sunday painter?”
“Leonardo, if you please.” Our guest twitched an arm; that was all it seemed. In the instant, a thin blade with a pearl handle appeared in his hand.
Holmes’s reaction was no more tardy. In a trice, he snatched up his leaded stick from where it leaned against the night-table, and in the next moment the knife lay on the floor, its owner gripping the hand in which it had been held.
“Golze, the Austrian fencing master, taught me the trick,” Holmes said. “I added a refinement of my own, pulling the punch to avoid shattering your hand. He wouldn’t approve; Teutons do nothing by half-measures. We are not defenceless, Lieutenant. You cannot spare an extra man upon our account.”
Petrosino shook the hand and worked his fingers. His smile was pained. “Very well. The proverbial house need not fall upon me.” He stooped to reclaim his knife—and in the space of a half-second it was buried to its hilt in the wall a few centimetres to the right of Holmes’s head.
“I would be honoured,” said the lieutenant, “if you would include the item among your famous souvenirs. The squad confiscates them at the rate of a dozen per week.”
Overcoming his surprise, Holmes chuckled and worked the blade loose from the plaster with the hand belonging to his good arm. He blew the powder off the blue steel and tested the edge with his thumb. “I shall use it to open all my correspondence henceforth, and think of you, Tenente, whenever I pay a bill.”
“And I of you, when old age creeps up on me and settles in these bruised bones.” He flexed his fingers, executed a smart little bow, and left.
From the landing, we heard a brief polite exchange between our departing visitor and the landlady. When presently I opened the door to her tapping, she looked sympathetically at Holmes. “Is the gentleman well?”
I had explained the situation to her when I’d asked to use the telephone. She had been stoicism personified, asking only after our welfare. “As his doctor, I can assure you he’ll recover.”
“This will help.” She drew the cover off a china bowl on the tray she was holding. It smelled strongly of potato. “Vichyssoise,” said she; “the French response to the chicken soup of the Hebrew. I am no cook, but the chef in the café on the corner is a friend. He delivered it himself, all dressed up as you see.”
I thanked her and took the tray.
“If there is anything else, please call. That two gentlemen under my roof should be attacked: Scandaleux!”
“An estimable woman,” said I, when we were alone. “The Gallic version of Mrs. Hudson.” I stooped to place the tray across Holmes’s lap, but he waved it away.
“Pray sustain yourself, Doctor. The digestive process murders sleep. Be alert, and wake me at midnight, when I shall take up the watch. To ignore Petrosino’s warning would be inane.” He knocked out his pipe in the tray on the night-table and drew the covers to his chin.
“I say, Holmes. There’s more on this tray than cold potato soup.”
“Oyster crackers?”
“No.”
Sitting in the chair Petrosino had vacated, I had snapped open the folded napkin, whereupon a fold of stiff paper fluttered to the floor. I put the tray aside and got up to retrieve and unfold it. The contents froze me to the marrow.
“You needn’t read it aloud, Watson.” Holmes was sitting up now, eyes bright, face flushed with excitement. “‘Pay or die.’ Is it in English or Italian?”
“Neither. I mean to say, that isn’t the message.” I turned the paper round and held it out so that he could see it for himself. It was blank but for the crude drawing of a human hand, dark with ink, and beneath it the legend:
BEQUEATH YOUR SOUL TO GOD