Then, to conserve what little heat remained, they bundled the body in heavy blankets kept warm in a fireless contrivance. And all the while the ambulance, its gong clanging madly, was plunging at wild speed across the city, swaying from side to side, turning corners on two wheels.
It drew up at last in front of a small undertaking shop on a back street, and the body was hurried inside. Laid upon a table, it looked as if carved from ivory. The coal-black hair curled about the white brow in glossy abandon. The long black lashes of the nearly-shut eyes left deep shadows on the cold pallor of the cheeks. No tint of blood, no sign of life appeared.
Quickly a pulmotor was applied. Oxygen was pumped into the lungs while the body was again vigorously rubbed with alcohol. Guisseppi’s father and mother and close relatives stood about in an excited group, eyes wide with feverish interest, their hearts in their mouths. Doctors and nurses worked with dynamic energy.
No sign of rekindled life rewarded them. Their drastic efforts seemed lost labor. The boy’s soul, apparently, had journeyed far into the dark places beyond life’s pale and was not to be lured back to its fleshly habitation.
Still they persisted, hoping against hope.
“_Per dio!_” suddenly exclaimed a physician. “Do you see that?”
A faint flush appeared in Guisseppi’s cheek.
“He lives again!” burst in a tense whisper from the bloodless lips of the father.
The tiny stain spread, tinging the marble flesh.
“My boy, my darling boy!” cried the mother, wringing her hands in delirious joy.
Guisseppi’s chest began to rise and fall slowly, with an almost imperceptible movement of respiration. The suspicion of a smile hovered for a moment at the corners of his mouth.
He opened his eyes. _He lived!_
_II._
“Devil” Cardello sat at his desk in a corner of his pool room. The morning was young; no customers had yet arrived to play pool or billiards. Basco, the porter, pail and mop in hand, stood for a moment gossiping.
“They say he died game,” remarked Basco.
“They all do,” sneered Cardello.
“And kept his mouth shut.”
“No; he spilled everything. But the police didn’t believe him. That’s all that saved me.”
“I heard he said his ghost would come back to haunt you.”
“Ho! That’s a good one,” laughed Cardello. “The devil has got him on a spit over the fire and will keep him turning. I should worry about the little fool’s ghost!”
A whisper of sound from the direction of the billiard tables caused both men to glance up.
There stood Guisseppi a few paces away, surveying them in silence, a blue-steel revolver in his hand!
“Mother of God!” screamed Basco, dropping his pail and mop, and dashing into the street.
Cardello’s eyes bulged from their sockets. His face went as white as paper. Panic, terror, pulled his lips back in a ghastly grin from his chattering teeth. He rose heavily to his feet and stood swaying.
“Guisseppi!” he breathed scarcely above a whisper. “_Guisseppi!_”
Guisseppi’s lips curled.
“Yes,” he replied. “The boy you ruined, betrayed, sent to death on the gallows.”
“No, no, Guisseppi. The _police_ got you. I was your friend.”
“Liar! But for you, I would be happy; my father and mother would not bear the black disgrace of a son hanged on the gallows.”
“Why have you come back from the dead, Guisseppi? Why should you haunt your old pal?”
“I have a score to settle with you.”
“In the name of God the Father, go back to the grave! Leave me in peace.”
Guisseppi raised his weapon.
“I have come to kill you,” he said.
Cardello fell upon his knees.
“Spare me, Guisseppi!” he screamed, stretching out imploring arms. “Mercy, Guisseppi, mercy! Don’t—”
There was a crash—a leap of fire.
A wisp of blue smoke drifted above a billiard table.
_III._
The police dragnet for the slayer of Cardello was far flung, and zest was added to the man hunt by the offer of $1,000 reward. Throughout the Italian quarter, Basco spread the story of Guisseppi’s recrudescence and his ghostly revenge.
The superstitious residents accepted the weird tale with simple faith. Fear of the phantom became rife. Children remained indoors after dark. Pedestrians quickened their pace when passing lonely spots at night. Turning a corner suddenly, they half-expected to come face to face with Guisseppi’s ghost, wry-necked from the hangman’s noose.
Policeman Rafferty, traveling beat in the neighborhood of Death Corners, was told time and again that Guisseppi’s ghost had murdered Cardello. Yes, it was true. Basco had seen the phantom. Others in the colony had seen it slipping like a shadow through some deserted street at night. There was no doubt that Guisseppi had come back from the dead.
Policeman Rafferty laughed. When had ghosts started in bumping off live folks? That was what he would like to know. How could the poor simpletons believe such stuff? Funny lot of jobbies, these dagoes!
But when Policeman Rafferty had heard the story of Guisseppi’s ghost for the thousandth time, he scratched his head and did a little thinking, not forgetting the $1,000 reward. Guisseppi was dead. Of course. He had been hanged, and the newspapers had been full of the stories of his execution. So Guisseppi couldn’t have killed Cardello. That was out of the question. But could it be possible that dead Guisseppi had a living double? Hah!
Policeman Rafferty got in touch with his favorite stool-pigeon without delay. Shortly thereafter, that worthy laid before him a piece of information which Policeman Rafferty was welcome to for just what it was worth and no more. Guisseppi’s ghost had been seen oftenest in the immediate neighborhood of Guisseppi’s father’s residence. If the fool copper thought he could put a pinch over on a ghost, he might do well to search Guisseppi’s old home.
So Policeman Rafferty eased himself one day through a narrow passageway, burst in suddenly at the kitchen door and started to search the premises.
He found Guisseppi whiffing a cigaret in a front room.
* * * * *
“Yes, I killed Cardello,” said Guisseppi quietly. “I’ll go with you.”
“But who are you?” asked the policeman. “You can’t be Guisseppi. They topped that boy on the gallows.”
“I’m Guisseppi, all right. They brought me back to life with a pulmotor.”
Policeman Rafferty’s jaw dropped.
“Back to life?”
“Yes. I was as dead as stone. I was gone absolutely for an hour.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere. I remember standing on the trap. Then it seemed I was falling for a long time, falling—from a star—or a high mountain top—through miles of emptiness into midnight blackness. There wasn’t any pain. I seemed to land on a deep soft cushion of feathers. I could _feel_ the darkness. It seemed to whirl and billow round me. I couldn’t see myself—or feel myself. But I knew, somehow, I was there in the heart of the darkness. I suddenly found myself on a broad road stretching away into night.”
“Must ha’ been the road to hell,” remarked Policeman Rafferty.
“Maybe so. Along this road, I glided with the swiftness of a bird on the wing. I didn’t know where I was going—”
“You were bound for hell,” said Rafferty.
“I heard music away off in the dark; wonderful orchestra music, violins, ’cellos, wind pipes. It grew louder. I never heard such beautiful music. Through the solid blackness ahead, I saw a great mountain peak standing up, red and shining, against the sky.
“Around me came a glare of bright lights. I was blinded by streaks and splashes of color, darting, rolling, weaving into each other, changing all the time. Reds, purples, greens, blues, rolled over me in great, flashing waves. Flaring colors swirled around me in blazing whirlwinds. I was drowned in gorgeousness. It was as if a cyclone had wrecked a thousand rainbows and buried me beneath their ruins.”
“What were these lights?”
“Search me. I don’t know. I heard a loud, clear call out of the distance. I pushed through the storm of colors. Across a dark plain, I reached the shining, red mountain. I climbed up until I stood on the peak. I felt fine. Something struck me as a joke. I began laughing. Then, bending close above me, I saw the faces of my mother and father and the doctors.”
“Well, Guisseppi,” said Policeman Rafferty, “gettin’ hung once would ha’ been an elegant sufficiency for most men. They’d be leery about takin’ a second chance. You must be stuck on dropping through a trap—eh?”
“Yes, they’ll hang me again, all right. That’s a cinch. You might think me a fool for walking with my eyes open right into this second scrape—”
“A hog,” corrected Rafferty.
“I don’t know. I came back from the dead to kill Cardello. And I killed him. I hated that fellow. I’d like to have tortured the life out of him, killed him by inches. His cries of agony would have been wine to me. It’s hell to be hanged. I ought to know. But I can go back to the gallows now with a light heart. I got Cardello, and I’m ready to take my medicine.”
Policeman Rafferty bit a generous chew from his plug of tobacco.
“You Eye-talians,” he remarked reflectively, “are a nutty bunch.”
_IV._
The court room was crowded. Guisseppi’s strange story had been spread to the four winds by the newspapers, and everybody was eager to see this man who had passed through the mystic portals of death.