"
"What do you think about this Black Hand business?"
"I think your friend the restaurant-keeper was nearly right, only that
it is being used by all sorts of crooks as well, who have no connection
with either the Mafia or the Camorra. Mark you, I think those two secret
societies are apt to be much misrepresented, just as the Jesuits were
during the Middle Ages and the Freemasons were at other periods. The
Camorra was once simply the Tammany Hall of Naples. But when, as
happened last year, there were six hundred and fourteen Black Hand
outrages in two States in four months it is idle to say that it does not
exist in America. The Camorrist trials over the Cuocolo murders at
Viterbo, perhaps the most sensational in the world since the Dreyfus
case, have shown its power to be more dangerous than any one could for a
moment have imagined. And the danger lies here--there are more
Camorrists in New York than in Naples!"
For a moment the boy looked at the Inspector, astounded.
"You mean--" he began, and stopped.
"I mean that the worst elements of the two worst societies in Europe are
concentrating in New York, and that unless rigorous measures are taken
to keep them down, America will harbor graver dangers than any it has
yet known.
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