In the Hour Before Midnight by Jack Higgins Page A

him his brandy. “Am I worse than you? In any way am I worse than you?”
    â€œWhen I kill, it is in hot blood,” he said. “A man dies because he is against me—against Mafia.”
    â€œAnd you think that sufficient reason?”
    He shrugged. “I believe it to be so. It has always been so.” The stick came up and touched my chest. “But you, Stacey, what do you kill for? Money?”
    â€œNot just money,” I said. “Lots of money.”
    Which wasn’t true. I knew it and I think he did also.
    â€œI can give you money. All you need.”
    â€œThat’s just what you did for a great many years.”
    â€œAnd you left.”
    â€œAnd I left.”
    He nodded gravely. “I had a letter from some lawyers in the States just over a year ago. They were trying to trace you. Your grandfather—old Wyatt—had second thoughts on his death bed. There is provision for you in the will—a large sum.”
    I wasn’t even angry. “They can give it back to the Indians.”
    â€œYou won’t touch it?”
    â€œWould I walk on my mother’s grave?” I was getting more like a Sicilian every minute.
    He seemed well pleased. “I am glad to see you have some honour left in you. Now you will tell me why you are here. I do not flatter myself that you returned to Sicily to see me.”
    I crossed the room and poured another brandy. “Bread and butter work—nothing to interest you.”
    The stick hammered on the floor. “I asked you a question, boy, you will answer.”
    â€œAll right. If it will make you feel any better. Burke and I have been hired by a man named Hoffer.”
    â€œKarl Hoffer?” He frowned slightly.
    â€œThat’s the man. Austrian, but speaks English like an American. Has interests in the oilfield at Gela.”
    â€œI know what his interests are. What does he want you to do?”
    â€œI thought Mafia knew everything,” I said. “His stepdaughter was kidnapped some weeks ago by a bandit called Serafino Lentini. He’s holding her in the Cammarata and won’t send her back in spite of the fact that Hoffer paid up like a soldier.”
    â€œAnd you are going to get her back, is that it? You and your friend think you can go into the Cammarata and bring her out with you again?” He laughed, that strange, harsh laugh, head thrown back. “Stacey—Stacey. And I thought you’d grown up.”
    I very carefully smashed my crystal goblet into the fire, and started for the door. His voice, when he called my name, had all the iron of hell in it. I turned, a twelve-year-old schoolboy again caught in the orange grove before harvest. “That was seventeenth-century Florentine. Does it make you feel any better?”
    I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”
    There was nothing more I could say. Unexpectedly he smiled. “This Serafino Lentini—you are kin on your grandmother’s side. Third cousins.”
    â€œYou know him then?”
    â€œI haven’t seen him for many years. A wild boy—he shot a policeman when he was eighteen and took to the maquis . When they caught him, they gave him a hard time. You’ve heard of the cassetta ?”
    In the good old days under Mussolini it had been frequently employed by the police when extorting confessions from the more difficult prisoners. A kind of wooden box, a frame to which a man couldbe strapped and worked on at leisure. It was supposed to be forbidden now, but whether it was or not was anyone’s guess.
    â€œWhat did they do to him?”
    â€œThe usual things—the hot iron, which left him blind in one eye and they crushed his testicles—took away his manhood.”
    Burke should be listening to this . “Does nothing change?” I said.
    â€œNothing.” He shook his head. “And watch Hoffer. He is a hard man.”
    â€œMillionaires usually are. That’s how they get