The Adventure of the Red CircleDoyle, Arthur Conan
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The Adventure of the Red Circle
Doyle, Arthur Conan
Detective and mystery stories; Holmes, Sherlock (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Private investigators -- England -- Fiction
"One night, when Gennaro returned from his work, he brought a
fellow-countryman back with him. His name was Gorgiano, and he had
come also from Posilippo. He was a huge man, as you can testify, for
you have looked upon his corpse. Not only was his body that of a giant
but everything about him was grotesque, gigantic, and terrifying. His
voice was like thunder in our little house. There was scarce room for
the whirl of his great arms as he talked. His thoughts, his emotions,
his passions, all were exaggerated and monstrous. He talked, or rather
roared, with such energy that others could but sit and listen, cowed
with the mighty stream of words. His eyes blazed at you and held you
at his mercy. He was a terrible and wonderful man. I thank God that
he is dead!
"He came again and again. Yet I was aware that Gennaro was no more
happy than I was in his presence. My poor husband would sit pale and
listless, listening to the endless raving upon politics and upon social
questions which made up our visitor's conversation. Gennaro said
nothing, but I, who knew him so well, could read in his face some
emotion which I had never seen there before. At first I thought that
it was dislike. And then, gradually, I understood that it was more
than dislike. It was fear--a deep, secret, shrinking fear. That
night--the night that I read his terror--I put my arms round him and I
implored him by his love for me and by all that he held dear to hold
nothing from me, and to tell me why this huge man overshadowed him so.
"He told me, and my own heart grew cold as ice as I listened. My poor
Gennaro, in his wild and fiery days, when all the world seemed against
him and his mind was driven half mad by the injustices of life, had
joined a Neapolitan society, the Red Circle, which was allied to the
old Carbonari. The oaths and secrets of this brotherhood were
frightful, but once within its rule no escape was possible. When we
had fled to America Gennaro thought that he had cast it all off
forever. What was his horror one evening to meet in the streets the
very man who had initiated him in Naples, the giant Gorgiano, a man who
had earned the name of 'Death' in the south of Italy, for he was red to
the elbow in murder! He had come to New York to avoid the Italian
police, and he had already planted a branch of this dreadful society in
his new home. All this Gennaro told me and showed me a summons which
he had received that very day, a Red Circle drawn upon the head of it
telling him that a lodge would be held upon a certain date, and that
his presence at it was required and ordered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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