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The Black-Handers were puzzled. They could not understand how it happened that Giallambardo had come into the toils unless one of the three men arrested had "squealed." And perhaps I should say right here that the gang never realized they were ever under surveillance, and that every move made by them individually was noted in the daily reports of Secret Service sent to Washington.

When Crocervera and DePriema were brought to my office I knew in advance that neither of them would talk, having had the characteristics of the men recorded long before they were arrested. However, in order to give Crocervera the impression that DePriema had told me a lot of the workings of the gang, I hit upon the idea of keeping DePriema in my inner office for several hours while Crocervera remained in an outer office. I was timing my effort for a purpose. As DePriema was leaving, I stepped to the door with him and shook his hand warmly and patted him on the back in order that Crocervera, seeing the performance, might gain the impression that DePriema had confessed all he knew about the gang. Naturally, the object of this move was to tempt Crocervera to talk and give information important to the government. But Crocervera did not talk. The subsequent arrest of Giallambardo served to strengthen the impression already planted in the mind of Crocervera that DePriema had betrayed him, and we overheard Crocervera telling this to the members of the gang while they were in our office.

The gang was not in position to take revenge on DePriema, as he was in Sing Sing prison, where the three men had been sent upon conviction on the charge of passing counterfeit money. Following the hereditary Sicilian custom, the gang then proceeded to select a blood relative of DePriema and mark him for murder. There being no male blood relative of DePriema on this side of the Atlantic, the Black-Hand Society decided that the nearest male relative must pay the penalty for DePriema's treason. Benedetto, the brother-in-law, was chosen as the sacrifice.

These details of the motive of the murder, and the society's choosing Petto, the Ox, to do the killing were confessed to me several years later by members of the gang after I succeeded in convicting them for counterfeiting and had them sentenced to long terms in the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta, Georgia.

As to the identity of Benedetto's kinsman, who made certain of his aim at Petto, the Ox, near the Italian rendezvous where "Il Bove" held sway in the little Pennsylvania city, I can only answer at the present writing that the kinsman was not DePriema, because the latter was still in Sing Sing Prison when the murder of the man in the barrel was avenged.

CHAPTER III
ORGANIZED TERRORISM

From what has been related so far, I presume the reader may gain some idea of the dangerous type of men whom I refer to as members of the Black-Hand Society.

You are now familiar with the kind of punishment meted out to one whom the gang suspects of having betrayed a member. You have also been acquainted with the Sicilian custom of revenge by way of an actual example showing how the slayer of the man in the barrel came to his end in a manner that is as certain as daylight follows darkness. It is the racial idea of the antique Hebrew law, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." The Sicilian "vendetta" demands a life for a life. You may have noted further that the police of New York and the machinery of the law failed to track down the slayer of the man in the barrel. A circumstance that makes it singularly difficult for the authorities to cope with this type of criminals is that the Sicilian does not ask the police for help when a member of his family is murdered. He keeps it quiet. And as quietly a blood relative of the slain person assumes the responsibility which we Americans place on the police and the courts. The end of Petto, the Ox, shows exactly what happens when individual vengeance succeeds in place of justice meted out by a court of law.

The reader will remember that when the criminal band, which the police rounded up in connection with the barrel murder, were turned out by the police magistrate, because there was insufficient evidence to hold them for the murder of Benedetto, the suspects dropped out of sight as far as the police of New York were concerned.

The Secret Service kept its eagle eye on them, however. Every suspect was carefully "shadowed" by a special operative. We expected that they would gravitate back to their haunts, and they did. We spotted them in such places as the café of Pietro Inzarillo, at No. 226 Elizabeth Street, and in the dark, little Italian grocery shop of Ignazio Lupo, at No. 8 Prince Street, which is just around the corner from Inzarillo's place. We also located suspects loafing around the dingy, garlic-smelling restaurant of Giuseppe Morello, tucked away in the rear of Lupo's grocery shop, like an evil thing afraid of the light of day.

Criminals wanted by Uncle Sam are not suffered to drop from the sight of the Secret Service. Members of this gang were busy in the counterfeit money line. The government was necessarily interested in following their movements. Consequently I stayed right on the job with my men at trailing and spotting the suspects. After a while I had in my possession quite a neat bundle of facts that gradually disclosed to us the impulse and the motives behind this crime-hardened gang of men. I say without the slightest hesitation that the basic, underlying motive of these men is a fierce and uncompromising passion to get rich quick. That is what makes them murderous criminals. It is the same get-rich-quick impulse that we find among unscrupulous business men and gamblers, but it is of a much more dangerous caliber and pregnant with every sinister motive to the most horrible and debased forms of crime. It is true that the "Black-Handers" got a pretty good start in this country before the authorities were alive to the danger, but it is also true that the Secret Service did finally succeed in rounding up the leaders and their henchmen, reducing the nefarious operations to a minimum. Had this not been done just about the time it was actually done, the "Black-Hand" Society would have increased its stranglehold upon the population to a point where the police might not have been able to guarantee the personal safety of the citizens. Even at the present time, when the authorities may be said to have the situation well in hand, the danger of renewed "Black-Hand" activities by other groups would not be removed if the Secret Service were to relax its vigilance for ever so short a time. The threat of Bolshevism, already flaring upon the horizon, as a menacing torch over murder-maddened mobs defying law and order, would be a welcome brother. In the chaos created, if the Red Bolsheviks should ever succeed in demoralizing this country, the malefactors of the "Black-Hand" Society would thrive as maggots in a cheese. A mixed brand of terrorism would soon show its evil head, a mixed brand that would bring every decent citizen to shudder at the mention of BLACK BOLSHEVISM.

In looking into the motives of the men who represented the Sicilian Mafia, or "Black-Hand" Society, in this country, I was fortunate to elucidate not a few particulars that go to show how these criminals actually operate.

The Black-Handers here would terrorize their less courageous countrymen from the provinces of Southern Italy. They had been at this form of blackmail for some years. Lupo and Morello were the