Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXVI. Miss Hall
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the same post, where I was locked up for the
night. In the morning I was interrogated again
by the same officer to whose intelligence and
kindness I probably owe my life. He told me
the three men were escaped prisoners on life
sentence in the prison by the Capuccini, all
“pericolosissimi.” Amedeo was a famous bandit who
had terrorized the country round Girgenti for
years with a record of eight homicides. It was
also he and his gang who had broken into the
Banco di Napoli and killed the watchmen the
previous night while I was sound asleep on his
mattress. The three men had been shot at
daybreak. They had asked for a priest, had
confessed their sins and had died fearlessly. The
police officer said he wished to compliment me
for the important rôle I had played in their
capture. I looked him in the eye and said I
was not proud of my achievement. I had realized
long ago that I was not fit to play the rôle of
an accuser and still less the rôle of an executioner.
It was not my business, maybe it was his,
maybe it was not. God knew how to strike when
He wished to strike, He knew how to take a life
as well as how to give it.
Unfortunately for me my adventure reached
the ears of some newspaper correspondents
hanging about outside the Military Zone—no
newspaper correspondents could enter the town in
those days and for good reason—in search of
sensational news, the more incredible the better;
and surely this story would seem incredible enough
to those who were not in Messina during the first
week after the earthquake. Only a lucky
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