The Narrative of Mr. James Rigby | Page 4

that I was absurdly shy, and indeed I fear little better than

an overgrown schoolboy in my manner. But somehow I was scarce a
day at sea before falling into a most pleasant acquaintanceship with
another passenger, a man of thirty-eight or forty, whose name was
Dorrington. He was a tall, well-built fellow, rather handsome, perhaps,
except for a certain extreme roundness of face and fulness of feature;
he had a dark military moustache, and carried himself erect, with a
swing as of a cavalryman, and his eyes had, I think, the most
penetrating quality I ever saw. His manners were extremely engaging,
and he was the only good talker I had ever met. He knew everybody,
and had been everywhere. His fund of illustration and anecdote was
inexhaustible, and during all my acquaintance with him I never heard
him tell the same story twice. Nothing could happen -- not a bird could
fly by the ship, not a dish could be put on the table, but Dorrington was
ready with a pungent remark and the appropriate anecdote. And he
never bored nor wearied one. With all his ready talk he never appeared
unduly obtrusive nor in the least egotistic. Mr. Horace Dorrington was
altogether the most charming person I have ever met. Moreover we
discovered a community of taste in cigars.
"By the way," said Dorrington to me one magnificent evening as we
leaned on the rail and smoked, "Rigby isn't a very common name in
Australia, is it? I seem to remember a case, twenty years ago or more,
of an Australian gentleman of that name being very badly treated in
London -- indeed, now I think of it, I'm not sure that he wasn't
murdered. Ever hear anything of it?"
"Yes," I said, "I heard a great deal, unfortunately. He was my father,
and he was murdered."
"Your father? There -- I'm awfully sorry. Perhaps I shouldn't have
mentioned it; but of course I didn't know."
"Oh," I replied, "that's all right. It's so far back now that I don't mind
speaking about it. It was a very extraordinary thing altogether." And
then, feeling that I owed Dorrington a story of some sort, after listening
to the many he had been telling me, I described to him the whole
circumstances of my father's death.

"Ah," said Dorrington when I had finished, "I have heard of the
Camorra before this -- I know a thing or two about it, indeed. As a
matter of fact it still exists; not quite the widespread and open thing it
once was, of course, and much smaller; but pretty active in a quiet way,
and pretty mischievous. They were a mighty bad lot, those Camorristi.
Personally I'm rather surprised that you heard no more of them. They
were the sort of people who would rather any day murder three people
than one, and their usual idea of revenge went a good way beyond the
mere murder of the offending party; they had a way of including his
wife and family, and as many relatives as possible. But at any rate you
seem to have got off all right, though I'm inclined to call it rather a
piece of luck than otherwise."
Then, as was his invariable habit, he launched into anecdote. He told
me of the crimes of the Maffia, that Italian secret society, larger even
and more powerful than the Camorra, and almost as criminal; tales of
implacable revenge visited on father, son and grandson in succession,
till the race was extirpated. Then he talked of the methods; of the large
funds at the disposal of the Camorra and the Maffia, and of the cunning
patience with which their schemes were carried into execution; of the
victims who had discovered too late that their most trusted servants
were sworn to their destruction, and of those who had fled to remote
parts of the earth and hoped to be lost and forgotten, but who had been
shadowed and slain with barbarous ferocity in their most trusted
hiding-places. Wherever Italians were, there was apt to be a branch of
one of the societies, and one could never tell where they might or might
not turn up. The two Italian forecastle hands on board at that moment
might be members, and might or might not have some business in hand
not included in their signed articles.
I asked if he had ever come into personal contact with either of these
societies or their doings.
"With the Camorra, no, though I know things about them that would
probably surprise some of them not a little. But I have had professional
dealings with the Maffia -- and that without coming off second-best,
too. But it was not so serious a case as your father's; one of a robbery