The Alien
Summary
On the rim of a nameless metropolis, winter light clings to shovels and scaffoldings like frostbitten faith. Pietro Massena, ditch-digger by trade, poet by necessity, rears Rosina—his only blossom—in a tenement where lullabies compete with the clang of passing trains. Their precarious Eden is ruptured when Phil Griswold, a velvet-gloved parasite expecting a sudden fortune, cajoles his co-worker Robbins into torching the florist emporium that employs them both. Fate’s punch-line arrives post-inferno: the inheritance sluices to Phil’s estranged brother William, a man who hoards coins and contempt in equal measure. Spurned, Phil spins a venomous stratagem: he kidnaps William’s pampered daughter Dorothy, scrawls the ominous Black Hand symbol on a ransom note, and ensures the paper trail points to the swarthy laborer who once delivered a pine-scented Christmas tree to the gilded doorstep. William’s limousine prowls the slums; in a haze of vengeance, its grille strikes Rosina. She dies beneath a hoarding for a flower shop that will never again know her laugh. Christmas dawns. Pietro, pockets rattling with copper, seeks a single white rose for the coffin lid. At that instant, Phil’s courier—designated only by “the sign of the rose”—arrives to collect the payoff. Irony curdles: Pietro is manacled as kidnapper. In the precinct, he snarls murderous grief at a detective; William bursts in, Dorothy rescued, contrition in tow. A check is offered; Pietro tears it like a prayer book and shuffles back into the snow, carrying a rose no coffin can keep.
Synopsis
A poor ditch-digger, Pietro Massena, lovingly raises his motherless daughter Rosina. Phil Griswold, in order to throw a party to celebrate his expected inheritance, induces his friend Robbins to rob the flower shop where he works. After the inheritance goes to Phil's brother William, who refuses Phil money to return to the flower shop, Phil abducts William's daughter Dorothy and sends a "Black Hand" ransom demand to throw suspicion onto Pietro, who earlier frightened Dorothy when he delivered a Christmas tree to William's house. William drives into the slums looking for Pietro and accidentally runs down Rosina. The grieving Pietro goes to the flower shop on Christmas morning to buy a rose for Rosina's coffin and is accused of the kidnapping, because Phil arranged to have a man known by "the sign of the rose" pick up the ransom money there. Pietro threatens to kill the arresting detective so that he can return to his "bambino," when William arrives with news that Dorothy has been found. William offers Pietro compensation, but he refuses and sorrowfully returns home.
