Word: fascistes
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Through the chinks of a Roman shutter, tiny sunbeams glinted on the telescopic sights of a high power rifle. Across the way was a balcony of the Palazzo Chigi, upon which Benito Mussolini would soon appear. Vast Fascist crowds swarmed in the street, eager to catch the words of their Duce's Armistice Day address. With a baleful flash of satisfaction, the man with the rifle trained its sights still more accurately, and waited...
...gentle squeeze of the trigger and the great Fascist would topple headforemost from the balcony. Perhaps the House of Savoy would fall with him. Amid the antiFascist revolution which would spring up, anything might happen. Even as these thoughts coursed through the mind of onetime Socialist Deputy Tito Zaniboni, something happened with a vengeance. Fascist police burst in his door, collared him, took his rifle away, trundled him off to jail...
...Plot, it was declared, had been carefully hatched by Zaniboni and General Luigi Capello (famed anti-Fascist Freemason leader), who had motored to Rome from Parma some three days earlier. Before reaching Rome they are said to have halted near a thick pine grove in order that Zaniboni might receive last minute practice in the use of his rifle, which he fired for a long time at a target set up 100 yards distant in the woods...
Arrived at Rome, the alleged conspirators were aided by Zaniboni's secretary, one Quaglia, who reserved a room in each of the three hotels which command various aspects of the Palazzo Chigi. The rooms were engaged for "an old friend, a wounded Fascist officer who wishes to view the Armistice Day celebration." And early on the morning in question a certain "Major Silvestrini" limped into the little Hotel Dragoni, demanding the room which had been reserved for him. The hotel manager, noting that the "Major's" breast was covered with decorations and that his open throated tunic revealed...
Later the hotel-keeper's suspicions were aroused. The "wounded officer" suddenly shaved off his powerful, black mustache, glared with ill-concealed hostility at the Fascist crowds surging in the street, and seemed to take an interest in a powerful motor car loaded with extra gasoline tins, which mysteriously appeared in an alley behind the hotel. When the police were informed of these doings, they responded with grim enigmatic smiles. Later they declared that the details of the plot had been known to Signer Mussolini for weeks; that Tito Zaniboni and General Capello had long been carefully shadowed...