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автор Edgar Wallace

On the Spot: Violence and Murder in Chicago

Edgar Wallace

Chapter 1

 

TONY PERELLI was not yellow, either by his own code or judged by standards more exacting. It was yellow, to squeal to futile police, but not yellow to squeal to one's own crowd, and squeal loudly, about injustices suffered. It was yellow to betray a pal, but not yellow if the pal had not acted square or if he himself was yellow; even then it was yellow to tip off the police about his delinquencies. The honourable thing was to take him to some lone place and "give him the works".

Horrified farmers who in the grey of morning found stark things sprawled on the edge of their lands might grow hysterical about the brutality of it, but there it was; justice in a sense, the sort of justice that the west and the middle west understood and countenanced too frequently.

For instance, "Red" Gallway.

Red bad been most things that were wrong and done most things that were indictable, He had been Peterman (which is a euphemism for safe—breaker), con man, hold—up man and keeper of questionable establishments. He came from this strenuous and not too affluent stew of professions into the business of booze running, which gave him wealth beyond his dreams, a comfortable existence, immunity from arrest, and the comradeship of square shooters. Success made him big in the head; he became talkative, a little quarrelsome; crowning offence, he began to sniff the white stuff.

Angelo Verona, the sleek chief of staff, expostulated.

"Say, Red, I'd cut out that stuff. Tony won't stand for coke in this outfit."

Red's ugly face twisted in a sneer. "Is that so?"

Angelo nodded, his grave, brown eyes on the weakling.

"Cocaine never did any good to anybody," he said. "Yeh! It makes you feel bigger than the Wrigley Building for a while, but when the effect passes you're just a hole in the ground. And the first time they get a guy down at Headquarters to quiz him, why, he falls apart."

"Is that so?" said Red offensively.

"That—is—so," nodded Angelo.

Red ran around with a friend—Mose Leeson, sometime machinist from Gary. The men had mean appetites in common, felt more at home in the squalor and dinginess of certain poor areas than in the splendour of lakeside restaurants.

To Leeson was due the credit of a discovery which had an important bearing upon the life of Tony Perelli.

Mose was poor and a sycophant. To him Red was the biggest of Big Shots, a man in the automobile and silk shirt class. He gave to his more fortunate friend the reverence of subject to monarch. It was over a drink at the firm's speakeasy that Mose, gross of mind and body, offered information and a proposal.

Red shook his head.

"Chink girls don't mean nothing to me, Mose," he said. "Listen! There's a girl up town who's nuts about me! Joe Enrico's daughter, but I don't look at her twice. That's me, Mose."

"Sure," said Mose. He looked twice at Minn Lee, and then more. He used to meet her on the stairs of the shabby apartment house where he had his home. She was Chinese and lovely. Small of stature, slim of body, with tiny, white hands that fascinated him. She was lovely, with slanting brown eyes and a rosebud of a mouth. Skin—like satin. When you saw it, you felt it. Her hair, not the blue—black of the Oriental but a sheeny black.

He used to give her a crooked grin. Then he tried to speak to her and found no difficulties. She was very simple and sweet and all too ready to talk. Her name was Minn Lee. Her husband was an artist, and a sick artist. She herself made fashions for catalogues.

Mose was staggered by her frank earnestness, and found no opportunity or opening for a more personal approach. Later, when he suggested supper at a swell place up town, she was more astonished than offended.

"But my husband is ill," she said. "I could not possibly leave him alone."

"Aw, listen, baby! I'll fix it to have a woman come in and sit with him… "

She shook her head. When he fumbled for her hand it was not there—nor she.

After that she avoided him. He suspected that she watched out for his leaving the house before she went abroad to the market. To test this he left the house early one morning and waited at the end of the block. Presently he saw her and stood squarely in her path.

"Hey, angel – face! What's the idea? Keepin' out of my way?"

She was too honest to deny the charge, and tried to dodge past him, but he grabbed her. "Wait a minute!"

He might have said much more, but a bony fist thumped him in the small of the back, and he spun round to stare into the merciless blue eyes of a man he had reason to detest. Sergeant Harrigan of the Central Office was laconic, offensively to the point.

"Hey, you! Leave that little Chinese girl alone, and tell me the story of your life, will you? That bit of your life that began at five last night and finished when you went to bed."

Minn Lee slipped away like a frightened pigeon and was lost in the crowd.

"Why, Mr. Harrigan, I just don't know what you mean." The voice of Mose became a plaintive and monotonous whine.

"Somebody stuck up a gentleman near Grant Park, took three hundred dollars and a watch from his pocket, and left him stumped on the sidewalk."

"Why, Mr. Harrigan, I went to bed at ten—"

"You're a liar. You were seen near the Hippodrome at midnight. And you were seen near Grant Park at nine o'clock."

There was a search of Mose Leeson's squalid little room and a personal search of Mose. All that day he alternated between police headquarters and the clinic to which the robbed and injured citizen had been taken. There was no identification, and Mose went free that night—relieved and wrathful.

Minn Lee heard all about it and was troubled. The dying artist who wailed at her from his neat bed demanded querulously what the hell she was thinking about and why she was making a meat soup for him and the day Friday. He had never had religion until he was ill. On the contrary, he favoured the more advanced school of thought which so heavily discounted the sacred symbols of divinity that they hardly had excuse for persisting. But since he had been sick he had ordered her to destroy certain drawings, notably the cartoon which caricatured so amusingly the Chicagoan's ideas of heaven. And all those nude studies of his, and certain appalling obscenities which had decorated the walls.

Minn Lee was neither glad nor sorry. These crude drawings meant nothing to her one way or the other. She recognized facts, but did not colour them nor tone them down. John Waite was a bad artist; she never thought that in his soul were the seeds of immortality. His perspectives were flat, his colour work was muddled, he had no sense of line, and even his drift towards vorticism, the last resort of all bad painters, had convinced nobody.

He was her man, that was all. Life and fate had linked them. There was reason enough for an infatuation which had the semblance of love, no reason at all for veneration. Yet she did not love him and did respect him. And he was dying. The German doctor had said so. Three months, maybe four. A priest came nowadays, a kindly man who was not shocked by the presence of Minn Lee, spoke to her humanly. He said three months too. There was a movement towards getting the painter to the coast, but nothing came of it. He protested vehemently against charity—he who had lived for years on an allowance made to him by the invalid mother he had brought to ruin. And when he was vehement he coughed and coughed and went on coughing all through the night.

The priest used to call twice a week. On the top floor he had another very sick man, who was also very old—Peter Melachini, sometime musician. He was not poor, but was as determined as any to die in the hovel which was his home. The slatternly wife of the plumber on the first floor told Minn Lee that old Peter was under the powerful protection of a Big Shot in the booze world.

"Can you beat it, Mrs. Waite? This guy offered to put Mr. Melachini in a grand house on the coast an' pay everything! But the old man wouldn't—no, ma'am, he said he'd stay right here in the city where he got born. He's crazy! A grand house on the coast an' everything!"

The Big Shot made occasional calls. Lithe, dark—faced men, nicely tailored, would suddenly appear in the street. Peering at them through dingy windows, the street grew pleasantly excited. Gunmen! Sure thing. Say, what an awful life—shoot'n' up folks, hey? They got as much as a hundred bucks a week. Yes, sir!

Then a dark car would sweep into the street and three men alight. One went first into the house, then the Big Shot himself, followed by the rear guard. He went straight up to Melachini's room, taking the basket of fruit from his henchman's hands.

"'Lo, Peter—here's the works, boy."

They had been in the same orchestra at Cosmolino's—Tony Perelli liked the old man. They were both Sicilian bred, both from a village outside Palermo.

Minn Lee met the Big Shot on the stairs. He was not tall, but carried himself with a certain dignity. His face was fleshy, his dark eyes held a spark of impish humour. He was heavily good—looking, perfectly fitted. About his waist was a belt with a diamond buckle. He smiled at Minn Lee, and she half smiled back. Looking over her shoulder after she had passed him, she saw him turn his head upward as though to take another look at her.

She saw him again in almost the same place, and he stopped and spoke to her. He was very polite, very kind, saw life from an amusing slant and made her laugh. He did not indulge in clumsy compliments, nor did he attempt to touch her hand.

The next day flowers and fruit came to the sick room. On the fruiterer's label was written, "From Tony Perelli", in a flourishing hand.

A Big Shot—my, what a Big Shot, breathed the plumber's wife. He's got the swellest apartment in Chicago. Motor—cars, a country house an' everything. One of the Booze Lords, with a casualty list on what remained of his soul as long as Michigan Avenue, yes, ma'am!

Again Minn Lee was not shocked. People did odd things. In a way a booze racket was more decent than John Waite's peculiar art. Only she never made comparisons. The third time she saw Tony Perelli was when he called. Waite was asleep, and she admitted the visitor—a little uneasily into the tiny sitting—room.

"Sleeping? Fine! I saw the doctor. He said your man should go to the coast. That crazy old Peter should go—but the hell he will! Listen, Mrs. Waite, if it's money—"

She shook her head.

"No, Mr. Perelli—he cannot take money because he cannot honourably return it," she said. She used the word "honourable" very often.

John Waite died a week later—died very quietly and unobtrusively, and when she had buried him and explained to the officials why her name was not Waite also, and had paid his immediate debts and had written to his mother, she set about finding work. It should have been easy for one who had a degree from Columbia University, and who had once earned as much as twenty—seven dollars and fifty cents in one week by drawing gowns for a ladies' magazine that no lady had ever seen, but she chose the easier way. There was a Chinese restaurant that needed girls. She wrote a business—like application to Che—foo Song, the proprietor, but before the answer came Mose Leeson called with a proposal.

The old Italian had died, and had been removed to a swell funeral parlour. On the night he went to Carmel, Tony Perelli came to gather the dead man's belongings, and especially his family treasures. They were to go back to Sicily to a grandson and a grand—daughter.

Nobody saw Perelli, for he came on foot with his bodyguard before, beside and behind him. He passed swiftly into the house and glanced at Minn Lee's door as he went on his way.

The house was noisy tonight. On the second floor Laski the Polak, who had ambitions to be the world's champion trap—drummer, was making deafening and frilly sounds on his drum, to the distress and wrath of every tenant. Some say that his drum killed John Waite; it may have made death a sweet alternative.

If he could have seen the girl standing with white, drawn face in the grip of Mose Leeson…

Mose was caveman by instinct. Experience helped him in the faith that women need to be carried off their feet.

"Honey, you can stand on what I say. I'll give you a swell time. I'm saying it! I'm nuts about you… "

She struggled; she had to struggle. Tony Perelli heard the thin scream as he came down the stairs and tried the door. It yielded to his hand, and he went in.

"What do you want—wop?"

Mose was white—hot mad; his unpleasant face twitched convulsively as it was thrust into Perelli's. "Beat it!"

Tony Perelli's voice was metallic, passionless.

"Beat it, eh? Sure I'll beat it—but not for no damn' Sicilian!"

His fist shot out; missed Perelli. The people in the other apartments heard only what sounded like a louder and more irregular beat of the drum.

Tony held the smoking pistol waist—high, but there was no need for a second shot. Mose had got his. He held for a second to the bedrail, then slipped down to the floor.

Minn Lee looked gravely from killed to killer.

"Get your coat and come away."

Perelli's orders could never be mistaken for requests. She obeyed and went out with him along the street and into his waiting car. The men he left behind would deal adequately with Mose Leeson. There would be no fuss; the situation was far from being unusual, and would develop normally. A car driver found his body lying on the prairie in the snow; the newspapers said "Another Gang Shooting", and that was the end of it.

In the meantime Minn Lee had gone to the home of Tony and became accustomed to being addressed as Mrs. Perelli.

Chapter 2

 

FROM the broad balcony with its Venetian balustrading Tony Perelli could look down upon the city which he was to rule. He loved Chicago, every stone of it.

Chicago was home and kingdom. The endless trails of cars which passed up and down the broad avenue beneath him bore his subjects to their daily work—his subjects and his partners. Beneath every one of those shiny roofs was a man or woman who kept "the best" in their cellars. Visitors who came to dinner would have the best brought to the table—the best in gilt-necked bottles, the best in sparkling decanters.

It was against the law that the best should be made or sold at all; every furtive case or keg smuggled into the cellars stood for lawlessness, every purchaser contributed to the smuggler who purveyed it and the gunman who protected it. Rather than that they should be denied the satisfaction of parading the best upon their tables, they tacitly agreed that any person interfering with its delivery should be shot and flung from a moving car on to the roadside. They would have been horrified at the suggestion, but they paid for the shells that wiped these vexatious people from the face of the earth, and unconsciously subscribed to the flowers that went to their funerals.

Perelli went back to the glorious salon which was at once breakfast—room, lounge and drawing—room. Sniffing and superior critics who had seen it likened it to the entrance hall of a super cinema theatre. They spoke of it as vulgar and garish and tawdry. It was in truth an exact replica of the most beautiful room in the Palace of the Doge.

Kiki, his Japanese servant, had brought his coffee. Minn Lee, in obedience to the routine he had established and which later he was to relax, would not be visible before the afternoon. Angelo had recently rented an apartment in a fashionable area, and would not appear till later.

He looked at his watch. Eight o'clock. Not too early for a caller. He had heard the purr of the signal bell and knew exactly who that caller was.

Red Gallway was never quite comfortable in this environment; he was even less comfortable this morning, because he had a grievance and found it difficult to maintain the overnight fury into which he had been worked.

"Sit down. Red. Tell me all that is happening on the West Side, huh?"

Red swallowed something.

"It's what's happenin' in Chicago that beats me," he said huskily. "I gotta know somep'n', Perelli—if I don't know I'll start somep'n'—see?"

Perelli regarded him from under his long lashes curiously. He might have favoured some unusual animal with a similar scrutiny.

"Start something? Fonny! You make me laff! Start something. Well? Start!"

Red moved uncomfortably in the chair on which he sat.

"That guy Leeson—Mose Leeson. Him and me was friends, Perelli. Somebody bumped him. Say, I'd like to meet that guy."

Antonio Perelli smiled.

"I bumped him," he said simply.

There was an awkward silence.

"Well?"

Red's face was twisted ludicrously.

"Say—that's no way to treat a regular feller… friend of mine… me and Mose is like brothers."

"Then you should be in mourning," said Perelli calmly, "for your brother is dead."

"Why?"

Red jerked out the query with an effort. There was no reply.

"Say, what's the idea? Mose was a right man. He has been useful to me."

Protest of some sort was called for.

"I thought I would."

Tony Perelli was perched on the wooden settle before the organ which stood in one corner of the room. He picked up the coffee by his side and sipped thoughtfully.

"Yes—I thought I would. I guess when I feel that way I just do what I want."

Red licked his dry lips. Inwardly he quaked and raged alternately.

"Well, it don't seem you've done right by me, Perelli—tha's all."

Tony nodded. "Yeh! I sympat'ise. It is very understandable. Have you been to hospital? No? A friend of yours is there—Antropolos the Greek. He is feeling very sore. Somebody beat him up last night. Why, you ask? I see that you do not. He was beaten up because he sold coke to one of my boys. Hey! That is good news or bad?"

The other man did not answer.

"They shall not drink, they shall not sniff the coke, or do things which make their 'eads go fonny and their 'ands go so—!" His outstretched hand trembled artistically.

"I guess I can look after myself—" began Red.

"Sure you can. And who cares if you don't? But you are not paid to look after yourself. You are paid to look after me and my boys. If your 'and shakes and your 'ead goes zooey, that is bad, and if you talk when you booze that is worse, but worst of all is this, that a hop—head will spill his friends' secrets to buy more hop. So that is all."

"Listen—"

"That is all. Cut out that white stuff or quit."

Red rose to his feet. "That's O.K. by me," he said. "I'll quit!"

Again that swift, sly smile.

"Sure. Quit!"

Dull in most respects. Red recognized the menace in that last word and wilted.

"Listen, Tony. I'm a guy that doesn't like to be pushed around—say, I'm not a child, and don't you forget it! If two guys can't get together they oughter quit. Tha's all."

Tony nodded.

"That's all," he said.

So Red went, his head buzzing with plans, for he now knew certain ends of the booze racket that he had not known before, and would never have known but for Tony Perelli's instruction. He sought out a member of the gang with whom he was on terms of sympathy, and over lunch at Bellini's poured into his ears the story of his grievances.

Victor Vinsetti was a well—dressed young man with restless eyes; he seemed everlastingly expecting to find somebody behind him. His own views he rarely expressed, but he was a good and ready listener. And so he listened.

He learned of Red's little quarrel, and of Mose, and how easy it would be to run a separate racket, get booze in over the frontier, cut it and find a market. And how, with a few good boys to persuade the speakeasies, one could come to fortune in a ludicrously short space of time. Vinsetti listened interestedly, because he himself had held such opinions. As for himself, he had formed his own plans.

"So you see, Vic," said Red at long last.

"Sure, I see—but it's not so easy, Red—and anyway, you're a bonehead to talk like you're talking."

"Mose was a square shooter—"

"Mose was just nothing and then not," said Vinsetti calmly. "He's dead, and it's no loss to the United States or the cause of Pure Government. He was just a vote. Next election you can poll twice and he'll be alive. No. I wonder what Perelli thinks about it?"

He pondered this whilst Red surveyed him curiously. For Vinsetti was a near—big shot, reputedly wealthy. And rumour did not lie. Vinsetti was an "outer". He was prepared to give the lie to tradition that once you were "in" you could never "get out". His cabin was reserved on the Empress of Australia, for he planned to leave via Canada; his share stock had been liquidated and was now currency. Already he had negotiated for a seashore house at San Remo. Red's frankness was a little alarming—and at Bellini's, where every other waiter was a spy.

That night he saw Perelli.

"Red's sore," he said, "and he's talking. He stuck me in Bellini's with a whole bellyful of aches."

"I don't want no trouble," said Tony Perelli. It was at once his slogan and alibi.

But Red, all lit up, was for bad trouble. Brilliant ideas were flowing in upon him. Through an intermediary he sought Mike Feeney, Baron of the South Side. He got no further than Shaun O'Donnell, who was Mike's chief of staff by appointment and brother by marriage.

But Shaun was the real leader, the brains of the outfit. ("That's the worst thing that's ever been said about Mike Feeney's crowd," Perelli was to say on a subsequent occasion.) Shaun was small, thin, irritable, too quick on the draw for some, too mouthily offensive for others. He listened to Red's proposals coldly and gave him no encouragement.

"Red, you're no darn' good to us or nobody," he said with rude frankness. "You're a hop—head and you booze. I'm telling you, boy. We got no room in this outfit for guys who sniff. Perelli's a this and that, but we don't want no trouble with him. If you break into his territory we'll help you with the Best Stuff."

"Mose—" began Red.

"Mose can stay plumb in hell where he b'longs," said Shaun.

The next day nothing much happened. The temperature of Red Gallway's feet went down some forty degrees, and in the dusk of a wintry afternoon he sidled into police headquarters and demanded an interview with Chief Kelly. He wanted to make a complaint about a policeman. He said this very loudly, because police headquarters was in Perelli's area, and inside and out there were watchful eyes and attentive ears.

Nobody but Red would have gone to police headquarters; they would have followed the usual procedure of getting it on the wire and fixing an appointment for a secret meeting. Red, who, when he was lit up, had no finesse, took the bold step, and a quarter of an hour after he arrived he was talking to the grim—faced chief of detectives.

His version would have been that he spoke cleverly, avoided mentioning names. The only thing he was certain about was that his life was in danger, and after he had spoken for a little while Mr. Kelly was even more certain than he on the subject.

Red was not clever, he was not particularly well guarded. Actually he did not spell out names and dot the i's. He told Kelly nothing he did not know. The chief knew by bitter experience that if he held the man as a witness and put him on the stand before a jury, he would retract every word he had spoken, that if he were to sign a written statement he would swear with the greatest fervour that that statement had been secured by a trick, or by bullying, or by threats of physical violence, or whilst he was unconscious as the result of such physical violence.

The chief knew just how Mose had died and why. He knew the names of the men who had taken his body away, and the number of the car they had used. The latter was easy; they had found the car, a stolen one, abandoned.

Red would have continued talking all through the night, but the chief was busy, and he hated one—sided conversation that told him nothing.

"Do you want me to keep you inside?" he asked.

Red was indignant. "What, me? I guess I can look after myself. No, sir! I'm going out to Chicago to—morrow. I'm through. I've got some friends out east who'll stake me to all the money I want."

There was a stage in Red's intoxication when ha acquired rich supporters; he had reached this.

He went out on to the street with three shadows behind him. Two of them were police officers.

"Don't lose sight of that bird," was the chief's instruction.

He had not gone a block when two men fell in with Red, one on each side of him.

"Say, what the—" began Red, when they locked their arms affectionately in his.

"You squawk and you go dead," said one of them pleasantly.

He stuck a snub—nosed belly gun into the side of the prisoner.

"Step out, you—!"

The detectives walking behind were new to the game. They saw only the arrival of two close friends of their quarry, and when the three came abreast of a waiting car and got in, their man in the front seat by the driver, they did no more than look around for a taxi. Before one drew up to them the car had gone ahead and was out of sight.

Red did not quite realize what was happening. You may sober a man who is suffering from alcoholism, but one who is lit is not so readily brought back to normality. The only thing he was perfectly certain about was that the man sitting immediately behind him in the car was pushing something hard against the back of his neck, and was chatting pleasantly across the seat with the driver. They were talking about a ball game, and argued hotly whether Southern California would beat Notre Dame or vice versa. The driver was all for Notre Dame, gave reasons why it should win, reeled off long lists of previous victories and performances, and offered to bet a hundred dollars on the team of his choice, which the man sitting immediately behind him instantly took.

"I'm all for Notre Dame," said Red.

"You shut your mouth," said the driver, "and keep it shut. I wonder your throat's not sore, the time you've been squawking to the bulls."

"Me squawk?" protested Red indignantly.

The gun muzzle at his neck thumped painfully into the back of his head.

"Shut up."

They left the town behind; dreary stretches of country ran past on either side, with an occasional house. Presently they came to a little plantation by the side of the bumpy road. The driver stopped.

"Step out," he said, and Red stepped. The drug had worn off. He was shaking from head to foot.

"Say, what's the big idea?" he quavered. "I've done no squawking. You take me right back to Tony… "

With a man on each arm he lurched across the rough ground, past the first outlying trees.

"You're not going to bump me off, are you?" His voice was a thin whine. "Listen—I've done nothing."

The man behind him thumbed back the hammer of his revolver and fired. Red went down on his knees, swayed. He heard neither the first nor the second shot. The executioner put the gun in his pocket and lit a cigarette. The flame of his match did not quiver.

"Let's go," he said.

He took the place that Red had occupied, and half—way back to town the argument of Southern California against Notre Dame was resumed.

The driver saw the squad car, above the whirr of his own engine heard the squeal of its siren. He Jerked the car round and stepped on the accelerator.

"Get the typewriter—it's under the seat."

The other man crawled over his shoulder. He came across the partition to the help of his friend. They let down the back flap and poked out the muzzle of the machine—gun.

"The coppers must have got Kelly on the wire," said the executioner, who had seen the shadows that were following Red.

The car was getting closer.

"Let her have it," he said, and the machine—gun man pressed the trigger.

Rat—a—tat—a—tat—a—tat—a—tat!

The windscreen of the pursuing car was smashed. It swerved slightly, then came up. Three pencils of flame shot out. The machine—gun fired again. The driver of the car behind made a wild swerve and the burst missed.

"Hell!" said the man with the machine—gun, and again rested the barrel on the back of the car, steadied it with his hand, then slid gently to the floor.

The gun poised for a moment, then fell backward on to the road. There was a sharp report; the police car had struck the weapon, and one of the tyres had ripped off. The assassin looked back through the flap.

"Ditched," he said. "Go to it, Joe."

He took a little electric torch from his pocket and flashed it on to the figure huddled on the floor. In the centre of his forehead was a big, red, ugly hole. The man climbed back to his place beside the driver.

"That bet of yours is phoney," he said. "Billy has got his."

All the way back to town they talked of the coming ball game, and the inert thing behind them rolled and rocked with every corner they took.

Chapter 3

 

VINSETTI was no ordinary gangster, held no ordinary position. For two years he had been the suave ambassador, the plenipotentiary travelling from coast to coast, the go—between who crossed and recrossed the lakes to Canada. At times he had been a high—grade negotiator, and settled differences which threatened to develop gruesomely if gang leaders kept their promise.

He was a good—looking young man, had a reputation for gallantry, and harboured the illusion of invincibility. There was certain justification for this.

But he made the mistake of engaging himself in Canada to a young lady who did not accept her ultimate dismissal with good grace. One day, when Vinsetti went across to Toronto to fix a delivery of whisky, a lawyer's emissary slipped a writ into his hand. He was sued for breach of promise, and even more than that. Vinsetti had no cosmopolitan sense of law. It was a matter to be fixed and he looked around for a fixer, choosing a disreputable lawyer who accepted his fee, made one half—hearted effort to secure a withdrawal of the action, and, when he failed, forgot all about it. The consequence was that Vinsetti was cast in heavy damages, and on his next visit to Toronto was arrested. He paid because he had to pay; but that was not the worst; he ceased to be a buying agent, suffered a very considerable cut of his revenue.

"I don't want no trouble," said Tony Perelli when the matter was discussed. "You're in bad with these Canadian guys. I don't want people working for me who are rubbered on the street."

"I don't see how it affects you," said Vinsetti, inwardly boiling.

Tony stroked his little moustache and studied the pattern of his silky carpet.

"Maybe not," he said. "Maybe that girl didn't squeal before the judge, and say you was in a whisky racket and was making a million dollars. Maybe she didn't say you was working with Antonio Perelli. That's bad." He shook his head. "You go east, Victor mio, there's plenty to do, plenty money, plenty fon. I am not sore—it is a bad break, but I am not sore."

He patted Vinsetti's shoulder gently.

That evening, sitting alone with Minn Lee, he opened his heart to her. He sat by her side on a silken divan in that big saloon of his; the golden gates were wide open, and the delicately scented apartment lay bathed in the soft radiance of amber lamps.

"That guy is too fond of women, and making love and such nonsense."

"Is it nonsense?" she asked, and he smiled.

"To you, my sweet peach blossom, no, but where in the world is another you, hey?"

He dropped her little hand on her lap, strolled across to the big organ that stood in one corner of the room, and played continuously for an hour, and she listened, entranced. He was a beautiful musician, a violinist of considerable ability, but the organ was his passion. He would sit for hours, extemporizing, bringing into his fancy little scraps of Italian opera that he remembered. Italian opera was the beginning and end of art for Tony Perelli. He loathed jazz, although he danced extraordinarily well.

For an hour Minn Lee sat, in her new satin robe, legs crossed like a little Buddah, her hands folded meekly, her head bent. When Tony came back to her and lounged on the sofa by her side, he spoke again of Vinsetti.

"That boy is too clever; yet he is very useful. It was a bad break, but everybody must have a bad break sometimes. Perhaps he is yellow—I do not know. Victor lives too softly—that takes the devil out of a man. But he doesn't drink, and he doesn't talk, and he's got a swell way with swell people."

Victor's lapse was overlooked a few days later when he negotiated with Chief Kelly for the release of a man who was being held—unjustly, as it happened—for an offence under the Mann Act. The individual so held was of immediate value to Tony, and his release was something of a triumph for the lieutenant.

"I should have held that guy," said Chief Detective Kelly, when he and Harrigan were discussing the matter.

"There's got to be a lot of give and take in this business, chief," said Harrigan. "My own opinion is that Perelli worked his release because he was afraid of us fastening another crime on him—they found Red Gallway this morning, by the way—plugged through the back."

Kelly nodded. "That was always coming to him. A loud speaker, that bird; sooner or later he would have blown wise. It's a waste of time, but you might see Perelli." He scratched his chin irritably. "No, I guess I'll see him myself."

"There's a new lady up at his apartment."

Kelly nodded. "I know—Minn Lee. Mrs. Waite, or whatever her name was. If there's any honour amongst thieves, Perelli has it all. He's got the tightest bunch of hoodlums in the town. We've never had a squeal from any of his regular gang."

Harrigan looked at him oddly.

"There's one who'll come across sooner or later," he said, lowering his voice.

Kelly pursed his lips.

"Vinsetti—I wonder? If there was a chance of it, Perelli would know first, and if Perelli knew first—"

He smiled.

Harrigan bit off the end of a cigar and lit it.

"He'll never take the stand—none of them will—but he's copper—hearted and he'll give us the dope on a whole lot of things that'll be mighty useful for the file."

Again Kelly shook his head, and again he said:

"I wonder? Do you see Vinsetti often?" he asked. "You might put him right on one point. Perelli knows he's quitting and it's pretty unhealthy when a man takes a powder on Perelli. Perhaps if he knows this he'll come across. We'll give him protection—put him right on board the boat. Anyway, the gang wouldn't start anything in Canada—the laws are still working there."

Harrigan spent the next two days fixing up an accidental meeting with Victor Vinsetti, and he failed for the excellent reason that Vinsetti had seen Minn Lee and was aflame.

Certain things to Minn Lee were honourable and certain things dishonourable. It was dishonourable to deceive your man; it was honourable to betray all for his sake. Vinsetti's calls were reported, all he said, all he did, all that he proposed. In his queer way Perelli was flattered by the attention she excited. He grew ecstatic over her loyalty, for she had told him simply, as one relating everyday events, not in a spirit of boastfulness, nor coyly, nor yet to inspire his pleasant jealousy.

Vinsetti had spoken about many things: Love, for example, devotion, the splendour of life in Europe. But he had said other things which were disturbing to Antonio Perelli's sense of dignity. For example, those houses in Cicero—she had never heard of them before, was not shocked even now. If she had gone into Che—foo Song's restaurant, where Chinese girls danced—well, there was not much difference between Cicero and the smoke-laden atmosphere of the Stars of Heaven Restaurant.

No, she was not shocked; a little startled, just a little hurt; for this man had suddenly become as a god to her.

Tony was both shocked and hurt; when he met Vinsetti the next day, his manner was curt, and at the end of the business interview—

"When Minn Lee wants to see you she will get you on the wire, Victor," he said. "You're a swell fellow but you talk too much… Oh no, not of love, but of Cicero, eh? You made a grand hit—but not with me, Victor."

Looking into his eyes, Vinsetti saw the red light, and yet those eyes were kind and good—humoured, and that thick mouth of Tony Perelli's was curled in a grin.

But the red light was there; Vinsetti sensed it.

You might quarrel with Tony Perelli, lash him to a fury, but if the subject of the quarrel did not make contact with the basic facts of life, when the trouble was over you went on just as you were. Your offence and his were forgiven and forgotten. Within a certain fenced area the quarrel might become a battle royal and no harm come of it, but outside the boundary line was death, quick, merciless—expedient.

Expediency governed every move, every action, every thought. Let any man impinge upon the safety line, open or threaten to open one stronghold door, and he vanished in the dark. As yet Tony Perelli's quarrel with him was purely domestic. His dignity had been hurt; he had been lowered in the eyes of his woman. He would destroy no man for that. Still, Vinsetti saw the red light and became cold and cautious and watchful. He had the mind of a diplomat, and the most powerful weapon in the diplomat's armoury is to impress upon his antagonist the sense of the reactions most flattering to him. So Vinsetti sulked, pretended more to being the guilty lover than the treacherous comrade, and after a while it seemed that the situation came back to normal. Not so with Vinsetti. Perhaps he had seen too much: he had certainly imagined more than was good for his peace of mind.

Tony was unusually generous. There was something of the cat in him; he preferred to strike brusquely and without warning. Now he warned. The next time Vinsetti called at the apartment, Perelli made a suggestion.

"There will be no vacation for you this year, Victor," he said. "I guess I'd sell that reservation on the Empress of Australia—why waste money?"

Just that, no more. No recriminations, no reproaches, no cold fury at this unforgivable act. For the man who takes a powder on the gang is outcast, and if he is detected after he has made his getaway, all manner of troubles await him. Notifications go forward through a strangely active police that the man is a criminal; foreign ports are barred against him; he may land only to be arrested, and possibly deported, and a man so deported would go back, as he knew, to waiting guns.

Perelli had an espionage system which was well—nigh perfect. He had clerks in the banks who furnished him with particulars about his own people. He knew to a cent their balances, would be instantly informed about the transfer of money or stock to another country, and particularly did he keep tag of cheques drawn in favour of tourist agencies or steamship companies.

Vinsetti was one of the few men who kept a banking account. As a rule gangsters do not trust banks, rather putting their faith in safe deposit boxes. Tony could keep watch, therefore, on the more intimate side of Victor Vinsetti's life. He knew all about the letter of credit that the bank had sold him. His chief offence was that attack at Cicero. Somebody had tipped off Mike and his friends, and here was the natural sequel. Three men alone knew of the forthcoming visit—certainly not the trader in Canada, who had no idea that his lucrative customer was Tony Perelli. It was a great pity about Vinsetti, Angelo agreed, for he was a wise boy and an asset; one must have fellows who could dress well to deal with those honest and respectable villains who supplied the raw material of Mr. Perelli's trade. As a liaison officer between the outfits he was unrivalled. Vinsetti could walk into any territory and get away without so much as a smell of powder. He was persona grata with Joe the Polak, Mike Feeney and various other members of the various organizations. He was discreet, could be relied upon to keep his word, was the gangman's idea of a square shooter. It was, as Angelo Verona said, a great pity.

Events were moving in one inevitable direction. Perelli's activities were multifarious; he had fingers in all makes and shapes of pies, some legitimate, some distinctly illicit. He kept rigidly aloof from the ordinary criminal classes. He neither financed nor benefited by vulgar robbery with or without violence. The monies of men who fell victim to his vengeance or suspicion were invariably found intact. Sometimes enormous sums were discovered in the pockets of the dead men left derelict by the roadside. He kept faith with seller and buyer; his word was his bond, and he even resented the practice of sending the booze he supplied to the analyst. His wages bill was enormous, his turnover colossal. Though he maintained a small army of accountants and clerks, he carried all the details of his transactions in his head. Greatest of his gifts was a sixth sense which warned him of danger. When that alarum sounded in his mind he accepted no excuses, but obeyed the warning blindly. Generally the reason he gave for some swift act of retribution was not the real reason. Red had been killed ostensibly for a visit to the police station. He died not because of the immediate but because of the future danger.

Chapter 4

 

IF Perelli punished ruthlessly, his rewards were on the side of munificence. He spent fifty thousand dollars in furnishing Angelo's new apartment—a bungling recruit to gangdom who had saved his life he sent back to Sicily a rich man; he was too awkward a gunman to retain, too brave a man to be dismissed.

Vinsetti? Perelli thought a lot about Vinsetti. He was independent, had lost his old enthusiasms, possessed a grievance. Vinsetti had a very sensitive reception and received in full the tonal disharmonies of Perelli's mind. Through one agent he wrote, cancelling his berth on the Empress of Australia, and through another agent booked the same accommodation in another name. Which was exactly what Tony Perelli thought he would do.

The fascinations of Minn Lee had not dissipated: Victor Vinsetti sent her flowers, wrote little notes to her, very clever little notes, and poetical. Tony read them smilingly.

"Victor is a swell writer—ask him to call again, Minn Lee… Sure I don't mind! I lak it… he's a swell feller and very fonny."

So Minn Lee wrote in her neat schoolboy hand, and Vinsetti came and drank tea with her, and sometimes Tony was there, but more often he was not.

There might be urgent need for Victor Vinsetti very soon. He shone as an arbitrator. The two big gangs were edging across neutral ground into one another's territory.

Feeney's crowd supplied a large number of speakeasies on the north side with hard liquor and beer. Mike ran a couple of breweries and was a millionaire. There was a sort of no—man's—land on this battlefield, where both gangs operated side by side. The proprietors of the speakeasies might buy safety from one side or the other. There was no "you take ours or none" in the tactics of either party. Then suddenly Mike changed front, claimed the territory as being exclusively his own and passed out the customary warnings, which were followed by the customary reprisals. One of Perelli's good customers had his establishment wrecked and was himself beaten up. He hastened to Angelo with the story of rapine, and Angelo reported.

"Let Victor see this mick," said Perelli. "Who did the beating?"

They told him it was one Death House Hennessey, a notorious strong—arm man who had operated with his personal gang. He was a sub—contractor of violence very often employed by Shaun O'Donnell when the Irishman did not wish to be identified with a foray or found it expedient to detach details from his main bodyguard.

"Give Hennessey the works," said Perelli, "but let Victor see Feeney or O'Donnell."

Victor went down to a certain hotel near North State and interviewed the irritable little Irishman. Shaun O'Donnell was not amenable to reason; he was truculent and breathed vague threats. Vinsetti, in his best diplomatic style, sought a modus vivendi, but Shaun, who had never heard the expression, and, if he had, would have disapproved of it, was adamant.

"Listen, Vic—that territory has always been ours and you can tell Mister Perelli that it stays ours. We stood for his muscle, but now the Polaks are crowding us we gotta tighten up. You're a swell feller, Vic, and me and Mike would go the coast to oblige you, but fair's fair."

There were other negotiations, and in the course of these Shaun said:

"I wonder a guy like you stays around with the Perelli outfit. Mike 'n' me would be glad to see you with a place in our organization. I know!" (when Vinsetti protested). "You're all plumb scared of Perelli, but suppose we was tipped off about some place where we could find him, hey? That guy treats men like dogs."

Crude temptation, but Victor pondered it. And in the meantime Death House Hennessey got the works.

A car drove up to the door of his little house and somebody rang the bell. Hennessey opened the door and peered into the night…

A distant motor—cyclist policeman heard the rattle of machine—gun fire and streaked towards the sound. Death House Hennessey was slumped over the balustrade of his porch with twenty machine—gun slugs in his physical system.

Shaun O'Donnell accepted the fact philosophically. It meant nothing in his life that a subcontractor had gone. There were others who charged less. Still, it was a peg on which to hang «n attack on Perelli. He personally paid for Hennessey's funeral and attended the lying in state. Perelli sent a wreath, and such was his power that the men who hated him, and who knew that he had encompassed the death of the man to whose pious memory the flowers paid tribute, dared not displace them.

To Minn Lee he spoke freely; he kept fewer secrets from her than from any woman who had entered and vanished from his life.

"In this racket, sweetheart, there are four points to the compass, and a guy that goes half—way between north 'n' west gets nowhere on his own feet. Victor is a swell talker, but he ain't talked over Shaun O'Donnell, and another of my speakeasies was broken up last night. And yet Victor does not say 'Go to it!' All he says is 'Wait, wait,' and, by gar, I wait and see my business go to hell!"

Victor had reason for saying "wait". He saw Tony and reported negotiations, and the big shot listened patiently.

"Sure that's fine!" he said. "Maybe I will wait till Shaun O'Donnell gets an old man and has sense, huh? For ten years maybe! This mick must settle or he gets the works, Victor—I'm saying it! There is too much talk—let Ricardo speak."

Ricardo was his favourite machine—gun chopper; a man who had fought in the Great War and had three decorations and twenty killings to his name.

"I will wait a little longer—yes," said Perelli, "and then… "

He drove out to Cicero that afternoon, and was sitting in his own restaurant, sipping coffee, when three cars drove slowly past and swept the restaurant with machine—gun fire. Perelli lay flat on the floor in a confusion of smashed glass and falling plaster, and decided that he could not afford to wait: he must move, and move quickly.

The attack had not been improvised: it was the result of careful planning. Vinsetti was one of the very few who knew that he was going to Cicero on that particular day—Victor had actually planned the trip, the object of which was to meet a Canadian shipper.

He made enquiries. Mike Feeney and Shaun had left on the previous night for New York; their alibi was a little too cleverly established.

He saw Victor on his return and was very voluble about the narrowness of his escape. To have made light of the matter would have been a mistake. Vinsetti would have been alarmed, and who knew what a frightened rat might do?

Victor was alarmed, nevertheless. He sent an urgent message to Kelly, and had an interview with the chief, giving him a little information but promising more. Then Vinsetti did a curious thing—it was one of those bizarre acts of his that were peculiar to the man. He called at his lawyer's and made a will, one clause of which ran;

In the event of my dying by violence and on the coroner's verdict that murder has been committed I direct that the sum of one hundred thousand dollars shall be act aside from my estate as a reward to the person who shall secure the conviction of my murderer and his execution.

In the afternoon he called upon Minn Lee. She had 'phoned an invitation to tea at Tony's suggestion.

"You may stay in your suite, little darling," he said, "for I have much business to finish with Victor."

Vinsetti called at 4.30. A quarter of an hour later Kelly came. This was the arrangement which had been agreed. In truth the detective arrived outside the entrance of the building five minutes after Vinsetti went in, and filled the idle time by watching some men load furniture on a truck. Two big chairs, a davenport, a coat—hanger and a table were loaded and pulled away as Kelly entered the building and made for the elevator.

Angelo opened the door to him.

"Victor's gone," he said. "He only stayed a minute—came to see Minn Lee, chief, but she's got a headache."

"Where is Perelli?" He was on the sun balcony, and was sent for.

"Vinsetti came in here fifteen minutes ago and could not have gone," said Kelly unpleasantly.

"If he is not here he could have gone," he said.

"There are two ways out, chief—one at the back of the block—Victor usually goes that way."

"I'd like to search this apartment." Kelly was frankly and rudely sceptical.

"Sure!" Tony Perelli was all smiles. Vinsetti was gone—how, whither, was a mystery.

Kelly knew of the back exit and had had a man stationed there, but Victor Vinsetti had not passed.

Two days later they found his body floating in the lake. He had been shot dead at close quarters, and in his pocket were eighty sodden notes, each for a thousand dollars.

They hauled Perelli down to police headquarters and quizzed him.

"I hope you get the guy that bumped poor Victor," he said. "There's too much of these killings."

He attended the funeral, riding in an armoured car just behind the funeral coach.

Chapter 5

 

VINSETTI was something of a litterateur. He kept a big diary, which, to the disappointment of Chief Kelly, and to the infinite relief of at least one person, contained no vital information.

On a visit to Hollywood he had made this illuminating comment:

The gangster's life has no continuity. It is a series of short stories written round the same funeral parlour… New characters appear on the stage and vanish, almost before they have established their identity… The story of gangland is punctuated with shootings by machine—guns, and most of the punctuation marks are full stops.

The diary was in Italian, and Chief Kelly, reading a translation, enlarged his philosophy but did not extend the volume of his files.

Minn Lee saw gangland from her own peculiar angle. She met men and women who came and went, and sometimes reappeared. The women were pretty, rather loud of voice, expensively gowned and jewelled. They seemed perfectly happy in their environment, which perhaps was an improvement upon the life they had previously known.

Tony was kind to her, much kinder than John Waite had been. He showed her consideration, a pleasing tenderness and a large understanding.

Once a girl came from Cicero to lunch with them. Her attitude towards Perelli was familiar, and yet the familiarity was tinged with a certain reserve which might have meant respect or fear, and probably had in it something of both. She was pretty in a coarse way, had a sable stole and elegant rings.

She drank incessantly throughout lunch, and her conversation was more or less Greek to Minn Lee. She knew the place, too; looked round it with a proprietorial smirk, appraised Minn Lee in one sweeping, searching glance, and thereafter ignored her; except that toward the end of lunch she leaned over and took Minn Lee's hand and examined the big ring.

"You want to be careful of that baby," she said. "It's a bum cut, and the stone slips out of its setting."

Looking up, she caught Tony's glance and dropped the girl's hand as though it were red hot. But Minn Lee was no fool. The woman had worn this ring, and in her crude way was acquainting its new proprietor with the important fact.

Any reserve Tony might have maintained was shaken down by this incident. He began to ask questions about the jewellery the visitor was wearing, where it had come from, how much it had cost. It was a little embarrassing, both for Minn Lee and the person to whom the queries were addressed." Apparently they had been given to her by various "boys". She named Vinsetti.

"Because he's dead?" asked Perelli quietly. "Tell me the names of some live men who gave you those things."

She was confused, went red and white, tried to carry off the situation with a laugh and a wisecrack, but Perelli drove through all her flippancy. "You should be very careful, Enid," he said, that metallic tang in his voice. "You have a good job, yes? And receipts are falling very severely."

She came back with a whine about the vigilants and the difficulties of finding the right people—a tactful move apparently, for Perelli changed the subject with an abruptness which would have been offensive to any other woman.

He would not speak about her to Minn Lee.

After she had gone:

"She is nobody—just trash," he said. "Once she stayed here, but she was too fresh for me, and she laughed at my music, because she has no brain—just a face and a line of flip talk, and she bored me. I hate people who bore me, little Minn Lee."

She smiled quietly at him. "I wonder if I ever shall?" she asked.

He took her hand and kissed it. "When I am very, very old," he said. "That is possible. When I do not like lovely things and lovely voices and all that is good for the eyes." He took her head in his two hands. "Are you 'appy?" And, when she nodded, he lifted her on to his knee, and, taking her in his arms, nursed her like a child without speaking; and in the comfort of that caress his mind was soothed and expanded, and he could give undivided, dispassionate attention to the problem of Shaun O'Donnell and the Feeney crowd. For they were getting on his nerves.

Mike Feeney was big, awkwardly built, a typical mick of a man, who had started life as an excavator, and, having secured control of a trade union, had multiplied its membership to an amazing extent by the simple process of beating up every man who refused to join. To his credit it must be said that he had secured concessions for his members, for he was one of the initiators of the pineapple method of persuasion. A pineapple is a bomb, and a bomb placed on the porch of an employer who refused to accept the conditions which Mike and his executives dictated usually brought about a change of heart in a very short time. If it did not, then the next bomb was more destructive. Few employers waited for the second pineapple; none stood out for the third.

The booze racket offered golden opportunities. He had all the machinery for terrorization. His speakeasies appeared overnight—queer little dives, some of them, elaborately furnished others. He supplied them with booze; his gun squad grew in importance. He opened gaming houses, pool rooms, muscled in to the handbook industry, which is a euphemism for bookmaking.

His sister, Mrs. Shaun O'Donnell, played an important part in the organization. She was a driving force, and, through her husband, the executive of the outfit. Almost as tall as her brother, big—boned, gaunt, red—faced, with hands like raw meat and a nose which was long and permanently red, this big—footed lady had once, so it was said, fought a man and beaten him. Nobody ever questioned this. Mike Feeney in his cups boasted of it.

With all the money in the world, she was the worst—dressed woman in Chicago. She affected naming violets, impossible reds, wore diamonds as big as nuts, set in gold brooches the size of coffee saucers. Her voice rasped and rasped, and when she spoke the Feeney crowd stirred uncomfortably.

Perelli she hated for his very masculine qualities. To her he was always "the wop dude". She called him other names, for she did not approve of those houses at Cicero. When her history comes to be written it will be found that she urged on her husband to inaugurate rival establishments.

She ruled her husband rather than her brother, which was remarkable, for Shaun had a temper of his own and the brain of three Mike Feeneys. For the rest, she was as remorseless as any; sent men to their death and never thought of them again. It was she who organized an attack on Tony Perelli.

"We surely scared that peterman," she said to her husband. "If you had the heart of a man you'd go and get him, after what he said about me to Mrs. Merlo. Maybe it don't mean nothin' to you, having your wife called 'Romeo's nightmare!' But if that don't mean something insulting I'm a crazy woman! Go get that wop, Shaun!"

Shaun snarled round at her.

"You're in a hell of a hurry to get rid of me, ain't ye?" he snapped. "You keep outa this, Bella."

She had been named by an unimaginative parent Floribella.

News of the beautiful Chinese girl who was staying at Perelli's apartment reached her, and feminine curiosity took her calling. She towered above little Minn Lee like an ugly derrick above an Easter lily. For once in her life she was human. Perelli was amazed to learn that she had left a good impression upon the girl. As for Mrs. O'Donnell—

"That baby's too good to live in a place like that with a dirty little Sicilian around. Gee! He's getting fat, Shaun. You couldn't miss him unless you was drunk."

Shaun said nothing. He had his own plans, and was not to be rushed.

His wife brought back one piece of information.

"Perelli's got a new man from New York, one of them Five Points people—Con O'Hara, do you know him?"

Shaun knew him; Mike Feeney knew him better, and had good reason for disliking him.

"He's a gun, and a slick one—nothing yellow about Con. He never stops talking, and I guess that means that he'll just have about time to see the city before he passes on."

That week Perelli gained another recruit. There was a man in Boston who was a booze importer and a highly respected member of the community. Through another friend he heard of a Harvard boy's misfortune and wrote to Tony.

"I don't know whether you'll he able to do anything for this fellow, but he comes of a good family, speaks two or three languages, and is the kind of man you might find useful."

So Jimmy McGrath came to Chicago with a letter of introduction, and a sense of humiliation which was all the more bitter because it was deserved. He had been expelled from a great university for a theft which was both mean and stupid, and which in his sober moments he could not understand. The college authorities accepted inebriation as the admission of another and even more serious offence. It was certainly no excuse. Jimmy scribbled a hurried note to his New England mother, went into hiding in New York, and, after a futile month spent in searching for work, accepted the rail fare and the letter of introduction which brought him to the Venetian magnificence of Tony Perelli's apartment.

He was tall, tow—headed, good—looking, nervous. Perelli liked him from the start, though he was puzzled as to how he could place him. There were the makings here of a big shot. He had a well—ordered mind, and would certainly become a capable organizer. But a big shot must be blooded. Here, too, was a substitute for Vinsetti, but again he must qualify. Tony's rule was inflexible; a man must have blood on his hands before he was initiated into the inner mysteries. It was not his sense of drama but his sense of safety which dictated this condition. A man must be "in"—up to his neck. There must be no member of the outfit so guiltless that he could take the stand without fear or knowledge of guilt.

You were either in or out.

There was a farm in the country where members of the gang rusticated. It was a sort of club, and it had its own shooting—range. Perelli sent the boy down with Ricardo, champion of all machine-gun choppers. "Give him the keys," he instructed, and by "keys" he meant the freedom of this drab little world.

Ricardo reported a week later that the pupil showed no promise.

"He hasn't the nerve for it," he said. "You'd better find him something easier first, Tony."

So Jimmy McGrath was brought back to Chicago and "was given the keys" of that territory which Perelli ruled so efficiently. He met gangsters, men on the one side or the other, and a few who were on neither but were in danger from both. For some reason or other he liked Shaun O'Donnell, and, more wonderful still, O'Donnell liked him and took him to his apartment off North Place and introduced him to his wife.

"One of Perelli's mob, ain't you?" she asked disparagingly. "Say, why do you go and get yourself fixed up with them Sicilians?"

"Leave the kid alone—that's his trouble," said Shaun. "You going to be Tony's fixer, Jimmy?"

Jimmy was puzzled.

"Well, I guess I'm going to be anything that he makes me," he said.

Shaun looked at him thoughtfully.

"He'll be wanting a fixer now that he's humped off Vinsetti."

"His best friend—that's the kind of yellow dog he is," interrupted Mrs. O'Donnell.

Shaun explained.

"Vinsetti ran around and fixed things. He saved Perelli a lot of trouble."

He might in truth and in justice have said that he himself had been relieved from many an embarrassing situation by the intervention of the fixer.

There was a fourth man at the luncheon, a gloomy Italian who was introduced as Mr. Camona. Exactly what role he played in the complicated business of Shaun's activities Jimmy did not know. The man spoke little and then only in monosyllables. Throughout the meal he ate and drank, and when he was not eating and drinking he stared blankly out of the window and seemed immersed in his thoughts. If he spoke at all it was in very bad English. Later, Perelli was to give the man's history. He was a Sicilian, who had been smuggled into the United States without a passport.

Mike Feeney controlled a number of alky cookers, men and women who distilled denatured alcohol, later to be doctored and bottled and sold to people who could not afford the best, and certainly got as near the worst as made no difference. Camona had been a bandit, had certainly suffered imprisonment in Italy, and was a fugitive from justice when he was imported into Chicago. His job had to do with the organization of the alky cookers. Incidentally, he had served in the Machine Gun Corps of the Italian Army and was a useful recruit to Mike Feeney's corps of killers. Either Camona or the driver of the car which carried him was at fault one evening. Tony was driving back from the opera with two of his trusted gang. He had turned into a side street off Michigan Avenue when another car drew level. Tony dropped to the floor as a hail of machine—gun bullets came through the window. One of his companions was not so fortunate, and went down with a bullet through his neck. It was all over in a few seconds. Four alert eyes saw a drooping moustache behind the sights of the machine—gun.

Tony drove the wounded man to hospital and came back to his apartment, very calm and unflurried. Minn Lee, who was waiting up for him, had no idea what had happened, though she supposed it was something serious, for Tony ordered her peremptorily to bed.

Camona lived in a little apartment house on the south side. He arrived home at two o'clock in the morning, was putting his key in the door when a man walked up behind him, laid a pistol against the back of his head, fired, walked back with the greatest unconcern to the waiting car, and was whisked off before the nearest police patrol was within sight.

"Good work. Con."

Perelli congratulated his newest recruit at breakfast the next morning, and Con O'Hara, stocky, classily tailored and interminably talkative, grinned at the compliment. It was his first solo job.

"Clean, Tony—that's my speciality, I never give a guy more than one, and after that his name's 'was'. I could have got him on the street, but there was a broad saying good night to her feller. I see him go up the stairs and nicked out me thirty—eight—"

"Sure, sure." Tony had little patience with people who dramatized their actions. "You're a swell feller."

Jimmy learned the news from the afternoon editions and was shocked. Here was a man with whom, two days before, he had sat, a living, breathing entity, with a history and a future, and who was now nothing but an object of curiosity to certain police officers and a name on a sprawling headline.

"Who do you think did it?" he asked Tony.

"I did it, Jimmy." Perelli's eyes never left the boy's. "Sure. That guy tried to stop me last night. He poked a machine—gun on me—the nerve!"

"Were you in the car that was fired at?" asked Jimmy incredulously.

He had read of the shooting on Michigan Avenue, but no names had been mentioned.

Perelli nodded.

"Sure."

"Are you certain it was Camona?" Jimmy was unconvinced.

Tony Perelli laughed softly. He was tickled by the effect of his confession.

"That's the way it is, Jimmy—killing and killing! I don't want to kill nobody, but what are you to do when these guys come after you? There's no law for us, Jimmy: we've got to be our own police and our own executioners. If a guy gives you the works you've got to give it him back, and if he gets you then the other boys have got to see you right. That's the way it goes. Suppose I go to the police, eh, and say: 'Mr. Camona poked a machine—gun on me,' what do all them lawyers say. Jimmy? 'Proof! Where's your proof?' And the only proof I've got is my eyes and something here"—he tapped his breast. "In this racket one of two things happens: you bump or you're bumped. And you see why, Jimmy. The law's not with us. We can't take a guy before a judge and say, 'He's done me dirt,' or 'He owes me this and he won't pay me,' and we can't get injunctions against fellows who come into our territory, and we can't advertise and say, 'Our brand of hooch is better than anybody else's.' The only law we know is what we get from lawyers and the coppers. A copper don't mean anything after he's on our pay roll."

"Killing a man seems pretty awful—in cold blood."

Perelli shook his head. "Killing a guy in hot blood—that's awful, because nine times in ten you make a mistake, and you kill somebody you wouldn't kill, that you didn't oughta kill. Look at the war, Jimmy—I was in that. Killing guys we didn't know—regular fellers, some of them. They'd done nothing wrong, but we just sailed in and killed them and they killed us. There's no sense to it. But when we bump off a man there's a reason, and when we do it it's been worth doing. The things you do in hot blood are generally foolish, and the things you do in cold blood are the worth—while ones."

So Jimmy had his first lesson in the ethics of gangland, and, being young, he was impressed.

"Keep next to Shaun O'Donnell," Perelli instructed him. "Maybe you'll be our fixer one of these days."

McGrath told him of the conversation he had had with Shaun.

"Fine," said Perelli. "Him and me thinks alike. Maybe you'll take Victor's place, and that will mean big money for you, Jimmy."

In his heart of hearts he knew that nobody could take Victor Vinsetti's place. Vinsetti had started steeped in the traditions of this strange underworld, with a complete and exhaustive knowledge of its code, founded on actual contact with its members.

One by one Jimmy met the executive of the gang. Angelo, with his lazy smile and his caustic sense of humour, he liked. The blustering Con O'Hara impressed him less favourably. At last he met Minn Lee. He had heard of her, and was curious to see how far rumour accorded with the truth. Her loveliness swept him off his feet. Whatever natural beauty was hers became enhanced by the setting. Tony spent money lavishly upon her. He had imported from the East silks that were worth a little more than their weight in gold. Literally he had changed the tapestry coverings of his furniture to show her colouring to greater advantage. Jimmy came away from that first interview conscious that an empty space in his soul had been filled. He was in love with Minn Lee from the first moment he met her. Thereafter he came very frequently, and Minn watched this development gravely. The one man in the world had come into her life, and that man was Tony Perelli—there could be no other.

Minn Lee looked toward tomorrow, knowing how dread a day that may be. She had inherited from her one European parent a philosophy that went well with the Oriental in her.

Tony asked her one day if she loved him, and she was so long answering that his self—esteem—a very vulnerable point of him—was made raw.

"I suppose so; I think so; yes," she said. "Perhaps I don't know what love is. These girls who come in here, they talk about it as though it was a face massage, a new picture. I can't talk about it. You frighten me, that's all I know."

He looked at her, a question in his frown, in the set of his face, in the cold scrutiny of his eyes.

"You love me, huh? Suppose I had a guy waiting in the hall and I said to you, 'Minn Lee, go out, he is waiting there with his choppers, and the first one who goes through that door will be killed.' Would you—"

She laughed. Very rarely she laughed, and when she did, it was the low laugh of the European, not the high, shrill giggle that he had heard from Chinese girls.

"I would go, yes, of course."

His breath came quickly. "You would be killed, Minn Lee, huh?"

She nodded. "That's nothing," she said.

"For anybody else would you do that?" She thought, her brows puckered.

"No," she said at last. "For nobody else."

A broad smile lightened his fleshy face, hi» brown eyes sparkled.

"That's love, then, you little fool! You lovely darling!"

He took her in his arms and kissed her for a long time.

Chapter 6

 

TONY PERELLI thought a lot about his newest recruit. He liked Jimmy, as far as he was capable of liking anybody—but he thought too much about him. Jimmy became a sort of amusing irritation. Always Tony was planning some place for him in the organization, and he never seemed to fit. He hadn't the balance for a fixer, or the knowledge.

He wasn't yellow, but he seemed incapable of murder. Not that Tony called it murder to dispose of an unfriendly rival or one who had designs upon his own life.

He seemed to fit into Tony's apartment, was attentive to Minn Lee, obviously in love with her. Not that Tony minded that: he regarded it as something of a compliment that a college boy should approve and confirm his choice.

What could he do? Once or twice he had an inclination to slip a grand into Jimmy's hand and pack him off by the 20th Century to New York. He could do this, for Jimmy was not "in" as a gangster might be counted in. He knew no secrets, was privy to no more than the confession which Tony had made as to his responsibility for Vinsetti's death; and somehow Tony rejected the idea that this boy would ever give evidence against him even if he were able to do so.

Kelly was taking an interest in the boy, which was in a sense unfortunate. The Detective Commissioner was clever; Tony never underrated his intelligence or his gifts as a man—catcher. Shrewd, cold, remorseless, and yet with a streak of kindliness which very few people suspected.

He had a trick of calling unexpectedly and usually at the most awkward moments. He came into Tony's apartment late one afternoon and saw Minn Lee, not for the first time. He liked this girl; there was a lot that was fatherly in Kelly, and he had, too, a sardonic sense of humour that found satisfaction in the knowledge that Minn Lee it was who had lowered herself when she accepted the patronage of the gangster.

"Having a grand time, Minn Lee?" he asked.

Tony grinned.

"Is she having a grand time? Say, that baby started living when she came here."

"And when does she start dying?" asked Kelly, not taking his eyes off the girl.

Tony made a grimace. Death—natural death—was a repugnant subject. He, who lived all the time in the shadow of a gun, who knew not from day to day or from hour to hour whence a deadly enemy might spring and a fatal bullet leap, had a horror of illness with possible fatal consequences.

"Ah, 'ow you talk, chief! Here is life and happiness. Why do you worry my little girl with your talk of death?"

Kelly looked round at him with a crooked smile.

"Worrying you more, I guess," he said. "Who's this new kid you've got running around with your hoodlums?"

Tony was ostentatiously puzzled. "I don't get you—"

"You get me all right—McGrath."

"Oh, Jimmy!" Tony smiled indulgently. "He's a friend of a friend of mine. He comes from New York."

"Why couldn't he stay in New York and take a correspondence course in murder?"

Tony shook his head reprovingly. "An awful word," he said. "Murder! There are too many murders in Chicago. Sometimes I wonder if the police are doing their duty, and then I think, 'Well, my friend Mr. Kelly is on the job and all will be well, and the hoodlums will be caught and go to the chair."

"And that makes you sleep comfortable, I guess?" said Kelly, and repeated his question.

"What shall I do with Jimmy? I don't know. He is a good boy, a swell boy. He is no good for rackets—too much of an American gentleman. I guess I'll give him somp'n' to do in Canada."

"Is he the new fixer?" asked Kelly.

"Fixer?" Tony was blankly bewildered.

"You'll want a new one since you bumped off Vinsetti." Kelly never minced his words. "I was wondering who would take his place."

Mr. Tony Perelli was shocked.

"Since I bumped off Vinsetti, chief?" His voice was a pained reproach. "Say, where d'you get that? Vinsetti, my best frien'? No, chief, it was Mike Feeney's gang got him—I'm giving you the straight of it. That bum Shaun O'Donnell gave him the works."

"Will you go on to the stand and testify that?'' asked Kelly quickly.

Tony smiled.

"I am telling you because you, Mr. Kelly, are my frien', not because you, Mr. Kelly, are a cop. I know things but can prove nothing, and if I could prove something would I be a squealer?"

Kelly knew that trouble was brewing between the rival factions. Perelli's position was growing stronger from day to day. His rivals were being wiped out as effectively as words may be wiped from a slate. Feeney still stood as the most formidable of the gang leaders opposing him, and Feeney meant Shaun O'Donnell.

He tried to get in touch with him, but failed. Making contact with a rival gangster, the inventor of the hand—shake murder, was a little difficult, for had not Tony Perelli on a certain night greeted Emilio Moretti with a firm grip of one hand and shot him with the other?

To Perelli's credit it can be said that he wanted peace. He would pay a big price in cash for harmonious working. He had a sincere distaste for killing. He desired that the war he waged should be fought with the minimum number of casualties, and if money could have brought that happy state of affairs, or any concession other than the loss of territory, he would have bought these conditions at almost any price.

With the little gangs he was ruthless. They kept no faith: took his money one day and muscled in on his joints the day after. For these tiny problems there was only one solution: the little gangsters came and went and none saw their going. Charred bodies were found in the woods; men bound with wire were fished up from the bottom of the river; one was shot dead in the crowded vestibule of a theatre. They had all gone their ways, little dust—heaps, easily flattened—Mike Feeney was a dump of slag, not easily removed.

Third—hand contact could be made with the gang. Jimmy met Shaun O'Donnell and lunched with him. Shaun liked the boy, was secretly amused at his enthusiasms, saw no harm in him, and certainly no danger.

Shaun listened gravely to the boy's naive essay in diplomacy. When Jimmy had finished he shook his head.

"There's nothing to it, kid," he said. "Meet Tony! Where—in his gold parlour, the same as Vinsetti did? No, sir!"

"But I swear to you that Tony wants to settle outstanding differences." Shaun blinked at this.

"That's a grand way of describing first—degree murder," he said. "Sure he wants to settle, and we want to settle too. But we want to do the settling—our guns are as good as his. No, kid, keep out of it. You're a swell guy and you don't properly belong to this racket or any other. And you might tell that bum mick, Con O'Hara, to keep that woman of his away from Tony Perelli. Con's due for the works. We've put a cross on him, and he knows it, but all the same, tell him what I told you."

He looked at Jimmy for a long time. "Why don't you get out of Chicago, boy?" he asked. "If it seems good to you, running alongside of a racket, believe me, you're all wrong. Before you know where you are they'll pull you in, and that'll be the end of you. You'd better go home."

Jimmy shook his head. He was bound now to Chicago by bonds which were not to be broken. Whatever might be his fate, Minn Lee was worth the risk.

He sat for hours in the little room he rented, thinking about her, and in moments of complete sanity marvelled and was shocked at himself that he, with his puritanical upbringing, his ultra—European ideals, should be so completely dominated by a girl who was at best a half—caste, and whose history was, by all his standards, unsavoury.

Yet he could not bring himself to think of her as anything but as he saw her, and as from day to day and from hour to hour she impressed him.

It was a puzzling, baffling sort of existence, this gang life. There were so many ramifications to Tony Perelli's business, so many complexities. Interest overlapped interest; men he had regarded as being henchmen of Perelli, and whom he had never thought of as being anything but loyal adherents to the big man, were, he was to discover, allied to other groups, and their allegiance to Tony the most temporary of associations.

Perelli had partners in specific enterprises, gave those partners protection and shared their gains, and when the enterprise was finished, so, too, was the alliance; and the men with whom you hobnobbed and dined and wined would be waiting to drop you when opportunity offered.

The regulars of the gang, the Angelos and Molos, knew of this arrangement, but Jimmy accepted these alliances as permanent.

There was a nice Italian boy called Salvini, whom he frequently met at Tony Perelli's apartment. He played the violin rather well: Tony had been ecstatic about the quality of his art. Then he had ceased to come, and when he enquired, both Angelo and Perelli answered vaguely that the work was finished. What the work was Jimmy did not ask. One day he was driving on the Burnham road and saw a crowd gathered around a small sedan, A squad car came howling and jangling past and pulled to a stop behind the stationary machine, scattering the crowd in all directions. Jimmy also pulled up and went forward through the crowd. He arrived as the police lifted an inanimate figure.

The face was terrible to see, yet Jimmy recognized Salvini and almost swooned with horror.

He hurried back to the big apartment and found Tony choosing favours for a party he was giving that night. As soon as they were alone he blurted out the news. Perelli listened without comment, unmoved; there was nothing remarkable in that. When Jimmy had finished he nodded.

"Sure it was Salvini," he said, "and his own car, Jimmy. That is how it goes. That guy hadn't got the sense to stay quiet. And I spoke to him, Jimmy—I took all that trouble. I said: 'Salvini, when this racket is finished maybe I'll bring you into my organization, but not yet.' And what did he do? He went shooting his mouth over Chicago about my business and the Federal officers raided one of my breweries, and it cost me twenty grand to get it open again."

Jimmy looked at him terrified. "But you—you!" he gasped. "Wasn't he one of your men?" Tony shook his head. "You—you didn't—?"

Perelli shook his head again. "Not me, Jimmy. I don't do such things. But I guess one of the boys got sore with him, and that's all there is to it. What could we do—bring a suit in the courts to stop him talking? Wouldn't Chicago laugh if I put the bulls on him? No, Jimmy, that happened just right. There's nothing to it."

He dismissed the murder airily.

Yet there was a definite line between the gangs. Mike Feeney's executive was on one side, Perelli's on the other. Certain definite territories that might not be invaded, certain no—man's—lands where unceasing battle went on for the possession of this or that strategical point.

Perelli had a monopoly of slot machines—gambling devices which produced a huge profit. Sometimes they would be raided, torn from their place and thrown, broken and smashed, into the street; and after that, dark—faced little men would wander with apparent aimlessness, looking for somebody and conscious that they were being looked for. The end would come with three staccato reports, later the howl of a squad car, the flashing by of an ambulance, and a dishevelled man sitting in Kelly's private room undergoing a grilling.

There was no lack of droppers. You could buy them at a price from New York, Detroit, St. Louis or Philadelphia; expert, two—handed gunmen, who shot with deadly accuracy and never lost their heads in the presence of a pursuing crowd.

Tony seemed to have the pick of them, but his agents watched with unceasing vigilance lest a better man were recruited by the other side—and woe to the recruit!

The business side of the organization was amazing. They had laboratories, where spirit was tested by expert analysts. Liquor came by car and ship and train and even aeroplane. The actual trading side of the organization was so complicated that only an expert accountant could have kept track of it.

One day, when Jimmy was having tea at the most fashionable hotel in Chicago, he was hailed by a strident voice, and Con O'Hara came towards him, beaming. A noisy man, this Con O'Hara, bursting with confidence; something of a brute, a boaster, though he had with it all a sense of humour which came in rare flashes. "Meet Mrs. O'Hara, Jimmy." Jimmy looked at the girl and gasped. He had seen her following O'Hara, but had imagined she was on her way up to her room. Never did he dream of connecting her with the stout, uncouth killer. She was fair, tall and slim; she had the face of a Madonna; the clear grey eyes of a child, red lips that needed no artificial aid…

"Glad to know you, Mr. McGrath—I've heard a whole lot about you."

He wished she hadn't spoken: that lazy, vulgar voice of hers sounded incongruous.

"Sit down, baby." O'Hara pulled out a chair. We're going round to the stores, and Maria's going to make a grand look like two cents."

He beamed at her, was obviously in love with the girl whom he called, without any especial authority, Mrs. O'Hara.

"You said you were going to take me up to see Mr. Perelli."

Her pout was theatrical—baby stuff, thought the disillusioned Jimmy.

"Sure I'll take you, but Tony's out this evening. She's crazy to meet him," he explained to Jimmy.

"I'd like to meet Mrs. Perelli—the Chinese girl."

Con's nose wrinkled.

"She's noth'n', kid, just a little Chink. Pretty? Well, maybe she's that, but she's not my idea of pretty."

She was looking with a steady, appraising eye at Jimmy, and he knew that she approved without being particularly interested in him. She liked Chicago, but not quite so much as New York. It was a grand city, but when all her friends were in Brooklyn—well, one felt lonesome.

She must have heard a great deal about Jimmy from Con, for she paid him none of the respect that might be due if she had imagined he held an important position in the organization. She didn't pity him, either, because Maria Pouluski had not exercised that emotion.

Walking out of the hotel. Jimmy came, most unexpectedly and surprisingly, upon Tony Perelli. He was walking towards Michigan Boulevard and he had his four killers with him, two before and two behind, and Jimmy suspected there were another four on the opposite sidewalk. Though he was not aware of the fact, Perelli very frequently made these excursions on foot, sometimes to transact a little business of the most trivial character, sometimes to buy presents for Minn Lee, but always to obtain the exercise which he found necessary.

Jimmy had learned enough of Perelli's likes and dislikes not to overtake him. He followed the great man at a respectful distance. They turned right into the Boulevard, and Jimmy noticed that the four guards closed on their leader. They had not gone more than fifty yards when a closed car, driving near the kerb, slowed just ahead of the party…

The reports were deafening. A machine—gun bullet ricochetted so close to Jimmy's face that the "wham" of it almost hurt him. One of the guards was on the pavement. Three others were shooting two—handed at the car, which made a sudden swerve and came to a halt in the centre of the road.

The fast—moving traffic stopped or dodged in time. There was a scurry of policemen; one leaped on to the running—board and pulled out the youth who was driving. He was dazed; blood was streaming down the back of his ear; his face was the colour of chalk.

The other two men were huddled on the back seat of the car. Tony's gunmen were experts.

Tony came back from police headquarters a very angry man, and it was unusual for him to display temper. One of his best droppers had been killed, and the fact that two of the attackers were now lying under tarpaulins, awaiting identification, was no satisfaction to him.

"They were Feeney's men all right. Shaun O'Donnell—yeah?"

Minn Lee was putting iodine very tenderly on a scarred knuckle.

"That's how it goes, Jimmy," he said more quietly. "This morning Shaun sent a message to me asking for a little peace talk. This afternoon he sent his torpedoes to make me more peaceful, eh? And he has been speaking against Minn Lee very badly. Oh, Jimmy, the things he has said about Minn Lee!" Jimmy stared at him.

"Why?" he asked hotly. "Minn Lee's done no harm to him."

"That's how it goes, Jimmy." Perelli nodded. "Presently I'll have a talk with you."

"Presently" was very soon. He led Jimmy out to the balcony that overlooked Chicago in the glory of a gorgeous Italian sunset.

"You will see O'Donnell, Jimmy. I think he will come if you telephone."

"But what can I do—" began Jimmy.

Tony silenced him with a gesture.

"Say you want to fix things. You want to ask him how far he'll go. You can get him on the telephone and say you want to make everything right with me, but that I don't know you're 'phoning. I don't want any trouble, Jimmy, and you're the guy that can fix everything.

Shaun O'Donnell was a most difficult man to meet. There was none more slippery, more shy of company and the unprotected streets. Though Jimmy McGrath was not aware of the fact, he had seen more of Mike Feeney's aide than any man in gangland.

It took him two hours to reach O'Donnell by 'phone and his reception was not encouraging.

"If it was anybody but you, Jimmy, I'd tell 'em to go plumb to hell," he said. "He's making you a fixer, eh? Why, last week he was telling the world you were dumb."

"Couldn't we meet somewhere?" asked Jimmy.

There was a silence.

"Perelli doesn't think I had anything to do with that shooting to—day, does he, Jimmy?"

There was an unusual note of anxiety in Shaun O'Donnell's voice.

"Why… yes." Jimmy hesitated. "I guess he does, Shaun."

The very honesty of the answer took Shaun O'Donnell off his guard.

"O.K. I'll meet you. Come along to the corner of Michigan and 48th at ten o'clock to—night. Bring nobody with you, Jimmy—I'm trusting you. I don't think anything will come of it."

Jimmy duly reported the result of the talk and Tony clapped him on the back.

"Jimmy, you're swell," he said. "You go along in your little sedan, get out and wait on the corner till Shaun comes. Con can sit on the floor of the car where he can't be seen. And maybe you won't want Con."

Jimmy listened, his head in a whirl. "How's that?" he asked dully. "What do you want me to do?"

Perelli's eye was cold and glittering. He took from his pocket a neat little Colt, passed it, butt foremost, to Jimmy.

"Stick it under your armpit. Jimmy, and give him the works—good and plenty."

There was a complete silence. Jimmy's face was white.

"What do you want me to do?" It did not sound like his own voice.

"It isn't what I want you to do, it's what I'm telling you to do," said Perelli steadily. "You're going to bump off Shaun O'Donnell."

Chapter 7

 

JIMMIE McGRATH found himself unlocking the door of his room without realizing how he came to be there. He was moving mechanically, thinking not at all. The world had become a monstrous unreality; the living people who thronged the streets and occupied the wild tangle of motor traffic, that moved and stopped obediently at the green and the red traffic lights, were of another kind to himself. They had homes and relatives and interests. Thousands of them were dressing for dinner at this moment; millions were relaxing in the security of their apartments and houses, having no worries beyond the domestic problems which beset every household…

He belonged to a people apart. They were human beings; he was something entirely different, a potential murderer, the cold—blooded assassin of a man who had trusted him, and probably had never trusted another. Well, he must get over that. Jimmie showed his teeth in a painful grin.

Shaun O'Donnell trusted him, and he was going to shoot him. He couldn't believe it. He wrote the words down on a sheet of paper: "Shaun O'Donnell trusts me, and I am going to murder him", and even then he could not find the reality of this bizarre situation. He tore the paper into little pieces and, dropped piece by piece through a blazing gas—ring, saw then fall, pitiful, charred morsels, on the enamelled cover below. That was how he was going into the fire—white, comparatively, and that was how he was coming out—the charred, ugly embers of a man.

That he might be killed himself did not concern him. He sat with his head on his hands, thinking it over and over; had wild ideas of warning Shaun. It was simple. A lift of the telephone, a number—and then what? Tony Perelli would know all about it. News of that kind travels like an electric spark throughout the underworld. The big secrets on which the police speculate are no secrets below ground. Of course Perelli would know that he had been betrayed, and there was only one punishment for that.

Yet it was not the fear of punishment which held Jimmie back: it was a perverse sense of loyalty to a man he liked, to the new clan he had joined, which revolted him, yet demanded his implicit obedience.

This was the end of it, then—the end of Jimmie McGrath. If he killed Shaun O'Donnell, the Feeney gang would put the cross on him. He would be marked for death—he laughed at the thought. No fear here, either. If he killed Shaun he deserved death: that was the beginning and the end of it. Tony would give him protection, would send him out of Chicago till some grander crime, directed against the Feeney crowd, wiped out all memory of lesser offences.

He was desperately sorry for Shaun, but, for some curious reason, not particularly sorry for Mrs. O'Donnell, who had treated him so well and civilly. Somehow he did not think of her as a dependent woman; he could imagine in her none of the romance and tragedy of widowhood. He thought of her only as a cog in the machinery of Mike Feeney's organization. You might fear her but not be afraid of her.

There came a knock at his door, and he jumped out of his chair. He went out into the little hall and opened the door. Con O'Hara was there; he was dressed in a new grey suit, a hard felt hat was on the back of his head, and in his large face was stuck a fragrant cigar.

"Busy, kid?" he asked.

Jimmie opened the door wider and invited him in with a gesture.

"Livin' alone, eh? Say, these apartment houses ain't fit for a dorg! Tony talks about putting you into a swell apartment."

He looked round the gaunt room disapprovingly.

"Not fit for a dorg!" he repeated.

And then he sat down at the table opposite Jimmie, looking at the boy with half—closed eyes.

"All set for to—night, kid?"

Jimmie shrugged. He wanted to appear unconcerned, called upon all his reserve of vanity to aid him in this affectation of indifference.

"Sure."

"You come round to the garage and take my flivver, and don't pull a rod on the man you'll find sitting down on the floor, because that'll be me. Feeney's crowd are Big Eyes. They'll be watching the car go out, and if I'm sitting there with you they'll know all about it. The first thing that'll happen to us will be a roadster coming alongside, and a typewriter working double time!"

Con O'Hara was a shrewd, understanding man. To give this loud—mouthed braggart his full measure of credit, he was absolutely without fear. He had been a dropper since his boyhood, had killed his man in his teens. To—night's work meant nothing unusual; nothing at any rate to stir his pulses in anticipation.

He had met Jimmie's type before: had superintended the blooding of many boys, had seen them swagger to their villainy and cringe, found them white and black and occasionally yellow. There was nothing yet to suggest that Jimmie was yellow. All these preliminary pallors and tremblings and breathlessness were inevitable to the occasion.

"Say, don't let it worry you, Jimmie." He took out his cigar and blew a cloud of smoke to the dingy ceiling. "Why, it's noth'n'. Everybody's got to die sometime, ain't they? Say, to read them God—awful newspapers, you'd think that if a guy hadn't been bumped off he'd have lived for ever! Ain't that the fact? Did you ever think, Jimmie, what you may be savin' a feller by putting him out? All the sickness an' the pain an' everythin'!"

Jimmie made a gesture of impatience. "I don't want to think about it—that's the truth."

"Of course you don't want to think about it," soothed Con.

He gave some instructions, dictated a little timetable, and swaggered out to report to his superior the result of his visit.

Tony was not at home; he and Minn Lee were driving somewhere in the country. Perelli often drove out in his armoured car for no other reason than for a little recreation. He had no set times, no regular routes. After several attempts to ambuscade him Feeney had given up hope of writing finish to the feud through this method.

Angelo, as usual, was in the apartment, checking documents that had come from Canada. Angelo Verona was something more than confidential clerk to Tony Perelli. By all he was regarded as the legitimate successor to the leadership of the gang. Oddly enough, he was not a Sicilian. What his real name was nobody quite knew; they accepted Verona both to identify him and to establish his birthplace. He was clever, combining strategical sense with considerable business ability.

The Feeneys and the O'Donnells of life respected and feared him. Shaun used to say that he was the most dangerous member of the Perelli crowd. Angelo was a brilliant two—handed gunman, a machine—gun expert, and an authority upon alcohol. As a rule he took little part in the outside fighting, confining himself to, and taking part in, all that happened within the orbit of Tony Perelli's personal leadership.

If Shaun O'Donnell spoke of him in complimentary terms, Angelo had no respect at all for O'Donnell. He did not like Irishmen. He liked Con O'Hara less than any Irishman he had ever met.

"Is the chief around?" asked Con, finding the most comfortable chair in the apartment and dropping into it, as he produced another cigar and bit off the end.

Angelo looked up from his work.

"He does not like you to call him 'chief', Con," he said quietly.

He had the quick, staccato speech of a man who is conscious of speaking a foreign language and is anxious to get every sentence pronounced as quickly and as correctly as possible. Yet Angelo had been born in America, and, except for the brief domestic period of his life, had spoken no other language.

"I've seen the kid," said Con.

Angelo, busy with an account, grunted something.

"That boy will never make a dropper in a million years, Angelo."

"Is that so?" Angelo was politely interested. "The kid being—?"

"Jimmie McGrath. But Tony needn't worry about to—night. Say, I'll handle Shaun—"

Angelo leaned back in his chair, and his thin smile was offensive.

"I surely get all the news from you. Con," he said. "What's all this stuff about Shaun? Say, you ought to be a newspaper man! Why don't you go down to the Tribune office and give them the dope on it?"

Con's frown was heavy and black. "I suppose I can't talk with you, huh? What's the matter with all you guys, Angelo, pretending there's nothin' doin' when there's sump'n' doing?" Angelo's dark eyes transfixed him.

"There's nothin' doing in this outfit that's worth talking about," he said emphatically. "I was reading in a book somewhere that the best thing about a torpedo was that it made no noise, and that's a pretty good kind of torpedo. Maybe in New York people like to hear themselves talk, but around here, Con, we behave as though there was a mike in every corner of the room, all leading down to police headquarters."

Con's lips curled.

"Police headquarters! Listen, you fellers—"

"Us fellers know them fellers," said Angelo, emphasizing every word.

Tony came in at that moment, alone. Minn Lee had gone to her room. He nodded lazily to Con, and, walking over to where Angelo was sitting, talked to him in a low voice and in Italian. Tony often chose that language for his more confidential communications, and these were the only occasions when Angelo responded in his mother tongue.

It was a practice which irritated Con. It made him feel out of things.

"Say, what's the idea of leavin' me out of it?"

Perelli turned his insolent gaze on his servant.

"Did anybody tell you you were in it, Mr. Con O'Hara?" he asked.

"Well, I happen to be here—" began Con.

"And who invited you here? Maybe you think this is a speakeasy where you can drop in just as and when, Con?"

"I come in to tell you about Jimmie," said Con, his vanity hurt. "Say, I'd rather do that job without Jimmie. That kid looks like falling apart."

Perelli walked slowly towards the man, standing before him, his hands on his hips, his head tilted on one side.

"Did I ask you anything about what you'd rather do?" he demanded. "This is Jimmie's killing. If he gets this fellow without your gun, let him get him. You're there to help Jimmie, in case he gets nervous and Shaun pulls on him. It isn't a question of taking him—he's taking you along. Get that, Con O'Hara."

Con's face was dark and sulky. He was an injured man.

"That's O.K.," he grumbled. He tried to find an excuse for remaining and producing an atmosphere less hostile, and failing, went forth ignominiously in silence.

For a long time after he had gone neither of the two men spoke, and then:

"It is wrong to send that boy, Antonio," said Angelo in Italian. "If you wish to give him experience, let him try a job less important." Tony shook his head.

"He's not 'in' yet," he said. "That's the only way to get him there. Till Jimmie's got to watch every step, till he knows that every one of Mike Feeney's gunmen is looking and waiting for him, he just won't know what this racket is."

Angelo shook his head. "I disagree. We'll let it stay at that," he said. "You're going to break a good workman."

Tony did a lot of city travel. He had depots and offices, laboratories, breweries, and places less easy to write about, that required his occasional personal attention, and since there were many of them, hardly a day passed when he did not leave his apartment. Usually the hours between six and nine were the dullest of the day for Minn Lee, and the arrival of Jimmie had brought her an appreciable relief from the tedium of the early evening.

Jimmie's visits to the apartment had been fewer lately. She liked Jimmie, in a sense was fond of him. He stood for something entirely outside any experience she had had since she had left college. He and Commissioner Kelly stood for an Americanism with which she was no longer brought into actual contact. When Kiki, the Japanese servant, came to her room to tell her that Jimmie was waiting in the saloon, she felt a little lightening of the heart, and, putting down the embroidery on which she was working, she hurried out to meet him.

"Why, Jimmie, I thought you were never coming again—" she began, and then she saw his face.

It was white and set. There was a new coldness in his eyes.

"Aren't you well, Jimmie?"

He shook his head.

"I'm O.K., Minn Lee. Thought I'd call m and have a little talk with you."

She smiled and indicated a chair.

"A long talk, Jimmie," she said. "Tony will not be home until ten o'clock."

He drew a long breath. By ten o'clock many things would have happened, the whole course of his life changed.

He found it difficult to begin, but at last stumbled into an opening.

"If anything happens to me, Minn Lee… I want you to know that you've made a whole lot of difference… You've been something terribly big in my life, Minn Lee… that sounds mushy and insincere, but it's God's truth. I guess folks would think I'm crazy to feel about you like I do. I know such a lot about you and about Perelli… You're not married, are you?"

She shook her head.

"Why, of course, I knew that," he went on, "but it doesn't matter. I couldn't give you anything. I'm just a poor, weak, amateur hoodlum."

He laughed bitterly.

"I guess I'm being sorry for myself."

There was a silence here.

"What do you mean—if anything happens to you, Jimmie?" she asked quietly, and he forced a smile.

"Well, you know what this racket is," he said. "Here to—day—and gone to—morrow."

"Why should you be gone to—morrow, Jimmie?" Her grave eyes did not leave his face. "Is something terrible happening to—night?"

He opened his mouth to reply, changed his mind, and shook his head.

"No. That's all, Minn Lee." He rose abruptly to his feet.

"Are you going?" she asked, in surprise. He nodded. He had found it sufficiently difficult to control his voice; it was almost impossible now. He walked swiftly towards her, took one of her hands in his and for a moment fondled it before he pressed it to his lips. In another instant he was gone.

The garage was only a few blocks away; he went there afoot, asking for Con's car, but not in Con O'Hara's name. For garage purposes Con O'Hara had a distinct name. One of the hands pointed out the machine and took no further notice.

His heart was beating painfully as he walked up to the door and pulled it open.

"The other door, you bonehead!" hissed a voice, and he saw the figure of Con O'Hara crouching on the floor, and over his bent head a black cloth.

He slammed the door close, walked round the machine and got in on the steering—wheel side. It was very dark; the main road was wet and slippery. He drew out of the garage, turned left and moved at a leisurely pace, coming to Michigan Boulevard in five minutes.

A car passed him. Somebody switched a spotlight full in his face. He was momentarily blinded.

"What did I tell you, Jimmie?"

Con O'Hara removed the cloth which covered him.

"They were looking for me."

"Why you?" asked Jimmie. It was the first rational question he had asked the man.

"Me or anybody," said the other impatiently. "If I'd been sitting up there by your side, do you know what would have happened? They'd have poked a machine—gun on to us, and that would have been farewell Chicago."

They reached the outskirts of the city and were to undergo another test. A second car came slowly towards them, a light struck Jimmie right in the face and held. He ducked his head to avoid the glare, passed out of the circle of light, blinded.

"That's Shaun," said Con in a low voice. "Mike Feeney doesn't know he's meeting you, or we wouldn't have gone far, believe me kid! Take your time, Jimmie—you've got all of it!"

They came at last to the rendezvous, a deserted little boulevard, from which ran at right angles a street filled with middle—class houses. The corner block was unbuilt on, and was surrounded by a plain fence. Jimmie drew the car to the sidewalk. His heart was thumping so madly now that he could hardly breathe. He put his hand into his pocket; the gun was there, and he thumbed back the hammer, and, drawing out the weapon, laid it on the seat by his side.

There was nobody in sight, except a car or two that went whizzing townwards.

Would Shaun come by car? If he did there would be trouble. Jimmie hoped he would come that way, attended by gunmen, with a machine—gun and every form of frightfulness to wipe out the monstrous affront of his murder.

Whatever happened, Shaun must be killed. Though it break his heart to do this, the enemy of Perelli must be blotted out of existence.

"Can you see anything, kid?" Con's muffled voice came up from the floor.

"Nothing."

He looked through the little window at the back of the car. A woman was walking along towards them; she carried a heavy basket. She was obviously a help at one of the houses. She passed; and then Jimmie saw a figure walking quickly towards them along the sidewalk, keeping in the shadows. Nearer and nearer it came, and the boy almost swooned when he recognized the man.

He stepped out of the car, his legs giving beneath him, his hand gripping the gun which he held behind him.

"Is that you, Jimmie?"

Shaun O'Donnell came quickly towards him.

"Listen, kid: I can only give you a few minutes. There's trouble in town, and—"

Jimmie tried to steady his gun. He jerked it in front of him and fired. The first shot missed. He fired again. Shaun O'Donnell was reaching for his revolver, staggered back against the fence.

"You—!"

Three shots thundered in rapid succession almost in Jimmie's ear. Con O'Hara fired coolly, scientifically, unerringly. Shaun O'Donnell slumped down by the fence. Somewhere a whistle blew.

"Beat it!" snarled Con, and leapt for the car.

He took the wheel. Jimmie sat beside him, a huddled figure, incapable of movement or thought.

Shaun O'Donnell was dead… he had killed him… lured him to his death… the blackest of treachery…

"Oh, my God!"

The car was flying. Con O'Hara had once been a racing motorist, and his machine was tuned for speed.

As he drove, he talked.

"I got him. Kid, you missed him. Say, you fell apart. I'm not blaming you, Jimmie. You ain't got my experience, nor my nerve either. Don't worry, kid. Sit tight and take a drink of that stuff you'll find in the pocket. Say, did you see him drop? First shot. That baby was right under the heart, Jimmie. Say, when I pull a rod on a man, that man don't take no interest in noth'n' but dying."

Jimmie sat, staring through the smeared glass of the window. Murderer… Jimmie McGrath, murderer!

Chapter 8

 

THE news flashed through Chicago—Shaun O'Donnell had got his. And it was news of the first importance, for Shaun was a big shot amongst little shots; a power; a man to whom lesser gangsters turned, if not for comfort, for very material assistance. A big shot in this sense, that at his word men died quickly and often in painful circumstances.

It was Shaun who had taken Perelli's boyhood friend so daringly that it was the talk of their world. Perelli and this man, whose name was Amigo, had been sitting together in the latter's apartment, and the host had been brought out to a telephone call. He was never seen again till they found him in a thin plantation near the Burnham Road, nor easily recognizable, for he had been shot and buried in quicklime. Tony remembered that till it was convenient to forget: friendships must not interfere with business.

And here was Shaun dead, and his wife displaying an unexpected aspect of femininity in a fit of hysterics, crying and screaming blue murder, and Detective Harrigan's car at the door, waiting to take her to the Brother's Hospital, where Shaun lay beyond any other help than that which the hastily summoned priest could give to him.

The little priest stood with Harrigan by the bedside of the unconscious man. The mud—stained cyclist patrol who had found the body and brought it in was an interested spectator. Curiously enough, in all his years of service, he had never been brought vis—a—vis a gang shooting.

The interne, white—coated, cool, very capable, a little indifferent, conscious only that he was to be relieved at midnight and had a date with a girl at the Blackstone, where the Medical Association were having their dance, could afford to wait with patience for the inevitable end.

Harrigan, the first to hear the news, had certain futile duties to perform, and their futility was emphasized by the whispered question of the priest.

"Have you any idea who did this?"

The interne heard the whisper and looked round, smiled and nodded.

"You needn't whisper, talk just as loud as you like: you're not disturbing him, because he can't hear you. He'll be conscious again, but not for long, I guess."

The priest drew a long breath. He, too, was meeting this form of dissolution for the first time. He was young, Rome—trained, an idealist and new to Chicago. His ideals were only capable of attainment given certain reactions in his flock—those reactions were neither audible nor visible. He spoke English with a slight accent; some day was to go back to Rome and the tranquillity of a bishopric, for he was of noble birth, expensively educated and marked for advancement.

"These crimes, I cannot understand them!" He was puzzled. "Every week I read in the newspapers of somebody who is killed this way. It is dreadful! This is a gang shooting?"

Harrigan nodded slowly.

"Yeh. He was one of Mike Feeney's crowd."

The priest looked at the dying man.

"I met him. Father Romani introduced him. Shaun O'Donnell? Of course, he was an altar boy at the Holy Name Cathedral."

"That's so," said Harrigan.

A curious fatality pursued these boys who had started so promisingly in the cloistered quiet of the great cathedral.

"Where did you find him?" asked Harrigan, addressing the interested policeman, who woke up with a start.

He had found him on the corner of Atlantic and 95th. He himself was two blocks away when the shooting started and had come up in time to see the sedan melt into the darkness. He had run to the nearest 'phone and got headquarters on the wire.

"He said nothing?" asked Harrigan.

The policeman thought he had said "Jimmie". He was certain he had cursed a little "in a kinder drowsy way".

Harrigan thought it was a queer place for a bumping and wondered how Shaun had come to be there without his guard and his killers, why he had stopped his own car two hundred yards down the road and had driven out of Chicago without a single attendant. He frowned as he considered all the possibilities of the case, and wondered aloud if Mike Feeney had put him on the spot.

It seemed a new phrase for the priest.

"Put him on the spot?"

"Sure, father," nodded Harrigan, and then the priest remembered that he had heard of such fatalities.

"Sent to his death by his own gang? Horrible! But why?"

Harrigan shook his head again and answered patiently.

"Sometimes it is the price they pay for peace," he said. "Gang leaders can't always control their own men, and if one of them starts to shoot up a rival gang, the leader can either take on his quarrel or put him on the spot—send him to some place where the other gang can get him."

The young priest whispered:

"A human sacrifice!"

"It would be, father," said Harrigan, with a frosty smile, "if they were human, but these—" His gesture towards the bed was very expressive.

Shaun was moving. They could hear the faint sound of his voice. The interne looked up quickly and beckoned with a jerk of his head—his hands being occupied.

"You won't have much time," he said in a low voice.

Harrigan sat down on the side of the bed and bent over.

"Hullo, Shaun. You know me, boy? Pat Harrigan. Captain Pat Harrigan… "

He saw a gleam of intelligence in the tired eyes.

"You are all jake, boy! I have been a good friend of yours, Shaun… Sure I have. Looked after your mother the first time you went to stir, didn't I? You are going to tell me who did this, aren't you?"

A whisper from the wreck on the bed. Harrigan bent his ear and nodded.

"Sure, I've sent for your wife. I rushed my own car for her. They never gave you a chance, Shaun. They put you on the spot, didn't they?" He paused expectantly.

Shaun O'Donnell understood, but there was no answer.

"Come clean with it, kid. It wasn't Feeney? Two of the Perelli gang, wasn't it, Shaun?"

The eyes were fixed in a stare, and Harrigan's voice became more urgent.

"You're not going to God with a lie on your lips, are you? Wasn't it Con O'Hara bumped you? Shaun, for God's sake, don't go out without tellin' the truth! Perelli's gang got you? Con O'Hara, wasn't it?"

He waited, waited…

True to the gang tradition, Shaun did not speak. The police meant nothing. Their promise of vengeance meant nothing. He was silent not because he did not trust the police, not from any mistaken sense of honour. He had no faith in policemen, because he knew that his own police would settle all accounts and his own executioners would move expeditiously and unerringly to avenge him. He relied on a higher authority than the authority of the established law. In his dimming consciousness he knew that the machinery of revenge would be working, and working swiftly.

Harrigan read the signs in the eyes. He turned to the priest and beckoned him forward.

"That's how they are—dumb!" he said bitterly, and knelt, looking at his watch as he did so. Shaun did not keep him waiting very long.

Mrs. O'Donnell came too late to the hospital to do any more than make preparations for her husband's funeral. If she had wept she did not weep now. Her instructions were practical to the point of heartlessness. It may have been that this gruesome business of designating the exact quality of silver casket that should receive all that was mortal of Shaun O'Donnell, and the injunction that it should cost no more than so much, were an anodyne to the stark desolation of her soul.

The interne, dressed for his party, listened, amazed, to the discussion that took place in his office. She had with her three of Mike Feeney's most trusted chiefs and an effeminate youth who wrote shorthand in a book with a red leather cover with gold edging. She left the hospital with the three men and drove back to her apartment with them.

The most important of these, "Spike" Milligan, weedy—looking, hatchet—faced, sandy—haired, with the appearance of a well—furnished bank clerk, by nature more deadly than a ring snake, turned to the more pressing business of reprisal. Mike Feeney was in Indiana, superintending certain important negotiations. Milligan had got him on the long distance wire and Mike was speeding back through the night.

"It was Jimmie McGrath and Con O'Hara," said Mrs. O'Donnell. "You saw them coming back, didn't you, Spike?"

Spike nodded.

"I knew Shaun was going to see Jimmie," she went on. "He didn't often tell me where he was going, but he told me that, and I tried to get him to stay home. Perelli sent Jimmie because he blew Shaun trusted him. Those two men have got to be fixed before Mike gets back."

"That's what I say," said Spike.

The other men nodded.

"Jimmie's nothing—just yeller—"

"But he ain't going to get away wid it," said Spike. "O'Hara's got an apartment on North State. He's living there with his woman."

"But Perelli—" said one of the others.

"Ain't one of you boys got enough guts to get him?" Mrs. O'Donnell spat the question.

Spike looked thoughtfully at his well—manicured finger—nails.

"That's not easy, Mrs. O'Donnell." There was a note of apology in his tone. "The other two, why, they don't think that anybody's seen them—they'll be easy. I'll get Con and Jimmie if they're not on the run."

The woman's hard face set into an ugly mask of hate.

"I'd fix Perelli if he'd see me," she said between her teeth.

There was a long, long silence, and then she rose abruptly from the table.

"Go and get these boys," she said, and the "droppers" went out to their mission.

Chapter 9

 

THE reactions of Jimmie McGrath were peculiar and unexpected. He was quite cool, his mind perfectly ordered, when he said good night to Con O'Hara and walked the rest of the way home.

He had taken his step and there was nothing else for him to do but to wait. He was beyond pity either for Shaun O'Donnell or for himself. There was blood on his hands—the blood of a friend. He was a cold—hearted midnight assassin. He had not understood these shootings till now. They had been beyond his comprehension. He had never been able to put himself in the place of the killer, and now he was a killer himself. He was numb to grief or remorse. It was as though a local anaesthetic had been applied to his sense of right and wrong. Just numb. The more sensitive places of his mind wess beyond feeling.

He went upstairs to his room, unlocked the door, put on a light, bolted the door behind him and washed his hands. He was terribly thirsty, drank glass after glass of water. He took off his coat and vest, loosened his collar, and, kicking off his shoes, lay down on the bed, pulling the coverlet over him, and switched out the light.

Sleep should have been denied him, yet he slept immediately, and was heavy in dreamless oblivion when a tap came to his door. He was awake instantly and off the bed. His gun was on the table where he had left it. He took it up, his heart thumping painfully. Again came the knock, and then a voice he recognized—it was Angelo's.

"Open the door, Jimmie."

He drew back the bolts and Angelo came in.

"Sleeping, eh?" He was frankly surprised. "Put on your shoes and coat."

"Does Tony want me?"

Angelo shook his head slightly.

"He doesn't want to see you, but we have got another place for you to sleep tonight. This one ain't so good, Jimmie."

Jimmie McGrath felt his throat go dry.

"Do they know—" he stammered, "about Shaun and—and me—?"

"Sure they know," said Angelo coolly. "Con was seen driving back to town with you."

Angelo looked at his watch.

"Step on it," he said curtly.

Jimmie fumbled his feet into his shoes, drew on his coat and, slipping his gun into his pocket, followed the other man out of the room.

"Put out the light and lock the door," commanded Angelo, and Jimmie obeyed the first instruction.

He was trembling violently. His breath came in short, shallow gasps. He felt like a man who had been running for a long distance.

They went downstairs into the street. A little way along a car was drawn up and loitering on the sidewalk were two men. He did not speak to them, nor did Angelo. They left them behind.

A quarter of an hour later Jimmie found a new lodging in a small hotel near to Tony Perelli's apartment.

"Don't open the door to anybody. I'll send somebody early in the morning and then you can have breakfast brought in. Tony will want to see you."

"Where is Con?"

"Home," said Angelo impatiently.

He was not in the mood to answer questions. He had himself been pulled out of bed to secure the new recruit to the murder squad, and was anxious to return to that comfortable place.

He waited outside the door until he heard the bolt snap home, and went down the elevator.

Perelli owned this hotel and Jimmie was safe for the night.

Spike Milligan did not go immediately in search of Jimmie McGrath. He accepted the harder task first. Con O'Hara's apartment was located. There was a light in the window and it was to be seen from the street. Spike went to the nearest drug store and called him on the wire.

"Say, is that you, Con?"

Milligan knew O'Hara—they had been members of the same gang in New York."

"It's Spike speaking."

"Yuh?" came Con's cautious voice.

"Say, Con, I want to see you. Shaun O'Donnell got his tonight and it looks as though this outfit is breaking up. Say, what's the chance of comin' over?"

Con O'Hara was not clever, but he shared with the lower animals a certain instinct of danger.

"Sure, there's a chance. See me in the morning, Spike. I've got a touch of grippe, and I ain't been out all night."

"What's the matter with tonight?" asked Spike.

"What's the matter with the morning?" asked Con.

A little pause, and then: "Maybe, I'll call in and see you and take a chance—"

"You don't know what chance you'll take if you call on me tonight, kid," said Con, and there was a significance in his tone not to be overlooked.

Spike Milligan did a bit of quick thinking. Was O'Hara in or was he just one of these floating guerillas loosely attached to the Perelli crowd, that Tony sometimes employed? Spike knew the day and hour of Con O'Hara's arrival in Chicago. The balance of probability was that Con was still a free—lance killer, as yet unprotected by Perelli's organization.

"This guy won't be hard to get," he said, "and there'll be no rap coming."

He was a little terrified of Mrs. O'Donnell—all the crowd were. To go back to her and report a failure would be to invite trouble. He made to where he had left his "torpedoes" and after a hasty consultation they moved towards the block where Con O'Hara had his residence.

To get into the apartment was a simple matter. There was a janitor, who was also the elevator man. The front door was open day and night. As they came in sight of the building they saw something else: a closed sedan came slowly from the direction of the city and pulled up within fifty yards of the entrance. The head lamps were dim and became dimmer, and nobody alighted.

Spike halted in the shadows and grinned. To walk into that building was to invite himself to an insignificant funeral, for the honours of the day would go to Shaun. They went back to the place where his car was parked and drove towards Jimmie's house. If there was a car waiting here, there was nothing left for him to do but to return to his employer.

They drove past the building; there was no sign of car or guard. A hundred yards away Spike alighted, walked slowly back, and crossing the road, reached the closed door of the apartment house. To open the door was easy enough: he had lodged at the place himself and after his interview with Mrs. O'Donnell he had gone home and got the key.

The passage was dark. He went softly up the stairs to the third floor and knocked gently at Jimmie's door. There was no reply. He knocked again, listening intently. If Jimmie had moved in his bed, he would have heard him, but there was no move, no creak of mattress or sound of stealthy footstep. He turned the handle, and when he found that the door was not locked he knew that the room was empty. Jimmie had not completely carried out instructions.

Spike switched on the light and looked round. The bed had been slept on, but not in; he read all the signs with a skill born of practice. Perelli had got him away. And then a sudden, queer premonition of danger sent a chill down his spine. If Perelli had got his killer away, it was because he knew somebody was going after him.

He turned off the lights and went softly down the stairs, his pistol arm stiffly extended, sensitive to every sound. Spike's thumb was on the back—drawn hammer of his Colt, the trigger tightly pressed. He had but to release his thumb and whosoever stood within the range of his gun died.

Turning the knob of the front door, he opened it and stopped. Immediately opposite, at the foot of the steps down which he must pass, was the sedan he had seen near Con O'Hara's house. He stood, thunderstruck, for a fraction of a second and then something hard and painful thumped against his spine.

"Step lively, Spike," whispered a voice behind him.

He was pushed out on to the top step, and simultaneously two men came out of the car, one walked up to him and took away the gun from his hand, slipping his thumb under Spike's to lower the trigger gently. "What's the idea?"

His throat was dry, his voice husky. He glanced up and down: no sign of his own torpedoes; they would be waiting for him two blocks away unless they had seen the car drive up. Maybe they were too dumb to see that. The man behind him closed the door softly. "You're going a ride. Spike," he said. He was pushed into the car by the side of the driver. The machine moved on.

"Say, what's the idea?" said Spike again, "I was taking a message from Shaun to Jimmy."

There was a chuckle from the seat behind him. "Now maybe you can take a message from Jimmy to Shaun!" mocked the voice. The car gathered speed, and Spike could do no more than sit and wonder just where they were heading for. Each gang had its favourite spot.

All thought, imagination, hope, human volition went out deafeningly. The driver slowed the car and drew up at the sidewalk. The man who had fired put down his pistol, and, leaning over, flung open the door, lifted the dead man by the shoulders and heaved him on to the road, the car swerving scientifically to avoid its wheels' contact with the sprawling figure, and then the machine circled and went back the way it had come.

The killer lit a cigarette.

"Might have got him outside to do it," grumbled the driver. "It'll take all night to clean up this coat of mine."

"Forget it," said the killer,

"Or burn it," said the other. "Say, what are furnaces for?"