Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist Part 33

"Last night," stated Big Slim. "I spotted a fellow in the dark who's turned a trick on a friend of mine. So I made a try to get him. But,"

with candor, "I didn't. He got me."

"Tough," sympathized Bat. "But wait! Maybe you'll have your chance to come back. You never can tell."

Big Slim grinned. With his distorted face this was not a pleasant sight, and the look in his eyes was sly and wicked.

"I'll get back," said he. "Leave it to me for that. I'll lay him out so stiff that a slab in the morgue'll be bent like a pretzel in comparison."

Bat looked at the man with all the unrestraint of the practiced negotiator.

"Who is he?" he asked, carelessly.

Again the sly, wicked look came into the eyes of the burglar.

"Don't be in a hurry," said he. "You'll know when the time comes."

Bat drew in a deep, silent breath at this; and when the burglar threw open the lid of a trunk, which he dragged from under the bed, and took from the tray a black, well-oiled automatic pistol, he felt a tightening of the scalp. But Big Slim put the weapon in his pocket.

"No one's ever tagged me out without me landing on his neck," declared he. "I do it one way or another, but I always do it."

They went down-stairs and Big Slim led the way into a back room. It was the same in which Bat had seen the Swiss playing the flute on the night of Nora's unaccountable visit. But Bohlmier was not at all musically inclined at this time.

"No, no," he was saying to the thick-necked young man, "I will nothing to eat have. I am seek! Ach, how I am seek!"

Big Slim looked at Scanlon and grinned; then he whispered behind his hand:

"He was in on the same lot of treatment. The guy got him before he did me." Then to Bohlmier he added: "How's the sore throat?"

"Bad," replied the Swiss, in a strained way. "I a doctor haf had. He said I was lucky that I was not killed."

"Well, you wasn't," said Big Slim. "So forget that part of it."

The eyes of Bohlmier, with a cat-like glare in them, went to Bat; then he motioned to the burglar, who bent over his chair. The Swiss whispered croakingly in the other's ear. Bat could get a word here and there, but not sufficient to make any sense of what was being said. Once or twice he saw the eyes of the two men turn upon him, and their eager expression--deadly and cunning--made him uneasy.

"Sure," he heard Big Slim say. "That's right. I didn't miss that trick."

Then the whispering resumed. He caught fragments, such as: "Get him down there." "Gaffney's." "I'll fix him, all right."

"Who, me?" said Bat, to himself, s.h.i.+fting uneasily from one foot to the other. "Do they really know I'm the party who put them on the hospital list? And are they framing it, right under my nose, to get even?"

He had heard of such things before--the fate of a victim planned in his hearing and he never the wiser for it. But he hunched his great shoulders and nodded his head. There were victims and victims. And if they tried to lead him into anything he resolved to do his best to prove to them that it was not a sheep they were handling.

"I'll make the proceedings much more interesting than last night's," he promised himself. "There was no 'follow up' then. This time there'll be plenty of it."

In a few moments more the burglar turned to Bat.

"Bohlmier wants us to go down and see a friend of ours," said he.

"After we get some feed, you know."

"Sure," said Bat, readily. "Anything to be sociable."

They nodded to the Swiss, who sat following them with inflamed eyes as they left the room. Their journey through the dirty streets to Joey Loo's was a silent one; and as they entered the high-smelling, underground place and seated themselves, the silence was unbroken. One of the detached fragments which Scanlon had caught, a few minutes before, kept recurring to him.

"Gaffney's!" flashed and reflashed through his mind. He paid no attention to it at first; but the mere repet.i.tion of the name finally claimed his attention.

"Gaffney's!" He considered it thoughtfully as Big Slim talked to the Chinaman who came to serve them. "Why, yes; didn't I hear that name somewhere before? And not so long ago, unless I'm much mistaken."

He pondered; but where he had heard it refused to come back, and so he dismissed it from his mind. He gave his order to the stolid, greasy-looking Oriental; and then, looking about the place, said to his companion:

"Funny looking crowd, eh?"

Big Slim allowed his eyes to flit about from one pale, hollow face to another.

"There's enough to start a 'snow' party right here, if you had the stuff," said he. "I could pick you out twenty customers without making a mistake."

"It beats booze, that stuff," said Bat. "I've seen some tough examples of how it worked."

"Great business," said Big Slim, a covetous glint in his eyes. "Big money in it. I'd like to raise a nice stake and get hold of a lot of 'snow.' I'll bet I'd take in more real change than a gambling house."

"Stick to cracking cribs," begged Bat "It's got more stuff in it for a man with nerve."

"Listen," said the lank burglar as he leaned across the table, "using your nerve all the time ain't what they tell you it is. Nerve ain't with you always; and when it's all warped and faded with hard usage, that's all you get. If you can't buy more and you can't patch up the old, what are you going to do? So why not a corner in the dope market as an easy graft?"

"It don't listen good," said Bat, positively. "I'd rather get a big name for opening babies' banks. It wouldn't sting so much."

"You're a regular particular guy, ain't you?" Big Slim had a disagreeable grin on his thin-lipped mouth, and eyed Scanlon attentively. "You must have been well brought up."

They ate their food in comparative silence when it was brought; and as soon as they had finished the burglar pushed back his chair.

"Let's get down to Gaffney's," said he. He put his hand to his swollen face as they arose. "I've got a little trick to turn."

The streets were crowded with a ma.s.s of cheap pleasure seekers; the burlesque theatres and motion picture places were besieged with throngs; from the open fronts of auction houses the strident voices of the auctioneers rose in feeling appeals that every one grasp the opportunities offered. "Store show" keepers stood upon high, narrow platforms draped all about with canvases upon which were painted monstrous errors of nature and "wonders" fresh from far-off lands. There was a smell of uncleaned corners and open drains; the very mud of the streets held a greasy quality which made the unaccustomed pa.s.ser shudder a little, and make haste.

And upon all this was thrown the glitter of many lights; from iron poles they hung in huge white domes; windows, filled with flashy merchandise, blazed with cl.u.s.ters of them; reeking alleys were exposed by the glare of their hanging lights as is a deep-set, poisonous sac by the scalpel of the surgeon. Illuminated signs of all sorts glared at one; some were lurid and stationary; others again flowed about in never ending contortions, making grotesque and high-pitched proclamations.

"Gaffney's round here somewhere?" asked Bat, after they had walked through the district for some little time.

"Just off here a little ways," replied the burglar. They turned a corner under the lee of a glaring saloon and found themselves in a small street which lay like a back-water off that thronged avenue. "There it is now."

Bat saw a dingy-looking place with the name "Gaffney" painted in red letters upon the window and two billiard cues in yellow crossed beneath it. They entered and were greeted by a babble of voices, an incessant clicking of b.a.l.l.s and the thick odor of poor tobacco. Here and there games of more than ordinary interest were going on; the princ.i.p.als were, as a rule, fox-like young men who wore no coats and staked their handling of their cues against the world for a living. Small crowds were gathered about these contests; the "shots" were lightning-like, and of great precision.

Lining the walls were rows of men, some with vacant faces, others alert and predatory; and as Bat looked about, he noted what he had noted in such places many times before.

"A hang-out for quitters and a meeting-place for yeggs," he thought.

"There's more good time wasted in places like this and more crooked deeds hatched than would put a roof over Lake Michigan."

With Big Slim, he took a station at the far end of the place; here and there was a doorway opening into a smaller room and in which more tables were erected.

"Get that fellow with the curly mop," said the burglar, indicating this doorway. "Inside there."