“About fifty dollars’ worth.”
“Gimme it quick!” said the Wolf, his hands reaching out nervously and eagerly.
“Let’s have the cash first,” retorted the stranger.
Kerrigan produced fifty dollars in bills of ten-dollar denomination. The other man took the money, counted and pocketed it and then reached into another pocket and extracted a good-sized chunk of opium. Kerrigan grasped it as a hungry baby grasps a bottle of milk.
“Gee, this is great,” he said, training his eagle eyes on his purchase, which he knew to be genuine stuff. Then, lifting his glance to the peddler, he asked:
“Say, can you get any more of this stuff? I sell it, too, but the fellow I been gettin’ it off got pinched by the agents.”
“Yes, I can get you more. How much would you want?”
“Oh, a hell of a lot of it; say, fifteen thousand dollars’ worth.”
The man in brown was taken aback at the mention of such large figures. Kerrigan was eying him up, not missing a trick.
“Well,” answered the stranger, “that’s a pretty big order, but I guess I can fix you up all right. Could you come for the stuff yourself?”
“Yeah,” answered the Wolf. A pause. Then: “Where?”
“Well, I could deliver it to you at an old farmhouse outside of Rutland, Vermont, if that wouldn’t be too far for you to come. You see, I don’t like to take a chance on bringing so much down here to New York. I been doin’ quite a business lately with my two partners, and the agents might be on to me.”
Kerrigan feigned indecision. At length he said:
“Well, the agents won’t bother me. I’ll come up to Vermont. Just where is the place?”
The stranger gave Kerrigan detailed directions as to how to reach a deserted farmhouse situated along a lonely road ten miles out from Rutland.
“You can’t miss it,” he concluded. “It’s a big place and sets far back from the road. It ain’t been occupied in years.”
“What time will I see you there?” asked Kerrigan.
“Eleven o’clock sharp to-morrow night — will that be satisfactory to you?”
“Yeah, that’ll be O K. I’ll be there.”
“You’ll have the cash with you?”
“I’ll have fifteen thousand in my pocket. What’s your name?”
“Phelps — Ned Phelps.”
The following night, at eight o’clock, Kerrigan and Agent Ray Connolley alighted from a train in Rutland. The night was pitch black. A storm was brewing.
The two agents hired a decrepit automobile and drove over ten miles of lonely country roads and finally arrived at a spot where a deserted old house sat far back from the road. A stretch of woods began in the rear of the place.
“This must be it, Ray,” opined the Wolf. “Now, here’s what we’d better do: I’ll take you back down the road and leave you at that gas station we just passed and then I’ll come back here. If I don’t return to the gas station by eleven thirty, you come after me. I want to handle this baby alone because if he sees you anywhere around he’s sure to blow.”
“But he might turn out to be a tough egg when he finds out who you are,” ventured Connolley.
“He won’t turn out to be half as tough as I am,” replied the Wolf.
So Kerrigan drove Connolley to the gas station, about a quarter of a mile back toward Rutland, left him there, and returned in the machine to the old farmhouse. He parked his car in from the road, alighted and walked into the dark, deserted structure. With the aid of his flashlight he saw that the floors were bare and that there was not a piece of furniture in the place. The wind whistled ominously through innumerable cracks in the sides of the house and any one but Kerrigan, there alone, would have been frozen by fright.
After completing his explorations, the Wolf took a seat on the floor of what had once been a parlor, drew his overcoat collar up around his neck, and proceeded to wait for eleven o’clock.
A couple of minutes before eleven o’clock the dozing Kerrigan was awakened by the noise of an old flivver, which pulled up in front of the house. He went to the front door and there saw the man who had sold him the dope in New York coming up the porch steps.
“Well,” said Phelps, “I see you got here all right.”
“Yeah,” said the Wolf, smiling, “I’ve had a pretty cold wait; been here since ten.”
The peddler, still sporting his natty brown outfit, led Kerrigan back into the house, lit a couple of candles which he had brought with him and then drew a gun on the little agent.
“Are you a narcotic man?” snapped Phelps.
“Lord, no,” replied Kerrigan: “What made you think that?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure — and I ain’t sure yet!”
With that, Phelps, holding his gun in his right hand, ran his other hand through the Wolf’s hip, jacket and overcoat pockets, but found no trace of what he was looking for — a gun. Kerrigan, however, had his trusty automatic with him, but it was reposing in the left-hand arm pit of his jacket. That’s where the Wolf always carried his gun. It was placed in such a manner that the barrel pointed downward and the handle stuck out from the arm pit, making a quick draw quite simple. And, let it be recorded, one of the late Jim Kerrigan’s many specialties was a quick draw.
“Well,” said Phelps, after his examination of the agent’s person had been completed, “I guess you’re all right. But if I’d found out you was an agent, I’d knock you off in a minute... Got the money for the stuff?”
Kerrigan produced a roll of greenbacks and handed them over to the man in brown. The latter counted them, by the aid of candlelight, pronounced the sum “fifteen thousand iron men; just right” and then told Kerrigan to come outside with him.
“We got the stuff in two suitcases in the machine here,” said Phelps, indicating the flivver.
When Kerrigan approached the machine, he noticed two men sitting in silence in the rear of the car. He had not anticipated dealing with three dope runners!
“Hand out the suitcases,” said Phelps to one of the occupants of the flivver. Two bags were promptly tossed from the car.
“Mind if I look over the stuff?” asked the Wolf of Phelps, who was standing alongside of him, still toying with his revolver.
“Not at all; go right ahead.”
Kerrigan opened up one of the suitcases and extracted a big chunk of what was represented to be opium. He then walked in front of the automobile headlights, explaining that he wanted to get a better look at the stuff. The agent at once recognized the contents of the suitcases as imitation opium and knew instantly that he was dealing with a gang of racketeers who specialize in the old game of “cheating cheaters.”
The Wolf began to burn up. He had gone to time and trouble of making the jaunt from New York to Vermont in the hope of running into something big, only to be disappointed in the worst way. He concealed his anger, however, for Phelps was standing right in front of him. Kerrigan was in a ticklish position — and he knew it. Why, any one of these fellows could bump him off out here in the wilderness and make a clean get-away.
Suddenly, Kerrigan raised the chunk of fake opium over his head, holding it with both hands, as if to further examine it. Then, in a fraction of a second, he let it fly — right in the face of the man in front of him! Phelps fell to the ground in a heap, knocked completely unconscious by the terrific blow. In less time than it takes to tell it, the Wolf whipped out his gun and covered the two men in the machine.
“You babies can step right out of there,” he snapped, “before I blow your dull brains out!”
Two stocky frames made clumsy exits from the car. The Wolf searched them and confiscated two revolvers and a hundred or more loose bullets. Still covering them, he leaned down and picked up Phelps’s gun. Then he marched the two conscious captives to the rear of the house and told them to stand with their chests flat against two trees, which were close together. Kerrigan next ordered the men to stretch out their arms and when these instructions were complied with he extracted some fine but strong copper wire from his overcoat pocket and bound the men’s hands. Thus, only a tree separated each prisoner from his liberty!