Czar Rohan laughed quietly and turned his back on the wop. It was time to help carry Carmody to the hearse outside for his last ride.
That night Czar Rohan summoned his lieutenants to his home. He told them that he was going away. It was the doctor’s orders. That was all the explanation he cared to offer. He knew that they did not believe him. They had heard Ferrini order him to leave town. There were mutterings and veiled threats. Czar Rohan was conscious of quick movements. Then he stared into the muzzles of four automatics.
“Go ahead and shoot,” he scoffed. “The wop’ll pay you sweet dough!”
The guns dropped. There was an embarrassed shifting of feet. Czar Rohan smiled wanly.
“Listen, you guys,” he said. “You know dam’ well that Ferrini has got us licked. We’re flghtin’ the whole dam’ country. I’m tellin’ you to take a sneak for yourselves. The cops from the big chief down are throwin’ in with the wop. Our dough now is nothin’ but chicken feed. I’m through. If you want to run things go ahead.”
Czar Rohan went away.
With the last big city overcome, Scar Ferrini sat enthroned over an empire of crime that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. He was the law. The other law in the land was not for Ferrini. He gave it but a passing thought, lived outside of it, broke it openly.
The press clamored for his downfall and it became a joke to Ferrini. High police officials laughed with him — it was so amusing. Now and then to satisfy the newspapers, the King of Crime would arrange the demise of one of his notorious henchmen. There was nothing that Ferrini could not do.
But the one triumph over which the wop never ceased to gloat was the removal of Czar Rohan. Ferrini had been afraid of the Czar. Now he had scared him out of town. Czar Rohan was yellow. All gangland, with the exception of the handful who had known Rohan personally, shared his opinion. That handful had to be shown, but they kept discreetly silent. It would be like signing their own death warrant to still claim allegiance to the Czar.
Secrets travel with incredible swiftness through the labyrinth of crime known as the underworld. One of them, dropped casually from the lips of August Rhyne, patrolman, was snapped up and relayed to all corners of Ferrini’s realm and finally reached the ears of the King himself. Czar Rohan’s heart had gone back on him. He had nearly passed out on his way home from Diamond Gavoni’s funeral.
Gangland looked upon the fallen Czar in a new light. Ferrini had toppled him from his throne, but in doing so the new leader had become the victim of a rare joke. The wop had pledged his word that he would give the Czar an elaborate funeral in case of the latter’s sudden demise. All gangland appreciated the significance of the Czar’s last gesture and laughed at Ferrini. Ferrini put a price of ten thousand dollars on Czar Rohan’s head and broadcast it far and wide. Rohan was to be brought in alive. Those were the instructions.
Two months passed and no word regarding the Czar. Seemingly he had disappeared from the face of the continent. In fact that was just what had happened. Czar Rohan was far beyond his enemy’s reach. While Ferrini’s snarling voice was sending out gangsters to bring him in, Czar Rohan was sitting in a cafe in Buenos Aires. From there he sailed to Egypt. In the next month he was to know Singapore, Samoa, Rangoon.
He cut himself off from his own world, the hard, sordid, ugly labyrinth of crime, all with a definite purpose in view. The Czar wished to be forgotten. He would go back only when he was ready to die. Three months, the doctor had said, perhaps a little more if the Czar heeded his precautions as to the excessive use of tobacco and lived a life of peace and quiet. The erstwhile gang leader had followed this advice although it had made his existence nothing more than slow torture.
In the beginning of the third month gangland began to forget the Czar. Ferrini had more important things to worry about. In various parts of the country his vassals began to revolt. Those districts needed his undivided attention if he wished to retain his vise-like grip on his kingdom of crime. A new menace threatened in the west. Wolfe La Motte, lord of the Pacific coast, taking advantage of internal strife in Ferrini’s domain, began to throw off the shackles that had tied him to the wop. When the minor revolts were finally squelched, Scar Ferrini headed for the coast. It was necessary to draw from his forces on the eastern front.
During the bloody gang war that followed, Czar Rohan was completely forgotten. Gangland was satisfied that the deposed monarch’s heart had failed him in some far away district where he was not known. The doctor had only given him ninety days. Czar Rohan had been away one hundred days. They offered a toast to his memory and put him out of their minds.
Ferrini came back from the coast, his head bloody but unbowed. The threat against his throne had been wiped out. There was nothing to worry him now. He moved from his steel-doored sanctuary on the waterfront into a fashionable hotel in an exclusive section of the town. He even approached the outer fringe of society. He gave his Packard to one of his lieutenants and bought a Rolls-Royce.
One night, feeling in a festive mood, Scar Ferrini motored to Bachman’s, a cabaret catering to the heavy spenders on the north side. The Rolls carried the king, two painted women, and a body guard.
It was a rainy night and few revelers had ventured out. Bachman’s was host to a thin crowd. The big car pulled up to the curb and a liveried chauffeur jumped from the driver’s seat. He swung the car door open and Ferrini and his party stepped from the luxurious confines. As was the custom the king of the underworld instructed his chauffeur to take the car to a nearby garage where he would call for it when he was ready to leave.
A few minutes after Ferrini had walked through the pretentious entrance to Bachman’s, a small sedan pulled up to the curb on the opposite side of the street. A man stepped out and lifted up the hood, evidently to examine a balky engine. Passersby favored him with but a perfunctory glance or a sympathetic comment. The rain beat down steadily but the man bending over the engine seemed oblivious to the drenching he was getting. He tinkered with the machine for a few minutes, then let the hood down, shook the water from his coat, and walked over to Bachman’s.
The girl at the checkroom accepted the man’s soaked overcoat with haughty disdain. The owner of the garment smiled and handed her a crisp banknote.
“Sorry, sister,” he said, “but they won’t poison you. Anyway, I didn’t order the rain.” Then throwing back his shoulders, he stalked into the dining room. The head waiter showed him to a table but it was not to his liking. He picked one to suit himself. There were no arguments. The head waiter had decided upon that when he had caught the steely glint in the newcomer’s eyes.
The man gave his order and after a hasty glance around the dining room reached into his pocket for a pencil. He wrote swiftly on the back of the menu.
Ferrini, at a table directly across the room, was waxing merry with his fair companions. He had not seen the man enter, but gangster’s intuition soon warned him that there was a sinister presence somewhere nearby. He put down his glass and swept the immediate vicinity with his little black eyes. They finally came to rest on the man sitting directly across the room.
Ferrini stared, his brows knitted in perplexity. The man was familiar. That mustache fascinated him. It seemed as if it should not be there. A hoarse cry fell from the Italian’s lips as recognition flashed to his brain like a bolt of lightning. Desperately he strove to maintain his calm. The women looked at him curiously. One ventured a query but Ferrini at the moment was not interested in women.