A diamond buckled slipper was placed daintily on the running board, followed by a perfect leg, covered by a web of gossamer silk, and the lady known as Mrs. J. F. McCann laid a sparkling hand on the preferred elbow and glided across the pavement in an aura of rare perfume, jewels and costly sables.
The pair stepped silently over the deep rugs and into the automatic elevator, and silently left the elevator high above the street. No word was spoken as the man opened a heavy door and stood aside for the woman to pass into the huge entrance hall, where a fire flamed under the high, carved fireplace.
The man threw aside his top hat and stick and turned to relieve the woman of the furs which swathed her. The sable cape was a heap on the floor where the woman had stood and the woman herself was swinging with pantherish grace toward the wide windows which faced the lights of the East River.
For a moment, he stood, quietly regarding the shadowy ripple of muscles under the white flesh of her bare shoulders and back. There was a hint of amusement at the firm corners of his thin lips, but the keen gray eyes under the heavy brows were humorless.
He sank into a low chair, and picked up the folded newspaper laid ready on the small table beside it. The printed sheets crackled under his long, muscular hands. The woman whirled as though a shot had broken the stillness of the room.
“Damn you, Mack!” she cried in a voice that shrilled high against the rafters of the two storied room, “Are you ever going to open your trap?”
J.F. McCann glanced up casually from the stock quotations.
“I have already opened my trap, as you so politely phrase it,” he said calmly. “As far as I am concerned, the deal was closed on the way home from the theatre. You are sick of this ‘lousy life,’ to use your own elegant expression. And you are damn sick of me. You are perfectly free to go back where you belong.”
The woman sprang, tore the paper from his hands, and hurled it on the blazing logs. Swiftly, the man got to his feet and gripped her white arms with fingers that dug deep into the flesh. His steady gaze met her dark, blazing eyes indifferently.
“I dislike scenes, Kate,” he said quietly. “I know what you’d like to say. You’ve said it. You are tired of the silks I’ve given you to cover your white hide. You’re tired of the diamonds I’ve given you to play with. You’re tired of luxury. You’re tired of security. You’re tired of me. You want something more. I’m not giving it to you. All right, go out and get it!”
He thrust her aside roughly. She stumbled and fell sprawling across the polished table. Her flung hand came in contact with a heavy bronze vase. Her white fingers curled around it, tensed for a moment, then relaxed. She crept to him and circled the broad shoulders with arms that already showed faint purple marks where his fingers had gripped them.
“Mack,” she pleaded, “I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to leave you! I want you to go with me. The damn play got me going tonight. You and me, Mack, dressed up like a couple of dummies in a show window, sitting in a box, watching a lot of ham actors pretend to be gangsters!”
She threw back her dark head and laughed mockingly. He stood immovable, watching the pulsations of her full throat under the circle of diamonds. The laugh died abruptly on the brink of hysteria. Quietly, he lifted her jeweled hands from his shoulders, and turned toward the stairs to the gallery above.
“You know where you can find the real thing, Kate,” he said pleasantly. “Any number of them, ready to welcome you back, and all of them real, red-blooded, fast-shooting gangsters.”
“Gangsters!” she shrieked after him as he ascended the stairs. “Gangsters! You know damn well you’re a damn gangster yourself!”
A door slammed above, but she raised her voice still higher.
“Yes, damn it to hell, nothing but a gangster, even if you do use a fountain pen now instead of a rod!”
She flung herself on the velvet cushions of a davenport before the fireplace, and lay staring into the flames.
“I’d sell my soul to hell,” she muttered, “to see some real gun play again.” And she ran her tongue over her painted lips.
A moment later, her jeweled heels were clicking swiftly up the gallery steps. At the top, she paused. The rigidity of her taut body dissolved into languorous grace, and voluptuous curves. The red lips that had so lately called for blood were sensuously moist as she swayed across the soft carpet to the closed door.
Two days later, J. F. McCann unlocked the door to his private office at the unheard of hour of eleven in the morning. “J. F.,” who always made a point of promptness, was late. He strode into the silent, spacious room, shrugged out of his overcoat, and settled at the huge, carved desk. There were six telephones on that desk, each one enameled a different color. J. F. bent over the pile of letters and documents waiting his attention. Swiftly, he ran through them, his thick brows knit in concentration. When he had finished, they were separated in neat piles on the polished surface of the desk.
He leaned back in his chair, and drew a small, white leather jewel from his pocket. He snapped open the lid. A ruby, like a huge drop of blood, gleamed on the satin lining of the box. J. F. reached for the telephone painted white.
A shrill jangle broke the intense quiet of the room. His hand moved to the instrument painted red.
“Yes?” he said, impatiently.
“Mike speaking,” said a huge voice which seeped out of the receiver McCann held to his ear. “I’ve been tryin’ to get you for hours, Mack. Trouble.”
“Turn the switchboard over to Joe, and come up by the private elevator.” said McCann, and hung up. He thrust the small white box back into his pocket, and whirled his chair to face the panelled side wall of the room. Presently, one of the heavy oak sections slid back, and a man stepped out of a small elevator and across the soft carpet.
“Sit down, Mike,” said McCann. “Have a cigar? What’s the trouble? Some of the clerks downstairs gone on a strike?”
Mike grunted and bit off the end of a cigar ferociously.
“You know damn well I wouldn’t bother you with that, Mack,” he replied. “I said trouble.”
McCann leaned back in his chair and studied the heavy figure of the man whose striped suit and yellow shoes made a glaring note in the subdued richness of the room.
“Mike,” said McCann casually, “will you ever learn how to dress for business? That flaming tie doesn’t set well on you at all, especially when your face is as red as it is now.”
Mike ignored the remark.
“Mack,” he said, leaning far over the desk, “there’s trouble brewin’. Hogan refuses to deliver. He says you’ll have to fight for it!”
McCann transferred his narrowed eyes from Mike’s loud shoes to the ceiling.
“Fight for it!” he said, quietly. “I don’t fight. I take. Cross Hogan’s off the list.”
“I’ve done that. Mack,” said Mike. “But that won’t settle it. Our man in Hogan’s mob says the Tenth Avenue bunch is backing Hogan. If he gets away with it with you, the Tenth Avenue push will pull the same trick. It means trouble, I tell you, Mack, and if...”
“It means more to you, Mike, than to me,” returned McCann. “Naturally, you’re a bit upset. Your cut-in on the booze racket is threatened. You see a nice, juicy ten-per cent fading out of your big fingers, eh? I don’t blame you. But, to me, Hogan and the Tenth Avenue mob and all the rest of the miserable little booze runners don’t mean that!” And he snapped his long fingers contemptuously.