The racketeer chief nodded absently but did not look up. His finely chiseled features seemed worn and lines of worry showed between his usually placid eyes.
Speck Thompson, the red-haired and befreckled liaison man of the gang, turned anxiously to Chimp and Paddy. The three exchanged worried glances. Finally Speck, after a period of silence, said:
“What’s the matter, Big Shot, still got th’ hunch?”
Mart’s eyes came up slowly from contemplation of his well kept hands — caught and held Speck’s glance levelly.
“Yes,” he replied slowly. “Still with me. Remember, you chaps, I’ve been in this game eight years, principally because I always play my hunches. There’s black trouble coming now, and it isn’t so far away.”
“Got a name for it?”
“Yes — ‘Chicago.’ Ever since we ran their Big Noise off last fall they’ve been trying to cook up a new racket here.”
“ ’At’s easy,” Chimp broke in crisply. “Let ’em start it an’ ’en knock ’em off.”
Mart lost himself in frowning thought for a moment before he replied.
“Maybe you’re right, Chimp, but there’s enough lads going for one way rides without sacrificing a lot of our best guns just because the Big Noise in Chicago thinks he’s fast enough to cut in here. Damn it all! For a plugged nickel I’d hop a rattler for Chicago tonight, hunt this troublemaker up and shoot it out with him on his own dunghill.”
“Let’s go!” Chimp roared. “I’ll take a stack wit’ youse.”
Then the telephone tinkled its summons. Mart, his features still an angry red, reached out for the receiver.
“Yes?” he said. “Fat? — Yes — Who? Dogs Miller! — In your place just now? — What about the rule? Who did it? — Stranger, eh? — Who? Chi Kid? Yes, I know him. A rod for the Big Noise. — Call Campbell to take the body. — I’ll be right down. Thanks. Goodbye!”
He snapped the receiver back on the hook.
“Put the word out,” he snapped in tones choked with anger. “A cannon named Chi Kid just burned Dogs Miller down in Fat’s Place. I want him!”
The others were on their feet, cursing, burying him under a flood of questions.
“Maybe Dogs was wrong,” he said, “but he was my pal and that makes him right. Fat says he made one of his cockeyed gun plays and the fellow — a stranger — croaked him.”
Then, for the first time in their long association, the three men closest to the Big Fellow saw his veneer of coldness and self control crack like thin glass. Hands shaking in anger, teeth bared in a snarl, he whirled to Speck and gritted:
“You’re top cutter now. Get the word out everywhere. Five to the man who turns Chi Kid in to me before night — alive. Ten grand if it’s before noon. Snap into it. He don’t know how hot this killing is. He’ll stick around.”
“Everybody? Anybody?” Speck asked. “All the gangs?”
Mart flared back at him bitterly:
“Anybody in the world — even a lousy dick. You know what a friend Dogs was to me, and whoever turns Chi Kid in can lift my bankroll Come on, you guns — maybe we can get him yet tonight.”
Speck already was busy at the telephone as they clattered down the stairs and into Mart’s big Lincoln roadster.
Only once did Mart break silence on the fast trip along Broadway and down the Eighth Avenue short cut. Then he said:
“I knew the lid was going to blow off with us standing on it. Now watch me put it back on.”
Fifteen minutes after they had left the house, Paddy piloted the big roadster up to Fat’s Place and snapped on the parking lights. A solitary dark figure detached itself from the shadows and whispered:
“Fat’s closed now. It’s Mr. Farrell, isn’t it? He said to bring you in through the side door.”
Then, as though obeying orders to hustle the visitors within as quickly as possible, the man shoved Paddy forward and motioned for Mart to follow. A black passageway yawned before them but Paddy, a regular patron, knew the way. Mart, lulled to security by the other’s assured progress, stepped out briskly. The guide fell in behind him with Chimp bringing up the rear.
The events of the next ten seconds always were vague in Mart’s mind. In his grief and anger over the death of Dogs he relaxed his vigilance for the moment. Suddenly through the daze, he sensed rather than heard a warning shout in Chimp’s gruff voice.
Instinctively he threw himself to one side and the slungshot blow intended for his skull grazed his left shoulder. He heard Chimp’s joyous battle cry as he leaped to grips with the attacker — the double roar of a pistol — Paddy’s feet pounding back from the door. All of these items registered vaguely in Mart’s mind as he tugged at the pistol which had jammed in the holster under his left arm.
At last the weapon worked loose. At the same moment a dark form appeared for a moment, shadowlike, in the entrance to the passageway, but Mart withheld his fire in the fear of hitting Paddy or Chimp.
A second later a powerful engine roared into life and gears clashed. Then came the sound of a car — his car — whizzing off down the street
Chimp was staggering to his feet, cursing. Paddy ran to the mouth of the passage and called back that the assailant had escaped; that Mart’s car was gone. Someone opened the side door of Fat’s place and a stream of light showed Chimp bleeding from a wound in the face.
Mart led the injured gunman inside, while Paddy borrowed a flashlight and searched the passageway. Suddenly he shouted and came rushing back with a seriously damaged derby hat.
Mart took it, studied the inside and went white with rage. His hands trembled as he fought back the words that leaped to his lips — for there stared back at him from within the crown the initials “C.K.” and the address of a Chicago hatter.
Silently, striving to keep his face expressionless, Mart turned to study the faces before him. Carefully he kept the hat turned against his side so that the telltale markings could not be seen by the others.
It all was plain to him now, the Chi Kid had not gone to earth. Instead he had waited for the almost certain coming of Mart, his first victim’s chief. Then, coolly, he had sought to kill him with one smashing blow on the skull. Even in his rage Mart could not repress a thrill of admiration for the gameness of one willing to take on the death gamble at odds of one to three. At least, here was an antagonist worthy of his own attention.
Resolutely putting the intruder out of his mind for the moment, Mart turned to ascertain the extent of Chimp’s hurts. As usual that human ironclad had escaped without great damage. One bullet had struck a glancing blow on the jaw, tearing away the lobe of the ear in passing.
The impact over the main trunk nerve had served to stun the Chimp momentarily, but already he had tied a clean towel about his head and now was staring about the circle to surprise someone laughing at his odd appearance.
“No wonder they call him Chimp,” Mart mused as he marked his bodyguard’s resemblance to the jungle dweller whose nickname he bore. The bloodstained towel bandage set off his protruding jaw, red-rimmed slits of eyes and the huge hands hung on arms all too long for the height of the squat body.
Turning back to the group before him, Mart looked from one to another, waiting for one of them to open the way for him to start a line of inquiry suggested to him by the markings in the hat.
There was Fat Siler, the self-satisfied smirk wiped off his flabby face; “Red” Slater and Hymie Eltner, gang leaders in widely separated localities; Gus Banks, a racketeer who posed as a labor organizer; Albert Skillman, contact man with the agents of the controlling powers; Benny Kauffman, who owned the delicatessen and fruit store racket — and a number of lesser lights.