Chester rather favored the suggestion. The driver over there was an ex-pug with a pock-marked chin. He confessed ignorance to The Spider’s hangout but he offered to let Chick ride for a week, free, if he couldn’t find it.
“Ye — s?” said Chester. “Here’s an X. Start her up and let me look around the town.”
The thug-ugly chauffeur grinned at the crinkling bill.
“You’re part Indian, ain’t youse?”
“It’s none of your damn business what I am!” Chester retorted. “As long as I got jack I’m a prince in this burg.”
Chick visited six houses, without results, and began to doubt if The Spider was in that section of the city. The yellow gangleader may have spread his web somewhere else. The color of Chester’s features grew darker and more determined. He had talked with housemen, croupiers, faro-dealers, proprietors and runners. He lost fifty dollars wandering from table to table. No one could give him the slightest clue concerning the Big-Shot’s worst enemies.
He phoned Morphy who shot back:
“Keep movin’, y’u! See th’ pay-guy if youse need more kale.”
The overworked taxi-driver began to think his fare was goofy. “Wot t’ell y’us lookin’ fer?” he asked Chick.
“A sneaking welcher named Gronto. Spider Gronto.”
He continued:
“I want to locate a new come-on joint, brown-stone front house, somewhere in Captain Jack’s ward. It’s probably got a back entrance.”
“Th’ Spider’s.”
“Ye — s?”
The driver scratched his head. “Wot’s he look like?”
“Thin... thin as I am. Bent over. Grayish brown hair, a nick on the lobe of his right ear — a gash across his chin. Bad actor.”
A light began to dawn in the depths of the driver’s eyes.
“Say, cull, I saw that baby onct — last week. Sure I piped him, good an’ plenty. Why didn’t youse tell me y’u wuz lookin’ fer him?”
Chester gripped the driver’s muscular arm.
“Come clean!”
“Oh, all right.” The chauffeur drew away from Chester’s intense stare. He recognized the steel beneath his passenger’s velvet manners. Getting out a map of the city, from a side-pocket, he ran a grimy thumb over it. “Say, cull, I saw that guy — or a ringer fer him, in Prospect Square. I had two fares from there. I knew the dump they came out ov wuz queer. How did I know? By the squawk a sucker put up about losing a lousy ninety bucks. Th’ other guy, th’ one wid evening clothes an’ a gash on his chin, got rid of th’ squealer by payin’ him off. Wot a dirty look he gave him. Then this guy had me take him back tu th’ square. He looked like a killer who didn’t want tu smear things up fer that little kale.”
“Ye — s? What number Prospect Square?”
“No. 6.”
“Did you hear this man’s name?”
“Th’ sucker, who wuz trimmed, called him every name that ain’t fit tu print. Funny how them honest guys ken beat us regulars when it comes tu cussin’.”
Chick Chester looked at his platinum watch.
“Make for the nearest coffee house. We’ll feed, on me. Then stop at a garage and fill up with gas. I want to take a look at that house before they put the blinds up.”
“I’m on, cull.”
The driver hurtled Chick northward, swung corners on two wheels and beat the red-set semaphores at the narrowest margins. He stopped at one corner of a green Square and said out of the side of his mouth:
“All th’ numbers run on one side ov th’ street. Y’u ken mooch along, while I wait here.”
With a long, lanky stride, like an Apache after a scalp, Chick glided up the street, pretending to be looking at nothing in particular. His black eyes saw everything — the marks on the asphalt where many taxis had stopped, the cigarette-butts in the gutter thrown by waiting chauffeurs, spots of oil that stretched along for half a block. A slight feeling of doubt came to him when he noticed the doors of No. 6. These were frail looking, unlike any kind The Spider would order. That gangleader favored boiler plate and ax-proof protection.
The windows of No. 6 were shaded with green blinds. The steps leading upward had been scrubbed until they shone. A big 6 was painted on a transom.
Crossing the asphalt to a wall that fenced in the Square, Chick studied the row of houses intently. It was an aristocratic-looking neighborhood. Just the place no one would look for The Spider. Behind the houses were private garages, on an alley.
Springing over the stone fence Chick Chester detoured through the Square and came out by the side of the waiting taxi.
“How about it, cull?” queried the chauffeur.
“Looks good. Get me to the nearest drug-store.”
Chester entered a sound-proof telephone-booth and called up Griffith’s. He was connected with Gabby. “I’ve got two ‘yards’ for you,” he promised her. “I need a swell broad for a job. One that can stall for me.”
“I’m cooking some pineapples,” chortled the moll.
Chester insisted: “Put the cooking away for a day. The Big-Shot wants certain information you can get for us. Meet me near Hadden Towers, early this evening.”
She consented, saying she would drive in and take a load of stuff back to the tavern on her return. “Stuff off a boat,” she laughed. “Y’u know, Dad sells it.”
“It was after six when Chester finished his preparations. He greeted the taxi-bucker and ordered him to rush to Hadden Towers. Gabby was already parked near the building. She sprang out of a long, black touring car.” Chester shook his head.
“You see, I’m here with my bus,” said Gabby.
“Yes? Say, sweetie, I wouldn’t drive that machine much if I were you. Every hooch runner uses that brand. You ought to know better.”
The moll bent down and adjusted a garter. “Gimme th’ two ‘yards.’ Two centuries, I gotta have clothes.”
Chick peeled two one-hundred dollar bills from his bank-roll. He folded them up and handed them to Gabby. “Now, come along with me,” he said. “You needn’t worry about glad rags. You better worry about that wreck you’re driving.”
Gabby dove again for her garter, where she concealed the two bills. She straightened a youthful back and swung on one high heel toward the parked phaeton.
“That’s a stall,” she explained. “A throw-off, y’u know. I never had any glycerin or hooch in it. I use taxis loaded to the axles. They trail that wagon, and if some sap copper stops it, the taxi turns around and beats it.”
The Indian blood in Chick recognized a ruse, remarkably effective. Brains were better than bullets.
“Say,” said Gabby, “if y’u stand there looking like that much longer, I’ll fall for you. Y’ur a swell looker, but y’ur cheek-bones are too high. Maybe you don’t fall for me. We might not mix any more than fulminate an’ nitroglycerine!”
Chester gripped the moll’s round brown arm. “Come along, kid. I’ve located The Spider, or think I have. We’ll both stand aces with the Big Shot if it’s true. We’ve got to check up and make sure. That’s a trick I’ve planned for you. The Spider is so shifty he’ll beat it at the first rumble.”
“Do you want me to vamp him?”
“No! He’s so tough he wouldn’t fall for ten joy-broads. I want you to identify him without exciting suspicion. Do you know what he looks like?”
“Dad told me, y’u know.”
Gabby’s catching little “y’u know” fascinated Chick Chester. He felt himself falling for the moll. He drew her toward the taxi. “The Big-Shot,” he explained, “has called on most of the gangster talent of this city to find out what The Spider is scheming. It’s the fear of not knowing what he is doing or planning, or where he is in hiding, that gets the Big-Fellow’s goat. Morphy is Czar of Windville.”