“Yes, I know. Them Czars are easy marks with an army smoke-wagon like The Spider lugs around.”
Chester felt the red-hot presence of a live aid as the taxi rolled toward Prospect Square. He got out two blocks from No. 6. To the chauffeur he whispered: “The street is slippery. Go on and make a good job of skidding in front of the house. Crash a lamppost. Smear things up. Then lug the dame up the steps and ring the bell. Don’t take no for an answer when the doorman comes.”
The taxi-driver squinted at the street, then at Chester. “How tu hell did th’ street get so wet? It ain’t been rainin’.”
“Ye — s? Well, somebody high up ordered it sprinkled about an hour ago. Just a little idea of mine.”
Gabby sank back on the cushions and set her eyes in front of her when the taxi started. Chick, after a look around for gangmen, strolled after the cab. He saw the driver slide toward the wall of the Square, strike it, rebound, and skid over the wet asphalt toward a lamppost in front of the brown-stone house.
The smash that followed seemed a natural one. Glass showered to the pavement. The taxi’s lamps and mudguards were bent. Gabby fell staggeringly, out an open door, to the curb. She lay still, with her blond hair covering most of her face.
A white-whiskered granddaddy came running up. He recoiled, and dropped his cane when the chauffeur muscled him away, lifted Gabby and marched up the steps. A small crowd gathered. Balefully glaring back, like a gorilla with a prize maiden, the driver jabbed at the vestibule button. The inner door opened revealing an English butler.
Chester sauntered along in time to see the driver and Gabby disappear inside. The door was shut with a click.
It came to Chick that The Spider was rather overdoing things. An English butler, who looked honest, was a strange guardian for a mob of killers.
Believing that he would soon learn something from the clever moll concerning The Spider, Chick moved on to a corner east of the wrecked taxi. He saw the driver come out of No. 6, without Gabby. A doctor’s coupe arrived. Soon after it came an emergency ambulance.
Chick began to worry about Gabby. The rouge the moll daubed on her cheeks and chin, to resemble blood, would hardly deceive a good physician. Gabby might come out of the house, with The Spider wise that a spy had visited him.
Walking toward the house Chick put on a pair of “cheaters,” with thick tortoise-rims. The gangsters inside the house might be watching through the windows, he thought. The clothes were unlike those he usually wore. Dark in hue, they were a throw-off from his usual ones.
An altercation between a cop and the taxi-driver, caused Chester to pause near the wrecked machine.
“What happened?” asked the cop.
The harness-bull ignored the question and charged up the steps of No. 6.
“Want tu use her as a witness against me fer reckless drivin’,” spat the chauffeur. “Ken y’u beat that?”
“She’ll be a good witness — for you.” Chester started, stepped rapidly to a railing and placed his back against it, with his hand on his hip. The door of the old brown-stone house had opened in the face of the officer. Out through it came Gabby, followed by an indignant doctor and the staid butler. They started explaining something when the moll reached Chester.
“Come! Blow!” she pleaded.
Chester was stoic as any Indian. He did not ask what had happened, in No. 6.
“Run across the street,” he suggested. “Climb that fence. Go through the Square and wait at the entrance, under the arch. I’ll tail an’ croak any gangster who follows you.”
“There is no gang—”
Gabby gathered up her skirts and ran for the wall. Chester waited. He saw the chauffeur motion for him to make a get-away. Searching for Gabby, after he leaped the fence, like an agile cougar, he reached the high, stone arch at the entrance. Gabby was rubbing her red-stained chin with a handkerchief.
“Ye — s?” asked Chick.
“It’s all right, y’u know,” the moll giggled. “Swell stuff, pal. Y’u sent me on a bum steer. I got a good eye-full before that croaker came. He touched the rouge and spilled the beans.”
“Ye — s? And The Spider?”
“Doesn’t hang out there. It isn’t the kind of house you think it is, y’u know. It’s respectable as hell. Woman there named Ambrose. Husband’s a big guy in the coffee business, downtown.”
“Ambrose?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure, kid?”
“Take a look in the telephone-book.” Gabby finished removing the blood-like stains from her face. She arranged her clothes and sent a spiteful glance across the Square, in the direction of No. 6. “I ought to have another ‘leaf’!” she suggested. “For damage to personal property.”
They walked toward a drug-store. “That driver,” said Chester, “gave me the dope about a man resembling The Spider steering a sucker away from No. 6. That, taken in connection with the information I have about The Spider’s scatter being a come-on joint, caused all this trouble. The taxi-bucker was so sure — too sure. He said there was a big 6 on the transom. There is.”
Gabby suggested: “Why don’t you stall around a while and see if The Spider comes out of there.”
“A coffee merchant, named Ambrose, wouldn’t be shielding gunmen.”
“Say, sweetheart, anybody will do anythin’ in Windville for enough jack, y’u know.”
“Ye — s? Come on in this drug-store.”
Chester consulted a telephone-book while Gabby stalled. He read aloud: “Ambrose, J. J. No. 6. Prospect Square. Asia 7598.”
Then below:
“Ambrose and Cunningham. Coffee Importers. No. 45 West Street. Garden 7320.”
Lifting the receiver Chick dropped a nickel in a slot. He asked the operator for Asia 7598. “Hello?” he drawled.
He swung his lithe form toward Gabby after asking a single question and receiving an answer. “I’m going back and crown that taxi-bucker. I’m beat, so far. Ambrose is not covering up The Spider’s mob. He’s real.”
“Well, y’u know, I thought so when they sent for a regular croaker. It didn’t look like a come-on dump to me.”
Gabby sprung an idea:
“Couldn’t that pock-marked driver been wrong about the house, y’u know? There’s a row of them that look alike to me.”
“It’s a slim chance, kid, but—”
“Shoot it. But what, Chick?”
“One worth a gamble. Nobody will make me, with these cheaters on. I’m going back to No. 6.”
Gabby had learned to think as gangsters reason. She had encountered some of the sharpest brains of the underworld, while helping make bombs in her father’s tavern.
“Go on, Chick,” she urged. “I’ll stall round, out of sight. That driver is either crooked or straight, y’u know. Beat him up an’ find out which way he leans.”
Trailing Chick, with the stone fence between them. Gabby swished the grass of the Square with her skirts. She saw that the wrecked taxi had been towed away.
Nearing the fence she leaned over it and beckoned to Chester. “Come here a minute,” she whispered when he strode over the street.
“Ye — s?” he asked her.
“Take a look. Why did they sweep the broken glass up the gutter, over there? See it, y’u know. And that lamppost has been moved.”
Chick’s Indian-dark eyes flashed along the row of brown-stone fronts. He saw details Gabby overlooked. The lamppost had not been moved. The windshield glass was in the same spot. No. 6 was on the transom of Ambrose’s mansion. There was also another No. 6 three doors away. The light through that transom was reddish, baleful.