The man in black examined the locks, and soon satisfied himself that they were vulnerable. In fact, he opened the outer door of the apartment, and experimented with master keys that he drew from a pocket of the cloak.
This procedure finished, he closed the door again, and studied the movable wall of the apartment. After finding the secret catch that opened the wall on the apartment side, the mysterious man went up the spiral stairway, and a few seconds later again stood in Savoli’s library, with the bookcase open behind him.
OF all the gangsters who made frequent visits to Nick Savoli’s lair, not one had ever suspected the existence of this secret passageway. None had realized that Mike Borrango instinctively stood in front of the hidden exit. Yet the man who concealed his identity beneath the black cloak and hat had ferreted out the secret as though by telepathy.
Now he stood alone in the center of Savoli’s library, and for the first time since his arrival, a sound escaped his lips. He laughed softly, yet even that murmuring tone was sinister in its mockery.
It was the same laugh that Steve Cronin had heard the night before: the laugh of The Shadow!
The motionless figure became suddenly active, as though keen ears had detected the sound of approaching footsteps. In a fraction of a second, the man in black passed through the secret opening, and closed the bookcase behind him. Mike Borrango entered the library just too late to observe what had happened.
CHAPTER XIII
MONK LOOKS FOR TROUBLE
MIRE LARRIGAN’S saloon on the South Side was not a good place for innocent bystanders. It was one of the most notorious booze joints in Chicago, run in open defiance of the law.
There was nothing subtle about Mike Larrigan. He was a hoodlum of the old school, a mob master who believed that it was cheaper and better to kill policemen than to pay them hush money.
At the same time, Larrigan, in his hostility toward Nick Savoli, had imitated some of the subtle methods of the big shot. He relied on political pull to protect the saloon which was his headquarters, and he appeared there frequently without fear that the law would annoy him.
Gangsters came and went — that is, those gangsters who stood in right with Mike Larrigan. The others kept away.
The elite of Mike Larrigan’s crew were permitted in the upstairs rooms. The others inhabited the barroom below, looking for opportunities to be summoned into Larrigan’s presence.
The big Irishman was a specialist in the beer-running racket. He supplied many of the South Side saloons, and had direct contact with several breweries.
His henchmen frequently hijacked booze trucks that carried the products of Nick Savoli, but none of these inroads had been directly traced to Larrigan as the source.
Hence, while there was no friendship between Larrigan and Savoli, open enmity had not been declared.
Savoli was in the business to make money, rather than to wage warfare. His organization was compact and firm, ruled by lieutenants and lesser chieftains.
Larrigan, on the contrary, was a loose organizer. Those closest to him obeyed his commands; others were almost beyond his reach.
Hymie Schultz and Four-gun Spirak, as members of Larringan’s tribe, never entered into hijacking. But they had no qualms when it came to sticking up gambling joints that paid tribute to Savoli. They had raided Marmosa’s place with calm assurance.
Schultz and Spirak had gradually begun to allow themselves greater privilege. They were skating dangerously close to thin ice.
In fact, they had already passed the deadline. The big shot had made his first effort to eliminate the two troublemakers when he had employed Monk Thurman to get them.
Savoli was a subtle worker. Monk Thurman was just the man he needed for this job. Only Savoli and Borrango knew that the New York gunman was actually in the big shot’s employ.
Savoli wanted Thurman for later jobs; but if Monk should fail on his first task, the big shot would be no worse off. On the contrary, if Monk should succeed, the deaths of Schultz and Spirak could be easily explained to Larrigan.
SAVOLI awaited results with interest. He wondered if Monk would get busy the first night after he had received instructions.
He doubted that the New York gunman would be foolish enough to actually invade Larrigan’s territory. In fact, he and Borrango had told Monk of Larrigan’s saloon chiefly as a warning not to go there.
Nevertheless, Larrigan’s saloon was the destination which Monk Thurman had chosen for that evening.
While Savoli and Borrango were in the big shot’s luxurious apartment, drinking wine that had come from Canada, Monk Thurman was on his way to the Irishman’s beer joint.
It was about nine o’clock when the redoubtable New Yorker sauntered into the barroom where the lesser lights of Larringan’s mob held forth.
He appeared there as a stranger, and the crowd around the bar took immediate interest in the presence of this tall, stern-faced man whom they had not seen before. Monk ordered a glass of beer, sniffed it, and poured the liquid into a cuspidor.
“This the best you have in the place?” he demanded.
The bartender, himself a hardened hoodlum, glared at the stranger.
“Not good enough for you, eh?” he asked. “Who are you, anyway, coming in here? Want to tell me how to run the place?”
Several of Mike Larrigan’s small-time mobsmen gathered closer to listen to the argument.
Monk Thurman was standing at the end of the bar, his back to the corner beside the door. He paid no attention to the threatening glances of the rowdies who gathered about him.
“I might be able to tell you something,” he said to the bartender. “But there’s no use talking to any one here in Chicago.”
“Where do you come from, tough guy?” demanded the man behind the bar.
“New York,” answered Thurman, in a boastful voice.
The bartender leaned his elbow on the bar, and studied the tall man, with a sarcastic expression on his face.
“There’s a lot of funny guys come from New York,” he observed. “Fellows that think they amount to something. They don’t find it healthy here in Chicago. A lot of them die from lead poisoning.”
“That doesn’t worry me,” responded Monk Thurman. “I’m inoculated.”
“One New York gorilla got fresh a few nights ago,” continued the bartender. “The boys are out looking for him, now. Maybe they’ve got him already. Did you ever hear of him? His name is Monk Thurman.”
“I am Monk Thurman,” said the tall man quietly.
A sudden silence fell over the crowd. The gangsters were too amazed to murmur their anger. The bartender remained motionless, his eyes wide open as he stared at the man.
“I am Monk Thurman,” repeated the man with the masklike face, “and I think your beer is punk. But it’s good enough for this mob of would-be gorillas.”
THE two men nearest Monk leaped forward. Then they stopped, their hands above their heads, as they stared into the muzzles of two automatics. The New Yorker had drawn his guns with an almost imperceptible motion.
“Back up, all of you!” he commanded. “Stick them up — all of you!”
Every gangster in the place moved to the wall. All held their hands above their heads, and listened sullenly to the words that followed.
“So the boys are looking for me, are they?” questioned Thurman, in a sarcastic voice. “What boys do you mean? Those two cripples that tried to hold up Marmosa’s gambling joint? They haven’t found me yet, so I’ll help them out.”
He pocketed one automatic, and brought out a card from his pocket. He tossed the piece of pasteboard to the bartender.
“I’ve got a little apartment,” he said, “and there’s the address. Send them around when they want to see me. I get in about three in the morning. They can find me after that.”