“Mr. Robbins!” he said. “I thought it was your step. Now I know — you’re trying to play tricks on me!”
Unhesitatingly, Penny came forward and laid a hand on “X’s” arm. His fingers clasped the Agent’s for a moment in a friendly grip.
“Right, Thaddeus,” said “X.” “You’re out early this morning. I saw you and wondered if I could sneak by — but I might have known I couldn’t. Let’s have a piece of that gum.”
Penny was silent for a second or two, his pale, lined face expressionless. He seemed to be listening — or thinking.
“You didn’t just stop me to say hello or to buy gum,” he said suddenly. “You’re worried about something. You’re breathing faster and not so deep as usual, Mr. Robbins. Anything the matter?”
Agent “X” threw back his head and laughed — something he seldom did, grim manhunter that he was. But Thaddeus Penny’s amazing powers of concentration and deduction always amused him.
“It’s lucky, Thaddeus,” he said, “that you don’t go in for crime. If you did, nobody would be safe!”
“Crime!” said the blind man. “So, that’s it! You’re always talking about crime, Mr. Robbins.” Penny smiled knowingly, staring vacantly into space. “I once told you you were a detective, you remember. Then I took it back, because you don’t act like any detective I’ve ever known before.”
“How do I act, Thaddeus?” asked Agent “X” suddenly. Blind as Penny was, he was one man whom Agent “X” suspected of knowing more than he admitted. “X” could come to him in any disguise. It was his voice and step that Penny recognized. But it sometimes seemed that Penny, with his remarkable brain, sensed the strange, magnetic qualities of Agent “X,” also.
“You act like a man,” said Penny slowly, “who sees farther than any eye could reach. And you act like a man who has a lot to think about.”
“The latter is true, anyhow, Thaddeus. I’ve got a lot to think about. And this morning I’m thinking about crime, as you say.” The Agent sank his voice lower then, so that no one passing on the street might hear. “There’ve been a great many robberies and murders this past week, Thaddeus, a great deal of crime in this town. Some say the police are being bribed. Others say they’re scared. I don’t know which is right. But there must be criminals who are getting rich and fat. I’d like, for private reasons, to know who they are.”
Thaddeus Penny nodded slowly, understandingly. A slow smile overspread his face, a knowing smile as though he suspected the purposes and motives of his friend Robbins and approved of them.
He cocked his head to one side again, listening to all sounds on the block. Then he drew “X” against the wall of a building, leaned close and spoke, his voice hardly more than a whisper.
“I get about a bit,” he said, “and sometimes ears are better than eyes. Sometimes I hear and remember things that others quickly forget — because when a man’s blind all he has to amuse him are his thoughts. He plays games with himself — tries to fit things together.”
Penny smiled and nodded slowly, tapping “X’s” arm. “Maybe you’ve heard of a fellow named Gus Sanzoni. He’s been quiet for years, isn’t rated as much of a big shot — but they say he made a pile of dough during prohibition. He had cookers working for him on a hundred stills and he had a mob. But when money comes easy, it goes easy, too. I heard that Sanzoni gambled away everything, lost his mob and his power, and had only a night club left. Then, lately, some of the fellows that used to work for him are calling him a big shot again instead of a cheap punk. There’s ‘Dutch’ Wilken, Mateo the Moocher, and ‘Little’ Dellman among ’em. They seem to feel frisky lately. The girls say they’re flashing big rolls. Don’t ask me how they get ’em. But when a crook has big money, there’s always blood on it. And Gus Sanzoni don’t pay men just because they’re his pals.”
The eyes of Agent “X” shone brightly as he listened. Bates and Hobart had men drifting through the tenderloin section, probably within a stone’s throw of him now. Yet they had learned nothing. The lips of the underworld had remained closed to them. It had taken the sharp ears of a blind beggar to hear the whispers that the Agent wanted, the rumors, that might send him in desperate, daring conflict against the menace that lay like a curse of waiting death over the whole great city.
Chapter X
HE thanked Thaddeus Penny quietly, withholding from his voice all trace of the deep excitement he felt. Yet Penny nodded wisely and laid a hand on “X’s” arm.
“That’s the news you wanted, isn’t it?” he said. “It sort of fits in with something you had in mind. You’re breathing fast again. I can almost hear your heart beat. But don’t go and get into trouble. Even if you’re a detective stay away from Gus Sanzoni. He’s like the rats that come out from the cellars at night. They run if you go right after them — but like as not they’ll turn around and bite you in the back afterwards.”
A thin smile twisted the lips of Agent “X.” “Don’t get into trouble,” Thaddeus Penny had said. But trouble was the Agent’s daily bread, trouble of the most bizarre and violent sort — trouble that other men would flinch from, but which he had grown hardened to.
“I’ll take care of myself, Thaddeus,” he said quietly. “Don’t worry about me. Suppose you give me a package of that gum.”
Agent “X” tossed a nickel into the old cigar box which Penny used as a tray; but along with it he dropped a crumpled five-dollar bill. This maneuver didn’t escape Penny’s sharp ears, however. The faint rustle of the bill was audible to him.
“There you go again, Mr. Robbins, giving me a cash hand-out! I won’t take it, I—”
“Your tip was worth it, Thaddeus. If you don’t need the money, give it to some friend who’s in a hole. I’ll be seeing you later. And thanks again.”
Agent “X” walked swiftly away from the blind beggar. He passed one of Jim Hobart’s men sauntering toward the tenderloin. But the detective didn’t guess for a moment that the person he’d brushed was the power behind his own employer, the man he had to thank for his job and his pay.
In his small, fast car again, “X” sped uptown. Thaddeus Penny had given him a tip which demanded instant attention. The Agent parked his coupé, this time, close to a wide, luxurious drive bordering the river. Not far away was the yacht club where was anchored Monte Sutton’s yacht, the Osprey, and where Mayor Ballantine had tried to forget his troubles in an atmosphere of glamorous gaiety.
But for the moment Agent “X” had decided to tackle the menace that hung over the city from another angle. He had gone to the municipality’s highest executive without accomplishing anything except the crystallization of his own belief that something was radically wrong.
Later he had found the Terror’s document in the mayor’s home. Now he would delve into the lowest depths of the criminal underworld — in an effort to trace down the Terror’s men and make contact with the Terror himself.
Closing and locking the door of the coupé, “X” walked swiftly down a side street and stopped at last before a high brick wall. On the other side of this the gables and peaked roof of an old house showed. Even at a distance there was an air of desolation about the place, an air of disuse and decay.