Agent “X” swung the woman into the steps of a fast foxtrot, leaning over her a bit to hide his face from her sharp gaze. He wanted to think.
The dance ended. Agent “X” took the woman back toward the table where Bugs’ two former pals still sat. They applauded loudly.
“You and Bugs make a good team, Goldie! It’s too bad Gus can’t dance like that, too.”
Goldie put her finger to her lips and rolled her eyes. “Gus can do other things,” she said mysteriously. “And you boys better watch yourselves.”
The instant sobering of the two gangsters faces showed the respect in which they held Sanzoni. They assumed poker expressions, fingered their glasses.
“Better go in and see him, Bugs,” said one. “He might get sore if you hang out here without letting him know.”
“Yes,” said Goldie, “run along, Bugs, but act decent. Gus is used to bein’ treated right these days. He makes all the boys toe the mark.”
“X” hesitated a moment, looking about him.
“The door at the left,” said Goldie. “He’s got a new hangout now. Go through the hall and up the stairs. His place is right ahead. But knock before you go in.”
AGENT “X” followed her directions. He was like a man walking on glass. But the eager, questing light of battle was in his eyes. He entered the doorway at the left of the dance floor, passed through a corridor, mounted a flight of luxuriously carpeted stairs, and knocked at the door before him. A wheezing voice bade him come in.
“X” did so, opening the door and entering a chamber that was a cross between an office and an elaborately ornate den. Great leather chairs stood about. Expensive woodwork made brownish reflections under shaded lights. A period-design of table stood in the center of the floor. And behind this a man sat.
He was a big man, with rounded shoulders and a bull-like neck that hung in flabby rolls over his collar. His small eyes were sunk in pouches of flesh. His lips were moist, red spots in a pile of blubber.
“X” had seen pictures of Gus Sanzoni. This was the man; but he had put on weight obviously. Prosperity had padded his massive frame with an excess of pendulous, unwholesome fat.
He did not seem surprised to see Bugs Gary. He held out a flabby hand, smiled, and waved to a chair. But his fingers were fishily cold, and there was no friendliness in his smile or in the brittle glitter of his small eyes.
“Sit down, Bugs. The boys told me about you getting out. I figured maybe you’d turn up.”
Looking at the man before him, Agent “X” felt that he was in for a battle of wits; that he was already on the mat before a relentless, masterful personality who would be difficult to trick or bulldoze.
Agent “X” smiled, met the glittering eyes of the other, all but out of sight in the flesh around them.
“Couldn’t stay away,” he said lightly. “A guy gets lonely for his old pals in stir.”
A laugh that began as a wheeze sounded in Gus Sanzoni’s throat. It rose until it was a bubbling peal of humorless mirth that filled the room.
“You like your old pals, Bugs!” he panted. “You got all dolled up just to meet ’em, eh, Bugs? You came back as quick as you could when they let you out!”
Agent “X” nodded, still smiling, but with the knowledge that the man before him was making sport of him for some reason of his own. Then suddenly Gus Sanzoni seemed to rise in his chair, tower like an unwholesome, menacing hulk; his dark eyes aglitter. He leaned forward across the table.
“Don’t pull that stuff on me, Bugs,” he wheezed. “Don’t think you can soft-soap Gus Sanzoni. You didn’t get out of the Big House for nothing. You didn’t come here because you loved us.”
There was silence in the room; tense silence while Agent “X” stared at the other waiting. Gus Sanzoni’s fat, almost shapeless hands spread out on the table like a bloated spider’s claws. The movement of his small red mouth was venomous.
“I’m onto you, Bugs. They let you out of the Big House for a purpose. You heard I’d taken Goldie. You’d heard I was playing a new racket, and you saw a chance to make some dough for yourself, and maybe square things up. Who’s payin’ you to be a stoolie — an’ spy on me?”
Agent “X” was for a moment speechless. This was a twist he hadn’t anticipated. Gus Sanzoni, far from the truth, was yet near enough to upset all of “X’s” plans. His disguise had worked; but it had gotten him in as deep as though he had come as an agent of the law.
“You musta gone off your nut, Gus,” he said. “I ain’t no stoolie. I—”
“None of your dirty lies! I ain’t got time to listen to ’em. There’s only one thing I want to know. Who’s the guy that got the warden to pardon you?”
“Why the governor, Gus. You know the governor has to—”
“Yeah. And who asked the governor to do it? Who’s got you on his payroll as a stoolie? Answer me that!”
“You’re talking crazy, Gus. You know Bugs Gary wouldn’t never doublecross—”
“O. K.,” said Sanzoni evilly. “You’re a tight-lipped guy! They got you fixed nice! But I got ways to make mugs loosen up when I ask ’em things — and I’ll make you beg for a chance to talk!”
“X” didn’t see the gangster move. But a buzzer sounded faintly somewhere. It testified to the fact that there was a button under Sanzoni’s foot on the floor. Instantly a door at the end of the room opened. Two flint-eyed men with sawed-off shot guns entered. Then, from the sound behind him and the faint draft of air on his neck, “X” knew that others had come in from the rear. He was surrounded, threatened with instant death if he made a move, in the stronghold of as cunning a criminal as he had ever come across.
Chapter XII
SLOWLY he turned so that he could see both pairs who menaced him. Those at his back were the same two he had set at table with a moment before — Bugs Gary’s pals. But their faces were dead pans now. Their hands gripped black automatics. They would shoot at the merest nod from Sanzoni, send a withering stream of slugs at his body. For that was the law of the underworld — obey the big shot — murder a pal in the interests of one’s own career. Like the gray rats that Thaddeus Penny had mentioned, each was out for himself alone. And because Sanzoni had money, influence, they would murder callously at his behest. The gangster’s harsh, wheezing chuckle sounded again. “Here are your pals, Bugs. You came to see ’em! Look ’em over! They got a welcome for you — a dose of lead. You’ll be glad to talk when they start working on you. Maybe you’d rather unbutton your lip now — and tell me what I asked.”
Agent “X” was silent. Whatever he said would be held against him. He couldn’t tell Sanzoni what the man wanted to know. Better keep still, and wait for a possible break. But none seemed coming. Sanzoni was experienced in handling desperate, murderous men. He was taking no chances.
“If he goes for his rod, boys, give it to him where he stands. Frisk him, Regio.”
A fifth man started toward “X” to disarm him. The Agent’s eyes burned somberly at this. There were things on his person that must not be discovered — his strange devices that he carried, his gas gun which would give him away, make Sanzoni suspect that he was not Bugs Gary at all. Sanzoni spoke as the man Regio came forward.
“The boys will take you downstairs, Bugs! They’ll work on you there. Shoot your fingers off — like they did Mike Barney’s. Maybe you remember Mike! And by the time you’ve lost a couple of thumbs you’ll be willing to talk!
A picture flashed through “X’s” mind. A picture of a criminal he had once seen, Mike Barney, trying to light a cigarette with shapeless, crippled hands, a silent, bitter man, reluctant to say what sort of accident he had met with. Now “X” knew.