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SCARFACE
139

eted to the gun for a moment, then he looked up at Tony and his eyes shifted again. He rose.

"All right, I'll do it," he said, and walked out.

Tony smiled a little when the man had gone. Again he had won over the sullenly defiant Libati. He felt that he might yet master the fellow and make him a highly useful subordinate. Well, one thing certain; he'd either master him or make use of the "authority" he had exhibited to clinch his argument.

For half an hour Tony sat quietly smoking while he thought over the situation. It began to look as if this Schemer Bruno had come by his name rightfully, as if he were a worthy foe. And as an instrument with which to carry out his schemes he had as powerful a gang as was to be found in the United States. Its personnel was at least as strong as that of the Lovo mob and had proved itself to be equally resourceful and ruth­less. And under the able leadership of this Schemer Bruno it seemed to have set out on the same sort of ambitious program of expansion that Tony himself now intended embarking upon with the aid of the Lovo gang.

Tony had heard, too, that the three most im­portant gangs on the South Side were about to