CHAPTER XXV
The newspapers the following afternoon gave Tony a shock. The Police Commissioner, in a lengthy statement about Flanagan's daring assassination, said that he felt that younger men were necessary to cope with these modern gangsters, and announced the promotion of Lieutenant Ben Guarino to Captain and Chief of Detectives. The new Chief, in a statement of his own, announced it as his opinion that the affair of the night before was the work of Tony Camonte and his gang, and promised to run Tony out of town or kill him in the attempt.
Tony laughed at that; then he frowned. It wasn't a nice thought to know that your own brother had sworn publicly to hunt you to the death. God! This family mix-up in his affairs was beginning to get on his nerves. Then Tony's jaw set and his eyes flashed. If they ever met in a situation where only one could escape, Ben would be just another dick in his eyes.
Tony went down to dinner in the dining-room of his hotel that evening feeling rather well-pleased with himself. One of the waitresses came forward to serve him, her crisply-starched white uniform rustling stiffly. He gave his order without looking up. But when she served his soup, her finely manicured hands caught his attention. From the hands, his glance strayed to her figure, the perfection of which drew his gaze upward to the face. Then he almost jumped out of his chair. For the girl was his sister, Rosie.
"You!" he exclaimed.
"Yes," she answered breathlessly in a low tone. "I hoped you wouldn't notice. But I had to do something, now that Mike's dead, and this was all I could find."
She hurried away before he could comment or question her further. Tony dipped his spoon into the soup, then paused. That explanation of her presence here did not ring true. He knew that she did not have to work; the monthly sum he had his attorney send to his family was more than sufficient to take care of them all in luxury.
Then why was she here? Why, indeed, except to attempt vengeance upon him? He gazed at the soup, his black eyes glittering with suspicion. But the clear liquid told him nothing. Surreptitiously he emptied the contents of his water glass upon the floor, and poured some of the soup into the glass. Then he rose and, concealing the glass by his side, walked toward the door that led into the lobby of the small hotel.
"I've been called to the telephone," he explained with a forced smile as he passed her. "Be back in a minute."
Out in the lobby, he called one of his henchmen and handed the glass to him.
"Take that over to the drug store across the street right away and have it analyzed." he ordered. "I'll wait here till you get back."
His thoughts in a turmoil, he waited. But he was positive of the verdict even before his henchman returned and breathlessly announced it! The soup contained enough poison to kill a mule, much less a man!
Tony walked back into the dining-room with his face an expressionless mask in which only the eyes glittered with life. The nerve of the girl, to get a job in his own hotel so that she could have the opportunity of poisoning him, of exacting the toll for Mike's death that the law had been unable to collect. God! She was his own sister, all right.
He stood beside his table and she came forward, only her flaming cheeks belying her outward cool ness.
"You get off at seven, don't you?" he said calmly.
"Yes. Why?"
"I have to go upstairs on business. When you get off, please bring the rest of my dinner up to my private office on the top floor of the hotel. There'll be a big tip in it," he added with an attempt at a smile, "and I want to have a little talk with you anyway."
He went up to his office, wondering if she would come of her own free will or at the behest of the gunmen he had ordered to keep a close watch upon her and bring her up in case she should try to get away without complying with his request. He hoped she would come by herself.
She did, already attired in an attractive street costume, and carrying a large tray with a number of covered dishes. She set the tray down on his desk. He looked up at her grimly.
"Are these things poisoned, too?" he asked.
She jerked so violently that she almost dropped the tray and her eyes widened in terror.
"I don't know what—" she stammered.
"There was enough poison in that soup you served me to kill a dozen men," he continued smoothly. "And they don't usually poison it in the kitchen. So you must have done it."
"Yes, I did," she snapped with sudden defiance. "I loved Mike and you murdered him. You cheated the law but I resolved that you shouldn't cheat me. And I got this job so I could get you. But you've found it out. Now, what are you going to do about it?"
The abrupt directness of her methods, so very like his own, disconcerted him for a moment. "I haven't decided," he admitted finally. "I ought to have you taken for a ride, but I think you're too brave to be finished up by a stab in the back like that. Do you realize the danger you're in?"
"Yes. I've known all the time what a long chance I was taking. But Mike was dead; what difference did it make?"
"Mike was a hoodlum," snapped Tony harshly. "A gunman and a thug. He'd killed a lot of people and was always ready to kill more whenever I said the word and was ready to pay the price."
"I suppose you think you're better," sneered the girl.
"That's not the question. We're talking about Mike. He wasn't worthy of any girl's love. But I want you to know that I had no idea you two were married. I thought he was just going to take advantage of you, as he had so many other girls. That's why I—I bumped him off."
A tenderness had come into Tony's voice. He caught himself as he saw her staring at him, wide-eyed.
"What's the matter?" he demanded.
"N-n-nothing. For a minute, you seemed so much like—somebody I—I once knew."
Tony breathed hoarsely for an instant and turned away so that she could see only the scarred side of his face. She had almost recognized him.
"I'm sorry about Mike. But it just had to be," he said doggedly. "And you'll be a lot better off. Some day you'll thank me for what I did. So run along and forget Mike. And from now on, be careful of the guys you pick. You're too nice a girl to be chasing around with gunmen."
"How would you like to mind your own business?" she blazed, her eyes glistening with incipient tears.
"Fine. You might do the same. And don't try to poison any more gang leaders; some of 'em might not like it. . . . If you need any money—" "I don't," she snapped proudly. "And I won't. We have plenty."
Tony felt a thrill of satisfaction. They would never know, of course, that their prosperity was due to him. But he was glad that he had been able to make them comfortable.
"All right, then—girlie," he said slowly. "And just remember that you're the only person that ever tried to kill Tony Camonte and lived to tell about it."
Still staring at him curiously, a perplexed frown wrinkling her brows, she finally departed. Tony heaved a long sigh. Well, that was over.
Abruptly he switched his agile, daring mind back to the matter which had become an obsession with him—the wreaking of vengeance upon the officials to whom he had paid so much but who, in time of crisis, had betrayed him. And then he realized that there was something bigger to all this than venting his personal spite upon these officials who had betrayed not only him but their trust.
For the first time in his hectic life he felt the social impulse which is, at once, the cause and the result of civilization—the realization that the welfare of mankind was more important than his own preservation, the realization that he owed something to the world.
In the grip of new emotions, of strange ideas and convictions hitherto foreign to him, he wrote steadily for two hours. When he had finished he read through the pile of sheets with grim satisfaction, then folded and sealed them, together with a small black leather-covered notebook, in a large envelope, across whose face he wrote: To be delivered unopened to the "Evening American" the day after my death. Then he locked it up in his desk.
He realized, of course, the sensation that would follow its ultimate publication but he had no idea that he had just written, with amazing brevity and directness, the most significantly damning indictment of American political machines ever composed. Yet that proved to be the case.
Its publication, unknown to him, was to cause the suicide of half a dozen prominent men, the ruination of innumerable others, a complete reorganization of the government and police administration of not only that city but many others; and, by its revelation to the common voter behind the scenes of activities of so-called public servants, and their close connection with the underworld, was to prove the most powerful weapon of modern times for the restoration of decent, dependable government in the larger cities.
But he would have laughed unbelievingly had any one told him that now. And he wouldn't have been particularly interested. This social consciousness that had come over him for a time was too new a thing to him to be permanent. Already he was hungry again for action, for personal vengeance against those whom he felt had it coming to them. His cunning mind leaped to the problem which was, momentarily, his main purpose in life—the killing of Moran, that ratty assistant district attorney.
The telephone at his elbow jangled loudly in the complete silence of the room. He lifted the receiver, growled a curt "Hello," and listened to the voice that came rapidly to him with its report. When he hung up, his eyes were sparkling.
Five minutes later, he and four of his most trusted men—that is, best paid—drove away in a high-powered sedan. To the far South Side they drove rapidly, yet at a pace not sufficiently rapid to attract attention. For they were in enemy territory there. If their presence was discovered, a dozen carloads of gansters, representing the various small and always turbulent South Side mobs—would be gunning for them.
There was danger, too, from detective bureau squad cars. With the contents of his car what it was, Tony realized that it would be impossible for him to give a satisfactory explanation of his presence in enemy territory. And if they should happen to be picked up by a squad that wouldn't listen to reason, they should probably find themselves in a nasty jam.
Across the street from a saloon in a dark neighborhood, they stopped. The engine of their car had been cut off a block away and they had coasted up to their objective, the careful application of their well-greased brakes preventing any sound as they came to a halt. The chauffeur remained under the wheel, ready for the instant getaway that would be imperative, Tony and the other three men slipped on masks that completely concealed their faces. Then, carrying machine guns, they hurried silently across the street.
Noiselessly as ghosts they appeared in the doorway, their weapons poised ready for instant destruction. A score of men were lined up at the bar. And at the end stood Moran, chatting chummily with four men who looked to be very improper companions for an assistant district attorney. In fact, two of them were prominent Irish bootleggers of the far South Side jungles, whom he had prosecuted unsuccessfully for murder not many months before.
The bartender, facing the door, was the first to see the masked intruders as they stood silently side by side with ready weapons. The way he stiffened and stared attracted the notice of the others because they began turning around to see what held his fascinated gaze.
"Hands up, everybody!" barked Tony brusquely.
"My God! It's—" cried Moran, but the rest of the sentence was drowned in the vicious stuttering of Tony's machine gun.
Without so much as a gasp, Moran fell forward, almost cut in two by the hurtling stream of lead. Behind his mask, Tony smiled grimly and swung the spouting black muzzle to include the two Irish bootleggers. Anybody that could stand being chummy with Moran was sure to be a rat and much better out of the way, and these two were notorious bad eggs anyway. As he watched them drop, Tony felt that he had accomplished a civic improvement. And undoubtedly he had saved the state the expense of trying to hang them again at some future time.
Tony loosened the pressure of his forefinger on the machine-gun's trigger and the abrupt silence that followed the gun's death rattle was startling.
"Any o' you other guys want a dose of this?" he demanded. The men cowered back against the bar, their lifted hands trembling. "Well, don't come outside for five minutes or you'll get it."
His henchman on the left turned and walked outside, on the lookout for danger from that direction. Tony followed, then the other two men backed out. During the hectic two minutes inside the saloon, the chauffeur had turned the car around and it stood humming angrily at the curb. They all leaped in and it roared away.
Tony was exultant. He had settled all his local scores now, except that with the D.A. himself and the contents of that envelope he had sealed not long before would take care of him—and how! But there was that New York crowd that were trying to invade his domain and who had tried to bump him off just before his trial. Tony frowned and gritted his teeth when he thought of them.