n and his practiced
fingers ran swiftly over the unresisting form, feeling beneath the arms,
down the flanks, about the belt line and even at the back of the neck
for a suspicious hard bulge inside the garments, finally giving the side
coat pockets a perfunctory slap.

"Unless you make it necessary, we won't be callin' for the wagon,"
Casane stated. "Just the three of us'll take a little stroll, like I'm
telling you--just stroll out and take the air up to Headquarters."

He slipped into position on one side of the gangster, Ginsburg on the
other. Over his shoulder the man thus placed between them looked round
to where his two underlings still sat at the table, both silent as the
rest of the company were, but both plainly prepared for any
contingencies; both ready to follow their chief's lead in whatsoever
course, peaceable or violent, he might next elect to follow.

"Here you, Louie," he bade one of them, "jump to the telephone and
notify a certain party to have me mouthpiece at Headquarters by the time
I kin get there with these two dicks. Tell him the cops've got nothin'
on me, but I wants me mouthpiece there just the same--case of a tie."

Until now the preliminaries had been carried on with a due regard for
the unwritten but rigid code of underworld etiquette. From neither side
had there issued a single unethical word. The detectives had been
punctilious to avoid ruffling the sensibilities of any and all. All the
same, the prisoner chose of a sudden to turn nasty. It was at once
manifest that he aimed to give offence without giving provocation or
real excuse for reprisals on the part of the invaders. He spat sidewise
across Casane's front and as he took the first step forward he brought
the foot down upon one of Ginsburg's feet, grinding his heel sharply
into the toes beneath. Ginsburg winced at the pain but did not speak; he
had not spoken at all up until now, leaving it to Casane as the elder
man to conduct the preliminaries.

"Why don't you say something, you Jew!" taunted the prisoner. "Don't you
even know enough to excuse yourself when you stick your fat feet in
people's way?"

"That'll be all right," said Ginsburg crisply. It was his business to
avoid the issue of a clash. "And it'll be all right your calling me a
Jew. I am a Jew and I'm proud of it. And I'm wearing the same name I
started out with too."

"Is that so?"

Except in the inspired pages of fiction city thugs are singularly barren
of power