wires when the crowd
came shouting back, sticky with cheap trust-made candy and black with
East Side chocolate. We opened the ginger ale and forced ourselves
to drink it so as to excite no suspicion, then a few minutes later
descended the stairs of the tenement, coming out just above Albano's.

I was wondering how Kennedy was going to get into Albano's again
without exciting suspicion. He solved it neatly.

"Now, Walter, do you think you could stand another dip into that red
ink of Albano's?"

I said I might in the interests of science and justice--not otherwise.

"Well, your face is sufficiently dirty," he commented, "so that with
the overalls you don't look very much as you did the first time you
went in. I don't think they will recognize you. Do I look pretty
good?"

"You look like a coal-heaver out of a job," I said. "I can scarcely
restrain my admiration."

"All right. Then take this little glass bottle. Go into the back room
and order something cheap, in keeping with your looks. Then when you
are all alone break the bottle. It is full of gas drippings. Your nose
will dictate what to do next. Just tell the proprietor you saw the gas
company's wagon on the next block and come up here and tell me."

I entered. There was a sinister-looking man, with a sort of
unscrupulous intelligence, writing at a table. As he wrote and puffed
at his cigar, I noticed a scar on his face, a deep furrow running from
the lobe of his ear to his mouth. That, I knew, was a brand set upon
him by the Camorra. I sat and smoked and sipped slowly for several
minutes, cursing him inwardly more for his presence than for his
evident look of the "_mala vita_." At last he went out to ask the
bar-keeper for a stamp.

Quickly I tiptoed over to another corner of the room and ground the
little bottle under my heel. Then I resumed my seat. The odor that
pervaded the room was sickening.

The sinister-looking man with the scar came in again and sniffed. I
sniffed. Then the proprietor came in and sniffed.

"Say," I said in the toughest voice I could assume, "you got a leak.
Wait. I seen the gas company wagon on the next block when I came in.
I'll get the man."

I dashed out and hurried up the street to the place where Kennedy was
waiting impatiently. Rattling his tools, he followed me with apparent
reluctance.

As he entered the wine-shop he snorted, after the manner of gas-men,
"Where's de leak?"

"You find-a da leak," grunted Albano. "Wha