t-a you get-a pay for? You
want-a me do your work?"

"Well, half a dozen o' you wops get out o' here, that's all. D'youse
all wanter be blown ter pieces wid dem pipes and cigarettes? Clear
out," growled Kennedy.

They retreated precipitately, and Craig hastily opened his bag of
tools.

"Quick, Walter, shut the door and hold it," exclaimed Craig, working
rapidly. He unwrapped a little package and took out a round, flat,
disc-like thing of black vulcanized rubber. Jumping up on a table, he
fixed it to the top of the reflector over the gas-jet.

"Can you see that from the floor, Walter?" he asked under his breath.

"No," I replied, "not even when I know it is there."

Then he attached a couple of wires to it and let them across the
ceiling toward the window, concealing them carefully by sticking them
in the shadow of a beam. At the window he quickly attached the wires
to the two that were dangling down from the roof and shoved them
around out of sight.

"We'll have to trust that no one sees them," he said. "That's the best
I can do at such short notice. I never saw a room so bare as this,
anyway. There isn't another place I could put that thing without its
being seen."

We gathered up the broken glass of the gas-drippings bottle, and I
opened the door.

"It's all right, now," said Craig, sauntering out before the bar.
"Only de next time you has anyt'ing de matter call de company up. I
ain't supposed to do dis wit'out orders, see?"

A moment later I followed, glad to get out of the oppressive
atmosphere, and joined him in the back of Vincenzo's drugstore, where
he was again at work. As there was no back window there, it was quite
a job to lead the wires around the outside from the back yard and
in at a side window. It was at last done, however, without exciting
suspicion, and Kennedy attached them to an oblong box of weathered oak
and a pair of specially constructed dry batteries.

"Now," said Craig, as we washed off the stains of work and stowed the
overalls back in the suit-case, "that is done to my satisfaction. I
can tell Gennaro to go ahead safely now and meet the Black-Handers."

From Vincenzo's we walked over toward Centre Street, where Kennedy and
I left Luigi to return to his restaurant, with instructions to be at
Vincenzo's at half-past eleven that night.

We turned into the new police headquarters and went down the long
corridor to the Italian Bureau. Kennedy sent in his card to Lieutenant
Giuse