reason of the aid given the government forces by the
boys.

J. B. McKay was the Man Higher Up. Higginbotham was his agent. This
man, one of the wealthiest realty operators in New York, was a born
gambler. He could never resist the impulse to engage in a venture that
would bring him big returns on his investment. In his realty
operations, this quality had earned him the name of "Take a Chance"
McKay.

When the Eighteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution was
adopted--the prohibition amendment--he watched developments. He felt
certain that liquor smuggling would spring up. In this he was not
mistaken. New York became a vast center of the traffic.

And as he beheld the great sums made by the men bringing liquor into
the country in defiance of the law, the thought came to McKay of how
these individual operators might be united by a strong and ruthless
man, their methods improved, and a vast fortune made by the man in
control. Thereupon he set about obtaining this control.

It was McKay, said Captain Folsom, who organized the motor truck
caravan which brought liquor across the Canadian border into Northern
New York to a distributing center, a night's run to the South, whence
it was sent across the land by express as china and glassware from a
china and glassware manufactory. This factory was mere camouflage. A
plant did exist, but it was nothing more than a storage warehouse at
which the motor trucks unloaded their cargoes.

Police protection was needed, of course, and police protection McKay
obtained. The factory so-called was in the open country, on the
outskirts of a tiny village. The local authorities were bribed. All
along the route from Canada, money was liberally spent in order to
prevent interference from police. Big cities en route were avoided.
The Highway of Grease ("grease" meaning bribery) led around all such,
for in them usually the police were incorruptible.

It was McKay, too, who organized the airplane carriage of liquor from
Canada to points outside New York City and to Stamford, Conn. One of
his planes only recently, explained Captain Folsom, had fallen in a
field near Croton-on-Hudson, with a valuable cargo of liquor aboard
after a night's flight from Canada.

But it was in organizing the importation of liquor from the Bahamas
that McKay reached his heights. He had assembled a fleet of old
schooners, many of which had seen better days and lacked business,
commanded by skippers who were in des