asked in desperation.

"Yes, sir," came the chorus.

"Who'll go down and get me a bottle of ginger ale?" I asked.

A chorus of voices and glittering eyes was the answer. They all would. I
took a half-dollar from my pocket and gave it to the oldest.

"All right now, hustle along, and divide the change."

With the scamper of many feet they were gone, and we were alone. Kennedy
had now reached Albano's, and as soon as the last head had disappeared
below the scuttle of the roof he dropped two long strands down into the
back yard, as he had done at Vincenzo's.

I started to go back, but he stopped me.

"Oh, that will never do," he said. "The kids will see that the wires end
here. I must carry them on several houses farther as a blind and trust
to luck that they don't see the wires leading down below."

We were several houses down, still putting up 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 recognise 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 mo