low."

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 recognize you. Do I look pretty good?"

"You look like a coal-heaver on the 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 barkeeper 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 gasmen,
"Where's de lea