k?"

"You find-a da leak," grunted Albano. "What-a you get-a you 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
disk-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 led 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 drug store, 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 suitcase, "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 Center 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 Bu