Part 61 (2/2)

Wait, I tell you! This ain't a autopsy. This is business. I'm tellin'

you two guys all this becuz I want you to realise that what Eddie done was against my advice. Come on, now; wasn't it?”

”It sure was,” admitted Curfoot, removing his cigar from his lean, pointed visage of a greyhound, and squinting thoughtfully at the smoke eddying in the draught from the open window.

”Am I right, Eddie?” demanded Stull, fixing his black, smeary eyes on Brandes.

”Well, go on,” returned the latter between thin lips that scarcely moved.

”All right, then. Here's the situation, Doc. We're broke. If Quint hadn't staked us to this here new game we're playin', where'd we be, I ask you?

”We got no income now. Quint's is shut up; Maxy Venem and Minna Minti fixed us at Saratoga so we can't go back there for a while. They won't let us touch a card on the liners. Every pug is leery of us since Eddie flimflammed that Battling Smoke; and I told you he'd holler, too! Didn't I?” turning on Brandes, who merely let his slow eyes rest on him without replying.

”Go on, Ben,” said Curfoot.

”I'm going on. We guys gotta do something----”

”We ought to have fixed Max Venem,” said Curfoot coolly.

There was a silence; all three men glanced stealthily at Neeland, who quietly turned the page of his book as though absorbed in his story.

”That squealer, Max,” continued Curfoot with placid ferocity blazing in his eyes, ”ought to have been put away. Quint and Parson wanted us to have it done. Was it any stunt to get that dirty little shyster in some roadhouse last May?”

Brandes said:

”I'm not mixing with any gunmen after the Rosenthal business.”

”Becuz a lot of squealers done a amateur job like that, does it say that a honest job can't be pulled?” demanded Curfoot. ”Did Quint and me ask you to go to Dopey or Clabber or Pete the Wop, or any of them cheap gangsters?”

”Ah, can the gun-stuff,” said Brandes. ”I'm not for it. It's punk.”

”What's punk?”

”Gun-play.”

”Didn't you pull a pop on Maxy Venem the night him and Hyman Adams and Minna beat you up in front of the Knickerbocker?”

”Eddie was stalling,” interrupted Stull, as Brandes' face turned a dull beef-red. ”You talk like a bad actor, Doc. There's other ways of getting Max in wrong. Guns ain't what they was once. Gun-play is old stuff. But listen, now. Quint has staked us and we gotta make good.

And this is a big thing, though it looks like it was out of our line.”

”Go on; what's the idea?” inquired Curfoot, interested.

Brandes, the dull red still staining his heavy face, watched the flying landscape from the open window.

Stull leaned forward; Curfoot bent his lean, narrow head nearer; Neeland, staring fixedly at his open book, p.r.i.c.ked up his ears.

”Now,” said Stull in a low voice, ”I'll tell you guys all Eddie and I know about this here business of Captain Quint's. It's like this, Doc: Some big feller comes to Quint after they close him up--he won't tell who--and puts up this here proposition: Quint is to open a elegant place in Paris on the Q. T. In fact, it's ready now. There'll be all the backing Quint needs. He's to send over three men he can trust--three men who can shoot at a pinch! He picks us three and stakes us. Get me?”

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