Chapter 3

Tony cocked an inquiring eye in Henny’s direction. “’S all right,” said
the latter, with a comfortable grin. “Fin ain’t lookin’ for revenge. He
on’y wants the story. He’s one of these new, fiction writers. He’ll
change the names and all.”

Tony, assured there was no danger in it, swelled a little at the idea of
seeing his exploit in print. “Yeah,” he said with a great air of
unconcern, “that was my job all right. I didn’t aim to hurt the old
Slovak, but it took longer than I figured to search the place, and he
come out of the gauze before I was troo. So I hadda bump his bean. I
didn’t hurt him much.” Tony spoke in an oddly husky voice for one so
young, and dropped the words out of the corner of his mouth like a
ventriloquist.

Fin held in his anger. It was no time to indulge private feelings.
“Sure,” he said propitiatingly, “he wasn’t hurt much. Who hired you to
do the job?”

“I don’t know the guy’s name,” said Tony coolly, “and I wouldn’t tell it
if I did. I seen him hanging around town once or twice—he was a guy you
wouldn’t forget easy, and one night he come into the bar downstairs. I
seen him lookin’ at me, and I seen him askin’ Ed who I was. So I let him
buy me a drink. After we had three or four we got friendly, and after he
stalled around awhile he put it up to me, would I take on a little job
for a hundred smackers paid down and a grand to follow.”

Fin perceived that he need have no delicacy in discussing these matters
with Tony.

“I says sure I would,” Tony went on, “give me the dope; and he told me a
story how years ago a Slovak jeweller stole an emerald off him that
belonged to his family, and disappeared. The guy finally traced him here
to Hoboken, and found him keeping a little repair shop. He couldn’t have
the Slovak arrested he said, because he didn’t have no proof he stole
the emerald, but he’d give me a hundred smackers to search his place,
and if I found the emerald and brought it to him, it would be worth a
grand to me.

“Maybe it was all hooey. What did I care? I saw a hundred in it anyhow,
and I took it on. I prospected around the joint and I found the Slovak
hadn’t no safe, so it looked like a cinch. I found I could get in easy
through the cellar, and up the air-shaft to the window of his back room.
He always left it open nights.

“I fixed on last night to pull it off. The Slovak worked late in his
store ev’y night. I watched until he put his light out, then I waited an
hour for him to go bye-bye and went in. I give him a whiff of chloroform
to keep him quiet. Then I searched the place. Cheese! I near pulled it
down, lookin’, because the New York guy told me if he had it he would
hide it good. Well, I didn’t find no emerald at that. The rest of the
stuff wasn’t worth lifting. I’m no small change artist. . . . Well, you
know the rest,” Tony concluded; “the Slovak come to while I was there,
and I had to put him to sleep again.”

“What did you hit him with?” asked Fin casually.

“Didn’t have nothing with me,” said Tony, “so I unscrewed a brass knob
offen the bed, dropped it in my handkerchief and soaked him with that.”

“That was a neat one!” said Fin with a grin that concealed more than it
expressed.

“Well, that’s all,” said Tony, with his conceited swagger. “I told you
there was nothing to it.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Fin. “That was a good touch about the emerald.
What like emerald was it, did he say?”

“It was in the shape of a heart the guy said,” answered Tony, “about so
big.” He measured an inch with thumb and forefinger. “It was in two
halves joined together with a gold band,” he said, “and there was a
little ring in the top to hang it by. Been in his family hundreds of
years, he said. All hooey, I guess. Said I was to bring it to him just
as I found it if I wanted the grand.”

“What like guy was this New York guy?” asked Fin.

Tony shook his head. “I won’t furnish no description,” he said. “It
ain’t professional.”

Henny nodded in agreement.

“Have you seen him since last night?” asked Fin.

“Sure. I met him on the ferry boat _Bergen_ this aft. as agreed. He was
sore as hell too, not to get the emerald, but what did I care? I already
had the hundred off him.”

“Will you see him again?”

“Nah! Why should I?”

“It’s a good story all right,” said Fin. “I’ll have to fake up what we
don’t know about it. . . . What did you do with the brass knob after?”
he asked very carelessly.

“Cheese! I dropped it in me pocket and forgot all about it,” said Tony.
“I found it there later, and I was for pitching it in the river first
off, but it made an elegant dropper without being incriminating, get me?
So I kept it. Just about that time I get Kid River, a pal of mine. He
had a job over in Manhattan to-night and he was looking for a nice
dropper, so I give it to him.”

Fin quietly absorbed this piece of information. There was nothing more
he could say without showing his hand. He threw out a little smoke
screen of flattery. “Cheese! Tony, you sure are one nervy kid! It’s a
treat to hear you! You must tell me some more stories!” And so on.

Tony could take any amount of this. “Sure, any time you like,” he said
condescendingly.

The meeting broke up.

Fin made his way down to the bar alone. He accepted a beer from Ed
Hafker, and they fell into idle talk across the mahogany.

“Do you know a guy called Kid River?” asked Fin.

“Sure, he comes in here.”

“I’d like to know him. I hear he’s got a good story.”

“I’ll tell him when I see him.”

“Know where he lives?”

“In the old tenement at Second and River. One block up.”

“What’s his right name?”

“You can search me. Everybody calls him Kid River.”

Fin was in no haste to be gone. Ed must have one with him first.
Robespierre was still loitering across the street. Fin naturally
supposed that this was the man who had hired Tony Casino. He silently
addressed him over his beer glass: “What wouldn’t you give to know that
the emerald heart was inside the brass ball, old fella? Your man lifted
it without knowing that he lifted it!”

II

The old tenement house had a row of broken letter boxes in the
vestibule, but nobody troubled to put names in them. The people who
lived in this house gave little work to the letter-carrier. Fin, as
before, applied to the sidewalk children for information.

“What floor does Kid River live on?”

Several voices answered at once: “Top floor, front, left-hand door.”

Another said: “He ain’t home.”

“Is there anybody there?” asked Fin.

“Sure, his girl is home.”

Still another voice volunteered: “They had a fight this afternoon. I
heard her hollerin’.”