Gang Pulp

Rough on “Rats” By Anatole Feldman

Gangster Stories, December 1929

It wasn’t he boodle that figured, and it wasn’t the lead, and it wasn’t fear — just the heartbreaking business of a filthy double-crossing trap that put too much lead into guts where it didn’t belong. A Chink, a Jew, and an Irishman — plenty brains — but nobody spotted the rat anyway. Read this hair-raising novel of Underworld intrigue and the gun-moll who knew everybody’s onions!

The hands of the open, bold faced clock in the tower of the Jefferson Market Court, pointed to three. Three in the morning of a raw, blustery day in early March. The streets were deserted of all save an occasional drunk sleeping off the effects of a bottle of potent “smoke,” and a few stray felines, commonly referred to in the neighborhood as “Garbage Inspectors.”

Then life and movement began to animate the scene. The heavy-timbered oak door of one of the many private houses silently opened into the night. A thin crack of light pierced the gloom in the street, then was snuffed out as a gusty gale of wind zoomed around the corner.

A squat, dark visaged man, with cap pulled low over his eyes, sidled down the short flight of stairs from the door onto the sidewalk. His movements were furtive, sly; as swift as any predatory creature of the night.

A brass-buttoned, blue-coated flatfoot pounded his heavy feet down the end of the street and the man in the cap flattened himself in the dark shadows against the house. He waited a moment, tense, until the copper had passed, then with an agile leap sped across the sidewalk to a waiting machine.

With one movement he was behind the wheel with his foot on the starter. A low rumble of power suddenly echoed in the quiet street as he jammed his foot on the gas pedal. Then he slipped into gear and took the next corner on high.

A scene, very similar to this, was transpiring at precisely the same time, at a point in the city some three miles north. And still a third individual, with slinking, furtive movements, surprisingly like those of the first gunman, started out in a speedy machine from a point five miles south.

A half hour later, within thirty seconds of each other, the three denizens of the night entered a shabby waterfront cafe on West Christopher Street. The honky-tonk was foul with the stale odor of flat beer and the acrid fumes of bitter black tobacco.

This was Silent Joe’s dump. Joe, its proprietor, was deaf and dumb. Anything and everything, murder, arson and rape, had been planned across the beery tables of Silent Joe’s place and there were only five notches carved on the bar.

Notches, you ask? Yes; that was Silent Joe’s idiosyncrasy. Every man, or woman for that matter, who was sent up to the hot seat from his dump, had his epitaph carved into Joe’s bar with a notch.

The three late arrivals drifted to a dilapidated table in the far corner. Joe approached them; Joe of the sharp, unnaturally bright and ferret-like eyes. That was nature’s compensation; hear and speak he could not, but he could read a letter out of the corner of his eye across the room.

One of the men at the table went into a graphic description of a bottle. Joe understood; he had received that order many times before. He turned to his bar and returned to the table a moment later with a bottle of whiskey. The drinks were poured.

“Salud!”

A grunt.

“Faugh!”

And thus the formalities were attended to. The formalities to the planning of—

Now New York is a town of a million rackets, gunmen, gangs and suckers. And over the flaming, vicious underworld of the city ruled three men. Three men as cold, relentless, brutal and yet as sentimental as ever killers were. One ruled the mob of two-gun gorillas that used the streets and alleys north of Tenth Street as their stamping ground. Another found a fortune in the crooked sinister alleys of Chinatown and the flaming east-side. And the third, like a blood-thirsty pirate of old, sucked wealth from the river on the west and the teeming warehouses that crowded its banks.

Shanty Hogan, quick thinking, witty, brilliant, ruled the North Siders, and such was his guile at playing crooked politics with even crookeder politicians of the city, that his activities in crime extended as far north as Columbus Circle.

Smooth, oily, affable China Cholly ruled his renegade tong with a honeyed tongue and the most subtle, treacherous poison known to the East. But be it said for China Cholly that he reserved this refinement in diabolical death only for a squealer — a rat! The entire underworld approved!

To make this curious triumvirate complete, there was in the west, Hymie Zeiss. Now when a Jew is tough and a bad egg — he’s just that. Wicked. Hymie Zeiss, “Little Hymie,” as he was affectionately referred to by his henchmen, was not a lovely thing to look at, as a man. He was short, flat-faced and wizened, but his eyes were the soft, mellow brown of the Semite. On more than one occasion. Hymie had plugged a man, plugged him dead, and a half hour later endowed the widow with an annuity for life.

Among these three mobs there was not open warfare. In fact, some sort of truce had been agreed on between them. But there was friction, jealousy, unrest. The seething dynamite of hell brewed beneath the surface, needing only the spark of one overt act to blow off the lid.

Among the three of them they had fairly well divided up lower Manhattan for criminal exploitation, but down the center of the island, between the domain ruled by China Cholly on the East Side and the haunts of Little Hymie on the west, was a narrow band of territory that all exploited equally. It was this neutral section of the city that was the chief bone of contention among the three gang chiefs. Each one suspected the other of reaching out greedy fingers for it; each one feared the aggression of the other.

And for the past six months now, the seething tempers and bitter hatreds so long kept below the surface, were gradually emerging toward an open break; towards open warfare. It started with minor violations of the truce among the three mobs and developed with one reprisal after another to a situation so desperate that Police Commissioner Mallen, down at Headquarters, neglected his duties as official welcomer of the city, and went into executive session with his lieutenants.

There was a certain three-story red brick house on West 10th Street, just off Seventh Avenue, that was used by Shanty Hogan as headquarters. The three upper stories were occupied by a crew of hungry, flea-bitten hack writers, but the low English basement, the pet graft of Shanty’s, was the most notorious and thriving dispensory of booze in the district.

At eleven a.m. of the morning following the surreptitious meeting of the three mugs in Silent Joe’s. Shanty stepped briskly into the private bar in the little room behind his public speakeasy.

From the outside, the place looked innocent and harmless enough but one glance around the inside revealed a veritable fortress and arsenal. Nothing short of a battery of six inch guns backed up by a company of Marines could have broken into Shanty’s hideout — once the bars were down.

Two men were there before him, awaiting their chief’s arrival. One was Smiling Jimmie Hart, the other, Groucho Griffo. They were Shanty’s lieutenants, tried through a hundred gang fights and not found wanting.

Smiling Jim and Groucho were a living demonstration of the theory that opposites attract. Their names alone told the story, but either one, at an instant’s call and without an instant’s hesitation, would have laid down his life for the other.

Shanty tossed his soft grey felt onto a convenient hook and slouched into the chair at the head of the table. His two henchmen eyed him quizzically as he withdrew a hammered silver cigarette case, extracted a butt and lit it thoughtfully. Smiling Jimmie’s freckled face broke into a broad grin. Groucho’s dark one scowled still more.

“Boys,” began Shanty at last, “I got a red hot tip-off.”

“On what?” growled Groucho the practical.

“On a load of booze under bond coming in tonight.”

Smiling Jimmie tilted back his chair, threw back his blond head and a thin piping whistle escaped his pursed lips.

“Can that! Can that!” snarled Groucho.

“Yeah. What’s the idea, Jimmie?” asked Shanty jokingly. “Your Irish pan is ugly enough without screwing it up like that. Anyway, when you whistle you’re thinking — and I don’t like you to think. What’s on your mind? Out with it.”

Smiling Jimmie’s chair came to the floor with a bang.

“You bet, Shanty, I’m thinking. And you, dumb guy,” he added, turning to Groucho, “don’t get sore at me if you ain’t got no brains. It’s this, Shanty. Don’t it seem God damn queer to you there’s been so many tip-offs lately? Funny, eh?”

“Jeez, Jimmie,” replied Shanty consideringly, “now that you mention it, you’re right.”

“And all the tip-offs haven’t been to us. China Cholly has had a lot of dirt spilled to him and the same goes for Little Hymie. Now tell me, who is so interested in our welfare that they’re handing us fifty grand on a silver platter? And another thing that strikes me queer about these tip-offs is the way they have a habit of not coming off the way we expect; or if they do come off we get the double cross and the bulls is waiting for us.”

“What you’re trying to say,” growled Groucho, “is that there’s a rat some place. Is that it?”

“That’s it. Groucho!”

“But why?” insisted Shanty. “Give me the gimmick. How does it work out? We get a tip-off, the office. China Cholly and Hymie Zeiss, the same. What’s the dirt, the low down? Who’s playing us for a sucker and why? Where’s his percentage?”

“Don’t know yet,” replied Smiling Jimmie. “But we got to find out. And the best way is to go through with this hi-jacking expedition of ours tonight. Unless I miss my guess, hell will pop loose along the road and out of the hell we might get the galoot back of this double, double cross and figure his game.”

“Figure his game, hell!” snarled Groucho. “Let me get a squint at the double crossing rat and I’ll pump him full of lead.”

“You would, dumb-bell!” smiled Smiling Jimmie. “You drill him before I get a chance to make him talk and you’ll be giving birth to a load of lead yourself.”

“Can that talk, boys,” urged Shanty. “Let’s work this thing out, first.”

The three hitched up their chairs closer to the table and bowed their shaggy heads together in conference.

To look at his round, placid, moon-like face, one would never have suspected China Cholly of being a bad man — killer. Especially so on this same morning as he ambled serenely up the Bowery and turned into Pell Street. Cholly greeted all his countrymen with an expansive chatter of high-key Cantonese and balanced the rakish checkered hat over one ear.

China Cholly was in a very genial mood that morning and with good reason, too. For there had come to him, via the complicated underworld grapevine, word that a load of genuine booze under bond was coming into the city that night.

Three doors down on Pell Street, he stopped before a low, dilapidated wooden structure. On the window was painted in shaky English letters the legend — Hop Sing, Laundry. As if to make the statement good, a few fly-bespeckled collars and one solitary antiquated dress shirt huddled together in one corner of the window.

Cholly looked once up and down the street; snapped his cigarette butt out into the gutter with a deft flick of his wrist and then gently rapped on the door. It opened on silent, well-oiled hinges for him and closed on his retreating back as swiftly and secretively. Hop Sing’s place, at one time in the distant past, might have served as a laundry, but that far off day had been forgotten even by China Cholly.

He passed swiftly through the main store, now heavy with flaky dust and tangled with spider webs. This outer sanctum was presided over by a sallow, pig-tailed Chinaman, who drowsed in a Buddhistic attitude at the door.

Cholly gently pulled aside the heavy curtains hanging at the rear of the room and slipped down a short damp hallway. He pulled up abruptly before a blank wall, while his agile fingers traced an intricate pattern across an inlaid panel. Under his manipulation a concealed door swung inward through which he swiftly disappeared.

No matter how tough a gang of Chinamen may be, they never look it. China Cholly’s outfit of killers was as murderous as any that haunted the underworld of New York, but to look at their bland, smiling faces as their Chief entered, one would have suspected them of nothing more vicious than an occasional puff at the pipe.

“Monling, boys,” sing-songed Cholly. “How’s everything? Hokay?”

“Hokay,” they answered in chorus.

China Cholly pulled up a chair, extracted a bag of Bull Durham and proceeded to roll a rice paper cigarette with yellow-stained fingers. He inhaled deeply for a minute. No one spoke, but six pairs of slant eyes followed his every movement. Cholly didn’t encourage questions from his men. He ordered, and they obeyed.

“Have all boys here nine o’clock tonight,” he jerked out in his sing-song voice. “I have tip-off.”

“All light. Boys he be here,” answered Soy Low, Cholly’s deputy.

“We take booze come in under Government bond,” continued Cholly. “You have all boys ready, Soy Low. By God, we make fifty grand tonight, maybe. Nine o’clock I be here. Have boys ready with guns.”

“Hokay,” replied the stolid Soy Low.

With the assurance that his brief orders would be carried out implicitly, Cholly reverted to his native tongue and gave vent to a long string of Chinese incantation. His followers beamed on him. China Cholly was a “funny fella,” and fifty grand would buy many hours of bliss via the poppy route.

It seems that the tip off that both Shanty Hogan and China Cholly thought their own private property, had been broadcast, for still another underworld chief made plans that morning for the capture of the load of good booze coming into the city under bond. “Little Hymie” Zeiss, in his strong-hold back of an abandoned water front warehouse, also went into executive session with his mob of rods.

“Boys,” said Little Hymie, “there’s money to be picked up tonight. A big piece of change. I got the tip-off straight.”

“Yeah?” growled Butch, his right hand man. “I remember the last time you got the office straight. We ran into a load of bulls and federals and damn near got shot all to hell!”

“I remember that too,” answered Zeiss, “but this time we’ll be ready for ’em if they come. Have the boys loaded down with artillery. If somebody gets funny along the way, blow ’em to hell and don’t stop to argue or ask any questions. Read about it in the papers.”

“The lay is queer, I tell you,” insisted Butch.

“I got a hunch that way myself,” agreed Little Hymie.

“Then why step into hell?”

“Because,” answered Hymie, “it’s time for a show-down. This might be a frame. Maybe this is Shanty Hogan’s dirt or maybe the Chink’s. Then again it might be somebody else trying to give the works to us. If my info is good and on the up and up — we get the booze. If somebody’s put the screws to us, this is the way to find out.”

“It’s the screws, Hymie, it’s the screws,” complained Butch.

“Then what’s eating you?” barked Little Hymie. “Don’t we know what to do with stool pigeon punks? We’ll give ’em the works and collect a bounty from Hogan and Cholly.”

The bleak March day passed uneventfully. So stilled were the rumblings of the underworld that many knew it for the calm before the storm. The three gangs were busy with preparations for the night. Guns, revolvers, knives and automatics were brought out and oiled and polished: trigger fingers were limbered. A man’s life depended that night on how fast and straight he could shoot.

But the underworld was not alone in making preparations. There was a great show of activity in an altogether different quarter of the city that day. Police Headquarters buzzed with more than the usual excitement. Something big was on foot.

The same held true for the Federal Building, a few blocks south on lower Broadway. Closeted in his office with five of his most dependable officers, sat Silas Yelton, the fanatical head of the Prohibition forces for New York. Yelton was mentally gloating over the massacre he was planning for that night. He expected to make a big name for himself, in a big, spectacular way. What matter if half a dozen men or so were lost? Hadn’t he been appointed to uphold the sanctity of the Law?

“Men,” he began, “I have again received information from that mysterious source that has tipped me off so well in the past.”

“Then it’s on the level,” chortled Yancey, one of his deputies. “That guy who’s squealing, who ever it is, is the inside. He’s got the right dope. God help him if ever Little Hymie or Shanty Hogan or China Cholly spot him.”

“That’s not our worry,” snapped Yelton. “He’s informed me that all three, Hogan, Zeiss and the Chink, are going to make a try at hi-jacking that load of whiskey coming into New York tonight. That’s our opportunity. This is the time to make a real clean up. Those outfits have caused us too much trouble all ready. They’re a menace to the law.

“We’ll let the three gangs converge on the booze truck, kill each other off and then we’ll charge down and clean up the rest.”

“But good Lord, Yelton, what about the driver of the truck. He’ll be killed,” complained Yancey.

“That’s not our concern.”

“But unless you warn him, it’s murder.”

“We are only doing our duty; our duty as we see it. And it means promotion for us all.”

At the word promotion. Yancey dissented no longer. Not that the promotion in itself meant anything, but the bigger the job, the bigger the graft.

Eight o’clock that night found Shanty Hogan at the bar of his speakeasy on Tenth Street. He was tense, on edge, and because of it he drank. Whiskey straight was Shanty’s order.

He always felt that way an hour before setting out on one of his numerous ventures into crime. He wasn’t yellow, he didn’t have a case of nerves; Shanty was just pleasantly stimulated by the coming danger. It was all a game to him. A live and die existence.

Nothing sweeter than the acrid smell of burnt powder and the growl of gats.

After his third he entered his private back room strong-hold as cool and placid as a lilly on a mill pond. His mob was awaiting his arrival, a gay, carefree buccaneering crew headed by Smiling Jimmie and Groucho.

“Howdy, Boys,” greeted Shanty with an inclusive wave of his hand. “All rarin’ to go?”

“All set, Shanty,” replied Smiling Jimmie. “Just waiting for the word from you.”

“Artillery?” questioned the gang chief.

“Plenty,” growled Groucho. “And I got a weird hunch we’re going to eat smoke before we’re tucked into bed again.”

“Just so they don’t tuck you into a wooden kimono,” laughed Smiling Jimmie. “If they send you over the river tonight, buddy, I’ll guarantee you plenty of company.”

“Well, we’ve gabbed enough,” grinned Shanty. “Let’s go! The side door, boys. The cars are parked on Waverly Place. Groucho, you take the second car. Jimmie, you drive the first. I’ll step with you.”

At his words, Groucho opened a concealed door in the back wall and led the exit into a dark alley that ran the length of the house. The mob, pulling their caps still lower over glinting eyes and taking one last reassuring feel of their hips, followed him out into the night. Smiling Jimmie and Shanty brought up the rear.

Swiftly they piled into the cars and a moment later, with roaring exhausts, careened away from the curb. The staccato bellow of their pounding engines echoed thunderously through the canyoned streets, only to be carried away on the tearing blasts of wind that screamed around the corners of the tall buildings.

Little was said. There was no need for words. What lay before them was action; an argument to be settled with the whine of hot, searing lead and the ominous growl of revolvers.

The two black cars, with lights dimmed and license plates bespattered with mud, headed north and east, making a bee line for the tangled maze of streets that rotated from the hub of the bridge to Long Island at Fifty-ninth Street. The blobs of light from the street lamps flamed by with an ever increasing rhythmic regularity.

As they approached the shabby east-side section where they had decided to way-lay the truck-load of booze, an electric tension gripped the men.

Guns were smoothly pulled from hip holsters and carefully examined for the last time. Safeties were snapped back, and gnarled and grimy fingers crooked around a score of triggers.

If all went well as they had planned it, this was to be a quick raid, with or without blood-shed. They were to drill the driver of the truck if necessary, roll his limp body into the gutter and then make their get-away.

The expedition was dangerous in the extreme, right in the heart of the city, but fifty grand was worth plenty of risk.

There was no question but that Shanty Hogan and his mob expected trouble but little were they aware of the direction from which it would come. Two blocks away from the approach to the bridge. Shanty pulled the cars up to a halt in a dark, blind alley. It was a strategic point — for the booze truck, passing off the bridge, would have to pass within ten feet of his men. They waited; five, ten minutes. Time that seemed ages-long to their expectant nerves. Cigarettes were consumed at a furious rate and men on the ragged edge passed slurring remarks concerning the parentage of their companions. Remarks, which if passed under normal conditions, would have been answered by a flash of six inch steel or a hurtling hunk of lead.

Far down the deserted high-way a faint light twinkled. A moment later the hum and throb of a heavily loaded truck was carried on the chill night breeze to the waiting gangsters in the alley. Shanty made a last inspection of his men.

“Here she comes, boys,” he said. “When the truck is abreast of us, let’s go, and let the driver have it. Groucho, Jimmie and I are going to make for the wheel. You guys cover us in case he has a guard trailing him. Watch your fire. Don’t shoot unless you have to. But when you do burn smoke, make it count!”

The men replied with grunts and low spoken profanity. It wasn’t the first time they had hi-jacked a truck load of booze. Bring on that truck! Let ’em have it over with!

The Government man behind the wheel of the heavy, six-ton Mack, was congratulating himself upon an uneventful trip into the city, as he swung off the bridge onto the streets of Manhattan. If he was to have had trouble, it would have been on the dark, unfrequented roads of Long Island.

Here in the city, he had nothing to fear. His thoughts were of his home. His old woman and the kids would be waiting up for him.

In an excess of good spirits, he pursed his lips and piped out the chorus of the latest popular song.

Suddenly a whine past his ear; then a pang and the tinkle of glass. Simultaneously with the last, the man behind the wheel heard the growl of a revolver. Instinctively his foot jammed down on the gas and even as the heavily loaded Mack lurched forward with a roaring exhaust, a fusillade of shots broke out in the night. Spattering lead splintered his wind-shield. Vindictive bullets flattened themselves savagely against his instrument board. The broken tinkle of glass and the gurgle of flowing liquid told where an acid wasp had eaten into his precious cargo.

He crouched low behind his wheel, gave the bus all the sauce she had and drove straight ahead.

Shanty, at the head of his men, led the drive on the truck. He was three yards ahead of his mob, his gat flaming fire as fast as he could pull the trigger. But suddenly he staggered in his reckless charge, lurched forward and only by a tremendous effort of will saved himself from going down. A slug of burning lead ate its way into his shoulder and his automatic clattered to the asphalt from his nerveless fingers.

The shot that had drilled Shanty was evidently a signal, for a split second after it, a fusillade of shots rang out from the opposite side of the alley. The black night was pierced with stabbing flame.

The surprise attack took Hogan’s mob completely unawares and at the first burst of raking fire two of his men fell prone into the foul gutter.

Shanty was quick to realize that he had fallen into a trap. The booze truck was speeding by; was even now out of danger. To hell with it now! His men came first! His right arm was paralyzed, dead. A growing pain lived in his breast. Shanty fell back a few feet and rallied his men.

On the other side of the street, Hymie Zeiss was taking full advantage of his surprise maneuver. With guttural profanity he urged his mob on, leading the charge with two barking, sinister guns in his hands. He well knew that it was Shanty Hogan’s mob he ran into and now that the warfare had broken out between them — let it be finished. Gun Law would rule and Little Hymie had the most potent gang of killers in the city.

By his sheer guts under fire, Shanty saved his men from utter rout under that first withering burst of lead. He wrenched an automatic from the limp and bloody hand of one of his fallen henchmen and held his first line, insecurely fortified behind a galvanized garbage can.

The night awoke to vivid, hectic life with the ominous rattle and growl of guns. The black alley was punctured with livid stabs of flame from the automatics, and the weird bursts of light etched in a scene of carnage.

But Shanty Hogan and Hymie were not to have it out alone that night. Two minutes after the two rival gangs had taken up positions of vantage on either side of the street, China Cholly’s horde of yellow gorillas swept down on the fray. The yellow men went into action with a reckless daring and spattered their foes, both Hogan’s men and Zeiss’ mob, with a deadly fire that took ghastly toll.

From then on it was every man for himself! It was hard to distinguish between friend and foe. The evil, dirty street was made heroic with the crash and thunder of glorious combat; the growl and bark of guns; the terrible blasphemous oaths of the fighters and the despairing death cries of the mortally wounded.

For a full ten minutes they carried on a miniature war. Neither side gave way, yielded; neither side gained despite the slaughter. The street became a shambles. Blood ran like water through the fetid gutters. The living stumbled over the dead, cursed them and kicked them out of the way. The three gangs would have fought it out there to the last man but—

Yelton, at the head of a squad of Federals, decided that the carnage had lasted long enough. In three high-powered cars they careened down the street, straight into the heart of the fray. Machine guns thrust their blunt, ominous nozzles from the windows of the cars and splattered a murderous rain of hail into the middle ranks of the gangsters. Friend and foe alike, Chink, Jew and Irish, fell like toy soldiers before that first, treacherous burst of lead. Confusion! Devastation! Pandemonium filled the street. The curses and death rattles of the dying rose on the howling wind above the roar of the guns.

In another few minutes Yelton would have carried out his intention of wiping out the three gangs. At this new, unexpected threat, the three mobs were utterly routed. All of the men were attacked from three sides at once and no one knew which fire to return first.

Half of the men had been mowed down in the first minute of bitter warfare before an answering round of singing death was spewed forth from their guns at the new foe. A foe more to be hated than any rival gang or gangster.

With a sick heart Shanty saw his men wither before the barrage of lead from the Federals. All the acid bitterness in his heart that a few moments before had been directed at Little Hymie and China Cholly, concentrated into one burning lust; a lust to kill Silas Yelton! But what was he to do? Retreat? The longer he held the few remnants of his mob there, the target for three fires, the less chance he would have of fulfilling his vengeance. For the first time in his long career as a gangster, panic seized his heart. Not that he was afraid to die — die with a hunk of lead in his guts. He had long realized that that was the way he would eventually go out. No! Shanty was filled with panic on realizing the terrific carnage amongst his men.

Common sense dictated retreat but never yet had he stooped to such an ignominious course. Then it was, when all seemed lost save honor, that inspiration came to Shanty Hogan. There came a momentary lull in the firing and in the brief silence he raised his voice and bellowed into the night.

“Hymie! Cholly!” he roared with all the power of his leather lungs. “It’s Yelton and the bulls. Let’s forget our battle and clean them out!”

Two answering incoherent bellows assured Shanty that his words had been understood and agreed upon. He breathed a half muttered prayer of relief. Quickly he rallied his men, encouraging them with bitter promises of vengeance. Revolvers and automatics were loaded again for the last time. Bleeding, stricken dying men rose to the last emergency like heroes.

“Now!” rang out Shanty’s voice above the chaos and din of battle.

As one man the few remaining survivors of his once indomitable mob swept into the street and headed for Yelton’s mob, still firing from the security of their machines. Hymie Zeiss at the head of his gang of gunmen joined them from the opposite side of the street. And on their flank, China Cholly, grinning devilishly, swept forward with his villainous crew of Chinks.

Involuntarily a blood curdling yell of triumph swelled from their lips, as with a united front they swept irresistibly forward. Nothing could stop them. They knew it. And Yelton and his men knew it too. At the sound of that savage, atavistic death cry from the mob of killers, panic and yellow crawling fear filled the heart of the Federals.

They returned an irresolute fire, but the underworld, united for once that night, was invincible.

The front of their ranks presented one continuous flame of fire as they advanced savagely up the street, guns and automatics belching death. When one man fell in the van, there was another from the rear, ready and eager to push up. Chink, Jew and Irishman battled shoulder to shoulder!

Slowly, at first, Yelton began to retreat. Then more swiftly. But ever that raking, deadly, unrelenting fire from the united mobs of the underworld, pressed on. The retreat became a route, a ghastly massacre. Men died, hurling terrible blasphemy on Yelton’s head.

Of the forty deputies that he had marshalled to what he believed a killing, less than half returned. Twenty men out of forty and of course Yelton himself. He saw to that!

The complete panicky route of the Federal men brought a temporary lull among the foes of the three gangs. They needed the next few minutes for the bitter task of collecting their dead. With sorrow-laden hearts they went about the gruesome work. They picked up the riddled bodies of their followers and placed them in machines.

In the course of the heart-breaking task, Shanty, Cholly and Little Hymie came together, elbow to elbow.

“Got to thank you, Shanty,” growled Little Hymie, “for comin’ through against Yelton.”

“Same goes here,” chimed in China Cholly.

“Forget it, you mugs,” snapped Shanty, slightly embarrassed. “This bloke yours?” And with the words he gently rolled over a stiffening corpse in the street.

Little Hymie claimed the dead man. There was a sob in his voice as he spoke.

“Louis, they got you too, did they? Don’t worry, old pal, I’ll get ’em.”

“We better lay off each other tonight,” continued Shanty. “Enough hell.”

“Yeah,” agreed Little Hymie. “We got plenty dead to bury.”

“How in hell all this hell start?” queried China Cholly.

“You guys trying to shoulder in on my racket!” growled Shanty.

“Your racket?” snarled Little Hymie. “How ya get that way? Since when you got a monopoly on the booze peddling in this town?”

“Sure, no your racket, Shanty. Me got to live too,” put in China Cholly. “No your racket Shanty any more Little Hymie’s or mine.”

“All right, all right! Forget it!” snapped Shanty. “All the stiffs taken care of?”

They looked around the street which at last had been cleared of its ghastly cargo. With a curt nod and a grunt to each other, the three gang chiefs turned on their heels and returned to their mobs. A minute later the blustery March wind had cleared away the acrid smoke of gun fire.

It was a weary, disillusioned remnant of his gang that Shanty Hogan led back to his retreat on Tenth Street. And it was with a stricken heart that Shanty counted the cost of the ill-fated expedition. And that was not alone in sorrowing his heart. The booze truck, the thing that had cost so much bloodshed, had escaped entirely.

Groucho had been right that morning when he had forewarned him of trouble. He too had suspected it, but the venture had turned out otherwise than he had planned. For the greater part of the time it had been out of his control. Only when the new menace of Yelton’s men had crashed down on them had he risen to the situation.

Just what was the low-down on the ill-fated expedition? Was it just a quirk of fate that had brought Little Hymie and China Cholly there on the scene at the same time as himself?

Who had tipped off the Federals that the attack was to be made? There were many questions, bitter and brutal, that Shanty mulled over in his mind that night.

The heavy, rumbling voice of Groucho thrust itself in on his meditations.

“Well, Shanty,” he began, “what did I tell you?”

“Don’t rub it in,” growled Shanty. “Hell! I feel lousy enough now.”

“The whole damn lay is queer,” put in Smiling Jimmie. “Something damned crooked some place. Jeez, with the three of us fighting it out and Yelton piling down with the machine guns, I thought it was curtains for all of us. If you hadn’t come through then, Shanty, Yelton would be collecting a bonus from the state on all our hides right now.”

“Hell!” complained Shanty. “You’re trying to let me down easy. I didn’t do anything but get you all into a lot of lead and lose half our men.”

There was a deep silence between the men for a few minutes. They sucked greedily at their cigarettes, each one preoccupied with the problem of the double-crossing rat in their midst.

“Say, listen Shanty,” said Groucho at last. “I hate like hell to mention it but I have to.”

“What?”

“Well,” began Groucho slowly, feeling for the right words, “there’s a leak somewhere. You know that. Has been for some time. This isn’t the first little party of ours that’s gone wrong. And always there’s been the Jew and the Chink to screw up our plans. Now, I put it to you, what do you make of that?”

Shanty had a sneaking idea to what he was referring but for the sake of discipline he wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

“What the hell you driving at?” he demanded. “Don’t give me none of your riddles. Ain’t in the humor for ’em. Speak out! If you have something to say, spill it.”

“Now don’t get sore, don’t get sore,” persisted Groucho. “It’s this. You’ve been running around a lot with Sadie. Now I ain’t saying that Sadie ain’t on the level, but after all she’s Little Hymie’s sister. You couldn’t blame her much if she—”

But Groucho never had a chance to finish his accusation. With a bellow like that of an infuriated bull, Shanty threw himself across the table and entwined his sinewy fingers around the throat of his lieutenant. The weight of his hurtling body crashed Groucho clear out of his chair onto the floor and as he fell, Shanty plunged down upon him. His hands tightened about the throat of his henchman until Groucho’s eyes bulged.

Smiling Jimmie dove across the room and flung himself on his chief’s back. It took all the strength of his hands to pry his fingers from Groucho’s throat.

“Easy, Shanty, easy,” he begged. “Now what do you want to do a thing like that for?”

Shamefacedly the Irishman released his lieutenant and then helped him to his feet.

“Sorry Groucho,” he apologized. “My nerves are ragged. Forget it.”

“Sure,” growled Groucho, rubbing his swollen throat. “Sure. No hard feelings. I know how you feel.”

“But Groucho is right,” put in Smiling Jimmie. “Shanty, you got to look the facts in the face. You been running around with Sadie. Nice skirt and all that. That’s okay. But maybe she is squealing to Little Hymie.”

The first seeds of suspicion and doubt had been planted in Shanty Hogan’s brain. His hands constricted into hard knots. His eyes narrowed and shot fire. His rugged jaw shot dangerously forward.

“By God!” he exclaimed. “If she is, she’ll never squeal again.”

“Now don’t do nothing hasty,” counselled Smiling Jimmie. “Maybe she’s on the level. Figuring her crooked don’t explain China Cholly. We have to go at this thing slow. We can’t make any mistakes.”

“We can’t make any mistakes, all right,” agreed Shanty, “but we can’t go slow.”

Shanty Hogan was not the only one who spent an anxious questioning time that night. Hymie Zeiss, too, put many unanswerable questions to himself as he stamped the length of his headquarters after the disastrous fiasco with the booze truck.

He did not know whom to curse first for the misadventure that had cut down so many of his best men.

Of course, there was Shanty Hogan, but then Shanty, by rallying the three gangs, had saved them all from destruction. And China Cholly had been there, too! There was no getting to the bottom of the thing. There had been a leak; a double cross — that alone was clear. Little Hymie concentrated all his mental powers on finding the rat.

For a half hour his yellow crooked teeth masticated the mangled end of a cigar. Then a cruel streak of suspicion entered his brain. His hairy nostrils dilated and his brown eyes narrowed down to dangerous pin points.

“Matz!” he bellowed to the outer room of his hangout.

The imperious summons was answered by a hatchet-faced, blue-bearded individual.

“Go out and get Sadie,” snapped Little Hymie. “I want to see her at once. Here!”

Matz grunted his understanding and shuffled out of the room. Little Hymie continued his impatient pacing of the room. It was the bitterest blow of all to be compelled to doubt his sister, but he could see no other possible leak.

Ten minutes later Sadie entered. Little Hymie eyed her shrewdly in silence. Sadie was none abashed by his scowling glare and answered him eye for eye. She flippantly swished her abbreviated skirt aside and perched jauntily on the corner of the table, revealing a tantalizing length of silk clad calf. Her body was lithe and slender but plump enough to the touch.

“Sadie,” began Little Hymie, “I got to speak to you.”

“Shoot kid,” replied Sadie. “I’m here. What’s eating you?”

“Plenty, kid. I got a good idea to croak you!”

Sadie’s slender leg was suddenly stilled. Her pretty, full mouth sagged open a moment in utter surprise.

“You’re going to do what, Hymie?” she asked.

“Nothing!” he replied curtly. “Listen, you little tart. There’s been a leak out of my place. Info is getting to Shanty Hogan. Somebody is squealing!”

“Why you dirty, low down crumb!” flared out Sadie. “Are you insinuating that I’m spilling any dirt to Shanty?”

“How does he get the dirt on every move I make?” insisted Shanty.

Sadie jumped off the table and like a flaming Amazon charged across the room at her brother. Her small, sleek head jutted out until it was within a foot of the gangster’s distorted features.

“How the hell do I know how it leaked? But I’m not that kind of a rat — see? And anyway if I was, do you think Shanty would listen to me?”

Little Hymie by now was pretty convinced that Sadie was on the level but he could not back out of his accusation just then. He shifted his attack.

“You think that dumb Irishman is a pretty wise guy, don’t you?” he scorned. “You know I’ve told you a hundred times to quit running around with him. Now I got enough. You got to make a choice. Either you quit Shanty Hogan or you quit me. Which is it?”

Sadie backed away a few feet from Little Hymie and surveyed him contemptuously with searing eyes.

“Well, if you want me to choose, I will. I’ll take Shanty. You can go to hell!”

That was only the beginning of Sadie’s “say” to her brother but he cut her taunting hot words short by slapping her viciously across the mouth with his open palm. This parting love token presented, the gang chief turned on his heels and stamped out of the room.

At one of the beer tables in the dark shadows of Silent Joe’s place on Christopher Street a little celebration was on foot that night. A celebration of three; a Jew, a Chink and an Irish Harp. Hogan, Zeiss and China Cholly would have been mighty interested to have heard the words that passed between the men. Lots of things and incidents that were puzzling and mysterious would have been readily cleared up. And there would have been three more stark figures on the cold marble slabs in the morgue.

The three men were jubilant. They toasted each other’s health many times in raw, stimulating whiskey and toasted the ultimate success of some secret venture among them. Tonight they had struck, craftily, wearily and it would not be many weeks more, they assured each other, until they would have in their hands alone the disposition of all the underworld rackets.

Things had gone even better than they had anticipated. As a result of their cunning and craft, the three rival gangs were on the point of entering a war of extermination. That was just what they wanted. Let Jew wipe out Chinaman, and Chink clean up Irish, and the Harps pulverize the Semites. Then these unholy double-crossing treacherous rats would step in and take command.

Sadie’s loyal heart was filled with an all consuming rage after her scene with Little Hymie. That she of all people should be accused of being a rat! A double-crossing rat, squealing on her brother!

In the heat of the moment, as she stormed out of Little Hymie’s headquarters, she planned and vowed a thousand fantastic vengeances. She would show Hymie, if he insisted on thinking her crooked, just how crooked she could be. The thing that hurt most of all was the implied reflection on her lover. Little Hymie had said what he had just because she was running around with Shanty. And she knew that Shanty Hogan would be the last person in the world to take double-crossing info from her.

But Hymie was right. Information was leaking somewhere. The thought sobered Sadie’s flaming anger against her brother. She spent a bitter half hour in trying to locate the leak. Who was the rat? That he existed she felt sure. The only way she had of vindicating herself in Little Hymie’s eyes, was to show him the real punk in the outfit. The more she mulled over the proposition, the more surely she came to the one conclusion. She would put the matter up to Shanty himself.

Late into the night, Shanty, Groucho and Smiling Jimmie brooded over a bottle. The room was heavy and bitter with the acrid smoke of many cigarettes. Their words were few and monosyllabic.

Then came a discreet rap at the door. At first they ignored it. The knock was repeated, this time more insistent. Shanty raised his bloodshot eyes from the table and turned his shaggy head toward the door.

“Well, what is it?” he snarled.

At his voice, the oaken panel slid open and the head of one of his henchmen thrust into the room.

“Sadie’s outside,” he said. “Wants to see you bad. Right away.”

The men stiffened in their chairs. Smiling Jimmie and Groucho silently eyed their leader, wondering how he would meet the situation. A thousand doubts assailed Shanty. A thousand fears, loves, hates and lusts. Could it be that the girl he loved was playing him dirt; was playing him for a sucker?

His love and desire struggled with his hate. Should he see her? He was about to send out word for her to go to hell when a sudden thought stayed him. Just what was so important that Sadie had to see him at that hour of the night? Had little Hymie sent her to him to get his new plans of campaign?

“Send her in, Scraggy,” he said at last. And his voice was cold, ominous, deadly.

Sadie swept confidently into the room, the swish of her skirts revealing her insinuating hips. Straight up to Shanty she marched, her hands reaching out for him.

Then she staggered back, for even before she could touch him, he sent her reeling across the room with a powerful right arm.

She recovered herself swiftly and was immediately on the defensive. She was not quite sure how to take this new attitude on the part of her lover.

“Say, you bum,” she began, “is that your idea of a love tap. It don’t fit in with mine.”

“Love tap, hell!” answered Shanty. “It ain’t. That mushy stuff is over between us, girl. What do you want here?”

Sadie was taken completely aback at this line of talk.

“Shanty—” she began pleadingly.

“Can it! Can it!” he growled. “That boloney don’t go any more, see. You made a sucker out o’ me long enough. What kind of a sap do you think I am. Dumb? By God, if I was only positive you’re the one that’s been double crossing me. I’d choke that neck of yours till your tongue dropped out.”

At this new attack on her honor, Sadie was indeed stricken.

“You too, eh, Shanty?” she said sadly. “A hell of a lot you guys know about women. Hell. All men are lice, anyway.” Then her pride and anger got the better of her.

“You’re just as dumb as that dope brother of mine. First he kicks me out with a clout on the jaw for squealing to you and now you give me the works for squealing to him. It’s a laugh, eh? A great big laugh! You’re a lot of wise guys! Wise, hell! You’re all hams, palookas. If I wanted to rat on you, don’t you think I could have done it long ago. Put you on the spot dead? And the same goes for that flat-nosed Jew brother of mine. Men are all lice.”

“Easy what you say,” began Shanty threateningly, but Sadie’s flow of angry words could not be stopped.

“To hell with you dumb mugs,” she flung out and her lashing tongue stung the three men to silence. “Of course there’s a leak somewhere — a blind man could see that. But I’m not the stool — see? Not for you, Shanty Hogan or for Little Hymie Zeiss. But I guess the only way I can make you believe that is to get the dirty rat myself. You guys are too dumb. All you do is sit on your cans and talk, talk, talk. Lice! All of you.”

“Listen here, Sadie...”

“Aw, go to hell!” she flung back.

And with this defiance on her lips she stamped out of the room, complete master of the situation.

“Now I wonder,” muttered Shanty, when the door had closed behind her. “I wonder. Sadie was a pretty swell kid.”

Sadie didn’t get to bed until five o’clock that morning. Tired as she was, aching in every limb, she did not sleep. Restlessly she tossed from side to side, thinking, thinking. There was some tiny germ of inspiration fermenting in the back of her mind. In vain she tried to bring it to light.

She began by marshalling all the facts of the three gangs before her. Then something very startling struck her.

Her brother, Little Hymie, thought that somebody was squealing to Shanty Hogan and the latter thought the same thing in reverse. And to make the situation still more complicated, China Cholly also got inside information on both the rival gangs.

What did that mean in the final analysis? Simply, there must be more than one squealer! Then inspiration!

The most obvious thing was that there were three rats, one in each gang. That would easily account for the double, double-cross. What their object could be she had not the slightest idea, but the more she considered the matter, the more surely she felt that she was right.

She knew that she would get no consideration from Little Hymie and pride forbade her from going to Shanty with her theory. Only one resource remained open for her. She would see China Cholly and put the matter up to the shrewd and wily Chink.

With this resolution in her mind and a faint smile of triumph on her lips, she at last found a deep and untroubled sleep.

With all the oily, subtle grace of his race, China Cholly extended the hospitality of his house to Sadie when she called on him the following afternoon. At a clap of his hands, tea and rice cakes were served to them by a mute Oriental who bowed deferentially to the white woman.

When they were alone China Cholly smiled enigmatically but said nothing. He waited for his visitor to begin. Sadie swallowed the last of her tea at a gulp and dove into the heart of the matter.

“Cholly,” she began, “there’s queer things going on.”

“Velly queer, Sadie,” agreed Cholly with a smile.

“Queerer things than you know, Cholly,” continued Sadie. “Something’s got to be done about it.”

In a few brief words she told him of her break with her brother and Shanty, and of their suspicions. Cholly listened attentively to all she had to say, but offered no word in reply. Mentally he was analyzing her words: silently he was analyzing the girl before him. China Cholly put his keen subtle perceptions to work on the problem of whether Sadie’s visit was on the level or merely one angle of some cunning plot to trap him.

Sadie went on, unaware of Cholly’s thoughts and suspicions. But the more she talked the more she convinced the Chinaman of her sincerity.

“And what you want from me, Sadie?” he asked at last.

“Listen, Cholly,” she replied. “Listen well. This is what I’ve figured out and I want you to help me. For your life and all your mob is at stake as well as Little Hymie’s and Shanty Hogan’s life.”

“Go on. I listen. I am all ears,” Cholly assured her.

“I figure it out that there are three rats,” said Sadie. “One in each mob. Get me? One in your mob, one in Hymie’s and one in Shanty’s. They’re playing a crooked game together. Why, I don’t know. But their game is to make trouble, see? Trouble between the three outfits. One spills the dirt on the other. Maybe what they’re trying to do is to have you and Shanty and Little Hymie kill each other off and then take over the works. I don’t know. Maybe. But it’s clear as hell they’re working against the gangs.”

A slow spreading smile of comprehension spread across Cholly’s face. He nodded approval.

“Now, I can’t get Hymie or Shanty to play with me,” continued Sadie, “so I’ve come to you. Just give me the tip-off, a name, that’s all I ask. You say nothing, Cholly. You know nothing and I know nothing. Okay?”

“Hokay,” smiled China Cholly. “You velly smart girl, Sadie. Maybe you better watch Solly Gold. He velly funny man.”

Sadie had gotten the office! So Solly Gold would be worth watching, eh? She was so impatient to be on the job that she utterly ignored all of Cholly’s courtesies and rose abruptly. With a light hand on her arm the Chinaman escorted her to the door.

“You let me know what you find out, eh, Sadie?” he said. “I work with you on this.”

“Okay, Cholly, thanks.”

“Hokay,” he sing-songed back to her.

Sadie wasn’t slow to follow the tip given her by China Cholly. For two days she literally lived on the trail of Solly Gold. He led her a merry chase from bar to speakeasy to gambling dump but not one suspicious thing did she see. She even pondered the revolting project of playing up to Solly Gold. A girl of Sadie’s calibre had lots of ways of making a sucker out of a guy. She vetoed the proposition, temporarily, however, deciding to save that line of attack for a last desperate endeavor.

By the end of the third day she was at her wits’ end. She even began to doubt China Cholly’s word. The situation, as far as she was concerned, demanded immediate action.

It was then she thought of Silent Joe’s place. Mentally she cursed herself fluently for not having thought of it before. She killed the early evening until eleven o’clock over a greasy pack of cards, dealing out endless games of solitaire. When at last she “beat the Chink” she took it as a good omen, slipped into a silk-lined leather jacket, jammed a white beret over one saucy ear and sallied forth.

She hailed a passing cab and gave the driver the Christopher Street address. Twenty minutes later she called him to a halt a block away from Silent Joe’s dump. She jammed her slim form close against the dark shadows that masked the dreary buildings that lined the shabby street and slowly began her approach on the dive.

Suddenly she flattened herself in a dark doorway as a car raced down the street and pulled up with screaming brakes before Joe’s place. Sadie was all alert. Her nerves tensed and her sharp eyes pierced the gloom ahead.

A man jumped out of the machine and sped speedily across the sidewalk to the basement entrance of Silent Joe’s. As the door opened for him she caught a fleeting glimpse of his silhouette in the doorway. She was not positive, but the man greatly resembled the squat, ugly Solly Gold.

Sadie was about to venture forth again when a second car pulled up to the curb ahead of her. She lost herself in the shadows again. This time she was sure the new arrival was a Chink.

Well, that accounted for two of the members of the conspiracy she had mentally pictured. She decided to wait to see if a third rat arrived, and she was not disappointed. Five minutes later a third car pulled up to Silent Joe’s dump and a third man stealthily entered the place.

Sadie considered her position. What was she to do? Follow the traitors in or pass on the word to Little Hymie and Shanty?

“To hell with those mugs,” she muttered to herself, “I’ll run this thing to the ground myself. Anyway, I don’t know anything definite yet.”

With her hands in her pockets she boldly swaggered on down the street past the hangout. A few feet beyond was a dark, narrow alley. On a hunch, Sadie dodged down it and carefully felt her way along by the wall of the house. A thin beam of light at the rear, shining out into the murky night, caught her attention. Swiftly she approached it and with a beating heart saw that it came from a window that gave onto Silent Joe’s dump.

Dropping on one knee she pressed her eye to one corner of the dirty glass and peered in. Directly opposite her at a corner table, sat three men. Her spirits soared and she could have sung for joy for her judgment had been vindicated. One of the three men was Solly Gold, another a Chink whom she recognized as a member of China Cholly’s mob. And the third was Lefty Dugan, a tin-horn rod belonging to Shanty’s outfit.

Sadie’s elation suddenly changed to bitter fury. These were the three gorillas responsible for all the trouble and bad blood among the three gangs!

These were the three mugs responsible for her break with Little Hymie and Shanty. Her fingers itched and constricted around the butt of the .32 automatic in her pocket.

First she had to hear what they were saying. She waited a moment until a boisterous gust of wind rattled the window, then she gently pried it up an inch. To the opening she pressed her ear. Voices came to her, faint and indistinct but she caught a word here and there and her inflamed imagination filled in the gaps. She had been right. Shanty had to listen in on that conversation!

She slipped out of the dark alley again and sped down the street. On the corner was a dingy, greasy all-night Coffee Pot. Sadie darted inside and locked herself in the telephone booth. Not having a nickel in her purse, she dropped a quarter into the slot and breathed a number into the mouth piece. A breathless pause and then a brusque voice answered at the other end.

“Hello. What you want?”

“Listen, guy,” said Sadie. “This is Sadie Zeiss. Put Shanty on.”

“He ain’t here!” came back the voice.

“Listen, bozo,” snarled Sadie. “Don’t hand me that line of manure. I know he’s there. Tell him it’s Sadie and I got to speak to him.”

“All right. Wait a minute. I’ll see if I can get him.”

A moment later Shanty’s irritated voice growled over the wire. Sadie cut his sarcastic profanity short with her hurried words.

“Listen, Shanty, I’m in the Coffee Pot on Christopher Street a block away from Silent Joe’s. There’s a little session going on down there that you got to listen in on. One of your men is there, one of Little Hymie’s and one of the Chink’s. If you want the low down on the double crossing business, now’s the time to get it.”

“Say,” began Shanty with deep irony. “You think I’m dumb? What’s this — a frame? You little bitch, you trying to put me on the spot?”

“Aw, for Gawd’s sake, Shanty, don’t be like that,” pleaded Sadie. “What kind of a bum do you think I am, anyway? I wouldn’t pull any dirt like that on you, and you know it. I’m giving this to you straight because you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. You got to hear yourself.”

“Where’d you say? Silent Joe’s?” questioned Shanty.

“Yeah. Make it snappy. There’s an alley running south of the dump. Go down there and you’ll find me by a window looking in.”

“Okay, kid, I’ll be there, but if you—”

“Hell, no! Please Shanty, don’t be like that!”

After he had agreed to keep the rendezvous with Sadie, Shanty was half sorry for his decision. The thing looked suspiciously like a trap, but still, deep down in his heart, he felt sure that Sadie would not put him on the spot. In view of the suspicions of Groucho and Smiling Jimmie, he did not tell them where he was to meet the girl.

“Where to?” asked Smiling Jimmie, as he retrieved his hat and slouched toward the door.

“Going to see Sadie,” answered Shanty defiantly. “Any objections?”

“None here,” answered Smiling Jimmie. “But just as a precaution, better see that the gat is loaded.”

“Don’t worry about me,” answered Shanty. “I can take care of myself with that moll without a gun.”

“Where you meeting her, just in case you don’t?” shot out Groucho.

“None of your damn business,” growled Shanty and with the words he slammed the door behind him.

After putting in her phone call to Shanty, Sadie beat it back to the black alley and her spy-hole by the window. Again she pressed her ear to the inch opening and listened. The three traitors were still speaking of their plans for disrupting their respective gangs. Their words came to her too indistinctly for her eager ears. She gambled on opening the window another inch and, swiftly following the attempt, came disaster.

The noise of the sash raising in the frame attracted Solly Gold’s attention. His head shot up and he glanced swiftly across the room. Sadie had been quick but not quick enough. The eyes of the other men at the table followed the direction of Gold’s gaze, just in time to see a disappearing head. Instantly the men were on their feet, guns drawn. Gold took swift charge of the situation.

“You stay Lefty,” he barked. “If he shows himself again, plug him. The same if he tries to get in the window. Come on, Chink. We’ll head him off down the alley.”

Without waiting for more the two men barged out of the room onto the street. They charged down the sidewalk and at top speed turned the corner into the alley. There was a sickening collision as they hurtled pell-mell into Sadie facing down from the opposite direction. The shock of their contact threw them apart for a moment, stunned, and Sadie’s automatic was wrenched from her hand to go sailing off into the night in a wide parabola.

In an instant Gold had recovered and was on her. He threw one rough arm around her head in a hammer lock, at the same time clapping his foul hand over her mouth. Sadie struggled violently, viciously, with tooth, nail and hoof, but to no avail.

The Chink came to Gold’s aid and between the two of them they managed to drag the twisting, squirming, struggling girl out of the alley onto the sidewalk.

Sadie knew their intention with her. If they once got her away from that place in a car — it was curtains. She fought like a mad woman with all the desperate abandon of an Amazon. But their combined weight was too much against her. Struggle as she might in their grip they slowly bore her to the curb and a waiting machine. Lefty came out to join them. He cursed bitterly at the sounds of struggle. Doubling up his fist, he pulled back and crashed a stiff-armed right flush to Sadie’s jaw. She went limp with a little panting sigh, and then was still.

Like a heavy sack of wet wash they threw her into the machine.

At the height of the struggle before Joe’s place, Shanty in his roadster turned into Christopher Street. He saw the swaying forms on the sidewalk and his first impulse was to charge down and investigate. Then his old gang sense asserted itself. That was an old gag — the street corner fight. The chances were that if he barged in on it, he would receive a load of lead poisoning for his trouble.

He slowed down and approached cautiously. Dimly he made out the swaying figures of three men and a girl — and that girl was Sadie. His heart constricted. Trap or no trap, he was going to investigate. With one movement he jammed his foot on the gas and whipped out his blue steel Smith and Wesson .38 special. But even as his car gained momentum he saw that he was too late. He saw with an agonized heart the slugging blow that felled Sadie; saw her tossed like a limp rag into the waiting machine; saw the three men pile in after her and roar away.

Shanty’s gun grow led once and he took up the chase. A fusillade of shots answered him from the speeding car ahead. Then the two drivers. Shanty and Solly Gold, got down to the fine points of piloting careening machines at sixty miles per hour through the narrow back alleys of New York.

They saved their lead for more sure shots, or until it was a question of fighting it out with death. Now that the other car was trying to escape, Shanty was convinced that the fight on the street was on the up-and-up and that Sadie had been on the level with him concerning the tip off.

A great sigh of relief welled to his lips. Sadie, what a damn swell kid she was! He had known all along that she wouldn’t play him dirt. And now she was being taken for a ride, for his sake; because he had tried to thrust onto her shoulders the responsibility for all his dumb mistakes. Well, he would make it up to her!

He nursed his throttle and spark and coaxed a few more revolutions out of his already straining engine. But ever the car ahead crept away from him. Corners were taken on two wheels with a skidding rush and a tear. Early morning milk-wagons were somehow miraculously missed. L pillars were skimmed by inches.

Shanty cursed bitterly, futilely. The car ahead was out-distancing him; was now a full block away. His bus was traveling with all the sauce she had. The needle on the speedometer trembled around the seventy mark but no matter how he nursed the gas, he could not get it above that mark.

Suddenly the car ahead took the next corner on two wheels and disappeared. Ten seconds later Shanty made the same turn. A burst of lead greeted his skidding advent and spattered with a spray of flying glass through his wind shield. The escaping machine had tricked him and instead of continuing the flight had pulled up to the curb to finish him off as he passed.

A stabbing, searing pain ate into Shanty’s breast. The car swerved crazily and it was only by a tremendous effort of will that he straightened it out and saved it from tangling disastrously around a lamp-post. His eyes became blood filmed. Shanty knew he was going out. Instinctively, before utter blackness fell over him, he shut off his gas and threw his gear shift into neutral.

A half hour later Shanty slowly climbed back to consciousness out of a deep well of blackness. His head throbbed abominably and a searing pain shot through his breast. He tried to sit up and found it impossible. He closed his eyes again and slowly strength ebbed back into his racked body. A moment later he stirred again to discover that he was bound, hand and foot. His mind was blank and empty. His brow wrinkled as he concentrated his hazy brain on the events of the evening. Then slowly it came back to him. The phone call from Sadie; the fight on the street: the chase and the trap.

Then a low, strange, unfamiliar sound attracted his attention. Shanty recognized it at last as the sound of weeping. A girl was crying softly by his side. He stirred.

“Shanty! Shanty! Tell me they didn’t get you. Tell me you’ll pull through,” pleaded Sadie’s tearful voice.

With a great effort Shanty slowly moved his lips and spoke.

“Sure, kid, I’ll pull through,” he muttered weakly.

The crying ceased. Sadie snuggled her young warm body up to the stricken gang chief.

“I’m sorry, Shanty, sorry I got you into this,” she whispered. “But anyway, it’ll show you I didn’t rat on you.”

“I never really thought you did,” answered Shanty. “It’s okay, kid, we’ll pull out of this.”

Their whispered conversation was abruptly cut short by the opening of a door. Solly Gold entered, holding a lamp before him, followed by Lefty and the Chink. The three traitors stood above the prostrate figures and gloated. To show his contempt, Lefty savagely kicked Shanty in the ribs with a heavy boot.

“So you’ve come to, have you?” he growled.

“Yes, I’m okay, you rat,” answered Shanty. “What the hell’s the big idea?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” answered Gold. “Your days as a tough guy are over, Hogan.”

“Let me up out of here, and I’ll damn soon show you different.”

“The only way you’ll go out of this room is in a wooden box,” laughed Gold. “Now just keep your mouth shut and nobody’ll step in it. We got you where we want you. The next guy we’re after is Little Hymie.”

“Hymie is too slick a guy for you to get the way you got me,” scorned Shanty.

“Well, if he’s slick, we got a slick trick he’ll fall for.”

Without more ado, he bent down, grabbed the hem of Sadie’s skirt and yanked. The flimsy material was rent in two, revealing a dainty array of silken underthings. The three mugs guffawed uproariously at Sadie’s futile efforts to conceal her shapely limbs.

“Never mind that stuff, Sadie,” laughed Lefty. “It all won’t matter in a little while.”

“What are you going to do with that skirt?” she demanded.

“Send it to Little Hymie. Even if he is on the outs with you, that Jew brother of yours will come looking for you hot foot if he thinks you’re in trouble.”

“So you’re the three punks who’ve been playing the double-crossing act?” snarled Shanty.

“Punks, hell!” laughed Gold. “We got brains. After tonight we’ll have the three gangs and all the gravy.”

“Don’t bank too much on that,” warned Shanty. “The night ain’t over and I ain’t croaked yet. You might get a nice quiet funeral instead.”

Ten o’clock next night found Little Hymie snozzling beer with his henchmen in his headquarters, back of the water front warehouse. A game of poker was suggested and in a few minutes the men were busily engaged in cheating each other out of huge sums of money which they in turn had fleeced from some one else.

A half hour after the game had been in progress, there came an interruption. The guard at the door ushered into the inner sanctum a little gutter-snipe with sniveling nose.

“There he is, kid,” said the guard pointing out Little Hymie.

The street brat approached Zeiss with awe in his eye.

“Say, mister, are you the guy they call Little Hymie?”

“Yep, that’s me, son. What are you doin’ here?”

“A broad give me this to give you,” said the urchin and with the words he reached inside his greasy blouse and extracted the tattered remnant of Sadie’s skirt.

Little Hymie took it from him and turned it slowly over in his hand a moment before he recognized it. Then he flushed and if his swarthy complexion would have permitted it, he would have paled a moment later. His arm shot out and grabbed the urchin with a vise-like grip.

“Where’d you get this, kid?” he demanded.

“Don’t hurt me, mister. I’ll tell you.”

“Well?”

“A lady give it to me. Shoved it out of a crack in a window. Told me to give it to you and to take you there. Said you’d give me a saw-buck, mister!”

“Anything you want, kid, if you can take me there.”

“Sure. Come on. But do I get the ten spot?”

Little Hymie crushed a crisp bill into his hand, considerably larger than the requested saw-buck. Then, literally picking the boy from the floor, he strode towards the door.

“Need any help?” flung out Butch after him.

“No. I’ll handle this alone,” answered Little Hymie.

The brat led Little Hymie down many dark alleys and around many twisting corners. So sure was the gang chief that Sadie was in trouble, that he never once thought that he was being put on the spot. At last the urchin stopped before a dreary, three story red brick building on Mulberry Street. The place had every appearance of desertion and decay.

“That’s the place, mister,” said the boy, pointing with his finger.

“All right, kid. Thanks. Now beat it!” growled Little Hymie.

The youngster took him at his word, turned and scampered down the street, clutching the fifty dollar bill tightly in his fist.

Hymie eased the gun in his hip pocket and stealthily mounted the steps to the front door of the house. Slowly his hand went out to the knob. He tried it and to his surprise it turned. Gently he eased the door open a foot and then squeezed his massive bulk through the opening. Then as carefully, he closed the door behind him.

A faint rustling came from the dark shadows in his rear. Little Hymie spun around with lightning precision, but just too late. He felt the breeze fan his face before the blow struck. Then something murderously heavy sloughed down on his skull. He threw his hands up instinctively but the blow crushed home. He was conscious of a blazing flash of heliotrope made jagged with vivid streaks of red. The smoky taste of sulphur was in his mouth. Then utter blackness.

Little Hymie’s knees sagged. Unconscious, out on his feet, he staggered forward for two steps, then crashed headlong to the floor. Where he lay, a thick pool of blood collected around his head.

The three traitors to the gangs found China Cholly not so easy to deal with. One ruse after another failed to entrap him and as a last resort the rats had to carry out a daring piece of kidnapping right off the crowded pavements of the Bowery. True, they got China Cholly in an off moment and before he had a chance to make a draw, two blunt nosed automatics were grinding away at his guts.

It would have been asking for death then and there, to have refused the invitation to go for a ride. Silently China Cholly obeyed. He stepped into the car and crushed himself on the seat beside Lefty, closely followed by Solly Gold. The Chink took the wheel of the machine and frisked them away to the sinister house on Mulberry Street.

When the thick skull of Little Hymie finally threw off the stunning effects of the blow he had received, he came to, to find himself amongst friends, as it were. At least, he had a very intimate knowledge of all those present in the room. Propped up against the wall on either side of him were his two underworld rivals, Shanty Hogan and China Cholly, and a little further on he saw with relief his sister, Sadie.

Facing them, leering, triumphant, sneering, were the three rats, automatics held suggestively in their hands. Little Hymie took in the motley gathering with a wry smile. Then he bravely essayed a grin.

“Jeez,” he said, “I’ve been trying to get together with you mugs for a long time. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t have to be shanghaied to do it.”

“And before the night’s over you’ll be dead!” croaked Solly Gold.

“Well,” answered Little Hymie, “worse things than that have happened. But I ain’t dead yet, see. I ain’t dead till you plug me in the heart with a load of lead. And you, you crawling scum, you ain’t got the guts.”

“I ain’t, ain’t I?” flared out Gold. “Well, God damn you, I’ll show you.”

He raised his automatic, drew bead and would have fired point blank if Lefty hadn’t knocked his gun down.

“Cut it out, you sap!” he growled. “We don’t want to croak ’em yet. They all got nice little bank balances we can collect in the morning. No use lettin’ it go to the state.”

“So,” continued Little Hymie tauntingly, “you’re the yellow, crawling vermin that’s been doing all the double crossing around these parts. Faugh!” With the words, he spat viciously at the three men standing over him.

Solly Gold suddenly flicked his wrist and brought the barrel of his gun in a tearing slash across Little Hymie’s face. The gangster took it without moving, without a mutter. His silence above the tap-tap of his blood dropping to the floor, was more deadly than a thousand words.

A long pause. Then:

“I’m telling you now, Solly Gold, you better plug me! If you don’t, I’ll tear out your heart!”

“Horse collar!” snarled Gold.

Then Little Hymie turned to the other captives.

“Fellas, I’m sorry for gettin’ you wrong. I apologize.”

Lefty had heard enough. He swaggered across the floor to the prostrate Jew and spat into his face.

“Well, Hymie,” he began after this insult, “now that you’ve made your little speech, I’m going to give you the low down. Seeing what we intend to do with all of you, it’s only fair. We’re going out and start your three gangs off on the war path. When they’ve about cleaned each other out, then, we’ll step in, take over the works and consolidate. See? The Chink, Solly and me are going to be the big works. Get me? We’re going to run the underworld. We’re going to run the rackets. We’re going to get the gravy.”

“And what about us, you double crossing, yellow livered pimps?” sneered Little Hymie. “You think we’ll lay down and take it?”

“You’ll have to, Hymie. You’ll lay down and take it in a coffin. You’ll be dead, see? Come on boys, let’s go!”

With evil, triumphant smiles on their lips, the three rats inspected once again the bonds on their prisoners and then left the room. A moment later the outer door was heard to close behind them.

No sooner were they alone in the house than there was a concerted move on the part of the four prisoners to free themselves from their bonds. But they were well and cunningly tied. They squirmed and twisted and turned but their bonds held. In vain one tried to free another. The air was livid with profanity as they struggled with the ropes that bound them but what they needed then, rather than sharp tongues, were sharp knives.

But at all costs they must succeed in freeing themselves. If not, it was very possible that the three rats would succeed in carrying out their threat of annihilation. They feared, not alone for themselves, but for their men, who even at that moment were being led into useless slaughter.

When the three rats left the house and their prisoners on Mulberry Street, they immediately separated, each going off in a different direction. Lefty made tracks for Shanty’s headquarters on Tenth Street; Solly Gold made for Little Hymie’s warehouse on the west side; and the Chink soon lost himself in the tangled streets of Chinatown.

A half hour later the three traitors had the three mobs worked up to the murder point. Men saw red and at the same time their chance of vengeance; a vengeance they had been seeking for months now. Brisk sharp orders were given and executed even before the words died out.

To the usual assortment of sawed off shot guns, revolvers and automatics, blunt, savage sub-machine guns were added and China Cholly’s tong pulled off the racks their heaviest hatchets. This was to be a war of extermination. Within minutes of each other the three mobs left their respective headquarters and piled eagerly into their waiting cars. The advance was begun. All speed laws were broken that night, as the machines loaded with death and destruction, hurtled through the night streets of the city toward one another.

A half hour later, the prisoners on Mulberry Street were desperate. Despite their most strenuous efforts to free themselves, they were in exactly the same position as when their captors left them.

It was then, when all else had failed them, that Shanty Hogan had inspiration; inspiration of a very desperate sort, it is true.

“Listen you guys,” he said, “I got an idea if you want to gamble on it.”

“Shoot,” said Little Hymie, “we can’t be any worse off than we are now.”

“Those wise guys left the lamp here.” continued Shanty. “There’s oil in it. We can set the damn joint on fire and let the fire department yank us out — if they get here in time.”

For a moment they considered the proposition. Sadie was the first to break the silence.

“My vote goes in yes,” she said.

“Me, too,” assented China Cholly.

“We’ll gamble the roll,” put in Little Hymie.

“Good!” grunted Shanty. “Now you guys and Sadie back into the other room. That’ll give us a few minutes leeway, anyway.”

They rolled, hobbled and lurched across the uneven floor and passed into the next room. Shanty was left alone. The oil lamp, burning brightly, was perched on a box in the center of the room. He scanned the dark corners of the place for a last time, judged the distance back of him to the door and then fell heavily into the box.

The lamp went down with a crash and a trail of flaming oil darted across the dusty floor. The old and moldy wood took fire at once. In a moment the spongy walls took flame. Shanty waited to see no more. He rolled himself across the floor, away from the fire, towards the door, squeezed through and slammed it shut behind him.

Breathlessly the captives waited behind the slender barrier. Had they made a mistake? Had they been foolhardy? Was their end to be the fearful one of dread by fire? A thin wisp of smoke curled under the door jamb: then a flickering light lapped through.

A moment later they heard the ominous roar and crackle of flames in the next room. The air became uncomfortably warm, then stilling hot as the acrid smoke still continued to seep in to them. Sweat poured off them in streams. They gasped for air. They choked and their lungs were a living hell.

The roar of the consuming flames sounded like an orchestra of hell. The heat became terrific and the door that sheltered them from the raging inferno inside warped and bent. Well, anyway, they were going out in a blaze of glory.

Then above the seething hiss of the flames a shout sounded in the street outside. The alarm was given!

The four prisoners suffered all the agonies of hell for what seemed an eternity before the air was pierced by the screaming wail of a siren and the clang of engines. They willed to live through that bath of flame.

The clang and roar of heavy trucks and the swelling throaty cry of the gathering crowd in the street filled the room. A moment later dark forms appeared at the window. The panes of glass were shattered and three helmeted firemen clambered over the sill. At first they thought the prisoners there quite dead but a string of hurried orders and instructions from Shanty convinced them otherwise. In a thrice their bonds were cut and they were carried to the waiting ladders.

The fresh clean air revived them. Greedily they sucked it in hungry mouthfuls and by the time they had reached the ground they were ready to carry on.

Four streams of water were now playing on the blazing structure. The street was a bedlam of noise, cries and pounding engines. Under cover of the confusion, Shanty herded his three companions together and streaked them outside the police ring.

The red painted body of a police car caught his eye.

“This way, this way!” he urged and elbowed his way to the curb. “Jump in, you guys. This is our best bet!”

Hymie, Cholly and Sadie were quick to obey and before the sweating policemen knew what had happened, the commandeered car was careening down the street in high. Shanty gripped the wheel in two strong hands while Little Hymie ground the siren to a high moaning wail.

Traffic officers cleared the streets for them for blocks ahead. Like a red juggernaut of doom the gangsters sped through the streets, their course of destruction speeded on by the hand of the Law. Sadie alone appreciated the humor of the situation and could not resist the temptation to thumb her nose at each flatfoot they passed.

The three rats, each one with the particular mob he had betrayed, did their work well. So well, in fact, that when the gangs converged from three points of the compass, in the neutral strip of territory between the East and West sides, flaming hell broke out with a cataclysmic roar. The heavy artillery went into immediate action and the sinister grow l and rattle of sub-machine guns sounded like a skeleton’s dance.

The gangs tore right up to each other and went into a desperate hand to hand conflict. No time this for seeking refuge down dark alleys; no time this for spotting off a bloke from the security of a roof top. There was bitter hatred between the men; hatred that could only be purged by personal contact.

A savage horde of madmen, a raging mob of insane demons, the gangs milled about the street, bleeding, sweating, cursing. Sawed off shot guns were jammed into enemy guts and emptied of their leaden poison; the asphalt became slimy with the tangled bowels of fallen men.

Ever and anon a pineapple would be dropped in the midst of half a dozen struggling gorillas, with the result that friend and foe alike were rent asunder by the flying shell.

The struggle was elemental, colossal! Here were bitter foes, struggling with brute force, face to face. There was no subtlety of brain in play here. There was no master mind strategy or ingenuity. Lust was given full play. Kill, kill, kill or be killed! That was the Law!

The massacre could not have lasted for long. There was only one inevitable outcome to it. Another half hour more and all there would have found a blessed annihilation in gory death.

Suddenly, however, there darted straight into the swirling haze of gun smoke, a streaking red car. With a scream of brakes it pulled up directly in the center of the fire. The advent of the hurtling machine was so sudden and unexpected that for a moment there was a lull in the bitter warfare.

The three gang chiefs were quick to take advantage of the brief respite. As one man they stood up in the captured police car, waved their arms violently and shouted hurried words. A terrible silence filled the air. The gang chiefs rejoined the torn and battered remnants of their once powerful organizations. Sobs of sorrow and hate struggled for dominance in their throats, as they surveyed the shambles.

And for this massacre three double crossing rats were responsible. God help them!

So great was their grief that they were momentarily stunned into inactivity. It was quick-thinking Sadie alone who saved them from another disastrous blunder. Her eye caught a furtive movement among the mob of restless gangsters, where the three rats edged their way to one of the parked cars.

Swiftly she wrenched a heavy colt .45 from a limp wrist and confronted the three traitors. A savage feline ferocity marked her face with terrible doom. Her lips curled evilly into a cruel smile revealing two rows of sharp white teeth. Teeth she would have been glad to sink into the traitors’ throats.

The rats fell back before her, more in fear of her passion-distorted face than of the threatening gun in her hand with which she covered them with a slow fan-like movement.

“Shanty!” she called. “The rats! Watch them or they’ll make a getaway.”

At her words the three chiefs started towards her.

The traitors saw their plot go sky-high on Sadie’s words. Death was all about them. They made a break and on the instant Sadie’s gun barked three times. The three explosions came so close together that they sounded like one and the three rats tumbled simultaneously to the gutter.

Little Hymie rushed to his sister.

“What’d you do, kid,” he asked hurriedly. “Kill ’em dead?”

“Hell, no,” replied Sadie. “Just drilled ’em to keep ’em quiet. I’m saving them for the boys to finish off proper. They deserve it.”

A half hour later a weird and terrible scene was being enacted in a dirty, musty room of Little Hymie’s warehouse. The three rats had been strung up by their wrists to a raftered beam in the ceiling and their ankles manacled together. Then the terrible revenge of the underworld began!

Each of the survivors of the now united mobs, all armed with evil, glinting knives, marched by the dangling figures and slashed. It was a slow death! A torturous, horrible death. The blows were struck cunningly with hateful lust, just deep enough to torture, not deep enough to kill at once. For a half hour the gruesome retribution lasted, then silently the three chiefs and Sadie, followed by their henchmen, left the scene of horror.

The three, dangling, disfigured corpses bore mute testimony to the terrible revenge the underworld wreaks on a traitor — a rat!

“Drinks, men, the best in the house for all of us,” said Little Hymie when the mob had left the death chamber. “From now on the three gangs are one.”

“And Sadie here,” said Shanty, putting one arm affectionately around her, “has agreed to become Mrs. Shanty Hogan. It’s this kid here, boys, that saved us all from being sent to hell by those stiffs inside.”

Bottles of good rye! Lifted glasses! A toast!

“Death to all traitors. Long life and prosperity to the new mob. A mob of Chink, Jew and Irish! Skoal!”