"You know," he whispered, "I have been working with my assistants on Dopey Jack ever since the conviction, hoping to get a confession from him, holding out all sorts of promises if he would turn state's evidence and threats if he didn't. It all had no effect. But Murtha's death seems to have changed all that. I don't know why—whether he thinks it was due to foul play or not, for he won't say anything about that and evidently doesn't know—but it seems to have changed him."
Carton said it as though at last a ray of light had struck in on an otherwise black situation, and that was indeed the case.
"I suppose," suggested Craig, "that as long as Murtha was alive he would rather have died than say anything that would incriminate him. That's the law of the gang world. But with Murtha no longer to be shielded, perhaps he feels released. Besides, it must begin to look to him as though the organization had abandoned him and was letting him shift pretty much for himself."
"That's it," agreed Carton. "He has never got it out of his head that Kahn swung the case against him and I've been careful not to dwell on the truth of that Kahn episode."
Carton led us into his main office, where Rubano was seated with two of Carton's assistants who were quizzing him industriously and obtaining an amazing amount of information about gang life and political corruption. In fact, like most criminals when they do confess, Dopey Jack was in danger of confessing too much, in sheer pride at his own prowess as a bad man.
Outside, I knew that it was being well noised abroad, in fact I had nodded to an old friend on the Star who had whispered to me that the editor had already called him up and offered to give Rubano any sum for a series of articles for the Sunday supplement on life in the underworld. I knew, then, that the organization had heard of it, by this time—too late.
Most of the confession was completed by the time we arrived, but as it had all been carefully taken down we knew we had missed nothing.
"You see, Mr. Carton," Rubano was saying as we three entered and he turned from the assistant who was quizzing him, "it's like this. I can't tell you all about the System. No one can. You understand that. All any of us know is the men next to us—above and below. We may have opinions, hear gossip, but that's no good as evidence."
"I understand," reassured Carton. "I don't expect that. You must tell me the gossip and rumours, but all I am bartering a pardon for is what you really know, and you've got to make good, or the deal is off, see?"
He said it in a tone that Dopey Jack could understand and the gangster protested. "Well, Mr. Carton, haven't I made good?"