He looked at Durkin steadily, for a moment, and then, seemingly satisfied, went on in a different tone.
“Did you ever hear of Penfield, the big pool-room man, the gay art connoisseur, who hob-nobs with a bunch of our Wall Street magnates and saunters over to Europe a couple o’ times a season? Well, I’ve been a plunger at Penfield’s now for two months—just long enough to make sure that he’s as crooked as they make ’em. I’m going to give him a dose of his own medicine, and hit that gilt-edged gambler for a slice of his genteel bank-roll—and an uncommon good, generous slice, too!”
“But what’s—er—your special line of business? How are you going to get at this man Penfield, I mean?”
“Ever hear of the Miami outfit?” asked the other.
“That cut in and hit the Montreal pool-rooms for eighty thousand?—well, I guess I have, a little!”
Durkin glanced at his companion, in wonder. Then the truth seemed to dawn on him, in one illuminating, almost bewildering, flash.
“You—you’re not MacNutt?” he cried, reading his answer even while he asked the question. Half a year before, the Postal-Union offices had been full of talk of the Miami outfit and MacNutt, buzzing with meagre news of the cool insolence and audacity of Miami’s lightning-slingers, who, when they saw they had worked their game to a finish, cut in with their: “We’ve got your dough, now you can go to——” as they made for cover and ultimate liberty ten minutes before their hillside cave was raided, and nothing more than a packing-case, holding three dozen Brumley dry batteries, a bunch of “KK,” and a couple of Crosby long-distance telephones, was found.
Durkin looked at the other man once more, almost admiringly, indeterminately tempted, swayed against his will, in some way, by the splendor of a vast and unknown hazard. He found a not altogether miserable consolation, too, in the thought that this possible second dip into illegitimate activities would be a movement not directed against organized society, but against one already an enemy of that society. Yet even this draught of sophistry left its after-taste of disgust.
“You’re pretty confidential,” he said, slowly, looking the other up and down. “What’s to stop me going to one of Doogan’s men and squealing on the whole gang of you?”
MacNutt smiled, gently and placidly, and stroked his short beard, touched here and there with gray. “And what good would all that do you?” he asked.