I left Parks at the corner of Kearny and Merchant Streets, and walking down to the door of the City Prison, applied for permission to see the prisoner I had captured in the final riot above the Mail docks. The death of Peter Bolton made it likely that I could induce him to answer the questions he had flouted the previous night.
I was admitted without difficulty, and found the cages filled with scores of men herded together into brutal contiguousness.
It was impossible to examine the prisoner before these cell-mates, but by the exercise of diplomacy I secured the privilege of talking with him in the comparative quiet of the Receiving Hospital. The man was brought shambling in, cast an impudent glance at me, and then looked sullenly at the floor. His pale face and sunken eyes and cheeks betrayed the opium smoker, and his manner was that of the hoodlum.
"You had better make a clean breast of it," I exhorted him. "I suppose you know that Bolton is dead."
"Yep," he said uneasily. "The old rooster that done for him was in here. He didn't look like he'd nerve enough to kill a cat."
"Well, I warn you that you have no one to protect you now, and your only chance of getting off with a light punishment is to answer my questions and tell the truth."
"Ask what you like, cully," he replied with an impudent leer. "You can bet I'm too fly to give up anything I ain't wanting you to know. I ain't a-goin' to split on the man that paid me, even if he has gone to the morgue. I'm game, I am." And he straightened himself with a pitiful exhibition of the criminal's pride.
"Oh, you needn't be afraid of giving away Bolton's secrets," I said. "I know more about them than you do." And I mentioned several incidents of his employment that made his eyes open and his face pale with the fear that he was caught beyond escape. "What I want you to tell me is what Bolton was doing with Big Sam?"
The spy looked sullenly at the floor, and shook his head. And it was not until I had threatened to put a charge of attempt to murder against him that he replied:
"Well, I don't see as there's any harm in tipping it off to youse on that. The old rat's game was to get Big Sam to put up money for them crazy bunko-men on the Council of Nine. He done it, too. I'll bet he got the coolie to put up as much as he gave himself."