“What a dapper little thought!” exclaimed the girl. “That would fix everything, wouldn’t it? You radiant man!”
CHAPTER XXI
On the following Monday a pock-marked Mexican appeared at the county jail in Los Angeles, during visitors’ hours, and asked to be permitted to see Slick Allen. The two stood in a corner and conversed in whispers. Allen’s face wore an ugly scowl when his visitor told him of young Pennington’s interference with their plans.
“It’s getting too hot for us around there,” said Allen. “We got to move. How much junk you got left?”
“About sixty cases of booze. We got rid of nearly three hundred cases on the coast side, without sending ’em through Evans. There isn’t much of the other junk left—a couple pounds altogether, at the outside.”
“We got to lose the last of the booze,” said Allen; “but we’ll get our money’s worth out of it. Now you listen, and listen careful, Bartolo.”
He proceeded very carefully and explicitly to explain the details of a plan which brought a grin of sinister amusement to the face of the Mexican. It was not an entirely new plan, but rather an elaboration and improvement of one that Allen had conceived some time before in the event of a contingency similar to that which had now arisen.
“And what about the girl?” asked Bartolo. “She should pay well to keep the Penningtons from knowing.”
“Leave her to me,” replied Allen. “I shall not be in jail forever.”