Bresci’s hand went straight over his head.
“Corpo di Christo! Non! Non!” he exclaimed, paling. “Oh, never speek such word here! Non! They say, too bad Ratto he keeled!”
He mopped his brow of its perspiration, suddenly started, and glanced furtively through the curtains to see whether anyone had come in and heard the conversation.
“I think you’re a liar, Bresci,” said Lanagan pleasantly. “But as I can’t talk Italian, I can’t prove it. It’s pretty funny how that pow-wow shut up the minute those coppers blew through that door. But you better wipe your streaming brow again and beat it back to the bar. You’ve got a customer. Who is—” Lanagan whispered to me as Bresci left, “no other than Lawrence Morton of the secret service, just assigned here from Seattle.”
Then he continued, “I met him the other day on that counterfeiting story at the beach. Just a shade curious, I should say, the attention Bresci is attracting to-night from the big and the little hawkshaws. It bears out my ‘tip.’”
Morton had a drink or two, complained of being tired, and drifted casually over to the curtains, opened them, saw us, and was backing easily away when Lanagan called out from the darkness—he had turned off the incandescent earlier:
“Come in, Morton. Nothing to get exclusive over,” switching on the light.
Morton dropped into a chair. If he was perturbed at being “made” he did not show it. He was generally reputed one of the two or three cleverest operators in the government service.
“That was good work you did on Iowa Slim, from all I hear,” he vouchsafed.
“There’s a better coming up,” replied Lanagan, indifferently. “What brings you to Bresci’s?”