“Don’t get sore, Bundy,” said Red Vallon appeasingly. “It’s nothing like that. You know how it was. Karlin’s arrest last night queered everything. That cursed snitch with the mask on put everything on the rough. There wasn’t any meeting. You know who sent that code there; well, he didn’t know about the other job, or that he was butting in on you. Tumble? There ain’t nothing to be sore about, Bundy. Say, me and Birdie ain’t going to be more’n an hour or two doing this trick, anyhow. Someone of the Mole’s gang must have leaked; or maybe one of our boys piped him off. I dunno. But we got him cold this trip. He’s a slick one all right, and he’s been getting away with the goods quite a lot lately, and giving us the laugh. You know all about that. Well, this is where he doesn’t laugh—see? He’s pulling a nice one to-night. Got it all fixed up to make it look like somebody else did it. Sure! Well, we’re not kicking at that—so long as we get the loot. Sure! We’ll let him pull it, all right, all right, believe me!”
Billy Kane appeared to be unmoved. He studied the gangster coldly.
“And how does it happen that you and Birdie, out of all the rest, are picked for this?”
Red Vallon indulged in an ugly grin.
“’Cause we know the Mole down to the ground,” he said; “but principally because the Mole knows us! There won’t be any fooling when we spring a show-down, he’s wise to that, and he’ll come across. And, besides, ’tain’t only Birdie and me, I’m taking some of my own gang along as well.”
Billy Kane scowled. It probably mattered very little indeed that Red Vallon’s efforts were to be sidetracked for the next few hours, and should he, Billy Kane, during that time, be successful, it mattered not at all; but his play for the moment was to preserve his rôle in Red Vallon’s eyes, to keep away from anything intimate concerning the purport of this cipher message that still lay beneath his clenched hand, and that might so easily betray his ignorance, and above all now to get rid of Red Vallon before any such awkward and dangerous impasse could arise. He shrugged his shoulders, but his voice was still sullen as he spoke.
“Well, go to it!” he growled. “Go and pick up your chicken feed! But you get this into your nut, Red, and let it soak there. After this”—he leaned far over the table, his face thrust almost into Red Vallon’s—“you stay with the game every minute, or quit! It’s the limit, or quit! There’s just one thing that counts—those rubies, or the man who pinched them. If we get the man, he’ll cough—red—the stones, or blood. Do you think I’m going to let anything queer me on my share of half a million? You don’t seem to get what I mean when I say the limit. Look out I don’t give you an object lesson!”
Red Vallon licked his lips, and drew back a little. There was something in Red Vallon’s eyes that was not often there—fear.
“It’s all right, Bundy,” he said with nervous eagerness. “I’m with you. Sure, I am! This thing must have broke loose quick, and there wasn’t no idea of crabbing anything you’d started. I got ten of the best of ’em combing out the ‘fences’ for you right now.”
“All right,” responded Billy Kane gruffly. “Make a report to me on that before morning.”