Well-dressed, smooth-faced, and quiet in appearance, he might have been a prosperous business man, just returned from the theater. He was reading a magazine.
“Hello, Dip,” he said, without raising his eyes.
The wolfish-faced man grinned. He walked halfway across the room, pulled a chair from beside the wall, and sat down. He waited a few minutes. The man in the corner tossed the magazine aside. Then “Dip” spoke:
“Here I am, Flash,” he declared. “I followed the guy. I found out what I wanted!”
No two men could have appeared more different than this pair. No student of facial characteristics would have placed them in the same category. Yet actually, the men were similar in nature. “Flash” Donegan and Dip Riker were known as the Siamese twins of gangdom. They were cronies.
Dip, with his wolfish face and ugly, leering smile, was not the type of man to excite admiration. In appearance, Flash was quite the opposite.
The gangster beneath the light had a calm and composed expression. His straight nose, his thin, well-formed mouth, his narrowed, green eyes, made him a type — the racketeer de luxe. It was the mastery over his expression alone that gave him a superiority over his companion.
Flash expressed a very definite interest when Dip spoke. His eyelids narrowed, his eyes sparkled. It was this odd flashing of his optics that had given the man his nickname. More than one gun toter had quailed before that sparkle. Some had gone to the big beyond while facing that sinister gaze.
“He lives at the Metrolite Hotel,” declared Dip, resuming the subject that he had mentioned. “I beat him there in a taxicab. Waited for him to come in. Looked him over close. I’ll know him again any time I see him.”
“He was alone?”