Jones held out his hand.
"Sometimes I wish I'd started life right," said the reporter gloomily. "A newspaper man is generally improvident. He never looks ahead for to-morrow. What with my special articles to the magazines, I earn between four and five thousand the year; and I've never been able to save a cent."
"Perhaps you've never really tried," replied Jones, with a glance at his companion. It was a good face, strong in outline; a little careworn, perhaps, but free from any indications of dissipation. "If I had begun life as you did, I'd have made real and solid use of the great men I met. I'd have made financiers help me to invest my earnings, or savings, little as they might be. And to-day I'd be living on the income."
"You never can tell. Perhaps a woman might have made you think of those things; but if you had remained unattached up to thirty-one, as I have, the thought of saving might never have entered your head. A man in my present condition, financially, has no right to think of matrimony."
"It might be the saving of you if you met and married the right woman."
"But the right woman might be heiress to millions. And a poor devil like me could not marry a girl with money and hang on to his self-respect."
"True. But there are always exceptions to all rules in life, except those regarding health. A healthy man is a normal man, and a normal man has no right to remain single. You proved yourself a man this afternoon, considering that you did not know I occupied the wheel seat. Come to think it over, you really saved the day. You gave me the opportunity of steering straight for the police station. Well, good-by."
"Queer duck!" mused the reporter as, after telephoning, he headed for his office. Queer duck, indeed! What a game it was going to be! And this man Jones was playing it like a master. It did not matter that some one else laid down the rules; it was the way in which they were interpreted.
Braine heard of the failure. The Black Hundred was finding its stock far below par value. Four valuable men locked up in the Tombs awaiting trial, to say nothing of the seven gunmen gathered in at the old warehouse. Braine began to suspect that his failures were less due to chance than to calculation, that at last he had encountered a mind which anticipated his every move. He would have recognized this fact earlier had it not been that revenge had temporarily blinded him. The spirit of revenge never makes for mental clarity.
There was a meeting that night of the Black Hundred. Four men were told off, and they drew their chairs up to Vroon's table for instructions. Braine sat at Vroon's elbow. These four men composed the most dangerous quartet in New York City. They were as daring as they were desperate. They were the men who held up bank messengers and got away with thousands. They had learned to swoop down upon their victims as the hawk swoops down upon the heron. The newspapers referred to them as the "auto bandits," and the men took a deal of pride in the furore they had created.