The crimp took no chances with the coiners. Yetsky’s brother was known in the city as Angel Face. He was credited with five murders.
Hansen securely handcuffed the prisoners. He waited while Abie searched the room. A plating outfit, a box of copper and zinc, and a double handful of smooth quarters were hidden beneath the floor.
“I’m Keenon of the Secret Service!” said Abie. “My man will take you out to the revenue cutter. You go to the Federal prison.”
Yetsky and his brother had feared Detective Keenon for over four years. They were plastic as their own plaster-of-Paris in the mate’s hands. They jumped to his proposal of letting them get away on a whaler. Had not they been caught red-handed? It was bad enough to have queer money in one’s possession, but double worse to have both the money and the molds. The sentence given by the Federal courts on similar charges had been five years for each offense.
Abie waited at the shore end of Meigg’s wharf for the mate to return from the whaler Bowhead. He had done remarkably well in the matter of getting Captain Gully a crew. There remained one more man to secure. The crimp had his pride. He had promised six.
The rain was a dampener to his hopes of getting this man. It would be useless to send out anybody except one who feared the law more than a whaling voyage.
Yetsky, Angel Face, Hong Kee and the two coolies would sign any paper at midnight. They did not need to be urged to leave San Francisco.
“Having put the fear of Keenon into their hearts,” Abie told Hansen, when the mate came ashore, “we’ll proceed to find the last man. What did Captain Gully say?”
“I dank he say nothin’. He is sitting on the booby-hatch holding down the crew.”
Abie led the mate toward Mission Street. The two men paused a moment in the shelter of an awning. The soap-box preacher had guided his flock of derelicts into the Beacon Room.