"Are you sure? How do you feel?"
"Good enough to pull a leg off of you if you don't shut that big mouth."
Gascon shrugged, and turned to a rear wall. A picture hung there, a very unsightly oil painting. He put his hand up, as if to straighten it on its hook. Then he glanced toward a window, letting his eyes dilate. "Ahhhh!" he said softly.
Up jumped the gangster, gun flashing into view. "What did you say?" he demanded.
"I just said 'Ahhhh,'" replied Gascon, his eyes fixed on the window.
"If anybody's followed you here—" The giant broke off and tramped toward the window to look out.
Like a flash Gascon leaped after him. With him he carried the picture, lifted from where it hung. He swept it through the air, using the edge of the frame like a hatchet and aiming at the back of the thick neck.
The blow was powerful and well placed. Knocked clean out, the gangster fell on his face. Gascon stooped, hooked his hands under the armpits, and made shift to drag the slack weight back to its chair. It took all his strength to set his victim back there. Then he drew from his side pocket the thing he had been carrying for days—a wad of cotton which he soaked in chloroform. Holding it to the broad nose, he waited until the last tenseness went out of the great limbs. Then he crossed one leg over the other knee, poised the head against the chair-back, an elbow on a cushioned arm. Clamping the nerveless right hand about the pistol-butt, he arranged it in the man's lap. Now the attitude was one of assured relaxation. Gascon hung the picture back in place, and himself sat down. He still puffed on the cigarette that had not left his lips.
He had more than a minute to wait before the leaner mobster returned. "Ready for you now," he said to Gascon, beckoning him through a rear door. He gave no more than a glance to his quiet, easy-seeming comrade.
They went down some stairs into a basement—plainly basements were an enthusiasm of the commander of this enterprise—and along a corridor. At the end was a door, pulled almost shut, with light showing through the crack. "Go in," ordered Triangle-Face, and turned as if to mount the stairs again.