While Banneker was packing in his room, Smith, seated on the window-sill, remarked:
“I ought to tell you that we have to go through a bad district to get there.”
“The Tunnel Gang?” asked Banneker, wise in the plague spots of the city.
“Just this side of their stamping ground. It’s a gang of wharf rats. There have been a number of hold-ups, and last week a dead woman was found under the pier.”
Banneker made an unobtrusive addition to his packing. “They’ll have to move fast to catch me,” he observed.
“Two of us together won’t be molested. But if you’re alone, be careful. The police in that precinct are no good. They’re either afraid or they stand in with the gang.”
On Fifth Avenue the pair got a late-cruising taxicab whose driver, however, declined to take them nearer than one block short of the pier. “The night air in that place ain’t good fer weak constitutions,” he explained. “One o’ my pals got a headache last week down on the pier from bein’ beaned with a sandbag.”
No one interfered with the two reporters, however. A whistle from the end of the pier evolved from the watery dimness a dinghy, which, in a hundred yards of rowing, delivered them into a small but perfectly appointed yacht. Banneker, looking about the luxurious cabin, laughed a little.
“That was a bad guess of mine about half expenses,” he said good-humoredly. “I’d have to mortgage my future for a year. Do you own this craft?”
“My father does. He’s been called back West.”