“Well, I’ve got a little job for you. Dago’s kind of careless in some ways. I want you to keep an eye peeled for two young kids that have been snooping around here the last few days. You’ve heard of the kids that helped get Hogan?”
“Sure, I’ve heard of them. Who hasn’t? I’ll land them if they come round here again! I don’t like kids anyhow!”
“You do the job right, get these kids unharmed and turn them over to me, and I’ll make things right by you, Gallagher!” Nevada promised. “Dago’s about washed up, anyhow.”
“You’ve got big plans, Nevada, and you’re the one to see ’em through!” Gallagher said, in praise.
Nevada patted the six-guns in the scabbards on the wall.
“Gallagher,” he said, seriously, “when I was riding the hot towns and the road I didn’t know what I do to-night. I’ve got schemes up my sleeve that will make this country sit up and take notice. Right now I’ve got a network of men from Maine to California in every big city and most towns—working for me and the day I’m ready to take things over in full!”
He made no offer to say more and Gallagher knew the wisdom of silence, so asked no more questions. But he knew that this ex-cowboy and bad-man was now a powerful underworld figure, and he knew that the search for Nevada was over the moment the word was sent to Headquarters. But the Chief would want to get the entire ring, the entire organization of Nevada’s crime network. And that would call for evidence, concrete and definite, and lots of it! It was arrest and imprison Nevada the bank-robber or wait and nab Nevada the leader of a stupendous crime syndicate and gather in his henchmen too!
Now the G-man was able to make use of many facts not clearly seen before. For a year or more the F. B. I. had seen the tentacles of a vast crime syndicate and had been unable to locate the brains of the system. In Omaha, a man had been kidnaped and a huge ransom collected. He was released, but the thing was so cleverly planned that even the F. B. I. could not yet put a finger on the man back of the “snatch.” In New York City the vegetable markets had been paying tribute to a “cabbage king” in the form of special orders for cabbage at fixed prices “or else——!” Who was the “cabbage king”? Police would have liked to know. The lottery racket was flourishing throughout the nation. Dozens of rackets were springing up, never heard of before. And, instead of being able to trace it to one or two big shots, the F. B. I. had run up against stone walls and blind alleys because of crooked lawyers, tight-mouthed suspects, and the resisting surface of the underworld. Mr. Sandborn began to see that Cowboy Nevada was a big cog, if not the main cog, in this racket business. He had graduated from small time bank robbing to specialized crimes.
Now that took millions of dollars of money to keep “the machinery greased when starting!” Cowboy had gotten about fifty thousand dollars from that Federal bank and by the time he’d paid for “protection” and a “fence” to handle the “hot money,” there was probably half that sum left for his efforts. Therefore he’d gotten unlimited wealth elsewhere. He might have made the money in the rackets themselves, but the G-man thought not. No, Nevada must have struck it rich suddenly and so got his grip on the underworld and the making of his syndicate.
Whatever happened, Mr. Sandborn must keep his identity secret, for these men would delight in the discovery that he was a law-man, particularly one of the dreaded G-men. They would find a way to get rid of him in some unpleasant manner and take their chances with the F. B. I. proving murder! He could not even be sure that Cowboy was not suspicious of him now. Time alone could prove that. In the meanwhile he must play his part as a gunman and aide to the syndicate head, learning all he could, memorizing everything, and getting to John and the boys all information possible to help convict these super-criminals.