A particularly young man near the end of the table rose to his feet with a grating laugh which rose in crescendo and pitch as he stood now trembling and white.
“Sit down!” said Cowboy; “you got nothing to worry about, Gagnon.”
Gagnon turned staring eyes towards Cowboy.
“Nothing to worry about?” demanded Gagnon. “With the Feds on our trails and the heat ready to turn on? What about Hegarty? You——”
“Steady, Gagnon,” whispered the man next to him.
“Steady? What for? I’m liable to get plugged to-night for all I know. I’m——”
Then, something in Cowboy’s eyes conveying a terrible warning, Gagnon seated himself, his cigarette dropping from his fingers while he buried his face in his hands. Mr. Sandborn had a pretty good idea what the trouble was, in fact, he was certain that he could piece together the story back of Gagnon.
Gagnon was probably like thousands of others buried in crime. Lured in his recent youth by rich rewards that crime could offer, easy money, and good times, he had first stolen odds and ends to sell to some “fence” of the underworld, gone on from that to spare-hand with a petty gang in an easy robbery or two, proved himself nervy and willing and been put “on the payroll” of the vast syndicate headed by Cowboy. Being bright, good-looking, and skillful with a gun, Gagnon had undoubtedly worked his way from the bottom of the syndicate ladder to his present spot at the long table of a cabin on Porpoise Island.
He’d enjoyed good food, merry company, and a carefree existence between the days of “work” for this syndicate but he had not been happy. Always he had to be battling the law and even when the law had been tied by Cowboy’s money and influence, there was always the chance of G-man “heat.” He could not go out on a street in any town or city without the chance of being mowed down by rival gang-fire or being picked up by some unbribed law agency. Not all the easy money he had earned could give him peace of mind, for his conscience troubled him, and a thousand forms of death awaited their chance to strike. Cowboy had lived to mature age, in spite of a life of crime, but Cowboy had been extremely lucky. Gagnon knew that nine out of ten of the Gagnons in the crime world would be laid out on cold marble slabs in morgues before they had reached twenty-four! Gagnon was nearing that age now though his years of crime had robbed his eyes of their youth and left care and worry imprinted there.
Now his nerve was snapping. He knew if it gave way too much Cowboy would have him taken for a little ride because the unfortunate Gagnons of this world always “know too much!” And now his nerve had snapped!—far enough to leave him shaken to the core, nauseated——