“Determined to go back! Say — they tell me guys have been found with lead poured in their mouths! That ain’t no mob stuff! I may be wrong; but I figure it’s the DOACs who done it. They think I got a lot of dough salted away. If they get me they’ll be pouring hot lead on me to make me talk. I ain’t got no dough. I’m a poor man, and I don’t want to be put on the spot for something I ain’t even got!”
“X,” looking at Carney, knew the man was lying. There was a look of craft and cupidity in Carney’s eyes. Fear of the DOACs and desire to hang onto his ill-gotten fortune, hidden somewhere, made Carney look upon his prison cell as a refuge.
The Agent shrugged. “I’ll see that you get back then,” he said. “And I’ll tip off that girl of yours to look out. Then I’ll see what I can find out about Di Lauro.”
“You’re some kind of a dick, ain’t you?” asked Carney shrewdly. “Don’t tell anybody what I told you. Maybe Di Lauro ain’t the guy.”
“X” was silent as he backed the big car around. It was now long after midnight. He had the problem of getting Carney back to jail. That was no easy matter. The DOACs had spies everywhere. It would be better to telephone the prison and have an escort meet Carney. But “X” didn’t want to come in contact with the forces of the law himself, be questioned and perhaps held for the part he had played tonight. He spoke to the gangster again.
“Lie down in the car,” he said. “Pull that robe over you. You’ll be out of sight. I’m going to find a phone.”
“You’ll be pinched if you’re seen in that hood,” said Carney.
“I’ll take it off — before I phone,” said “X.”
Carney obeyed instructions, got down in the rear of the big car, drawing the soiled and moth-eaten lap robe over him. Agent “X” went back into the highway, and drove on in the same direction he had followed before his conversation with the gangster. In a half hour he saw the lights of a town ahead. He stopped beside the road, spoke to Carney:
“Wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.”
He plunged into the bushes, and under cover of the darkness he drew off the DOAC hood; removed the disguise of A.J. Martin.
The sandy-haired wig, part of his make-up as the newspaper man, came off. He put that and the DOAC hood in a deep inner pocket. He slipped a close-fitting toupee over his head, and changed his features until they were utterly unlike Martin. It was another of his remarkable stock disguises that he had learned to make even under cover of the darkness.
He walked quickly back to the car again, a dark-haired man with nondescript, blunt-looking features. When he climbed into the seat of the driver Michael Carney looked up, regarding him with hard, shrewd eyes.
“Lie low,” the Agent said harshly. “We’re going into town now. There may be DOAC spies around. It will be tough if they spot you.”
“What about the car?” said Carney uneasily. “You swiped it from them. They may spot it.”
“X” had thought of that, too, but he shrugged.
“It’s a chance we’ve got to take,” he said.
EXCEPT for the lights along the sidewalks, the town seemed dead. It was after two o’clock. The streets were deserted. Not even an all-night drug store was open. But “X” drove on swiftly till he found a hotel catering to transients. A light burned in the lobby of this. A night clerk was on duty, yawning over his desk.
This hotel looked like a good spot to leave Carney until the prison officials could pick him up.
The Agent went in and the clerk directed him to a telephone booth. Agent “X” dialed long distance and called the state prison; He and Carney had put many miles between themselves and the prison town in their wild night ride. The Agent’s announcement that Carney was safe and ready to return to his cell caused a furore in the warden’s office. The warden, roused from his bed by the raid and still on duty, spoke with brittle excitement.
“Who is this calling?”
“Never mind, warden. Get an escort together. Come here as fast as you can and pick up Carney. Hotel Franklin, Dennistown.”
The baffled cursing of the prison warden was audible as “X” hung up the receiver.
The Agent strode outside, climbed into the car and drove it directly to the door of the Hotel Franklin. The quiet of the streets was undisturbed. “X” spoke to the gangster.
“I’ve phoned the warden to come and get you here at the hotel. That seems like the best way out.”
He accompanied Carney to his room on the second floor, said an abrupt good-by and left, knowing that the gangster, cringing with fear under the DOAC menace, would remain in his room till the prison escort came.
“X” drove his car to the highway along which the prison escort must come. There he backed into a grove of screening trees, and waited till he saw headlights far down the highway.
Many cars passed — the last dozen filled with armed State troopers. The prison warden was taking no chances this time. He had learned his lesson.
Twenty minutes went by, and the cavalcade of cars repassed, going the other way, Carney hunched between two burly prison guards. Agent “X” smiled grimly at the sight of a felon returning to prison voluntarily because it was his only refuge against a threat that had put terror into his criminal heart.
SIX hours later, a gray-haired man, whose card bore the name “T. Galaway, investigator for the governor,” walked up to the prison gate. An early morning sun shone down on the scene of last night’s destruction. The slain, guards had been taken away. Those among the hooded raiders who had fallen under bullets from the prison walls had been removed by the DOACs.
Stone masons were already at work on the watchtowers that had been smashed by the bombs. A cordon of State troopers stood guard around the grim walls of the prison. All the inmates were locked in their cells. There would be no exercise in the prison yard for days to come. Warden Johnson was ruling his walled empire with military discipline.
A score of newspaper reporters clamored outside the prison gates. More were arriving every instant. Their press cards had gained them entry through the line of State troopers. But Warden Johnson refused to grant them an interview.
He was busy in his office, answering long-distance phone calls, consoling families of slain guards, supervising the prison repairs, interviewing state, federal, and local detectives who were gathering information about the hooded raiders.
When Galaway’s card was sent in, however, Johnson’s reaction was immediate. He told his secretary to admit Galaway at once. Expecting a call from the governor’s mansion any instant, Johnson was nervously apprehensive. Blame, he feared, would attach to the fact that he had not heeded the DOACs’ threat against Mike Carney. The lives of the guards might have been spared if he had done so.
Galaway, tall, austere, with a look of penetrating intelligence in his eyes, was ushered into the warden’s private office. The warden received him uneasily.
“Sit down. Have a cigar, Mr. Galaway.”
“I don’t smoke, thank you.”
The warden became still more uneasy under Galaway’s intent gaze. There was dynamic, almost hypnotic power in the scrutiny of this tall stranger. Johnson fidgeted in his chair, rolled his cigar between lips that were unnaturally dry.
“I hope the governor understands that we did all we could in the raid last night,” he said. “My men were hardly prepared for such a desperate attack by armed criminals. You’ll explain to him that from now on we’ll take extra precautions. Through the co-operation of Major Manley I’m to have a detachment of State troopers stationed here indefinitely.”
T. Galaway made a deprecatory gesture with his long, lean hand.
“I’m not here as an inquisitor, warden. There will be a formal investigation of the affair later. The governor, I may say, will be interested in your report on Carney’s strange return.”