Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; College graduates -- Fiction; Gangsters -- Fiction
The Lizard grunted and entered his own cab. As he did so a man on a
motorcycle drew up on the opposite side and peered through the window.
The driver had started his motor as the newcomer approached. From her
cab the girl saw the Lizard and the man on the motorcycle look into each
other's face for a moment, then she heard the Lizard's quick admonition
to his driver, "Beat it, bo!"
A sharp "Halt!" came from the man on the motorcycle, but the taxicab
leaped forward, and, accelerating rapidly, turned to the left into the
road toward the city. The girl had guessed at the first glance that the
man on the motorcycle was a police officer. As the Lizard's taxi raced
away the officer circled quickly and started in pursuit. "No chance,"
thought the girl. "He'll get caught sure." She could hear the staccato
reports from the open exhaust of the motorcycle diminishing rapidly in
the distance, indicating the speed of the pursued and the pursuer.
And then from the distance came a shot and then another and another.
She leaned forward and spoke to her own driver. "Go on to Elmhurst," she
said, "and then come back to the city on the St. Charles Road."
It was after two o'clock in the morning when the Lizard entered an
apartment on Ashland Avenue which he had for several years used as a
hiding-place when the police were hot upon his trail. The people from
whom he rented the room were eminently respectable Jews who thought
their occasional roomer what he represented himself to be, a special
agent for one of the federal departments, a vocation which naturally
explained the Lizard's long absences and unusual hours.
Once within his room the Lizard sank into a chair and wiped the
perspiration from his forehead, although it was by no means a warm
night. He drew a folded paper from his inside pocket, which, when
opened, revealed a small piece of wrapping paper within. They were
Murray's letter to Bince and the enclosure.
"Believe me," muttered the Lizard, "that was the toughest job I ever
pulled off and all I gets is two pieces of paper, but I don't know but
what they're worth it."
He sat for a long time looking at the papers in his hand, but he did not
see them. He was thinking of other things: of prison walls that he had
eluded so far through years of crime; of O'Donnell, whom he knew to be
working on the Compton case and whose boast it had been that sooner or
later he would get the Lizard; of what might naturally be expected were
the papers in his hands to fall into the possession of Torrance's
attorney. It would mean that Murray would be immediately placed in
jeopardy, and the Lizard knew Murray well enough to know that he would
sacrifice his best friend to save himself, and the Lizard was by no
means Murray's best friend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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