Chapter 13 - Page 2

plain words--lynch them?"

"Well, what of that? It's the only--"

"But, my dear young man, the law--"

"Oh, I know what you're going to say, well enough, yet there are times when mob law is justified. If these men are not destroyed quickly they will live to laugh at our laws and our scheme of justice. We must strike terror into the heart of every foreign-born criminal; we must clean the city with fire, unless we wish to see our institutions become a mockery and our community overridden by a band of cutthroats. The killing of Dan Donnelly is more than a mere murder; it is an attack on our civilization."

"You are carried away by your personal feelings."

"I think not. If this thing runs through the regular channels, what will happen? You know how hard it is to convict those people. We must fight fire with fire."

"Personally, I agree with a good deal you say; officially, of course. I can't go so far. You say you want to help. Will you assume a large responsibility? Will you take the lead in a popular movement to help the enforcement of the law--organize a committee?"

"If you think I'm the right man?"

"Good! Understand"--the Mayor spoke now with determined earnestness-- "we must have no lynchings; but I believe the police will need help in the search, and I think you are the man to stir up the public conscience and secure that aid. If you can help in apprehending the criminals we shall see that the courts do their part. I can trust you in so delicate a matter where I couldn't trust--some others."

O'Neil appeared at that moment with two strange objects in his hands.

"See what we've just found on the Basin Street banquette."

He displayed a pair of sawed-off shotguns the stocks of which were hinged in such a manner that the weapons could be doubled into a length of perhaps eighteen inches and thus be concealed upon the person. Blake examined them with mingled feelings. Having seen the body of the Chief ripped and torn in twenty places by buckshot, slugs, and scraps of iron, he had tried to imagine what sort of firearms had been used. Now he knew, and he began to wonder whether death would come to him in the same ugly form.

"Have you sent for Larubio?" he asked.

"The men are just leaving."

"I'll go with them."

O'Neil intercepted the officers at the door, and a moment later Norvin was hurrying with them toward Girod Street. Mechanically his mind began to review the events leading up to the murder, dwelling on each detail with painful and fruitless persistence. He repictured the scene that his eye had so swiftly and so carelessly recorded; he saw again the dark shed, the dumb group of figures idling beneath it, the open door and the flood of yellow light behind. But