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By Root 2036 0

s business to stop too. It was an important job, because he took a chance of being sent to prison. When he stopped, it was his job to try to bribe the cops. It was an important job, because he carried up to ten thousand dollars cash of Ed s money in the Nash roadster which he used on these trips. It was up to him to use his head about bribing the cops; one or two of them wouldn’t be bribed, but most of them would listen to reason unless they had been sent out to pinch a truck or two to make a showing. He had to be smooth in his bribery offers to some of them. Some of them would take anything from a gold tooth to ten thousand dollars, but hated to be approached in the wrong way. On the few occasions when the cops refused to be bribed, it was Al s job to get to the nearest telephone, tell Ed, and get Jerome M. Montgomery, Ed s lawyer, working on the case. Al never was arrested for attempted bribery. In fact he was so successful generally that Ed took him off the convoy job and made him a collector. Ed trusted him and liked him, and made a lot of money for him, or gave him a lot of money. Sitting there at breakfast on this Christmas morning Al Grecco could write a check for more than four thousand dollars, and he had thirty-two one-thousand-dollar bills in his safety deposit box. For a kid of twenty-six he was doing all right. Now Loving Cup suddenly was standing at his table. On the phone, you, said Loving Cup. Who is it? Some dame? said Al. Don t try and bluff me, said Loving Cup. I know you’re queer. No, it s a party I think they said the name was Jarney or Charney. That was it. Charney.

Wise guy, said Al, getting up. I ll cut your ears off. Is it Ed?

Yeah, said Loving Cup, and he don t sound like Christmas to me.

Sore, eh? Al hurried to the telephone. Merry Christmas, boss, he said. Yeah. Same to you, said Ed, in a dull voice. Listen, Al, my kid got his arm broke

Jesus, tough! How d he do that?

Oh, he fell off some God damn wagon I bought him. So anyhow I m staying here till he gets the arm set and all, and I won’t be down till I don t know when. Annie is all hysterical and yelling her head off shut up, for Christ s sake, can t you see I m phoning. So I m staying here. Now listen, Al. Do you have a date for tonight?

Nothing I can t break, said Al, who had no date. I had a sort of a date, but it can wait if you want me to do anything.

Well, I hate to ask you, but this is what I want you should do. Drive up to the Stage Coach and stay there till they close up and keep an eye on things, see what I mean? And tell Helene I ll be there if I can make it, but you stay there anyhow, will you kid? There s fifty bucks in it for you on account of lousing up your date. Okay?

Kay, said Al. Only too glad, Ed.

Okay, said Ed. Just stick around and keep an eye on everything. He hung up. Al knew what he meant. Helene was not a teetotaler by any means. In fact Ed encouraged her to drink. She was more fun when she drank. But she was liable to get drunk tonight, because it was Christmas, and Ed didn’t want her to become reckless with the spirit of giving.

CHAPTER 3

ANYONE in Gibbsville who had any important money made it in coal; anthracite. Gibbsville people, when they went away, always had trouble explaining where they lived. They would say: I live in the coal regions, and people would say, Oh, yes, near Pittsburgh. Then Gibbsvillians would have to go into detail. People outside of Pennsylvania do not know that there is all the difference in the world between the two kinds of coal, and in the conditions under which anthracite and bituminous are mined. The anthracite region lies roughly between Scranton on the north and Gibbsville on the south. In fact Point Mountain, upon which Gibbsville s earliest settlement was made, is the delight of geologists, who come from as far away as Germany to examine Gibbsville Conglomerate, a stone formation found nowhere else in the world. When that geological squeeze, or whatever it was that produced veins of coal, occurred, it did not go south of Point Mountain, and coal is found on the north