Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/250

 Then they told me the shipment would have to be held. And I can't keep dodging around this town in daylight."

"I imagined that," was the other's laconic retort.

"If we get that stuff, I've got to get it myself."

"Well, that wouldn't be so much of a stunt. There's no time-lock on it."

"It's held and guarded in a bonded warehouse."

"S'posin' it is. I've got a couple o' river junkies who can get into anything along the waterfront."

"But I must handle those cans myself. We must have the right ones. We don't want seven hundred gallons of olive oil mixed up with that shipment of paper."

"Which means you'll have to get into that warehouse."

"Then tell me how. For God's sake, tell me how!"

"How? Why, I'll get you two or three men who can slip in under with a muffled kicker and cut out one of those six-inch floor-planks."

"But there'll be a watchman there at the street end of the pier—perhaps two of them."

Kestner could hear the easy laugh of the man called Burke.

"Whitey McKensic'll fix that for you. He's got a trick o' cuttin' out a pier-plank and asphalt over-lay with a brace and bit, goin' through eight inches of oak without makin' more noise than eatin' through a cheese—just gets up between a couple o' stringers and runs a row o' holes across a plank. Then he runs another row close together, about three feet from the first row. Then he chisels that block free, lets it drop