“Good day, Foley!”

And Nucky, staring curiously from the Square, saw the apartment house door close on the tall, well-dressed stranger, and saw a taxi-cab driver offer a lift to his ancient enemy, Officer Foley.

“Thinks he’s smart, don’t he!” he muttered aloud, starting slowly back toward the Cafe Roma.  “I wonder what uplifter he’s got after me now?”

In the Cafe Roma, Nucky sat down at a little table and ordered a bowl of ministrone with red wine.  He did not devour his food as the normal boy of his age would have done.  He ate slowly and without appetite.  When he was about half through the meal, a young Irishman in his early twenties sat down opposite him.

“Hello, Nucky!  What’s doin’?”

“Nothin’ worth talking about.  What’s doin’ with you?”

“O, I been helping Marty, the Dude, out.  He’s going to be alderman from this ward, some day.”

“That’s the idea!” cried Nucky.  “That’s what I’d like to be, a politician.  I’d rather be Mayor of N’ York than king of the world.”

“I thought you wanted to be king o’ the dice throwers,” laughed the young Irishman.

“If I was, I’d buy myself the job of Mayor,” returned Nucky.  “Coming over to-night?”

“I might, ’long about midnight.  Anything good in sight?”

“I hope so,” Nucky’s hard face looked for a moment boyishly worried.

“Business ain’t been good, eh?”

“Not for me,” replied Nucky.  “Luigi seems to be goin’ to the bank regular.  You bet that guy don’t risk keepin’ nothin’ in the house.”

“I shouldn’t think he would with a wonder like you around,” said the young Irishman with a certain quality of admiration in his voice.

Nucky’s thin chest swelled and he paid the waiter with an air that exactly duplicated the cafe manner of Marty, the Dude.  Then, with a casual nod at Frank, he started back toward Luigi’s, for his evening’s work.

It began to snow about ten o’clock that night.  The piles of dirty ice and rubbish on MacDougal Street turned to fairy mountains.  The dead horse in Minetta Lane might have been an Indian mound in miniature.  An occasional drunken man or woman, exuding loathsome, broken sentences, reeled past Officer Foley who stood in the shadows opposite Luigi’s house.  He was joined silently and one at a time by half a dozen other men.  Just before midnight, a woman slipped in at the front door.  And on the stroke of twelve, Foley gave a whispered order.  The group of officers crossed the street and one of them put a shoulder against the door which yielded with a groan.

When the door of the large room on the second floor burst open, Nucky threw down his playing cards and sprang for the window.  But Foley forestalled him and slipped handcuffs on him, while Nucky cursed and fought with all the venom that did the eight or ten other occupants of the room.  Tables were kicked over.  A small roulette board smashed into the sealed fire-place.  Brown Liz broke a bottle of whiskey on an officer’s helmet and the reek of alcohol merged with that of cigarette smoke and snow-wet clothes.  Luigi freed himself for a moment and turned off the gas light roaring as he did so.