Tony Gabrielli, an oblate Neapolitan of enormous equator, wabbled heavily out of his store and settled himself over a soap box.

Usually Tony enjoyed sitting out front thus in the evening, when his helper had gone home and his trade was slackest. He liked to watch the little Gabriellis playing over the sidewalk with the little Levys and Johnsons; the trios and quartettes of brightly dressed, dark-skinned girls merrily out for a stroll; the slovenly gaited, darker men, who eyed them up and down and commented to each other with an unsuppressed “Hot damn!” or “Oh no, now!”

But to-night Tony was troubled. Something was wrong in the store; something was different since the arrival of King Solomon Gillis. The new man had seemed to prove himself honest and trustworthy, it was true. Tony had tested him, as he always tested a new man, by apparently leaving him alone in charge for two or three mornings. As a matter of fact, the new man was never under more vigilant observation than during these two or three mornings. Tony’s store was a modification of the front rooms of his flat and was in direct communication with it by way of a glass-windowed door in the rear. Tony always managed to get back into his flat via the side-street entrance and watch the new man through this unobtrusive glass-windowed door. If anything excited his suspicion, like unwarranted interest in the cash register, he walked unexpectedly out of this door to surprise the offender in the act. Thereafter he would have no more such trouble. But he had not succeeded in seeing King Solomon steal even an apple.

What he had observed, however, was that the number of customers that came into the store during the morning’s slack hour had pronouncedly increased in the last few days. Before, there had been three or four. Now there were twelve or fifteen. The mysterious thing about it was that their purchases totalled little more than those of the original three or four.

Yesterday and to-day Tony had elected to be in the store at the time when, on the other days, he had been out. But Gillis had not been overcharging or short-changing; for when Tony waited on the customers himself—strange faces all—he found that they bought something like a yeast cake or a five-cent loaf of bread. It was puzzling. Why should strangers leave their own neighborhoods and repeatedly come to him for a yeast cake or a loaf of bread? They were not new neighbors. New neighbors would have bought more variously and extensively and at different times of day. Living near by, they would have come in, the men often in shirtsleeves and slippers, the women in kimonos, with boudoir caps covering their lumpy heads. They would have sent in strange children for things like yeast cakes and loaves of bread. And why did not some of them come in at night when the new helper was off duty?

As for accosting Gillis on suspicion, Tony was too wise for that. Patronage had a queer way of shifting itself in Harlem. You lost your temper and let slip a single “nègre” A week later you sold your business.

Spread over his soap box, with his pudgy hands clasped on his preposterous paunch, Tony sat and wondered. Two men came up, conspicuous for no other reason than that they were white. They displayed extreme nervousness, looking about as if afraid of being seen; and when one of them spoke to Tony it was in a husky, toneless, blowing voice, like the sound of a dirty phonograph record.

“Are you Antonio Gabrielli?”

“Yes, sure,” Strange behavior for such lusty-looking fellows. He who had spoken unsmilingly winked first one eye then the other, and indicated by a gesture of his head that they should enter the store. His companion looked cautiously up and down the Avenue, while Tony, wondering what ailed them, rolled to his feet and puffingly led the way.

Inside, the spokesman snuffled, gave his shoulders a queer little hunch, and asked, “Can you fix us up, buddy?” The other glanced restlessly about the place as if he were constantly hearing unaccountable noises.

Tony thought he understood clearly now. “Booze, ’ey?” he smiled. “Sorry—I no got.”

“Booze? Hell, no!” The voice dwindled to a throaty whisper. “Dope. Coke, milk, dice—anything. Name your price. Got to have it.”

“Dope?” Tony was entirely at a loss. “What’s a dis, dope?”

“Aw, lay off, brother. We’re in on this. Here.” He handed Tony a piece of paper. “Froggy gave us a coupon. Come on. You can’t go wrong.”

“I no got,” insisted the perplexed Tony; nor could he be budged on that point.

Quite suddenly the manner of both men changed. “All right,” said the first angrily, in a voice as robust as his body. “All right, you’re clever, You no got. Well, you will get. You’ll get twenty years!”

“Twenty year? Whadda you talk?”

“Wait a minute, Mac,” said the second caller. “Maybe the wop’s on the level. Look here, Tony, we’re officers, see? Policemen.” He produced a badge. “A couple of weeks ago a guy was brought in dying for the want of a shot, see? Dope—he needed some dope—like this—in his arm. See? Well, we tried to make him tell us where he’d been getting it, but he was too weak. He croaked next day. Evidently he hadn’t had money enough to buy any more.

“Well, this morning a little nigger that goes by the name of Froggy was brought into the precinct pretty well doped up. When he finally came to, he swore he got the stuff here at your store. Of course, we’ve just been trying to trick you into giving yourself away, but you don’t bite. Now what’s your game? Know anything about this?”

Tony understood. “I dunno,” he said slowly; and then his own problem, whose contemplation his callers had interrupted, occurred to him. “Sure!” he exclaimed. “Wait. Maybeso, I know somet’ing.”

“All right. Spill it.”

“I got a new man, work-a for me.” And he told them what he had noted since King Solomon Gillis came.

“Sounds interesting. Where is this guy?”

“Here in da store—all day.”

“Be here to-morrow?”

“Sure. All day.”

“All right. We’ll drop in to-morrow and give him the eye. Maybe he’s our man.”

“Sure. Come ten o’clock. I show you,” promised Tony.