Chapter 2

Stan was ruminating as he walked to his bootmaker's shop, "There is no way that a individual can defeat a gang as large and as entrenched as the Sydney Ducks. The most I can hope to do is slow down their attack on the good things of San Francisco. If the police were seriously interested in stopping that gang, then I would have a chance. Maybe there is some hope in the vigilance committee that is being talked about. If they would hurry and get organized, I would have some hope of success. Oh, well, I'll do what I can."

He opened the door and walked it. "Ah, Mr. Bromly, I see that you got my message. Your new boots are ready. Please try them on to see if they do what you wanted."

Stan slipped the boots on and walked around a bit. They certainly were comfortable; much more so than the boots he had worn to get to the shop. The uppers were soft and pliable, while the soles were softer than his leather soles, but not so soft that they did not protect his feet. He was anxious to give them a real tryout. "Excellent, sir, excellent! You have outdone yourself. Please wrap up the old boots and I shall take them with me; you'll have to kill me to get these boots off my feet!" he said with a smile. Stan was unusual for this day and time, he believed in cash and carry commerce; in other words, he paid for the new boots as he took delivery.

That night, Stan was wearing the new boots as he headed for Sydney-Town. In addition to the other items he had become accustomed to carrying, he had his new sap. It was an iron bar encased in a leather cover; it fit his hand very well and extended past his thumb about 7 to 8 inches. It tapered from 1 inch in diameter at the handle to 11⁄2 inches at the business end. One gentle tap below the ear should cause a villain to sleep for several hours.

He was now using a leather belt to carry his accessories, since he had the bandoleer and shotgun slung over his shoulders. He doubted that he could add much else to his list of utility tools, since the belt was getting heavy. On the other hand, he didn't know of anything else he might need.

Stan quickly reached Sydney-Town and climbed to the roof of the first building he came to. He was very pleased to note that his boots made absolutely no noise as he walked across the roof, nor was there very much noise when he jumped to the next roof. His bootmaker truly had done a magnificent job.

Stan had made nearly a complete circuit of Sydney-Town when he saw four men drag an unconscious man from the alley into a small building. Stan hurried over and dropped to the ground. He looked in the window to see what was going on. The unconscious man was now tied to a chair and the four men were standing around as if they were waiting for someone else to put in an appearance.

After about 15 minutes, another man came through the door and went over to look at the man in the chair. He looked closely at the man's face, nodded to the other four men, and walked out. Before Stan could react, one of the men pulled a knife and cut the bound man's throat. Blood gushed everywhere and the men jumped to avoid getting splashed. One grumbled, "Hey, Archie, give a bloke warnin' afore ya do sumpin' like that! My wife'll bitch like hell if'n I gets blood all over me shirt an' she has ta wash it out!"

The man with the knife replied, "Shit, Johnny, if'n you'd slap her around a bit, she wouldn't nag ya so much. Now help me get this body to tha bay."

Stan knew that the men would never be punished for this blatant murder unless he did it and he resolved to do so, forthwith. He watched the four men carry the corpse out toward the bay, swearing loudly as they struggled with it. He followed them, keeping to the shadows, as they went toward the water. Once they were in a less populated area, Stan took his four throwing knives and rushed a little ahead of the four murderers. As they got close enough, Stan threw his four knives as rapidly as he could grasp a fresh one after releasing the previous knife. All four men dropped in their tracks; three were dead, and one was badly injured.

This was deliberate because Stan wanted information. The living man was Archie, who had been the wielder of the knife in the murder. Stan rushed up and knelt on Archie's chest near the knife still sticking into his shoulder. He grasped the knife's handle and twisted viciously. Archie screamed and fainted. Stan slapped Archie's face, back and forth, until he responded. "Do you want me to do that again, or will you tell me who hired you?"

"Da... Don't! Please! It was Gentleman Jim O'Doul who hired us. This fool welshed on a bet an' O'Doul wanted ta get him fer it."

"Thank you. That's all I want to hear from you." Stan withdrew the knife and buried it to the hilt in Archie's left eye. He recovered his knives and cleaned them before returning them to his belt. He then ducked away before he could be noticed by some stray pedestrian.

Even Stan, who paid little attention to local gossip, had heard of Gentleman Jim O'Doul. He ran a string of gambling dens in Sydney-Town and was very nearly unreachable. He was aware that he was a target for assassination and rarely went where he might be vulnerable. Initially, it would be better to attack him in the pocket book.

Stan decided to use one of the tricks of the Sydney Ducks and burn O'Doul out of hiding. He would find out which of the gambling dens belonged to O'Doul and set fire to them, one by one, until O'Doul showed himself.

The safest way to get this information was to ask one of the men he knew who was an inveterate gambler. It took over an hour of gently probing questions to find out that O'Doul's gambling dens could be identified by the fact that every one had a reference to Dublin in its name. "The Dublin House" was the most obvious example.

With this information, Stan was ready to strike. He planned to start one fire per night until he had O'Doul spotted. He would decide what to do, then.

It rained that night, so Stan had to put his plan on hold for 24 hours, but finally, it had stopped raining. Stan climbed to the roof of The Dublin House and started a fire in the back left corner. He started the fire on the roof because he thought that this would give it plenty of time to get started, but also burn slowly enough to give those inside time to get out.

Man, was he wrong! There was nothing slow about this fire. Stan barely had time to escape before the entire roof was covered in flame. Stan yelled fire at one of the windows and people paid attention. A steady stream of people, male and female, came pouring out of every orifice the building had. There was no chance to get the bucket brigades organized before the building was burned to the ground. However, they did save the adjacent buildings and no one was seriously hurt, so Stan had to be satisfied. There was no sign of O'Doul, so Stan planned to hit another building the next night.

The next night, Stan struck at "The Rose of Dublin" with the same results. There was a fatality this time, one of the faro dealers had tried to pocket a pile of gold coins and waited too long to try to escape. Stan didn't feel too bad about this, since the man's greed had done the killing.

"The Dublin Cross" was Stan's next victim with still no sign of O'Doul. Where was he hiding? The loss of gambling income had to be hurting some. Why hadn't O'Doul put in an appearance?

Stan found the reason on the night he burned down the last (sixth) of O'Doul's gambling dens. He heard someone in the crowd say that it was too bad that O'Doul wasn't here to see his empire go up in smoke, but he had just died the day before from a knife applied forcefully to his right kidney by a bribed bodyguard. The bodyguard had confessed under torture, but had died without revealing who had paid for O'Doul's death. Well, Stan wasn't sure how much good he had done, but O'Doul was dead, at least.

Kidnapping, sometime for ransom, had become a favorite pastime in Sydney-Town. No woman could be considered safe in San Francisco. They were even being taken from their homes, occasionally in broad daylight. The more beautiful of the women were never heard of again, even when a ransom was paid. There was speculation that these women were being sold into prostitution in brothels in Mexico. Still, the women who had been ransomed had been repeatedly raped, sometimes anally. Stan vowed to do what he could to put a dent in this trade.

Stan didn't have any leads, so he didn't have any specific place to start his search for the kidnappers. He speculated that it was a gang because so many women were being taken and not returned. There had to be an organization behind disposing of this many sex-slaves. But how to find them? Stan couldn't think of any other way but his routine of patrolling Sydney-Town and looking for gang activity.

He took to following every group of three or more men as they left Sydney-Town and breaking off the trailing as soon as he was sure that kidnapping was not their aim. He spent nearly three weeks at this before he finally got his break.

Three men headed for a richer neighborhood and Stan had a feeling about this group. He followed them to a darkened house and watched them break in. He heard the sound of a struggle and breaking glass. Not long after, they came out carrying two women, one of whom was small enough to be adolescent. The women were bound and two men were carrying the larger woman between them and a single man was carrying the smaller woman over his shoulder.