Kitabı oku: «The Apaches of New York», sayfa 6
“Be youse alludin’ to me, Grabber?” asked Louie, with a frown like a great cloud. “I don’t like them cracks about startin’ somethin’.”
“Keep your shoit on,” expostulated the Grabber, clinking down the change for the round of beers; “keep your shoit on, Louie. I ain’t alludin’ at nobody nor nothin’, least of all at youse. Besides, I just gets a message for you – only you don’t seem in no humor to receive it.”
“Who’s it from?” asked Louie.
“It’s Laura” – Laura was the opulent blonde – “Mollie Squint an’ Pretty Agnes runs up on her about an hour ago at Twelfth Street an’ Second Avenoo, an’ Mollie bounces a brick off her coco. A copper comes along an’ chases Mollie an’ Pretty Agnes. I gets there as they’re carry in’ Laura into that Dago’s joint be th’ corner. Laura asks me if I sees youse to tell w’at’s happened her; that’s all.”
“Was Mollie and Agnes sloughed in?” asked Louie, whose practical mind went first to his breadwinners.
“No, they faded into th’ next street. Th’ cop don’t want to pinch ‘em anyway.”
“About Laura; was she hoited much?”
“Ten stiches, an’ a week in Roosevelt Hospital; that’s the best she can get.”
“I must chase round an’ look her over,” was Louie’s anxious conclusion. “W’at’s that Dago joint she’s at?”
“It’s be th’ corner,” said the Grabber, “an’ up stairs. I forgets the wop’s monaker.” As Louie hesitated over these vague directions, the Grabber set down his glass. “Say, to show there’s no hard feelin’, I’ll go wit’ youse.”
As Louie and the Grabber disappeared through the door, Candy Phil threw up both hands as one astonished to the verge of nervous shock.
“Well, w’at do youse think of that?” he exclaimed. “I always figgered Louie had bats in his belfry; now I knows it. They’ll croak him sure!” Nigger Ruhl and the Lobster Kid arose as though to follow. At this, Candy Phil broke out fiercely.
“W’at’s wrong wit’ youse stews? Stick where you be!”
“But they’ll cook Louie!” expostulated the Lobster Kid.
“It ain’t no skin off your nose if they do. W’y should youse go buttin’ in?”
Louie and the Grabber were in Twelfth Street, hurrying towards Second Avenue. Not a soul, except themselves, was abroad. The Grabber walked on Louie’s right, which showed that either the latter was not the gunplayer he pretended, or the word from Laura had thrown him off his guard.
Suddenly, as the pair passed a dark hallway, the Grabber’s left arm stole round Louie’s neck.
“About that dough, Louie!” hissed the Grabber, at the same time tightening his left arm.
Louie half turned to free himself from the artful Grabber. As he did so, the Grabber’s ready right hand brought his pistol into action, and one bullet and then another flashed through Louie’s brain. A slim form rushed out of the dark hallway, and fired two bullets into Louie’s body. Louie was dead before he struck the pavement.
The Grabber, with his slim companion, darted through the dark hallway, out a rear door and over a back fence. Sixty seconds later they were quietly walking in Thirteenth Street, examples of law-abiding peace.
“It was th’ easiest ever, Slimmy!” whispered the Grabber, when he had recovered his breath. “I knew that stall about Laura’d fetch him.”
“Who was at th’ Hesper Club?”
“On’y Candy Phil, th’ Lobster Kid an’ two or three other blokes. Every one of ‘em’s a right guy. They won’t rap.”
“Thim la-a-ads,” remarked the Wop, judiciously, when he heard of Louie’s taking off – “thim la-a-ads musht ‘av lost their heads. There’s six or seven hundred bones on that bum, an’ they niver copped a splinter!”
The word came two ways to the Central Office. One report said “Indian Louie” and another “Johnny Spanish.” Detective O’Farrell invaded Chinatown, and dug up Big Mike Abrams, that the doubt might be removed.
“It’s Indian Louie, all right,” said Big Mike, following a moment’s silent survey of the rigid form. Then, in a most unlooked for vein of sentiment: “They all get here at last!”
“That’s no dream!” agreed the morgue attendant. “An’, say, Mike” – he liked his joke as well as any other – “I’ve been expectin’ you for some time.”
“Sure!” returned Big Mike, with a friendly grin; “I’ll come chasin’ along, feet foist, some mornin’. But don’t forget that while I’m waitin’ I’m workin’. I’ve sent two stiffs down here to youse already, to help keep you goin’ till I comes. Accordin’ to th’ chances, however, me own turn oughtn’t to be so very far away.”
Big Mike Abram’s turn was just three weeks away.
“Who were those two, Mike, you sent down here to the morgue?” asked O’Farrell, carelessly.
O’Farrell had a catlike fame for slyness.
“Say,” grinned Big Mike, derisively; “look me over! I ain’t wearin’ no medals, am I, for givin’ meself up to you bulls?”
VI. – HOW JACKEEN SLEW THE DOC
In person he was tall, languid, slender, as neat as a cat, and his sallow face – over which had settled the opium pallor – was not an ugly face. Also, there abode such weakness, some good, and no harm in him. His constitution was rickety. In the winter he coughed and invited pneumonia; in the summer, when the sun poured down, he trembled on the brink of a stroke. But neither pneumonia nor sunstroke ever quite killed him.
It was written that Jackeen would do that – Jackeen Dalton, alias Brady; and Jackeen did it with five bullets from an automatic-38. Some said that opium was at the bottom of it; others laid it to love. It is still greatly talked over in what pipe joints abound in Mott, Pell and Doyers, not to mention the wider Catherine Street, in the neighborhood of number Nineteen, where he had his flat and received his friends.
They called him the Doc. Twenty years ago the Doc studied dentistry with his father, who flourished reputably as a tooth surgeon at the Troy Dental Parlors in Roosevelt Street. The father died before the Doc had been given a diploma; and the Doc, having meanwhile picked up the opium habit, was never able afterwards to see the use. Why should he be examined or ask for a license? What foolishness! Magnanimously waving aside every thought of the sort, he plunged into the practice of his cheerless art among those who went in and out of Chinatown, and who lived precariously by pocket-picking, porch-climbing, safe-blowing and all-round strong-arm methods; and, careless of the statute in such case made and provided, he proceeded to file and drill and cap and fill and bridge and plug and pull their aching cuspids, bicuspids and molars, and all with as quick an instinct and as deft a touch as though his eyes were sharpened and his hand made steady by the dental sheepskins of a dozen colleges. That he was an outlaw among tooth-drawers served only to knit him more closely to the hearts of his patients – themselves merest outlaws among men.
The Doc kept his flat in Catherine Street as bright and burnished as the captain’s cabin of a man-of-war. There was no prodigious wealth of furniture, no avalanche of ornament to overwhelm the taste. Aside from an outfit of dental tools, the most expensive belongings appeared to be what lamps and pipes and kindred paraphernalia were required in the smoking of opium.
Those who visited the Doc were compelled to one formality. Before he would open his door, they must push the bell four times and four times tap on the panel. Thus did they prove their friendly identity. Lawful dentists, in their jealousy, had had the Doc arrested and fined, from time to time, for intromitting with the teeth of his fellow worms without a license. Hence that precautionary quartet of rings, followed by the quartet of taps, indicative that a friend and not a foe was at his gate.
The Doc had many callers who came to smoke opium. For these he did divers kindly offices, mostly in the letter-writing line. As they reclined and smoked, they dictated while the Doc transcribed, and many and weird were the epistles from Nineteen Catherine Street which found their way into the mails. For this service, as for his opium and dentistry, the Doc’s callers never failed to press upon him an honorarium. And so he lived.
Love, that flowerlike sentiment for which – as some jurist once remarked of justice – all places are palaces, all seasons summer, is not incompatible with either dentistry or opium. The Doc had a sweetheart named Lulu. Lulu was very beautiful and very jealous. Also, she was broadly popular. All Chinatown made songs to the deep glories of her eyes, which were supposed to have excited the defeated envy of many stars. The Doc, in what odd hours he could snatch from tooth-drawing and opium-smoking, worshipped at the shrine of Lulu; and Lulu was wrapped up in the Doc. Number Nineteen Catherine Street served as their Garden of Eden.
Now it is among the many defects of opium that it renders migratory the fancy. An ebon evidence of this was to be given at number Nineteen. The I love of the Doc became, as it were, pipe-deflected, and one day left Lulu, and, after a deal of fond circling, settled like some errant dove upon a rival belle called May.
Likewise, there was a dangerous side to this dulcet, new situation. The enchanting May, when the Doc chose her for his goddess, vice Lulu thrown down, could not be described as altogether disengaged. Was she not also the goddess of Jackeen? Had not that earnest safe-robber laid his heart at her feet?
Moreover, there were reasons even more substantial. The gentle May was in her way a breadwinner. When the fortunes of Jackeen were low, she became their mutual meal-ticket. May was the most expert shoplifter in all of broad New York. If not upon heart arguments, then upon arguments of the pocket, not to say stomach, Jackeen might be expected to fiercely resent any effort to win her love away.
Jackeen?
Not much is to be told by an appearance, although physiognomists have sung otherwise. The egg of the eagle is less impressive than the egg of: the goose. And yet it hotly houses in its heart an’ eagle. The egg of the nightingale shows but-meanly side by side with the egg of the crow. And: yet it hides within its modest bosom the limpid music of the moon.
So it is with men.
Jackeen was not an imposing personality. But neither is the tarantula. He was five feet and an inch in stunted stature, and weighed a mean shadow under one hundred and ten pounds. Like the Doc – who had stolen his love away – Jackeen’s hollow cheeks were of that pasty gray which speaks of opium. Also, from opium, the pupils of his vermin eyes had become as the points of two dull pins. Shrivelled, degenerate, a tattered rag of humanity, Jackeen was none the less a perilous spirit, and so the Doc – too late – would learn.
From that Eden at Nineteen Catherine Street, the fair Lulu had been put into the street. This was to make pleasant room for the visits of the fairer May. Jackeen was untroubled, knowing nothing about it. He was for the moment too wholly engaged, being in the throes of a campaign against the Savoy theatre safe, from which strongbox he looked forward to a harvest of thousands.
The desolate Lulu went everywhere seeking Jackeen, to tell him of his wrongs. Her search was vain; those plans touching the Savoy safe had withdrawn him from his accustomed haunts. One night, however, the safe was blown and plundered. Alas and alack! Jackeen’s share, from those hoped-for thousands, dwindled to a paltry sixty dollars – not enough for a single spree!
In his resentment, Jackeen, with the aid of a bevy of friends, hastily stuck-up a wayfarer, whom he met in Division Street. The wayfarer’s pockets proved empty. It was even more of a waterhaul than had been the Savoy safe. The double disappointment turned Jackeen’s mood to gall and it was while his humor was thus bilious that he one day walked into the Chatham Club.
There was a distinguished company gathered at the Chatham Club. Nannie Miller, Blinky the Lob-bygow, Dago Angelo, Roxie, Jimida, Johnny Rice, Stagger, Jimmy Foy, and St. Louis Bill – all were there. And these were but a handful of what high examples sat about the Chatham Club, and with calls for beer, and still more beer, kept Nigger Mike and his assistants on the joyful jump.
When Jackeen came in, Mike greeted him warmly, and placed a chair next to that of Johnny Rice. Conversation broke out concerning the dead and departed Kid Twist. While Twist was an Eastman and an enemy of Roxie – himself of the Five Points – the latter was no less moved to speak in highest terms of him. He defended this softness by remarking:
“Twist’s dead, see! An’ once a guy’s been put to bed wit’ a shovel, if youse can’t speak well of him youse had better can gabbin’ about him altogether. Them’s my sentiments.”
Dago Angelo, who had been a friend of the vanished Twist, applauded this, and ordered beer.
Twist – according to the veracious Roxie – had not been wanting in brilliancy as a Captain of Industry. He had showed himself ingenious when he took his poolroom into the Hatmakers’ Union, as a safeguard against raids by the police.
Upon another occasion, strictly commercial – so said Roxie – Twist had displayed a generalship which would have glorified a Rockefeller. Baby Flax, named for the soft innocuousness of his countenance, kept a grogshop in Houston Street. One quiet afternoon Twist abruptly broke that cherubic publican’s windows, mirrors, glasses, bottles.
Lighting a cigar, Twist stood in the midst of that ruin undismayed.
“What’s up?” demanded the policeman, who came hot-foot to the scene.
“Well,” vouchsafed Twist, between puffs, “there’s a party chases in, smashes things, an’ then beats it up the street wit’out sayin’ a woid.”
The policeman looked at Baby Flax.
“It’s straight,” chattered that ill-used proprietor, who, with the dangerous eye of Twist upon him, wouldn’t have told the truth for gold and precious stones.
“What started youse, Twist?” asked a friend.
“It’s this way,” explained Twist. “I’m introducin’ a celery bitters – because there’s cush in it. I goes into Baby Flax’s an’ asks him to buy. He hands me out a ‘No!’ So I ups an’ puts his joint on the bum. After this, when I come into a dump, they’ll buy me bitters, see! Sure, I cops an order for two cases from Flax before I leaves.”
Leaving Twist to sleep in peace, and by way of turning the laugh on that gentleman, Roxie related an adventure with Nigger Mike. It was when that sub-chief of the Eastmans kept at number Twelve Pell, by word of the vivacious Roxie, he, with certain roysterers belonging to the Five Points, had gone to Mike’s to drink beer. They were the foe. But no less he served them, as he was doing now, for such was and is the bland etiquette of the gangs.
One o’clock struck, and Mike locked his door. Key turned, the beer flowed on unchecked.
At half after one, when Mike himself was a law-breaker under the excise statute by full thirty criminal minutes, Roxie with his Five Points merrymakers arose, beat up Mike and his few retainers, skinned the damper for fifty bones, and departed singing songs of victory.
Mike was powerless.
As was well said by Roxie: “W’at could he do? If he makes a roar to th’ cops for us puttin’ his joint in th’ air, we’d have whipped one over on him for bein’ open after hours.”
Mike laughed with the rest at Roxie’s reminiscence. It was of another day.
“W’at’s th’ matter wit’ your mouth, Mike?” asked St. Louis Bill, for there was a lisping queerness, not only about Mike’s talk, but about his laugh.
Nigger Mike proceeded to lay bare the causes of that queerness. While engaged in a joint debate – years ago, it was – with a gentleman given as much to sudden petulances as to positive views, he had lost three of his teeth. Their place had been artifically but not artistically supplied.
“An’ lately they’ve been feelin’ funny,” explained Mike, alluding to the supplemental teeth, “an’ I toins ‘em over to th’ Doc to fix. That guy who made ‘em for me foist must have been a bum dentist. An’ at that, w’at do you t’ink he charges? I’m a Dutchman if he don’t lash me to th’ mast for forty bucks! He says th’ gold plate is wort’ twenty.”
“Well, Mike,” said Nannie Miller, who’d been listening, “I don’t want to make you sore, but on the level you talk like your mouth is full of mush. I’d make th’ Doc come through wit’ ‘em as soon as I could.”
“He says he’ll bring ‘em in to-morry,” returned Mike.
“It’s ten to one you don’t see ‘em for a week,” declared the pessimistic St. Louis Bill. “Youse can’t tell nothin’ about them hop-heads. They say ‘to-morry’ when they mean next year.”
St. Louis Bill, being virtuously superior to opium, never lost a chance to speak scornfully of those who couldn’t make that boast.
Mike, at the discouraging view expressed, became doleful. “Say,” he observed, “I’d look like a sucker, wouldn’t I, if anything happens th’ Doc, an’ I don’t get ‘em?”
St. Louis Bill assured Mike that he would indeed look like a sucker, and re-declared his conviction – based upon certain occult creepings and crawlings in his bones – that Mike had seen the last of those teeth.
“Take my steer,” said St. Louis Bill in conclusion; “treat them teeth you gives th’ Doc as a dead issue, an’ go get measured for some more. Twenty dollars wort’ of gold, you says! It ain’t no cinch but the Doc’s hocked ‘em for hop.”
“Nothin’ to that!” returned Mike, decisively. “Th’ Doc’s a square guy. Them teeth is all safe enough. Only, as you says, bein’ he hits the pipe, he may be slow about chasin’ in wit’ ‘em.”
While Nigger Mike and his guests are in talk, run your eye over the scene. Those citizens of Gangland assembled about the Chatham Club tables would have made a study, and mayhap a chapter, for Lombroso. Speaking generally, they are a stunted litter, these gangmen, and seldom stand taller than five feet four. Their weight wouldn’t average one hundred and twenty pounds. They are apt to run from the onslaught of an outsider. This is not perhaps from cowardice; but they dislike exertion, even the exertion of fighting, and unless it be to gain money or spoil, or a point of honor is involved – as in their duels and gang wars – they back away from trouble. In their gang battles, or when fighting the police, their strategy is to lie flat on the ground and shoot. Thus they save themselves a clubbing, and the chances from hostile lead are reduced.
To be sure there are exceptions. Such as Chick Tricker, Ike the Blood, Big Mike Abrams, Jack Sirocco, the Dropper, and the redoubtable Jimmy Kelly never fly and always fight. No one ever saw their backs.
You are inclined to doubt the bloody character of those gang battles. Why doesn’t one hear of them? – you ask. Because the police conceal as much as may be all word and all sign of them. For the public to know might get the police criticized, and they are granted enough of that without inviting it through any foolish frankness. The hospitals, however, will tell you of a weekly average of fifty patients, suffering from knife or gun-shot wounds, not to name fractures born of bottles, bricks and blackjacks. A bottle judiciously wielded, or a beer stein prudently broken in advance to assure a jagged edge, is no mean weapon where warriors are many and the fields of battle close.
While Roxie rattled on, and the others gave interested ear, Jackeen was commenting in discouraged whispers to Johnny Rice on those twin setbacks of the Division Street stick-up and the Savoy safe.
“It looks like nobody’s got any dough,” replied Rice, in a spirit of sympathy. “Take me own self. I ain’t made a touch youse could call a touch, for a mont’ of Sundays. Me rag, Josie, an’ I was chin-nin’ about it on’y last night, an’ Josie herself says she never sees th’ town so dead.”
“It’s somethin’ fierce!” returned Jackeen, moodily.
More beer, and a moment of silence.
“W’at’s you’ goil May doin’?” asked Rice.
“She’s graftin’ a little,” responded Jackeen; “but w’at wit’ th’ stores full of private dicks a booster can’t do much.”
“Well, you can bet May ought to know!” returned Rice. “As a derrick, she’ got the Darby Kid an’ the best of ‘em beat four ways from th’ jack. She could bring home th’ bacon, if any of them hoisters could.”
Then appeared Lulu the houseless – Lulu, the forlorn and outcast Eve of that Catherine Street Eden!
Lulu stood a polite moment behind the chair of Jackeen. At a lull in the talk, she whispered a word in his ear. He looked up, nodded, and then followed her out into Doyers Street.
“It’s this way,” said Lulu. “May’s copped th’ Doc from me, see! An’ she’s givin’ you the cross, Jackeen. You ought to hand her out a good heatin’. She’s over hittin’ the pipe wit’ th’ Doc right now.”
“G’wan!” came jealously from Jackeen.
“Honest! You come wit’ me to number Nineteen, an’ I’ll show youse.”
Jackeen paused as though weighing the pros and cons.
“Let me go get Ricey,” he said at last. “He’s got a good nut, an’ I’ll put th’ play up to him.”
“All right,” responded Lulu, impatient in her desolation; “but get a move on! I’ve wised you; an’ now, if you’re any good at all, you’ll take May out of number Nineteen be th’ mop. W’at license has she, or any other skirt for that matter, got to do me out of me Doc?”
The last ended in a howl.
Leaving Lulu in the midst of her complaints, Jackeen wheeled back into the Chatham Club for a word with Rice. Even during his absence, a change had come over the company. He found Rice, St. Louis Bill and Nannie Miller, holding anxious confab with a ratfaced person who had just come in.
“See here, Jackeen,” said St. Louis Bill in an excited whisper, “there’s been a rap about that Savoy safe trick, an’ th’ bulls are right now lookin’ for th’ whole mob. They say it’s us, too, who put that rube in the air over in Division Street.”
“An’ th’ question is,” broke in Nannie Miller, who was quick to act, “do we stand pat, or do we do a lammister?”
“There’s on’y one answer to that,” said St. Louis Bill. “For my end of it I’m goin’ to lamm.”
Jackeen had May and his heart troubles upon the back of his regard. Still he heard; and he arrived at a decision. He would run – yes; for flight was preferable to four stone walls. But he must have revenge – revenge upon the Doc and May.
“Wit’ th’ bulls after me, an’ me away, it ‘ud be comin’ too soft for ‘em,” thought Jackeen.
“W’at do youse say?” asked St. Louis Bill, who was getting nervous.
“How did youse get the woid?” demanded Jackeen, turning upon Ratface. It was he who had brought the warning.
“I’m a stool for one of the bulls,” replied Ratface, “an’ it’s him tells me you blokes is wanted, see!”
“So you’re stoolin’ for a Central Office cop?”
Jackeen’s manner was fraught with suspicion. “How do we know you’re givin’ us th’ correct dope?”
“Miller knows me,” returned Ratface, “an’ so does Bill. They’ll tell youse I’m a right guy. That stool thing is only a stall. I gets more out of the bull than he gets out of me. Sure; I give him a dead one now an’ then, just be way of puttin’ in a prop for meself. But not youse; – w’en it’s any of me friends I puts ‘em hep, see!”
“Do you sign for this duck?” demanded Jackeen of St. Louis Bill. “He’s a new one on me.”
“Take it from me, he’s all right,” said St. Louis Bill, decisively. “Why, you ought to know him, Jackeen. He joined out wit’ that mob of gons Goldie Louie took to Syracuse last fall. He’s no farmer, neither; Ricey there ain’t got nothin’ on him as a tool.”
This endorsement of Ratface settled all doubt. Jackeen’s mind was made up. Addressing the others, he said:
“Fade’s the woid! I’ll meet youse over in Hoboken to-night at Beansey’s. Better make th’ ferry one at a time.”
“W’at do youse want to wait till night for?” asked Nannie Miller. “Th’ foist t’ing you know you’ll get th’ collar.”
“I’m goin’ to take the chance, though,” retorted Jackeen. “It’s some private business of me own. An’ say” – looking at Rice – “I want a pal. Will youse stick, Ricey?”
“Sure, Mike!” said Rice, who had nerve and knew how to be loyal.
Thus it was adjusted. Ratface went his way, to exercise his gifts of mendacity upon his Central Office principal, while the others scattered – all save Jackeen and Rice.
Jackeen gave his faithful friend the story of his wrongs.
“I wouldn’t have thought it of the Doc,” was the pensive comment of Rice. He had exalted the Doc, because of his book learning, and groaned to see his idol fall. “No, I wouldn’t have guessed it of him! Of course, it’s different wit’ a doll. They’d double-cross their own mothers.”
Over in Catherine Street at number Nineteen the Doc was teaching May how to cook opium. The result fell below the Doc’s elevated notions.
“You aren’t to be compared with Lulu,” he complained, as he trimmed the peanut-oil lamp. “All Chinatown couldn’t show Lulu’s equal for cooking hop. She had a genius for it.”
The Doc took the needle from May, and cooked for himself. May looked discouraged and hurt.
“It’s all right,” said the Doc, dreamily, replying to the look of injury. “You’ll get it right in time, dear. Only, of course, you’ll never quite equal Lulu; that would be impossible.”
The Doc twirled the little ball of opium in the flame of the lamp, watching the color as it changed. May looked on as upon the labors of a master.
“I’ll smoke a couple of pipes,” vouchsafed the Doc; “then I must get to work on Nigger Mike’s, teeth. Mike’s a good fellow; they’re all good fellows over at the Chatham Club,” and the Doc sank back upon the pallet.
There was the sound of someone in the hall. Then came those calmative four rings and four taps.
“That’s Mike now,” said the Doc, his eyes half closed. “Let him in; I suppose he’s come for his teeth. I’ll have to give him a stand-off. Mike ought to have two sets of teeth. Then he could wear the one while I’m fixing the other. It’s a good idea; I’ll tell him.”
May, warned by some instinct, opened the door but a timorous inch. What she saw did not inspire confidence, and she tried with all her little strength to close and bolt it.
Too late!
The door was flung inward, and Jackeen, followed by Rice, entered the room. They paid no heed to the opium fumes; almost stifling they were, but Jackeen and Rice had long been used to them.
May gazed at Jackeen like one planet-struck. The Doc, moveless on the pallet, hardly raised his opium-weighted lids.
“This is a fine game I’m gettin’!”
Jackeen sneered out the words. The Doc pulled tranquilly at his pipe; while May stood voiceless, staring with scared eyes.
“I’d ought to peg a bullet into you,” continued Jackeen, addressing May.
He had drawn his heavy gun. May stood as if the sight of the weapon had frozen her. Jackeen brought it down on her temple. The Doc never moved. Peace – the peace of the poppy – was on his brow and in his heart. May fell to the floor, her face a-reek with blood.
“Now you’ve got yours!” said Jackeen.
May struggled unsteadily to her feet, and began groping for the door.
“That ought to do youse till I get back,” was Jackeen’s good-by. “You’ll need a few stitches for that.”
Unruffled, untroubled, the Doc drew blandly at the mouthpiece of the pipe.
Jackeen surveyed him.
“Go on!” cried Rice; “hand it to him, if you’re goin’ to!”
Rice was becoming fretted. He hadn’t Jackeen’s sustaining interest. Besides, he was thinking of that word from the Central Office, and how much safer he would be with Beansey, on the Hoboken side of the Hudson.
Jackeen took a step nearer. The Doc smiled, eyes just showing through the dreamy lids.
“Turn it loose!” cried Rice.
The gun exploded five times, and five bullets ploughed their way into the Doc’s body.
Not a cry, not a movement! The bland, pleased smile never left the sallow face. With his mouth to the pipestem, the Doc dreamed on.
In the street, Jackeen and Rice passed Lulu. As they brushed by her, Rice fell back a pace and whispered:
“He croaked th’ Doc.”
Lulu gave a gulping cry and hurried on.
“Is that you, Lulu?” asked the Doc, his drug-uplifted soul untouched, untroubled by what had passed, and what would come. Still, he must have dimly known; for his next words, softly spoken, were: “I’m sorry about Mike’s teeth! Cook me a pill, dear; I want one last good smoke.”
