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Title: Beyond the wall
Author: Henry Leverage
Release Date: September 6, 2022 [eBook #68930]
Language: English
Produced by: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEYOND THE WALL ***
Beyond the Wall
by Henry Leverage
The first of a remarkable series of underworld stories by the
author of “Thirst” and “The Harvest of the Deep.” Few other
writers have Mr. Leverage’s keen sense of drama and ability to
describe swift action clearly.
Chester Fay, a slender, keen-eyed, gray-haired young man,--clad in
prison shoddy, serving life and fifteen years at Rockglen,--glanced
through the rain and over the wall to where a green-cloaked hill
loomed. “Charley,” he whispered, “we might as well try it this
afternoon. Are you game?” Charley O’Mara, sixty-five years old, bent,
broken, and bitter at the law, coughed a warning. He raised his pick
and started digging around a flower-bed.
A guard in a heavy raincoat, carrying a dripping rifle, came toward
the two prisoners. He stopped a few feet away from Fay.
“Quit that talkin’!” he snarled. “I’ll chalk you in if I see any more
of it!”
Fay did not answer the guard. He spaded the earth, dug deep, tossed
the shovelfuls to one side and waited until the guard had strolled
within the shelter of a low shed.
“Charley!” he continued without moving his lips. “Listen, old pal.
See that motortruck near the shed?”
“I see it, Chester.”
“See where the screw is standing?”
“He’s watching us.”
“And I’m watching him, Charley. We can beat this stir in an hour. Do
you want to try it?”
“How you going to do it?”
“Will you follow me?”
“Yes, pal.”
“Wait till it gets a little darker. Then we’ll take the chance.”
The prison guard stood with his rifle lowered to the moist earth
beneath the shed. His eyes ranged from the two convicts to the wall
upon which were other guards sheltered in tiny guardhouses. He yawned
and drowsed, standing.
Fay worked in a slow circle. He had seen the auto-truck come into the
prison yard at noon. It was part of the road-gang’s outfit. There was
no road-work that day, on account of the rain. The inmate driver had
gone into the cellhouse.
Old Charley O’Mara let his pick dig into the earth with feeble
strokes. He paused at times. There was that to Fay’s actions which
presaged much. The gray-haired young man was gradually closing in on
the drowsing guard. He was like a lean panther getting ready for a
spring.
* * * * *
The attack came with lightninglike suddenness. Fay dropped his
shovel, crossed the earth, struck the guard a short-arm uppercut and
bore him down to earth, where he smothered his cries with a flap of
the raincoat.
Charley O’Mara came limping toward the shed.
“Get a rope!” snapped Fay. “I don’t want to croak him.”
“Croakin’s too good for the likes of him, Chester.”
“Get a rope. We’ve got about fifteen minutes to work in. We ought to
be beyond the wall by then.”
Fay worked quickly. He took the rope the old convict found, and
trussed the guard, after taking off the raincoat. He made sure that
the man would make no outcry. He fastened a stick in his mouth and
tied it behind his head. He rose and glanced through the down-pouring
rain.
“I knocked him out,” he said. “Now, Charley, put on that raincoat,
take the cap and rifle and walk slowly toward the auto-truck. Get in
the front. Stand up like a guard.”
“But they might know me!”
“They wont know you. It’s raining. The screws on the wall will think
you are taking the truck out, by order of the warden. I’ll drive. An
inmate always drives.”
The guard who sat huddled in the little house which loomed over the
great gate at Rockglen rose, opened a small window and glanced out as
he heard the motortruck mounting the grade from the prison yard. He
saw what he thought was the figure of a guard standing by a convict.
The convict crouched with partly hidden face over the steering-wheel.
“All right!” shouted Charley O’Mara, motioning with his rifle toward
the closed gate.
The guard squinted for a second time. He caught, through the rain,
the gleam of brass on the cap Charley wore. He saw the rifle. He
reached and pulled at a lever. The gate slowly opened, first to a
crack, then wide. Fay pressed forward the clutch pedal, shifted from
neutral to first speed, stepped on the accelerator and let the clutch
pedal up gently.
The truck mounted the top of the grade, churned through the gate,
turned in front of the warden’s house and took the incline which led
over the hill from Rockglen.
* * * * *
All might have gone well for the convicts had it not been for the
rain. Water had formed in deep pools along the road. Into these pools
Fay guided the clumsy truck. He heard the engine miss an explosion. A
sputter followed. The truck slowed. An explosion sounded in the
muffler. The insulation wires grounded and short-circuited. The truck
stopped.
Fay sprang from the driver’s seat and opened the hood. He attempted
to find the trouble. A dangling wire, touching the engine’s frame,
was sodden with water.
“No go!” he said to Charley. “Come on! We’ll leave the truck and take
to the woods. That means a chase as soon as the big whistle blows.”
The two convicts were crossing an open field when they heard the
first menacing blasts from the prison siren. They ran for shelter. A
dog barked. A farmhand came through the underbrush. He stood
watching.
“Keep your nerve!” said Fay. “You’ve got the rifle. Night is coming
on. Follow me.”
The trail led away from Rockglen. Fay sensed the general direction.
He attempted to gain a railroad junction where a freight could be
taken for Chicago. He was headed off by a motorcar load of prison
guards. He saw the danger in time.
“To the right,” he whispered to O’Mara. “Follow me. Don’t cave, pal.”
“I’m all in,” sobbed the old convict.
Fay braced his arm beneath Charlie’s elbow. He took the rifle. They
crossed a swollen brook, broke through the hedge of a vast estate and
came suddenly upon a trio of watchmen who had been alarmed by the
blowing of the prison’s siren.
The fight that followed was entirely onesided. Fay pumped lead in the
general direction of the watchmen. He was answered by a salvo.
Crimson cones splashed the night. Bullets whined. A shout sounded far
away. Other watchmen and constables were surrounding the estate.
Old Charley O’Mara, crouching in the shelter of a hawthorn clump,
coughed, rose, spun and fell face downward. A great spot of scarlet
ran over the raincoat. His aged face twisted in agony. Fay knelt by
his side.
“I’m croaked, pal,” said the convict. “They winged me through the
lungs. Good-by, pal.”
“Anything I can do, Charley?”
“Do you think you’ll get away?”
“I know I will.”
“To Chi?”
“Yes!”
“Will you go see my little girl?”
“Where is she?”
“At the Dropper’s, on Harrison Street. She’s in bad, Chester. Take
her away from them low-brows.”
“How old is she?”
“Sixteen.”
“What is her name?”
“Emily--little Emily.”
“I’ll take care of her, Charley. I promise you that!”
* * * * *
Fay let the convict’s head drop to the ground. He heard the
death-rattle. He kicked aside the empty and useless rifle.
The way of escape was not an easy one. Forms moved in the mist. He
darted for a row of bushes. He crawled beneath them. He gained the
high fence around the estate, where, freed of the necessity of
setting his pace to that of the old convict, he broke through the
far-flung cordon of guards and watchmen and gained a woods which
extended north and west for over a score of miles.
He discovered, toward morning, a small house in course of erection.
Its scaffolding stood gaunt against the velvet of the sky. A
carpenter’s chest rested on the back porch.
Fay pried this open with a hatchet, removed a suit of overalls and a
saw, and dropped the lid. He emerged from the woods, looking for all
the world like a carpenter going to work.
To the man who had wolfed the world--to the third cracksman then
living--the remainder of his get-away to Chicago was a journey wherein
each detail fitted in with the others.
He arrived--after riding in gondola-cars, hugging the tops of Pullmans
and helping stoke an Atlantic type locomotive--at the first fringe of
the city of many millions.
With sharp eyes before him, and dodging police-haunted streets, he
mingled with the workers--seemingly a carpenter.
No one of all the throng seemed to notice him. He walked slowly at
times. He thought of old Charley O’Mara, and of the dying convict’s
request.
A speck in the yeast, a chip on the foam, he quickened his steps and
entered a small pawnshop where money could be borrowed for
enterprises of a shady nature.
* * * * *
Mother Madlebaum peered over the counter at the gray-haired young man
who held out an empty palm and asked for a loan on a mythical watch.
She removed her spectacles, polished them with her black alpaca
apron, and glanced shrewdly toward the door.
“What a start you gave me, Chester. And me thinking all along you
were lagged.”
“Five C’s on the block,” laughed Fay pleasantly. “Remember the
blue-white gems I brought you last time? Remember the swag, loot and
plunder from the Hanover job? You made big on them.”
“I always do with your stuff, Chester.”
“Can you lend me five hundred? I’ve just beaten stir.”
The old fence opened her safe and brought forth a money-drawer. Fay
took the bills she handed to him, without counting them. He touched
his hat and started toward the door.
“Wait, Chester.”
“What is it?”
“Want to plant upstairs till the blow is over?”
“No. I promised old Charley O’Mara I’d see his girl for him. Poor
Charley is dead.”
“He wasn’t in your class, Chester. Nobody is.”
“Where’s the Dropper’s scatter?”
“Five doors from the corner, on Harrison Street. Is the girl there?”
“Yes.”
“Then may God help her. You can’t!”
Fay passed from the fence and lost himself in the clothing-department
of a dry-goods store. He entered the place a carpenter--down in the
heels and somewhat grimy from his train-ride. He emerged with a
bamboo cane hooked over the sleeve of a shepherd-plaid suit. His hat
was a flat-brimmed Panama, his shoes correct.
A bath, shave, shampoo and haircut completed his metamorphosis. He
left a barber-shop--the proper figure of a young man. He walked
briskly, seeing everything.
* * * * *
There were detectives in that city--discerning ones. He avoided the
main streets and crossings. Wolf-keen and alert for the police, he
turned toward the dive where little Emily O’Mara lived. He distrusted
the place and cursed himself for the venture.
The Dropper’s reputation among the powers that preyed was--unsavory.
There had been rumors in the old days that he was a pigeon. The den
and joint he managed sheltered cheap dips, pennyweighters and
store-histers who bragged of their miserable exploits.
Fay entered the hallway that led up to the Dropper’s, like a duke
paying a visit to a tenement.
A gas-light flared the second landing. An ash-can, half filled with
empty bottles, marked the third. Fay paused by this can, studied a
fist-banged door, then knocked with light knuckles.
As he waited for a chain to be unhooked and a slide to open, he
sniffed the air of the hallway. Somewhere, some one was smoking
opium.
A brutish, shelving-browed, scar-crossed face appeared at the
opening. Steely eyes drilled toward the cracksman.
“What d’ye want here?”
“Gee sip en quessen, hop en yen?”
“Who to hell are yuh?”
“A friend,” said Fay. “A man to see Charley O’Mara’s daughter.”
Fay carried no revolver. He scorned such things. The police rated him
too clever to commit murder. Only amateurs and coke-fiends did things
like that.
He wished, however, that he could thrust the blued-steel muzzle of a
gat through the panel and order the Dropper to unlatch the door. The
thug was so long in making up his none-too-alert mind.
It swung finally. Fay stepped into the room. He narrowed his eyes and
mentally photographed a mean den, made translucent by the
greenish-hued smoke that swirled over a peanut-oil lamp and floated
before the drawn faces of many poppy-dreamers who were peering from
bunks.
The Dropper stood waiting. His elbows were slightly bent. His huge,
broken-boned hands came slowly in front. He measured Fay from the tip
of the shoes to the prematurely gray hair that showed beneath the
cracksman’s straw hat.
“Well, when did you get out of stir?” he snarled with sudden
recognition. “I thought they threw the key away on yuh.”
“Easy, Dropper! Who are all these people?”
“Aw, they’re all right! There’s Canada Mac and Glycerine Jimmy an’
three broads over there. Then there’s Mike the Bike and Micky Gleason
with us to-night. Know them?”
Fay unhooked his cane from his arm. He swung it back and forth as he
studied the faces in the bunks. His stare dropped to the peanut-oil
lamp and the lay-out tray around which reclined two smokers. He saw a
piglike dog crouching by a screen. Behind this was the entrance to
another room.
“Suppose we go in there,” he said. “There’s something I want to speak
to you about, Dropper.”
“Spit it out, here!”
“No!” Fay’s voice took on a metallic incisiveness. He flashed a
warning at the Dropper. The big man shifted his eyes uneasily, and
followed Fay around the screen and into a room where two
chintz-covered windows looked out into Harrison Street. There were a
poker-table, a couch and many chairs in the room. The floor was
covered with a cheap matting.
“Listen,” said Fay, still swinging his cane: “I came here to see
Charley O’Mara’s daughter. I want to see her quick! I can’t stay
around here. It’s no place--”
“Aw, cut that kid-glove stuff. What d’ye think we are--stools?”
“I want to see Charley’s daughter--Emily!”
“You can’t!”
“What have you done with her?”
“I aint done nothin’. She lives right here.”
Fay hung his cane on a chair, removed his hat, turned, backed against
the poker-table and fastened upon the Dropper a glance of white fire.
“Tell that girl to come to me.”
“Well, who the hell are you orderin’ around?”
“Go! Get--that--girl!”
The Dropper was in his own castle. The bunks in the den were filled
with the reclining forms of a number of men who would commit murder
at his bidding. He had, safely planted, the only hundred toys of
choice Victoria hop in all of Chicago. One could buy most anything,
from virtue to a man’s soul, with opium at the current prices.
He considered the matter of Fay with a slow brain. Back in the heart
of him there lurked a fear for a five-figure man. They did big
things. They were supercrooks. Their weight might be felt through
political influence.
“I’m hep!” he said sullenly. “You want to cop the skirt from me. You
want to tell her about diamonds and rubies and strings of pearls--of
swag and kale and the easy life swillin’ wine.”
“I don’t want to do anything of the kind. I’ve got a message for her
from her old man. He’s not well,” Fay added cautiously, remembering
that under the law the Dropper might be considered Emily’s guardian.
“So he aint goin’ to get sprung? I heard he had a swell mouthpiece
who was workin’ with the pollies.”
“The appeal was denied last week. The governor turned it down--cold.
Charley may have to serve his full term.”
“Oh, well, if that’s the straight of it-- I’ll get the moll an’
let you chin with her a bit. Remember, no fancy stuff.”
Fay stared at the dive-keeper disgustedly. The Dropper weighed over
two hundred and fifty pounds. He moved his gross form across the
matting, paused at the screen where the piglike dog lay, and lumbered
out of sight. His voice rasped in a shout: “Emily!”
* * * * *
Her entrance came a minute after Fay had seated himself at the
poker-table. His hand rested on his hat. He heard the Dropper’s
nagging oaths.
Emily entered, propelled by a strong arm.
Fay rose. He flashed an assuring glance. He reached and offered her a
chair.
The picture she left with him, as he turned for the chair, was one he
could never forget.
Golden-glossed hair, fine-spun as flax, an oval face, big
sherry-colored eyes, long lashes, a round breast and straight
figure--was his summing up of little Emily O’Mara.
The Dropper lunged for the girl. He lifted her chin. He leered as she
cringed from him.
“This guy wants to see you, kid!”
Fay pressed the sides of his trousers with the sensitive tips of his
fingers. He waited, with his teeth grinding. He wanted to leap the
distance, reach, clutch and throttle the purple neck of the brute.
The Dropper swung a terrible jaw and eyed Fay.
“Go to it!” he rumbled. “Get done with the kid, damn quick. Tell her
she’ll never see her old man again. That’s wot I’ve been tellin’
her--all the time.”
Fay waited until the Dropper disappeared. He moved the chair he had
offered to the girl, so that she could see it.
“Wont you sit down, Emily? I left your dad last night. He wasn’t
well.”
A flash of interest and gratitude crossed her features. She clutched
her skirt, stared at the door, bent one knee and sank into the chair
timidly.
Fay leaned and whispered:
“Your father sent me to you. He wants you to leave this bunch. He’s
afraid you are not being well treated. He thinks you ought to go to
some good home,” he added as he realized the girl’s underworld
upbringing.
“Is Father coming back to me?”
“No, never.”
“Why not?”
The naivete of the question struck Fay as an indictment against
society.
“Because the laws are unjust!” he declared. “They keep a man in
prison after he is reformed. They don’t keep a man in a hospital
after he is cured.”
“Did you escape from Rockglen?”
“Would it make any difference to you if I had broken out of prison?”
“No, it wouldn’t make any difference to me--but I don’t know what you
mean.”
“I mean I want you to go away with me. I want to get you out of this
den of petty-larceny addicts and low-brows. That’s what your father
wanted, Emily.”
“But I don’t even know your name. Why should I run away with you?”
“Because the Dropper is a brute. Because he will beat you--if he
hasn’t already. Because the life here leads to the gutter--and mighty
fast you’ll drift down to it, little Emily.”
* * * * *
The girl arranged a black velvet bandeau on her hair. Fay noticed
that the rings on her fingers were brassy and childish. They grated
on a man who had never handled any but first-water jewels.
He leaned forward and suggested:
“Come with me--say, to-morrow night. We’ll go East together. I know a
motherly woman who has an old mansion on the Hudson.”
Little Emily fluttered her lashes in an anxious glance at the open
door, beyond which was the sound of dreamy voices.
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Why?”
“He wont let me.”
“What is he to you?”
“Nothing, but I’m afraid of him. He’s so strong.”
“He’s a big mush, little Emily--a woman-beater, a peddler of opium--a
Fink, if you know what that means.”
The girl pulled her dress down to the tops of her broken shoes. She
twisted, glanced up, smiled faintly, and blanched as the Dropper
thrust his head into the room.
“What are you tryin’ to pull off?” he asked.
Fay stared over the girl’s cringing shoulder. His steel-blue eyes
locked with the brute’s. They burned and blazed into a sodden brain.
The Dropper leered, said, “Oh, all right, cul,” and went back to the
smokers around the lay-out tray.
“Quick, Emily! Make up your mind. Can I come for you to-morrow night?
I owe it to your old man. We’ll go East, and this woman I know will
take care of you. I hate the coppers, and I’m out to collect from the
world. They sent me away to Rockglen--dead, bang wrong! They gave me
life and fifteen years. I didn’t serve fifteen weeks!”
Fay ceased pleading. He watched the girl. There was a mark behind her
left ear which could only have come from a blow. She fingered a black
velvet bandeau. She clenched her hands. She started to rise. Suddenly
she dropped to the chair.
“I can’t go--even if Dad wants me to. I can’t leave the Dropper. I am
afraid he’ll kill me if I go away with you.”
“He’s got you cowed!”
“I can’t help it.”
“And you slave for him--work for him--touch his hand when he calls for
you?”
“I do. You don’t understand my position.”
“It’s an outrage. Poor Charley O’Mara’s daughter held in the clutches
of that beast!”
“He is going to kill me some day. I saw him kill a man once. He hit
him with his fist. They carried the man to the river.”
“Suppose I come here to-morrow night with a gat, stick up the joint,
make the Dropper whine like a cur. What would you do?”
“He wouldn’t whine. He’d kill you--the way he killed that man who
didn’t pay him for a card of hop.”
Fay caught the underworld note.
“Do you smoke?” His voice was suspicious.
“No, I don’t smoke opium. I watch other people do that.”
“You’re too sensible. Does the Dropper smoke?”
“He don’t smoke, either. He sells the stuff.”
* * * * *
The girl’s naïveté brought a smile to Fay’s lips.
“You’re going East,” he said. “I’ll make the money for your
education. I’ve got two big jobs located. One is in Maiden Lane.”
“Diamonds?”
“Yes, gems. What do you say, little Emily?”
“I--I am afraid.”
“But think what a beautiful world this is. There is London and Paris
and Rome.”
“London and Paris and Rome mean nothing to me. I wouldn’t know how to
behave in those places. All I’ve known is Harrison Street, and the
back rooms of saloons, and getting beat up.”
“But your dad was a high-roller.”
“He wasn’t always. Sometimes he was broke. Sometimes we didn’t know
where we were going to get things to eat.”
Fay’s voice grew tender.
“Emily,” he said, “that’s all a bad dream. Yesterday afternoon I made
a get-away. A man who was dying--a mark for the prison screws--told me
to go and save his daughter. I don’t want you to think I forgot that
request. I could never forget it. Charley was a pal o’ mine. I came
right to you. I see the lay-out. You’re cowed, beaten, crushed, by
the Dropper. I’ll croak him when you ask me to.”
“You can’t! I want you to go away. Please don’t suggest anything like
that. I like you, but I can never run away with you. I’m afraid.”
“Good God, do you want me to leave you in this joint?”
“It’s the only life I’ve ever known.”
“Where do you sleep?”
“On a cot upstairs.”
“And you ought to have a palace. Did you ever look at yourself in the
glass?”
“Sometimes, after he beats me.”
Fay started toward the door. He heard a chair upset. Little Emily
dragged on his arm.
“Don’t go to him! He’ll kill you.”
“Then you come with me.”
“I’m afraid to.”
The girl spoke the truth. Her color was ashen.
Fay went to the table, lifted her chair, turned it and motioned for
her to sit down. She hesitated between the table and door.
“Please,” said Fay.
He might have been addressing a princess. Her color returned in
rippling waves. She tried to smile. Her lips trembled--she took one
step in his direction, swayed, and pressed her fists to her breast.
The Dropper’s form completely filled the doorway.
“Come here!” he snarled.
“Hold on!” snapped Fay.
“Come ’ere, yuh!”
The girl between the two men, made her choice, or rather, had it made
for her.
Shrinkingly demure, and altogether tearful, she pressed by the
Dropper and glided across the den where the poppy-smokers lay.
“Go to bed!”
Fay saw the brute’s chin move in a slow circle over his shelving
shoulder. He swung back his jaw.
“You’re next,” he said. “Better beat it, bo. I’ll tame yuh like I’ve
tamed her.”
“Tamed is good.” Fay picked up his hat. He hooked the cane over his
left sleeve. “Rather pleasant evening, Dropper.... I see you
understand women.”
“I guess I do. Yuh want to let ’em know you’re the biggest guy alive.
I’m that guy. Nobody ever took a broad away from me.”
“But she’s only a kid, Dropper.”
“Another year--”
“Yes, you’re right. Well, so long. There’ll be another night, too.
I’m coming back.”
“I’ll be ready for yuh!”
* * * * *
Fay had no set plan as he left the scatter of Mike Cregan--alias the
Dropper. He wanted to thrash out the matter of Emily O’Mara in his
mind. Her behavior, and the fear she held of her unsavory guardian,
puzzled the cracksman.
He had accomplished much in a brief time. There were not many men
living who could have broken out of Rockglen on one afternoon and
strolled down Michigan Avenue the next. It was an exploit in keeping
with his reputation.
Midnight found him working over the problem of the girl. He recalled
old Charley’s last instructions:
“Get her away from the low-brows.”
A promise, Fay had never intentionally broken. There was the
girl--naive, doll-like, docile. There was the Dropper--demanding,
brutish, a fink.
Fay slept that night at a stag hotel.
He woke early, bathed beneath a shower, dressed and went down to
breakfast.
On Harrison Street he gulped the air. He avoided being seen by the
detectives of the city. Once he took a cab for a distance of five
squares. He dismissed the driver at the side entrance of a cheap
hotel--sauntered through the lobby and emerged with a sharp glance to
left and right.
The game gripped him as he dodged into the tenement and started
climbing the gas-flared stairways to the hop-joint. He knew, in the
soul of him, that Chicago was a danger-spot.
He knocked on the door and was admitted by the Dropper--who seemed
alone.
“Back again,” said Fay. “I said I’d be back. Where is Emily?”
“Wot t’hell!”
“Where is the girl?”
A gliding sounded over the matting of the room beyond the screen.
Emily thrust her head through the doorway. Her sherry-colored eyes
were red-rimmed, glazed with tears, sullen. The Dropper had just
finished his morning hate by upbraiding her.
“Wot t’hell’s comin’ off?” rumbled the dive-keeper. “Beat it, cul,
before I wake up. I’m going to wham yuh one.”
Fay swiftly hooked his cane over the edge of an empty bunk, removed
his hat, took off his coat, and rolled up his sleeves.
“I didn’t bring a gat!” he snapped. “I don’t need one. Get into that
room, set the card-table back and pile up the chairs. Get ready, you
fink, for what’s coming to you.”
* * * * *
The Dropper found himself in the grip of a situation not exactly to
his liking. He backed from Fay. He crashed over the screen. He
turned, thrust Emily aside, and shelved forward his shoulders in an
aggressive posture. His brows worked up and down. The scar on his
cheek grew livid.
“Hol’ on,” he started to protest.
Fay stepped swiftly forward, whipped over a lightning uppercut, and
jabbed with his left fist toward the brute’s stomach. Both blows had
force enough to land the Dropper against the card-table.
He went down like a pole-axed bullock. He rose in his might and rage.
His bellowing could have been heard a block away. He came at Fay
unskillfully--thrown off balance by the sudden attack.
The clean life of a supercrook stood Fay in good stead. His weight
was less than half that of the Dropper’s. But he more than made up
for this by the swiftness of his blows. He tormented the brute by
jabs, hooks and side-stepping.
The Dropper was no novice at boxing. Once, years before, he had been
Honest Abe’s chief bouncer. He had broken men’s heads and hurled
derelicts from barrooms. He knew the rudiments of wrestling.
Slowly his thick brain came into action. He covered his jaw with a
shelving shoulder. He put down his bulletlike head and started to
bore through the rain of blows. With wild swings he forced Fay
against the poker-table. It went over and rolled to the wall near
where Emily crouched.
The cracksman glided around the Dropper and shadow-tormented him. He
struck straight from the shoulder. He was two-fisted and agile. Each
flash of his eye was marked by a stinging blow. A crescendo of
effort, all to the brute’s purple face, had its effect. The Dropper
started gasping. He lowered his fists. He breathed, waiting. He
grunted as he followed Fay--blindly, grossly. A red gleam showed where
his lids were puffing.
* * * * *
Fay felt his own strength waning. He called on all his latent
nerve-force. He became a tiger. He leaped, drove a smashing fist
between the Dropper’s gorilla-like brows, stepped back, dodged a
swing, then repeated the blow. He played for this mark. The fury of
his assault was like an air-hammer on a rivet. It deadened the
brute’s brain. It made him all animal.
A bull’s roar filled the room. Goaded to an open defense, the Dropper
abandoned science. He tried to grasp his tormentor. His huge hands
groped through the air. He stumbled and searched. He fell over a
chair. He rose to his knees. Fay waited, hooked a short, elbow-jab
between the eyes. He followed with his left. His arm snapped in its
sting. He backed, side-stepped, and started around the Dropper,
delivering blows like a cooper finishing a barrel.
A red rage came to the cracksman that was terrible in its ferocity.
He forgot Emily. He saw only the swollen thing before him. He wanted
to kill. He sought for the opening.
Abandoning his straight jabs, he danced in and out with short-arm
swings to the face and neck and eyes. He pounded the ears until they
resembled cauliflowers. He made a pulp of the Dropper’s face.
The end came in less than a second. Beaten into near-insensibility,
tottering and bloated--the Dropper attempted to reach the door that
led to the opium-joint. He remembered a gat he had planted there. He
lowered his shielding left shoulder. His jaw was exposed.
Fay poised on tiptoes, drew back his right fist and sent it home with
the tendons of his legs strained in the effort. His weight, his rage,
his science and clean living were in that blow. It milled the brute,
staggered and brought him crashing, first to his knees, then over on
his back, where he lay with his swollen face turned toward the
ceiling.
Little Emily glided to the door. She waited with her eyes fixed and
shimmering.
Fay breathed deeply. He turned, unrolled his silk sleeves and said:
“Will--you--get my hat and coat and cane, please?”
Little Emily helped him on with his coat. Her hands trembled.
“Now get _your_ things. You’re going away from here.”
She returned within three minutes.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“You saw me knock him out?”
“Yes.”
“Go look at him.”
Emily hurried into the room. She knelt by the Dropper’s head. She
came back to Fay and whispered:
“I’m not afraid of him any more.”
“Why, little Emily?”
“Because you are stronger than he is.”
Fay opened the door that led to the hallway where the gas-flare
showed in the gloom.
“Have you everything?” he asked.
Emily pointed to a pasteboard hatbox. Fay lifted it gallantly.
“Come on,” he said.
“Where are you going to take me?” she asked, humbly.
“I’m going to take you to the house of the good woman on the Hudson.”
“And what are _you_ going to do?”
“I? I’m going to get word to Charley O’Mara that I kept my
promise--and his kid’s all right.”
THE END
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the February 1920 issue
of Blue Book magazine.]
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