# Partners Of The Night/Chapter 3

I
Astir with questionings as to what might be behind his unexpected summons here, Clifford pushed the button. The door was opened by Mary Regan herself.
"Step into the sitting-room," was her brief and formal greeting.
Somehow, after her note, he had half expected a reception less cold than this, cold and short though that note had been. More at a loss than ever, he entered the familiar room where, over that strange week-end now but three days gone, he had held Joe Russell and Mary Regan and their poor dupe of a receiving teller and the suit-case crammed with an uncounted fortune of stolen bank-notes.
Mary Regan motioned him to a chair and herself sat down. Among the possibilities awakened by her note was that he might find this proud, wilful young woman in a softer and more humble mood. She must have read the very text of his thoughts, for her first words were a prompt answer to them.
"Do not think, Mr. Clifford, that my object in sending for you was to hear the confession of a penitent." Voice and manner were superbly composed, and set him far, far away.
The immediacy with which she had reversed their positions and taken the upper hand nonplussed him yet further. He who had arrested her, and by whose lenience alone she was now sitting before him a free woman, and who was here at her request, was being treated as though he were the one at fault and as though he were a presumptuous person to be snubbed into his place. The audacity of her!
"Your note gave me no hint of why you wished to see me," he managed to say.
"Mere curiosity--though strong, to be sure. What you did the other day, it naturally made me very curious."
"Curious? Why?"
"You will admit that your course was somewhat unusual for a police officer, even a discharged officer," she drawled, with a faint, derisive smile. "The Empire Security Bank, unknown to itself, had been robbed of two or three hundred thousand dollars. You had the three persons captured who had done the job: my uncle, the receiving teller, and myself, who would have made the story twice as big by adding the 'pretty girl' element beloved by newspapers. Our arrest would have made you sensationally famous, and would have restored you to your lost position. And yet you managed the affair so that Mr. Jerrold replaced the stolen money in the bank and resumed his accustomed place without any one being the wiser about the robbery--and you let Uncle Joe and me go free. Such action isn't the usual course pursued by the police. Can you blame me for taking a trifling interest in why you did it?"
She certainly was amazing! But of what might not that pride and mockery and audacity be the mask? Three days before, for an instant, he had thought he had glimpsed a soul behind it.
Should he answer her? He wasn't certain, even if he did explain, that she could possibly comprehend his point of view. But skeptic and cynic though she might be, he would give her the chance.
"Your uncle has been what he is for over thirty years and may never be anything different," he began. "But that young teller who actually robbed the bank, he was not by nature a criminal. And I do not believe you are either. it's your training. You and Jerrold are both very young. To have arrested you two would have meant the ruin of your lives. I could not accept personal triumph at such a cost. I believe"--and here he was repeating what he had said in his own defense when reporting to Commissioner Thorne his handling of the robbery--" I believe it is a bigger thing, even for a police official, to save a person from becoming a criminal than it is to jail him after he has become one."
"Ah, so your motive was to reform me? You thought I might be rescued and made into a better woman?"
Her sarcasm made Clifford flush.
"I came here at your invitation, Miss Regan, and I did not come here to moralize or preach. But you state my motive and opinion with marvelous precision."
"Thanks for your solicitude"--very caustically. "Your explanation is very ingenious. It has only one slight defect. It leaves me as curious as before."
"Why?"
"Because I do not believe it."
Stung by her cool gibes, Clifford trembled with an exasperated impulse to retort with physical chastisement. That impulse he checked, and while he was groping for phrases with which he might strike back, down the hallway a key slid into the Yale lock.
"Your uncle?" he inquired.
"Uncle Joe sailed yesterday on a business trip to Rio Janeiro. My brother has the only other key."
"Slant-Face Regan? I beg pardon--that's the way we know him."
"Yes. Jim drops in sometimes."
Steps came down the hall. Clifford lowered his voice to a whisper.
"You've told him about the other day?"
"No."
There entered a slender young man, in perfectly tailored clothes of reserved sportiness. His face was lean and dark, with as its outstanding feature a slight downward slant to the left corner of his mouth; his olive-gray eyes were quick and cold; his right hand, which held an olive-gray soft hat, was long and suggested the swift suppleness of a pianist's. The whole of him gave instantly a sense pf relentless self-control--and also a sense that in this repressed personality was an incalculable voltage of human passions, whose lightning might strike in times and places that there was no foreseeing.
"'Lo, Mary," he said to his sister, who had stepped into the doorway to meet him. Then he sighted Clifford and scowled. "Say, what the--" But in the same instant he was his expressionless self again. "Hello, Clifford."
"Hello, Slant-Face."
The master pickpocket, whom Clifford had several times tried in vain to capture "with the goods on," drew out a silver cigarette case, offered it open to Clifford, who took one, offered it to his sister, who refused, then helped himself. He gave Clifford a light, then lighted his own.
"Well, Clifford," he remarked, "you don't head the list of the guests I expected to find at my sister's. I say, Mary, Clifford's not trying to make trouble for you, is he?"
"No."
"Even if he was, he couldn't do much. Been fired from the Department, you know." His cold slits of eyes scrutinized the two. "don'tunderstand the layout here, Mary--you and Clifford--but I guess you know your business. I've got a hunch I'm butting into a party I've not been invited to. So-long."
"Don't go, Jim," exclaimed his sister.
"I'll happen around again when I'll not be an interruption." Calmly, with lithe, steely grace, he continued his way, and the next moment the two heard the hall door close behind him.
"You seem to know him," Mary Regan remarked--and Clifford caught a shadow of perturbation on her face.
"Yes."
"How well?"
Clifford did not answer at once. Despite her coolly derisive attitude toward him, he yearned to divert her somehow from that life toward which birth and recent companionship had headed her, and of which he believed she did not know the sorry side nor foresee the end. And yet he realized full well that her proud spirit would scornfully repulse any direct endeavor. At this moment he had an inspiration that Slant-Face offered him an opening to act upon her indirectly.
"Do you want to know how well I really know him?"
"Yes."
"I know your brother, in some aspects at least, better than you do," said Clifford. "In some details even better than he knows himself. Several times, in the past, it has been my duty to try to secure enough evidence against him to guarantee his conviction if arrested. So I've studied him, his life, his friends--and so have the men who used to be under me--almost with a microscope. That's how I know. Thus far he has managed to avoid detection. And for a time he'll continue to escape, for he's the cleverest pickpocket working in. New York. But in the end he'll take too long chances, or overlook some detail, and will be caught. They always are."
"Most of that I already knew," said Mary Regan.
"That is only the best," said Clifford. "The worst thing about him is the three pals he is now working with. God knows what made him tie himself up with such a bunch; his recklessness, perhaps. The three are rotten. Why, the Commissioner was saying to me only"--Clifford was on the point of saying "only last night," which would have been the truth, but he checked himself just in time--"he was saying to me just before my discharge that it would save the state a bill for electricity if they got in a gun-fight and were all three filled with lead. I don't believe in the death penalty, but if any mortals ever earned the privilege of sitting in the electric chair, they are the three pals of your brother."
"What have they done?"
"What haven't they done? Miss Regan, you have in your own experience known only polite, high-class crime--known only, so to say, crime's respectables, crime's aristocrats. Beneath this glittering surface there is a sordidness and vileness you may never have dreamed of. Now a pickpocket almost invariably is also a cadet. He has a girl, or several, on whose earnings he depends for a steady income. I don't need to tell you how she earns it."
Despite her control Mary Regan had paled. "You don't mean--my brother--"
"No. Your brother is the exception to the law. In him there is a streak of his own kind of honor. But you have got to understand the code, the point of view, and perverted psychology, of these pickpockets. With them it is the accepted order of things for one to have a girl working for him. That is convention. What would be strange to him would be not to have a girl. Slant-Face did not have a girl. That at first puzzled his three pals. They expostulated with him; they pointed out that he was passing up an easy chance to make regular money. But he declared he did not want any skirts mixed up in his, and they could not move him. Then they became sore because they thought he was trying to set himself above them, trying to be different, He was violating the customs of his class. It's human nature to want to make the other fellow believe and behave like the rest of his kind--even in religion; so the three talked the matter over and decided, since argument wouldn't work, they'd try to trick Slant-Face into conformity. They found a girl, pretty, young, and new to that sort of life--Jennie Malone is her name--and arranged matters so that the two met seemingly by accident. Their plan succeeded--partially."
He thought he detected a shrinking fear in Mary Regan's dark eyes. "Succeeded how--how far?"
"He was attracted by her--fell in love with her--and they're now living together."
"Has he--you know--put her on the street?"
"Not yet."
"And that's--that's all?"
"That's all--so far. But that's not enough to satisfy his pals. They want to make him like themselves."
She was now grayish-pale. "Can't something be done to break his connection with those friends?"
"Can't you be the one to do it?"
"He won't listen to me." There was a moment of silence. Suddenly she stiffened, as though she had just realized that she had lapsed from the attitude of ironic superiority she had established for herself, and as though she were resentful against herself for that lapse. When she next spoke she tried to speak caustically, as before.
"If I am to believe the reasons you just gave for not arresting me, you are a highly efficient reformer, Mr. Clifford--determined to dose the reformee with goodness whether he likes it or not. Won't you postpone treatment of my soul, and take on my brother as a substitute?"
Clifford dared believe that the voice of her lips was not the voice of her desire.
"I'll try," he said. Then, looking her directly in the eyes: "But you must be ready to help me."
Again there was a moment of silence. Then she gave a short nod.
The following instant she was even more supercilious than at first. "You'll have to excuse me now," she said, rising with bored indifference. But despite this arrogant dismissal, Clifford went away with elation in his heart.
II
Below a great colorful triptych by Maxfield Parrish of Old King Cole, there is a fitting altar to that demigod of merriment--a polished bar; and lined up along that bar you may find any afternoon such devotees as theatrical managers, actors, playwrights, popular novelists, bookmakers, stock brokers, gamblers and law-breakers of the higher order and the more gentlemanly behavior. Here, during a lull in the services, stood Slant-Face Regan alone, sipping a glass of buttermilk--he rarely took spirits--when a hand fell upon his shoulder. Without changing his leaning posture he easily turned his head.
"Well, Clifford," he remarked calmly, "d' you think you've got anything on me?"
"No," said Clifford.
"Then have a drink. What'll it be?"
"Vichy. But let's drink sitting. I want to say something to you."
They sat down facing each other in a deeply upholstered booth across from the bar.
"When I've got something on you, Slant-Face," Clifford said, taking up the pickpocket's first remark, "I'm going to get you. And if I don't get you, some one else will. For every man in the department knows what you are and has his orders to lay for you."
"Sure, I know," said Slant-Face. There was no pretense between these two. "Next remark?" "I just wanted to get that in so there wouldn't be any later misunderstanding. It was something else I wanted to say. Slant-Face, do you think I'm on the square?"
"You? You're damned square--for a detective." The left corner of his mouth dipped down in a saturnine smile. "D 'you think any of us were so easy as to believe that stuff Bradley put across on you, and got you fired for! Everybody that knows you knows you were framed. Bradley!--I guess we're on to Bradley!"
"I guess we are," said Clifford.
"Bradley wants to hog the whole game," half-growled Slant-Face. "He's just sent me word that I've got to pay more or there 'll be trouble. he's getting more than his share now--I can't come across with any bigger piece of change. So he can just cut loose with his trouble and be damned to him! That's the word I sent back."
Clifford sensed that here was a possible opening to get at Chief of Detectives Bradley; but he knew that Slant-Face knew he was telling only what was already a part of Clifford's. general knowledge, and would probably tell no more. Besides, Bradley was off the main track of his immediate business.
"Here's the point I'm after now," said Clifford. "Slant-Face, very likely you'll live and die a crook. But at least you are, in your own way, a clean crook. But, Slant-Face--I'm talking now as your friend--the bunch you're trailing with, they're rats! Biff Farrell, and Gipsy Joe, and Red Mick, they're the lowest things that ever got into human shape. Keep tied to them, and they'll get you in some dirty mess that'll make you sick and ashamed for life. And if they don't do that, then some time when they get in a tight place, to save themselves they'll squeal on you. You can't trust them! they're rotten! Do whatever else you like, but for God's sake, Slant-Face, cut loose from them!"
Young Regan's face had clouded with wilful anger. "I guess I can take care of myself!" he snapped out. "With my best compliments, Clifford, please go to hell!"
"Then you are going to hang on with the bunch?"
"I pick my own friends! "
The result of this, his first step in trying to execute Mary Regan's commission, had been what Clifford had half anticipated. He made no return.
"Anything more?" demanded Slant-Face.
Clifford shook his head.
Regan's manner relaxed. "Then have another drink?"
"Thanks. No."
"Well, I've got to meet the bunch." He raised his glass and drained the last of his buttermilk, then rose. "So-long."
"So-long."
Half way to the door Slant-Face abruptly turned and came back to the table. "I say, Clifford--I suppose you mean well. And if it's my luck ever to have to be pinched, I hope you're the guy that turns the trick."
And just as abruptly Slant-Face turned again, and this time went out.
III
Biff Farrell, Gipsy Joe and Red Mick, pickpockets, indulgers in occasional hold-upsand burglaries when such were easy and could be considered safe risks, and masters, each of them, of one or two or three women, according to how their luck was serving them, sat in the basement caf of Original Joe in a side street off Broadway. They were a swagger lot, these friends of Slant-Face: with the swaggerness of the Broadway shops that sell cheap ready-made exaggerations of the latest extremity in masculine style. And they were conscious of their appearance, every one, and preeningly proud of it.
They were discussing an important detail of their multifarious interests, the inexplicable perversity of Slant-Face Regan, the unepauletted generalissimo of their more honorable campaigns--when a very pretty girl, whose prettiness was italicized by expertly applied make-up, entered the café, sighted them, and came tilting toward their table on her high French heels.
"Hello, fellows," she greeted them carelessly. "Know where Jim is?"
"Ain't got an idea, Jennie," said Biff Farrell. It did not fit in with the trio's plan to tell her that they were then awaiting Slant-Face. "Have a cocktail?"
"Nope." She was somewhat spoiled, perhaps, and being still young and pretty dared be independent, and so she eyed the three with undisguised disfavor. "If you see Jim, tell him I've got tickets for a show for to-night; one of the girls in it copped them off for me. Tell him to break his other date and meet me at the fiat at seven."
"All right, Jen," Biff promised. "Say, we're talkin' business now, but where can I find you in an hour? Something that'll interest you."
She hesitated, still regarding him with disfavor. "I'll be walking along the west side of Broadway between Forty-fifth and Seventh."
"I'll happen along there;" and as she went out, Biff Farrell, who had been a lightweight fighter rising toward mediocrity until his present life ate him down to the sapless thing that he was, watched her with small, appraising eyes.
"Certainly some peach, that kid," he observed. And then in a tone of mixed incredulity and disgust: "My God, Slant-Face gets my goat! Why, he could pocket a fortune out o' her if he wasn't such a damned fool! And there'd be no hangin' back on Jennie's part if he give the word. She'd only be goin' back to what he took her from."
"Makes me sick, too," agreed Gipsy Joe. "Think o' the devil's trouble us guys had to get him to look at a skirt at all--and now that we've got him to really livin' with one, he won't make nothin' out of it! And now whaddu think o' his sayin' last night that him and Jennie was going' to get married some day!"
"Aw, hell!" commented Red Mick.
"The boob!" spat Biff Farrell. "What for's a guy want to marry a girl he's already livin' with unless there's a big stake in it? Ain't he the limit! Jennie ain't askin' it. Marryin' when you don't have to, it's throwin' your chances away. You may want to get married again some time, when there's somethin' in it for you, and if you do-- bing!--first thing you know you may be in the cooler." He spat again. "Slant-Face, the damned boob!"
But Slant-Face's behavior seemed something more than sheer mad perversity. Biff Farrell roughly voiced the suspicion.
"I'll tell you what," he said with a forward thrust of his jaw, "it ain't just thatSlant-Face is a boob and is passin' up his chances. Slant-Face all along has been settin' himself up above us. The way he's been behavin' about Jennie is just some more of his stuff to show us that he's above our class."He swore, with his mastery of obscenity--then: "Me, I tell you what, I ain't goin' to stand for his swell-headedness!"
The other two, in profanity equally obscene, subscribed to this last declaration. Here in Original Joe's, indignant conventionality was making the same stand that it has made the world over since time began: resentfully, it was determined that the other person should not be different.
"Biff, you hand Slant-Face that line o' talk we was talkin' about," said Gipsy Joe, "and if that don't do no good, then we'll pull the college boy stunt with Jennie."
A few minutes later Slant-Face sauntered in with his gracefully slouching gait of the unroused panther. Wicked as he might be measured by the world's ordinary standards, in this company he looked, and was, a Sir Galahad. The four had a few drinks, Slant-Face again sipping buttermilk, and with the drinks a bit of immaterial talk. Then Biff Farrell approached the business the three had been discussing. A bravo with the others, in the presence of Slant-Face, Biff was hesitant and cringing.
"Us ginks has been talkin' about you, Slant-Face," he said, after having edged slowly toward his subject. "We don't mean to butt in--it's your own business--but us guys don't make you out. About you and Jennie. Why, Jennie is a peacherino; any guy 'd fall for Jennie. You don't seem to know what you got in her. She could easy put the hooks into some rich boob--get him to keep her steady and give her plenty o' dough--and she'd slip the coin along to you. Hell, Slant-Face!"
Slant-Face tensed, but his manner remained composed.
"Nothing doing."
"But she's soft on you," argued Biff. "She'd come across with the money he gives her all right. And you'd be in no danger o' losin' her."
"Nothing doing," repeated Slant-Face.
"I see; that might mean you bein' apart more 'n you'd like. Well, then why don't you put her on the street? She'd be willin' if you said so. And on the street--God, she'd be a walkin' bankroll for you!"
The control Slant-Face had been keeping upon himself gave way, ever so slightly; the olive-gray eyes glinted.. But he still spoke evenly.
"How you fellows live is none of my business. How I live is none of your business. But I'll tell you this for the last time: I'm playing straight with Jennie, and Jennie is playing straight with me, and that's how we're going to keep on. You get me?"
"Aw, your lovey-love business gives me--" sneeringly began Biff Farrell.
"Shut up!" snapped Slant-Face, and a malignantly destructive gleam leaped into his eyes. "Biff, any more talk like that about Jennie and me and I'll smash your face! And the same goes for the rest of you!"
Farrell shrank away from that menacing glare. Coward as he was, he would never have won very high as a pugilist even if dissipation had not halted that career.
"Say, now, Slant-Face," he whined, "don't get sore. I was only thinkin' o' you. I didn't mean nothin'."
"Then say nothing!"
There was a brief silence. Biff felt that Joe and Red Mick were eying him, waiting for him to set going the plan which they had discussed for use in case just this recalcitrance developed. Though inwardly Biff shivered, he had to speak or lose something of his leadership over the other two. He summoned up all that adulterated quality, which in his composition was substitute for courage.
"Now don't get sore, Slant-Face," he repeated. "And don't let fly until I've finished. here's what I gotta say: Why don't you put Jennie on the street, and pocket what she makes--when she's already on the street, without your knowin' it, and holdin' back for herself the coin--"
"You damned-- --!" The words which hurtled from Slant-Face's wry lips were such words as never get into print. Slant-Face had risen; his cold, contained fury was awful. "You-- --liar! I'm going to twist off your rotten little neck!"
"Wait, Slant-Face!" cried Farrell, springing up and back in a panic. "I ain't askin' you to believe me. I'm only askin' you to believe what you see."
Slant-Face halted. "What I see?"
"Yes, that's all--only what you see with your own eyes." Farrell, reassured somewhat, moved forward. "I ain't sayin' a thing against Jennie. I'm just givin' you a hint to what everybody knows but you, and askin' you to take a look for yourself."
"What everybody knows?"
"Sure." A bit more of confidence rose in Farrell. "Everybody knows, us guys all knows, that Jennie has been pickin' up fellows and keepin' the money herself. Ain't that so, boys?"
"Straight stuff," the two corroborated.
"You--you liars!" This time the epithet was unreinforced by devastating blasphemy.
"See for yourself, I been tellin' you," pursued Farrell. "There's one o' these here young college guys been soft on her, and several times she-- Say, Slant-Face, you wasn't expectin' to be away to-night, was you?"
"Yes."
"That's what I guessed. Jennie must 'a' been bankin' on that, for I heard her make a date with the college guy for to-night. She's goin' to bring him in here a little after eleven; he wants to see what life over here is like. Don't take my word, I say it again, but if you really want to know, you drop in here at half-past eleven."
Slant-Face eyed them piercingly. Their faces were all affirmations. Slant-Face's features hardly changed, but behind that lean, wry mask emotions were reeling and crashing. For into his reckless, cynical life, sordid where it dipped lowest, there had strangely come this straightforward love--which had gripped him--mastered him--awakened in him things which he seemed to be meeting for the first time. And now, if what they said about Jennie--
"You'll drop in? " queried Biff.
With a curt nod, but without a word, Slant-Faoe walked out.
"Think he'll come?" asked Gipsy Joe.
"Sure he'll come!" exulted Biff Farrell. "Didn't you see how he took the hook!" Now that Slant-Face was gone he puffed himself out. "Guess I put the business across all right, eh, boys!"
"You certainly did one swell job, Biff," applauded Red Mick.
The three were so preoccupied that they did not notice that a man had just taken a seat at the table adjoining theirs and was deep in his evening paper. It would have mattered little to them if they had noted him, for in their opinion there was nothing in their talk that was the least out of the ordinary. The man was Clifford. He had shadowed Slant-Face to Original Joe's, had waited for the exit of that keen person, and had then slipped in to gather what he might from this less subtle trio.
"We'll give Slant-Face a tumble," gloated Biff Farrell. "The crazy boob--passin' up easy dough. And settin' himself up above us--damn him!"
"Yes, but just how you goin' to do it?" inquired Red Mick.
"Soft stuff!" sniffed Farrell. "I meets Jennie in ten minutes, don't I? Well, I says to her Slant-Face didn't seem to care much about that show she's got tickets for, and he seems to have something new on for to-night--another girl, I guess. You get me? that'll make Jennie sore. And then I says to her I know a swell guy that's dyin' to meet her, and take her out to dinner and a show. Oh, I know how to handle her. I'll put it up to her in the way to make her fall for it, all right. And then I brings in that young nut that's broke loose from college and is burnin' up Broadway, and who's been askin' me to steer him up against a piece o' real life. I'll fix it so that after the show they comes here. And Slant-Face comes and spots 'em. See? You know what he'll think. Slant-Face don't ask questions; he acts. Seein' Jennie at it, he'll say to himself she might as well be doin' it for him--and he'll put her right out on the street. And that'll finish his superior airs, the-- -- --!"
Biff Farrell nodded with a very superior air of his own. "It's pie, fellows. Easy as eatin' is for a two-handed hungry man."
"Great stuff!" acclaimed Red Mick.
"You sure got a great little head, Biff," admired Gipsy Joe. "Have another."
Biff had another. Then Biff swaggered righteously forth to his effort to uphold the greatest of all man-made gods, Convention.
IV
It was eleven-thirty by the amazing clock of plaster and bronze which The Happy Fat Association had presented as a token of its esteem to Original Joe. Jennie, new-come from the theater, talked her smartest and listened in fascination to the college boy across the table. His father was a millionaire; that had been one of the first things he had told her; and the youth had brought her from dinner to the theater, and from the theater here, in his own private car of an amazing luxuriousness. Jennie was flattered; never before had she mixed with such "class." She had made a "hit," she knew it, and she was energized to make a bigger one. She was piqued at Slant-Face for the slight that he had put upon her, but beyond this evening's flirtation, which he knew she could and would end in an hour or so, she had no further thought of disloyalty to Slant-Face.
And so she chatted and laughed on, and gaily drank of the wine which came from the iced pail beside the table. Jennie--pretty, untrained, intimate since childhood with the worst, to whom life's best opportunity had been the last three months with Slant-Face, who had clutched this best with a feverish, adoring love--Jennie could not judge what worthless clay was this fine-mannered, moneyed youth who for the moment enchanted her.
At a table near the front, in a corner made by the stairway, sat Biff Farrell, Red Mick and Gipsy Joe, gazing in satisfaction at the happy pair. Biff especially was a-gloat. His was the clever brain that had planned this, and Jennie was behaving exactly as he had anticipated. He told the others so and accepted their praise. Yes, Jennie was certainly doing it great.
The stage was set, the introductory scenes were being played. All was ready for the entrance of the leading character. Eagerly the three waited for Slant-Face to walk down the stairway.
At another table, having just come in, sat Clifford and Mary Regan. All sorts drifted into Original Joe's, so their presence drew to them no particular attention. Clifford was noted by the three, but they were conscious of having done nothing recently which had caught the attention of the police; besides, Clifford was a discharged officer, Mary Regan they did not know.
Clifford indicated the trio in the corner and whispered to Mary Regan that these were her brother's mates. She glanced then over and a little shiver ran through her. Clifford noticed this with satisfaction, but made no remark. If this wilful spirit were ever brought around, she would be brought around, not by another's words, but by what she saw, by what happened, by her own thoughts. That was why he had led her here-- that she might observe, and think.
"The girl with that young sport, that's Jennie Malone," he whispered.
Mary Regan eyed her brother's sweetheart. "She's rather pretty, don't you think?" she said.
"Yes. And she'd always have been O. K. if she had had any sort of a chance."
"But the way she's behaving with that young fool! "
"Don't blame her too much. Remember, your brother's pals are trying to put something across on her and him, and so far she's falling for it."
"I wish you had found my brother!" she could not forbear exclaiming.
"I looked every place I thought he might be."
At that moment Slant-Face came down the steps and through the doorway. Clifford's and Mary Regan's and the trio's eyes fixed upon him, and all five quickened with suspense.
Slant-Face did not see them. What he saw first, and the one thing he saw, was at the far end of the cafe: Jennie and a young swell, joyous in each other's company--exactly as Biff Farrell had foretold.
His face, a little paler than its, wont when he had entered, did not change in the slightest degree; and without an instant's hesitation he strode down between the tables with his lithe, slouching grace, in which there had come an imperceptible tenseness.
"Hello, Jim," Jennie called to him with a challenging smile as he passed.
"Hello," he said shortly, and took the table just beyond theirs--the last one in the row, and placed just beneath the switch which controlled the cafe's electric lights.
"Who's the party with the frozen stare?" he heard the college youth ask Jennie.
"Oh, a fellow that thinks he's a sort of friend," laughed Jennie in a voice intended for Slant-Face's ears, again giving him her defiant smile.
She flirted more openly with the young man. Slant-Face did not guess, and no more did Jennie, that she was trying to hurt him so because she loved him so.
"Jack," Slant-Face called to a passing waiter.
The waiter came to his side. "Same thing a usual--buttermilk?" he asked perfunctorily.
"Whisky," said Slant-Face.
As she heard him announce "whisky," Jennie glanced at him quickly--no malicious coquetry now in her gaze, only sharp surprise. Again he met her look with the unwavering coldness of his olive-gray eyes.
When the whisky came, he tossed it straight down, and did not touch the little glass of water beside it. "Bring me another," he said.
But before the second glass of spirits arrived Mary Regan was at his table.
"Jim, come outside. I want to tell you something."
"After while," he replied in his emotionless, even tone.
"But, Jim, please!" Her voice trembled. "I'll only keep you two minutes!"
"After while."
Before this calm, changeless answer, before his immobile expression, Mary Regan turned helpless back to Clifford. SlantiFace drank the second glass of whisky--and a third. His sister and Clifford, now hardly speaking, sat watching him and the couple near him. Jennie, surprised though she was by his unaccustomed drinking, nonetheless laughed more gaily than ever at her companion, who had begun to ogle her caressingly--she hurting herself frightfully, and striving her utmost to hurt the coldly watching Slant-Face. And from their corner at the front, Biff and Red Mick and Gipsy Joe looked on in triumphant happiness; things were certainly working out all right.
All who watched waited in mounting suspense. But the lean, wry, satanically handsome face did not change by the twitch of a muscle. None had the dimmest guess of what was working behind that impassive countenance.
But though his face was stone, the soul of Slant-Face Regan was anguish and red turmoil. He had loved once, loved suddenly and unexpectedly, loved violently. His thoughts--they were too swift to attain the definiteness of thoughts--were now leaping through his brain like lashing, scorching flames. She had said she loved him. She had said she would be straight with him. Re had said he would be straight with her. He had kept his word, and he had believed her. And she had fooled him --lied to him! There she was, flaunting her lie and her faithlessness and her rich idiot of a lover--
"Jack, bring me another," he called to the waiter. He had it--and one more--and one after that--and yet one after that. Still his face did not change, but a gleam came into his narrow olive-gray eyes. The three in the corner noted and began to grow uneasy. Upon Clifford and Mary Regan there closed an even deeper suspense. But still none of them guessed.
Satanic fury, which had an element, of the primevally heroic, now convulsed the contents of the calm shell which was the Slant-Face Regan "that the cafe saw. He had another drink. His native violence, vindictiveness, recklessness, ruthlessness, were in mad riot. So she'd throw him down, would she?--after she'd promised to go it straight with him. So she thought she was going to take up with that rich college guy, did she? So that college guy thought he was going to take his girl away from him, did he?--the damned, supercilious, insulting young fool! Well, by God, if he couldn't have her--
It all happened, and was over with, in a moment.
Slant-Face stood up and reached for the switch on the wall behind him. The room clicked black. Like a serpent striking out, his right hand stretched toward where, he had carefully marked Jennie's heart to be, and released a death-intending bullet. And while the crack was still in the air, he pointed to where he had marked, ever so carefully, the young man's heart to be, and a second report overlapped the first. And as the first shrieks rang out, ad before the lights could be switched on, he had with pantherish swiftness slipped out of the café.
V
Master of the art of the "get-away," Slant-Face found himself at daybreak on the station platform of a quiet New Jersey town, possessed of a suit- case which he had commandeered in transit for the purpose of adding stage realism to his role of an ordinary traveler. From a sleepy newsboy, opening a bundle which had just been tossed from the baggage-car of a local train, Slant-Face bought a paper. It was New York's most sensational morning paper and this was its "mail-train" edition; and though Slant-Face knew it not, there had been barely time to crowd the story in. In fact, the ink had been wet upon the paper while they were still scrubbing up the blood down at Original Joe's.
"RICH YOUTH AND BEAUTIFUL GIRL MORTALLY SHOT IN CAFÉ" ran the huge double-deck headline. Below it was a scant, hurried story; the ambulance surgeons had declared the pair would not live to reach the hospital. Slant-Face did not doubt the declaration, for he had shot to kill. By now the pair had for several hours been dead.
Partly through the furtive dodging life he was forced for days to lead, and more, perhaps, through the purpose of that vague power which we call Fate, this first story of the shooting was the only story that Slant-Face was ever to see. He, had no desire, and made no effort, to see more. He had tried to kill, and knew he had killed. He knew the police were after him. He knew what would happen if he were caught. The papers could tell him nothing he did not already know.
The next afternoon he was in Chicago, hiding, drinking hard. Day after day he kept up his drinking. He felt no remorse. Those two had deserved it. But he felt a vast aching. He did not know what the ache was; he did not try to know; rather he tried to anesthetize it with drink. But could he have analyzed that ache, he would have found it to be deceived, broken love--disappointment--emptiness. Slant-Face would have sneered, perhaps struck savagely, if any one had said that his sick pain was heartbreak.
From the very first he felt the inevitable pull to return, and after two weeks he yielded. It was a daring thing to do, to go back; but he was reckless, and he had the confidence that comes from being often hunted, but never captured.
Funds were low, and to pay his fare he lifted a pocketbook in the Illinois Central Station which contained just enough to pay for his ticket. He was almost caught. The narrowness of his escape was a warning to him. He had been clumsy, and the almost fatal clumsiness was due to his drinking. He would drink no more.
It was night when, back in New York and having eluded the notice of the police, he stood in a side street just off Seventh Avenue and glanced up at the windows of a little flat. This was the "joint" which he and his three pals maintained, but which he had rarely frequented. A light glowed dully through the drawn shades; some of the three were in. He needed cash, and they would have to stake him.
He slipped up four flights of stairs and gave a series of dot-and-dash raps on a door. After a moment a bolt shot back and he entered.
"Slant-Face!" exclaimed Biff Farrell, who had admitted him. The other two, rising from a table, ejaculated surprise and alarm.
"Hello, fellows," said Slant-Face, and quietly took a chair at the table. The three had been playing craps to kill time before going forth to the more serious business of the evening, and dice and money were on the table.
Biff Farrell dropped into the chair he had left to answer the door.
"Good God, Slant-Face," he breathed, "whaddu mean by comin' back? Don't you know the cops are hot after you?"
"I suppose they are," said Slant-Face.
"And that there's a reward of ten thousand out for you?" put in Red Mick.
"I didn't know about the reward," said Slant-Face. "Ten thousand. that's very complimentary. Who put it up? Not the police department?"
"The old man of the young guy you shot," answered Farrell. "And every cop in New York is out to grab you and that bank-roll, and Chief Bradley hottest of 'em all. I say, Slant-Face"--very nervously--"you should never 'a' come here! Bradley has been havin' us tailed every minute, tryin' to get a line on you."
Suspicion leaped into Slant-Face's mind that for the reward's sake these three might betray him. "All right. Stake me to a piece of change and I'll beat it quick."
"Sure--whatever we got. Dig up, fellows." But as Biff reached for his own thin roll, a thought occurred to him--the thought which had rendered him uneasy since the unexpected twist the climax of their righteous plan had taken. From the way Slant-Face spoke it was evident he did not know; but now that he was back, he certainly would learn any moment from other sources--and if he learned elsewhere, the matter might be presented in a light most unpleasant, even dangerous, to them. Better and safer fart that they should seize this chance to be the first to speak and thus make the first impression, and present the business in its most favorable aspect.
"Say, Slant-Face," Biff began, smiling propitiatingly, but alert for any move, "o' course you know the whole business was just a joke?"
"Joke? What was a joke?"
"You know. About Jennie and that college guy. We 'd never 'a' done it, you know that--but none of us ever thought you'd take it so serious."
Slant-Face's whole being went taut. But his expression did not alter; his tone was quite casual.
"I don't quite get you, Biff."
Biff had not expected that Slant-Face would get him at first. He rose that he might be better prepared for unexpected eventualities.
"Don't you see--it was just a little thing we doped out--just a joke." Biff tried to smile with easy, apologetic, good-fellowship. "Sure, ain't told you we didn't mean nothin' by it--never guessed you'd take it like you did. And Jennie --why, Slant-Face, Jennie'd never seen that college guy before that night. She'd been as straight as a string with you."
There, he'd got out the thing he'd feared Slant-Face might learn elsewhere.
Whirling chaos was suddenly released in Slant-Face; yet his features changed little--even less than his fellows had expected. Biff smiled at him with growing confidence; he was taking it rather more easily than they had counted. Biff thought, and the others thought, that of course Slant-Face knew what they knew. And Fate, which had been grimly biding its time for these three, left all four of them in their misunderstanding.
"You say--she'd been straight--with me?" repeated Slant-Face.
"Straight, I should say so! "Biff's voice was hearty. All was turning out well. "Why, I never seen a girl so stuck on a guy as Jennie was on you!"
The unanalyzed ache of the past two weeks became a wild agony. Jennie had loved him, she had been square with him! And with his own hand he had shot her! My God, he had shot her! Shot her! Shot her! ...
Through a blur of red haze he saw the propitiating, smirking face of Biff Farrell and the smirking faces of the others. They had made him shoot her! --they with their lies about her! Insane rage swept up through him with the suddenness of a cyclone: a rage compounded of all in his nature that was vindictive and cruel and primitive and swift. He leaped to his feet.
"Damn your soul!" he blazed at Biff. And he lurched toward Biff, his lean, sinewy hands clutching for Biff's throat.
Biff, though he had smiled, had been on the alert for the unexpected. He jerked out his pistol. But the infinitely swifter hands of Slant-Face changed their course and wrenched the weapon from his grasp, Slant-Face whirled the weapon upon Red Mick and Gipsy Joe, who were reaching pocketward.
"Put your guns on the table!" he snapped at them.
They hesitated an instant, then each laid a pistol down among the dice and silver coins. Slant-Face's left hand picked one pistol up.
"Aw, come now, Slant-Face," whined Biff Farrell, "don't you understand it was nothin' but a joke!"
"A joke!" Slant-Face cried in an awful tone. "You call it a joke to make me kill a girl that's played square with me!"
They gasped out, all in one voice: "Kill her! Why, Slant-Face--"
They never ended. Fate had waited her full time. With almost a single crack three bullets leaped with their eternal silence from Slant-Face's hands, and the three men slumped loosely down. Slant-Face dropped among the dice the pistol which had shot twice, and picked up the third one and once more he shot three times--a total of two bullets from each pistol.
He did not even glance at the three bodies to make certain; this time he had shot in full light, and he knew he had done his work. He dropped the two pistols, turned out the gas, and so swiftly had he acted that, as alarm was catching its first breath, he was through a window and running over familiar house-tops. He went down a fire-escape and dropped into the dark courtyard of a rear tenement. From there he plunged through the rabbit's burrow of a passage beneath the front tenement out into the street. He gave a swift glance about. The street was empty of police-- or seemed so. He glided away: giving not so much as a thought to the three dead men behind hi all his brain an agony of remorse over Jennie.
VI
Clifford's ring was answered by Mary Regan. She did not speak until they were in the sitting-room of the flat, safe from all possible overhearing.
"Tell me," she breathed, "have the police any clue yet to my brother?"
"They haven't the slightest idea where he is. At least, not that I could learn."
Every two'or three days he had been coming to report to her.
"But they're still after him?"
"They are--and harder than ever," he admitted, for she had before this insisted that he should hold back from her no bit of truth. "Bradley never worked harder on a case than on this one, You see, your brother had defied Bradley--said he wouldn't pay another cent; and that made Bradley mad. Besides, the reward is a mighty appetizer, and the fact that one of the persons shot was that rich young Garrison has made the thing a sensation. It would be a big triumph for Bradley if he or his men could make the arrest."
"Oh, I hope Jim's out of the country!"
"Perhaps he's in London or Paris now. He's had time." Clifford wanted to reassure her consuming anxiety. "Just remember that he's about the hardest man alive to catch."
She did not at once speak again, and he volunteered nothing more. During the silence he studied her dark, worried face, and wondered. Not once had he tried to talk right and wrong to her; he had held strictly to his plan of letting her see the ugly side of crime, and letting that ugly side speak to her whatever it might have to say. And not once had he tried to press toward intimacy. As far as the spoken word was concerned, they stood in exactly the same relation toward each other as three weeks before.
While this silence still remained between them, they heard a key slip into the lock of the outer door.
"Uncle Joe--come back!" breathed Mary Regan. But instead of the polished Joe Russell, it was Slant-Face who entered the sitting-room.
"Jim!" cried his sister, and threw her arms about him. He endured her embrace for a moment, silently, without returning it, with an Indian's emotional inhibition.
"But, Jim," she cried, "why did you come back? Why are you here?"
"I want money for my get-away. And quick--for I've got to beat it in a minute."
"I'll give you all I have, and I have plenty."
She went swiftly into her own room. Slant-Face for the first time now saw Clifford.
He stepped sharply toward him.
"What's your business here, Clifford?" he demanded, eyes gleaming.
"To see your sister, who--"
"You lie!" he chopped Clifford off. "You're hanging around my sister to grab me and the reward!"
"That's not so, Regan," Clifford said quietly.
"No, Jim--" began his sister, who had come sack with the money.
"You may fool Mary, but you can't throw the con into me!" cried Slant-Face. His pistol came out, and with a lightning-swift hand, which Clifford did not try to intercept, he swept over all of Clifford's pockets, and from one drew out a pair of hand-cuffs. "You liar!" he snarled. "You had these for me!"
"I had those for another case," said Clifford in the same quiet voice.
"Cut out that bunk!" He backed away, covering Clifford with his pistol. "You're not going to get me, and no other man--while I'm alive, anyhow."
Mary Regan stepped between the two.
"You're all wrong, Jim!" she cried rapidly. "Mr. Clifford has tried to be your friend. didn't he advise you, before anything happened, to cut loose from those three men? And that night in Original Joe's café, when I wanted to speak to you, it was to tell you something Mr. Clifford had told me--that those three had some crooked game working against you and Jennie, and that you should look out. Oh, why didn't you let me tell you, Jim! If I'd ever have guessed what you were going to do, I'd have spoken right out before them all!"
Slant-Face stared piercingly at Clifford. Clifford met the gaze steadily, thrilled by this outburst from Mary Regan--almost the first non-hostile words he had heard from her.
"I'm not after any reward, Regan," he said, replying to th query in those keen olive-gray eyes. "And I've got no evidence against you. I've heard it said you switched out the light, but I did not see even that much."
"He's been your friend, Jim!" Mary Regan insisted. "Believe me--it's true! And now, here--take this money--and go!"
"Thanks, Mary." Slant-Face took the bills, his eyes still on Clifford. "I don't quite get you, Clifford," he said after a moment, "but I guess I've got to thank you, too. And here are your bracelets."
Clifford slipped the hand-cuffs back into his pocket.
"By the by," Slant-Face remarked casually; "before I came here I dropped in on Biff Farrell, Red Mick and Gipsy Joe to get money from them. I found them dead."
"Jim--did you--"
"I found them dead," he interrupted with blank, grim face.
"Jim! . . ." Then with galvanic energy: "You must hurry, Jim. Perhaps you can slip on the Mauretania unseen. After so long the police will hardly be watching the boats for you. It sails tonight in an hour or two."
Slant-Face accepted her kiss, gave Clifford a "so-long," and was turning to leave, when Mary Regan caught his arm.
"Another thing, Jim. Jennie begged me, if I could get word to you, to tell you that she understands everything now, and loves you just the same."
The lean, wry face of young Regan twitched spasmodically. His mouth fell open, but no words came from out it. He seemed able only to stare at his sister.
"You--say--Jennie--" he began in a thin whisper, and said no more.
"Yes, she still loves you."
"You mean--she isn't--dead?"
"Why, Jim," she cried amazed, "didn't you know?"
He shook his head.
"Jim, all the while you've been thinking you killed her!" she marveled numbly. And then: "The fact that the shooting was done in the dark, that's what saved them."
He caught at her last word. "Them? You mean--he--"
"The young fellow left the hospital several days ago. Jennie is leaving to-morrow. I'm bringing her here to stay with me."
Of a sudden Slant-Face sank into a chair and dropped his head into his hands. And ever so slight a shiver ran through him. They let a moment pass. Mary Regan moved to his side and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Jim! . . ." she breathed in an awed voice. And then: " You must hurry now if you are going to catch the boat."
He looked up. His face was paper white, but had its usual Indian's immobility.
"I'm not going."
"Not going? "
"I'm going to stay here where I can see Jennie when she comes out."
"But, Jim, you'll be arrested!" Mary Regan cried frantically. "Why, the police may be after you this minute!"
"I don't care."
"But, Jim, are you crazy? Hurry--and Jennie can join you abroad as soon as she can travel."
"I'm going to see her here," said Slant-Face quietly.
Clifford stared bewildered at this incalculable being. Only partially could he perceive and understand the violent reaction, the cataclysmic changes, that were operating in the volcanic soul within that stoic mold. Mary Regan pleaded with him frantically that he fly; but the furthest Slant-Face would yield was to consent to leave the flat and go into hiding, and wait for chances for stolen meetings with Jennie.
Had there been a few hours, his high-wrought emotionalism might have receded, and self might have risen, and he might have flown. But even as Slant-Face yielded to this compromise, the apartment bell rang out, long, authoritatively. The three gave a start, and again Slant-Face was wide awake, alert.
"The police!" whispered Mary Regan. "Oh, Jim, it's too late!"
None moved to answer the bell, and none tried to escape. That front door, as Clifford knew from a previous experience, and as the police outside must also know, was the apartment's only exit. The bell rang out again and again was unanswered. Then they heard a master-key slip into the lock and turn back the bolt. The door rattled, but did not open, for on entering Slant-Face had thrust the chain-bolt into its socket.
A big, heavy voice boomed out: "Open up in there! Or we'll chop down the door!"
It was the voice of Chief of Detectives Bradley. The dismay which had seized upon Clifford at the first touch of the bell became in an instant a panic of consternation. He was trapped! The interpretation that would be placed upon his presence here was incontrovertibly obvious: he had been found assisting a notorious fugitive to evade arrest. And the man who had trapped him was Bradley! Again Bradley had triumphed over him and the disgrace that had fallen upon him as the outcome of his first conflict with the great Chief of Detectives was as nothing measured by the disgrace now about to descend upon him. Sister and brother noted the swift change that had come in Clifford's face. Mary Regan demanded the reason, and insisted; and briefly Clifford told her.
"It's about like this, is it?" queried the alert Slant-Face. "Besides getting me, and grabbing off the ten thousand reward, Bradley will soak you?"
"That's about it--except that, of the three things Bradley would rather soak me."
"I see," remarked Slant-Face--and for an instant he might have been thinking.
"Open up," roared Bradley, "or the next second we smash hell out of this door!"
"Nothing for it but to let them in," said Slant-Face. "Clifford, I want another word with Mary, so you bring in the bulls." And putting his hands on Clifford's body he turned him about and pushed him from the room.
Heavy, sick, Clifford went down the little dark hallway and unfastened the chain-bolt. "Grab him!" Bradley ordered his men, not recognizing Clifford, but knowing him not to be the fugitive he sought, and brushed by him and entered the sitting-room. Clifford, his arms seized, was pushed in after his former chief. Mary Regan and Slant-Face were seated behind a table. They did not rise. The square, dark face of Bradley, with its brilliant little eyes, fixed upon Slant-Face in grim gloating.
"Well, Slant-Face!"
"Well, Chief," was the very composed response.
"So, I've run you down at last!"
"So it seems, Chief," said Slant-Face.
At that moment one of the men who held Clifford thrust him forward before the Chief's attention. Bradley stared dumfounded at Clifford. Then his dark face flushed with greater triumph.
"And I've got you again too, Clifford!" he cried with crunching, vindictive joy.
"God, what a nice business for you--accomplice of a fugitive from justice who's just murdered three more men. You'll get yours, Clifford, and you'll get it good and plenty!"
Clifford made no response. It was beyond him to speak. What his enemy had said was the truth. He was sick.
"I don't quite get what you say about Clifford, Chief," remarked Slant-Face in his even tone, still keeping to his chair behind the table. "But I size it up that you think this is a great day for you-- getting me--and ten thousand--and getting something on Clifford--all in one haul."
Bradley could not restrain a brighter gleam of his little eyes at this summary of his victory and vengeance. But he did not answer Slant-Face.
"Boys," he said sharply, "put the bracelets on the two of them."
"Just a second, Chief," said Slant-Face. "I'm sorry you're not the one to make something out of this, for you and I have been friends. But if money and the glory of grabbing me belong to any one, they belong to another man."
"What's that?" snapped Bradley.
"Some one beat you to it, Chief."
So saying, Slant-Face rose from the table. For the first time they saw that on his wrists were hand-cuffs.
"Clifford had tailed me here, Chief," he went on, "and had nabbed me just before you showed up.
Automatically Clifford felt the pocket where his hand-cuffs had been. It was empty. In an instant he understood. A minute before, under cover of pushing him from the room, Slant-Face had picked that pocket. Through the blur of his own amazement, Clifford saw Bradley glaring at him in stupefaction, saw his dark face work convulsively with frustrated rage. Before he himself could grip his control, he again heard the even tone of Slant-Face.
"Guess we might as well be moving along down to Headquarters. So-long, Mary," and Clifford saw him give a manacled hand to his sister and again endure a close embrace.
"I'm ready, Clifford. And, Bradley, if you feel like joining us, I think Clifford ought to be able to stake all of you to car-fare out of his ten thousand."
As unpretentiously calm as if he were moving to the bar to order his accustomed buttermilk, Slant-Face started for the door. And with a swift glance at the white face of Mary Regan, Clifford, still a-reel with bewilderment, followed his prisoner out.