Teddie, alone with her irate young prize-fighter, turned and regarded
him with a studiously narrowed eye.
“Now, what do you want to know?” she quietly demanded. She felt oddly
and immeasurably older than she had done but one short week ago.
“I want ’o know who’s playin’ double in this mix-up,” Gunboat Dorgan
promptly asserted.
“I don’t quite understand,” protested Teddie.
“Well, first thing, I want ’o know just what yuh said about that car?”
“When?” temporized Teddie. “And where?”
“Just b’fore I kissed yuh, right here in this room,” asserted the
over-honest youth. Whereupon Teddie stiffened and winced and had to take
a grip on herself before she could control her voice.
“I’m sorry there’s been any mistake about it,” explained Teddie, doing
her best to be patient. “I remember now, I said you could have the car.
And, as a matter of fact, you are perfectly welcome to it, or what’s
left of it!”
“Then why’s this man West talkin’ so big about grand larceny and gettin’
me locked up? What’s he know about what’s been passin’ strictly b’tween
yuh and me? Yuh were up ag’inst it, and I could see it, and I helped yuh
out the same as I’d help any girl. And I didn’t have me hand out when I
did it!”
“That was the trouble, Mr. Dorgan,” Teddie tried to tell him. “I was
willing to accept service from you without stopping to consider whether
or not it could be repaid, I mean adequately repaid. And that’s where I
made my mistake. You’ll have to attribute that mistake, I’m afraid, to
the defects in my bringing up. It’s a sort of penalty for the past. One
gets into the habit of accepting things, just as one accepts
cinnamon-toast from the footman, or a trip across the Hudson from the
ferry-boat, without being actively conscious of any human obligation.
That man had made himself unbearably offensive to me, and I asked you to
punch his nose for me, without remembering the risks it involved,
without appreciating the danger I was bringing——”
“Risks!” cried Gunboat, with a derisive hoot, finally arriving at a
definite idea in what seemed a morass of abstractions. “Where’s the
risks in standin’ up to a big stiff like that?”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking of the risks to you,” Teddie rather
wearily explained. “I was rather selfishly remembering the risks to
myself.”
“Well, yuh ain’t suffered none from it, have yuh?” derided her still
indignant-eyed cross-examiner.
“I’ve just paid Raoul Uhlan twenty-five thousand dollars as compensation
for his injuries,” explained Teddie, as coolly as she was able.
Gunboat Dorgan fell back, gaped a little, and then swallowed hard.
“Yuh paid—yuh paid that mutt—that money—for—for what he’d get tarred
and feathered for—down in my Ward!” he gasped, wide-eyed with
incredulity.
Teddie nodded.
And Gunboat, seeing that movement of acquiescence, repeated:
“Twenty-five thousand dollars!” Then he began to stride meditatively
back and forth, pacing the studio-rug with his characteristic
panther-like step. Teddie watched him, without speaking, without moving.
She watched him until he came to an abrupt stop.
“Say, Ruby was right in this, after all,” he suddenly proclaimed. “_I_
was the guy who got off his trolley. Yuh—yuh looked so good to me I got
my numbers mixed. I got to dreamin’ things. But twenty-five thousand
bucks in cold cash ain’t no dream. And d’ yuh know what I’m goin’ to do,
and do right now? I’m goin’ up to that Uhlan guy and get that
twenty-five thousand back. Just so ’s yuh can see I’m a little more on
the level than yuh’ve been imaginin’. I’m goin’ to make that
studio-lizard come across wit’ that dough—_with_ that dough,” he
amended, remembering, in his excitement, certain old-time admonitions as
to the utterance of his mother-tongue.
“But I don’t want you to do that!” cried Teddie, harboring a strangely
muddled-up and reluctant admiration for the deluded young fire-eater
with the Saint Anthony light in his blazing blue eyes.
“Of course yuh don’t, for the thing’s got yuh buffaloed the same as
_yuh_ got me buffaloed,” proclaimed the knight of the ring. “And the
whole lay-out’s wrong. The only thing that got hurt about that guy was
his dignity. I knew what I was doin’ all the time. I held back on the
sleep-punch, and played wit’ him. I didn’t give him anything that a
pound of beefsteak wouldn’t put right inside o’ twenty-four hours—and
he knows it as well as I do. But now he’s pulled this blackmail stuff
I’m goin’ to put him wise to how I was toyin’ wit’ him. I’m goin’ to let
him see that if he ever so much as opens his trap about this business
he’s goin’ to have it decorated wit’ a double set o’ plates when I get
through wit’ him—when I get through _with_ him. And the next time he’ll
holler so loud for help they’ll be fannin’ him wit’ a hearse-plume
before he’s finished!”
Teddie tried to stop him as he turned away.
“Noth-thing doin’!” he proclaimed with his movie-hero side-movement of
the hand. “I’m Irish, I am, and me Irish is up. Yuh’re goin’ to see this
goob bitin’ on a mouth-gag or yuh’re goin’ to see crape swingin’ over
his door-mat!”
“It’s no use,” Teddie still tried to tell him. “It’s too late. It will
only make things much worse than they already are!”
But Gunboat Dorgan hadn’t been crowned with that soubriquet of
belligerency without fit and proper reason.
“I’m wise to this lay-out now,” he announced from the doorway, “and I’m
goin’ to have a hand in windin’ it up. It’s no use tryin’ to flag me
off. And I ain’t sayin’ yuh’re a quitter, for yuh’re only a girl. But
yuh don’t see me layin’ down in the shafts wit’ a thing like this under
me nose. I’m goin’ through wit’ this, and nobody’s goin’ to stop me. And
maybe this’ll square up a little for—for them lamps o’ yours I put on
the blink!”