Railroad Street to the right of Stanley Junction was a busy, respectable
thoroughfare. There were a hotel, some restaurants, a store or two, and
beyond these some old residences.
To the left, however, the street retrograded into second-hand stores,
junk-shops, and the like, cheap eating places and boarding-houses, with
a mixture of saloons.
The lower class of railroad employees and the scum of the Junction
usually infested these places. At a restaurant called "The Signal"
Ralph, from what he learned that day, felt he was pretty sure to get
some trace of Mort Bemis.
He went by the place slowly once or twice, but could not discover Bemis
in the crowded front room.
Then he paced down the alley at the side of the building. Several
lower-story apartments showed lighted up. He approached the open window
of one of these.
As he did so, he noticed that directly under it lay some person asleep,
rolled up in horse-blankets. Ralph nearly stumbled over this
individual.
He glanced into the room beyond the window. It held a table, at which
was seated the object of his search.
Mort Bemis was idly pawing over a greasy deck of playing cards. He
seemed to be awaiting the arrival of congenial company. Tilted back in
a chair against the wall near by, a skullcap pulled down over his eyes
and seemingly asleep, was a person Ralph did not recognize.
Ralph now stepped cautiously over the sleeper at his feet so as not to
disturb him, and went around to the front of the restaurant.
It was run by a man named Prince, who at one time had conducted eating
camps for railroad construction crews. He kept lodgers upstairs, and
derived a good deal of revenue by letting out the rear rooms of the
lower floor to card-players.
Ralph entered the restaurant and passed through a curtained doorway at
one side. Prince, at the cashier's desk, gave him a keen look, but took
him for some new recruit to the crowd who infested the rear rooms.
A narrow passageway led the length of the rear addition. Ralph turned
the knob of the second door he reached. He found he had correctly
located the apartment he had viewed from the alley.
Mort Bemis looked up as Ralph closed the door behind him. He started
and stared. Ralph came around to the table, sank into the chair
directly opposite Bemis, and looked him squarely in the face.
"What are you doing here?" demanded Bemis a surly, suspicious expression
crossing his features.
"I came particularly to see you," answered Ralph calmly. "Can I have
your attention for a minute or two?"
"Just two of them," growled Bemis.
Ralph did not scare at the bullying, significant manner of the
discharged leverman.
"It's just this," he said bluntly: "you visited the switch tower
yesterday and came very nearly causing a bad wreck."
"Who told you so?" demanded Bemis.
"Oh, there are plenty of witnesses, your former landlady, for one.
Another low-down trick was attempted this afternoon, instigated, I
believe, by you. Now, Mr. Bemis, this has come to a dead-open-and-shut
conclusion."
"Has it? How?" sneered Mort.
"I have legitimately succeeded to your position, and I intend to hold
it. You seem resolved to discredit and disgrace me. It won't work. If
you make one more break in my direction, I shall go to the
superintendent of the Great Northern, make a formal complaint of
malicious mischief, and then enter a regular complaint with the police."
Mort Bemis did not reply. His bluff was gone, for he knew that Ralph
meant every word that he said.
"There's another thing," pursued Ralph: "you owe a poor widow money that
she needs, and needs badly. If you have any sense of shame or honor in
your nature, you will find honest work and pay her."
"I don't want none of your advice!" flared out Bemis. "You've said your
say! Then get out. I'll keep hands off because I don't fancy being
locked up, but," he added with a malicious grin, "I can't hold back my
friends from doing what they like."
"You have had your warning," said Ralph quietly, rising to his feet.
"I've given you your chance. Leave my affairs alone, if you are wise."
Ralph started for the door. Suddenly his way was blocked. The person
he had supposed to be asleep, tilted back against the wall in a chair,
had roused up with marvelous quickness.
As this individual threw back his skullcap, he revealed the coarse,
bloated face of a boy about two years Ralph's senior. He was a
powerfully-built fellow. Ralph remembered having seen him once in the
hands of the police after a raid on a chicken fight at the fair grounds.
"Easy," spoke this person, springing between Ralph and the door, and
doubling up his fists pugilist-fashion. "This gent is my friend, and
you've insulted him."
"I think not," said Ralph calmly.
"Do all your thinking quick, then," advised the other, "for I want
satisfaction."
The speaker drove at Ralph with one hand. It was a sledge-hammer blow.
Ralph whirled half-way across the room.
His antagonist followed him up quickly. His back now to the window, he
put up his fists anew.
"I wanted some training," he chuckled. "Come up to your punishment. Do
you know who I am?"
"I do not, and don't care," answered Ralph quickly, nettled out of his
ordinary composure by a blow that had nearly knocked the breath out of
his body.
"Then you can't read the newspapers. I'm Young Slavin, the juvenile
Hercules, light-weight champeen. Come, wade in; I give you one chanct."
"I have no quarrel with you," remarked Ralph. "Stand aside. I wish to
leave this room."
"Ho! ho! When you do, it will be on a shutter."
"And I shall not let you pound me. I warn you to mind your own
business."
"Time!" roared the pugilist gloatingly.
Ralph took in the situation in all its bearings. He realized that he
confronted a young giant. To oppose his prodigious muscular strength in
even battle would be to be hammered to a jelly.
The occasion called for action, however. Ralph reflected for a bare
minute, and then he "waded in."
With a rush he made a slanting dive for the brutal bully, aiming
squarely for his feet.
Exercising all the muscle of which he was capable, Ralph grasped his
antagonist's ankles, took him off his guard, gave him a sudden trip, and
sent him toppling backwards.
With a yell of consternation and pain Young Slavin went crashing through
the window sash.