He strolled to the corner and glanced up and down the intersecting
street, but saw nothing save the oases of light shed by the street lamps
at the successive crossings. Then he strolled back the way he had come.
He was a shadow of a man, sliding noiselessly and without undue movement
through the semi-darkness. Also he was very alert, like a wild animal in
the jungle, keenly perceptive and receptive. The movement of another in
the darkness about him would need to have been more shadowy than he to
have escaped him.
In addition to the running advertisement of the state of affairs carried
to him by his senses, he had a subtler perception, a FEEL, of the
atmosphere around him. He knew that the house in front of which he
paused for a moment, contained children. Yet by no willed effort of
perception did he have this knowledge. For that matter, he was not even
aware that he knew, so occult was the impression. Yet, did a moment
arise in which action, in relation to that house, were imperative, he
would have acted on the assumption that it contained children. He was
not aware of all that he knew about the neighbourhood.
In the same way, he knew not how, he knew that no danger threatened in
the footfalls that came up the cross street. Before he saw the walker,
he knew him for a belated pedestrian hurrying home. The walker came
into view at the crossing and disappeared on up the street. The man that
watched, noted a light that flared up in the window of a house on the
corner, and as it died down he knew it for an expiring match. This was
conscious identification of familiar phenomena, and through his mind
flitted the thought, “Wanted to know what time.” In another house one
room was lighted. The light burned dimly and steadily, and he had the
feel that it was a sick-room.
He was especially interested in a house across the street in the middle
of the block. To this house he paid most attention. No matter what
way he looked, nor what way he walked, his looks and his steps always
returned to it. Except for an open window above the porch, there was
nothing unusual about the house. Nothing came in nor out. Nothing
happened. There were no lighted windows, nor had lights appeared and
disappeared in any of the windows. Yet it was the central point of his
consideration. He rallied to it each time after a divination of the
state of the neighbourhood.
Despite his feel of things, he was not confident. He was supremely
conscious of the precariousness of his situation. Though unperturbed by
the footfalls of the chance pedestrian, he was as keyed up and sensitive
and ready to be startled as any timorous deer. He was aware of
the possibility of other intelligences prowling about in the
darkness--intelligences similar to his own in movement, perception, and
divination.
Far down the street he caught a glimpse of something that moved. And he
knew it was no late home-goer, but menace and danger. He whistled twice
to the house across the street, then faded away shadow-like to the
corner and around the corner. Here he paused and looked about him
carefully. Reassured, he peered back around the corner and studied the
object that moved and that was coming nearer. He had divined aright. It
was a policeman.
The man went down the cross street to the next corner, from the shelter
of which he watched the corner he had just left. He saw the policeman
pass by, going straight on up the street. He paralleled the policeman's
course, and from the next corner again watched him go by; then he
returned the way he had come. He whistled once to the house across the
street, and after a time whistled once again. There was reassurance
in the whistle, just as there had been warning in the previous double
whistle.
He saw a dark bulk outline itself on the roof of the porch and slowly
descend a pillar. Then it came down the steps, passed through the small
iron gate, and went down the sidewalk, taking on the form of a man. He
that watched kept on his own side of the street and moved on abreast
to the corner, where he crossed over and joined the other. He was quite
small alongside the man he accosted.
“How'd you make out, Matt?” he asked.
The other grunted indistinctly, and walked on in silence a few steps.
“I reckon I landed the goods,” he said.
Jim chuckled in the darkness, and waited for further information. The
blocks passed by under their feet, and he grew impatient.
“Well, how about them goods?” he asked. “What kind of a haul did you
make, anyway?”
“I was too busy to figger it out, but it's fat. I can tell you that
much, Jim, it's fat. I don't dast to think how fat it is. Wait till we
get to the room.”
Jim looked at him keenly under the street lamp of the next crossing,
and saw that his face was a trifle grim and that he carried his left arm
peculiarly.
“What's the matter with your arm?” he demanded.
“The little cuss bit me. Hope I don't get hydrophoby. Folks gets
hydrophoby from manbite sometimes, don't they?”
“Gave you fight, eh?” Jim asked encouragingly.
The other grunted.
“You're harder'n hell to get information from,” Jim burst out irritably.
“Tell us about it. You ain't goin' to lose money just a-tellin' a guy.”
“I guess I choked him some,” came the answer. Then, by way of
explanation, “He woke up on me.”
“You did it neat. I never heard a sound.”
“Jim,” the other said with seriousness, “it's a hangin' matter.
I fixed 'm. I had to. He woke up on me. You an' me's got to do some
layin' low for a spell.”
Jim gave a low whistle of comprehension.
“Did you hear me whistle?” he asked suddenly.
“Sure. I was all done. I was just comin' out.”
“It was a bull. But he wasn't on a little bit. Went right by an' kept
a-paddin' the hoof out a sight. Then I come back an' gave you the
whistle. What made you take so long after that?”
“I was waitin' to make sure,” Matt explained. “I was mighty glad when
I heard you whistle again. It's hard work waitin'. I just sat there an'
thought an' thought... oh, all kinds of things. It's remarkable what
a fellow'll think about. And then there was a darn cat that kept movin'
around the house all' botherin' me with its noises.”
“An' it's fat!” Jim exclaimed irrelevantly and with joy.
“I'm sure tellin' you, Jim, it's fat. I'm plum' anxious for another look
at 'em.”
Unconsciously the two men quickened their pace. Yet they did not relax
from their caution. Twice they changed their course in order to avoid
policemen, and they made very sure that they were not observed when they
dived into the dark hallway of a cheap rooming house down town.
Not until they had gained their own room on the top floor, did they
scratch a match. While Jim lighted a lamp, Matt locked the door and
threw the bolts into place. As he turned, he noticed that his partner
was waiting expectantly. Matt smiled to himself at the other's
eagerness.
“Them search-lights is all right,” he said, drawing forth a small pocket
electric lamp and examining it. “But we got to get a new battery. It's
runnin' pretty weak. I thought once or twice it'd leave me in the dark.
Funny arrangements in that house. I near got lost. His room was on the
left, an' that fooled me some.”
“I told you it was on the left,” Jim interrupted.
“You told me it was on the right,” Matt went on. “I guess I know what
you told me, an' there's the map you drew.”
Fumbling in his vest pocket, he drew out a folded slip of paper. As he
unfolded it, Jim bent over and looked.
“I did make a mistake,” he confessed.
“You sure did. It got me guessin' some for a while.”
“But it don't matter now,” Jim cried. “Let's see what you got.”
“It does matter,” Matt retorted. “It matters a lot... to me. I've got
to run all the risk. I put my head in the trap while you stay on the
street. You got to get on to yourself an' be more careful. All right,
I'll show you.”
He dipped loosely into his trousers pocket and brought out a handful of
small diamonds. He spilled them out in a blazing stream on the greasy
table. Jim let out a great oath.
“That's nothing,” Matt said with triumphant complacence. “I ain't begun
yet.”
From one pocket after another he continued bringing forth the spoil.
There were many diamonds wrapped in chamois skin that were larger than
those in the first handful. From one pocket he brought out a handful of
very small cut gems.
“Sun dust,” he remarked, as he spilled them on the table in a space by
themselves.
Jim examined them.
“Just the same, they retail for a couple of dollars each,” he said. “Is
that all?”
“Ain't it enough?” the other demanded in an aggrieved tone.
“Sure it is,” Jim answered with unqualified approval. “Better'n I
expected. I wouldn't take a cent less than ten thousan' for the bunch.”
“Ten thousan',” Matt sneered. “They're worth twic't that, an' I don't
know anything about joolery, either. Look at that big boy!”
He picked it out from the sparkling heap and held it near to the lamp
with the air of an expert, weighing and judging.
“Worth a thousan' all by its lonely,” was Jim's quicker judgment.
“A thousan' your grandmother,” was Matt's scornful rejoinder. “You
couldn't buy it for three.”
“Wake me up! I'm dreamin'!” The sparkle of the gems was in Jim's eyes,
and he began sorting out the larger diamonds and examining them. “We're
rich men, Matt--we'll be regular swells.”
“It'll take years to get rid of 'em,” was Matt's more practical thought.
“But think how we'll live! Nothin' to do but spend the money an' go on
gettin' rid of em.”
Matt's eyes were beginning to sparkle, though sombrely, as his
phlegmatic nature woke up.
“I told you I didn't dast think how fat it was,” he murmured in a low
voice.
“What a killin'! What a killin'!” was the other's more ecstatic
utterance.
“I almost forgot,” Matt said, thrusting his hand into his inside coat
pocket.
A string of large pearls emerged from wrappings of tissue paper and
chamois skin. Jim scarcely glanced at them.
“They're worth money,” he said, and returned to the diamonds.
A silence fell on the two men. Jim played with the gems, running them
through his fingers, sorting them into piles, and spreading them out
flat and wide. He was a slender, weazened man, nervous, irritable,
high-strung, and anaemic--a typical child of the gutter, with
unbeautiful twisted features, small-eyed, with face and mouth
perpetually and feverishly hungry, brutish in a cat-like way, stamped to
the core with degeneracy.
Matt did not finger the diamonds. He sat with chin on hands and elbows
on table, blinking heavily at the blazing array. He was in every way a
contrast to the other. No city had bred him. He was heavy-muscled and
hairy, gorilla-like in strength and aspect. For him there was no unseen
world. His eyes were full and wide apart, and there seemed in them
a certain bold brotherliness. They inspired confidence. But a closer
inspection would have shown that his eyes were just a trifle too full,
just a shade too wide apart. He exceeded, spilled over the limits of
normality, and his features told lies about the man beneath.
“The bunch is worth fifty thousan',” Jim remarked suddenly.
“A hundred thousan',” Matt said.
The silence returned and endured a long time, to be broken again by Jim.
“What in hell was he doin' with 'em all at the house?--that's what
I want to know. I'd a-thought he'd kept 'em in the safe down at the
store.”
Matt had just been considering the vision of the throttled man as he had
last looked upon him in the dim light of the electric lantern; but he
did not start at the mention of him.
“There's no tellin',” he answered. “He might a-ben gettin' ready to
chuck his pardner. He might a-pulled out in the mornin' for parts
unknown, if we hadn't happened along. I guess there's just as many
thieves among honest men as there is among thieves. You read about such
things in the papers, Jim. Pardners is always knifin' each other.”
A queer, nervous look came into the other's eyes. Matt did not betray
that he noted it, though he said--
“What was you thinkin' about, Jim?”
Jim was a trifle awkward for the moment.
“Nothin',” he answered. “Only I was thinkin' just how funny it was--all
them jools at his house. What made you ask?”
“Nothin'. I was just wonderin', that was all.”
The silence settled down, broken by an occasional low and nervous giggle
on the part of Jim. He was overcome by the spread of gems. It was not
that he felt their beauty. He was unaware that they were beautiful in
themselves. But in them his swift imagination visioned the joys of life
they would buy, and all the desires and appetites of his diseased mind
and sickly flesh were tickled by the promise they extended. He builded
wondrous, orgy-haunted castles out of their brilliant fires, and was
appalled at what he builded. Then it was that he giggled. It was all
too impossible to be real. And yet there they blazed on the table before
him, fanning the flame of the lust of him, and he giggled again.
“I guess we might as well count 'em,” Matt said suddenly, tearing
himself away from his own visions. “You watch me an' see that
it's square, because you an' me has got to be on the square, Jim.
Understand?”
Jim did not like this, and betrayed it in his eyes, while Matt did not
like what he saw in his partner's eyes.
“Understand?” Matt repeated, almost menacingly.
“Ain't we always ben square?” the other replied, on the defensive
because of the treachery already whispering in him.
“It don't cost nothin', bein' square in hard times,” Matt retorted.
“It's bein' square in prosperity that counts. When we ain't got nothin',
we can't help bein' square. We're prosperous now, an' we've got to be
business men--honest business men. Understand?”
“That's the talk for me,” Jim approved, but deep down in the meagre soul
of him,--and in spite of him,--wanton and lawless thoughts were stirring
like chained beasts.
Matt stepped to the food shelf behind the two-burner kerosene cooking
stove. He emptied the tea from a paper bag, and from a second bag
emptied some red peppers. Returning to the table with the bags, he put
into them the two sizes of small diamonds. Then he counted the large
gems and wrapped them in their tissue paper and chamois skin.
“Hundred an' forty-seven good-sized ones,” was his inventory; “twenty
real big ones; two big boys and one whopper; an' a couple of fistfuls of
teeny ones an' dust.”
He looked at Jim.
“Correct,” was the response.
He wrote the count out on a slip of memorandum paper, and made a copy of
it, giving one slip to his partner and retaining the other.
“Just for reference,” he said.
Again he had recourse to the food shelf, where he emptied the sugar from
a large paper bag. Into this he thrust the diamonds, large and small,
wrapped it up in a bandanna handkerchief, and stowed it away under his
pillow. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes.
“An' you think they're worth a hundred thousan'?” Jim asked, pausing and
looking up from the unlacing of his shoe.
“Sure,” was the answer. “I seen a dance-house girl down in Arizona once,
with some big sparklers on her. They wasn't real. She said if they was
she wouldn't be dancin'. Said they'd be worth all of fifty thousan', an'
she didn't have a dozen of 'em all told.”
“Who'd work for a livin'?” Jim triumphantly demanded. “Pick an' shovel
work!” he sneered. “Work like a dog all my life, an' save all my wages,
an' I wouldn't have half as much as we got tonight.”
“Dish washin's about your measure, an' you couldn't get more'n twenty a
month an' board. Your figgers is 'way off, but your point is well taken.
Let them that likes it, work. I rode range for thirty a month when I was
young an' foolish. Well, I'm older, an' I ain't ridin' range.”
He got into bed on one side. Jim put out the light and followed him in
on the other side.
“How's your arm feel?” Jim queried amiably.