USEFUL INFORMATION
O'Byrn's eyes glistened. Here were possibilities, to be sure, but the
first thing to do was to get out of that quarter, which might be too
warm for comfort in a few minutes. Even as the reflection struck him,
Micky backed close against the wall, in the deepest shadows, as a man
rushed past him through the alley. It was Dick Peterson. The whole gang
must be out looking for Slade. To add to the discomfort of the
situation, the weather made good its threat of many hours' standing and
it began to rain. Slade lay inert, still unconscious from the fall.
Micky scratched his head in deep perplexity. He had no intention of
leaving the fellow, but what should he do with him?
Fortune was kind. At that moment a cab swung into the alley from
Lawrence Street at a leisurely pace. The driver was evidently taking a
short cut to more travelled thoroughfares. O'Byrn halted him and invoked
his assistance in loading Slade into the vehicle. "My friend's drunk,"
he laconically explained, to which the cabby grunted a gruff assent.
Slade had recovered his jarred senses by the time the cab arrived at a
point near Micky's lodging, and the Irishman prudently stopped the
driver, and paying him, dismissed him. It would never do to leave a
clear trail for Shaughnessy's gang, should they chance to stumble upon
it at all. He asked the still dazed Slade to wait for him a few minutes
in an adjacent drug store while he hurried over to the city hall, which
was near at hand, and telephoned the Courier office, informing Mr.
Harkins that he had a chance for a future "beat" that would have to be
improved at once, and he wouldn't be back. "All right, keep at work on
it. We won't need you," Harkins telephoned, and Micky rejoined Slade.
He piloted Slade to his lodgings, took him to his room, lighted his gas
heater and the two jets and installed his guest in the big easy chair
which the room boasted. He took the rocker himself, drawing it
confidentially close to Slade's chair. He then produced cigars, holding
a match for Slade to light his weed. "Smoke up, old man," remarked
Micky, cordially. "It'll be comfortably warm here in a few minutes.
Stretch out and pull yourself together. You got a nasty fall." Slade
smiled slightly, without words, and arranged himself luxuriously in the
big chair, puffing thoughtfully at his weed. A pleasant glow stole
through the room. Micky, also puffing methodically, was silent as his
companion, philosophically waiting for the spirit to move. Cautiously
watching Slade, he was gratified to see a sullen, smouldering fire in
the queer black eyes, ordinarily as indifferent as a Chinaman's. Slade
would evidently be in a confidential mood in a few moments, and Micky
could well afford to wait.
Not many newspaper men could have expected Nick Slade, accredited heeler
for the Shaughnessy gang, to wax confidential, under any circumstances,
to a representative of the press. His very presence at that moment, in
the room of a reporter of the Courier, of all papers, was anomalous. But
O'Byrn was shrewd. He had learned early that success for the reporter on
a daily newspaper depends on his being all things to all men. Tact is
the little key that unlocks all doors. A hundred different plans of
campaign are needed for a hundred different men, yet every man must be
met on a broad and common field of friendliness. Anything short of that
curtails the reporter's field of usefulness. One shorter sighted than
Micky would perhaps have avoided making Slade's acquaintance in the
beginning, on the ground that he was not a respectable person. To be
sure he was not. Slade himself would be the last to question the
impeachment. Because of this very lack of respectability, Slade's good
graces were valuable to Micky, for a large proportion of the news that
the public revels in is garnered from the ranks of the non-respectable.
There is little in the life of your ordinary, respectable citizen to
keep the typesetters busy, for there is nothing sensational in virtue
unless it be possessed by a politician. Then it is inexplicable. But the
record of the ordinary esteemed citizen can usually be summed up in the
horns of life's trilemma: birth, marriage and death, unless, indeed, he
excels at golf. The newspapers still devote considerable space to it.
Slade knew the men who made much of the real news of the town, the news
with fat head-lines. To be sure, many of them figured in it unwillingly,
but that was a minor consideration, for their doings often made and sold
extras. Chance had thrown Slade in Micky's way early in the Irishman's
career in the town, and the reporter's trained journalistic sense told
him that Slade's confidence would be valuable. So it had been. The
episode in Goldberg's saloon, when Slade evaded wrath that fell upon the
luckless head of O'Byrn, had not ended their acquaintance. Micky had
found occasion to do Slade some good turns since then. And now
Slade,--from ambuscade, to be sure, but none the less effectively,--was
destined to reciprocate tenfold.
Slade had been a heeler for the gang. It was not an important post,
affording a pose in the limelight, but that fact had its compensations.
Evidently Slade, in trying, perhaps, to fit himself surreptitiously for
larger responsibilities, had come to grief. And, as Micky watched him,
smoking in the big chair, he noted a fire of sullen resentment kindling
in Slade's eyes.
"Say, old man," inquired Slade suddenly, "where'd you pick me up
tonight? How'd you happen to connect with me, anyway?"
Micky grinned. "Why, I was up to the same game you were, I guess," he
explained. "Shaughnessy passed me tonight, and, though I'd never met
him, I couldn't help throwin' the con' into him a little, just for luck.
I'd seen some things, you know, and I guess he was next to what I was
drivin' at, all right. But he never turned a hair and went on, with me
doin' a quick sneak after him. I missed him finally, but some of his
gang blew along, and after a while I was up stairs in Hogan's, perched
on a table and rubberin' through a hole in the wall. All of a sudden up
jumps Goldberg, yellin' something about a spy, and I thought I was
copped for fair. I was down stairs in three shakes, and I went through a
waiter like a halfback to do it. I was just about to breathe the open
when you bumped along down. You were dead to the world when I dragged
you out, I guess, and I kept you out of sight of the gang,--which was
looking for you, my boy,--till I got the cab. And here you are.
Goldberg's as good a bouncer as his man Mulligan, ain't he?"
"Goldberg?" echoed Slade. "Nit, young feller, he never touched me. They
were all grabbin' for me at once, and I shook the whole bunch, just as I
did in that session at Goldberg's. I wound around like a gimlet for a
minute and I was goin' some when I went through the door. Then," in a
tone of deep disgust, "I had to miss my bearin's, of course, and when I
brought my hoof down for the first stair I must have hit about the last
one, I guess. Anyway, the lights went out." He shook his head
mournfully, while O'Byrn chuckled.
"Don't you mind," said he soothingly, "Goldberg got a worse one than
you. He bumped along down after you, and afterward he was hoppin' around
on one leg lookin' for Nicky, who was just then safe in the arms of
Micky. And then along blew the dear old cab. I told the cabby you were
drunk, you know."
"Oh, you did, did you?" without enthusiasm. "No such luck this time. Oh,
it's all right; it was a good bluff. Now about the rough-house. It was a
funny stunt, your happenin' to be there at the same time I was. You've
got your nerve with you, all right. As for yours truly, I'd been there
so often before, without any trouble, that I must have got careless.
Anyway, their talk was interesting and I shoved my face out from behind
the sideboard a little too far, and up jumps that bald-headed dog of a
Goldberg. And now my goose is cooked."
He sat silent for a few moments, moodily puffing his cigar and scowling
blackly. O'Byrn critically watched him, without words. The sullen glow
returned to Slade's eyes, his sallow cheeks flushed slightly. Then, with
a savage oath, he leaped to his feet, facing the waiting Irishman.
"See here!" he exclaimed fiercely, "I owe you for more than one good
turn, and I guess if you hadn't happened to be on deck tonight those
dogs would have killed me. You're a good feller and they're a bunch of
yellow curs. I've worked for 'em for all I was worth for a long while,
done dirty work for 'em, and what have I got? Just promises and a run
around the rim, that's all, when I've got enough in me to be helpin' to
work the calliope in the inside. And they know it, too,--they know I
ain't no fool. Many's the time has Dick Peterson, the rotten liar, said
to me: 'Slade, my boy, you're the stuff; we're goin' to take care of
you.' Promises, promises to burn! And it's all I've had.
"Well, that's the way it went, while they kept on playin' me for a
sucker. Many's the job I've done for Peterson that he didn't have the
sand for to do himself. I was always willin'." Micky suppressed a smile
at the injured sorrow in Slade's tones. The ex-heeler shrugged his
shoulders wearily and resumed his seat. The savagery had departed from
his demeanor, replaced by an air of dogged malice.
"Why, that gang of lepers," he resumed impressively, "that bunch of
hard-hearted slobs would have dumped me in a minute, after that little
scrape me and you was mixed up in at Goldberg's, if it hadn't been for
Peterson, and he ain't used me right to any extent since then, either.
But if it hadn't been for him I'd have got t'run down then, with never a
thought for what I'd done for 'em. You're always pure wool while you can
be used, then you're cheap crash; remember that, my boy. I was kin' o'
hangin' on by my teeth, though, till tonight. Now it's some other burg
for mine, or likely get killed. Well, that's all right, too. They're
racin' in other burgs as well as this, and I guess Slade can make a few
other little pick-ups, too, just to keep the wolf away." He smiled
cunningly.
"But before I take the choo-choos out," he continued, his eyes alive
with malice as he bent toward Micky, "there's a score to settle with
this lovely old Shaughnessy gang that I'm thinkin' will jar more than
one of 'em clear behind the bars. You know this Shaughnessy. He's a deep
one, though I notice you was onto him the very day of the convention.
Nobody knows what he's drivin' at except his own little ring, the ring
that everyone in this buncoed town, barrin' me and you and a mighty few
others, thinks has turned him down. Turned him down!" Slade laughed
dryly. "Why, he's got every mother's son of 'em by the neck; could jail
every cursed one of 'em and crawl out of the muss himself. Oh, I believe
he could, he's the devil himself.
"But there's one that's fooled him," exultantly, "and he won't know how
much till election day. Sure, they caught me tonight, but do you think
for a minute they'll find out that I've been attendin' their devilish
little seances for months, unbeknown to 'em? Well, I have. I was at the
meetin' that decided this whole funny programme that is givin' Fusion
black eyes every minute, and Fusion would have won out in a canter if it
had anyone else than this devil of a Shaughnessy to buck against. I was
at that meetin', and I thought I knew a thing or two, but say, feller,
the nerve of that proposition got my alley. When Shaughnessy sprung it
on the bunch I came near dyin' prematoorly on the spot by wantin' to
jump out from behind the sideboard and tellin' Shaughnessy he was a
gilt-edged dandy; which he is, if he ain't got no soul. 'But,' says the
gang, when he sprung it, 'it won't work. They won't follow us when we
talk of throwin' you down. The party'll get hacked to pieces in its own
convention.' 'Gentlemen,' says he, 'I never mixed with the hoi-polloi
anyway, didn't have to. You have. They don't like me and they do like
you. Work this thing slick, as I tell you to, and you'll have 'em all
marking time to your music.' And it was so. Remember the convention? The
reformers thought it meant a clean bill; the grafters thought it would
be a gang more lavish than Shaughnessy had been. Oh, it was a lovely
move. And he's on top yet, and they don't know it."
He gave Micky a lingering look. "I'm for gettin' even," he said. "You've
been trying to get onto the trail ever since the convention; you've had
your suspicions. I saw you myself the other night; walked from
Shaughnessy's office back of you, after that old whitewashed graveyard
of a nominee for mayor had left there. I was there, just as I'd been at
others, though Mr. Shaughnessy never invited me. Of course, they're
careful about windows, etc., but I can always make good somehow on a
still hunt. What do I know? I know the whole rotten business. The circle
always goes into particulars and there have been some beautiful
give-and-takes between Shaughnessy and old Graveyard-Whiskers. Whiskers
don't want to stand, not for a minute, you know, but Shaughnessy holds
him to the gaff because he's _respectable_." This with a grim laugh.
"Shaughnessy got his hooks on him years ago; it's a funny story, I
guess. The old man hates to give up living decent; he knows if he's
elected it'll be the worst administration of graft this city or any
other ever saw. He can't help himself; Shaughnessy's claws are in him."
Micky was bending forward. Imagined possibilities were assuming definite
shape. "Is it Consolidated Gas?" he asked, eagerly.
"Consolidated Gas!" Slade echoed. "Why, son, that's only the beginning.
It's a long, hard story, a bigger one than you'll want to believe, but I
know where you can get the proofs for it. I've been busy for a long
time. When I saw the gang wasn't goin' to do anything for me, I began to
find out about things on my own hook, and I've got a way of doin' it and
I remember what I hear. When this thing was over and Fusion was knocked
out, I was goin' to diplomatically introduce myself into a better thing,
and then I'd have got it. But that's all changed now. When I remember
that those lepers I've done so much for would have liked to murder me
tonight, I get hell-hot. I want to see 'em downed now. I'm tired of the
rotten town anyway. Now, I put you on, see? You have to do the work, for
I've got to keep out of sight. 'Twon't be safe for me to be floatin'
around the old diggin's, for I'm a 'traitor' now, you know, and a 'dirty
spy.' But don't you care, it's a rich thing for you. You'll be at the
top of the newspaper heap. I'll stay around here on the q. t. long
enough to see the fun, and then it's me quietly out. There's an Indian
streak in me, I guess, and it's doing double duty just now." His
malevolent face looked it.
For the next hour Micky listened to a recital that filled him with
gaping amazement at a revelation of municipal iniquity, spreading to the
State-house and even beyond, that was undreamed of by the general
public. It thrilled him with the lust to secure as big, pulsing,
astounding chapters in a vital news story as were ever written. At the
close, and when some talk had been devoted to his plan of procedure,
Slade arose to depart. "I've got some friends, in a quiet place, that
won't give me away," he announced.
Micky accompanied him to the front door. "Good night, Santa Claus," he
said, with twinkling eyes, and Slade, somewhat mystified, unobtrusively
departed.