OF A PACKET OF LETTERS
M'Ginnis jerked aside the roll-top desk and falling on his knees before
a small but massive safe built into the wall behind, set the combination
and swung open the heavy door, talking to his companion as he did so and
quite unconscious of the pale face that watched him through the dingy
window.
"That dam' Soapy's gettin' ugly," he was saying, "an' it don't do t'
get ugly with me, Heine, boy! Soapy thinks he's smart Alec all right,
but I guess I'm some smarter. Why, I got evidence enough in here t'
'lectrocute a dozen Soapys."
"So?" said Heine, chewing on his cigar and peering into the safe. "Say,
what's all them tied up in sassy blue ribbon, Bud?"
"These?" said M'Ginnis, and he took out a bundle of letters, turning
them over in his big hands.
"Skirt--hey, Bud?"
"Sure thing!" he nodded, and as he stared down at this packet, how
should he know how tense and rigid had become the lounging form in the
darkness beyond the window, or guess of the wide glare of watchful eyes
or of the sudden quiver of a smouldering cigarette?
"Yes, a girl's letters, Heine! An' a hell of a lot of 'em. I dunno why I
keep 'em, but--oh, hell!" So saying he tossed the letters back again and
turned to his companion. "Hand over that dope!" he commanded, and Heine
passed over a bundle of papers which M'Ginnis carefully slipped into a
certain compartment. As he did so, Heine spun around upon his heel.
"Gee whiz!" he exclaimed, "you shook me that time, Soapy! Where've you
blown in from--"
"An' what th' hell are you nosin' around here for, anyway?" snarled
M'Ginnis, shutting the heavy safe with a fierce slam; "since you've
come in you can get out again--right now!"
Soapy seated himself upon a corner of the desk and placidly breathed out
two spirals of cigarette smoke.
"Heard about Hermy bein' married, Bud?" he enquired.
"Married? You're a liar! Hermy married? It's not so!"
"'S right!" nodded Soapy. "She's married th' millionaire guy as got
shot--you know--got shot in that wood--you'll remember, Bud!"
M'Ginnis sank into a chair and fell to biting his nails, staring blindly
before him.
"Is--this--straight goods?" he enquired thickly, without altering his
gaze.
"Sure! Y' see, she nursed him through his sickness, Bud--kind of did the
piller-smoothin' an' brow-strokin' act. Oh, I guess she comforted him
quite some."
M'Ginnis stared before him, worrying his nails with sharp white teeth.
"Ravenslee's a well man again, I hear, an' they're honeymoonin' at his
place on the Hudson--devotion ain't the word, Bud! 'S funny," said
Soapy, "but th' bullet as downed this guy drove Hermy into his arms.
'S funny, ain't it, Bud?"
With a hoarse, inarticulate cry that was scarcely human, M'Ginnis sprang
from his chair, his quivering fists up-flung. For a moment he stood
thus, striving vainly for utterance, then wrenched loose his
neckerchief, while Soapy methodically lighted a new cigarette from the
butt of its predecessor.
"Easy, Bud, easy!" he remonstrated gently, when M'Ginnis's torrent of
frenzied threats and curses had died down somewhat. "If you go on that
way, you'll go off--in a fit or something an' I shouldn't like t' see
ye die--that way!"
"Up the river, is he?" panted M'Ginnis.
"'S right, Bud, up the river in his big house--with her. I--"
"Is he, by--"
"A dandy place f' honeymoonin', Bud!"
"Loan me your gun, Soapy. I'll get him, by God! if I have t' shoot him
in her arms--loan me y'r gun!"
"I guess not, Bud, no, I guess not. I'd feel kind o' lonesome without
th' feel of it. Ask Heine; he'll loan you his; it's gettin' t' be quite
a habit with him, ain't it, Heine?"
M'Ginnis sat awhile glaring down at his clutching right hand, then he
rose, opened his desk, and took thence a heavy revolver, and slipped it
inside his coat.
"You're comin' with me, Heine," said he, "I'll want you."
"Sure thing, Bud," nodded Heine, chewing his cigar. "But what about
lettin' Soapy tag along too."
"Soapy," said M'Ginnis, striding to the door, "Soapy can go t' hell
right now."
"Why then, Bud," drawled Soapy, "I'll sure meet you--later. S'long."
Left alone, Soapy's languor gave place to swift action. In two strides,
it seemed, he was in the saloon, had beckoned the quick-eyed bartender
aside and put the question: "Where's the Kid, Jake?"
The bartender lifted an eyebrow and jerked a thumb upward.
"Shut-eye," he nodded, and turned back to his multifarious duties.
Up a narrow stair sped Soapy and, opening one of the numerous doors,
crossed to a truckle bed wherefrom a tousled head upreared itself.
"Who th'--"
"Say, Kid, are ye drunk or only asleep?"
"What yer want, Soapy? You lemme be--what yer want?" began Spike
drowsily.
"Nothin' much, Kid, only Bud an' Heine's gone t' shoot up y'r sister's
husband."
"Husband!" cried Spike, drowsy no longer. "Husband--say, d' ye mean
Geoff?"
"That's who, Kid. You was crackin' on t' me about wantin' t' make good;
well, here's y'r chance. Bud aims t' get there 'bout midnight--up th'
river, you know--so you got two hours. You'll have t' go some t' get in
first, but I guess you can do it."
"I will if it kills me!" cried Spike, springing toward the door.
"Hold on, Kid, you'll need some mazuma, maybe. Here's a ten-spot. It'll
be more useful t' you than me after t'night, I reckon. So get your
hooks on to it, an' now--beat it!"
Without more words Spike snatched the money, crammed it into his pocket
and, running down the stairs, was gone.
Then, after having lighted another cigarette, Soapy descended to
M'Ginnis's dingy office, where having dragged away the desk, he brought
a chair and sat with his ear against the safe, turning the combination
lock with long, delicate fingers. To and fro he turned it, very
patiently hearkening to the soft clicks the mechanism gave forth while
the cigarette smouldered between his pallid lips. Soapy, among other
accomplishments, was a yeggman renowned in the profession, and very soon
the heavy door swung softly back, and Soapy became lost in study. Money
there was and valuables of many kinds, and these he didn't trouble with,
but to the papers he gave a scrupulous attention; sometimes as he read
his white eyelids fluttered somewhat, and sometimes the dangling
cigarette quivered. Presently he arose and bore these many papers to the
sheet iron upon which stood the rusty stove; here he piled them and set
them alight and stood watching until they were reduced to a heap of
charred ash. Then, returning to the safe, he took out a bundle of
letters tied up in a faded blue ribbon, and seating himself at
M'Ginnis's desk, he slipped off the ribbon and very methodically began
to read these letters one after the other.
But as he read the humble entreaties, the passionate pleading of those
written words, blotted and smeared with the bitter tears of a woman's
poignant shame and anguish, Soapy's pendent cigarette fell to the floor
and lay there smouldering and forgotten, and his lips were drawn back
from sharp, white teeth--pallid lips contorted in a grin the more awful
because of the great drops that welled from the fierce, half-closed
eyes. Every letter he read and every word, then very methodically set
them back within the faded blue ribbon and sat staring down at them with
eyes wider open than usual--eyes that saw back into the past. And as he
sat thus, staring at what had been, he repeated a sentence to himself
over and over again at regular intervals, speaking with a soft
inflection none had ever heard from him before:
"Poor little Maggie--poor little kid!"