Chapter XXVI: Right and Left

There had been a shiver and a scamper in that nether world of which Craig for a period had been the unwilling “Napoleon.” There was no doubt about that. The word had been passed: “Lay low.” There was nothing new about this. Every now and then some such warning went out--following some big crime, preceding some special investigation, and especially around election time. But to a number of the denizens of this underworld had the signal come with special violence--particularly to those who had recently been in touch with Three Sevens.

Count Wolf, with the nagging New York detectives on his trail, had suddenly decided to put over his designs of vengeance on the man he believed had betrayed him. Taylor Leamy suddenly wished he were back in Cincinnati.

When the district attorney and the police got together for a real clean-up, the millstones were turning--grinding. It was “Good night!” to the weevils in the wheat.

Especially disquieting was that report that Three Sevens had been taken and, in exchange for benefits, present and to come, had decided to tell all that he knew. No one knew where this rumor originated. No one knew how much it contained of truth. But there it was, with a quality about it to furnish a shiver and a scamper even to those who had believed themselves to be most immune.

It was the very fact that so little was known about Three Sevens, himself, apart from that amazing delivery he had put over in San Pedro, that this new rumor concerning Craig assumed the quality it did. No one knew what he knew and what he didn’t know. A good deal was taken for granted. Here was a man who could bargain with not only the police, but the finicky and uncompromising district attorney.

“You can tell it to the whole world,” said Trick O’Ray, “I ain’t scared of him, nor no other stiff.”

“It ain’t no disgrace to lay low for a while, though, Tricky,” grinned Jarvis.

Jarvis knew that Trick was talking for the benefit of Violet rather than for the mere enunciation of pure truth.

“The first chance I gets,” said Trick, “I put him in the morgue.”

Jarvis laughed genially.

He was perfectly willing to have Trick try. He was perfectly willing to have almost anything happen to Tricky, too. He was, at any time, especially now, with Violet’s not ungraceful shape occupying so much of his physical and mental vision.

There was nothing dark and mysterious about this lair of the well-known pair. It was just an ordinary little flat, far out in the suburbs. There was even a touch of home about it. There was a red tablecloth on the table at which the men sat. On this the lighted lamp shone warmly. In the corner stood the cook stove radiating heat and sausage smells, and the woman at the side of it might have been the bride of any well-paid workman. Well-paid workmen were what Trick and Jarvis might have been--if one didn’t examine their soft hands, look too long at the inner hardness of their faces.

But, in general, they were very human--Jarvis, the man of the world, and the superior of the two, listening tolerantly to an inferior whom he secretly intends to dupe.

“Why didn’t you do it the last time you seen him?” demanded Violet, with a touch of disdain.

Secretly, she also was dreaming of romance, not of the romance that was in Ben Jarvis’ thought. Something more splendid by far. Once, not so long ago, she had thought of forsaking Trick for Ben. But no more! No, there was another. She thought of him now as she stood there frying sausages, her thoughts skyrocketing--as they had done more or less ever since she had met him--Three Sevens himself!

Why not?

She could recall every moment of their meeting, from the first instant that she had seen him. What a thrill! Had she thrilled him like that? Two fortune tellers and a trance medium had thus far assured her that she had. And hadn’t he looked her in the eyes, and spoken to her as if she were a lady, and held her hand the shred of a century when they parted?

“I wasn’t born for this,” said Violet to herself as she fried the sausage for the two thieves at the table, “I was born for something better. My Gawd, I could love him so!”

She emptied the sausages into a plate and put this on the red tablecloth. She reached down a loaf of bread from a shelf and added this to the repast. Her ideas of domestic science were primitive. Her thoughts were elsewhere.

Trick had taken a knife from his pocket. He opened this, showed he was housebroken by wiping it on the tablecloth, then cut himself a hunk of bread. He parted this and thrust a piece of the hot sausage into the opening with the point of his knife. On his monkeylike face had come a banquet look.

“Git us some coffee,” he commanded.

“What’s the matter with a can of suds?” Ben asked.

Ben had also helped himself. He had broken off a piece of bread and folded this over into a sort of tongs with which he secured his meat.

Not like this had Three Sevens eaten, Violet reflected. He had joined her and Trick and Ben in the rear room of a saloon which was also a restaurant of sorts, and they had regaled themselves together. She herself had been scarcely able to eat--pretending she had a headache. It was so she could watch Three Sevens, be ready to meet his eye whenever he should chance to look at her. And he had looked at her.

“Sure, a scuttle o’ suds,” said Trick.

Trick was in a quiver of eagerness. His mouth was full. He was eating with a sort of ferocious delight.

Ben was but little less absorbed, but he had a glance for the girl as she took a tin bucket from the window sill. She went out of the little flat without a word.

Neither of them was ever to see her again.

Craig saw her, at the bottom of the dark stairs, three flights down. He spoke to her.

“Hello, Violet----” the merest whisper.

She suppressed a cry. Then Craig was speaking to her rapidly.

“Keep right on going, but give me the key to the flat. You can give me the bucket, too, if you want to.”

“Where----” she began, stifled.

“You’ve got a brother in Waukegan.”

“How did you know?”

“I found out.”

“Was it--did you----”

“Think about you? Yes. Go to him. Later, go West.”

“What’s the matter? What are you going to do? Will I----”

“Violet, do what I tell you, now! Agreed?”

He got her affirmative without a word from her. She had passed him a key. There was a shyness and a confidingness about her, somehow, and all of a sudden, that made it seem to Craig that he was talking to a little child--as if, here in this somber and also sinister hall, a kindly fate had moved the years back for Violet and made her a child again.

It was in that sort of a spirit that Craig put his hands on Violet’s shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. It was a fraternal kiss.

That was their leave taking. And that was the sum and climax of Violet’s romance. After all, many a woman and man has had to be satisfied with less.

Craig didn’t look back of him. He didn’t have to. He had that species of omniscience--small and human, but none the less a variety of omniscience itself--that permitted him to know that Violet had fled away through the night, to fairer fields and happier, he hoped.

With a thought like that he came to the door of the flat where the two fugitives gorged and waited for their beer. Craig didn’t need the key. He had the signal that would have caused them to open. But it would be easier with the key. He smiled as he fitted the key to the lock.

He was smiling as he pushed the door open. He was smiling still as the silence fell. He smiled because he was thinking of Violet, and then of what old Eddie Yarmouth used to say:

“’Tis a thought that’ll bring you luck.”

Eddie was right. The surprise was perfect. Craig spoke softly.

“How’ll you ride?” he asked. “Taxi--or an ambulance?”

* * * * *

There were a dozen places in any one of which Taylor Leamy might have sought refuge, and all of these Craig had visited while the night was still young, as Taylor Leamy himself was to discover. And in each one of these Craig had left an impression that was at once ensnaring and disquieting.

Leamy, that night, had eaten his dinner in a quiet little restaurant back of a brewery. He was almost the only customer in the place. The quiet had appealed to him. Also, it had given him time to reflect.

Getting a little old, a little fat, a little soft. No, it wouldn’t do for him to make any more false plays. The idea of prison nauseated him--the hardness, the violence, the ugliness of everything. He hoped that Craig would prosper. Perhaps he could get as much as ten--as much as twenty--thousand dollars out of Craig. For Craig also must hate prison. But what had been the meaning of that tip he had got from Bender to lay low, let Craig alone for a while?

Bender was a shyster lawyer. In times past, Leamy had paid Bender thousands of dollars. Was Bender now giving him a straight tip? Or had Bender accepted a fee from Craig himself?

The message had come to Leamy at his lodging house, a quiet place, kept by a respectable widow.

He had taken to living much at night, since his return to Chicago, sleeping mostly in the daytime. It wouldn’t do for him to stumble into the wrong sort of person and get recognized. And yet he couldn’t be too cautious, either. His funds were running low. Now, if he could only blackmail Craig out of a comfortable sum!

The waiter who had served him hastily approached from the other end of the hall.

“Beg pardon,” said the waiter. “Are you Mr. Finch?”

It was the name that Leamy had adopted since his return. He was Finch to Three Sevens.

“Yes,” he said cautiously. “I’m Mr. Finch.”

“Just before you came in,” said the waiter, “a gentleman gave me this card for you. I almost forgot.”

Leamy took the card. It was a plain card. There was a message written on it as follows:

Y 630
Report before midnight.
3777

Leamy lingered a little longer picking his teeth. He made of it an elaborate operation. But all the time that he was doing this he could feel the blood draining back to his heart and leaving something of a weight and a coldness there. He remembered that “Y 630.” How well he remembered it--his own private mark on the books of San Pedro!

He would have to get rid of this feeling. So he told himself when he was out in the street. He went to a small political club of the neighborhood where he had been wont to slay a few of his heavy hours with a game of billiards. And he played there now, indifferently, albeit with a passion of forced attention, until a certain marker, just back from an errand, noticed him and handed him a card:

Y 630

Heigh-o! He pocketed the card, put up his cue.

Leamy yawned. All right, he was willing to let it go at that. A man of his age appreciated a good night’s sleep. He paid his reckoning. He thought with appreciation of the quiet room that was awaiting him at the widow’s house.

A little later he let himself in with a pass-key. The hall of the widow’s house was dimly lighted. Leamy started for the stairs. He stopped short.

Odd, but there for a moment he was almost certain that the woman who stood there in front of him was a certain other widow who had once confronted him, telling him that he had robbed her of her last cent. Then Leamy pulled himself together. It was no one but his landlady.

“Goodness, Mrs. Travis,” he exclaimed, with a touch of the jocular, “you almost frightened me.”

“Maybe it was because I was frightened myself,” said Mrs. Travis.

She was a woman who had lost all sense of humor if she had ever possessed any.

“I should have rung the bell,” said Leamy.

“It wasn’t that,” said she. “It was the gentleman who was just here looking for you. He was a fine-looking gentleman, but there was something in his face I can’t forget.”

Leamy felt a thin, fine quiver in his spine.

“To see me? What did he want?”

“He didn’t say. He said you’d know. He said: ‘Tell him Three Sevens said’--what does that mean?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Mrs. Travis.”

“But he said you would. He said: ‘Tell him Three Sevens orders him to come to his office, without fail, before midnight.’”

“Oh, yes,” said Leamy, “I remember, now. It’s something about our lodge.” And Leamy turned and left the house. He was in need of air. As a matter of fact he had been in need of air--although he hadn’t recognized the necessity at once--ever since Mrs. Travis had reminded him of that other widow.

It was an hour later before Leamy succeeded in getting Bender, the shyster lawyer, on the telephone. Bender, it appeared, had been dining with friends and was in a jovial mood.

“What did you mean by that message?” Leamy asked, as soon as he had established his identity.

“See you to-morrow.”

“Listen,” said Leamy passionately. “I’ve been standing here in the stuffy telephone booth for an hour----”

“--’s what I’m telling you----”

“Bender, let me see you to-night.”

“See you to-morrow.”

Leamy caught the strain of music.

“Listen, Ike! Three Sevens----”

For the first time since the attempted conversation began, Bender’s voice came clear and cold. It was a question:

“Did you ever hear of some one listening in?”

There was a rasping click, and Leamy knew that Bender had “hung up.”

“I’ll do what Three Sevens said,” Leamy agreed with himself. “After all, there was that deal he was going to let me in on. I was to have seen him at six. Bender steered me off.”

Bender was a shyster. On the other hand it was perfectly true that Bender had valuable relations with the police and certain magistrates. And Leamy hesitated after he had signaled the car that would have carried him past the Courtney Building. For a second the conductor was frowning at Leamy. Then the conductor jerked his bell and the car rumbled on.

It was another car he took, and one that went in the opposite direction an hour or so later, and in that hour the coldness and the weight about Leamy’s heart had grown like an icicle under a glacial drip. Two more of those cards had been added to his collection now. One he had picked up at the Sagamore Buffet, where the bartender was an old and trusted friend of his, and the bartender had looked at him with pity. The other he had picked up at the Hotel Columbine.

Leamy rode and rode, until he noticed how a man who stood beside the motorman kept staring back at him. Then Leamy got off and found that he was in a part of the city that was unfamiliar to him.

He was near a stream of water. He saw the dancing reflections of it through blackness. And there came to him a peculiar jolt of consciousness that there may have been a bit of truth in that death notice of Taylor Leamy he had read, after all; and that this shimmering dark water was what he had come to find.