Jimmie Dale, as Smarlinghue, smiled thinly. Whoever they were in there, they were friends of Smarlinghue, the riff-raff, the rank and file of the citizenry of that sordid fatherland of the underworld in which he held so high a station! The character of Gypsy Dan's saloon guaranteed that. He turned quickly, pushed the swinging doors open, and stepped to the side of the ragged, unkempt figure at the bar who was yelling at the top of his voice.
“Forget it!” said Smarlinghue roughly. “There's a harness bull on the move out there.”
The man, too immersed in his vocal efforts and the liquor he had imbibed, paid no attention; but the barkeeper was alert in an instant.
“T'anks, Smarly!” he grunted. He leaned across the bar and clapped his hand over the singer's mouth, effectually shutting off the flow of song. “Close yer face!” he ordered peremptorily. “Dat'll be Riley out dere, an' he's all to de good if youse'll give him half a chance. D'ye hear? Dat goes for de whole of youse!”
The half dozen loungers around the bar subsided. Comparative silence reigned for a moment, then a slow, measured step sounded outside, a night-stick rattled softly on the swinging doors, as though both in warning and in acknowledgment that the amenities had been observed, and the step died away.
“T'anks, Smarly!” said the barkeeper again, as he once more leaned back against the far side of the bar.
The erstwhile singer blinked.
“Have a drink,” he invited cordially; and digging into his pocket, he produced a fistful of bills which he waved with a lordly, inebriated air about him.
Jimmie Dale stared. A moniker in the Bad Lands was always apt and incisive, and it had been particularly so in this instance. He knew the ragged, down-at-the-heels vagrant, as everybody else in the East Side knew the man. Beggar Pete! The man was known at times to do odd jobs perhaps if pushed to extremity for food and particularly for drink, but otherwise he lived a miserable, poverty-stricken existence—not criminal, perhaps, just a drifter, lost to all sense of responsibility and self-respect.
“Hello!” said Jimmie Dale, half seriously, half facetiously. “Who stuck you in his will, Pete?”
Some one at the bar guffawed.
“A nice old geezer wid gold spectacles dat Pete croaked wid a black-jack,” said the man. “Dere wasn't no one else to inherit wot was in de stiff's pocket!”
Beggar Pete swung suddenly upon the speaker.
“Dat's a damn lie!” he shouted furiously. “Youse t'inks youse're funny, don't youse? Well, mabbe youse won't laugh so loud wid a bust face—see?”
Jimmie Dale edged in between the two men. Beggar Pete was huge-framed and, in spite of dissipation, muscular, and his face, working with rage, was indicative of a row that would bring more than Riley rapping softly in admonition with his night-stick on the swinging doors.
“Sure, I'll have a drink,” said Jimmie Dale, diplomatically. He nodded to the barkeeper. “Suds for mine!” Then to Beggar Pete: “Here's how, Pete!”
Beggar Pete's scowl gradually subsided.
“Youse're all right, Smarly!” he said. He grew suddenly confidential. “Say, it came my way all right, an' 'twasn't more'n half an hour ago, neither. I'll tell youse. I was walkin' along an' broke for fair, an' an old gent goes brushin' by in a hurry in de rain. De Mouser t'inks he's funny, but de old geezer did have gold spectacles 'cause just after he gets by me he stops an' reaches into his pocket for a box of matches, an' I sees his face under de umbrella as he lights his cigar. Den he goes on again, an' as he puts de box of matches back in his pocket I sees somet'ing drop out on de sidewalk. I slips along an' grabs it up.” Beggar Pete licked his lips, and scowled again at the little crowd. “It's his purse, dat's wot it is, an' a fat one. I ain't no saint, an' jest den I t'ought me luck was out, 'cause I t'ought he looked 'round an' saw me pickin' it up, so I runs after him an' hands it back. Say, he slips me wot I t'ought was one buck, an' wot I guess he t'ought was only one too, but w'en I gets into Kelly's place dat was near dere an' had a snifter it took all de money in de cash register to make change—see? Fifty, dat's wot it was—a fifty-dollar bill.”
“Well, den,” suggested one of the crowd to whom the story had evidently been retailed before, “set 'em up again, Pete—youse must be dry talkin' about it.”
Jimmie Dale, included in the invitation which Beggar Pete promptly accorded, shook his head and left the place.
He smiled a little curiously to himself as he went on again through the rain. It was an incident, that was all; an incident that could have no bearing on him in a personal way, that could carry with it no significance so far as he was concerned, save that it was one of the many little cross-sections of life, queer, bizarre, a scratch under the surface of things, here in the Bad Lands. Yet, naturally enough, it remained uppermost in his thoughts for a few moments as he walked along.
He knew Beggar Pete, and he was not at all convinced by Beggar Pete's story. Benevolent, gold-spectacled gentlemen were not in the habit of handing out fifty-dollar bills—even on a dark and rainy night! There would always be a street lamp within a few paces under whose light the award could be made without any mistake on the donor's part. A five-dollar bill for the service Beggar Pete had rendered—yes; a fifty-dollar bill—no. He found himself growing more and more skeptical. Indeed, he was not sure, for instance, that the gibe the lounger at the bar had flung at Beggar Pete had not more nearly hit the truth, to the extent at least that Beggar Pete had come by the money by methods that would not stand any very close scrutiny.
Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders. One thing at least seemed certain. Beggar Pete would sooner or later come to grief, and perhaps the sooner the better. There were too many Beggar Petes who had drifted on the reefs to become broken hulks, worthless to themselves and a menace to others!
He drew his coat collar closer around his throat. What a beastly night! Head down against the storm, he ploughed along. Thank Heaven, he was not far from Kerrigan's now—just around the next corner. For all its evil-smelling, reeking atmosphere, where about the only air there was stole in like a sneak thief through the broken window pane that was covered with cardboard, there would be even physical comfort to-night in the company of Bunty Myers and his fellow gangsters in that upstairs back room! There would even be a sort of compensation in the fact that he was under cover and in shelter should the real object of his visit, as it probably would, prove as futile to-night as it had in the past. His face hardened suddenly. What was the matter with him? Was he growing childish, his thoughts feeble-minded and astray? Shelter! A bit of a rain storm! Where was the Tocsin to-night? Where was she? What was sheltering her from a storm, not of pattering rain drops, but from one where every moment her life itself stood in peril, where her——
He raised his head. Along the street, through the murk, he noticed a shadowy form, the only other pedestrian in sight. It was too far off in the storm to distinguish even whether it was a woman, or a man wearing what might be a long raincoat, but strangely enough, unaccountably enough, yet nevertheless existent in his mind was the consciousness of something familiar about the figure. And then, almost the next moment, his impression was verified in a measure that brought every faculty, alert and tense now, into instant action. The figure was turning the corner, passing under the street lamp. It was Mother Margot!
He did not quicken his pace. He was Smarlinghue! His lips tightened grimly. Mother Margot owed the man she knew as the Gray Seal her life, but how far her gratitude extended he did not know—perhaps not at all in view of the fact that her life would not have been in jeopardy if the Gray Seal had not literally forced her into the situation that had so nearly proved fatal to her that night at Pedler Joe's! In any case, it would be trusting her very far, too far, farther than he would ever dream of doing, if he risked the consequences of handing himself over utterly to her mercy in allowing even a suspicion to arise in her mind that the Gray Seal and Smarlinghue were one! A word of that, a hint, and Smarlinghue, the idol now of the underworld, would know instead a hatred and a vengeance that would