Captivating Mary Carstairs Part 25

"Here's how, friend Jim!"

Whatever Mr. Hackley's foibles, he was a man at his cups. His platform was the straight article uncontaminated by ice or flabby sparkling-water; and chasers and the like of those he left to schoolboys.

"Ain't took a drink for days," he said, holding up his gla.s.s to the electric light and squinting through it. "Cut it out religious, I have.

Been settin' around the house, an' settin', under physic'an's orders, tryin' fer to get my health back so's I could go to moldin' agin. But Lordamussy, what's the use of torkin'! I ain't no more fitten fer work than a noo-born baby. Well, here's luck, Ryan!"

He set his gla.s.s down and involuntarily smacked his lips. The fiery liquid percolated through him down to his very toes. He felt better at once, more ambitious, less conscious of his const.i.tution. And simultaneously, he lost something of that indolent good-nature which was the badge of all his sober hours.

Ryan regarded him with friendly anxiety. "You gotter be more careful with yourself, honest! Here--strengthen your holt a little. One little swallow ain't no help to a man as beat out as you are."

"As yer like, Dennis," said Mr. Hackley, listlessly. "What I reely need is a good long rest, like in a 'orspittle."

Kindly Mr. Ryan filled the small gla.s.s almost to the brim; and Hackley, though he had modestly stipulated for "on'y a drap" tossed it all off thirstily at a single practised toss.

"That'll fix you up nice. But ain't I glad," said his host with a sly chuckle, "that n.o.body sees you taking these drinks on the quiet, which _we_ know you need bad for your health."

Mr. Hackley set down his gla.s.s again, this time with something of a bang. "How's that?" he demanded suspiciously.

Ryan laughed deprecatingly. While doing so, he manipulated the tall dark bottle again.

"Shuh!" said he. "It's only the boys' fun, of course. Don't you mind _them_, Jim."

"What're you drivin' at?" asked Hackley, bristling a bit. "If you got anything worth sayin' to me, spit it out plain, I say."

"Well," laughed Ryan, "if some of the boys was to see you in here putting away a harmless drink or so, o' course they'd say that you was gettin' up your Dutch courage. He, he!"

"Dutch courage!" cried Mr. Hackley, indignantly. "An' wot the h.e.l.l fer?"

"s.h.!.+ Not so loud, Jim. Why, it's only their little joke, o' course.

They'd say you was gettin' up your nerve to meet them two friends of yours from New York! Hey? He, he!"

"Wot friends?" asked Hackley again, hotly.

Ryan observed the mounting color on the other's cheek and brow, and his eye, which was like a small, glossy shoe-b.u.t.ton, gleamed.

"Why, that 'un that killed that dog o' yours, and put you to sleep before the crowd, and that 'un that sent Mamie Orrick to Gawd knows where. But shucks! Drop it, Jim. I wouldn't have allooded to it, on'y I thought you'd see the fun of the thing."

It takes a philosopher to perceive humor in taunts at his own personal courage, and Mr. Hackley, with three drinks of the Ottoman's choicest beneath his tattered waistcoat, was not that kind of man at all.

He leaned forward against the bar with a belligerence suggesting that he wished to push it over, pinning his pleasant-spoken host to the wall, and pounded the top of it till the gla.s.ses tingled.

"Fill her up with the same!" he ordered loudly, looking suddenly, and for the first time, very much like the rough-looking customer who had tackled Peter Maginnis in defense of his dog. "An' I'll have you know, _Mister_ Ryan--I'll have you know, my fine, big, bouncin' buck, that Jim Hackley ain't afeared of anythink that walks."

Ryan filled her up again, though this time more conservatively. He was a keen man and an excellent judge of what was enough.

"Shuh! Don't _I_ know that, Jim! Why, after that big bloke licked the stuffin' out of you the other night, the boys said: 'Well, that's the last o' that little differculty! Jim Hackley'll never foller that up none,' they says. And what'd I say?"

"Well, what'd you say?"

"I says, 'h.e.l.l!' I says. 'You boys don't _know_ Jim Hackley!'"

"I'll interdooce myself to 'em!" said Hackley savagely. "And whoever says that Maginnis licked me's a liar. You hear me? Tripped my toe on a rock, I did, and banged all the sense outen my head--"

"I understand, Jim," interrupted Ryan suavely. "Just what I told the boys. O' course, just between you an me, I have been kinder took by surprise that you've waited so long to get your evens. Why, this morning when the piece came out in the _Gazette_, tellin' the whole town that the feller's side-partner was that yellow cur-dog Stanhope, I says to the boys, first thing: 'Boys, we gotter watch Jim Hackley mighty careful to-day,' says I. 'I'm afeard there'll be gun-play before sunset.'

'Gun-play!' says they. 'F'om Hackley! h.e.l.l,' says they. 'You boys,' says I, 'don't know old Jim like I do!' And then o' course,--he, he!--as the whole day slipped by and nothin' doin' at all--why, o' course, I won't deny that they ain't been jollyin' me some."

Hackley leaned far over the bar, and shook his fist in the boss's face.

"I ain't a man," he shouted, "to be pushed an' a-nagged at in a deal like this. I takes my time, I makes my plans, I decides on the ways I'll do it. Do yer pipe to that? An' now I've got ever'think fixed and I'm ready. Do yer see!"

The boss, who had retreated a step before that menacing fist, glanced out of the window and instantly started, this time with an amazement that was genuine.

"Why, blast my eyes," he cried, raising a pudgy arm, "if there ain't that dog Stanhope now!"

Hackley, following the pointing finger, peered over the green silk curtain out into the darkening street. A young man, tall and rather thin, in a blue suit and wide gray-felt hat, was walking slowly and with a slight limp up the cross street, evidently heading for the Palace Hotel.

The two men watched him intently, in a moment of perfect silence. Then the boss, who was not without a certain dramatic sense, said slowly:

"_Mamie Orrick's old friend_!"

A baleful light leaped into Hackley's eyes. He broke away from the bar with a movement that was like a wrench, and started for the door.

"I'll fix him," he muttered dourly. "Fix him _good_."

But Ryan, who wanted something much better than that, sprang around the bar like lightning, and caught Hackley roughly by the shoulder, at the door.

"What, here in the square!" he hissed sharply. "With the po-lice in sight a'most! Why, you fool, it'll mean the pen for you as sure as your name's Jim Hackley!"

Hackley paused, his resolution unsettled by the other's superior knowledge of the law.

"No, no, Jim--it won't do," went on Ryan with bland decisiveness. "What you want is the two of them together, hey?--on a nice dark stretch o'

road, and old Orrick and a few good fellows along to help. You ain't the only one that's got it in for Stanhope, are you? An' you want Maginnis too, I guess? Come on in the orfice and talk about it over a seegar."

CHAPTER XV

IN WHICH VARNEY DOES NOT PAY A VISIT, BUT RECEIVES ONE

Coligny Smith had told the truth. Peter Maginnis had bought the _Gazette_, and the _Cyprianl's_ troubles, from this source at any rate, were at an end.

Varney found the new proprietor at the hotel, completing a hurried supper, and Peter hailed him with astonishment and delight. All afternoon he had been bursting with his great news, eager to get word of it to Varney on the yacht. But there had been no trustworthy messenger to send; his own time had been rilled to overflowing, with contracts, bills of sale and deeds; and, besides, his certain knowledge that everything was all right made it seem a minor matter that Varney should know it too.

"But what the deuce," he exclaimed at once, "brings you at this hour to the Palace Hotel and Restaurant?"

"I, too," quoted Varney, "have not been idle."