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Now chase off, an' see ye get them addresses right. S'long, Larry boy, be good now!" When the boy had scudded away, Soapy opened the paper and scanned the words of M'Ginnis's telegram and, being alone, smiled as he glanced through it. "You got th' Kid, Bud," he murmured, "you got th' Kid but if th' Kid gets the guy Geoff, why I've sure got you, Bud got ye sure as hell, Bud!" Mr.
Then swiftly he turned away but, reaching the door, stooped and picked up M'Ginnis's neckerchief and, recognising it, crumpled it in fierce hand; so, with it clenched in griping fingers, he hurried away and left her there upon her knees. "What, back again already, Mr. Geoffrey?" exclaimed Mrs. Trapes, poking her head around the kitchen door, as Ravenslee entered the flat, "back so soon?"
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.
Watch this!" So saying, he reached Spike's half-emptied glass from the bar and, not troubling to stoop, poured the raw spirit down upon M'Ginnis's pale, blood-smirched face. "Dead?" said Soapy. "Well, I guess not look at him!" And, sure enough, M'Ginnis stirred, groaned, opened swollen eyelids and, aided by some ready arm, sat up feebly.
"Who did it, Bud?" questioned Spike eagerly. "Who was it?" "Hush up, Kid, hush up!" said Soapy, viewing M'Ginnis's cuts and bruises with glistening eyes. "I guess that guy's layin' around somewheres waitin' f'r th' coroner Bud wouldn't let him make such a holy mess of his face an' get away with it not much! Bud's a killer, I know that don't I, Bud?"
M'Ginnis's heavy hand descended on his shrinking shoulder and next moment he was out on the sidewalk where Soapy lounged, a smouldering cigarette pendent from his thin, pallid lips as usual. And Soapy's eyes, so bright between their narrowed, puffy lids, so old-seeming in the youthful oval of his pale face, were like his cigarette, in that they smouldered also.
M'Ginnis's companions, dumbfounded by the sudden ferocity of it all, stood awhile inactive, staring at those two forms that lurched and swayed, that strove and panted, grimly speechless. Then, closing in, they waited an opportunity to smite down M'Ginnis's foe from behind.
Spike, cowering behind a bush with M'Ginnis's fingers gripping his arm, shivered and sweated and held his breath until Ravenslee moved on again, and, coming to a fallen tree, seated himself there and sat chin on fist, expectation in every tense line of him. "Now!" whispered M'Ginnis hoarsely, "get him now before Hermy comes t' him!"
For a moment Soapy's baleful eye turned aside to the desk as he reached for the letters, and in that moment M'Ginnis's pistol spoke, and Soapy, lurching sideways, sagged to his knees, his back against the desk. Again and again M'Ginnis's weapon clicked, but no report followed, and Soapy slowly dragged himself to his feet.
While M'Ginnis stared from his swelling, bloody wrists to Ravenslee's face a face quite as fierce and determined as his own steps were heard and Spike's voice called: "Hermy come in yet, Geoff?" "Not yet but our friend Mr. Flowers has dropped in socially, I fancy." "Mr. Who?" enquired Spike at the door, but beholding M'Ginnis's angry face, he paused there, staring aghast.
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