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He did not pause, did not take Sheener's extended hand; instead he looked the newsboy through and through. Sheener fell back to my side. They stalked past us, out to the taxi stand. I moved forward. I would have halted them, but Sheener caught my arm. I said hotly: "But see here. He can't throw you like that." Sheener brushed his sleeve across his eyes. "Hell," he said huskily.
"Don't worry about us," Sheener told him. "Just you keep your eye skinned for the boy. Good luck, bo." We left him standing there, a tall, gaunt, shaky figure. Sheener and I drew back toward the stairs that lead to the elevated structure, and watched from that vantage point.
"He's got to live, ain't he?" I answered, somewhat glibly, that I did not see the necessity, but the look that sprang at once into Sheener's eyes made me faintly ashamed of myself, and I went on to urge that Evans was failing to do his work and could deserve no consideration. "That's all right," Sheener told me. "I didn't hear any kicks that his work wasn't done while he was on this bat."
He had full charge of our city circulation and was quite as important, and twice as valuable to the paper, as any news editor could hope to be. In making a friend of him, Evans had found an ally in the high places; and it became speedily apparent that Sheener proposed to be more than a mere friend in name.
Sheener said hotly: "He don't owe me a cent." "I know. But how much have you spent on him?" "If I hadn't have give it to him, I'd have blowed it somehow. He needed it." I guessed at a hundred dollars, at two hundred. Sheener would not tell me. "I'm telling you, he's my pal," he said. "I'm not looking for anything out of this."
He said again that I was a wise guy; and I apologized for my wisdom and asked for a share in what was to come. He promised to keep me posted. Ten days later he telephoned me while I was at supper to ask if I could come to his room. I said: "What's up?" "The old guy's boy is coming after him," Sheener said. "He's got the shakes waiting. I want you to come and help me take care of him."
Evans, I think, was unconscious of my presence. He gave Sheener a name; his name. Also, he told him the name of his lawyer, in one of the Midland cities of England, and added certain instructions.... When he had drifted into uneasy sleep Sheener came out into the hall to see me off. I asked him what he meant to do. "What am I going to do?" he repeated. "I'm going to write to this guy's lawyer.
There's class to him, I'm telling you. Class, bo." "He walks like a splay-footed walrus, and he talks like a drunken old hound," I told Sheener. "He's got you buffaloed, that's all." "Pull in your horns; you're coming to a bridge," Sheener warned me. "Don't be a goat all your life. He's a gent; that's what this guy is." "Then I'm glad I'm a roughneck," I retorted; and Sheener shook his head.
He was my friend, of course, and I was able to look beneath the exterior. But it seemed to me that sight of him distressed Evans. In the end the old man said, somewhat furtively: "I say, you know, I want to meet my boy alone. You won't mind standing back a bit when the train comes in." "Sure," Sheener told him. "We won't get in the way. You'll see. He'll pick you out in a minute, old man.
There was a flower stand on the corner, and Sheener bought a red carnation and fixed it in the old man's buttonhole. "That's the way the boy'll know him," he told me. "They ain't seen each other for since the boy was a kid." Evans accepted the attention querulously; he was trembling and feeble, yet held his head high.
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