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In the square, the lingering crowd, attuned to cheering, was summoning one name after another to noisy felicitation. Out of the tumult rose one persistent voice, clamoring a changeless request. Yes, it was Hackley's voice, very near, evidently on his own front porch, and he was saying over and over: "Lemme ask you! Lemme ask you!"
I'm glad," she added hurriedly, resolutely contrite, "of the chance to to say this " "It is extraordinarily kind," said Varney. He looked at her steadily, as far from understanding the mystery of her coming as ever. "But I came," she went on at once, as though reading the question in his eyes, "for quite another reason. We happened to stop just now at poor Jim Hackley's."
Couldn't you please go out " "Certainly," said Varney. "Certainly. Yes, indeed. I'll do anything anything in the wide world to avoid getting thumped on the head with Mr. Hackley's walking-stick." Her face told him that she found his tone and manner somewhat disconcerting, but she took no notice of it otherwise. "I hope it won't be necessary to do anything more than that.
The bottle he left standing ready on the bar. "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 glass to the electric light and squinting through it.
"Why do you call me Stanhope, Hackley? My name happens to be Laurence Varney." Mr. Hackley's gaze never relaxed. "Chuck it," he said without emotion. "A sensible and eddicated man," he added impersonally, "never lies when a lie couldn't do him no good. If I was you, Stanhope, I wouldn't lose a minute in cuttin' loose from this town." "If I were Stanhope, I daresay I wouldn't either.
And there was no possibility of any mistake it was Jim Hackley's porch that he stood upon, and yes it was Jim Hackley himself, a sober and genial Jim Hackley, who stood by his side, in intimate pose, and grinning somewhat sheepishly into the glare of fame which suddenly enveloped him.
Jim Hackley's house is just over on the other corner why, you can see it from here. I want you to know Hackley, sir! A great big whimsical fellow with a fist like a ham and a heart like a woman's.... Ah!..."
Windows cut it here and there along its length, and over their green silk half-curtains, poured forth a golden light which was hospitality made visible. Yet, so strange are the ways of life, the proprietor of all these luxuries, who stood at the furthest window, beyond Hackley's range, did not look happy in their possession.
But instead of arriving there, they collided with a forearm which had about the resiliency of a two-foot stone-wall. Simultaneously, Peter released his famous left-hook had of the Bronx Barman at ten dollars a lesson and the fight was over. Mr. Hackley's head struck first, and struck passionately; men picked him up and bore him limply from the field.
The name riveted his attention. A quality in her voice had already told him that something troubled her. "At Hackley's?" She stood just behind Peter's deserted chair and rested her ungloved right hand upon it. He noticed, as though it were a matter which was going to be vital to him later on, that she wore no rings, and that there was a tiny white spot on the nail of her thumb.
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