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Updated: May 15, 2025
He was a tall, shambling fellow with a white cloth swathed about the top of his head; and Varney, in the act of passing, suddenly recognized him as the dog man, whom Peter had knocked out the night before. His gaze was a wanton challenge for the young man to stop, and Varney cheerfully accepted it. "Why, it's Mr. er Hackley, isn't it?"
It was plain to him from the first that he was not the only man who favored her with admiring glances; and he soon discovered that young Merriweather and his friend Hackley had passed beyond the neutral ground of non- committal.
In front of a tall, loose-jointed, scraggly-mustached fellow he paused, and stared him in the eye with steady fixity. "T-t-take your d-d-damned d-dog off me, Hackley," he said, stuttering badly, but very cool. But Hackley backed away, shaking his head and bellowing with laughter. In an ecstasy of delight, the onlookers began pressing more closely about the men, narrowing the circle.
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, 'Hell! I says. 'You boys don't know Jim Hackley!"
Hackley especially invited me to share his porch ..." and the other Varney, not the one who sat so stiff and mute, desperate eyes glued on the far horizon, but the easy, negligent Varney, gay dare-devil that he was, actually achieved a pleasant laugh. "I must show you his note. It's been a long time since I have had anything to please me so much."
The man's bandage left only one eye free to operate, and he kept this upon Varney with a curious unwinking stare. "Yes," said he slowly, "I'm Hackley." "How'd the dog come out?" asked Varney. "Dead," said Hackley, as quiet in mien as the Hackley of last night was bellicose. "Dead an' buried." "I'm sorry," said Varney, his glance on the head-cloth.
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 glass 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.
What part Hackley had borne in the events to which the orator had referred was never officially known, but it may be said without exaggeration that there had been suspicions abroad against him. His present friendliness with the victim of those events, therefore, seemed the gauge and symbol of penitence and reconciliation.
"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.
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.
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