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Updated: May 3, 2025
"When's the boy coming?" "Gets in at midnight to-night," said Sheener. I promised to make haste; and half an hour later I joined them in Sheener's room. Sheener let me in. Evans himself sat in something like a stupor, on a chair by the bed. He was dressed in a cheap suit of ready-made clothes, to which he lent a certain dignity.
The man Evans went his pompous way, accepting Sheener's homage and protection as a matter of right, and in the course of half a dozen years I left the paper for other work, saw Sheener seldom, and Evans not at all. About ten o'clock one night in early summer I was wandering somewhat aimlessly through the South End to see what I might see when I encountered Sheener.
"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."
Old Evans brushed at his coat anxiously; his fingers picked and twisted; and Sheener sat down on the bed beside him and began to soothe and comfort the man as though he were a child. The son was to arrive by way of Montreal, and at eleven o'clock we left Sheener's room for the station.
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.
Whatever the explanation, a certain alliance developed between the two; a something like friendship. I was one of those who laughed at Sheener's credulity, but he told me, in his energetic fashion, that I was making a mistake. "You got that guy wrong," he would say. "He ain't always been a bum. A guy with half an eye can see that. The way he talks, and the way he walks, and all.
I was somewhat impatient with Sheener's insistence, but I was also interested in this developing situation. "Who's going to do his work, anyhow?" I demanded. For the first time in our acquaintance I saw Sheener look confused. "That's all right too," he told me. "It don't take any skin off your back, long as it's done." In the end I surrendered.
Five minutes later the doctor and Sheener and I were retracing our steps toward Sheener's lodging, and presently we crowded into the small room where Evans lay on Sheener's bed. The man's muddy garments were on the floor; he himself tossed and twisted feverishly under Sheener's blankets. Sheener and the doctor bent over him, while I stood by.
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