Adventure, January 20, 1922 — page 109: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Men of the Night wearing the greatest air of injured inno- cence imaginable, and tell how he has been mistaken for some rapscallion, and how the Angel of the Records has got him down all wrong. “Ten words?” Middleton repeated. “I am surprized that she found it necessary to use so many.” “T don’t get youse, Misser Middleton,” said Billy the Dude without the guilty quiver of an eye-muscle. “Well, Billy, she got us, as you call it. Harry and I had a rather successful eve- ning. Did he tell you?” “Dat guy? He don’t tell not’in’. If he meets his own mother in de street, he wouldn’t tell her his name. Dat’s Sil- keen”’; and it was very nearly the truth. “T had the trinkets in my pockets.” He pointed toward the overcoat, sprawled like something lifeless over the back of a chair. “Miss Cabron asked you to leave the room, didn’t she? ... Yes. Oh, it is all right, Billy. Entirely the fortunes of war. But you were listening in on the little scene——”’ “S’help me, Misser Middleton Middleton gestured quietly in good na- ture, silencing the purjuring oath; and con- tinued— “She made a rather incomprehensible scene, don’t you think?” The big word in the question brought a puzzled wrinkling of the forehead, but Billy listened with open mouth. “She acted very strangely, Billy, until— you know why—she saw it was to her ad- vantage to leave abruptly and in anger. To help deflect our attention from the empty pockets of the coat.” “Well I'll be ,’ said Billy, which was probably the truth. Middleton in his turn was being decep- tive. He had a strong liking that amounted almost to affection for Billy the Dude, for Silkeen, for the wooden-faced Jerry, too; but he had no wish that they should be familiar with such intimacies of his life as Leela’s love for him; but since he knew that they were, or at least that Billy was, sure to have listened, he took the pains to try to make it appear that she had played a clever trick. He had a certain aristocratic sensitive- ness, as well as a crook’s discretion, about letting personal things be known. 107 Middleton’s air of lazy amusement, his idle manner, the invariable gentleness that he showed, though it was often tinged with irony, suggested something baffling and impenetrable to the three men who knew him best. He exacted respect without de- manding it. With an inexplicable air of part indifference and some kindliness he kept men who were fellow crooks in the at- titude of servants. “These women’s queer birds,” said Billy the Dude, discarding a cigaret-butt and lighting another. He settled back oracularly, encouraged by Middleton’s attention. “There’s Doll. She over to the hospital now, flat on ’er back an’ flirtin’ wit’ two corpse-catchers—docs, y’know. If Silkeen gets onto ‘em he’ll go waltzin’ right over dere an’ bust her in de eye. Silkeen jus’ gets bug-house when Doll starts her work. ‘An’ Dolly’s de kind dat has t’ get a wal- lop now. ’n’ then ’r she t’inks Silkeen’s hookin’ up wit’ some ot’er jane an’ starts a howl. She raves aroun’ till ol’ Silkeen gets bored an’ he ups an’ pokes ’er one. ’N’ she’s aw right again—f’r a while. ‘Say, I seen her oncet in front of a look- in’-glass soakin’ herself wit’ a hairbrush handle right on de eye—she was dat proud of a black lamp Silkeen’d handed her she wants to make it worser! I don’t get wo- men at-tall. *f I do!” Middleton listened watchfully without stirring. He knew the strange, barbaric code of the underworld, and its savagery; though unlike Billy the Dude and Silkeen Harry he had not come up from it. A world indeed, a jungle world, where police hunt and beasts hide; a world of mystery and sordidness, full of treachery, harsh vice, mean crime; where snitches prowl and stools shuffle along shadowed - ways to reach the ears of a bull; where crooks and coppers buy and sell the rights of a sleeping city to be robbed—for be it chiseled above the doorway of Headquar- ters that no crook can make a living month in and month out without scratching the itching palm of somebody that wears a badge; a hiving-place of stunted, crouching savages, full of sudden revenge, strange unshakable loyalties, the martyrous loyalty of pal to pal; where a runt bold as a hop- head on the grab may lead a gang of sneaks into desperate work; where illiterate men train, practise, study, with inexhaustible CORNICLOO© S (C@