“Who th’—­”

“Say, Kid, are ye drunk or only asleep?”

“What yer want, Soapy?  You lemme be—­what yer want?” began Spike drowsily.

“Nothin’ much, Kid, only Bud an’ Heine’s gone t’ shoot up y’r sister’s husband.”

“Husband!” cried Spike, drowsy no longer.  “Husband—­say, d’ ye mean Geoff?”

“That’s who, Kid.  You was crackin’ on t’ me about wantin’ t’ make good; well, here’s y’r chance.  Bud aims t’ get there ‘bout midnight—­up th’ river, you know—­so you got two hours.  You’ll have t’ go some t’ get in first, but I guess you can do it.”

“I will if it kills me!” cried Spike, springing toward the door.

“Hold on, Kid, you’ll need some mazuma, maybe.  Here’s a ten-spot.  It’ll be more useful t’ you than me after t’night, I reckon.  So get your hooks on to it, an’ now—­beat it!”

Without more words Spike snatched the money, crammed it into his pocket and, running down the stairs, was gone.

Then, after having lighted another cigarette, Soapy descended to M’Ginnis’s dingy office, where having dragged away the desk, he brought a chair and sat with his ear against the safe, turning the combination lock with long, delicate fingers.  To and fro he turned it, very patiently hearkening to the soft clicks the mechanism gave forth while the cigarette smouldered between his pallid lips.  Soapy, among other accomplishments, was a yeggman renowned in the profession, and very soon the heavy door swung softly back, and Soapy became lost in study.  Money there was and valuables of many kinds, and these he didn’t trouble with, but to the papers he gave a scrupulous attention; sometimes as he read his white eyelids fluttered somewhat, and sometimes the dangling cigarette quivered.  Presently he arose and bore these many papers to the sheet iron upon which stood the rusty stove; here he piled them and set them alight and stood watching until they were reduced to a heap of charred ash.  Then, returning to the safe, he took out a bundle of letters tied up in a faded blue ribbon, and seating himself at M’Ginnis’s desk, he slipped off the ribbon and very methodically began to read these letters one after the other.

But as he read the humble entreaties, the passionate pleading of those written words, blotted and smeared with the bitter tears of a woman’s poignant shame and anguish, Soapy’s pendent cigarette fell to the floor and lay there smouldering and forgotten, and his lips were drawn back from sharp, white teeth—­pallid lips contorted in a grin the more awful because of the great drops that welled from the fierce, half-closed eyes.  Every letter he read and every word, then very methodically set them back within the faded blue ribbon and sat staring down at them with eyes wider open than usual—­eyes that saw back into the past.  And as he sat thus, staring at what had been, he repeated a sentence to himself over and over again at regular intervals, speaking with a soft inflection none had ever heard from him before: