MRS1 The Under Dogs

by Hulbert Footner

  Jessie then lighted up and looked around her. It was just such a room as might have been found in scores of the second-rate lodging houses of that run-down neighbourhood. It had no character; it contained not a single object upon which the imagination could seize. But Jessie was relieved on the whole; it was well enough; the bed was clean. At least, she did not appear to be expected to share her room, and that was a blessed privilege.

  She lay on the bed with her hands under her head, staring at the ceiling. What a day, what a day it had been! And what a dangerous haven she had come to anchor in! She went over and over that scene in the kitchen. Life in the raw, assuredly. Her thoughts revolved principally about the figure of Big Bill Combs—the other two were negligible. Bill looked like a brute, and no doubt he was a brute; nevertheless, every word he uttered was charged with a certain massive dignity. Such as he was, he was the most nearly human thing in that terrible household, and she must make friends with him if she could.

  Jessie had a stout heart, but she also had clear sight, and she could not disguise from herself the imminence of the danger in which she stood. She was aghast at it. In that house all the ordinary decencies of life that one took for granted were cast aside; and all the safeguards of an ordered life. One could not expect justice any more than kindness or mercy. Only unbridled savagery. She experienced what it meant to be an outlaw; to have every hand raised against her. She was absolutely at the mercy of this inhuman woman who was accountable to nobody except the powerful unseen one behind her. Jessie was appalled at the ingenuity of this pair who made a business of stealing the victims of the law in order to obtain slaves who had no recourse on earth from their tyranny.

  While she lay there suddenly, out of absolute quiet came the sound of a scuffle below. It was only a slight scuffle, and soon over. It was followed by that most dreadful of sounds, a man's voice broken and gasping with terror, whining, moaning, imploring for mercy. She heard only the one voice, as if the poor wretch was faced by dumb enemies. The voice was silenced by a single, dull blow, and not another sound was to be heard.

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE OUTLAWS

  Next morning Cliff Hutchins was gone, but there was presently a new-comer. The household was at breakfast in the dreary sitting-room over the kitchen. Mrs. Pullen was at the table, consequently everybody looked glum, excepting Skinny Sam, who was exercising his wit, much to his own satisfaction. Occasionally Mrs. Pullen gave him a fond look. Pap carried the dishes in and out, and between whiles sat down to eat with the others. Jessie kept her face averted from him, for his table manners were not pretty.

  A little bell sounded through the house. By now Jessie was familiar with the door bell and the telephone, and this was neither. It had a disconcerting effect on the gang; they stopped eating, and listened in suspense. Mrs. Pullen went swiftly to one of the windows looking to the rear.

  The bell continued to ring. "Something's wrong," she said curtly. "Sam, look into the street and see if the front is watched. If it is, all make for the roof."

  Sam ran out, and the others pushed out into the hall uncertainly. Then the bell stopped, and a breath of relief escaped from all. They drifted back into the sitting-room. Mrs. Pullen was still at the window.

  Presently she said coolly: "It's Abell," and returned to her chair. The meal was resumed.

  There were steps on the stairs, and a man came into the room carrying a small satchel. He was different from the others. With his keen, shrewd face and careful dress, he looked like a prosperous young attorney. But at present his face was as white as paper, and he had a reckless, apathetic look, either from fatigue, or from some powerful emotion. He dropped the satchel on the table near to Mrs. Pullen's hand, and came around to a seat on the other side, next to Jessie. Sunk deep within himself, he scarcely seemed to see her. There was something in his clean, thin profile touchingly young.

  "Another one!" thought Jessie. "Poor soul!"

  "What did you hold the sliding door open for?" demanded Mrs. Pullen harshly.

  "It slipped its trolley," was the indifferent reply. "It ought to be fixed."

  "You attend to that, Sam," said Mrs. Pullen.

  Food was pushed towards the new-comer, but nobody paid any particular attention to him. He seemed little disposed to eat.

  "Where you been since twelve o'clock last night?" said Mrs. Pullen.

  "On the streets. I was chased. I couldn't lead them here, could I?"

  "That's a lie," said Mrs. Pullen. "You forget I've read the papers. There was no discovery until two hours later."

  "What do I care what's in the papers," said Abell, shrugging. "When they haven't got the facts they'll make up anything at all."

  "But if you had been seen, they'd have that fact, wouldn't they?"

  "Well, I thought I was chased," said Abell.

  "You been to see your family," said Mrs. Pullen accusingly.

  The young fellow raised his white face sharply and met her gaze. "Yeh, likely, ain't it," he said with bitterly curling lip, "that I'd go to them straight from a robbery with the stuff in my hands. They're making out in a sort of way without me. Do you think I'm going to drag them down to my level? ... It's a fact I thought I was followed, and I wouldn't come back for that reason. It's a fact, too, that I went up there where they lived, and I walked past the house and looked at the windows. That's as near as I'm likely to get."

  "How much is in here?" asked Mrs. Pullen, indicating the satchel.

  "I didn't count it."

  Mrs. Pullen opened the satchel, and took out packages of bills, and rolls of coins in paper. She counted it in a glance almost, and compared the total with the newspaper she had. From her grunt one might have thought she was disappointed to find that Abell was not trying to hold out on her. Abell sneered.

  Presently Mrs. Pullen got up, taking the satchel, and made to leave the room. Abell jumped up, too, his white face working painfully.

  "Kate," he stammered, "will you let me talk to him this morning?"

  "Tell me what it is," she said with a disagreeable smile, "and I'll talk for you."

  "Ask him," he said, forgetting everybody else in the room, "ask him if he'll let me go now. In six months I've brought in seventy-six thousand dollars. Isn't that the price of a man's freedom? Two tricks a week on an average is too much to ask of a man; my nerves are shot to pieces. And anyhow I couldn't keep it up. Every theatre in town is laying for me now. In the next night or two I'll get a bullet through my head!"

  Jessie thought: "So this is the nervy thief who has been sticking up the theatrical box-offices."

  Mrs. Pullen said: "That sort of talk don't go with him."

  "Well, then, ask him if he won't give me assistance," cried Abell desperately. "A scout, just to watch that I don't get plugged from behind."

  "That doubles the risk for the organisation," remarked Mrs. Pullen.

  "Ah! you don't care what my risk is!"

  "Oh, I'll ask him," said Mrs Pullen indifferently, and went out.

  Jessie supposed from this talk that she had gone to telephone the boss. Mrs. Pullen's room adjoined hers in the front, and the telephone was in there. But Jessie had already learned that the telephone was in a closet, only the bell outside, that it might be heard through the house. When Mrs. Pullen retired into the closet, and shut the door, not a sound could be heard in Jessie's room, or in the hall outside.

  "Don't you wisht you could hear the number?" Sam asked Abell with a sneer.

  "That wouldn't do him no good," remarked Pap. "He always waits in a pay station for her to call him up, and every couple of days he changes to another."

  "Well, I'll use my influence for you, Abie," said Sam derisively.

  "Sam," said Abell with a deadly quietness, "when they push me too far, and I go bugs, the first thing I'm going to do is to kill you. I won't put a bullet through you neither. That's too clean. I'll slit you."

  Sam's shallow eyes bolted, and he showed his teeth.

  "And I hope I'll be there t
o see it," said Bill Combs in his bass growl.

  "Me, too!" added Pap shrilly.

  Sam shot poisonous sidelong glances at them, but held his tongue.

  When Mrs. Pullen returned to the room, Abell asked eagerly: "What did he say?"

  "He didn't say nothing," Mrs. Pullen said coolly. "He don't listen to that stuff."

  Abell's chin dropped on his breast.

  Whatever her private feelings towards her might be, it was absolutely necessary for Jessie to insinuate herself into Mrs. Pullen's good graces. Unless she could induce them to trust her, to give her a little more rope, she, Jessie, was helpless. She therefore lost no opportunity of propitiating "Black Kate" (as they called her behind her back) but was always met with a contemptuous rebuff. As when, Mrs. Pullen getting up to leave the room again, Jessie said:

  "Is there any work I can do around the house to help out?"

  To which Mrs. Pullen replied with a hard stare: "You'll get your work when I'm ready to give it to you."

  She called Sam, and they went out. Pap had retired to the kitchen, and as Abell was sunk within himself, Jessie and Bill Combs were, to all intents and purposes, alone in the room.

  "What makes her so sore at me?" Jessie asked of Bill: "What have I done?"

  "She ain't got nothin' against you particular," said Bill in his heavy way; "she hates women—that is women as is younger than herself. And she's just takin' it out on you. She wouldn't have you here at all, on'y she got orders from above."

  "Wasn't there ever a girl in the house before?" asked Jessie.

  "Oh, yes, they was a girl here before," said Bill evasively.

  "What become of her?"

  "Don't ask me questions, sis," growled Bill. "It's onhealthy. You just keep your eyes and your ears open around here, and you'll learn plenty to make you wise."

  "But she told you to tell me things."

  "Not all things," said Bill.

  "There's one question I gotta ask," persisted Jessie. "I heard something last night. Where's Cliff Hutchins?"

  "Back in the hoose-gow."

  "Oh," said Jessie, relieved; "I thought they had croaked him. I couldn't sleep of it."

  "Oh no," said Bill carelessly. "After a spell in the cooler, he'll be back on the job. They's on'y one thing they puts you out for."

  "What's that?" asked Jessie, though she knew.

  "They calls it treason," said Bill dryly.

  A heavy anxiety settled on Jessie's breast. Was this the answer to that other question which Bill had refused to answer?

  "How could they get Cliff Hutchins back to Sing Sing so quick?" she asked.

  "Just hand him over to the police."

  "Is there an understanding between the boss here and the police?"

  "So it seems,"

  "O-oh!" said Jessie.

  "Now looka here, sis," said Bill, taking his pipe out of his mouth; "you said one question, and you ast me four already. Cut it out or you'll get us both in Dutch."

  Jessie was tidying up her room, when the door opened and Skinny Sam walked in without so much as by your leave. By the leer on his face he fancied himself irresistible.

  "You get out of here quick!" cried Jessie, scowling.

  "'S'all right, kid," he said perkily, "the old un's gone to market."

  "Whether she's in or out, you get out of my room!" cried Jessie.

  "Say, you talk like the young Miss in her father's mansion; Act 2," he said, sneering. "It's wasted, kid. You ain't got no audience. Be yourself."

  Jessie's arms itched to chastise the unpleasant little wretch, but she bethought herself she must avoid a fracas if she could. Physically, he was not very dangerous. She went on making the bed. Sam straddled a chair, and leaned his arms on the back in what he thought was a killing attitude.

  "In this house we're down to rock bottom," he went on. "We can afford to be natural. We can let ourselves go. You'd be a fool not to take what fun there was going."

  "Maybe it wouldn't be fun for me," remarked Jessie.

  "Say, you're quite a jollier, ain't yuh? Well, it suits me. Gee! you got a peach of a shape. Makes my mouth water!"

  A great anger surged up in Jessie, but she crushed it down. She merely looked at Sam.

  He hadn't sense enough to get the significance of the look. "You're safe with me," he went on. "I got the old woman locoed; I'm her white-headed boy, and I can make her do what I want. I don't let my hand show, but it's really me runs this house through her, see? So whenever she's out of the way, you and I..."

  "I don't follow you, kid," said Jessie dryly. "If I'm free to do what I want, being down to rock bottom as you say, I'm free to choose the man I'll take, ain't I?"

  "Sure! and here he sits!"

  "No," said Jessie, looking him over speculatively; "no, I can't say as I'd choose you. You don't impress me."

  Sam got up. "You're quick with the come-back, ain't yeh, kid?" he said. "Me and you'll make a good pair. You don't know me yet."

  "Nor I don't want to," said Jessie.

  He came close to her. "Oh, that's what they all say at first," leering into her face; "but they changes their tune."

  Jessie stepped back. "You want it straight?" she said grimly. "All right. I don't like you. If you was the last man on earth I'd choose to live single."

  "Oh, is that it?" he snarled. "Well, you got to take me anyhow, cause I'm the master here, I can put you back in Woburn within a week. You ain't made none too good an impression here."

  Jessie laughed.

  "You can't afford to quarrel with me," he went on. "Wat t'hell, kid! We're wastin' time.... Turn around!"

  He came up behind her, and slid an arm around her waist. This left Jessie's arms free. She did turn half around, leaning back, and, with a full swing of her right arm, boxed his ear.

  "There!" she said, "I wanted to do that since I first laid eyes on your ugly face!"

  Sam staggered back, dazed and blinking, a comical sight. Then his face became convulsed with rage, and he made for her. She was ready for him. It was the first time in her life that she had been called upon to exert her strength against another, and to her joy she found herself strong and able. The weedy youth was like a rag doll in her arms. She hustled him around the bed, and held him against the wall while she got the door open. Then she flung him outside with such force that he collapsed on the floor. She slammed the door.

  "If you ever come in here again," she cried through it, "I'll break a chair over your head."

  No sound from Sam. She walked away from the door, full of a savage exultation. "I can take care of myself," she thought. But her feeling of triumph soon wore off, and she sat on the bed, scowling in perplexity.

  She saw that this would only make her position more difficult. Her woman's instinct told her that it would be useless to complain of Sam to Black Kate. Sam had her ear, and Sam would not be slow to distil poison within it. In Kate, he would find a willing listener. Sam's boast of sending Jessie back to Woburn was not altogether an idle one. What a mess! She sighed. How tragic if, after all she had dared, her work should come to nothing now.

  It occurred to her that it would be a good stroke of policy to tell Big Bill what had happened, and she immediately went downstairs. Abell had gone to get his sleep, and Bill was alone in the dining-room, laboriously reading the newspaper. Sam, who had been peeping from some corner, came creeping after her into the dining-room to see what she was going to do. Beaten and cringing, he was a loathsome sight; with his viperish glances he was trying to intimidate her.

  "What was the racket upstairs?" asked Bill.

  "Sam came into my room when I was cleaning up," said Jessie clearly.

  "And what did you do?" asked Bill, putting down the paper.

  "I threw him out."

  Bill was slow in all his movements. There was an alarming rumble from somewhere within his big body, then an appalling explosion—of laughter. He flung back his head, and slapped his thighs helplessly.

  "And you could do it, too!
" he gasped, when he was able to speak.

  Sam sneaked out of the room again.

  "I thought I better tell you," said Jessie, picking at the soiled red tablecloth. "He'll try to make trouble for me with her."

  "It's a nasty mess," agreed Bill, "but it's not hopeless. Be sure the boss got you here for some purpose, and he's not going to give it up too easy. Whatever they may tell you, a girl like you is not easy to get. Then I heard what happened, see? Don't run ahead to meet trouble, sis. Wait till it comes. I'll stand by you."

  "Thank you," said Jessie.

  There was a silence. Big Bill was looking at Jessie in a peculiar way, but she did not immediately become aware of it.

  Finally Bill said: "Sam is a measly little swine. He's not worth a woman's notice."

  "Sure he isn't," said Jessie.

  "There's other men in the world," said Bill meaningly.

  Jessie looked at him in horror. He hoisted his great bulk slowly out of the chair and, going to the door, closed it. He came back to her, his gross features working with emotion. At all times Bill had the wistful look of the Beast in the old story, who knew that he was repulsive to Beauty. It was intensified now; simple, piteous and absurd.

  "How about me, Jess?" he said gently.

  "Oh, my God!" she thought; "another one!"

  "I know I'm no cake-eater," he went on; "but at least I'm a man, not a flash-in-the-pan; not a flea-bitten whippet like that one. Oh, Jess, I could love you well; I could stand by you through thick and thin. I ain't had much that was nice in my life. I'd be so damn grateful to you, my girl. I'm not young, but I'm not old neither. A man is different from a boy; he's had sense knocked into his head."