“He don't like the way you t'row your feet, eh? I'll make him like it.”
Thus spake Harrington to Goldie Cora, as he turned from her to seek out Tricker.
No, Gangland is not so ceremonious as to demand that you lead the lady to a seat. Dance ended, it is good form to leave her sticking in the furrow, even as a farmer might his plow, and walk away.
Harrington bitterly added his views to Eat-'Em-Up-Jack's, and something was said about croaking Tricker then and there. The threats of Harrington, as had those of Eat-'Em-Up-Jack, glanced off the cool surface of Tricker like the moon's rays off a field of ice. He was sublimely indifferent, and didn't so much as get off his chair. Only his right hand stole under his coat-skirt in an unmistakable way.
“Why, you big stiff! w'at be youse tryin' to give me?” was his only separate notice of Harrington. Then, to both: “Unless you guys is lookin' to give th' coroner a job, youse won't start nothin' here. Take it from me that, w'en I'm bounced out of a dump like this, the bouncin' 'll come off in th' smoke.”
Eat-'Em-Up-Jack, being neither so quick nor so eloquent as Tricker, could only retort, “That's all right! I'll hand you yours before I'm done!”
Harrington, after his first outbreak, said nothing, being privily afraid of Tricker, and more or less held by the spell of his fell repute. Eat-'Em-Up-Jack, who feared no man, was kept in check by his obligations as sheriff—that, and a sense of duty. True, the situation irked him sorely; he felt as though he were in handcuffs. But the present was no common case. Tricker would shoot; and a hail of lead down the length of the dancing floor meant loss in dollars and cents. This last was something which Kelly, always a business man and liking money, would be the first to condemn and the last to condone. It would black-eye the place; since few care to dance where the ballroom may become a battle-field and bullets zip and sing.
“If it was only later!” said Eat-'Em-Up Jack, wistfully.
“Later?” retorted Tricker. “That's easy. You close at one, an' that's ten minutes from now. Let the mob make its getaway; an' after that youse ducks 'll find me waitin' 'round the corner in Thoid Avenue.”
Tricker, manner nonchalant to the point of insult, loitered to the door, pausing on his way to take a leisurely drink at the bar.