The dark companion leveled his own pistol in a way calculated to do the most harm, and Spanish reaped an assortment of cheap watches and a handful of bills.
Spanish came round on Mersher's brother. The latter had stooped down until his eyes were on a par with the bar.
“Now,” said Spanish to Mersher's brother, “I might as well cook you. I've no use for barkeeps, anyway, an' besides you're built like a pig an' I don't like your looks!”
Spanish began to shoot, and Mersher's brother began to dodge. Ducking and dodging, the latter ran the length of the bar, Spanish faithfully following with his bullets. There were two in the ice box, two through the mirror, five in the top of the bar. Each and all, they had been too late for Mersher's brother, who, pale as a candle, emerged from the bombardment breathing heavily but untouched.
“An' this,” cried Ikey the pawnbroker, ten minutes after Spanish had disappeared—Ikey was out a red watch and sixty dollars—“an' this iss vat Mayor Gaynor calls 'outvard order an' decency'!”
It was upon the identification of the learned bystander that Dribben and Blum went to work, and it was for that stick-up in Mersher's the two made the collar.
“It's lucky for you guys,” said Spanish, his eye sparkling venomously like the eye of a snake—“it's lucky for you guys that you got me wit'out me guns. I'd have croaked one of you bulls sure, an' maybe both, an' then took th' Dutch way out me-self.”
The Dutch way out, with Spanish and his immediate circle, means suicide, it being a belief among them that the Dutch are a melancholy brood, and favor suicide as a means of relief when the burdens of life become more than they can bear.
Spanish, however, did not have his gun when he was pinched, and therefore did not croak Dribben and Blum, and do the Dutch act for himself. Dribben and Blum are about their daily duties as thief takers, as this is read, while Spanish is considering nature from between the Sing Sing bars. Dribben and Blum say that, even if Spanish had had his guns, he would neither have croaked them nor come near it, and in what bluffs he put up to that lethal effect he was talking through his hat. For myself, I say nothing, neither one way nor the other, except that Dribben and Blum are bold and enterprising officers, and Spanish is the very heart of quenchless desperation.
By word of my Central Office informant, Spanish has seen twenty-two years and wasted most of them. His people dwell somewhere in the wilds of Long Island, and are as respectable as folk can be on two dollars a day. Spanish did not live with his people, preferring the city, where he cut a figure in Suffolk, Norfolk, Forsyth, Hester, Grand, and other East Side avenues.