To be sure, his few friends, contending feebly, insisted that it wasn't Spanish who had killed the little Rotin girl. When Spanish cracked off his rod at Jigger, others had caught the spirit. A half dozen guns—they said—had been set blazing; and it was some unknown practitioner who had shot down the little Rotin girl. What were the heart-feelings of father and mother Rotin, to see their baby killed, did not appeal as a question to either the friends or foes of Spanish. Gangland is interested only in dollars or war.
That contention of his friends did not restore Spanish in the general estimation. All must confess that at least he had missed Jigger. And Jigger without a rod! It crowded hard upon the unbelievable, and could be accounted for only upon the assumption that Spanish was rattled, which is worse than being scared. Mere fear might mean no more than an excess of prudence. To get rattled, everywhere and under all conditions, is the mean sure mark of weakness.
While discussion, like a pendulum, went swinging to and fro, Spanish—possibly a-smart from what biting things were being said in his disfavor—came to town, and grievously albeit casually shot an unknown. Following which feat he again disappeared. None knew where he had gone. His whereabouts was as much a mystery as the identity of the unknown whom he had shot, or the reason he had shot him. These two latter questions are still borne as puzzles upon the ridge of gang conjecture.
That this time he had hit his man, however, lifted Spanish somewhat from out those lower reputational depths into which missing Jigger had cast him. The unknown, to be sure, did not die; the hospital books showed that. But he had stopped a bullet. Which last proved that Spanish wasn't always rattled when he pulled a gun. The incident, all things considered, became a trellis upon which the reputation of Spanish, before so prone and hopeless, began a little to climb.
The strenuous life doesn't always blossom and bear good fruit. Balked in his intended partnership with Jigger, and subsequently missing Jigger—to say nothing of the business of the little Rotin girl, dead and down under the grass roots—Spanish not only failed to Get the Money! but succeeded in driving himself out of town. Many and vain were the gang guesses concerning him. Some said he was in Detroit, giving professional aid to a gifted booster. The latter was of the feminine gender, and, aside from her admitted genius for shoplifting, was acclaimed the quickest hand with a hanger—by which you are to understand that outside pendant purse wherewith women equip themselves as they go forth to shop—of all the gon-molls between the two oceans. Others insisted that Spanish was in Baltimore, and had joined out with a mob of poke-getters. The great, the disastrous thing, however—and to this all Gangland agreed—was that he had so bungled his destinies as to put himself out of New York.
“Detroit! Baltimore!” exclaimed the Dropper. “W'y, it's woise'n bein' in stir! A guy might as well be doin' time as live in them burgs!”
The Dropper, in his iron-fisted way, was sincere in what he said. Later, he himself was given eighteen spaces in Sing Sing, which exile he might have missed had he fled New York in time. But he couldn't, and didn't. And so the Central Office got him, the District Attorney prosecuted him, the jury convicted him, and the judge sentenced him to that long captivity. Living in New York is not a preference, but an appetite—like drinking whiskey—and the Dropper had acquired the habit.
What was the Dropper settled for?
Robbery.
It's too long to tell here, however, besides being another story. Some other day I may give it to you.