The Wop coughed timidly and made a suggestion. “Come round in half an hour,” said he, “when the last race from New Orleans is in; I'll have the cush ready for yez.”
Louie withdrew, and the Wop shoved the poker into the blazing big-bellied stove.
An hour later, that New Orleans race having been run, Louie returned. The poker being by this time white-hot, the Wop drew it forth from the stove. There were no stage waits. Applying the poker to the shrinking rear of Louie, the Wop compelled that yearner after fifty dollars to leap screechingly from a second-storey window.
“That's phwy I puts th' windy up,” explained the Wop; “I didn't want that chape skate to bre-a-ak th' glassh. Indian Louie! Spanish Louie!” he repeated with measureless contempt. “Let me tell youse ginks wan thing.” This to a circle who had beheld the flight of Louie. “If ever that bum shows up here ag'in, I'll put him out av business altogether. Does he think a two-cint Guinea from Sout' Ameriky can bluff a full-blown Mick?”
Louie's flight through the Wop's window, as had his steadiness at the morgue, went the gossipy rounds. It didn't injure him as much as you might think.
“For who,” said the general voice, “would face and fight a white-hot poker?”
On the whole, public sentiment was inclined to sustain Louie in that second-storey jump.
From what has been written, it will not astonish you to hear that, upon the important matter of courage, Louie's place in society had not been absolutely fixed. Some said one thing, some another. There are game men in Gangland; and there exist others who aren't the real thing. Sardinia Frame believes, with the Irish Wop, that Louie belonged in the latter class. Also, Sardinia Frank is entitled to an opinion. For he was born in Mulberry Bend, and has himself been tried twice on charges of murder.
It was Sardinia Frank, by the way, who smote upon Eat-'em-up Jack with that effective lead pipe, albeit, there being no proof, he was never arrested for it. No, he doesn't admit it, even among intimates and where such admission would be respected as sacred. But when joked concerning it, he has ever worn a cheerful, satisfied look—like the pictures of the cat that ate the canary—and while careful not to accept, was equally careful not to reject, the compliment implied. Moreover, when the dead Eat-'em-up-Jack was picked up, the lead pipe used to break his skull had been tucked jocosely under his arm. It was clear to knowing ones that none except Sardinia Frank would have thought of such a jest. To him it would have come readily enough, since death always appealed to his sense of humor.
Clad in a Tuxedo and an open-face suit, Sardinia Frank, at the time I questioned him, was officiating as peace-preserver in the Normandie rathskeller. By way of opener, I spoke of his mission on the rathskeller earth.