Lighting a cigar, Twist stood in the midst of that ruin undismayed.
“What's up?” demanded the policeman, who came hot-foot to the scene.
“Well,” vouchsafed Twist, between puffs, “there's a party chases in, smashes things, an' then beats it up the street wit'out sayin' a woid.”
The policeman looked at Baby Flax.
“It's straight,” chattered that ill-used proprietor, who, with the dangerous eye of Twist upon him, wouldn't have told the truth for gold and precious stones.
“What started youse, Twist?” asked a friend.
“It's this way,” explained Twist. “I'm introducin' a celery bitters—because there's cush in it. I goes into Baby Flax's an' asks him to buy. He hands me out a 'No!' So I ups an' puts his joint on the bum. After this, when I come into a dump, they'll buy me bitters, see! Sure, I cops an order for two cases from Flax before I leaves.”
Leaving Twist to sleep in peace, and by way of turning the laugh on that gentleman, Roxie related an adventure with Nigger Mike. It was when that sub-chief of the Eastmans kept at number Twelve Pell, by word of the vivacious Roxie, he, with certain roysterers belonging to the Five Points, had gone to Mike's to drink beer. They were the foe. But no less he served them, as he was doing now, for such was and is the bland etiquette of the gangs.
One o'clock struck, and Mike locked his door. Key turned, the beer flowed on unchecked.
At half after one, when Mike himself was a law-breaker under the excise statute by full thirty criminal minutes, Roxie with his Five Points merrymakers arose, beat up Mike and his few retainers, skinned the damper for fifty bones, and departed singing songs of victory.