“Cut out that Joe Rocks stuff,” commanded Aug-gy, with vast heat, “or you'll hit the street on your frizzes—don't make no mistake!”
Observing the stormy slant the talk was taking, Whitey Dutch diplomatically ordered beer, and thus put an end to debate. It was a move full of wisdom. Auggy was made nervous by the absence of Tricker, and Anna the Voluble, on many a field, had shown herself a lady of spirit.
While the evening at the Stag thus went happily wearing towards the smaller hours, over in Twenty-ninth Street, a block away, the stuss game of Casey and Paper-Box Johnny was in full and profitable blast. Paper-Box himself was in active charge. Casey had for the moment abandoned business and every thought of it. Leoni had just informed him of those visitations at the hands of Goldie Louie, and set him to thinking on other things than cards.
“An' he says,” concluded Leoni, preparing to go, “after he's beat me half to death, 'now chase 'round an' tell your Dago friend, Casey, that my monaker ain't McTaffe, an' that if he starts to hand me anythin', I'll put him down in Bellevue for the count.'”
The dark face of Casey displayed both anger and resolution. He made neither threat nor comment, but his eyes were full of somber fires. Leoni departed with an avowed purpose of subjecting her injuries to the curative effects of arnica, while Casey continued to gloom and glower, drinking deeply the while to take the edge off his feelings.
Harry Lemmy, a once promising prize-fighter of the welter-weight variety, showed up. Also, he had no more than settled to the drink, which Casey—whom the wrongs of his idolized Leoni could not render unmindful of the claims of hospitality—had ordered, when Jack Kenny and Charlie Young appeared.
The latter, not alive to the fatal importance of such news, spoke of the Stag, which he had left but the moment before, and of the presence there of Goldie Louie.
“McTaffe's stalls, Fog-eye, Brother Bill an' Sanky Dunn, are lushin' wit' him,” said Young. “You know Sanky filled in wit' th' mob th' time Goldie gets settled in Mexico.”
Goldie Louie, only a block away, set the torch to Casey's heart.
“Where's Dago Frankie?” he asked.