"Well, it's a cinch," went on the droning voice, "if The Doc'll only cut out the dope for a couple o' days and your Babbie doesn't get to buckin' over the footboard!"
"It ain't Babbie I'm worryin' over," explained old Crotty. "That girl'll do what's expected of her. She's got to. I've wised her up on that. What's worryin' me more is that cuff-shooter who butted in over there on the Island."
Still again I could hear Latreille's little snort of open contempt.
"Well, you can put that bug out of your head," quietly averred my ex-chauffeur. "You seem to 've forgotten that guy, Zachy. That's the boob we unloaded the Senator's town car on. And that's the Hindoo I framed, away back on Hallow-e'en Night. You remember that, don't you?"
I leaned closer, with my heart pounding under my midriff and a singing in my ears. But old Crotty didn't seem to remember.
"On Hallow-e'en Night?" he ruminated aloud.
"Why, the stiff I asked you to stand ready to give the glad word to, if he happened round for any habeas-corpus song and dance!" prompted the somewhat impatient voice of Latreille. "Don't you mind, back on last Hallow-e'en, how the Big Hill boys stuffed that suit of old clothes with straw and rags, and then stuck it up in the street? And how we hit that dummy, and how I made the chicken-hearted pen-wiper think that he'd killed a man and coyoted off the scene?"
I don't know what old Crotty's reply to those questions were. I wasn't interested in his reply. It wasn't even rage that swept through me as I stood listening to those only too enraging words.
The first thing that I felt was a sense of relief, a vague yet vast consciousness of deliverance, like a sleepy lifer with a governor's pardon being waved in his face. I was no longer afraid for Mary. I was no longer afraid of life, afraid of myself, afraid of my fellows. My slate was clean. And above all, I was in no way any longer afraid of Latreille. I was the chicken-hearted pen-wiper—and I hated him for that word—who had been "framed." I was the over-timorous victim of their sweet-scented conspiracies. I was the boob who had been made to shuffle and suffer and sweat. But that time was over and done with, forever. And the great wave of relief that swept through me surged back again, this time crested with anger, and then still again towered and broke in a misty rush of pity for Mary Lockwood. I thought of her as something soft and feathered in the triple coils of those three reptilious conspirators, as something clean and timid and fragile, being slowly slathered over by the fangs which were to fasten themselves upon her innocence, which were to feed upon her goodness of heart. And I decided that she would never have to go through what I had been compelled to go through.
I didn't wait for more. There was, in fact, nothing more to wait for, so far as I and my world were concerned. I had found out all I wanted to find out. Yet I had to stand there for a full minute, coercing myself to calmness. Then I tiptoed across the room to a second door which stood in the rear wall, unlocked it, and stepped out into the narrow and none too well-lighted hallway. This led to a washroom which in turn opened on another narrow passageway. And from this I was able to circle back into the bar-room itself.