"He sprung you down there, too!" said Mason with more surprise than Archie had ever known him to show. "I figured you'd waive, anyhow."
"Well, I wanted a show-down, d'ye see?" said Jackson. "I knew they couldn't hold me on the square."
"Didn't they know anything?"
"Who, them chuck coppers?" Jackson sneered. "Not a thing; they guessed a whole lot, and when I got out they asked if I'd object to be mugged." Jackson was showing his perfect teeth in a smile that attracted Archie. "They'd treated me so well, I was ready to oblige them--d'ye see?--and I let 'em--so they took my Bertillon. I didn't think one more would hurt much."
Jackson looked down at the table and smiled introspectively. The smile won Archie completely. He was looking at Jackson with admiration in his eyes, and Jackson, suddenly noticing him, conveyed to Archie subtly a sense of his own pleasure in the boy's admiration.
"Well, I tell you, Curly," Mason was going on. "You done right--that fink got just what was comin' to him. You showed the nerve, too. I couldn't 'ave waited half that long. But I didn't think you'd stand a show with Bostwick. I knowed you'd get off in front of a jury, but I had my misdoubts about that fellow Eades. God! he's a cold proposition! But in front of Bostwick--!" Mason slowly and incredulously shook his head, then ended by swallowing his little glassful of whisky suddenly.
"Well, you see, Joe," Jackson began, speaking in a high, shrill voice, as if it were necessary to convince Mason, "there was nothin' to it. There was no chance for the bulls to job me on this thing," and he went on to explain, as if he had to vindicate his exercise of judgment in a delicate situation, seeming to forget how completely the outcome had justified it.
Archie had scarcely noticed Keenan and Mandell; once he had wrested his eyes from Gibbs, he had not taken them from Jackson. He had been puzzled at first, but now, in a flash, he recognized in Jackson the man who had shot Moon.
"You see, Joe," Mandell suddenly spoke up--his voice was a rumbling bass in harmony with his heavy jaws--"it was a clear case of self-defense. The shamming-pusher starts out to clean up down the line, he unsloughs up there by Connie's place on Caldwell, and musses a wingy, and then he goes across the street and bashes a dinge; he goes along that way, bucklin' into everybody he meets, until he meets Curly, who was standing down there by Sailor Goin's drum chinnin' Steve Noonan--he goes up to them and begins. Curly mopes off; he dogs him down to Cliff Decker's corner, catches up and gives Curly a clout in the gash--"
Mason was listening intently, leaning forward, his keen eyes fixed on Mandell's. He was glad, at last, to have the story from one he could trust to give the details correctly; theretofore he had had nothing but the accounts in the newspapers, and he had no more confidence in the newspapers than he had in the courts or the churches, or any other institution of the world above him. Archie listened, too, finding a new fascination in the tale, though he had had it already from one of the gang, Pat Whalen, who had been fortunate enough to see the tragedy, and had had the distinction of testifying in the case. Whalen had seen Moon, a bartender with pugilistic ambitions, make an unprovoked assault on Jackson, follow him to the corner, and knock him down; he had seen Jackson stagger to his feet, draw his revolver and back away. He had told Archie how deathly white Jackson's face had gone as he backed, backed, a whole block, a crowd following, and Moon coming after, cursing and swearing, taunting Jackson, daring him to shoot, telling him he was "four-flushing with that smoke-wagon," warning him to make a good job when he did shoot, for he intended to make him eat his gun. He had told how marvelously cool Jackson was; he had said in a low voice, "I don't want to shoot you--I just want you to let me alone." And Whalen had described how Moon had flung off his coat, how bystanders had tried to restrain him, how he had rushed on, how Jackson had gone into the vacant lot by old Jim Peppers's shanty, coming out on the other side, until he was met by Eva Clason, who tried to open a gate and let Jackson into the brothel she called home. Whalen had given Archie a sense of the ironical fate that that day had led Eva's piano player to nail up the gate so that the chickens she had bought could not get out of the yard. The gate would not open and Moon was on him again; and Jackson backed and backed, clear around to the sidewalk on Caldwell Street, and then, when he had completed the circuit, Moon had sprung at him. Then the revolver had cracked, the crowd closed in, and there lay Moon on the sidewalk, dead--and Jackson looking down at him. Then the cries for air, the patrol wagon, and the police.