"Yes," the elder man repeated, "I'll be better in the mornin'. Yes; I'm goin' to make sure of that, to-night."
When he opened the outer door of the saloon the damp moisture suddenly filled his lungs and he choked, but he dared not cough, as the strained muscles of his side warned him.
Two doors above the saloon was a pawnbroker's office, with the three golden balls hanging over the door, and with the unredeemed pledges offered for sale in the broad window. Into this store Malone made his way, glad to get out of the dank air, if only for a moment.
In perhaps five minutes he came forth holding in his hand the envelope addressed to the Honorable Terence O'Donnell. He paused on the threshold of the pawnshop and, by the light of the gas-jets in its window, he put the pawn-ticket into the letter and then closed it. In the large right-hand pocket of his thin overcoat there was something that had not been there when he entered the pawnbroker's—something irregular in shape; it was the revolver he had bought with the money advanced on his watch.
He turned down the avenue again, for there was a letter-box on the lamp-post at the corner occupied by M'Cann's saloon. The store between the pawnbroker's and the barroom was an undertaker's; and Malone, walking slowly past, saw in the window a little coffin, lined with white satin.
"It'll take a bigger one than that for me," he said. "To-night's Friday—they'll be havin' the funeral on Sunday."
At the corner he dropped the letter into the box on the lamp-post, just as there came a weird shriek from an impatient tug in the river far behind him. While he was waiting for a cable-car a lame newsboy limped up to him and proffered the evening papers with a beseeching look. Malone felt in his pocket and found only two coins, a nickel and a quarter. He gave the quarter to the newsboy. Then he lifted himself painfully on the rear platform of a cable-car, and handed the nickel to the impatient conductor. The car clanged forward again; and soon the halo about its colored lamp faded away in the murky distance.
(1895.)
A GLIMPSE OF THE UNDER WORLD
