“So he may, and probably is, if he is alive.”
“Why, Bob, they wouldn’t kill him, would they?”
“No, I don’t suppose so, not if they didn’t have to.”
“Why would they have to do that?” asked Tom, with his eyes bulging out with excitement.
“Well, sometimes folks has to do so—them hard tickets will do ’most anything. You see, if they start in to make way with a feller, and they are ’fraid he’ll blow on ’em, and they can’t make no other arrangement, why then they just fix him so he won’t never blow on nobody.”
“Bob, it’s awful, ain’t it?” said Tom, with a shudder.
“Yes, it is. There are a pile of tough gangs in this city that don’t care what they do to a feller.”
“What do you s’pose they’ve done with your chum?” asked young Flannery, returning to the subject.
“Well, that’s just what I want to know,” said Bob, seriously. “I am going to try to find out, too. There are tough dens in them cross streets running out of the Bowery.”
“They won’t do worse nor keep him a prisoner, will they, Bob?”