“Say, where do youse keep yer stuff?” demanded Whitie Jack. “A shirt’ll do—anything to tear up an’ make a bandage wid, see?”
Billy Kane did not answer. He did not know! Instead, he let his head sag limply forward, and fall on his crossed arms upon the table.
“Aw, buck up, Bundy!” pleaded Whitie Jack anxiously. “Youse’ll be all right in a minute. Dat’s de boy! Buck up! It’s all right! Leave it to me! I’ll find something!”
Still Billy Kane did not answer. His face hidden in his arms, he was making a surreptitious, but none the less critical, survey of his surroundings. It was a large room, evidently comprising the entire basement of the building; and the single incandescent that it boasted seemed only to enhance, with its meager light, the sort of forbidding sordidness, as it were, that pervaded the place. There were no windows. The walls had been boarded in with cheap lumber that had warped and bulged in spots, and the walls had been painted once—but so long ago that they had lost any distinctive color, and had faded into a murky, streaky yellow. The room was dirty and ill-kempt. A few old pieces of carpet were strewn about the floor, and for decoration prints from various magazines and Sunday supplements were tacked here and there around the walls. There was a bed in one corner; a wardrobe made by hanging a piece of old cretonne diagonally across another corner; a sink at one side of the room; and, at the far end, a bureau, whose looking-glass seemed to be abnormally large. Billy Kane studied the looking-glass for a moment curiously. It seemed to reflect back some object that he could not quite identify, something that glittered a little in the light. And then Billy Kane smiled a sort of grim appreciation. Whitie Jack had left his keys hanging in the lock of the door—the mirror held in faithful focus the only entrance to the place that the Rat’s lair apparently possessed!
And now the reflection of the door in the mirror was blotted out, and the figure of Whitie Jack took its place. The man had crossed the room from an apparently abortive search behind the cretonne hanging, and was rummaging now in the drawers of the bureau. And then, with a grunt of satisfaction, and with what looked like a shirt and some underclothing flung over his arm, Whitie Jack made his way to the sink, filled a basin with water, and returned to the table.
Billy Kane raised his head heavily—and with well-simulated painful effort aided in the removal of his coat, vest and shirt.
“Dat’s de stuff, Bundy!” said Whitie Jack approvingly.
It was a flesh wound, angry and nasty enough in appearance when the clotted blood was washed away, but still only a flesh wound. Whitie Jack surveyed it judicially.
“’Tain’t so worse, Bundy!” he announced reassuringly. “Youse’ll be all to de good in a day or so.” He began to rip and tear the underclothing into strips. “Youse’ll need de shirt to wear, an’ dis stuff’ll do for de bandages,” he explained. “See?”
“Yes,” said Billy Kane.