From Now On

by Frank L. Packard

“Then take mine!” Skarvan rasped. “I'll go now and tell the warden you wouldn't say anything. If you try to put a crimp in me by reporting my offer, I'll say you lied. I don't mind taking chances on my word being believed against the word of a convict and a thief who is known to be playing tricky! You get that? And after that—God help you!”

The man was gone....

Presently, Dave Henderson found himself back in the carpenter shop. The band-saw was shrieking, screeching insanely again. He had smiled in there in the visitor's room at Bookie Skarvan; he had even been debonair and facetious—he wasn't that way now. He could mask his face from others; he couldn't mask his soul from himself. It seemed as though his courage were being drained away from him, and in its place were coming a sense of final, crushing defeat. Barjan's blow of last night had sent him groggy to the ropes; but the blow Bookie Skarvan had just dealt had smashed in under his guard and had landed on an even more vital spot.

Skarvan's veiled threat hadn't veiled anything. The veil was only too transparent! “God help you!” meant a lot. It meant that, far more dangerous to face, even more difficult to outwit than the police, there was now to be aligned against him the criminal element of San Francisco. It meant Baldy Vickers and Runty Mott, and Baldy Vickers' gang. It meant the men who had already attempted to murder him, and who would be eager enough to repeat that attempt for the same stake—one hundred thousand dollars. With the police it would have been, more than anything else, the simple thrust and parry of wits; now, added to that, was a physical, brutish force whose danger only a fool would strive to minimize. There were dives and dens in the underworld there, as he knew well enough, where a man would disappear from the light of day forever, and where tortures that would put the devil's ingenuity to shame could be applied to make a man open his lips. He was not exaggerating! It was literally true. And if he were once trapped he could expect no less than that. They had already tried to murder him once! Naturally, they had entered into his calculations before while he had been here in prison; but they had not seemed to be a very vital factor. He had never figured on Bookie Skarvan setting that machinery in motion again—he had only figured on getting his own hands on Bookie Skarvan himself. But he saw it now; and he realized that, once started again, they would stop at nothing to get that money. Whether Bookie Skarvan would have abided by his offer, on the basis that he would get more out of it for himself that way, or whether it was simply a play to discover the whereabouts of the money and then divide up with his old accomplices, did not matter; it was certain now that Bookie Skarvan would be content with less rather than with none, and that the underworld would be unleashed on his, Dave Henderson's, trail. The police—and now the underworld! It was like a pack of wolves and a pack of hounds in chase from converging directions after the same quarry; the wolves and the hounds might clash together, and fall upon one another—but the quarry would be mangled and crushed in the mêlée.

The afternoon wore on. At times Dave Henderson's hands clenched over his tools until it seemed the tendons must snap and break with the strain; at times the sweat of agony oozed out in drops upon his forehead. Bookie Skarvan was right. He could not get that money alone. No! No, that was wrong! He could get it alone, and he would get it, and then fight for it, and go under for it, all hell would not hold him back from that, and Bookie Skarvan and some of the others would go under too—but he could not get away with the money alone. And that meant that these five years of prison, five years of degradation, of memories that nauseated him, five years that he had wagered out of his life, had gone for nothing! God, if he could only turn to some one for help! But there was no one, not a soul on earth, not a friend in the world who could aid him—except Millman.

And he couldn't ask Millman—because it wouldn't be fair to Millman.

His face must have grown haggard, perhaps he was acting strangely. Old Tony over there had been casting anxious glances in his direction. He took a grip upon himself, and smiled at the old bomb-thrower. The old Italian looked pretty bad himself—that pasty whiteness about the old fellow's face had a nasty appearance.

His mind went back to Millman, working in queer, disconnected snatches of thought. He was going to lose Millman, too... Millman was going out tomorrow.... It had always been a relief to talk to Millman.... He had never told Millman where the money was, of course, but Millman knew what he, Dave Henderson, was “in” for.... The library hour wasn't far off, and it would help to talk to Millman now.... Only Millman was going out to-morrow—? and he was to bid Millman good-by.

This seemed somehow the crowning jeer of mockery that fate was flinging at him—that to-morrow even Millman would be gone. It seemed to bring a snarl into his soul, the snarl as of some gaunt, starving beast at bay, the snarl of desperation flung out in bitter, reckless defiance.

He put his hands to his face, and beneath them his jaws clamped and locked. They would never beat him, he would go under first, but—but——