She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “You will have to thank Tony Lomazzi.”
He wanted to say something to detain her there for a moment or two longer, even under those most unauspicious of circumstances—but five years of prison had not made him glib of tongue, or quick of speech. She was very pretty—but it was not her prettiness alone that made her appeal. There was something of winsomeness about the lithe, graceful little figure, and something to admire in the quiet self-reliance, and the cool composure with which, for instance, she had just accepted the danger of possible, and decidedly unpleasant, interference by the police in the lane.
“But I can't thank Tony Lomazzi, since he is dead,” he blurted out—and the next instant cursed himself for a raw-tongued, blundering fool. In the rays of the street lamp a little way off, he saw her face go deathly white. Her hand that was in his closed with a quick, involuntary clutch, and fell away—and there came a little moan of pain.
“Dead!” she said. “Tony—dead!” And then she seemed to draw her little form erect—and smiled—but the great dark eyes were wet and full of tears.
“I——” Her voice broke. “Good-night!” she said hurriedly—and turned abruptly away.
He watched her, gnawing viciously at his lip, cursing at himself again for a blundering fool, until she disappeared in the lane; and then he, too, turned, and walked to the waiting car.
A man in the driver's seat reached out and opened the door of the tonneau.
“Me Emmanuel,” he said complacently, in broken English. “You no give-a da damn tor da police anymore. I gotta da room where you hide—safe. See? Over da restaurant. You eat, you sleep, you give-a da cops da laugh.”
Dave Henderson stepped into the car. His mind was in a chaotic whirl. A thousand diverse things seemed struggling for supremacy—the police and Runty Mott—Millman—Capriano, the queer, sick Capriano—the girl, the girl with the wondrous face, who cried because Tony Lomazzi was dead—a thousand things impinging in lightning flashes that made a vortex of his brain. They found expression in a sort of debonair facetiousness.