Bradley, before he could recover himself, pitched over a tangled mass of wrecked tables—over that and a man's body. Somebody ran through the room, and the back door slammed. There were shouts now, and yells—a chorus of them from the barroom. Some one bawled for a light.
Bradley got to his knees, and, reaching to raise the boy, wounded or killed as he believed, found his throat suddenly caught in a vicious grasp—and Reddy's snarling laugh was in his ears.
"Let go!" Bradley choked. "Let go, Reddy. It's me—Martin."
Reddy's hands fell.
"Martin, eh?" he said thickly. "Thought it was—hic—that——"
Reddy's voice sort of trailed off. They were bringing lamps into the room now, holding them up high to get a comprehensive view of things—and the light fell on the farther wall. Reddy was staring at it, his eyes slowly dilating, his jaw beginning to hang weakly.
Bradley glanced over his shoulder. Old John, as though he had slid down the wall, as though his feet had slipped out from under him, sat on the floor, legs straight out in front of him, shoulders against the wall and sagged a little to one side, a sort of ironic jeer on the blotched features, a little red stream trickling down from his right temple—dead.
Not a pretty sight? No—perhaps not. But old John never was a pretty sight. He'd gone out the way he'd lived—that's all.
It was Martin Bradley who reached him first, and the crowd hung back while he bent over the other, hung back and made way for Reddy, who came unsteadily across the room—not from drink now, the boy's gait—the drink was out of him—he was weak. There was horror in the young wiper's eyes, and a white, awful misery in his face.
A silence fell. Not a man spoke. They looked from father to son. The room was filling up now—but they came on tiptoe. Gamblers, most of them, and pretty rough, pretty hard cases, and life held light—but in that room that night they only looked from father to son, the oaths gone from their lips, sobered, their faces sort of gray and stunned.