“Hello, boys,” broke in a third new voice, and then the real shock came. The third new voice was not in the play at all, and the consternation it wrought was more than ludicrous.
Wallingford, drawing back for a moment, was nearly knocked off his feet by fat Badger Billy’s dashing past him through that door to the back stairway, closely followed by Mr. Phelps, and Mr. Phelps was trailed almost as closely by the gaunt man of the badge. Glancing toward the door, Mr. Wallingford smiled beatifically. The cause of all this sudden exodus was huge Harvey Willis, in his blue suit and brass buttons and helmet, with a club in his hand, who, making one dive for the husky red-faced man as he, too, was bent on disappearing, whanged him against the wall with a blow upon the head from his billy; and as the red-faced man fell over, Harvey grabbed the black bag. The crash of a breaking water-pitcher from the adjoining room, the shrill voice of a protesting and frightened landlady as she came tearing up the stairs, and the clamor of one of those lightning-collected mobs in front of the house around the patrol-wagon, created a diversion in the midst of which Harvey Willis started out into the hall, a circumstance which gave the dazed red-faced man an opportunity to stagger down the back stairway and out through the alley after his companions, whom Wallingford had already followed. They were not waiting for him, by any means, but this time were genuinely interested in getting away from the law, each man darkly suspicious of all the others, and Wallingford, alone, serene in mind.
In the hall, Willis, with a grin, thrust the black bag into his big pocket, and turned his attention to the terrified landlady and his brother officer of the wagon, who was just then mounting the stairs.
“Case of plain coke jag,” he explained, and burst into the noisy room, from which the two presently emerged with the shrieking and inebriated man who had been brought up-stairs but a short while before.
In Wallingford’s room that night, Blackie Daw was just starting for Boston when Harvey Willis, now off duty, came up with the little black bag, which he dropped upon the table, sitting down in one of the big chairs and laughing hugely.
“Mr. Daw, shake hands with Mr. Willis, a friend of mine from Filmore,” said Wallingford. “Order a drink, Daw.”
As he spoke, he untied the bag, and, taking its lower corners, sifted the mixture of cards and greenbacks upon the table. Daw, in the act of shaking hands, stopped with gaping jaws.
“What in Moses is that?” he asked.
“Merely a little contribution from your Broadway friends,” Wallingford explained with a chuckle. “Harvey, what do I owe out of this?”
“Well,” said Harvey, sitting down again and naming over the cast of characters on his fingers, “there’s seven dollars for the room, and the tenner I gave Sawyer to go down on Park Row and hunt up a coke jag. Sawyer gets fifty. We ought to slip a twenty to the wagon-man. Sawyer will have to pay about a ten-case note for broken furniture, and I suppose you’ll want to pay this poor coke dip’s fine. That’s all, except me.”