I tells him.
“‘Holy Mike,’ he says. ‘Jinny Slade—what made him do it?’
“I told him I didn’t know unless it was the devil, and then I asked what he knew about the party.
“‘Well,’ says Newall, ‘I’m a cautious man and I’m not going to lay myself open to no law court actions for deffination of character. I’m not going to say nothing about the woman except that she oughta been flung into the bay two years ago with a sinker tied to her middle, and then you wouldn’t have saved her first husband which she poisoned as sure as my name’s Dan Newall, no, nor the men she ruined in that gambling joint she run in Caird Street with a loaded r’lette wheel that’d stay put wherever you wanted by the pressin’ of a button under the table, run by a Chink it was with her money.
“‘In with the crimps she was, and if I had a dollar for every sailor-man she’s helped to shanghai I’d buy a fishin’ boat and make my fortune out of catchin’ the crabs that are feedin’ on the corpses of the men that’s drowned themselves because of her.
“‘Laundry,’ he says, ‘a laundry s’big as from here to Porte Costa, with every Chink in California workin’ overtime for a month wouldn’t wash the edges of her repitation—and Buck’s married her; strewth, but he’s got himself up to the eyes. What sort of blinkers were you wearin’ to let him do it?’
“‘I don’t know,’ I says, ‘alligator hide I should think was the sort he was wearing, anyhow. Question is what am I to do now?’
“‘Take a gun and shoot him,’ says Newall, ‘if you want to be kind to him.—Has she got any money out of him?’
“‘I don’t know,’ I says.
“‘Been married to him a month,’ he goes on. ‘She’ll have every jitney by this—well, if you’re set on trying to do somethin’ for him, get the last of his money from him if he’s got any and hide it in a hole for him before she kicks him out plucked naked.’”