"I have got about forty names; leastwise, the police say I have; but they as knows me best calls me Bob for short; sometimes they fixes it up a little by calling it Surly Bob. But I think that Bob will do for you."
"What have you got against Nick Carter, Surly Bob?" asked Madge, smiling. She liked the looks of this hard-featured individual. He was just brutal enough in his appearance to satisfy her ideas of what a man should be.
Bob deliberately took a huge chew of tobacco into his mouth before he replied, and then, with a slow and almost bovine indifference, he responded:
"I don't know as it makes much difference to you, Black Madge, what I hate him for as long as I do hate him, and I'm bound to get square with him some day, whether I do it in connection with this organization that you're getting together or on my own hook without the help of any of you," and he glanced defiantly around. "It's enough that I do hate him. He's done enough to me to make me hate him. It's enough that if I had him alone in this room to-night one of us would never leave it alive unless he got the best of me without killing me, for I would certainly do him if I got half a chance.
"But I'll tell you one thing about him that maybe it will do some of you good to hear, for I give you fair warning that you want to give Nick Carter a wide berth unless you can manage somehow to catch him foul. He's about as strong as three horses, and if he ever succeeds in getting his grip on you you're gone. I'm about as tough as they make them, but I'm a wee baby in Nick Carter's hands, and don't any of you forget it."
"Tell us the story," said Madge.
"Oh, it ain't no story; it's just a short account. We ran into each other once near the front door of a bank I had gone into after hours and without the permission of the president and board of directors. When I picked myself up from the middle of the street after he grabbed me there was a crack in the top of my skull which didn't get well for three months. That's all I've got to say about it, but I want to add this: If that fellow Slippery Al, who says killing ain't in his line, but leading astray is, wants to bring Nick Carter my way, and will fetch him along so as I can get him foul, I'll fix him for keeps, and no questions asked."
And Surly Bob sat down.
He had no sooner taken his seat than the individual next to him sprang up without waiting to be asked to do so. If you had encountered this individual along Broadway or on Fifth Avenue in New York City, you might not have devoted a second glance to him; but if you had, and still had not studied him closely, you would not have thought him other than a gentleman.
His features were handsome or would have been handsome were it not for the crafty and shifty expression of his eyes and the otherwise insincerity that was manifest in his face. Among his companions of the underworld he was known far and near as Gentleman Jim.