“Is that you, Mac?” he said, halting before the derelicts. His diamond stickpin dazzled. His diamond-studded fob chain assisted. He was big and smooth and well fed. “Yes, I see it’s you,” he continued. “They told me at Mike’s that I might find you over here. Let me see you a few minutes, Mac.”
The Captain lifted himself with a grunt of alacrity. If Charlie Finnegan had come down in the bottomless pit to seek him there must be something doing. Charlie guided him by an arm into a patch of shadow.
“You know, Mac,” he said, “they’re trying Inspector Pickering on graft charges.”
“He was my inspector,” said the Captain.
“O’Shea wants the job,” went on Finnegan. “He must have it. It’s for the good of the organization. Pickering must go under. Your testimony will do it. He was your ‘man higher up’ when you were on the force. His share of the boodle passed through your hands. You must go on the stand and testify against him.”
“He was”—began the Captain.
“Wait a minute,” said Finnegan. A bundle of yellowish stuff came out of his inside pocket. “Five hundred dollars in it for you. Two-fifty on the spot, and the rest”—
“He was my friend, I say,” finished the Captain. “I’ll see you and the gang, and the city, and the party in the flames of Hades before I’ll take the stand against Dan Pickering. I’m down and out; but I’m no traitor to a man that’s been my friend.” The Captain’s voice rose and boomed like a split trombone. “Get out of this park, Charlie Finnegan, where us thieves and tramps and boozers are your betters; and take your dirty money with you.”
Finnegan drifted out by another walk. The Captain returned to his seat.
“I couldn’t avoid hearing,” said Murray, drearily. “I think you are the biggest fool I ever saw.”