Fortune was kind. At that moment a cab swung into the alley from Lawrence Street at a leisurely pace. The driver was evidently taking a short cut to more travelled thoroughfares. O'Byrn halted him and invoked his assistance in loading Slade into the vehicle. "My friend's drunk," he laconically explained, to which the cabby grunted a gruff assent.
Slade had recovered his jarred senses by the time the cab arrived at a point near Micky's lodging, and the Irishman prudently stopped the driver, and paying him, dismissed him. It would never do to leave a clear trail for Shaughnessy's gang, should they chance to stumble upon it at all. He asked the still dazed Slade to wait for him a few minutes in an adjacent drug store while he hurried over to the city hall, which was near at hand, and telephoned the Courier office, informing Mr. Harkins that he had a chance for a future "beat" that would have to be improved at once, and he wouldn't be back. "All right, keep at work on it. We won't need you," Harkins telephoned, and Micky rejoined Slade.
He piloted Slade to his lodgings, took him to his room, lighted his gas heater and the two jets and installed his guest in the big easy chair which the room boasted. He took the rocker himself, drawing it confidentially close to Slade's chair. He then produced cigars, holding a match for Slade to light his weed. "Smoke up, old man," remarked Micky, cordially. "It'll be comfortably warm here in a few minutes. Stretch out and pull yourself together. You got a nasty fall." Slade smiled slightly, without words, and arranged himself luxuriously in the big chair, puffing thoughtfully at his weed. A pleasant glow stole through the room. Micky, also puffing methodically, was silent as his companion, philosophically waiting for the spirit to move. Cautiously watching Slade, he was gratified to see a sullen, smouldering fire in the queer black eyes, ordinarily as indifferent as a Chinaman's. Slade would evidently be in a confidential mood in a few moments, and Micky could well afford to wait.
Not many newspaper men could have expected Nick Slade, accredited heeler for the Shaughnessy gang, to wax confidential, under any circumstances, to a representative of the press. His very presence at that moment, in the room of a reporter of the Courier, of all papers, was anomalous. But O'Byrn was shrewd. He had learned early that success for the reporter on a daily newspaper depends on his being all things to all men. Tact is the little key that unlocks all doors. A hundred different plans of campaign are needed for a hundred different men, yet every man must be met on a broad and common field of friendliness. Anything short of that curtails the reporter's field of usefulness. One shorter sighted than Micky would perhaps have avoided making Slade's acquaintance in the beginning, on the ground that he was not a respectable person. To be sure he was not. Slade himself would be the last to question the impeachment. Because of this very lack of respectability, Slade's good graces were valuable to Micky, for a large proportion of the news that the public revels in is garnered from the ranks of the non-respectable. There is little in the life of your ordinary, respectable citizen to keep the typesetters busy, for there is nothing sensational in virtue unless it be possessed by a politician. Then it is inexplicable. But the record of the ordinary esteemed citizen can usually be summed up in the horns of life's trilemma: birth, marriage and death, unless, indeed, he excels at golf. The newspapers still devote considerable space to it.
Slade knew the men who made much of the real news of the town, the news with fat head-lines. To be sure, many of them figured in it unwillingly, but that was a minor consideration, for their doings often made and sold extras. Chance had thrown Slade in Micky's way early in the Irishman's career in the town, and the reporter's trained journalistic sense told him that Slade's confidence would be valuable. So it had been. The episode in Goldberg's saloon, when Slade evaded wrath that fell upon the luckless head of O'Byrn, had not ended their acquaintance. Micky had found occasion to do Slade some good turns since then. And now Slade,—from ambuscade, to be sure, but none the less effectively,—was destined to reciprocate tenfold.
Slade had been a heeler for the gang. It was not an important post, affording a pose in the limelight, but that fact had its compensations. Evidently Slade, in trying, perhaps, to fit himself surreptitiously for larger responsibilities, had come to grief. And, as Micky watched him, smoking in the big chair, he noted a fire of sullen resentment kindling in Slade's eyes.
"Say, old man," inquired Slade suddenly, "where'd you pick me up tonight? How'd you happen to connect with me, anyway?"
Micky grinned. "Why, I was up to the same game you were, I guess," he explained. "Shaughnessy passed me tonight, and, though I'd never met him, I couldn't help throwin' the con' into him a little, just for luck. I'd seen some things, you know, and I guess he was next to what I was drivin' at, all right. But he never turned a hair and went on, with me doin' a quick sneak after him. I missed him finally, but some of his gang blew along, and after a while I was up stairs in Hogan's, perched on a table and rubberin' through a hole in the wall. All of a sudden up jumps Goldberg, yellin' something about a spy, and I thought I was copped for fair. I was down stairs in three shakes, and I went through a waiter like a halfback to do it. I was just about to breathe the open when you bumped along down. You were dead to the world when I dragged you out, I guess, and I kept you out of sight of the gang,—which was looking for you, my boy,—till I got the cab. And here you are. Goldberg's as good a bouncer as his man Mulligan, ain't he?"
"Goldberg?" echoed Slade. "Nit, young feller, he never touched me. They were all grabbin' for me at once, and I shook the whole bunch, just as I did in that session at Goldberg's. I wound around like a gimlet for a minute and I was goin' some when I went through the door. Then," in a tone of deep disgust, "I had to miss my bearin's, of course, and when I brought my hoof down for the first stair I must have hit about the last one, I guess. Anyway, the lights went out." He shook his head mournfully, while O'Byrn chuckled.
"Don't you mind," said he soothingly, "Goldberg got a worse one than you. He bumped along down after you, and afterward he was hoppin' around on one leg lookin' for Nicky, who was just then safe in the arms of Micky. And then along blew the dear old cab. I told the cabby you were drunk, you know."