Snipes had stopped fanning the old man, as he ran on, and was listening intently, with an uncomfortable feeling of sympathy and sorrow, uncomfortable because he was not used to it.
He could not see why the old man should think the city should have treated his boy better because he had taken care of the city's children, and he was puzzled between his allegiance to the gang and his desire to help the gang's innocent victim, and then because he was an innocent victim and not a “customer,” he let his sympathy get the better of his discretion.
“Saay,” he began, abruptly, “I'm not sayin' nothin' to nobody, and nobody's sayin' nothin' to me—see? but I guess your son'll be around here to-day, sure. He's got to come before one, for this office closes sharp at one, and we goes home. Now, I've got the call whether he gets his stuff taken off him or whether the boys leave him alone. If I say the word, they'd no more come near him than if he had the cholera—see? An' I'll say it for this oncet, just for you. Hold on,” he commanded, as the old man raised his voice in surprised interrogation, “don't ask no questions, 'cause you won't get no answers 'except lies. You find your way back to the Grand Central Depot and wait there, and I'll steer your son down to you, sure, as soon as I can find him—see? Now get along, or you'll get me inter trouble.”
“You've been lying to me, then,” cried the old man, “and you're as bad as any of them, and my boy's over in that house now.”
He scrambled up from the stoop, and before the trailer could understand what he proposed to do, had dashed across the street and up the stoop, and up the stairs, and had burst into room No. 8.
Snipes tore after him. “Come back! come back out of that, you old fool!” he cried. “You'll get killed in there!” Snipes was afraid to enter room No. 8, but he could hear from the outside the old man challenging Alf Wolfe in a resonant angry voice that rang through the building.
“Whew!” said Snipes, crouching on the stairs, “there's goin' to be a muss this time, sure!”
“Where's my son? Where have you hidden my son?” demanded, the old man. He ran across the room and pulled open a door that led into another room, but it was empty. He had fully expected to see his boy murdered and quartered, and with his pockets inside out. He turned on Wolfe, shaking his white hair like a mane. “Give me up my son, you rascal you!” he cried, “or I'll get the police, and I'll tell them how you decoy honest boys to your den and murder them.”
“Are you drunk or crazy, or just a little of both?” asked Mr. Wolfe. “For a cent I'd throw you out of that window. Get out of here! Quick, now! You're too old to get excited like that; it's not good for you.”
But this only exasperated the old man the more, and he made a lunge at the confidence man's throat. Mr. Wolfe stepped aside and caught him around the waist and twisted his leg around the old man's rheumatic one, and held him. “Now,” said Wolfe, as quietly as though he were giving a lesson in wrestling, “if I wanted to, I could break your back.”