She smoked her cigar and ruminated on this excessive love of romanticistic literature.
"When Eva gave 'em the run," she went on later, "the coppers flopped the moll--she got thirty-sixty, and Bostwick copped the pipe to give to a friend, who wanted a ornament for his den. Since then her husband comes in here now and then--and--why, hello there! Here's some one to see you, Curly!"
Archie sprang to his feet to greet Curly, who, checking the nervous impulse that always bore him so energetically onward, suddenly halted in the doorway. The low-crowned felt hat he wore shaded his eyes; he wore it, as always, a little to one side; his curls, in the mortification they had caused him since the mates of his school-days had teased him about them, were cropped closely; his cheeks were pink from the razor, and Archie, looking at him, felt an obscure envy of that air of Curly's which always attracted. Curly looked a moment, and then, with a smile, strode across the room and took Archie's hand. Archie was embarrassed, and his face, white with the prison pallor, flushed--he thought of his clothes, quite as degrading as the hideous stripes he had exchanged for them, and of his hair, a yellow stubble, from the shaving that had been part of his punishment. But the grip in which Curly held his hand while he wrung his greeting into it, made him glad, and Bertha, going out of the room, left them alone. The strangeness there is in all meetings after absence wore away. Curly sat there, his hat tilted back from his brow, leaned forward, and said:
"Well, how are you, anyway? When did you land in?"
"Yesterday morning."
"Been out home yet?"
Archie's eyes fell.
"No," he said, his eyes fixed on the cigarette he had just rolled with Curly's tobacco and paper. "I was pinched the minute I got here; Quinn and some flatty--and I fed the crummers all last night in the boob. This morning Bostwick give me orders."
"Well, you can't stay here," said Curly.
"No, I was waiting to see you. I've got to get to work. Got anything now?"
"Well, Ted and me have a couple of marks--a jug and a p. o."
"Where?"
"Oh, out in the jungle--several of the tribes have filled it out."
"Well, I'm ready."
"Not now," Curly said, shaking his head; "the old stool-pigeon's out--she's a mile high these nights."
A reminiscent smile passed lightly over Curly's face, and he flecked the ash from his cigarette.
"Phillie Dave's out,"--and then he remembered that Archie had never known the thief who had been proselyted by the police and been one of a numerous company of such men to turn detective, and so had bequeathed his name as a synonym for the moon. "But you never knew him, did you?"
"Who?"
"Dave--Phillie Dave we call him; he really belonged to the cat--he's become a copper. He was before your time."
They chatted a little while, and as the noise in the bar-room increased, Curly said:
"You can't hang out here. Those hoosiers are likely to start something any minute--we'll have to lam."
"Where to?"
"We'll go over to old Sam Gray's."
They did not show themselves in the bar-room again. Some young smart Alecks from the country were there, flushed with beer and showing off.
Curly and Archie left by a side door, walked hurriedly to the canal, dodged along its edges to the river, then along the wharves to the long bridge up stream, and over to the west side, and at four o'clock, after a wide detour through quiet streets, they gained Sam Gray's at last.
Sam Gray kept a quiet saloon, with a few rooms upstairs for lodgers.
Gray was a member of a family noted in the under world; his brothers kept similar places in other cities. His wife was a Rawson, a famous family of thieves, at the head of which was old Scott Rawson, who owned a farm and was then in hiding somewhere with an enormous reward hanging over his head. Gray's wife was a sister of Rawson; and the sister, too, of Nan Rawson, whom Snuffer Wilson had in mind when, on the scaffold, he said, "Tell Nan good-by for me." And in these saloons, kept by the Rawsons and the Grays, and at the Rawson farm, thieves in good standing were always welcome; many a hunted man had found refuge there; the Rawsons would have care of him, and nurse him back to health of the wounds inflicted by official bullets.
When Curly and Archie entered, a man of sixty years with thick white hair above a wide white brow, in shirt-sleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned, and his trousers girded tightly into the fat at his waist, came out, treading softly in slippers.
"A friend of mine, Mr. Gray," said Curly. "He's right. He's just done his bit; got home last night, and the bulls pinched him. He's got orders and I'm going to take him out with me. But we can't go yet--Phillie Dave's out."
The old man smiled vaguely at the mention of the old thief.
"All right," he said, taking Archie's hand.
Archie felt a glow of pride when Curly mentioned his having done his bit; he was already conscious, now that he had a record, of improved standing.
"Who's back there?" asked Curly, jerking his head toward a partition from behind which voices came.
"A couple of the girls," said old Sam. "You know 'em, I guess."
The two women who sat at a table in the rear room looked up hastily when the men appeared.
"Hello, Curly," they said, in surprise and relief.
They had passed thirty, were well dressed in street gowns, wore gloves, and carried small shopping-bags. They had put their veils up over their hats. Archie, thinking of his appearance, was more self-conscious than ever, and his embarrassment did not diminish when one of the women, after Curly had told them something of their plans, looked at the black mark rubbed into Archie's neck by the prison clothes and said:
"You can't do nothin' in them stir clothes." Before he could reply, she got up impulsively.
"Just wait here," she said. She was gone an hour. When she returned, her cheeks were flushed, and with a smile she walked into the room with a peculiar mincing gait that might have passed as some mode of fashion, went to a corner, shook herself, and then, stepping aside, picked from the floor a suit of clothes she had stolen in a store across the bridge and carried in her skirts all the way back. Curly laughed, and the other woman laughed, and they praised her, and then she said to Archie:
"Here, kid, these'll do. I don't know as they'll fit, but you can have 'em altered. They'll beat them stir rags, anyhow."
Archie tried to thank her, but she laughed his platitudes aside and said:
"Come on, Sadie, we must get to work."
When they were away Archie looked at Curly in surprise. There were things, evidently, he had not yet learned.
"The best lifter in the business," Curly said, but he added a qualification that expressed a tardy loyalty, "except Jane."
Archie found he could wear the clothes, and he felt better when he had them on.
"If I only had a rod now," he remarked. "I'll have to go out and boost one, I guess."
"You can't show for a day," said Curly.
"I wish I had that gat of mine. I wouldn't mind doing time if I had that to show for it!"
"I told you that gat would get you in trouble," said Curly, and then he added peremptorily: "You'll stay here till to-morrow night; then you'll go home and see your mother. Then you'll go to work."
They remained at Gray's all that Saturday night and all the following day, spending the Sunday in reading such meager account of the murder of the Flanagan sisters as the morning papers were able to get into extra editions.