000
ОтложитьЧитал
“My notion,” said Ellison, “is to turn th’ trick right now.”
“Just th’ two of us?”
“Why not?”
“He’d have his guerillas; youse have got to figure on that.”
“They wouldn’t stand th’ gaff. It’s the difference between guys who knows what they wants, and guys who don’t. Once we started, they’d tear th’ side out the Brighton in the get-away.”
“All right,” said Razor, bringing down his hand; “I’m wit’ you.”
“Just a moment,” and Ellison motioned Razor back into his chair. “If Paul’s dancin’, we must stall him into th’ bar. I don’t want to hoit any of them skirts.”
It was the delightful habit of Slimmy, on the tail of one of his lectures, to order beer for his hearers. That’s why he was listened to with so much interest. Were every lecturer to adopt Slimmy’s plan, he would never fail of an audience. Also, his fame would grow.
Slimmy, having finished with Cæsar and the others, had just signed up to the waiter to go his merry rounds, when Ellison and Razor slipped in from the street. Their hands were on their guns, their eyes on Kelly.
Harrington saw it coming.
“Your gatt, Paul, your gatt!” he shouted.
The rule in Gangland is to let every man kill his own snakes. Harrington’s conduct crowded hard upon the gross. It so disgusted Razor that, to show Harrington what he thought of it, he half turned and laced a bullet through his brain.
“Now you’ve got something of your own to occupy your mind,” quoth Razor.
Ellison was too old a practitioner to be drawn aside by the Harrington episode. He devoted himself unswervingly to Paul Kelly. Ellison’s first bullet cut a hole through Kelly’s coat and did no further harm. The lights were switched out at this crisis, and what shooting followed came off in the dark. There was plenty of it. The air seemed sown as thickly full of little yellow spits of flame as an August swamp of fireflies. Even so, it didn’t last. It was as short lived as a July squall at sea. There was one thunder and lightning moment, during which the pistols flashed and roared, and then – stillness and utter silence!
It was fairish pistol practice when you consider conditions. Paul Kelly had three bullets in him when four weeks later he asked the coppers to come and get him. He had been up in Harlem somewhere lying low. And you are not to forget Harrington. There were other casualties, also, which the police and politicians worked hand in hand to cover up.
Five minutes went by after the shooting; ten minutes! – no one was in a hurry. At last a policeman arrived. He might have come sooner, but the New Brighton was a citadel of politics. Would you have had him lose his shield?
The policeman felt his official way into the barroom: – empty as a drum, dark as the inside of a cow!
He struck a match. By its pale and little light he made out the dead Harrington on the floor. Not a living soul, not even Goldie Cora!
Goldie Cora?
Said that practical damsel, when the matter was put up to her by Big Kitty, who being sentimental called Goldie Cora a quitter for leaving her dead love lying in his blood, “What good could I do? If I’d stuck I’d have got pinched; an’ then – me in th’ Tombs – I’d have stood a swell chance, I don’t chink, of bein’ at Bill’s funeral.”