Part 2

He had accomplished much in a brief time. There were not many men living who could have broken out of Rockglen on one afternoon and strolled down Michigan Avenue the next. It was an exploit in keeping with his reputation.

Midnight found him working over the problem of the girl. He recalled old Charley’s last instructions:

“Get her away from the low-brows.”

A promise, Fay had never intentionally broken. There was the girl--naive, doll-like, docile. There was the Dropper--demanding, brutish, a fink.

Fay slept that night at a stag hotel.

He woke early, bathed beneath a shower, dressed and went down to breakfast.

On Harrison Street he gulped the air. He avoided being seen by the detectives of the city. Once he took a cab for a distance of five squares. He dismissed the driver at the side entrance of a cheap hotel--sauntered through the lobby and emerged with a sharp glance to left and right.

The game gripped him as he dodged into the tenement and started climbing the gas-flared stairways to the hop-joint. He knew, in the soul of him, that Chicago was a danger-spot.

He knocked on the door and was admitted by the Dropper--who seemed alone.

“Back again,” said Fay. “I said I’d be back. Where is Emily?”

“Wot t’hell!”

“Where is the girl?”

A gliding sounded over the matting of the room beyond the screen. Emily thrust her head through the doorway. Her sherry-colored eyes were red-rimmed, glazed with tears, sullen. The Dropper had just finished his morning hate by upbraiding her.

“Wot t’hell’s comin’ off?” rumbled the dive-keeper. “Beat it, cul, before I wake up. I’m going to wham yuh one.”

Fay swiftly hooked his cane over the edge of an empty bunk, removed his hat, took off his coat, and rolled up his sleeves.

“I didn’t bring a gat!” he snapped. “I don’t need one. Get into that room, set the card-table back and pile up the chairs. Get ready, you fink, for what’s coming to you.”

* * * * *

The Dropper found himself in the grip of a situation not exactly to his liking. He backed from Fay. He crashed over the screen. He turned, thrust Emily aside, and shelved forward his shoulders in an aggressive posture. His brows worked up and down. The scar on his cheek grew livid.

“Hol’ on,” he started to protest.

Fay stepped swiftly forward, whipped over a lightning uppercut, and jabbed with his left fist toward the brute’s stomach. Both blows had force enough to land the Dropper against the card-table.

He went down like a pole-axed bullock. He rose in his might and rage. His bellowing could have been heard a block away. He came at Fay unskillfully--thrown off balance by the sudden attack.

The clean life of a supercrook stood Fay in good stead. His weight was less than half that of the Dropper’s. But he more than made up for this by the swiftness of his blows. He tormented the brute by jabs, hooks and side-stepping.

The Dropper was no novice at boxing. Once, years before, he had been Honest Abe’s chief bouncer. He had broken men’s heads and hurled derelicts from barrooms. He knew the rudiments of wrestling.

Slowly his thick brain came into action. He covered his jaw with a shelving shoulder. He put down his bulletlike head and started to bore through the rain of blows. With wild swings he forced Fay against the poker-table. It went over and rolled to the wall near where Emily crouched.

The cracksman glided around the Dropper and shadow-tormented him. He struck straight from the shoulder. He was two-fisted and agile. Each flash of his eye was marked by a stinging blow. A crescendo of effort, all to the brute’s purple face, had its effect. The Dropper started gasping. He lowered his fists. He breathed, waiting. He grunted as he followed Fay--blindly, grossly. A red gleam showed where his lids were puffing.

* * * * *

Fay felt his own strength waning. He called on all his latent nerve-force. He became a tiger. He leaped, drove a smashing fist between the Dropper’s gorilla-like brows, stepped back, dodged a swing, then repeated the blow. He played for this mark. The fury of his assault was like an air-hammer on a rivet. It deadened the brute’s brain. It made him all animal.

A bull’s roar filled the room. Goaded to an open defense, the Dropper abandoned science. He tried to grasp his tormentor. His huge hands groped through the air. He stumbled and searched. He fell over a chair. He rose to his knees. Fay waited, hooked a short, elbow-jab between the eyes. He followed with his left. His arm snapped in its sting. He backed, side-stepped, and started around the Dropper, delivering blows like a cooper finishing a barrel.

A red rage came to the cracksman that was terrible in its ferocity. He forgot Emily. He saw only the swollen thing before him. He wanted to kill. He sought for the opening.

Abandoning his straight jabs, he danced in and out with short-arm swings to the face and neck and eyes. He pounded the ears until they resembled cauliflowers. He made a pulp of the Dropper’s face.

The end came in less than a second. Beaten into near-insensibility, tottering and bloated--the Dropper attempted to reach the door that led to the opium-joint. He remembered a gat he had planted there. He lowered his shielding left shoulder. His jaw was exposed.

Fay poised on tiptoes, drew back his right fist and sent it home with the tendons of his legs strained in the effort. His weight, his rage, his science and clean living were in that blow. It milled the brute, staggered and brought him crashing, first to his knees, then over on his back, where he lay with his swollen face turned toward the ceiling.

Little Emily glided to the door. She waited with her eyes fixed and shimmering.

Fay breathed deeply. He turned, unrolled his silk sleeves and said:

“Will--you--get my hat and coat and cane, please?”

Little Emily helped him on with his coat. Her hands trembled.

“Now get _your_ things. You’re going away from here.”

She returned within three minutes.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“You saw me knock him out?”

“Yes.”

“Go look at him.”

Emily hurried into the room. She knelt by the Dropper’s head. She came back to Fay and whispered:

“I’m not afraid of him any more.”

“Why, little Emily?”

“Because you are stronger than he is.”

Fay opened the door that led to the hallway where the gas-flare showed in the gloom.

“Have you everything?” he asked.

Emily pointed to a pasteboard hatbox. Fay lifted it gallantly.

“Come on,” he said.

“Where are you going to take me?” she asked, humbly.

“I’m going to take you to the house of the good woman on the Hudson.”

“And what are _you_ going to do?”

“I? I’m going to get word to Charley O’Mara that I kept my promise--and his kid’s all right.”

THE END

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the February 1920 issue of Blue Book magazine.]