CHAPTER XX

OUT OF THE PAST

The carriage stopped, unheeded by O'Byrn, who drowsed, huddled in a corner. "Come on," said a gruff voice, "we're there." An ungentle hand shook the Irishman rudely.

Confused and dazed, Micky stumbled out. With a man at each arm, he was whisked through a doorway and up a flight of stairs that led to a suite of rooms over a corner grocery. Shaughnessy was unostentatious in his manner of living, as he was in matters of political procedure.

Before the befuddled O'Byrn had gathered his deadened wits sufficiently to decide that his would-be friends had mistaken his intended destination, the trio halted before a door which opened without any preliminary formality of knocking. "Ah, come in, gentlemen," said a remembered voice, which brought Micky to wavering attention. Then he was pushed inside, into the presence of Shaughnessy. He stared for a moment about the plainly but comfortably furnished room, then into the black eyes of his host. Just now they were alight with triumphant gleams. Micky sat down in sudden hopeless, though rather hazy, despair.

"All right, boys; a good job," said Shaughnessy, a certain insistence in his tone. Peterson took the hint. He plucked his companion by the sleeve and the two withdrew. Their footsteps died in silence down the stairs, followed in a moment by the diminishing roll of wheels.

"Well, Mr. O'Byrn," said Shaughnessy, suavely, "I'd like my keys if you're through with them, and I rather guess you are."

"Keys?" echoed Micky, a vague and rueful grin reluctantly visiting his face, "yes, I guess so. Took 'em for a joke. You can have 'em and be hanged!" He threw them violently on the floor and continued to stare rather helplessly about the room. Shaughnessy, unruffled, bent to pick up his property, stepped for a moment to the door, then seated himself on a chair, facing Micky, who sprawled supinely on a sofa.

"Who was with you in my office last night?" he inquired casually. "You know--when you got these?"

"Don't you know?" Micky's utterance was rather thick, but there was a cunning gleam in his eye. No amount of intoxicants, that the Irishman had ever taken at any time in his checkered career, had even temporarily robbed him of his sharp wits. Even though he might not be able to remember it afterward, the busy brain was in evidence throughout the spree; and the sub-conscious intelligence of the fellow, even when he was nearly physically helpless from over-indulgence, had often staggered his associates.

Shaughnessy was now to have a taste of this. "Don't you know?" O'Byrn had asked innocently and very thickly. Shaughnessy smiled dryly. The fellow was sufficiently drunk to be as wax in the boss' hands.

"No, I don't," mildly replied Shaughnessy, and waited for the desired information.

"Well," answered Micky, with a tipsy laugh, "I'm mighty glad you don't. And now see here, let me out of here. I've got business--business to attend to."

"Yes," assented Shaughnessy softly, "you want to go to the Courier office. But hold on a minute first, I want to have a little chat with you, and it will be to your advantage to listen to reason. I suppose you're wondering why you're here. Well, when I got out from the influence of your dope last night, I happened to pull out of my pocket the card you gave me. Without bothering to ask just why, I knew I had you to thank for that little job. I don't know who was with you, but I'll find out. Anyway, there've been good sharp eyes lookin' for you all day, but, as the cursed luck would have it, they didn't cop you till tonight. You were getting drunk then, making it easier for us. Much obliged to you. Now, where are those papers?"

O'Byrn leered with impish eyes. "Gimme a cigar," he suggested. The boss handed him one with a scowl. O'Byrn lighted it uncertainly and began unevenly to puff at it.

The boss waited silently a moment, then a smouldering fire crept into his eyes. He brought his fist down upon the arm of his chair with an oath. O'Byrn's wandering glance shifted lazily to Shaughnessy.

"Aha! my smart young rooster," growled the boss, "I know who was with you last night. I'm getting dippy, or I'd have thought of it sooner. I forgot who Peterson said was with you when he first set eyes on you tonight. So it's Nick Slade, is it, that helped you with your little job last night?"

"Lemme out and I'll ask him for you," suggested the Irishman. "I haven't got time to talk to you."

"Now see here," urged Shaughnessy, "I want those papers. I suppose you've got 'em on you." Micky made a mock gesture of alarm which the boss evidently believed was genuine, for he permitted himself a slight, sneering smile of triumph. "Well," he continued, "I'm on the level, I am. I'm not playing any dirty stab-in-the-back games like that little one of yours last night. If you'd used those papers as you meant to do, why, there wouldn't have been any use in talking things over now. But I know well enough, for I've been fairly busy today, that you haven't done anything yet and tonight's pretty near your last chance to scribble. Scribble? You're in good shape for the job, ain't you? Why, I'll bet you don't get the sense of twenty words I've said. But listen, you can get this." Shaughnessy bent toward him. "Turn those papers over to me, and do a quiet sneak out of town for good, and I'll make it worth your while."

"Yes," muttered O'Byrn, "I get that." His body swayed a moment, then straightened. His head wagged slowly from side to side, for the heat of the apartment was oppressive and the room began to whirl uncannily. Micky leaned his throbbing head upon his clasped hands. Shaughnessy smiled sardonically, believing him to be thinking it over.

O'Byrn lifted his head. "Say, is your name Shaughnessy?" he suddenly inquired. The question went home like a shot. Even through the mists that obscured his vision, the little Irishman chuckled as he saw Shaughnessy start violently, saw his white face go whiter. "No," pursued O'Byrn, with a momentary rally of his faculties, "I don't know what your name used to be, and I don't care. I was just guessin', somehow. But I'll tell you somethin'. My name ain't O'Byrn any more than yours is Shaughnessy. Here's the difference. I took the name of an honest man, an old fellow that was a friend to me after my mother died. I took it because it was an honest name, and my father's wasn't. I was only a kid, but I was old enough to hate the old man right, and try to change my luck by shedding his rotten name like a snake's skin. Since then I've rubbed along, but I've managed to keep honest, thank God, for I was born that way. Now I'll tell you the difference between you and me. I changed my name to get rid of one that wasn't honest, but someone else was to blame. You changed from one rascal's name to another, that's all, and you're gettin' worse every minute. No, old man, we won't make a deal for any papers, not this evening."

The fire faded in his eyes. With a spasmodic hiccough he fell back upon the sofa. The whirling room, which he had conveniently forgotten during his flat statement to Shaughnessy, swung once more in rhythmic, disconcerting circles before his swollen eyes. "Open a window!" he demanded. "It's roasting in here!"

Shaughnessy had remained silent since O'Byrn's outburst, regarding him balefully. "The window can wait," he said deliberately, "and so can you, unless you listen to reason. Now, you produce those papers, agreeing to keep your mouth shut and get out of town, for value received, of course. Either that or I'll promise you you'll be kept quiet till after election, anyway, and maybe longer. Things are ripe now and we can't afford to have you loose."

The fire was rekindled in O'Byrn's eyes. Clenching his hands he half rose from the sofa, only to again fall back helplessly upon it, with a curse, anathematizing his unsteady legs while he pressed his palms against his whirling head. Shaughnessy watched him with malicious satisfaction.

Suddenly the recurrent hazy thought disturbed Micky, the accusing whisper of duty unperformed. Where it had lain dormant with faint stirrings, it was now imperious. O'Byrn sat bolt upright, groping for his watch. Snapping the timepiece open, he stared at the dial. Even through the mists, which he could not blink away, the significance of the hour smote him like a lash. For a moment he sat inert, a growing horror in his eyes that stared straight ahead. The open watch slipped unheeded from his nerveless hand to the floor, striking the rug with a muffled thud.

The sound roused O'Byrn. He pitched forward, gaining his feet, and reeled toward the door, which he shook impotently. He turned to confront Shaughnessy's sneer.

"The key--give me the key!" O'Byrn's steps toward Shaughnessy were unsteady but his face was eloquent with settled purpose. The boss thoughtfully moved so as to put a heavy table, standing in the center of the room, between him and the angry Irishman. His sneer faded, his look spoke of uneasy apprehension. Shaughnessy was not a coward, but he was not over-strong; and, to do him justice, his fear came more from the possibility that the strangely rallied Irishman might, after all, escape, than from any worry over possible damage to himself in the process.

Now O'Byrn was opposite him, his hands resting on the table, his blue eyes staring straight into the uneasy black ones of the boss. For the present at least, O'Byrn's will, intent upon a definite object, would control his wavering limbs. "Give me the key!" he repeated softly. The tone was clear, the freckled face grim with determination, the glaze of the eyes had been burned away in flame. It was an uncanny transformation.

Shaughnessy, watching the other warily, tried to temporize. "Those papers," he suggested, "they're all I want. Give them to me and--"

O'Byrn hurled the table to one side, where it fell with a crash. He leaped forward, extended arms hungry for Shaughnessy. Now they were reeling about the room, locked together in desperate, voiceless struggle for the mastery. A chair fell heavily. Now they fell against the prostrate table, but recovered themselves with an effort and fought on.

Shaughnessy had been no stranger to either physical science or rough-and-tumble, in the days before ill-health assailed him; but older muscles, further handicapped by acquired weakness and long disuse, were not a match for those of the wiry young man, even in his present intoxicated condition. Shaughnessy, his breath coming in gasps and his face grown ghastly, tried by every recollected trick to trip O'Byrn, but the latter wriggled instinctively out of every snare. Now he forced Shaughnessy once more toward the fallen table, the boss resisting doggedly. But he was weakening, and Micky, with a sudden twist, threw him backward over one of the protruding legs of the table and fell heavily upon him.

The Irishman's breath, heavy with whisky, smote the fallen boss full in the face. Shaughnessy, gasping and nearly senseless, lay with his hand gripped hard at his left side. As though he had dreamed it in his agony, he felt his opponent's hand groping in a lower pocket of his coat. There was a faint jingle--the keys! O'Byrn rose with a tipsy laugh, swayed a moment and turned toward the door. Then, with a supreme effort, Shaughnessy threw himself to one side, reaching out a hand and catching Micky about the right ankle. A sharp wrench jerked him from his feet and he fell heavily, striking his head against the table leg which had previously served for the downfall of the boss.

After a few moments, Shaughnessy struggled weakly to his feet and stood grimly regarding the Irishman, who lay unconscious, with closed eyes, the freckles staring strangely from his pallid face. After a time Shaughnessy bent down and examined the reporter's hurt. "Nothing serious," he muttered, noting a crimson abrasion at the right side of the scalp. Then he thrust his hand confidently into the inner pocket of O'Byrn's coat. His look of complacency changed to concern. He made a thorough examination of the pockets, then rose with a bitter oath.

"Bluffed me!" he muttered furiously. "He hasn't got 'em." He felt strangely weak, as the result of the late encounter, and moved languidly over to the sofa whereon Micky had lately been. Shaughnessy sat down, with a heavy sigh, to think.

His moody eyes noted an object lying on the rug. Leaning over, he picked up Micky's watch. The back cover swung open in his hands, owing to the defective spring, which Micky had never had repaired.

Shaughnessy turned over the timepiece idly, noting on the inner cover a woman's picture. And in that moment the dead-white face, ordinarily an inscrutable mask, became startling to see. His black eyes, in which there grew a slow, consuming horror, stared at the picture as if hypnotized by it, and on his face was the look which the living might wear if confronted, without warning, by the resurrected dead.

After a time Shaughnessy withdrew his gaze, and, with a convulsive movement, snapped the watch shut. Slowly, fearfully, he approached the prostrate young fellow on the floor, afraid of what he should see. Now he bent on one knee over the senseless O'Byrn, peering strangely into his face. He thrust the watch into the little Irishman's pocket, as if anxious to hide it from his own vision. Then, timidly, he raised the inert right arm of his victim and slipped the sleeve up from the wrist. There was the scar.

A deep groan burst from Shaughnessy's lips; in his eyes gloomed, with added intensity, the horror that was the heritage of the past.