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Under The Eaves
by
Mr. Breeze was unable to obtain any information regarding the desperado Bodine’s associates and relations; his correction of the paragraph had made the other members of the staff believe he had secret and superior information regarding the fugitive, and he thus was estopped from asking questions. But he felt himself justified now in demanding fuller information from Roberts at the earliest opportunity.
For this purpose he came home earlier that night, hoping to find the night watchman still on his first beat in the lower halls. But he was disappointed. He was amazed, however, on reaching his own landing, to find the passage piled with new luggage, some of that ruder type of rolled blanket and knapsack known as a “miner’s kit.” He was still more surprised to hear men’s voices and the sound of laughter proceeding from the room that was always locked. A sudden sense of uneasiness and disgust, he knew not why, came over him.
He passed quickly into his room, shut the door sharply, and lit the gas. But he presently heard the door of the locked room open, a man’s voice, slightly elevated by liquor and opposition, saying, “I know what’s due from one gen’leman to ‘nother”–a querulous, objecting voice saying, “Hole on! not now,” and a fainter feminine protest, all of which were followed by a rap on his door.
Breeze opened it to two strangers, one of whom lurched forward unsteadily with outstretched hand. He had a handsome face and figure, and a certain consciousness of it even in the abandon of liquor; he had an aggressive treacherousness of eye which his potations had not subdued. He grasped Breeze’s hand tightly, but dropped it the next moment perfunctorily as he glanced round the room.
“I told them I was bound to come in,” he said, without looking at Breeze, “and say ‘Howdy!’ to the man that’s bin a pal to my women folks and the kids–and acted white all through! I said to Mame, ‘I reckon HE knows who I am, and that I kin be high-toned to them that’s high-toned; kin return shake for shake and shot for shot!’ Aye! that’s me! So I was bound to come in like a gen’leman, sir, and here I am!”
He threw himself in an unproffered chair and stared at Breeze.
“I’m afraid,” said Breeze dryly, “that, nevertheless, I never knew who you were, and that even now I am ignorant whom I am addressing.”
“That’s just it,” said the second man, with a querulous protest, which did not, however, conceal his admiring vassalage to his friend; “that’s what I’m allus telling Jim. ‘Jim,’ I says, ‘how is folks to know you’re the man that shot Kernel Baxter, and dropped three o’ them Mariposa Vigilants? They didn’t see you do it! They just look at your fancy style and them mustaches of yours, and allow ye might be death on the girls, but they don’t know ye! An’ this man yere–he’s a scribe in them papers–writes what the boss editor tells him, and lives up yere on the roof, ‘longside yer wife and the children–what’s he knowin’ about YOU?’ Jim’s all right enough,” he continued, in easy confidence to Breeze, “but he’s too fresh ’bout himself.”
Mr. James Bodine accepted this tribute and criticism of his henchman with a complacent laugh, which was not, however, without a certain contempt for the speaker and the man spoken to. His bold, selfish eyes wandered round the room as if in search of some other amusement than his companions offered.
“I reckon this is the room which that hound of a landlord, Rakes, allowed he’d fix up for our poker club–the club that Dan Simmons and me got up, with a few other sports. It was to be a slap-up affair, right under the roof, where there was no chance of the police raiding us. But the cur weakened when the Vigilants started out to make war on any game a gen’leman might hev that wasn’t in their gummy-bag, salt pork trade. Well, it’s gettin’ a long time between drinks, gen’lemen, ain’t it?” He looked round him significantly.