Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1924 — page 116: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

906 she was doing she was kneeling by his chair, wiping his cold, wet feet with a homely crash towel. A dull red flooded Mike’s white face. ‘* Here—-don’t do that!” he muttered, striving to hold his tea with one hand and to repulse her kindly offices with the other. “You drink that tea while it’s hot! Don’t you s’pose I’ve ever waited on a help- less man before now?” She cackled cheerfully, finished her job, and laid a clean, dry pair of blue home- knit socks beside him. “When you’ve drunk your tea, you can change these. They belonged to Henry— my bachelor brother. I’m glad to find some good use for ’em.” After a minute she asked: ‘ Hungry, ain’t ye? Men most generally be.” Mike the Wop nodded tersely. She bustled out into the kitchen, and presently there stole into the little front room the ineffable aroma of ham and eggs frying in a nest of sliced potatoes. Supper ready, she did not embarrass him by watching him eat. Instead, having set everything in abundance upon the kitchen table, including bread and butter and apple sauce and more hot tea, she returned to the sitting room and picked up the big book which she had been reading when he knocked at her door. _ It was not a Bible. Its cover bore the odd title, “ What very Mother Should Know About Her Child.” But she didn’t read further in it. <A tiny frown between her eyes, she laid it aside after carefully marking the place with a slip of paper, and waited for her guest to finish his meal. The most reticent nature finds itself now and then off guard. Prolonged silence breeds the acute need of an audience. Liquor loosens many tongues; but a warm meal after cold and exposure may act in much the same way. In Mike the Wop, the transition from hunger and dampness, and the evil communion of his own thoughts, to warm shelter and a full stom- ach, caused a sudden letting down of the bars of caution. It wasn’t that he was boastful. He simply didn’t care. He want- ed to talk. And how could this little old ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. dame interfere with his plans, even if she wanted to or dared try? Almost insolently he swaggered back te the beguiling, deep seated wing chair, and stretched animal-like before the fire. He fished his vest pockets and found a packet of cigarettes given him by the warden. Without asking permission, he lighted one, and sighed contentedly. ‘Stranger in these parts?” asked his hostess. ‘Naw. I been a neighbor o’ vours ‘most three years. Over to the pen. They sprung me to-day.” The little old lady looked startled for a mere instant. ‘“ You mean—you’ve been a prisoner and are just free again?” “You got me,” he answered. The woman swallowed, and her eyes widened a little. Then, ‘“‘ Why, that’s splen- did!” she exclaimed. ‘How happy you must be!” Mike watched her from half closed lids. “I’m happier than one bird will be when he gets wise that I’m loose,” he conceded. ‘You mean there’s somebody, some ene- my who is so cruel that he won’t be glad you’re let out?” The Wop flicked the ash from the end of his cigarette into the grate of the little stove. ‘Lady, the guy I mean is the one who squealed on me and got me sent up.” “* Squealed?”’ “Double crossed me. Blew the game. Turned State’s evidence to save his own dirty skin. Me and him was in en the job tegether. And he never done a day’s time for it.” “But you were guilty? As guilty as hee” “Wot of it? Couldn’t he take his medi- cine like a man? ‘Stead of which he’s been sitting pretty while I rotted up the river. And now it’s my turn!” His listener felt cold under the breath of his hatred. “ What are you going to do?” she asked fearfully. “Do? Wot am I going to do? I’m going to do him. That’s wot! Creak him—bump him off! To-night. That’s why I’m hoofing COnmiC doo! (©