CHAPTER ELEVEN
Teddie, alone with her irate young prize-fighter, turned and regarded him with a studiously narrowed eye.
"Now, what do you want to know?" she quietly demanded. She felt oddly and immeasurably older than she had done but one short week ago.
"I want 'o know who's playin' double in this mix-up," Gunboat Dorgan promptly asserted.
"I don't quite understand," protested Teddie.
"Well, first thing, I want 'o know just what yuh said about that car?"
"When?" temporized Teddie. "And where?"
"Just b'fore I kissed yuh, right here in this room," asserted the over-honest youth. "Whereupon Teddie stiffened and winced and had to take a grip on herself before she could control her voice.
"I'm sorry there's been any mistake about it," explained Teddie, doing her best to be patient. "I remember now, I said you could have the car. And, as a matter of fact, you are perfectly welcome to it, or what's left of it!"
"Then why's this man West talkin' so big about grand larceny and gettin' me locked up? What's he know about what's been passin' strictly b'tween yuh and me? Yuh were up ag'inst it, and I could see it, and I helped yuh out the same as I'd help any girl. And I didn't have me hand out when I did it!"
"That was the trouble, Mr. Dorgan," Teddie tried to tell him. "I was willing to accept service from you without stopping to consider whether or not it could be repaid, I mean adequately repaid. And that's where I made my mistake. You'll have to attribute that mistake, I'm afraid, to the defects in my bringing up. It's a sort of penalty for the past. One gets into the habit of accepting things, just as one accepts cinnamon-toast from the footman, or a trip across the Hudson from the ferry-boat, without being actively conscious of any human obligation. That man had made himself unbearably offensive to me, and I asked you to punch his nose for me, without remembering the risks it involved, without appreciating the danger I was bringing"
"Risks!" cried Gunboat, with a derisive hoot, finally arriving at a definite idea in what seemed a morass of abstractions. "Where's the risks in standin' up to a big stiff like that?"
"I'm afraid I wasn't thinking of the risks to you," Teddie rather wearily explained. "I was rather selfishly remembering the risks to myself."
"Well, yuh ain't suffered none from it, have yuh?" derided her still indignant-eyed cross-examiner.
"I've just paid Raoul Uhlan twenty-five thousand dollars as compensation for his injuries," explained Teddie, as coolly as she was able.
Gunboat Dorgan fell back, gaped a little, and then swallowed hard.
"Yuh paid—yuh paid that mutt— that money—for—for what he'd get tarred and feathered for—down in my Ward!" he gasped, wide-eyed with incredulity.
Teddie nodded.
And Gunboat, seeing that movement of acquiescence, repeated: "wenty-five thousand dollars!" Then he began to stride meditatively back and forth, pacing the studio-rug with his characteristic panther-like step. Teddie watched him, without speaking, without moving. She watched him until he came to an abrupt stop.
"Say, Ruby was right in this, after all," he suddenly proclaimed. "I was the guy who got off his trolley. Yuh—yuh looked so good to me I got my numbers mixed. I got to dreamin' things. But twenty-five thousand bucks in cold cash ain't no dream. And d' yuh know what I'm goin' to do, and do right now? I'm goin' up to that Uhlan guy and get that twenty-five thousand back. Just so's yuh can see I'm a little more on the level than yuh've been imaginin I'm goin' to make that studio-lizard come across wit' that dough—with that dough," he amended, remembering, in his excitement, certain old-time admonitions as to the utterance of his mother-tongue.
"But I don 't want you to do that!" cried Teddie, harboring a strangely muddled up and reluctant admiration for the deluded young fire-eater with the Saint Anthony light in his blazing blue eyes.
"Of course yuh don't, for the thing's got yuh buffaloed the same as yuh got me buffaloed," proclaimed the knight of the ring. "And the whole lay-out's wrong. The only thing that got hurt about that guy was his dignity. I knew what I was doin' all the time. I held back on the sleep-punch, and played wit' him. I didn't give him anything that a pound of beefsteak wouldn't put right inside o' twenty-four hours and he knows it as well as I do. But now he's pulled this blackmail stuff I'm goin' to put him wise to how I was toyin' wit' him. I'm goin' to let him see that if he ever so much as opens his trap about this business he's goin' to have it decorated wit' a double set o' plates when I get through wit' him—when I get through with him. And the next time he'll holler so loud for help they'll be fannin' him wit' a hearse-plume before he 's finished!"
Teddie tried to stop him as he turned away.
"Noth-thing doin'!" he proclaimed with his movie-hero side-movement of the hand. "I'm Irish, I am, and me Irish is up. Yuh're goin' to see this goob bitin' on a mouth-gag or yuh're goin' to see crape swingin' over his door-mat!"
"It's no use," Teddie still tried to tell him. "It's too late. It will only make things much worse than they already are!"
But Gunboat Dorgan hadn't been crowned with that soubriquet of belligerency without fit and proper reason.
"I'm wise to this lay-out now," he announced from the doorway, "and I'm goin' to have a hand in windin' it up. It's no use tryin ' to flag me off. And I ain't sayin ' yuh're a quitter, for yuh're only a girl. But yuh don't see me layin' down in the shafts wit' a thing like this under me nose. I'm goin' through wit' this, and nobody's goin' to stop me. And maybe this'll square up a little for—for them lamps o' yours I put on the blink!"