yellowish stuff came out of his inside pocket. “Five hundred dollars in it for you. Two-fifty on the spot, and the rest———”
“He was my friend, I say,” finished the Captain. “I’ll see you and the gang, and the city, and the party in the flames of Hades before I’ll take the stand against Dan Pickering. I’m down and out; but I’m no traitor to a man that’s been my friend.” The Captain’s voice rose and boomed like a split trombone. “Get out of this park, Charlie Finnegan, where us thieves and tramps and boozers are your betters; and take your dirty money with you.”
Finnegan drifted out by another walk. The Captain returned to his seat.
“I couldn’t avoid hearing,” said Murray, drearily. “I think you are the biggest fool I ever saw.”
“What would you have done?” asked the Captain.
“Nailed Pickering to the cross,” said Murray.
“Sonny,” said the Captain, huskily and without heat. “You and me are different. New York is divided into two parts—above Forty-second street, and below Fourteenth. You come from the other part. We both act according to our lights.”
An illumiated clock above the trees retailed the information that it lacked the half hour of twelve. Both men rose from the bench and moved away together as if seized by the same idea. They left the
[186]
