There was the familiar red rag that served as a scarf tied around the neck. There was the thick black beard covering all the face but for the gash cutting across the cheek bone. There was the pitted nose over the thick, wet lips. And there were the dark eyes suddenly piercing Robin with a razor-sharp stare as the heavy lids narrowed around them.
“Get over here, boy!” Hawker Doak snarled. “You’re late!”
Chapter II
OUT!
Shoving his chair away from the table where he had been slouching with two other men, Hawker hoisted himself up. But he never for a moment took his glaring eyes off Robin squeezing between tables and chairs as he made his way across the foul room. The moment he arrived, Hawker grabbed him roughly by the collar.
“This boy and I got private business,” Hawker muttered under his breath to his tablemates.
“You comin’ back?” one of the men asked. “Want we should save your seat?”
“Sure I’m comin’ back, you dolt,” Hawker growled. “What do you think? Just goin’ over to the cubby at the back where everyone can’t be stickin’ their noses into what’s none o’ their affair.”
Giving Robin a violent jerk that almost knocked him off his feet, Hawker dragged him away from the table, forcing a way to the back of the room to what was little more than a dent in the wall. It was large enough, however, for him to shove Robin in, and then plant himself in front so nothing but his huge, hulking back could be see by the rest of the room. Then he shot out a beefy hand at Robin.
“All right, boy, turn it over. Let’s see what you did.”
His hands shaking so hard he could hardly unbutton his jacket, Robin dug into an inside pocket and started pulling out the money he had collected. But any lingering hope he had that the darkness of the hole in the wall where he stood would confuse Hawker was soon ended. His thick fingers were nimble as they counted every cent and crumpled dollar bill.
“Is this all?” he snapped. “Look at me, boy. I’m askin’, is this all?”
Eyes glued to Hawker’s accusing face, Robin nodded.
Hawker’s eyebrows raised suspiciously. “You didn’t by any chance lift a mite for yourself, did you? In another way of puttin’ it, you didn’t steal any, did you?” His eyes bored into Robin as he jammed the money inside his jacket.
“No,” he said, answering his own question. “A scrawny little weasel like you wouldn’t have the stomach for nothin’ like that. But then why, I’m askin’ you, are we comin’ up fifty cents short? Who, I’m askin’ you, didn’t pay up? If you don’t got a hole in your pocket, and you didn’t steal it, who, I’m askin’ you again, boy, who didn’t pay up?”
“It … it … it was Mr. Kringle,” Robin stammered. “He … he didn’t have enough money to pay it all.”
Hawker snorted. “Well, if that’s what he told you, I’m tellin’ you he’s lyin’.”
“But … but he said his wife had to see the doctor,” Robin said. “He … he …”
“He nothin’!” Hawker snarled. “If you believe that, you believe Christmas comes twice a year, boy. She sits around earnin’ money makin’ them fancy slippers, don’t she?”
“But he said to tell you he’d have the money next week,” Robin said. “He said to tell you, ‘Mr. Kringle makes a promise.’”
Hawker sneered. “Oh, he said that, did he? So what makes him think that him who owns the building is gonna like it if all I bring him is bloody promises? It’s my neck or Kringle’s is what it is. So you just tell him Hawker Doak makes a promise to him. He pays up now, or else he and his slipper-makin’ missus, the old lady, and all their brats are out. You hear me, boy? Out! Now, I’m goin’ back to my seat what’s bein’ held for me. You march right back to Kringle, and don’t come back without the fifty cents. You understand me, boy?”
Even as Robin was nodding, Hawker grabbed him by the jacket collar once again and yanked him back to the table. “All right, get movin’! I’ll be right here waitin’ for you.”
Oh yes, there was little doubt about that. Where the doubt lay was in whether Robin could come back with the fifty cents. And as he finally left The Whole Hog, one terrible word kept drumming in his head. Out! Out where? Where could the Kringle family go if they were put out? The street? Or perhaps a rat hole worse than the one they were in, if they were lucky enough to find one?
Robin remembered once when work at the docks had been slow for his papa, and he and Mama had gone around with worried looks. They had something “put aside” for such an event, they said, but was it enough? They had even breathed the word “out.” How frightening it would be for someone to be put out. Of course, though they lived in the tenements, it was in a decent building, nothing so murderous as the one where Robin had been sent to collect rents. But out was out, no matter from what kind of building.
As Robin left The Whole Hog, he thought of the twitching hands by Mr. Kringle’s sides, and the fear in his eyes. He thought of the thin, wasted face of the wife bent over the table, the shrunken, shrivelled grandmother, the pasty-faced children—all of them relentlessly slaving away over the beads and the boxes. Out! And they would be put out, too. For Robin believed Mr. Kringle truly did not have the fifty cents. So what was the use of knocking on that door again? Robin could not even bring himself to try.
But what then was he to do? Hawker had warned him not to come back without the fifty cents. Well, he did not have the fifty cents,
