she reached unsteadily for the bar to support herself. Grimly Johnny set his drink down, untouched. Blindly he turned in the direction of the voice, all the bitterly subdued emotion he had felt since arising from his knees on the sidewalk outside fused in a thick rage that swelled his throat.
“Johnny!” Sally's half whisper, half plea drifted after him.
Unheeding, he shouldered customers aside, sifting faces, and beside him the voice laughed raucously as a big man with a florid face jabbed his drinking companion in the ribs. “You hear what I said? I said at least the kid's-”
Johnny spun him around, and the big man's drink went flying over his shoulder to smash on the floor behind him, spraying neighboring cuffs and ankles. “I heard what you said, Jack. I didn't like it.”
“And who the hell are you not to like it?” the man demanded, and unloaded a line-drive right-hand smash that landed high, flush on Johnny's mouth. The big man stepped back expectantly, but Johnny's neck shrank itself into his shoulders as his chin came down on his chest. His open hands, hooked like curved claws, came up waist-high as he shuffled closer. The big man, recovering, slammed a left and right to the diminished target and then grunted loudly as the reaching hands clamped down on him laterally on thigh and shoulder. The man's surprised yell was breathlessly hoarse as he went effortlessly aloft, and Johnny straightened with the man overhead to find Mickey Tallant opposite him, hopping up and down with arms frantically outstretched.
“Not behind the bar, Johnny!” the Irishman yelled at the top of his lungs above the pandemonium around them, and Johnny pivoted as the man in the air struggled to get a hand in Johnny's hair and the other in the neckband of his uniform collar. The customers scattered wildly as Johnny came out of the pivot and slung the big man explosively at the wall a dozen feet away. Intervening tables and chairs splintered like kindling as the heavy body crashed through them, and Johnny straightened from the soul-satisfying effort to find that seventy-five per cent of his uniform jacket, shirt, and undershirt had made the trip to the wall with the big man. Impatiently he stripped off the rags still clinging to him.
“Throw me an apron, Mickey,” he called to the tavern owner without turning around. Then he ran a hand lightly over his swelling mouth and looked impassively at the blood upon it.
In the second it took sound to return to the room, the shattered outer door opened and two slender men huddled in dark overcoats entered briskly. They came to a dead stop just inside the door as their eyes took in the tableau at the other end of the room, and the nearer dark overcoat shook its head disparagingly as it looked from Johnny to the man crawling along the base of the wall like a wingless grub. “I must say it looks natural,” Detective James Rogers announced in his usual imperturbable tone, “but is it legal?”
Hands in pockets, Detective Ted Cuneo in the second dark overcoat sauntered over to the wall. After a sharp glance at Johnny he leaned down over the man sitting up dizzily, the official voice solicitous. “You like to sign a complaint, citizen?”
From behind the bar Mickey Tallant made an angry sound. “He ain't signin' no complaint, Cuneo. He's been livin' too long now on borrowed time with that unzippered bazzoo of his. He's just lucky he don't wind up plenty shortweight on the scale.”
The slender Detective Rogers removed his hat and tossed it onto a nearby table; he ran a hand lightly through his sandy hair. “Is it official that he hasn't?” he asked mildly, and walked over to Johnny, who was unfolding the apron that had been tossed him. The detective placed a stiffened forefinger amid the ridged scars prominent on Johnny's bared chest. “Every time I see you, Killain,” he began thoughtfully, then shrugged. “I imagine we could always charge indecent exposure.” He looked from Johnny to his partner, who was still talking urgently to the big man on the floor, and he raised his voice. “The sidewalk affair does seem to have priority, Ted,” he suggested, and Detective Cuneo straightened reluctantly. He was a lean six-footer, hatchet-faced and sallow-complexioned, with overlarge eyes that seemed perpetually outraged.
He removed a notebook from an inside breast pocket and walked quickly to the bar. “All right, Tallant,” he said snappily. “You got so damn much to say let's hear something now. Let's not keep the first editions waiting.”
Detective Rogers nodded at Johnny, swathed in wraparound fashion in his apron. “Don't hurry off, chum,” he said softly, and turned to the bar to join in the questioning of the tavern owner.
Neither Rogers nor Cuneo had noticed Sally's presence, Johnny reflected, but that wouldn't last long. Silently he made his way through the crowd back to the end of the bar and took up his position beside her. She slipped her hand back into his, her eyes on the big man, who had made it up to a chair and was cautiously flexing arms and legs. Her expression was unreadable.
With his free hand Johnny picked up his previously neglected drink. He swallowed it at a gulp, winced as the alcohol burned his torn mouth and set the empty glass down on the bar.
He waited for their turn at questions-and-answers, the seething boil and bubble of his overheated blood ebbing gradually to a liquid simmer. He felt almost ready when Detective Rogers turned suddenly at the bar and looked in their direction, then detached himself and walked rapidly toward them.
CHAPTER II
Detective Rogers looked from Sally to Johnny and back again. “I'm sorry, Miss Fontaine,” he said quietly. “If you're able, there are a few questions-” He broke off and looked over at the door, through which half a dozen men had just entered. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said, and walked over to the two men in the lead, each of whom carried a black leather case.
“Listen to me, Sally,” Johnny said urgently when he was sure that they could not be overheard. “When he comes back, tell him you're not feeling well. Tell him you'd like to go back to the hotel, and you'll answer his questions there.”
The slender girl roused herself from the apathy into which she had fallen. “Will you come, too?”
“A little bit later. They'll want to-”
He had lost her attention; she was shaking her head firmly.
“I'll wait for you.”
“Look, Ma,” he said impatiently. “I'm not tellin' you without a reason. This Rogers is the closest thing they got to a right guy in this precinct. I've known him a while, an', though we've taken a few nips out of each other, he's all right. This Cuneo, though, is another peck of potatoes. He don't like me, an' I don't want you around here when he gets to me in the questioning. Savvy?”
“I don't see what difference-” she began stubbornly, and then subsided. “All right,” she said tiredly, “if you say so. What will I say?”
“Just what I told you. Here he comes.” Johnny listened to Sally's fumbling, halting request and watched Rogers' cautious observance of the girl's blue-lipped semishock. When the detective turned to him he was ready with what he hoped would be the clincher. “She don't look good to me. You'll want to talk to Gidlow anyway, won't you?”
“Gidlow?”
“Jake Gidlow, the kid's manager. Stays at the hotel. Suite on the tenth floor.”
The sandy-haired man nodded. “I'll get my hat.” Back at the bar Johnny could see him talking to Cuneo briefly.
Johnny placed two fingers beneath Sally's chin and tipped her head back slightly; he examined the suspicious glimmer in the reddened brown eyes. “You got to stop knockin' yourself out, Ma,” he told her roughly.
“I'm-I'll be all right.” She detached her hand from his. “Lend me your handkerchief. I wish you were coming back with me.”
“I'll be there before you know it,” he said, draping his discarded trench coat over her shoulders.
“And don't lose your temper, like you did with that other man. They-”
“Here he comes,” Johnny interrupted her. “Chin up, now.” Her smile was wan, but she walked steadily enough to the door with Detective Rogers in her wake. Johnny released an expansive sigh; he was glad to get her out of here. He looked around for a chair and found one in a back corner. He knew it would not be a short wait, with a roomful of people to be run through the police routine. He had a lot on his mind; he lit innumerable cigarettes and snuffed out lengthy stubs. With his eyes he followed the horde of uniformed and plain-clothed men who had
