K Part 58

There was one thing wrong. What had come over Wilson, to do so reckless a thing? K., who was a one-woman man, could not explain it.

From inside the bar Bill took a careful survey of Le Moyne. He noted his tall figure and shabby suit, the slight stoop, the hair graying over his ears. Barkeepers know men: that's a part of the job. After his survey he went behind the bar and got the revolver from under an overturned pail.

K. thrust it into his pocket.

"Now," he said quietly, "where is he?"

"In my room--top of the house."

K. followed Bill up the stairs. He remembered the day when he had sat waiting in the parlor, and had heard Tillie's slow step coming down.

And last night he himself had carried down Wilson's unconscious figure.

Surely the wages of sin were wretchedness and misery. None of it paid.

No one got away with it.

The room under the eaves was stifling. An unmade bed stood in a corner.

From nails in the rafters hung Bill's holiday wardrobe. A tin cup and a cracked pitcher of spring water stood on the window-sill.

Joe was sitting in the corner farthest from the window. When the door swung open, he looked up. He showed no interest on seeing K., who had to stoop to enter the low room.

"h.e.l.lo, Joe."

"I thought you were the police."

"Not much. Open that window, Bill. This place is stifling."

"Is he dead?"

"No, indeed."

"I wish I'd killed him!"

"Oh, no, you don't. You're d.a.m.ned glad you didn't, and so am I."

"What will they do with me?"

"Nothing until they find you. I came to talk about that. They'd better not find you."

"Huh!"

"It's easier than it sounds."

K. sat down on the bed.

"If I only had some money!" he said. "But never mind about that, Joe; I'll get some."

Loud calls from below took Bill out of the room. As he closed the door behind him, K.'s voice took on a new tone: "Joe, why did you do it?"

"You know."

"You saw him with somebody at the White Springs, and followed them?"

"Yes."

"Do you know who was with him?"

"Yes, and so do you. Don't go into that. I did it, and I'll stand by it."

"Has it occurred to you that you made a mistake?"

"Go and tell that to somebody who'll believe you!" he sneered. "They came here and took a room. I met him coming out of it. I'd do it again if I had a chance, and do it better."

"It was not Sidney."

"Aw, chuck it!"

"It's a fact. I got here not two minutes after you left. The girl was still there. It was some one else. Sidney was not out of the hospital last night. She attended a lecture, and then an operation."

Joe listened. It was undoubtedly a relief to him to know that it had not been Sidney; but if K. expected any remorse, he did not get it.

"If he is that sort, he deserves what he got," said the boy grimly.

And K. had no reply. But Joe was glad to talk. The hours he had spent alone in the little room had been very bitter, and preceded by a time that he shuddered to remember. K. got it by degrees--his descent of the staircase, leaving Wilson lying on the landing above; his resolve to walk back and surrender himself at Schwitter's, so that there could be no mistake as to who had committed the crime.

"I intended to write a confession and then shoot myself," he told K.

"But the barkeeper got my gun out of my pocket. And--"

After a pause: "Does she know who did it?"

"Sidney? No."

"Then, if he gets better, she'll marry him anyhow."

"Possibly. That's not up to us, Joe. The thing we've got to do is to hush the thing up, and get you away."

"I'd go to Cuba, but I haven't the money."

K. rose. "I think I can get it."

He turned in the doorway.

"Sidney need never know who did it."

"I'm not ashamed of it." But his face showed relief.

There are times when some cataclysm tears down the walls of reserve between men. That time had come for Joe, and to a lesser extent for K.

The boy rose and followed him to the door.

"Why don't you tell her the whole thing?--the whole filthy story?" he asked. "She'd never look at him again. You're crazy about her. I haven't got a chance. It would give you one."