Part 14 (1/2)

”MiKY ef yo be reely hym c.u.m to KelLys karner at 10 tumoroW nite. Ef you are mIK youz thee old whissel an doante bring no une wit yer Ef yO du I wunt be thar.

”SAM.”

Michael seated on his lumpy bed puzzled this out, word by word, until he made fairly good sense of it. He was to go to Kelly's corner. How memory stirred at the words. Kelly's corner was beyond the first turn of the alley, it was at the extreme end of an alley within an alley, and had no outlet except through Kelly's saloon. Only the ”gang” knew the name, ”Kelly's Corner,” for it was not really a corner at all only a sort of pocket or hiding place so ent.i.tled by Buck for his own and ”de kids”

private purpose. If Michael had been at all inclined to be a coward since his recent hard usage in the vicinity of the alley he would have kept away from Kelly's corner, for once in there with enemies, and alone, no policeman's club, nor hospital ambulance would ever come to help. The things that happened at Kelly's corner never got into the newspapers.

Memory and instinct combined to make this perfectly dear to Michael's mind, and if he needed no other warning those words of the letter, ”Don't bring no one with you. If you do, I won't be there,” were sufficient to make him wise.

Yet Michael never so much as thought of not keeping the appointment. His business was to find Sam, and it mattered as little to him now that danger stood in the way as it had the day when he flung his neglected little body in front of Starr Endicott and saved her from the a.s.sa.s.sin's bullet. He would go, of course, and go alone. Neither did it occur to him to take the ordinary precaution of leaving his name and whereabouts at the police station to be searched for in case he did not turn up in reasonable time.

It was all in the day's work and Michael thought no more about the possible peril he was facing than he had thought of broken limbs and b.l.o.o.d.y noses the last hour before a football scrimmage.

There was something else in the letter that interested Michael and stirred the old memories. That old whistle! Of course he had not forgotten that, although he had not used it much among his college companions. It was a strange, weird, penetrating sound, between a call and whistle. He and Buck had made it up between them. It was their old signal. When Michael went to college he had held it sacred as belonging strictly to his old friends, and never, unless by himself in the woods where none but the birds and the trees could hear, had he let its echoes ring. Sometimes he had flung it forth and startled the mocking birds, and once he had let it ring into the midst of his astonished comrades in Florida when he was hidden from their view and they knew not who had made the sound. He tried it now softly, and then louder and louder, until with sudden fear he stopped lest his landlady should happen to come up that way and think him insane. But undoubtedly he could give the old signal.

The next night at precisely ten o'clock Michael's ringing step sounded down the alley; firm, decisive, secure. Such a.s.surance must Daniel have worn as he faced the den of lions; and so went the three Hebrew children into the fiery furnace.

”It's him! It's the angel!” whispered old Sal who was watching. ”Oi tould yez he'd come fer shure!”

”He's got his nerve with him!” murmured a girl with bold eyes and a coa.r.s.e kind of beauty, as she drew further back into the shadow of the doorway.

”He ain't comin' out again so pretty I guess. Not if Sam don't like. Mebbe he ain't comin' out 'tall!”

”Angels has ways, me darlint!” chuckled Sal. ”He'll come back al roight, ye'll see!”

On walked Michael, down the alley to the narrow opening that to the uninitiated was not an opening between the buildings at all, and slipped in the old way. He had thought it all out in the night. He was sure he knew just how far beyond Sal's house it was; on into the fetid air of the close dark place, the air that struck him in the face like a hot, wet blanket as he kept on.

It was very still all about when he reached the point known as Kelly's corner. It had not been so as he remembered it. It had been the place of plots, the hatching of murders and robberies. Had it so changed that it was still to-night? He stood for an instant hesitating. Should he wait a while, or knock on some door? Would it be any use to call?

But the instinct of the slums was upon him again, his birthright. It seemed to drop upon him from the atmosphere, a sort of stealthy patience. He would wait. Something would come. He must do as he had done with the birds of the forest when he wished to watch their habits. He must stand still unafraid and show that he was harmless.

So he stood three, perhaps five minutes, then softly at first and gradually growing clearer, he gave the call that he had given years before, a little barefoot, hungry child in that very spot many times.

The echo died away. There was nothing to make him know that a group of curious alley-dwellers huddled at the mouth of the trap in which he stood, watching with eyes accustomed to the darkness, to see what would happen; to block his escape if escape should be attempted.

Then out of the silence a sigh seemed to come, and out of the shadows one shadow unfolded itself and came forward till it stood beside him. Still Michael did not stir; but softly, through, half-open lips, breathed the signal once more.

Sibilant, rougher, with a hint of menace as it issued forth the signal was answered this time, and with a thrill of wonder the mantle of the old life fell upon Michael once more. He was Mikky--only grown more wise. Almost the old vernacular came to his tongue.

”Hi! Sam! That you?”

The figure in the darkness seemed to stiffen with sudden attention. The voice was like, and yet not like the Mikky of old.

”Wot yous want?” questioned a voice gruffly.

”I want you, Sam. I want to see if you look as you used to, and I want to know about the boys. Can't we go where there's light and talk a little?

I've been days hunting you. I've come back because I promised, you know.

You expected me to come back some day, didn't you, Sam?”

Michael was surprised to find how eager he was for the answer to this question.