Ever After (24 page)

“Johnny? He’s getting a story.”

“Not tonight, Dixie. Some other time. Don’t come back here.
either, for a while. Take your songs somewhere else, hear me? Go on, scat.”

“Scat yourself, Fay, we’re seein’ Miss Murphy home.”

Johnny put his head in at the door.

“Come on, Dixie,” he said quietly. “Time for us to get a move on.”

“You go ahead if you like,” Fitz said. “I’m goin’ to see Miss Murphy home.”

Johnny caught Fay’s eye and shook his head sadly.

“He’s from Ole Virginny,” he explained. “Sometimes it takes him this way. Doesn’t mean any real harm. The fact is, Dixie, we aren’t wanted around here.”

“Thought you had a story.”

“Reporters, eh?” Gwen spoke suddenly from behind Fitz. “I might have known! Well, none of your sob stuff about my brother, see? Outside, the both of you!”

“Now wait a minute,” Fitz began, rather hurt. “Johnny, here, writes for the papers, I don’t deny. But I’m—”

“Yeh, you told me, you write songs!” Her red mouth was
scornful
. “Well, I’m out of a job now, so you can find somebody else to sing ’em. I’m no use to you, see? Don and I worked together. I’m no good as a single, they won’t hire me that way.”

“Well—what are you goin’ to do for a livin’, then?”

“That’s my worry. Will you two get out of here or would you rather be thrown out?”

Fitz gazed at her, aggrieved and incredulous. He hadn’t done anything but dry her eyes and offered her his protection on the way home, and she had turned on him as though he was prying into her personal affairs.

“No need to get sore about it, Miss Murphy, I was only trying to—” he began with dignity, and Fay laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and turned him towards the door where Johnny waited.

“Yeh, we know—helpful Harry! You can’t teach that kid
anything
, Dixie, she can look after herself.”

“I wasn’t trying to teach her anything, I just—”

Fay straightened her arm without apparent effort and he reeled against the door-casing, and Johnny held him up and led him away through a maze of ropes and stacked-up wings and the gaudy painted furniture of the animal act, to a narrow dark doorway through which they emerged into a dark narrow alley and eventually into West Thirty-fourth Street.

“Look, Johnny, why should they kick us out like that, I only wanted to—”

“Keep walking, Dixie. It was for your own good.”

Fitz gave him a surprised glance in the ill-lighted street.

“What’s it got to do with me?” he asked.

“I got the whole dirty story from Jake. It wasn’t a healthy place to be tonight, all hell was popping. That boy Don was a very unwholesome piece of work, his pretty sister notwithstanding. It seems he gambled, Dixie, my son—with money that didn’t belong to him, mind you. And then, as though playing with dynamite wasn’t enough, he grabbed off a girl that didn’t belong to him either. And then, just to make sure it wouldn’t go unnoticed, he talked back to the rightful owner of both properties and tried to blackmail him. But he wasn’t quite smart enough to take on Fagan’s gang
single-handed
. And the girl he stole got cold feet and went back on him. One of Fagan’s boys came to the dressing-room tonight and told Don Murphy what he could do. He probably gave him the gun to do it with.”

“You mean they forced him to—”

“Well, he saw the jig was up. There wasn’t much else he could do, and his girl had ratted. He should have picked on somebody his size. And that’s not all, either. It’s hands off the sister, Dixie. Fagan’s orders.”

“I see.” They had come down to Sixth Avenue and turned down town. After a thoughtful silence Fitz said, “What becomes of the sister now?”

“I don’t think,” said Johnny carefully, “that that is a thing which need concern you and me.”

There was more silence while they kept step together down Sixth Avenue.

“So that’s why she was so scared,” Fitz said at last.

“It’s not our funeral, Dixie. Not, that is, if we mind our own business from now on.”

Fitz thought it over for another block.

“I’ve got kind of a funny idea she doesn’t like Fagan,” he said then, and his pace slackened. “She’s an honest girl, Johnny—did you see her eyes? And she was scared out of her skin.” He drifted to a standstill. “I’m going back there and see that she gets home all right.”

“Now, Dixie, will you listen to reason—”

“You comin’ with me or not?” said Fitz, and Johnny sighed, and they turned around and began to retrace their steps towards Thirty-fourth Street.

A
S THEY
approached the mouth of the alley which led to the stage door, Johnny put out a detaining hand and drew Fitz into an
unlighted
doorway. Peering down the street, they could see the glowing end of a cigar patrolling the sidewalk in front of the alley. They waited. The shadowy figure with the cigar moved back and forth deliberately, as though waiting for somebody. Fitz’s heart beat a little faster.

“Do you think—” he whispered, and Johnny’s tightened fingers hushed him.

They stood in the added darkness of the doorway for what seemed like hours, while the cigar was thrown away and a new one was lighted. Then figures began to emerge from the alley. First came the man and the two children from the contortionist act. They passed close to the pair in the doorway without noticing them. Then came a couple who might have been the trainer of the animal act and his girl assistant. They turned in the opposite direction. Fitz and Johnny left the doorway and edged closer to the alley. Two women came next—Gwen and the lady contortionist, a bulky figure beside the girl’s slight one. The cigar made a lighted are into the gutter, and the man who threw it moved purposefully to intercept them.

“Leave her alone, can’t you?” Fitz heard the woman saying. “Wait till tomorrow anyway, for God’s sake.” And the man replied brusquely. “I got orders from Fagan,” as Fitz and Johnny eased in on them.

“Where is he?” Gwen asked tonelessly.

“That’s what I’m here to show you.”

“No. If you won’t tell me where I’m going, I won’t go with you.”

“Won’t, eh?” said the man softly, and—

“Good evening,” Fitz remarked, removing his hat. “It is Miss LaSalle, isn’t it? I’d know that voice, even in the dark. I’m the fellow that spoke to you about my songs, remember?”

“Not tonight, please,” Gwen said rather breathlessly.

“Well, I don’t want to butt in. of course, if you have a previous engagement, but I brought my friend along, he’s very musical, and he’s going to be kind of disappointed if you turn us down.
Thursday
after the show, you said, and I promised we’d wait for you, and here we are.”

“Well, I—I don’t think I—”

“It’s mighty good of you to take the trouble,” Fitz went on in his gentle voice, and he took her arm on one side and Johnny closed in on the other and they moved off towards Sixth Avenue with Gwen
between them, Fitz talking smoothly as they went, while his heart beat a tattoo against his unaccustomed ribs and he anticipated tautly an angry roar of protest or a physical assault from the man they left standing, strangely silent, at the mouth of the alley. “Of course I haven’t had anything published yet, but there has to be a first time for everything, and I thought
Introduced
by
Gwen
LaSalle
would look kind of pretty on the cover. As soon as I heard you sing I said, ‘That’s the girl I want to plug my songs,’ I said, didn’t I, Johnny, and by the way who wrote that number you open with, it’s not bad.”

“Don wrote all our stuff.”

“That leaves you kind of high and dry, doesn’t it! Well, anything I’ve got that you want you can use to get a new act worked up—”

By now they had reached Sixth Avenue where the lights were brighter and Johnny decided with relief that they were not going to be followed. Once more they turned downtown, with Gwen between them now, and Fitz, with his hand under her elbow, felt her
trembling
still. As they came to the Thirty-third Street kerb she gasped and stumbled, and Johnny caught her on the other side. A moment she hung on their hands, till the weakness passed and she raised her head resolutely.

“I’m all right. I—never faint.”

“Sure, you’re all right,” Johnny said encouragingly. “Just keep walking, you’ll get your wind, we’ll hold you up.”

“I don’t know why you bother,” she murmured. “I tried to tip you off to let me alone, it’s only a question of time anyway, with Don out of the way. They’ll tell you wrong about Don. You mustn’t believe what you hear. Oh, well, that was true too. He did use Fagan’s money and lose it, and he did take Fagan’s girl. But Fagan and Madge were about through anyway. The real reason he hated Don was me. Don always said Fagan would get me over his dead body—” Her teeth were chattering now. “If Don hadn’t said that—”

“He’d still be dead,” Johnny said grimly. “Get that into your head, Gwen. He was a goner before you ever came into it, don’t make any mistake about that.”

“But I’ll never be sure—”

“You can be sure. You must.”

“I f-feel like a murderess—”

“Now, stop it—stop it!” Johnny gave her a little shake. “You couldn’t have saved Don from what was coming to him if you’d gone to Fagan on your knees, and you know it.”

“I g-guess you’re right.”

“You know damn’ well I’m right.”

“They took him to the morgue. There wasn’t any place else.”

“No, there wasn’t any place else,” Johnny agreed kindly. “That’s all over now, see? You must try and let it go and forget it.”

“There’s the funeral—”

“You aren’t going to any funeral.”

“But I’m the only—”

“The only mourner, sure, I know, but he’ll have to do without. You’re going to disappear, Gwen.”

“Ah, Johnny, what a boy!” cried Fitz from her other side. “You leave it to us, Gwen, we’ll see you through. The hell with Fagan, I told you!”

“I don’t want you boys to get into any trouble on my account.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Johnny clearly, for he was sober as a judge now. “They don’t know us. He couldn’t see our faces, it was too dark back there. He’ll wait for you to— Do they know where you live?”

“Of course.”

“Then you aren’t going back there. Not for a while, anyway. You’ve just walked off into limbo, Gwen, with a couple of nut songwriters, that’s all they know. Let’s see, you can sleep at my place tonight, and tomorrow we’ll think this out. I live down this way,” and he swung them eastward into the Twenties. “Are you hungry?” he demanded. “I’m frightfully hungry. Dixie, here’s my key, you and Gwen go along to my room and light up. I know where I can get some sandwiches and beer. Be with you in about ten minutes.”

Dazedly Gwen allowed Fitz to lead her up the steps of the house where Johnny had a large room at the back with some easy chairs, a dilapidated typewriter on which he wrote his short stories in the Richard Harding Davis manner, a gas ring on which when he was broke he cooked messes he called meals, and a bed and wash-stand in the alcove behind a chintz curtain. She stood passively, like a shy child in strange surroundings, while Fitz lit the gas and her eyes went gravely round the shabby, comfortable place. There was no way of telling by her face that to Gwen it looked like a palace.

“How do you like being kidnapped?” Fitz asked anxiously as he blew out the match. “Better us than Fagan, huh? Johnny’s a great guy. Always knows what to do. Give you the shirt off his back. They don’t come any finer than Johnny. You’ll be all right here, safe as houses. You stopped shakin’ now?”

She nodded, and stood looking at him, her eyes wide and dark in her white face.

“Bet you’d rather have coffee than beer, huh?”

She nodded again, and Fitz burrowed in a cupboard, emerging with a coffee-pot and a paper bag of ground coffee.

“Here’s the makin’s,” he said. “You probably know more about throwin’ ’em together than I do.”

With the faintest of smiles Gwen laid down her handbag on the bureau and took charge of the coffee while Fitz looked on with interest.

“The woman’s touch,” he marvelled, as she lighted the gas ring under the pot. “There’s nothing like it, I’ve always heard.”

“You boys bach’ it here together?”

“No, I live with my uncle over the other side of Fifth.” He forebore to mention that it was on Madison Avenue in the expensive East Thirties.

“From the South, aren’t you?”

“Now, how on earth did you guess that?” he drawled, and they grinned at each other and the tension in the room relaxed appreciably.

When Johnny came in with the refreshments in two paper bags he viewed the bubbling coffee-pot with horror.

“At
night
?” he said. “I wouldn’t sleep a wink!” And he set out large fat bottles of beer, still sweating from the ice-chest at Reilly’s on the corner, and thick well-buttered sandwiches with pink ham slices showing round the edges. Gwen brought plates and glasses and cups from a shelf as though she had done it before, and Johnny stood back to gaze at her, entranced. “Look,” he said to Fitz. “Look at Gwen being motherly already! That’s what we need around here, Dixie—a mother!”

Gwen, who was accustomed to wait on her menfolk hand and foot, gave them her small one-sided smile and turned away to get the coffee-pot.

“She’d look more at home if she took her hat off,” Fitz suggested, and they stood punctiliously behind their chairs waiting while she paused in front of the mirror on the bureau and removed her hat before joining them at the table.

“And of course her hair ought to be grey,” Johnny remarked captiously as they sat down. “To give the best effect, it ought.”

“That depends on whose mother she is,” Fitz told him. “Mine has brown hair—hardly a bit of grey in it. Your mother’s hair probably turned white in a night long ago.”

“I haven’t got a mother,” said Johnny pathetically, staring at his ham sandwich. “I’m an orphan.”

“Why, that’s terrible, Johnny, when did it happen? You never told me you were an orphan.” Fitz was deeply concerned.

“I’m getting sort of used to it. They died when I was three.”

“Who raised you?”

“Aunt Irma.”

“Maiden lady?”