The Miracle Man | Page 4

other's.
"You close yer jaw," he snarled, "or I'll make yer map look like wot's
goin' ter happen ter dat cross-eyed snitch of a guy dat did me--him an'
de harness bull, when I--" The Flopper stopped abruptly, and edged
away from Pale Face Harry. "Hullo, Doc," he said meekly. "I didn't
hear youse comin' in."
A man, fair-haired, broad-shouldered, immaculate in well-tailored
tweeds, reliant in poise, leaned nonchalantly against the door--inside

the room. He was young, not more than twenty-eight, with
clean-shaven, pleasant, open face--a handsome face, marred only to the
close observer by the wrinkles beginning to pucker around his eyes,
and a slight, scarcely discernible puffiness in his skin--"Doc" Madison,
gentleman crook and high-class, polished con-man, who had lifted his
profession to an art, was still too young to be indelibly stamped with
the hall-marks of dissipation.
His gray eyes travelled from one to another, lingered an instant on
Helena, and came back to the Flopper.
"What's the trouble?" he demanded quietly.
It was Pale Face Harry who answered him.
"The Flopper's got it in for a couple of ginks that handed him one--a
bull and a chauffeur on a gape-wagon," he grinned, punctuating his
words with a cough. "The Flopper's got an idea the corpse-preserver's
business is dull, and he's going to help 'em out with two orders and pay
for the flowers himself."
Doc Madison shook his head and smiled a little grimly.
"Forget it, Flopper!" he said crisply. "I've something better for you to
do. You fade away, disappear and lay low from this minute. I don't care
what you do when you're resurrected, but from now on the three of you
are dead and buried, and the police go into mourning for at least six
months."
"What you got for us, Doc?--something nice?"--Helena pushed Pale
Face Harry and the Flopper unceremoniously out of her line of vision
as she spoke.
"Yes--the drinks. Cleggy's bringing them," Madison laughed--and
opened the door, as the tinkle of glass and a shuffling footstep sounded
without.
A man, big, hulking, thick-set and slouching, with shifty, cunning little

black eyes and the face of a bruiser, his nose bent over and almost
flattened down on one cheek, entered the room, carrying four glasses
on a tin tray. He set down the tray, and, as he lifted the glasses from it
and placed them on the table, he leered around at the little group.
"Gee!" he said, sucking in his breath. "De Doc, an' Helena, an' Pale
Face, an' de Flopper! Gee, dis looks like de real t'ing--dis looks like
biz."
"It does--fifty-cents' worth--ten for yourself," said Doc Madison
suavely, flipping the coin into the tray. "Now, clear out!"
"Say"--Cleggy put his forefinger significantly to the side of his
nose--"say, can't youse let a sport in on--"
"Clear out!" Doc Madison broke in quite as suavely as before--but there
was a sudden glint of steel in the gray eyes as they held the bruiser's,
and Cleggy, hastily picking up the tray, scuffled from the room.
Madison watched the door close, then he began to pace slowly up and
down the room.
"Pull the chairs up to the table so we can take things comfortably," he
directed.
"There ain't but two," grinned Pale Face Harry.
"Oh, well, never mind," said Madison.
"Slew the couch around and pull that up--Helena and I will sit on the
head of it."
Still pacing up and down the length of the room, his hands in his
pockets, Doc Madison watched the others as they carried out his
directions; and then, suddenly, as he neared the door, his hand shot out,
wrenched the door open, and, quick as a panther in its spring, he was in
the hall without.
There was a yell, a scuffle, the rip and crash of rending bannisters, an

instant's silence, then a heavy thud--and then Cleggy's voice from
somewhere below in a choice and fervent flow of profanity.
Doc Madison re-entered the room, closed the door, dispassionately
arranged a disordered cuff, brushed a few particles of dust from his
sleeves and shoulder, and, this done, started toward the table--and
stopped.
Helena had swung herself to the table edge, and, glass in hand,
dangling her neatly shod little feet, was smoking a cigarette, her brown
hair with a glint of amber in it, her dark eyes veiled now by their heavy
lashes; on the other side of the table Pale Face Harry coughed, as, with
sleeve rolled back, he was intent on the hypodermic needle he was
pushing into his arm; while the Flopper, his eyes with a dog-like
admiration in them fixed on Madison, stood facing the door, a
grotesque, unpleasant figure, unkempt, unshaven, furtive-faced, his
rags hanging disreputably about him, his trousers with their frayed
edges, now that he stood upright, reaching far