Twin Tales, Are All Men Alike and The Lost Titian by Stringer Arthur

Author:Stringer, Arthur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: autobiography
Publisher: Distributed Proofreaders Canada
Published: 1921-03-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Teddie, alone with her irate young prize-fighter, turned and regarded him with a studiously narrowed eye.

“Now, what do you want to know?” she quietly demanded. She felt oddly and immeasurably older than she had done but one short week ago.

“I want ’o know who’s playin’ double in this mix-up,” Gunboat Dorgan promptly asserted.

“I don’t quite understand,” protested Teddie.

“Well, first thing, I want ’o know just what yuh said about that car?”

“When?” temporized Teddie. “And where?”

“Just b’fore I kissed yuh, right here in this room,” asserted the over-honest youth. Whereupon Teddie stiffened and winced and had to take a grip on herself before she could control her voice.

“I’m sorry there’s been any mistake about it,” explained Teddie, doing her best to be patient. “I remember now, I said you could have the car. And, as a matter of fact, you are perfectly welcome to it, or what’s left of it!”

“Then why’s this man West talkin’ so big about grand larceny and gettin’ me locked up? What’s he know about what’s been passin’ strictly b’tween yuh and me? Yuh were up ag’inst it, and I could see it, and I helped yuh out the same as I’d help any girl. And I didn’t have me hand out when I did it!”

“That was the trouble, Mr. Dorgan,” Teddie tried to tell him. “I was willing to accept service from you without stopping to consider whether or not it could be repaid, I mean adequately repaid. And that’s where I made my mistake. You’ll have to attribute that mistake, I’m afraid, to the defects in my bringing up. It’s a sort of penalty for the past. One gets into the habit of accepting things, just as one accepts cinnamon-toast from the footman, or a trip across the Hudson from the ferry-boat, without being actively conscious of any human obligation. That man had made himself unbearably offensive to me, and I asked you to punch his nose for me, without remembering the risks it involved, without appreciating the danger I was bringing——”

“Risks!” cried Gunboat, with a derisive hoot, finally arriving at a definite idea in what seemed a morass of abstractions. “Where’s the risks in standin’ up to a big stiff like that?”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking of the risks to you,” Teddie rather wearily explained. “I was rather selfishly remembering the risks to myself.”

“Well, yuh ain’t suffered none from it, have yuh?” derided her still indignant-eyed cross-examiner.

“I’ve just paid Raoul Uhlan twenty-five thousand dollars as compensation for his injuries,” explained Teddie, as coolly as she was able.

Gunboat Dorgan fell back, gaped a little, and then swallowed hard.

“Yuh paid—yuh paid that mutt—that money—for—for what he’d get tarred and feathered for—down in my Ward!” he gasped, wide-eyed with incredulity.

Teddie nodded.

And Gunboat, seeing that movement of acquiescence, repeated: “Twenty-five thousand dollars!” Then he began to stride meditatively back and forth, pacing the studio-rug with his characteristic panther-like step. Teddie watched him, without speaking, without moving. She watched him until he came to an abrupt stop.

“Say, Ruby was right in this, after all,” he suddenly proclaimed.

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