Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; City and town life -- Fiction; Coal mines and mining -- Pennsylvania -- Fiction; Labor leaders -- Fiction
The veins in McGregor's neck began to swell and as he stood in the
darkness before the door of the house he swore. He stared up and down
the street but the sky, the sight of which might have helped him, was
hidden from view by the structure of an elevated railroad. Pushing
open the door of the house he stepped in. In the dim light he could see
nothing but a form sprang out of the darkness and a pair of powerful
arms pinned his hands to his sides. McGregor looked quickly about A man
huge as himself held him tightly against the door. He had one glass
eye and a stubby black beard and in the half light looked sinister and
dangerous. The hand of the woman who had beckoned to him from the window
fumbled in McGregor's pockets and came out clutching a little roll of
money. Her face, set now and ugly like the man's, looked up at him from
under the arms of her ally.
In a moment McGregor's heart stopped pounding and the dry unpleasant
taste went out of his mouth. He felt relieved and glad at this sudden
turn to the affair.
With a quick upward snap of his knees into the stomach of the man who
had held him McGregor freed himself. A swinging blow to the neck sent
his assailant groaning to the floor. McGregor sprang across the room. In
the corner by the bed he caught the woman. Clutching her by the hair he
whirled her about. “Hand over that money,” he said fiercely.
The woman put up her hands and plead with him. The grip of his hands
in her hair brought the tears to her eyes. She thrust the roll of bills
into his hands and waited, trembling, thinking he intended to kill her.
A new feeling swept over McGregor. The thought of having come into the
house at the invitation of this woman was revolting to him. He wondered
how he could have been such a beast. As he stood in the dim light
thinking of this and looking at the woman he became lost in thought and
wondered why the idea given him by the barber, that had seemed so clear
and sensible, now seemed so foolish. His eyes stared at the woman as his
mind returned to the black-bearded barber talking on the park bench and
he was seized with a blind fury, a fury not directed at the people in
the foul little room but at himself and his own blindness. Again a great
hatred of the disorder of life took hold of him and as though all of
the disorderly people of the world were personified in her he swore and
shook the woman as a dog might have shaken a foul rag.
“Sneak. Dodger. Mussy fool,” he muttered, thinking of himself as a giant
attacked by some nauseous beast. The woman screamed with terror. Seeing
the look on her assailant's face and mistaking the meaning of his words
she trembled and thought again of death. Reaching under the pillow
on the bed she got another roll of bills and thrust that also into
McGregor's hands. “Please go,” she plead. “We were mistaken. We thought
you were some one else.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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