Kentucky -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
Three o'clock of that same day disclosed Judge Priest perched on the
side of a bunk in a cell in the Marshallville jail, close up alongside
a blocky person of unkempt appearance whom we, for convenience, may call
Montreal Red, more especially as this happens to be the title to
which he commonly answered within the fraternity of which he was a
distinguished member.
They made a picture sitting there together--the old man, nursing his
soft black hat between his hands, with the half light bringing out in
relief his bald round skull, his chubby pink face and his tuft of white
beard; the captive yeggman in his shirt sleeves, with no collar on and
no shoes on, holding Mr. Fairleigh's note in his hand and, with the
look upon his face of one who feels a just pride in his professional
knowledge, hearkening while the Judge minutely described for him a
certain individual. Before the Judge was done, Montreal Red interrupted
him.
“Sufficiency, bo,” he said lightly; “you've said enough. I know the gun
you're talkin' about without you goin' any farther--it's Shang Conklin,
the Solitary Kid.”
“But this here gentleman went by the name of Caruthers!” demurred the
Judge.
“Wot else did you figure he'd be doin'?” countered Montreal Red. “He
might 'a' called himself Crowley, or Lord Copeleigh, or half a dozen
other things. He might 'a' called himself the King of Bavaria--yes, and
got away with it, too, because he's there with the swell front and the
education. The Solitary Kid's got a different monniker for every day in
the week and two for Sundays. It couldn't be nobody else but him; you've
called the turn on him same as if you'd mugged him for the Gallery.”
“You know him personally, then?” asked Judge Priest.
“Who don't know him?” said Montreal Red. “Everybody that knows anybody
knows Solitary. And I'll tell you why! You take 'most any ordinary gun
and he's got just one regular line--he's a stick-up, or he's a moll
buzzer, or a peterman, or a con man; or he belongs to the hard-boiled
people, the same as me. But Shang he doubles in brass; it's B. and O.
for him. Bein' there with the front, he's worked the wire; and
before that he worked the bat. Knowin' all there is to know about the
pasteboard papes, he'd done deep-sea fishin' in his time--playin' for
rich guys on the big liners, you know.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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