My Disreputable Friend, Mr. Raegen

My Disreputable Friend, Mr. Raegen

Rags Raegen was out of his element. The water was his proper element--
the water of the East River by preference. And when it came to
"running the roofs," as he would have himself expressed it, he was
"not in it."

On those other occasions when he had been followed by the police, he
had raced them toward the river front and had dived boldly in from the
wharf, leaving them staring blankly and in some alarm as to his
safety. Indeed, three different men in the precinct, who did not know
of young Raegen's aquatic prowess, had returned to the station-house
and seriously reported him to the sergeant as lost, and regretted
having driven a citizen into the river, where he had been
unfortunately drowned. It was even told how, on one occasion, when
hotly followed, young Raegen had dived off Wakeman's Slip, at East
Thirty-third Street, and had then swum back under water to the
landing-steps, while the policeman and a crowd of stevedores stood
watching for him to reappear where he had sunk. It is further related
that he had then, in a spirit of recklessness, and in the possibility
of the policeman's failing to recognize him, pushed his way through
the crowd from the rear and plunged in to rescue the supposedly
drowned man. And that after two or three futile attempts to find his
own corpse, he had climbed up on the dock and told the officer that he
had touched the body sticking in the mud. And, as a result of this
fiction, the river-police dragged the river-bed around Wakeman's Slip
with grappling irons for four hours, while Rags sat on the wharf and
directed their movements.

But on this present occasion the police were standing between him and
the river, and so cut off his escape in that direction, and as they
had seen him strike McGonegal and had seen McGonegal fall, he had to
run for it and seek refuge on the roofs. What made it worse was that
he was not in his own hunting-grounds, but in McGonegal's, and while
any tenement on Cherry Street would have given him shelter, either for
love of him or fear of him, these of Thirty-third Street were against
him and "all that Cherry Street gang," while "Pike" McGonegal was
their darling and their hero. And, if Rags had known it, any tenement
on the block was better than Case's, into which he first turned, for
Case's was empty and untenanted, save in one or two rooms, and the
opportunities for dodging from one to another were in consequence very
few. But he could not know this, and so he plunged into the dark hall-
way and sprang up the first four flights of stairs, three steps at a
jump, with one arm stretched out in front of him, for it was very dark
and the turns were short. On the fourth floor he fell headlong over a
bucket with a broom sticking in it, and cursed whoever left it there.
There was a ladder leading from the sixth floor to the roof, and he
ran up this and drew it after him as he fell forward out of the wooden
trap that opened on the flat tin roof like a companion-way of a ship.
The chimneys would have hidden him, but there was a policeman's helmet
coming up from another companion-way, and he saw that the Italians
hanging out of the windows of the other tenements were pointing at him
and showing him to the officer. So he hung by his hands and dropped
back again. It was not much of a fall, but it jarred him, and the race
he had already run had nearly taken his breath from him. For Rags did
not live a life calculated to fit young men for sudden trials of
speed.

He stumbled back down the narrow stairs, and, with a vivid
recollection of the bucket he had already fallen upon, felt his way
cautiously with his hands and with one foot stuck out in front of him.
If he had been in his own bailiwick, he would have rather enjoyed the
tense excitement of the chase than otherwise, for there he was at home
and knew all the cross-cuts and where to find each broken paling in
the roof-fences, and all the traps in the roofs. But here he was
running in a maze, and what looked like a safe passage-way might throw
him head on into the outstretched arms of the officers.

And while he felt his way his mind was terribly acute to the fact that
as yet no door on any of the landings had been thrown open to him,
either curiously or hospitably as offering a place of refuge. He did
not want to be taken, but in spite of this he was quite cool, and so,
when he heard quick, heavy footsteps beating up the stairs, he stopped
himself suddenly by placing one hand on the side of the wall and the
other on the banister and halted, panting. He could distinguish from
below the high voices of women and children and excited men in the
street, and as the steps came nearer he heard some one lowering the
ladder he had thrown upon the roof to the sixth floor and preparing to
descend. "Ah!" snarled Raegen, panting and desperate, "youse think you
have me now, sure, don't you?" It rather frightened him to find the
house so silent, for, save the footsteps of the officers, descending
and ascending upon him, he seemed to be the only living person in all
the dark, silent building.

He did not want to fight.

He was under heavy bonds already to keep the peace, and this last had
surely been in self-defence, and he felt he could prove it. What he
wanted now was to get away, to get back to his own people and to lie
hidden in his own cellar or garret, where they would feed and guard
him until the trouble was over. And still, like the two ends of a
vise, the representatives of the law were closing in upon him. He
turned the knob of the door opening to the landing on which he stood,
and tried to push it in, but it was locked. Then he stepped quickly to
the door on the opposite side and threw his shoulder against it. The
door opened, and he stumbled forward sprawling. The room in which he
had taken refuge was almost bare, and very dark; but in a little room
leading from it he saw a pile of tossed-up bedding on the floor, and
he dived at this as though it was water, and crawled far under it
until he reached the wall beyond, squirming on his face and stomach,
and flattening out his arms and legs. Then he lay motionless, holding
back his breath, and listening to the beating of his heart and to the
footsteps on the stairs. The footsteps stopped on the landing leading
to the outer room, and he could hear the murmur of voices as the two
men questioned one another. Then the door was kicked open, and there
was a long silence, broken sharply by the click of a revolver.

"Maybe he's in there," said a bass voice. The men stamped across the
floor leading into the dark room in which he lay, and halted at the
entrance. They did not stand there over a moment before they turned
and moved away again; but to Raegen, lying with blood-vessels choked,
and with his hand pressed across his mouth, it seemed as if they had
been contemplating and enjoying his agony for over an hour. "I was in
this place not more than twelve hours ago," said one of them easily.
"I come in to take a couple out for fighting. They were yelling
'murder' and 'police,' and breaking things; but they went quiet
enough. The man is a stevedore, I guess, and him and his wife used to
get drunk regular and carry on up here every night or so. They got
thirty days on the Island."

"Who's taking care of the rooms?" asked the bass voice. The first
voice said he guessed "no one was," and added: "There ain't much to
take care of, that I can see." "That's so," assented the bass voice.
"Well," he went on briskly, "he's not here; but he's in the building,
sure, for he put back when he seen me coming over the roof. And he
didn't pass me, neither, I know that, anyway," protested the bass
voice. Then the bass voice said that he must have slipped into the
flat below, and added something that Raegen could not hear distinctly,
about Schaffer on the roof, and their having him safe enough, as that
red-headed cop from the Eighteenth Precinct was watching on the
street. They closed the door behind them, and their footsteps
clattered down the stairs, leaving the big house silent and apparently
deserted. Young Raegen raised his head, and let his breath escape with
a great gasp of relief, as when he had been a long time under water,
and cautiously rubbed the perspiration out of his eyes and from his
forehead. It had been a cruelly hot, close afternoon, and the stifling
burial under the heavy bedding, and the excitement, had left him
feverishly hot and trembling. It was already growing dark outside,
although he could not know that until he lifted the quilts an inch or
two and peered up at the dirty window-panes. He was afraid to rise, as
yet, and flattened himself out with an impatient sigh, as he gathered
the bedding over his head again and held back his breath to listen.
There may have been a minute or more of absolute silence in which he
lay there, and then his blood froze to ice in his veins, his breath
stopped, and he heard, with a quick gasp of terror, the sound of
something crawling toward him across the floor of the outer room. The
instinct of self-defence moved him first to leap to his feet, and to
face and fight it, and then followed as quickly a foolish sense of
safety in his hiding-place; and he called upon his greatest strength,
and, by his mere brute will alone, forced his forehead down to the
bare floor and lay rigid, though his nerves jerked with unknown,
unreasoning fear. And still he heard the sound of this living thing
coming creeping toward him until the instinctive terror that shook him
overcame his will, and he threw the bed-clothes from him with a hoarse
cry, and sprang up trembling to his feet, with his back against the
wall, and with his arms thrown out in front of him wildly, and with
the willingness in them and the power in them to do murder.

The room was very dark, but the windows of the one beyond let in a
little stream of light across the floor, and in this light he saw
moving toward him on its hands and knees a little baby who smiled and
nodded at him with a pleased look of recognition and kindly welcome.

The fear upon Raegen had been so strong and the reaction was so great
that he dropped to a sitting posture on the heap of bedding and
laughed long and weakly, and still with a feeling in his heart that
this apparition was something strangely unreal and menacing.

[Illustration with caption: He sprang up trembling to his feet.]

But the baby seemed well pleased with his laughter, and stopped to
throw back its head and smile and coo and laugh gently with him as
though the joke was a very good one which they shared in common. Then
it struggled solemnly to its feet and came pattering toward him on a
run, with both bare arms held out, and with a look of such confidence
in him, and welcome in its face, that Raegen stretched out his arms
and closed the baby's fingers fearfully and gently in his own.

He had never seen so beautiful a child. There was dirt enough on its
hands and face, and its torn dress was soiled with streaks of coal and
ashes. The dust of the floor had rubbed into its bare knees, but the
face was like no other face that Rags had ever seen. And then it
looked at him as though it trusted him, and just as though they had
known each other at some time long before, but the eyes of the baby
somehow seemed to hurt him so that he had to turn his face away, and
when he looked again it was with a strangely new feeling of
dissatisfaction with himself and of wishing to ask pardon. They were
wonderful eyes, black and rich, and with a deep superiority of
knowledge in them, a knowledge that seemed to be above the knowledge
of evil; and when the baby smiled at him, the eyes smiled too with
confidence and tenderness in them that in some way frightened Rags and
made him move uncomfortably. "Did you know that youse scared me so
that I was going to kill you?" whispered Rags, apologetically, as he
carefully held the baby from him at arm's length. "Did you?" But the
baby only smiled at this and reached out its hand and stroked Rag's
cheek with its fingers. There was something so wonderfully soft and
sweet in this that Rags drew the baby nearer and gave a quick, strange
gasp of pleasure as it threw its arms around his neck and brought the
face up close to his chin and hugged him tightly. The baby's arms were
very soft and plump, and its cheek and tangled hair were warm and
moist with perspiration, and the breath that fell on Raegen's face was
sweeter than anything he had ever known. He felt wonderfully and for
some reason uncomfortably happy, but the silence was oppressive.

"What's your name, little 'un?" said Rags. The baby ran its arms more
closely around Raegen's neck and did not speak, unless its cooing in
Raegen's ear was an answer. "What did you say your name was?"
persisted Raegen, in a whisper. The baby frowned at this and stopped
cooing long enough to say: "Marg'ret," mechanically and without
apparently associating the name with herself or anything else.
"Margaret, eh!" said Raegen, with grave consideration. "It's a very
pretty name," he added, politely, for he could not shake off the
feeling that he was in the presence of a superior being. "An' what did
you say your dad's name was?" asked Raegen, awkwardly. But this was
beyond the baby's patience or knowledge, and she waived the question
aside with both arms and began to beat a tattoo gently with her two
closed fists on Raegen's chin and throat. "You're mighty strong now,
ain't you?" mocked the young giant, laughing. "Perhaps you don't know,
Missie," he added, gravely, "that your dad and mar are doing time on
the Island, and you won't see 'em again for a month." No, the baby did
not know this nor care apparently; she seemed content with Rags and
with his company. Sometimes she drew away and looked at him long and
dubiously, and this cut Rags to the heart, and he felt guilty, and
unreasonably anxious until she smiled reassuringly again and ran back
into his arms, nestling her face against his and stroking his rough
chin wonderingly with her little fingers.

Rags forgot the lateness of the night and the darkness that fell upon
the room in the interest of this strange entertainment, which was so
much more absorbing, and so much more innocent than any other he had
ever known. He almost forgot the fact that he lay in hiding, that he
was surrounded by unfriendly neighbors, and that at any moment the
representatives of local justice might come in and rudely lead him
away. For this reason he dared not make a light, but he moved his
position so that the glare from an electric lamp on the street outside
might fall across the baby's face, as it lay alternately dozing and
awakening, to smile up at him in the bend of his arm. Once it reached
inside the collar of his shirt and pulled out the scapular that hung
around his neck, and looked at it so long, and with such apparent
seriousness, that Rags was confirmed in his fear that this kindly
visitor was something more or less of a superhuman agent, and his
efforts to make this supposition coincide with the fact that the
angel's parents were on Blackwell's Island, proved one of the severest
struggles his mind had ever experienced. He had forgotten to feel
hungry, and the knowledge that he was acutely so, first came to him
with the thought that the baby must obviously be in greatest need of
food herself. This pained him greatly, and he laid his burden down
upon the bedding, and after slipping off his shoes, tip-toed his way
across the room on a foraging expedition after something she could
eat. There was a half of a ham-bone, and a half loaf of hard bread in
a cupboard, and on the table he found a bottle quite filled with
wretched whiskey. That the police had failed to see the baby had not
appealed to him in any way, but that they should have allowed this
last find to remain unnoticed pleased him intensely, not because it
now fell to him, but because they had been cheated of it. It really
struck him as so humorous that he stood laughing silently for several
minutes, slapping his thigh with every outward exhibition of the
keenest mirth. But when he found that the room and cupboard were bare
of anything else that might be eaten he sobered suddenly. It was very
hot, and though the windows were open, the perspiration stood upon his
face, and the foul close air that rose from the court and street below
made him gasp and pant for breath. He dipped a wash rag in the water
from the spigot in the hall, and filled a cup with it and bathed the
baby's face and wrists. She woke and sipped up the water from the cup
eagerly, and then looked up at him, as if to ask for something more.
Rags soaked the crusty bread in the water, and put it to the baby's
lips, but after nibbling at it eagerly she shook her head and looked
up at him again with such reproachful pleading in her eyes, that Rags
felt her silence more keenly than the worst abuse he had ever
received.

It hurt him so, that the pain brought tears to his eyes.

"Deary girl," he cried, "I'd give you anything you could think of if I
had it. But I can't get it, see? It ain't that I don't want to--good
Lord, little 'un, you don't think that, do you?"

The baby smiled at this, just as though she understood him, and
touched his face as if to comfort him, so that Rags felt that same
exquisite content again, which moved him so strangely whenever the
child caressed him, and which left him soberly wondering. Then the
baby crawled up onto his lap and dropped asleep, while Rags sat
motionless and fanned her with a folded newspaper, stopping every now
and then to pass the damp cloth over her warm face and arms. It was
quite late now. Outside he could hear the neighbors laughing and
talking on the roofs, and when one group sang hilariously to an
accordion, he cursed them under his breath for noisy, drunken fools,
and in his anger lest they should disturb the child in his arms,
expressed an anxious hope that they would fall off and break their
useless necks. It grew silent and much cooler as the night ran out,
but Rags still sat immovable, shivering slightly every now and then
and cautiously stretching his stiff legs and body. The arm that held
the child grew stiff and numb with the light burden, but he took a
fierce pleasure in the pain, and became hardened to it, and at last
fell into an uneasy slumber from which he awoke to pass his hands
gently over the soft yielding body, and to draw it slowly and closer
to him. And then, from very weariness, his eyes closed and his head
fell back heavily against the wall, and the man and the child in his
arms slept peacefully in the dark corner of the deserted tenement.

The sun rose hissing out of the East River, a broad, red disc of heat.
It swept the cross-streets of the city as pitilessly as the search-
light of a man-of-war sweeps the ocean. It blazed brazenly into open
windows, and changed beds into gridirons on which the sleepers tossed
and turned and woke unrefreshed and with throats dry and parched. Its
glare awakened Rags into a startled belief that the place about him
was on fire, and he stared wildly until the child in his arms brought
him back to the knowledge of where he was. He ached in every joint and
limb, and his eyes smarted with the dry heat, but the baby concerned
him most, for she was breathing with hard, long, irregular gasps, her
mouth was open and her absurdly small fists were clenched, and around
her closed eyes were deep blue rings. Rags felt a cold rush of fear
and uncertainty come over him as he stared about him helplessly for
aid. He had seen babies look like this before, in the tenements; they
were like this when the young doctors of the Health Board climbed to
the roofs to see them, and they were like this, only quiet and still,
when the ambulance came clattering up the narrow streets, and bore
them away. Rags carried the baby into the outer room, where the sun
had not yet penetrated, and laid her down gently on the coverlets;
then he let the water in the sink run until it was fairly cool, and
with this bathed the baby's face and hands and feet, and lifted a cup
of the water to her open lips. She woke at this and smiled again, but
very faintly, and when she looked at him he felt fearfully sure that
she did not know him, and that she was looking through and past him at
something he could not see.

He did not know what to do, and he wanted to do so much. Milk was the
only thing he was quite sure babies cared for, but in want of this he
made a mess of bits of the dry ham and crumbs of bread, moistened with
the raw whiskey, and put it to her lips on the end of a spoon. The
baby tasted this, and pushed his hand away, and then looked up and
gave a feeble cry, and seemed to say, as plainly as a grown woman
could have said or written, "It isn't any use, Rags. You are very good
to me, but, indeed, I cannot do it. Don't worry, please; I don't blame
you."

"Great Lord," gasped Rags, with a queer choking in his throat, "but
ain't she got grit." Then he bethought him of the people who he still
believed inhabited the rest of the tenement, and he concluded that as
the day was yet so early they might still be asleep, and that while
they slept, he could "lift"--as he mentally described the act--
whatever they might have laid away for breakfast. Excited with this
hope, he ran noiselessly down the stairs in his bare feet, and tried
the doors of the different landings. But each he found open and each
room bare and deserted. Then it occurred to him that at this hour he
might even risk a sally into the street. He had money with him, and
the milk-carts and bakers' wagons must be passing every minute. He ran
back to get the money out of his coat, delighted with the chance and
chiding himself for not having dared to do it sooner. He stood over
the baby a moment before he left the room, and flushed like a girl as
he stooped and kissed one of the bare arms. "I'm going out to get you
some breakfast," he said. "I won't be gone long, but if I should," he
added, as he paused and shrugged his shoulders, "I'll send the
sergeant after you from the station-house. If I only wasn't under
bonds," he muttered, as he slipped down the stairs. "If it wasn't for
that they couldn't give me more'n a month at the most, even knowing
all they do of me. It was only a street fight, anyway, and there was
some there that must have seen him pull his pistol." He stopped at the
top of the first flight of stairs and sat down to wait. He could see
below the top of the open front door, the pavement and a part of the
street beyond, and when he heard the rattle of an approaching cart he
ran on down and then, with an oath, turned and broke up-stairs again.
He had seen the ward detectives standing together on the opposite side
of the street.

"Wot are they doing out a bed at this hour?" he demanded angrily.
"Don't they make trouble enough through the day, without prowling
around before decent people are up? I wonder, now, if they're after
me." He dropped on his knees when he reached the room where the baby
lay, and peered cautiously out of the window at the detectives, who
had been joined by two other men, with whom they were talking
earnestly. Raegen knew the new-comers for two of McGonegal's friends,
and concluded, with a momentary flush of pride and self-importance,
that the detectives were forced to be up at this early hour solely on
his account. But this was followed by the afterthought that he must
have hurt McGonegal seriously, and that he was wanted in consequence
very much. This disturbed him most, he was surprised to find, because
it precluded his going forth in search of food. "I guess I can't get
you that milk I was looking for," he said, jocularly, to the baby, for
the excitement elated him. "The sun outside isn't good for me health."
The baby settled herself in his arms and slept again, which sobered
Rags, for he argued it was a bad sign, and his own ravenous appetite
warned him how the child suffered. When he again offered her the
mixture he had prepared for her, she took it eagerly, and Rags
breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Then he ate some of the bread and ham
himself and swallowed half the whiskey, and stretched out beside the
child and fanned her while she slept. It was something strangely
incomprehensible to Rags that he should feel so keen a satisfaction in
doing even this little for her, but he gave up wondering, and forgot
everything else in watching the strange beauty of the sleeping baby
and in the odd feeling of responsibility and self-respect she had
brought to him.

He did not feel it coming on, or he would have fought against it, but
the heat of the day and the sleeplessness of the night before, and the
fumes of the whiskey on his empty stomach, drew him unconsciously into
a dull stupor, so that the paper fan slipped from his hand, and he
sank back on the bedding into a heavy sleep. When he awoke it was
nearly dusk and past six o'clock, as he knew by the newsboys calling
the sporting extras on the street below. He sprang up, cursing
himself, and filled with bitter remorse.

"I'm a drunken fool, that's what I am," said Rags, savagely. "I've let
her lie here all day in the heat with no one to watch her." Margaret
was breathing so softly that he could hardly discern any life at all,
and his heart almost stopped with fear. He picked her up and fanned
and patted her into wakefulness again and then turned desperately to
the window and looked down. There was no one he knew or who knew him
as far as he could tell on the street, and he determined recklessly to
risk another sortie for food.

"Why, it's been near two days that child's gone without eating," he
said, with keen self-reproach, "and here you've let her suffer to save
yourself a trip to the Island. You're a hulking big loafer, you are,"
he ran on, muttering, "and after her coming to you and taking notice
of you and putting her face to yours like an angel." He slipped off
his shoes and picked his way cautiously down the stairs.

As he reached the top of the first flight a newsboy passed, calling
the evening papers, and shouted something which Rags could not
distinguish. He wished he could get a copy of the paper. It might tell
him, he thought, something about himself. The boy was coming nearer,
and Rags stopped and leaned forward to listen.

"Extry! Extry!" shouted the newsboy, running. "Sun, World, and Mail.
Full account of the murder of Pike McGonegal by Ragsey Raegen."

The lights in the street seemed to flash up suddenly and grow dim
again, leaving Rags blind and dizzy.

"Stop," he yelled, "stop. Murdered, no, by God, no," he cried,
staggering half-way down the stairs; "stop, stop!" But no one heard
Rags, and the sound of his own voice halted him. He sank back weak and
sick upon the top step of the stairs and beat his hands together upon
his head.

"It's a lie, it's a lie," he whispered, thickly. "I struck him in
self-defence, s'help me. I struck him in self-defence. He drove me to
it. He pulled his gun on me. I done it in self-defence."

And then the whole appearance of the young tough changed, and the
terror and horror that had showed on his face turned to one of low
sharpness and evil cunning. His lips drew together tightly and he
breathed quickly through his nostrils, while his fingers locked and
unlocked around his knees. All that he had learned on the streets and
wharves and roof-tops, all that pitiable experience and dangerous
knowledge that had made him a leader and a hero among the thieves and
bullies of the river-front he called to his assistance now. He faced
the fact flatly and with the cool consideration of an uninterested
counsellor. He knew that the history of his life was written on Police
Court blotters from the day that he was ten years old, and with
pitiless detail; that what friends he had he held more by fear than by
affection, and that his enemies, who were many, only wanted just such
a chance as this to revenge injuries long suffered and bitterly
cherished, and that his only safety lay in secret and instant flight.
The ferries were watched, of course; he knew that the depots, too,
were covered by the men whose only duty was to watch the coming and to
halt the departing criminal. But he knew of one old man who was too
wise to ask questions and who would row him over the East River to
Astoria, and of another on the west side whose boat was always at the
disposal of silent white-faced young men who might come at any hour of
the night or morning, and whom he would pilot across to the Jersey
shore and keep well away from the lights of the passing ferries and
the green lamp of the police boat. And once across, he had only to
change his name and write for money to be forwarded to that name, and
turn to work until the thing was covered up and forgotten. He rose to
his feet in his full strength again, and intensely and agreeably
excited with the danger, and possibly fatal termination, of his
adventure, and then there fell upon him, with the suddenness of a
blow, the remembrance of the little child lying on the dirty bedding
in the room above.

"I can't do it," he muttered fiercely; "I can't do it," he cried, as
if he argued with some other presence. "There's a rope around me neck,
and the chances are all against me; it's every man for himself and no
favor." He threw his arms out before him as if to push the thought
away from him and ran his fingers through his hair and over his face.
All of his old self rose in him and mocked him for a weak fool, and
showed him just how great his personal danger was, and so he turned
and dashed forward on a run, not only to the street, but as if to
escape from the other self that held him back. He was still without
his shoes, and in his bare feet, and he stopped as he noticed this and
turned to go up stairs for them, and then he pictured to himself the
baby lying as he had left her, weakly unconscious and with dark rims
around her eyes, and he asked himself excitedly what he would do, if,
on his return, she should wake and smile and reach out her hands to
him.

"I don't dare go back," he said, breathlessly. "I don't dare do it;
killing's too good for the likes of Pike McGonegal, but I'm not
fighting babies. An' maybe, if I went back, maybe I wouldn't have the
nerve to leave her; I can't do it," he muttered, "I don't dare go
back." But still he did not stir, but stood motionless, with one hand
trembling on the stair-rail and the other clenched beside him, and so
fought it on alone in the silence of the empty building.

The lights in the stores below came out one by one, and the minutes
passed into half-hours, and still he stood there with the noise of the
streets coming up to him below speaking of escape and of a long life
of ill-regulated pleasures, and up above him the baby lay in the
darkness and reached out her hands to him in her sleep.

The surly old sergeant of the Twenty-first Precinct station-house had
read the evening papers through for the third time and was dozing in
the fierce lights of the gas-jet over the high desk when a young man
with a white, haggard face came in from the street with a baby in his
arms.

"I want to see the woman thet look after the station-house--quick," he
said.

The surly old sergeant did not like the peremptory tone of the young
man nor his general appearance, for he had no hat, nor coat, and his
feet were bare; so he said, with deliberate dignity, that the char-
woman was up-stairs lying down, and what did the young man want with
her? "This child," said the visitor, in a queer thick voice, "she's
sick. The heat's come over her, and she ain't had anything to eat for
two days, an' she's starving. Ring the bell for the matron, will yer,
and send one of your men around for the house surgeon." The sergeant
leaned forward comfortably on his elbows, with his hands under his
chin so that the gold lace on his cuffs shone effectively in the
gaslight. He believed he had a sense of humor and he chose this
unfortunate moment to exhibit it.

"Did you take this for a dispensary, young man?" he asked; "or," he
continued, with added facetiousness, "a foundling hospital?"

The young man made a savage spring at the barrier in front of the high
desk. "Damn you," he panted, "ring that bell, do you hear me, or I'll
pull you off that seat and twist your heart out."

The baby cried at this sudden outburst, and Rags fell back, patting it
with his hand and muttering between his closed teeth. The sergeant
called to the men of the reserve squad in the reading-room beyond, and
to humor this desperate visitor, sounded the gong for the janitress.
The reserve squad trooped in leisurely with the playing-cards in their
hands and with their pipes in their mouths.

"This man," growled the sergeant, pointing with the end of his cigar
to Rags, "is either drunk, or crazy, or a bit of both."

The char-woman came down stairs majestically, in a long, loose
wrapper, fanning herself with a palm-leaf fan, but when she saw the
child, her majesty dropped from her like a cloak, and she ran toward
her and caught the baby up in her arms. "You poor little thing," she
murmured, "and, oh, how beautiful!" Then she whirled about on the men
of the reserve squad: "You, Conners," she said, "run up to my room and
get the milk out of my ice-chest; and Moore, put on your coat and go
around and tell the surgeon I want to see him. And one of you crack
some ice up fine in a towel. Take it out of the cooler. Quick, now."

Raegen came up to her fearfully. "Is she very sick?" he begged; "she
ain't going to die, is she?"

"Of course not," said the woman, promptly, "but she's down with the
heat, and she hasn't been properly cared for; the child looks half-
starved. Are you her father?" she asked, sharply. But Rags did not
speak, for at the moment she had answered his question and had said
the baby would not die, he had reached out swiftly, and taken the
child out of her arms and held it hard against his breast, as though
he had lost her and some one had been just giving her back to him.

His head was bending over hers, and so he did not see Wade and
Heffner, the two ward detectives, as they came in from the street,
looking hot, and tired, and anxious. They gave a careless glance at
the group, and then stopped with a start, and one of them gave a long,
low whistle.

"Well," exclaimed Wade, with a gasp of surprise and relief. "So
Raegen, you're here, after all, are you? Well, you did give us a
chase, you did. Who took you?"

The men of the reserve squad, when they heard the name of the man for
whom the whole force had been looking for the past two days, shifted
their positions slightly, and looked curiously at Rags, and the woman
stopped pouring out the milk from the bottle in her hand, and stared
at him in frank astonishment. Raegen threw back his head and
shoulders, and ran his eyes coldly over the faces of the semicircle of
men around him.

"Who took me?" he began defiantly, with a swagger of braggadocio, and
then, as though it were hardly worth while, and as though the presence
of the baby lifted him above everything else, he stopped, and raised
her until her cheek touched his own. It rested there a moment, while
Rag stood silent.

"Who took me?" he repeated, quietly, and without lifting his eyes from
the baby's face. "Nobody took me," he said. "I gave myself up."

One morning, three months later, when Raegen had stopped his ice-cart
in front of my door, I asked him whether at any time he had ever
regretted what he had done.

"Well, sir," he said, with easy superiority, "seeing that I've shook
the gang, and that the Society's decided her folks ain't fit to take
care of her, we can't help thinking we are better off, see?

[Illustration with caption: She'd reach out her hands and kiss me.]

"But, as for my ever regretting it, why, even when things was at the
worst, when the case was going dead against me, and before that cop,
you remember, swore to McGonegal's drawing the pistol, and when I used
to sit in the Tombs expecting I'd have to hang for it, well, even
then, they used to bring her to see me every day, and when they'd lift
her up, and she'd reach out her hands and kiss me through the bars,
why--they could have took me out and hung me, and been damned to 'em,
for all I'd have cared."

-THE END-
Richard Harding Davis' short story: My Disreputable Friend, Mr. Raegen

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