Two hundred pounds of uniformed Nemesis landed on his shoulders. A clanging alarm sounded through the corridor. Magee went down fighting, but he was outclassed and caught off guard. He jerked his head free and shouted, “Run for it, kid!”
MacKinnon could hear running feet from somewhere, but could see nothing but the struggling figures before him. He shook his head and shoulders like a dazed animal, then kicked the larger of the two contestants in a fashion forbidden by sportsmanship. The man screamed and let go his hold. MacKinnon grasped his small companion by the scruff of the neck and hauled him roughly to his feet.
Magee’s eyes were still merry. “Well played, my lad,” he commended in clipped syllables, as they burst out the street door, “if hardly cricket! Where did you learn La Savate?”
MacKinnon had not time to answer, being fully occupied in keeping up with Magee’s weaving, deceptively-rapid progress. They ducked across the street, down an alley and between two buildings.
The succeeding minutes, or hours, were confusion to MacKinnon. He remembered afterward crawling along a rooftop and letting himself down to crouch in the blackness of an interior court, but he could not remember how they had gotten on the roof. He also recalled spending an interminable period alone, compressed inside a most unsavory refuse bin, and his terror when footsteps approached the bin and a light flashed through a crack.
A crash and the sound of footsteps in flight immediately thereafter led him to guess that Fader had drawn the pursuit away from him. But when Fader did return and opened the top of the bin, MacKinnon almost throttled him before identification was established.
When the active pursuit had been shaken off, Magee guided him across town, showing a sophisticated knowledge of back ways and short cuts, and a genius for taking full advantage of cover. They reached the outskirts of the town in a dilapidated quarter, far from the civic center. Magee stopped. “I guess this is the end of the line, kid,” he told Dave. “If you follow this street you’ll come to the open country shortly. “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” MacKinnon replied uneasily, and peered down the street. Then he turned back to speak again to Magee.
But Magee was gone. He had faded away into the shadows. There was neither sight nor sound of him. MacKinnon started in the suggested direction with a heavy heart. There was no possible reason to expect Magee to stay with him; the service Dave had done him with a lucky kick had been repaid with interest—yet he had lost the only friendly companionship he had found in a strange place. He felt lonely and depressed.
He continued along, keeping to the shadows and watching carefully for shapes that might be patrolmen. He had gone a few hundred yards and was beginning to worry about how far it might be to open countryside when he was startled into gooseflesh by a hiss from a dark doorway.
He did his best to repress the unreasoning panic that beset him, and was telling himself that policemen never hiss, when a shadow detached itself from the blackness and touched him on the arm.
“Dave.” it said softly.
MacKinnon felt a childlike sense of relief and well-being. “Fader!”
“I changed my mind, Dave. The gendarmes would have you in tow before morning. You don’t know the ropes— so I came back.”
Dave was both pleased and crestfallen. “You shouldn’t worry about me,” he protested. “I’ll get along.”
Magee shook him roughly by the arm. “Don’t be a chump. Green as you are, you’d start to holler about your civil rights or something, and get clipped in the mouth again.
“Now see here.” he went on, “I’m going to take you to some friends of mine who will hide you until you’re smartened up to the tricks around here. But they’re on the wrong side of the law, see? You’ll have to be all three of the three sacred monkeys—see no evil, hear no evil, tell no evil. Think you can do it?”
“Yes, but-”
“No ‘buts’ about it. Come along!”
~ * ~
The entrance was in the rear of an old warehouse. Steps led down into a little sunken court. From this open areaway—foul with accumulated refuse—a door let into the back, wall of the building. Magee tapped lightly but systematically, waited and listened. Presently he whispered, “Ps-s-st! It’s the Fader.”
The door opened quickly and Magee was encircled by two great, fat arms. He was lifted off his feet while the owner of those arms planted a resounding buss on his cheek. “Fader!” she exclaimed. “Are you all right, lad? We’ve missed you.”
“Now that’s a proper welcome, Mother,” he answered when he was back on his own feet, “but I want you to meet a friend of mine. Mother Johnston, this is David MacKinnon.”
“May I do you a service?” David acknowledged with automatic formality, but Mother Johnston’s eyes tightened with instant suspicion.
“Is he stooled?” she snapped.
“No, Mother, he’s a new immigrant—but I vouch for him. He’s on the dodge. I’ve brought him to cool.”
She softened a little under his persuasive tones. “Well—”
Magee pinched her cheek. “That’s a good girl! When are you going to marry me?”
She slapped his hand away. “Even if I were forty years younger I’d not marry such a scamp as you! Come along, then,” she continued to MacKinnon, “as long as you’re a friend of the Fader—though it’s no credit to you!” She waddled quickly ahead of them down a flight of stairs while calling out for someone to open the door at its foot.
The room was poorly lighted with a few obsolete glow tubes and was furnished principally with a long table and some chairs, at which an odd dozen people were seated, drinking and talking. It reminded MacKinnon of prints of old English pubs in the days before the Collapse.
Magee was greeted with a babble of boisterous welcome. “Fader!” “It’s the kid himself!” “How’d ja do it this time, Fader? Crawl down the drains?” “Set ‘em up, Mother— the Fader’s back!”
He accepted the ovation with a wave of his hand and a shout of inclusive greeting, then turned to MacKinnon. “Folks,” he said, his voice cutting through the confusion, “I want you to know Dave—the best pal that ever kicked a jailer at the right moment. If it hadn’t been for Dave I wouldn’t be here.”
MacKinnon found himself seated between two others at the table and a stein of beer thrust into his hand by a not uncomely young woman. He started to thank her, but she had hurried off to help Mother Johnston take care of the sudden influx of orders. Seated opposite him was a rather surly young man who had taken little part in the greeting to Magee. He looked MacKinnon over with a face expressionless except for a recurrent tic which caused his right eye to wink spasmodically every few seconds.
“What’s your line?” he demanded.
“Leave him alone, Alec,” Magee cut in swiftly but in a friendly tone; “He’s just arrived inside; I told you that. But he’s all right,” he continued, raising his voice to include the others present. “He’s been here less than twenty-four hours, but he’s broken jail, beat up two customs busies, and sassed old Judge Fleishacker right to his face. How’s that for a busy day?”
Dave was the center of approving interest, but the party with the tic persisted. “That’s all very well, but I asked him a fair question: What’s his line? If it’s the same as mine, I won’t stand for it—it’s too crowded now.”
“That cheap racket you’re in is always crowded, but he’s not in it. Forget about his line.”