Ned Beaumont mumbled something about Fedink and sat up. He was in a narrow bed without sheets or bed-clothes of any sort. The bare mattress was blood-stained. His face was swollen and bruised and bloodsmeared. Dried blood glued his shirt-sleeve to the wrist the dog had bitten and that hand was caked with drying blood. He was in a small yellow and white bedroom furnished with two chairs, a table, a chest of drawers, a wall-mirror, and three white-framed French prints, besides the bed. Facing the foot of the bed was a door that stood open to show part of the interior of a white-tiled bathroom. There was another door, shut. There were no windows.
The apish dark man and the rosy-checked boy with sandy hair sat on the chairs playing cards on the table. There was about twenty dollars in paper and silver on the table.
Ned Beaumont looked, with brown eyes wherein hate was a dull glow that came from far beneath the surface, at the card-players and began to get out of bed. Getting out of bed was a difficult task for him. His right arm hung useless. He had to push his legs over the side of the bed one at a time with his left hand and twice he fell over on his side and had to push himself upright again in bed with his left arm.
Once the apish man leered up at him from his cards to ask humorously: “How’re you making out, brother?” Otherwise the two at the table let him alone.
He stood finally, trembling, on his feet beside the bed. Steadying himself with his left hand on the bed he reached its end. There he drew himself erect and, staring fixedly at his goal, lurched towards the closed door. Near it he stumbled and went down on his knees, but his left hand, thrown desperately out, caught the knob and he pulled himself up on his feet again.
Then the apish man laid his cards carefully down on the table and said: “Now.” His grin, showing remarkably beautiful white teeth, was wide enough to show that the teeth were not natural. He went over and stood beside Ned Beaumont.
Ned Beaumont was tugging at the door-knob.
The apish man said, “Now there, Houdini,” and with all his weight behind the blow drove his right fist into Ned Beaumont’s face.
Ned Beaumont was driven back against the wall. The back of his head struck the wall first, then his body crashed flat against the wall, and he slid down the wall to the floor.
Rosy-checked Rusty, still holding his cards at the table, said gloomily, but without emotion: “Jesus, Jeff, you’ll croak him.”
Jeff said: “Him?” He indicated the man at his feet by kicking him not especially hard on the thigh. “You can’t croak him. He’s tough. He’s a tough baby. He likes this.” He bent down, grasped one of the unconscious man’s lapels in each hand and dragged him to his knees. “Don’t you like it, baby?” he asked and holding Ned Beaumont up on his knees with one hand, struck his face with the other fist.
The door-knob was rattled from the outside.
Jeff called: “Who’s that?”
Shad O’Rory’s pleasant voice: “Me.”
Jeff dragged Ned Beaumont far enough from the door to let it open, dropped him there, and unlocked the door with a key taken from his pocket.
O’Rory and Whisky came in. ORory looked at the man on the floor, then at Jeff, and finally at Rusty. His blue-grey eyes were clouded, When he spoke it was to ask Rusty: “Jeff been slapping him down for the fun of it?”
The rosy-checked boy shook his head. “This Beaumont is a son of a bitch,” he said sullenly. “Every time he comes to he gets up and starts something.”
“I don’t want him killed, not yet,” O’Rory said. He looked down at Ned Beaumont. “See if you can bring him around again. I want to talk to him.”
Rusty got up from the table. “I don’t know,” he said. “He’s pretty far gone.”
Jeff was more optimistic. “Sure we can,” he said. “I’ll show you. Take his feet, Rusty.” He put his hands under Ned Beaumont’s armpits.