They carried the unconscious man into the bathroom and put him in the tub. Jeff put the stopper in and turned on cold water from both the faucet below and the shower above. “That’ll have him up and singing in no time,” he predicted.
Five minutes later, when they hauled him dripping from the tub and set him on his feet, Ned Beaumont could stand. They took him into the bedroom again. O’Rory was sitting on one of the chairs smoking a cigarette. Whisky had gone.
“Put him on the bed,” O’Rory ordered.
Jeff and Rusty led their charge to the bed, turned him around, and pushed him down on it. When they took their hands away from him he fell straight hack on the bed. They pulled him into a sitting position again and Jeff slapped his battered face with an open hand, saying: “Come on, Rip Van Winkle, come to life.”
“A swell chance of him coming to life,” the sullen Rusty grumbled.
“You think he won’t?” Jeff asked cheerfully and slapped Ned Beaumont again.
Ned Beaumont opened the one eye not too swollen to be opened.
O’Rory said: “Beaumont.”
Ned Beaumont raised his head and tried to look around the room, but there was nothing to show he could see Shad O’Rory.
O’Rory got up from his chair and stood in front of Ned Beaumont, bending down until his face was a few inches from the other man’s. He asked: “Can you hear me, Beaumont?”
Ned Beaumont’s open eye looked dull hate into O’Rory’s eyes.
O’Rory said: “This is O’Rory, Beaumont. Can you hear what I say?”
Moving his swollen lips with difficulty, Ned Beaumont uttered a thick “Yes.”
O’Rory said: “Good. Now listen to what I tell you. You’re going to give me the dope on Paul.” He spoke very distinctly without raising his voice, without his voice losing any of its musical quality. “Maybe you think you won’t, but you will. I’ll have you worked on from now till you do. Do you understand me?”
Ned Beaumont smiled. The condition of his face made the smile horrible. He said: “I won’t.”
O’Rory stepped back and said: “Work on him.”
While Rusty hesitated, the apish Jeff knocked aside Ned Beaumont’s upraised hand and pushed him down on the bed. “I got something to try.” He scooped up Ned Beaumont’s legs and tumbled them on the bed. He leaned over Ned Beaumont, his hands busy on Ned Beaumont’s body.
Ned Beaumont’s body and arms and legs jerked convulsively and three times he groaned. After that he lay still.
Jeff straightened up and took his hands away from the man on the bed. He was breathing heavily through his ape’s mouth. He growled, half in complaint, half in apology: “It ain’t no good now. He’s throwed another joe.”
4
When Ned Beaumont recovered consciousness he was alone in the room. The lights were on. As laboriously as before he got himself out of bed and across the room to the door. The door was locked. He was fumbling with the knob when the door was thrown open, pushing him back against the wall.
Jeff in his underwear, barefoot, came in. “Ain’t you a pip?” he said. “Always up to some kind of tricks. Don’t you never get tired of being bounced on the floor?” He took Ned Beaumont by the throat with his left hand and struck him in the face with his right fist, twice, but not so hard as he had hit him before. Then he pushed him backwards over to the bed and threw him on it. “And stay put awhile this time,” he growled.
Ned Beaumont lay still with closed eyes.
Jeff went out, locking the door behind him.
Painfully Ned Beaumont climbed out of bed and made his way to the door. He tried it. Then he withdrew two steps and tried to hurl himself against it, succeeding only in lurching against it. He kept trying until the door was flung open again by Jeff.
Jeff said: “I never seen a guy that liked being hit so much or that I liked hitting so much.” He leaned far over to one side and swung his fist up from below his knee.