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“Don’t lose your nerve!”
A couple of quick thinkers lit matches, which cast weird, jumpy shadows.
Weeks hadn’t a moment to lose. He rushed up the side of the ballroom, hugging the wall, and then cut across the front. When he was six feet from the snake, he shouted at the top of lungs, “Look out! Jaysus, don’t drop it!,” and smashed the window glass on the wooden floor.
Shouts turned to screams, followed immediately by the pounding of hundreds of feet. Before Weeks could yell, “He’s loose. He’s out. Run! Run! Run!,” many panicky voices did it for him.
Jimmy Clark deserved a place in Heaven for how quickly he wheeled up the trunk.
“Careful,” muttered Weeks. “Let’s not drop it.”
Feeling in the dark, they lifted the glass box into the trunk, shut the lid, got it back on the cart, and wheeled it out the side door of the ballroom. They were almost to the alley when the lights came on.
“House dick!” Clark hissed a warning.
“Keep going,” Weeks said coolly. “I’ll deal with the dick.”
“Hey! Where you going with that?”
Dressed like a college man, Weeks blocked the way so Jimmy could roll his cart out the door, and answered, “Out of here, before I miss my steamer.”
The house dick heard, “Outta her, ’fer I miss me steamer,” and drew his pistol.
By then Weeks had his fingers firmly inside his brass knuckles. He brought the bigger man down with a lightning-fast, bone-smashing blow between the eyes. He caught the pistol as it dropped, pocketed it, and found Jimmy in the alley. The bellboy looked scared stiff.
“Don’t go rattly on me, now,” Weeks warned him. “We still got to get across town.”
19
THERE APPEARED TO BE A COMMOTION UP BROADWAY when Isaac Bell and Marion Morgan stepped out of Rector’s. They heard clanging fire bells and police whistles and saw crowds of people milling in every direction and decided the best way to Marion’s ferry was to take the subway.
Uptown in twenty minutes, they walked to the pier holding hands. Bell escorted her aboard the boat and lingered on the gangway. The whistle blew.
“Thank you for dinner, darling. It was lovely to see you.”
“Shall I come across with you?”
“I have to get up so early. So do you. Give me a kiss.”
After a while, a deckhand bawled, “Break it up, lovebirds. All ashore that’s goin’ ashore.”
Bell stepped off, and called as the water widened between the boat and dock, “They say it may shower on Friday.”
“I’ll do a rain dance.”
He rode the subway downtown and stopped at the Knickerbocker to check in with the Van Dorn night watch, who asked, “Did you hear about the snake?”
“Lachesis muta.”
“He escaped.”
“From the Cumberland?”
“They think he made it down to the sewer.”
“Bite anybody?”
“Not yet,” said the nightman.
