Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/249

 Judy trips into the office, looking kind of puzzled. She says she didn't know that Nate and Rags was so friendly. I ask her what does she mean and she says she has just saw them going into the office of the Dempster Carpet Factory, arm in arm. It's my turn to look puzzled, and that's what I'm doing when Nate busts in, out of breath and grinning like a hyena.

"I'm what you call a collectin' fool!" He pants, throwing a pink slip of paper down in front of me." There's your ten grand—laugh that off!"

I snatched up the paper and sure enough it's a check for ten thousand, signed by old man Dempster.

"Do you mean to tell me that Mr. Dempster took your word that his son owed me that money?" I says, in amazement.

"No," says Nate. "He took his son's word for it!"

"What on earth made Rags act decently, for once in his life?" butts in Judy.

"This!" says Nate, reaching back on his hip and throwing a ugly-looking automatic on the desk. Judy gasps and edges away. "I meet this Rags on the street," goes on Nate, "and I tell him if he don't come over to his old man with me and promote 'at ten grand I'll cook him! Rags laughs. Then I move close to him and let him feel the gat in my pocket. When he starts to squawk I says make it snappy, or I'll put a hole in him you could drive a truck through. 'At makes Rags see things in a different light, and we wind up in his old man's office. I speak my piece, and, with the gun at his back through my coat, Rags says I'm tellin' the truth. The old boy's burnt up, but he