Read The Man Who Killed for Free Online

tree sap from an elbow. I tipped a quarter in gratitude that there hadn’t been any brain or bone in the wash.
    SATURDAY NIGHT IN the metropolis. Neon signs came to life on St. Catherine Street, syncopating light and music, red, green, and blue splashing in time with hot jazz from gramophones. I floated along with a suppertime crowd in the direction of Phillips Square. A vendor roasted chestnuts. Morgan’s department store was closed. Pigeons landed and shat on the head of the Roi Pacificateur behind me. Taking it as an augury I ambled to the Hotel Edward VII.
    Hanging in the lobby was a portrait of the dead Emperor in his admiral’s rig.
    â€œWho’s that, the Kaiser?” I asked through my nose like a Yankee.
    The clerk pulled a face as I forged a signature in the register and forked over a dollar for the night. I went up to the fourth floor and entered a clean, bare room. After the day’s efforts some rest was prescribed me. Propped a chair under the door handle, unwrapped the Webley, took off my boots, and stretched out on the bed, the gun at hand. After dozing and mumbling and fading away a sudden fastball struck the pillow next to my face. Hypnic jerk. I started up and rubbed my eyes clear, then went and doused my head in cold water. Quarter to nine by the clock on the dresser; for our King the time at Sandringham was set a half-hour earlier than Greenwich Mean for the pheasant shooting. Jack had said quarter past nine every evening at the Dominion and this was the first night.
    By the time I returned to its dirty streets the city was really starting to enjoy itself. Past the railway terminal on Dorchester smoke rose from the wide cut in the earth where trains marshalled below the street, readying themselves to scream north through the tunnel under the mountain. Stopping at an Imperial Tobacconist I bought Juicy Fruit and chewed it, crackling bubbles between my molars. At right was the largest building in the Empire, more massive than St. Paul’s or Canterbury Cathedral, the wedding-cake Sun Insurance behemoth. It anchored Dominion Square and had next to it the small tavern where Jack said he’d leave word if anything went wrong. How little he’d known.
    I pushed my way into the crowded saloon and stepped up to the bar. Men were jawing politics or sport. Next to me a chap with a tin of Puck at his elbow gobbed tobacco into a spittoon at his feet between freshening gulps of beer, a disgusting choreography. I added chewing gum to the bucket of brown slime, bought a quart of Export, and retired, my back to a wall where I could watch the door. From scarlet faces came shouted scraps of talk.
    â€œRedmen’ll top the Argos one-legged this year...”
    â€œBennett can’t make more of a mess of Ottawa than that straw man Meighen...”
    â€œWent to her sister’s and won’t come to the door when I call...”
    â€œFired six good men for jack shit...”
    The whole panoply of masculine weltschmerz. My problems were deeper and deadlier. I leaned back, drank, and scanned the room, waiting, watching. Next to me an old cove wearing a ratty beard and with a dead wet hand-rolled in his yap mauled a ’paper. So as not to be too noticeably alone I offered him a Buckingham.
    â€œThanks, sonny.”
    He was thumbing the sports pages so I chose that as a topic.
    â€œLooks like the Canucks are trying to buy a championship this year,” I said.
    The cove turned to me and I continued: “Too bad about Vezina dying. Least they’ve got Howie Morenz, for starters.”
    He put down his ’paper.
    â€œI don’t care who wins as long as it ain’t them blasted
    Ma-roons,” said the old goat.
    â€œI hear you. Had money on the Cougars to win last year. Now look where they are. Sold them all off to Detroit.”
    â€œIs that so? So you’re not from around here?”
    â€œNo. Western League. Good teams there. Seattle Mets. The old