Gang Pulp

Kid Dropper Plays It Alone By Clement Wood

Racketeer Stories, February 1930

The job seemed as sure as The Dropper was safe from bullets that he could play it alone — but he forgot one thing — he was butter in the hand of a skirt!

It was safe to visit the place in the daytime, that he knew. But, safe or not. Kid Dropper would have gone ahead.

Nothing had ever stopped him yet: nothing ever would, the whole Suffolk Street gang knew. If he was safe at black midnight in the thick of East Side gunmen and cops, what should he fear when bright noon sparkled over these April Westchester woodlands?

The car rattled across the bridge over the tracks just above Garrison, and took the uphill road. For a mile, the way was flanked by the evergreened borders of two great estates. Then they turned up a steeper, wilder road to the right, and were at once in the midst of the untouched forest.

The car groaned in zig-zag fashion up the narrow rocky road, high above a noisy torrent in the hill pocket, just below them; so they made for the top.

Here the Dropper had the car parked in an unkempt grassy opening. “Come on, Abe,” he called to the chauffeur. The two of them set out on foot for their goal — the lofty outside of the house called Aiken’s Folly.

You must have seen the place, if you ever rode down the Hudson past Garrison, or stopped at West Point or Highland Falls to stare across the swirling river. Aiken’s Folly is the tall shell of a house, four stories high, smack on the top of a great cliff. It has always been a shell. Some say that a Wall Street plunger gave his wife exactly a million to build it; and, when this sum was sunk in the concrete base and the cavernous structural steel framework, refused her another cent to complete it.

Native guides point to the deep concrete pits in front, and tell of interrupted German plans to place guns here, during the World War, that would have blown West Point to bits. All these may be only myths: but there the high hollow shell of a house stands, in the eyes of the curious tourist world good for nothing, and used for nothing.

Kid Dropper knew otherwise. He had stumbled by accident upon the secret; he was quick to make use of it. That was why he was closing quietly in on the place, an early April morning, at an hour when he knew it should be empty. But he took no foolhardy risks; empty or not, all the way his hand was on his gun.

Eyes peering intently, he reached hemlock. Nothing stirring yet...

“Keep yer iron handy,” he cautioned Abe Beck, the close-mouthed chauffeur.

Like two velvet-footed shadows, the two men sped across the open space to the shelter of the building. Like human flies, the Dropper in the lead, they scuttled noiselessly along the concrete wall, to the first opening.

The Kid swung himself recklessly up to the floor level, disdaining the exposed plank trodden by most of the few curious visitors. Beck was at his side at once. The two men, dwarfed into insignificance by the immensity of the high-ceiIinged shell on whose rim they stood, stared suspiciously into the interior.

“It’s clear,” said the Dropper casually. “Come on.”

The flooring was of iron, and clanged hollowly at their softest step.

“Speed it,” the Kid ordered sharply, and hurried ahead across great vaultlike rooms, till he came to the only enclosed space in the building. He knelt here on the floor, pointing to a huge padlocked trap-door to the basement.

“That’s where they keep the stuff, when any’s here,” he muttered cryptically. “I dunno — other way’s sure, anyhow. Yeah, it’s gotter be the other way. Come on — hurry; if them guys turned up—”

Back to the main hall he hurried, leaving Abe Beck to wonder who the “other guys” might be. But he said not a word: in good time he would know. When they reached this place, the interior of the house rose, without intervening doors, four stories high.

Up the center zig-zagged an iron stairway; for this the leader made. They went clear to the top landing, and so out upon the highest balcony leaning on the sky.

The view of river and hill from here was magnificent. But not to the Dropper: his eyes measured only the hill road they had come, and the far ribbon of brown below that was the Post Road back to New York. Suddenly his eyes grew tense: there was a city taxi coming, where no city taxi should be.

“Speed it,” he hissed suddenly, taking the way down in great dying leaps, that set the echoes leaping and shrieking metallically all around them. Disdaining cover this time, they made for the red and black taxi that had brought them, and piled in. “Give her everything,” he ordered fiercely.

The car slid and slithered down the rocky hill road. At the bottom, the leader ordered Beck to slow up, to turn right instead of left, to drive across the shallow ditch at the right of the road, and to hide the car behind glossy-leaved rhododendron and mountain laurel clustered conveniently at the corner.

Not a moment too soon — the city taxi groaned up the easier hill, and turned up the way they had gone, hardly three minutes afterwards. Abe Beck’s eyes widened in amazement as he saw who was in the car. He could not keep silent this time: “It’s Little Goldie,” he marvelled, “an’ ‘Get ’Em’ Engel — most of Allen Street, Kid!”

“Yeah. An’ Suffolk Street don’t love any of ’em too much.”

Beck chuckled grimly. The rivalry between the two gangs had cost more than a dozen lives in the last six months.

“What’s the game, Kid?”

The Dropper explained to Beck as much as it was good for him to know. “It’s rum-runnin’, Abe. Them wise guys horned in on the swell boot-leggin’ game. The border runners bring the stuff this far down from Canada, an’ hide it under that old tin loft. Then Little Goldie’s gang picks it up, in milk trucks — whaddya know about that! Big money, boy. So tomorrer night — that’s when they run it in, Choosdays an’ Fridays — that’s when we come in.”

“The gang?”

“I’m playin’ this all alone — me an’ you, Abe. I got my own little debt to pay. It’s all worked out. To make it look nice, you see, for the cops, they ain’t even got a guard ridin’ in — only that Mike Spadoni chauffin’ the ‘Meadow Dairy’ truck. Then I hi-jack ’em, see? It’s stewed rhubarb, this job is.”

“Tomorrer night, eh?”

“We’ll beat it out of Noo Yawk about midnight, an’ get to Peekskill before three. The truck leaves up here just at three. Come on, we can get started now.”

Abe backed the car savagely back to the road. “That lob ain’t got a chanct in the worl’!”

Moe Korn, known all over lower Manhattan as Kid Dropper, was, in the eyes of the police department, the toughest gunman on the East Side. Not a gang murder for four years, the knowing ones said, but he had had his hand in it some way. Yet, before any living witnesses arrived, like a shadow he had dissolved away.

Barring one jail sentence for being seen throwing away a gun, his record was clear; even that case, he claimed, had been framed up against him. Nobody knew a thing against his record: just as nobody was fooled as to what he really was. In the eyes of reformers, he was an utterly vicious killer, with not a good word to be said for him.

In the eyes of the Suffolk Street gang, that he ruled with a grip of steel, he was the ideal man, with only one fault. That fault was women. If it wasn’t Bessie Laut, it was Mamie Kaplan; if it wasn’t Mamie, it was Yetta Wolff; if it wasn’t Yetta, it was that uptown blonde of Saul Cohen’s, or some other soft-eyed skirt.

Heretofore, the Dropper had changed his girls as easily as he changed his necktie or his name. But Yetta Wolff was different.

There was something hard about her eyes much of the time — something hard and fine. She saw the Kid’s easy smile answer the open invitation on the admiring face of Saul Cohen’s uptown girl, and her eyes grew hard and beautiful.

“Look yere, Kid,” she crooned to him, voice still gentle, “lay off that uptown cheese. She’s nothin’ to you — an’ you’ve got me — ain’t it honey?”

“You got a nerve,” he said. “You ain’t got no mortgage on me.”

Her eyes flashed hard and dangerous fire. “I’m straight with you, Kid; you play straight with me.”

“Aw, I wouldn’t lift my little finger to save that skirt’s life, if she was drownin’ in apple sauce,” he assured her easily.

“Don’t let me catch you playin’ around with her, just the same.”

“Whaddya think I am, anyhow? Aw, be reasonable, baby. My mind ain’t on no uptown jizzies. I got a big job on, Yetta — real pile for me an’ you, an’ no dividin’!”

“Come on, tell me!”

“Aw, I couldn’t yet—”

But no fly in the web of a spider was more hopeless than Kid Dropper in the hands of a woman. Yetta kept at it, and out it all came — the whole plan to get hold of the priceless week’s truck-load of contraband rum from the Allen Street gang.

“You’ll be spendin’ every cent of that wad, baby. Think I’d bother about another dame?”

“Don’t let me catch you doin’ it, that’s all.”

She had to be content with this; but she kept her eyes open. This had been several days before; and she knew the Kid, and his weakness for ladies. It wasn’t hard to pump Meyer Korn, the Dropper’s brother who was studying law in his vacations from gunplay. Meyer never guessed what she was driving at: his mind was whirling with torts and arsons and law quizzes. But he leaked enough to send her flying, the very night that the Kid returned from his jaunt into Westchester, over to the dance at the Labor Temple.

She didn’t see him at first; she almost hoped Meyer had been wrong. No, there he was, he and that uptown blonde, clinched as tight as a large family in the subway at rush hour, while the band jazzed out some seductive Blues. This was enough.

Yetta started to slip away, eyes blinded by a sudden sting. The Kid saw her just at this moment, and waved a worried hand at her.

When he came across to see her, as the dance ended, she was gone.

He threw it off lightly; a synthetic pearl choker, a little soft talk, would make it right. He forgot entirely that Sollie Fein, who was right in the heart of the Allen Street gang, was Yetta’s cousin. And, before her anger had time to cool, she had found Sollie, and had poured out the story of her abandonment in his receptive ears.

Sollie kept on his pinochle face. “Yeah, he’s a bad egg, the Dropper is. Ain’t much of a real man—”

“Little you know!”

“Ahhh! he always skips when his gang’s in trouble — wouldn’t dare do a thing by himself—”

Her breast rose furiously. “Why, right now, Sollie, he’s goin’ to stick up a bootleg truck tomorrer night, an’ hi-jack the whole load, all by himself!”

A sudden suspicion formed in the gangster’s agile mind. “He wouldn’t dare fool around our truck—”

“Oh, wouldn’t he!” She had already said more than she intended; she ended by saying more still.

“He’s lyin’ to you, Yetta,” Fein taunted. “He’ll be playin’ around with that blondie again.”

Out it all came now; the very thought of that other woman drove all caution out of her mind.

Sollie’s face threw off its mask. “I’ll fix him!” with gritting teeth.

“Don’t hurt the boy,” suddenly contrite. “He’s my man, if he’d only play straight—”

“We’ll just scare him off,” he lied easily.

Within half an hour, the willing ear of Little Goldie itself had the whole thing. The brains of the Allen Street mob were gotten together. Kid Dropper — and alone! This was the chance they had always waited for.

They argued long and hard over the plans, and at last worked out what ought to settle the Dropper’s hash completely.

At three a.m. the next morning the milk truck started, loaded to its roof, except down the center, from Aiken’s Folly. But it was not Mike Spadoni who drove down alone. Hunched beside him on the driver’s seat sat Max Engel, “Get ’Em” Engel, the crack shot of the whole gang; inside the truck crouched Sollie Fein and Morris, his brother; and, starting out three minutes behind, Little Goldie himself followed with a carload of his mate’s, all with guns out. There would be no slipup on this trick!

As they started from the hill above Garrison, the Dropper and his taciturn chauffeur reached Peekskill. They drew up the car before a drowsing all night lunch, its nose pointed toward New York. They sat waiting quietly. It was still night, but something in the air said that day was near.

“He’s startin’ now,” Kid muttered smilelessly. “We’ll tail in behind him, an’ when he reaches the first likely space on the road—”

“Yeah,” Abe Beck nodded in grim joy. “That lob won’t have a chanct in the worl’!”

A solitary policeman owled out of the Peekskill dimness, took one look at the peaceful pair parked before the restaurant, then thumped hollowly away into the dimness. No one else was in sight; there was no traffic stirring on the Post Road. The last night revellers had started homeward, the morning traffic had not commenced.

The Dropper carefully went over the plans again, in a low voice.

“There!” he suddenly interrupted himself, holding up a warning finger.

Abe heard it now, a low heavy rumble from the distance far behind him. It might be anything heavy — furniture moving down the Hudson, farm produce from upstate trucking down, a legitimate milk load, or the “Meadow Dairy” truck from Aiken’s’ Folly.

They leaned out in stiff expectancy.

Louder and louder, in the crisp air, the noise grew.

Abe set the engine going. The Kid stood at ease in the shadows behind the car, to make sure that he read the name right.

The flicker of lights at the turn three blocks away, and the heavy truck swung into sight, coasting with easy power. The Dropper tensed himself, although it was not yet necessary. He felt the presence of an enemy, even before the truck came close enough for him to spell out its name.

A block away — half a block—

“Watch it, Abe!”

The truck slithered swiftly by.

“ ‘Meadow Dairy — Best Milk’!”

“That’s her,” he whispered savagely to the driver, as he swung himself noiselessly into the back seat. “Drive like all everything, Abe — keep her in sight!”

’Round great curves the truck swept ahead of them, the car hugging the trail of its small red light a block and a half behind.

As they thundered through the hush of sleeping Oscawanna, the Dropper had his car begin to cut down the distance. After the pale lights of Tumble Inn had slashed into the gray murk and faded behind them, he told Abe to put on more juice.

The truck shot swiftly down the reversed curve of Soap Hill, and through the echoing stillness of Croton. The car gained constantly, until at the bottom of the rise to Harmon it was within a hundred feet of the flying goal.

“Now,” ordered the Kid with terrible intentness.

On this hill, the loaded truck faltered a trifle. The pursuer took it on high, and at the crest, was side by side with the other vehicle.

“Get your nose in front,” whispered the Kid harshly.

The car slid smoothly ahead; and side by side, the taxi’s nose ahead of the truck’s snub front, they raced along. The truck might have thought that the car was merely trying to pass.

The Dropper’s pistol was out; he hung over the car door, his gun trained on the driver of the truck. His voice boomed startlingly above the mechanical purr of the two powerful motors. “Stop her — an’ stick ’em up!”

Spadoni, who had been expecting this, slowed down at once. “Don’t shoot, mister,” he whined, as if frightened.

Before the truck had stopped the Dropper was aboard it, crowding over the two men on the driver’s bench, as he held two guns boring upon their chests.

“Drive on — an’ do jus’ what I say; get me? Or I’ll pump you so full of lead you’ll bust the truck springs!” he gloated in savage warning.

Across the level height of Harmon, down toward the crossing that led to Ossining, the captured truck continued. The game was in his hands, the Dropper thought exultantly. The two men beside him, the two gangsters crouching out of sight in the truck’s hidden interior just at his back, thought otherwise.

Abe Beck, as directed, took it easy about a block behind.

Suddenly the Kid stiffened, as he heard a sound behind him.

It was not the sound he should have heard — the sound of the two Fein boys aiming their guns through the two holes bored in the truck, which opened directly just where the Dropper’s heart was bound to be, with three men crowded on the front seat... Oh, Little Goldie had it all planned out.

It wasn’t this the Kid heard — it was a sound from farther behind, like a tire blowing out, or the engine missing fire... A single hollow pop borne faintly to him by the rushing wind — one, and then another.

Oh, well, Abe could look out for himself. Everything was swimming in gravy.

Behind him, if he could have seen, a car still followed the truck. But the car held Little Goldie and his gang. The taxi the Dropper had come in, at this very moment was plunging and veering wildly down the steep hill fields, with a dead man at the wheel. The car was not found until two days later, lying overturned in a black arm of the brackish swamp, where Croton River emptied its delta into the Hudson. The man beneath it was not found until the car was pulled off him.

The Kid guessed none of this. But he lifted his head suspiciously, as he felt, somehow, danger in the lightening air. A minute later, and he would have stopped the truck to investigate. It was thundering now across the new bridge over the Croton River. As soon as they crossed it, he decided, he would stop her and investigate—

“Now,” whispered Sollie Fern, a tense, terrible whisper in the hidden darkness just behind the Dropper. Out of the two holes in the truck right behind his back there was a double spurt of flame, the sudden thunder of two shots together, the acrid spread of smoke.

After a moment’s silence, Mike Spadoni stopped his engine. The brakes ground to a standstill. Engel, crouched between the chauffeur and the enemy gang leader, slid his hand down toward his gun.

The truck stopped entirely. Only then they dared look at the still, white face of the gangster beside them. It stared sightlessly ahead. With a strange, convulsive movement, the Dropper’s body tumbled over the running board, upon the roadway beneath.

“Got him!” breathed Engel unbelievingly. “Bumped the lob off!”

The two Fein boys were craw ling toward the back of the truck, over the boxes of contraband. Sollie reached the back door and clawed for the catch. “Get ’Em” Engel swung himself out on the river side, Spadoni following close after him. As they reached the ground they looked down for the dead body of the gangster.

It was not there!

Unbelievingly they stared at each other. The Dropper had gone, after all — nobody would drop him! Hard common sense swung back — of course the truck had moved forward a trifle, and the body had rolled back. They fell on their knees, peering toward the rear.

The car following them knew differently. Goldie, eyes tense on the slowing truck ahead, was the first who had seen the figure that rolled out from under its wheels thirty seconds later, and started running uncertainly toward the base of the hill. The first gray of dawn was triumphant in the sky now: the man was plainly visible, running more confidently with every step.

“Hey, cut round him, Angie,” he ordered fiercely.

At this place, as Goldie remembered, there was a wide, flat, grassy circle, the beginning of an intended park. Round this the earshot, and, having gotten the man between it and the truck, swung skillfully toward the west again, catching him in the full glare of its headlights, which died away beyond him against the milk truck and the distant river mists.

“Abe,” called out the Dropper exultantly, “we’ll shoot ’em up yet—”

“It’s the Kid himself!” marveled Little Goldie.

Before the Dropper had time to take a second step toward the car, two spurts of flame, and two more. He stopped dead still in his tracks.

It wasn’t Abe at all! Something had gone wrong again.

The men in the car saw him take one sweeping glance around, and make for the only shelter at hand — a stone monument to the dead in the World War, hardly ten steps to the side. He threw himself leaping toward this.

“Missed him,” groaned Goldie.

Angelo, the chauffeur of the car, turned it slightly sideways, so that the lights washed the big hollow boulder that was the base of the monument. There was the Kid, disappearing behind the shelter.

Panting rackingly, he crumpled to the ground, his two guns out. Only one thing, he realized, had saved his life — the one thing that Allen Streeters had not counted on. There had been that unexplained murder of a policeman less than a month before — nothing to connect it with the Dropper or his gang; and the officer, as the whole department knew, had been wearing one of the new bullet-proof vests. The papers had been full of pictures of Officer Reilly wearing the armored garment, while pistols were shot off harmlessly close to his body: so the Dropper had shrewdly sent his bullet through the officer’s brain. One fumbling minute after the Kid’s delightful discovery of the garment, it had disappeared down the street with the shadowy gang leader. Since then he had had it on except when sleeping. It was absolute protection against a body shot.

The two bullets from the interior of the truck had stunned him momentarily, but that was all. As long as the Allen Streeters did not guess this he was almost safe against gun or knife.

It was growing brighter by the moment, as the dawn gray spread farther and farther up the east. He took one quick look at the truck — a shot was his reward. Well, with Abe Beck gone, there was only one thing to do — to get back away from this open space, and that at once.

He rose to his full height in the shelter of the rock, prepared to run for it. Meanwhile the Allen Streeters had piled out of their two vehicles and were calling to each other plans for a concerted rush against the one desperate foeman.

All the time that this battle had been waging two other cars had been burning up the road between Manhattan and Ossining, in the endeavor to be in at the finish. For this night, starting even before the Kid’s car had left the city limits, had marked another of the periodical round-ups of the East Side gangsters. This time the department was after information concerning that very policeman whose bullet-proof vest the Kid was wearing.

They found out nothing about that policeman’s death. But the astute officers had rounded up not only all the gangsters available, but their girls as well. And Yetta Wolff, of course, had been one who had fallen into the net.

She had lied desperately at first; she knew nothing about anything. But somehow they had tripped up her tangling story, and by a lucky guess had played on her jealousy of the Kid and other women. She was so angry still, that she could not hold it in. So out came at last the story of what he had planned for this night, and the fact that the Allen Streeters had been tipped off.

At once two carloads of officers were started, desperately driving north, to take control of the hi-jacking game, and net all of these trouble-makers of both parties at the same time.

As the Kid, erect, started his spring toward freedom out of the grassy park circle toward the temporary safety of the pumping station a hundred feet away, the two powerful police cars swung around the curve a hundred yards off.

He sensed the coming of the cars at once. Well, friend or foe, they could not be worse to face than what lay behind him. Out of the rain of shots that whistled harmlessly around him, he ran straight for the headlights, calling aloud for help. Even ordinary travelers might protect him for a moment’s breathing space against the enemy behind — and then—

Too late he noticed what new enemies were these. At that, he thought with painful rapidity, the cops had nothing on him. Still, better make a break, anyhow. He leaped from his indecision for one more try at freedom.

He had delayed too long. Two muscular officers caught him before he had taken two steps, and flung him to the ground. Before he could rise to his feet they had the bracelets on him. He found his guns wrenched violently out of his hands. He was yanked and bundled into the back car, under the guard of the police chauffeur.

The two officers joined the others, who had gone after the truck and Little Goldie’s car.

The gangsters realized that this game had reached its end. Here they were, in territory alien to the rat holes and basements they were familiar with. There, too, was the truck load of rum, and no way to get it out of sight.

Morosely Goldie gave the order not to shoot. They were outnumbered; it would mean only a fight to the death. The penalty for rum-running, anyhow, was nothing compared to penalties they were always running the risk of. Hands above their heads, the four from the truck and four of the men who had been in the car came forward into the light.

At least, it had taken eleven policemen to net the nine — no, the eight of them, Little Goldie was glad to notice. Light — he ran his eyes over them again. Who was missing? Ah, where was Harry Weiss, who had sat right behind him in the car?

Dirty little yellow squirt! Always ducking out when there was trouble. The others had warned him not to trust Harry — he only hit from behind. Where had the squirt gone, anyhow?

“We ain’t doin’ nothin—” Goldie began, sparring for time, as the irons were slipped over his wrists.

A powerful blow against the mouth stopped his words at once. “Shut your trap, till you’re spoken to,” ordered an officer, one of the unsleeping Strong-Arm Squad, bred in the gutters of the East Side, and by police wisdom matched against its lawlessness, as the only force that could end it. “If you don’t dry up, I’ll—”

“Aw, I wasn’t savin’ nothin,” muttered Goldie.

One of the officers meanwhile had brought up the car of the gangsters. The nine captives, including the Dropper, were divided, three to a car, with an adequate guard over each. Two officers were detailed to bring the truck of contraband rum down to the city.

“Got you this time, Goldie,” said the sergeant in command, with a complacent sneer.

“Fer what?”

“Rum runnin’ — I don’t know what else.”

“I ain’t with that gang,” said the Dropper, master of himself at last. “You know me—”

“On suspicion — Officer Reilly’s death,” the sergeant gloated.

“I got a alibi — wasn’t in Noo Yawk a-tall when they bumped him off. You ain’t got nothin’ against me — you know that, Sarge. Better turn me loose.”

“I ain’t got no evidence, no,” worried the officer aloud. “You’re a bad guy, Moe Korn — I got just one thing to say to you: Noo Yark ain’t big enough to hold you an’ the police department. We gotter git out, or you have. You get me? You gotter get out, an’ stay out. I’d turn you loose now, if you’d give me your word—”

“I ain’t with this gang,” he temporized. “Wouldn’t be caught dead workin’ with ’em. They wuz stickin’ me up! — you seen ’em. You seen me comin’ for help, ain’t you? I’m Suffolk Street—”

“I know.” The officer considered carefully. “If you don’t stay out of Noo Yark, Moe Korn, you’ll get it, an’ good — lemme warn you—”

“Lemme go now,” said the Dropper, a crafty look veiled in his eyes. He could see Abe Beck, and then — “Turn me loose here, Sarge. You know I ain’t runnin’ with them toughs.”

“Take ’em off,” ordered the sergeant curtly, after a long stare at the gangster. “These other boys is who we want. But don’t lemme catch you in the city again—”

As his hands clicked free, the officer relieved him of a third pistol, swinging from a hidden holster at his side.

The Dropper trembled, for fear the police would discover the bullet-proof vest. That would be something to connect him with Officer Reilly’s death. But the cop, after making sure that there were no more weapons, did not investigate any further.

“You get — an’ stay got,” he ordered shortly.

“This way,” said a sudden tense voice from the side of the car just beside them.

Little Goldie thrilled suddenly, as he recognized the unexpected voice. It was Harry Weiss, the little squirt!

Before another word could be said the anemic little gangster rose to his runty height on the running board, his face working palely. Before any one could guess his intention, he had placed a pistol against the Dropper’s chest and had pulled the trigger.

There was a roar and a flash almost at the same instant.

A brawny police arm knocked the man spinning across the road. Two officers were on him before he could rise. His face was all blood as they brought him back to the car.

The Dropper stared at him, shaken but uninjured. “Not that way,” he smiled stiffly. “The man ain’t livin’ can poke me off— So long, Sarge.” His mind was already working furiously. There was something still to be done at the vast shell of a house called Aiken’s Folly. So he disappeared into the murk of the dawn.