high colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky,
self-addressed envelopes at your door."
"Oh, fiddles and footlights!" cried Dawe, derisively. "You've got that
old sawmill drama kink in your brain yet. When the man with the black
mustache kidnaps golden-haired Bessie you are bound to have the mother
kneel and raise her hands in the spotlight and say: 'May high heaven
witness that I will rest neither night nor day till the heartless
villain that has stolen me child feels the weight of another's
vengeance!'"
Editor Westbrook conceded a smile of impervious complacency.
"I think," said he, "that in real life the woman would express herself
in those words or in very similar ones."
"Not in a six hundred nights' run anywhere but on the stage," said Dawe
hotly. "I'll tell you what she'd say in real life. She'd say: 'What!
Bessie led away by a strange man? Good Lord! It's one trouble after
another! Get my other hat, I must hurry around to the police-station.
Why wasn't somebody looking after her, I'd like to know? For God's sake,
get out of my way or I'll never get ready. Not that hat - the brown one
with the velvet bows. Bessie must have been crazy; she's usually shy of
strangers. Is that too much powder? Lordy! How I'm upset!'
"That's the way she'd talk," continued Dawe. "People in real life don't
fly into heroics and blank verse at emotional crises. They simply can't
do it. If they talk at all on such occasions they draw from the same
vocabulary that they use every day, and muddle up their words and ideas
a little more, that's all."
"Shack," said Editor Westbrook impressively, "did you ever pick up the
mangled and lifeless form of a child from under the fender of a street
car, and carry it in your arms and lay it down before the distracted
mother? Did you ever do that and listen to the words of grief and
despair as they flowed spontaneously from her lips?"
"I never did," said Dawe. "Did you?"
"Well, no," said Editor Westbrook, with a slight frown. "But I can well
imagine what she would say."
"So can I," said Dawe.
And now the fitting time had come for Editor Westbrook to play the
oracle and silence his opinionated contributor. It was not for an
unarrived fictionist to dictate words to be uttered by the heroes and
heroines of the _Minerva Magazine_, contrary to the theories of the
editor thereof.
"My dear Shack," said he, "if I know anything of life I know that every
sudden, deep and tragic emotion in the human heart calls forth an
apposite, concordant, conformable and proportionate expression of
feeling. How much of this inevitable accord between expression and
feeling should be attributed to nature, and how much to the influence of
art, it would be difficult to say. The sublimely terrible roar of the
lioness that has been deprived of her cubs is dramatically as far above
her customary whine and purr as the kingly and transcendent utterances
of Lear are above the level of his senile vaporings. But it is also true
that all men and women have what may be called a sub-conscious dramatic
sense that is awakened by a sufficiently deep and powerful emotion - a
sense unconsciously acquired from literature and the stage that prompts
them to express those emotions in language befitting their importance
and histrionic value."
"And in the name of the seven sacred saddle-blankets of Sagittarius,
where did the stage and literature get the stunt?" asked Dawe.
"From life," answered the editor, triumphantly.
The story writer rose from the bench and gesticulated eloquently but
dumbly. He was beggared for words with which to formulate adequately his
dissent.
On a bench nearby a frowzy loafer opened his red eyes and perceived that
his moral support was due a downtrodden brother.
"Punch him one, Jack," he called hoarsely to Dawe. "W'at's he come
makin' a noise like a penny arcade for amongst gen'lemen that comes in
the square to set and think?"
Editor Westbrook looked at his watch with an affected show of leisure.
"Tell me," asked Dawe, with truculent anxiety, "what especial faults in
'The Alarum of the Soul' caused you to throw it down?"
"When Gabriel Murray," said Westbrook, "goes to his telephone and is
told that his fiancee has been shot by a burglar, he says - I do not
recall the exact words, but - "
"I do," said Dawe. "He says: 'Damn Central; she always cuts me off.'
(And then to his friend) 'Say, Tommy, does a thirty-two bullet make a
big hole? It's kind of hard luck, ain't it? Could you get me a drink
from the sideboard, Tommy? No; straight; nothing on the side.'"
"And again," continued the editor, without pausing for argument, "when
Berenice opens the letter from her husband informing her that he has
fled with the manicure girl, her words are - let me see - "
"She says," interposed the author: "'Well, what do you think of that!'"
"Absurdly inappropriate words," said Westbrook, "presenting an
anti-climax - plunging the story into hopeless bathos. Worse yet; they
mirror life falsely. No human being ever uttered banal colloquialisms
when confronted by sudden tragedy."
"Wrong," said Dawe, closing his unshaven jaws doggedly. "I say no man
or woman ever spouts 'high-falutin' talk when they go up against a real
climax. They talk naturally and a little worse."
The editor rose from the bench with his air of indulgence and inside
information.
"Say, Westbrook," said Dawe, pinning him by the lapel, "would you have
accepted 'The Alarum of the Soul' if you had believed that the actions
and words of the characters were true to life in the parts of the story
that we discussed?"
"It is very likely that I would, if I believed that way," said the
editor. "But I have explained to you that I do not."
"If I could prove to you that I am right?"
"I'm sorry, Shack, but I'm afraid I haven't time to argue any further
just now."
"I don't want to argue," said Dawe. "I want to demonstrate to you from
life itself that my view is the correct one."
"How could you do that?" asked Westbrook, in a surprised tone.
"Listen," said the writer, seriously. "I have thought of a way. It is
important to me that my theory of true-to-life fiction be recognized as
correct by the magazines. I've fought for it for three years, and I'm
down to my last dollar, with two months' rent due."
"I have applied the opposite of your theory," said the editor, "in
selecting the fiction for the _Minerva Magazine_. The circulation has
gone up from ninety thousand to - "
"Four hundred thousand," said Dawe. "Whereas it should have been boosted
to a million."
"You said something to me just now about demonstrating your pet theory."
"I will. If you'll give me about half an hour of your time I'll prove to
you that I am right. I'll prove it by Louise."
"Your wife!" exclaimed Westbrook. "How?"
"Well, not exactly by her, but _with_ her," said Dawe. "Now, you know
how devoted and loving Louise has always been. She thinks I'm the only
genuine preparation on the market that bears the old doctor's signature.
She's been fonder and more faithful than ever, since I've been cast for
the neglected genius part."
"Indeed, she is a charming and admirable life companion," agreed the
editor. "I remember what inseparable friends she and Mrs. Westbrook once
were. We are both lucky chaps, Shack, to have such wives. You must bring
Mrs. Dawe up some evening soon, and we'll have one of those informal
chafing-dish suppers that we used to enjoy so much."
"Later," said Dawe. "When I get another shirt. And now I'll tell you my
scheme. When I was about to leave home after breakfast - if you can call
tea and oatmeal breakfast - Louise told me she was going to visit her
aunt in Eighty-ninth Street. She said she would return at three o'clock.
She is always on time to a minute. It is now - "
Dawe glanced toward the editor's watch pocket.
"Twenty-seven minutes to three," said Westbrook, scanning his
time-piece.
"We have just enough time," said Dawe. "We will go to my flat at once. I
will write a note, address it to her and leave it on the table where she
will see it as she enters the door. You and I will be in the dining-room
concealed by the portieres. In that note I'll say that I have fled from
her forever with an affinity who understands the needs of my artistic
soul as she never did. When she reads it we will observe her actions and
hear her words. Then we will know which theory is the correct one - yours
or mine."
"Oh, never!" exclaimed the editor, shaking his head. "That would be
inexcusably cruel. I could not consent to have Mrs. Dawe's feelings
played upon in such a manner."
"Brace up," said the writer. "I guess I think as much of her as you do.
It's for her benefit as well as mine. I've got to get a market for my
stories in some way. It won't hurt Louise. She's healthy and sound. Her
heart goes as strong as a ninety-eight-cent watch. It'll last for only a
minute, and then I'll step out and explain to her. You really owe it to
me to give me the chance, Westbrook."
Editor Westbrook at length yielded, though but half willingly. And in
the half of him that consented lurked the vivisectionist that is in all
of us. Let him who has not used the scalpel rise and stand in his place.
Pity 'tis that there are not enough rabbits and guinea-pigs to go
around.
The two experimenters in Art left the Square and hurried eastward and
then to the south until they arrived in the Gramercy neighborhood.
Within its high iron railings the little park had put on its smart coat
of vernal green, and was admiring itself in its fountain mirror. Outside
the railings the hollow square of crumbling houses, shells of a bygone
gentry, leaned as if in ghostly gossip over the forgotten doings of the
vanished quality. _Sic transit gloria urbis_.
A block or two north of the Park, Dawe steered the editor again
eastward, then, after covering a short distance, into a lofty but narrow
flathouse burdened with a floridly over-decorated facade. To the fifth
story they toiled, and Dawe, panting, pushed his latch-key into the door
of one of the front flats.
When the door opened Editor Westbrook saw, with feelings of pity, how
meanly and meagerly the rooms were furnished.
"Get a chair, if you can find one," said Dawe, "while I hunt up pen and
ink. Hello, what's this? Here's a note from Louise. She must have left
it there when she went out this morning."
He picked up an envelope that lay on the centre-table and tore it open.
He began to read the letter that he drew out of it; and once having
begun it aloud he so read it through to the end. These are the words
that Editor Westbrook heard:
"Dear Shackleford:
"By the time you get this I will be about a hundred miles away and
still a-going. I've got a place in the chorus of the Occidental
Opera Co., and we start on the road to-day at twelve o'clock. I
didn't want to starve to death, and so I decided to make my own
living. I'm not coming back. Mrs. Westbrook is going with me. She
said she was tired of living with a combination phonograph, iceberg
and dictionary, and she's not coming back, either. We've been
practising the songs and dances for two months on the quiet. I hope
you will be successful, and get along all right! Good-bye.
"Louise."
Dawe dropped the letter, covered his face with his trembling hands, and
cried out in a deep, vibrating voice:
_"My God, why hast thou given me this cup to drink? Since she is false,
then let Thy Heaven's fairest gifts, faith and love, become the jesting
by-words of traitors and fiends!"_
Editor Westbrook's glasses fell to the floor. The fingers of one hand
fumbled with a button on his coat as he blurted between his pale lips:
_"Say, Shack, ain't that a hell of a note? Wouldn't that knock you off
your perch, Shack? Ain't it hell, now, Shack - ain't it?"_
XX
PAST ONE AT ROONEY'S
Only on the lower East Side of New York do the houses of Capulet and
Montagu survive. There they do not fight by the book of arithmetic. If
you but bite your thumb at an upholder of your opposing house you have
work cut out for your steel. On Broadway you may drag your man along a
dozen blocks by his nose, and he will only bawl for the watch; but in
the domain of the East Side Tybalts and Mercutios you must observe the
niceties of deportment to the wink of any eyelash and to an inch of
elbow room at the bar when its patrons include foes of your house and
kin.
So, when Eddie McManus, known to the Capulets as Cork McManus, drifted
into Dutch Mike's for a stein of beer, and came upon a bunch of
Montagus making merry with the suds, he began to observe the strictest
parliamentary rules. Courtesy forbade his leaving the saloon with his
thirst unslaked; caution steered him to a place at the bar where the
mirror supplied the cognizance of the enemy's movements that his
indifferent gaze seemed to disdain; experience whispered to him that the
finger of trouble would be busy among the chattering steins at Dutch
Mike's that night. Close by his side drew Brick Cleary, his Mercutio,
companion of his perambulations. Thus they stood, four of the Mulberry
Hill Gang and two of the Dry Dock Gang, minding their P's and Q's so
solicitously that Dutch Mike kept one eye on his customers and the other
on an open space beneath his bar in which it was his custom to seek
safety whenever the ominous politeness of the rival associations
congealed into the shapes of bullets and cold steel.
But we have not to do with the wars of the Mulberry Hills and the Dry
Docks. We must to Rooney's, where, on the most blighted dead branch of
the tree of life, a little pale orchid shall bloom.
Overstrained etiquette at last gave way. It is not known who first
overstepped the bounds of punctilio; but the consequences were
immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like
swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane deck.
But McManus's simile must be the torpedo. He glided in under the guns
and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade between the ribs of the
Mulberry Hill cruiser. Meanwhile Brick Cleary, a devotee to strategy,
had skimmed across the lunch counter and thrown the switch of the
electrics, leaving the combat to be waged by the light of gunfire alone.
Dutch Mike crawled from his haven and ran into the street crying for the
watch instead of for a Shakespeare to immortalize the Cimmerian shindy.
The cop came, and found a prostrate, bleeding Montagu supported by three
distrait and reticent followers of the House. Faithful to the ethics of
the gangs, no one knew whence the hurt came. There was no Capulet to be
seen.
"Raus mit der interrogatories," said Buck Malone to the officer. "Sure I
know who done it. I always manages to get a bird's eye view of any guy
that comes up an' makes a show case for a hardware store out of me. No.
I'm not telling you his name. I'll settle with um meself. Wow - ouch!
Easy, boys! Yes, I'll attend to his case meself. I'm not making any
complaint."
At midnight McManus strolled around a pile of lumber near an East Side
dock, and lingered in the vicinity of a certain water plug. Brick Cleary
drifted casually to the trysting place ten minutes later. "He'll maybe
not croak," said Brick; "and he won't tell, of course. But Dutch Mike
did. He told the police he was tired of having his place shot up. It's
unhandy just now, because Tim Corrigan's in Europe for a week's end with
Kings. He'll be back on the _Kaiser Williams_ next Friday. You'll have
to duck out of sight till then. Tim'll fix it up all right for us when
he comes back."
This goes to explain why Cork McManus went into Rooney's one night and
there looked upon the bright, stranger face of Romance for the first
time in his precarious career.
Until Tim Corrigan should return from his jaunt among Kings and Princes
and hold up his big white finger in private offices, it was unsafe for
Cork in any of the old haunts of his gang. So he lay, perdu, in the high
rear room of a Capulet, reading pink sporting sheets and cursing the
slow paddle wheels of the _Kaiser Wilhelm_.
It was on Thursday evening that Cork's seclusion became intolerable to
him. Never a hart panted for water fountain as he did for the cool touch
of a drifting stein, for the firm security of a foot-rail in the hollow
of his shoe and the quiet, hearty challenges of friendship and repartee
along and across the shining bars. But he must avoid the district where
he was known. The cops were looking for him everywhere, for news was
scarce, and the newspapers were harping again on the failure of the
police to suppress the gangs. If they got him before Corrigan came back,
the big white finger could not be uplifted; it would be too late then.
But Corrigan would be home the next day, so he felt sure there would be
small danger in a little excursion that night among the crass pleasures
that represented life to him.
At half-past twelve McManus stood in a darkish cross-town street looking
up at the name "Rooney's," picked out by incandescent lights against
a signboard over a second-story window. He had heard of the place
as a tough "hang-out"; with its frequenters and its locality he was
unfamiliar. Guided by certain unerring indications common to all such
resorts, he ascended the stairs and entered the large room over the
cafe.
Here were some twenty or thirty tables, at this time about half-filled
with Rooney's guests. Waiters served drinks. At one end a human
pianola with drugged eyes hammered the keys with automatic and furious
unprecision. At merciful intervals a waiter would roar or squeak a
song - songs full of "Mr. Johnsons" and "babes" and "coons" - historical
word guaranties of the genuineness of African melodies composed by red
waistcoated young gentlemen, natives of the cotton fields and rice
swamps of West Twenty-eighth Street.
For one brief moment you must admire Rooney with me as he receives,
seats, manipulates, and chaffs his guests. He is twenty-nine. He
has Wellington's nose, Dante's chin, the cheek-bones of an Iroquois,
the smile of Talleyrand, Corbett's foot work, and the poise of an
eleven-year-old East Side Central Park Queen of the May. He is assisted
by a lieutenant known as Frank, a pudgy, easy chap, swell-dressed, who
goes among the tables seeing that dull care does not intrude. Now,
what is there about Rooney's to inspire all this pother? It is more
respectable by daylight; stout ladies with children and mittens and
bundles and unpedigreed dogs drop up of afternoons for a stein and a
chat. Even by gaslight the diversions are melancholy i' the mouth - drink
and rag-time, and an occasional surprise when the waiter swabs the suds
from under your sticky glass. There is an answer. Transmigration! The
soul of Sir Walter Raleigh has traveled from beneath his slashed doublet
to a kindred home under Rooney's visible plaid waistcoat. Rooney's is
twenty years ahead of the times. Rooney has removed the embargo. Rooney
has spread his cloak upon the soggy crossing of public opinion, and any
Elizabeth who treads upon it is as much a queen as another. Attend to
the revelation of the secret. In Rooney's ladies may smoke!
McManus sat down at a vacant table. He paid for the glass of beer
that he ordered, tilted his narrow-brimmed derby to the back of his
brick-dust head, twined his feet among the rungs of his chair, and
heaved a sigh of contentment from the breathing spaces of his innermost
soul; for this mud honey was clarified sweetness to his taste. The sham
gaiety, the hectic glow of counterfeit hospitality, the self-conscious,
joyless laughter, the wine-born warmth, the loud music retrieving the
hour from frequent whiles of awful and corroding silence, the presence
of well-clothed and frank-eyed beneficiaries of Rooney's removal of the
restrictions laid upon the weed, the familiar blended odors of soaked
lemon peel, flat beer, and _peau d'Espagne_ - all these were manna to
Cork McManus, hungry for his week in the desert of the Capulet's high
rear room.
A girl, alone, entered Rooney's, glanced around with leisurely
swiftness, and sat opposite McManus at his table. Her eyes rested upon
him for two seconds in the look with which woman reconnoitres all men
whom she for the first time confronts. In that space of time she will
decide upon one of two things - either to scream for the police, or that
she may marry him later on.
Her brief inspection concluded, the girl laid on the table a worn red
morocco shopping bag with the inevitable top-gallant sail of frayed lace
handkerchief flying from a corner of it. After she had ordered a small
beer from the immediate waiter she took from her bag a box of cigarettes
and lighted one with slightly exaggerated ease of manner. Then she
looked again in the eyes of Cork McManus and smiled.
Instantly the doom of each was sealed.
The unqualified desire of a man to buy clothes and build fires for a
woman for a whole lifetime at first sight of her is not uncommon among
that humble portion of humanity that does not care for Bradstreet or
coats-of-arms or Shaw's plays. Love at first sight has occurred a time
or two in high life; but, as a rule, the extempore mania is to be found
among unsophisticated creatures such as the dove, the blue-tailed
dingbat, and the ten-dollar-a-week clerk. Poets, subscribers to all
fiction magazines, and schatchens, take notice.
With the exchange of the mysterious magnetic current came to each of
them the instant desire to lie, pretend, dazzle and deceive, which is
the worst thing about the hypocritical disorder known as love.
"Have another beer?" suggested Cork. In his circle the phrase was
considered to be a card, accompanied by a letter of introduction and
references.
"No, thanks," said the girl, raising her eyebrows and choosing her
conventional words carefully. "I - merely dropped in for - a slight
refreshment." The cigarette between her fingers seemed to require
explanation. "My aunt is a Russian lady," she concluded, "and we often
have a post perannual cigarette after dinner at home."
"Cheese it!" said Cork, whom society airs oppressed. "Your fingers are
as yellow as mine."
"Say," said the girl, blazing upon him with low-voiced indignation,
"what do you think I am? Say, who do you think you are talking to?
What?"
She was pretty to look at. Her eyes were big, brown, intrepid and
bright. Under her flat sailor hat, planted jauntily on one side, her
crinkly, tawny hair parted and was drawn back, low and massy, in a
thick, pendant knot behind. The roundness of girlhood still lingered in
her chin and neck, but her cheeks and fingers were thinning slightly.
She looked upon the world with defiance, suspicion, and sullen wonder.
Her smart, short tan coat was soiled and expensive. Two inches below her
black dress dropped the lowest flounce of a heliotrope silk underskirt.
"Beg your pardon," said Cork, looking at her admiringly. "I didn't mean
anything. Sure, it's no harm to smoke, Maudy."
"Rooney's," said the girl, softened at once by his amends, "is the only
place I know where a lady can smoke. Maybe it ain't a nice habit, but
aunty lets us at home. And my name ain't Maudy, if you please; it's Ruby
Delamere."
"That's a swell handle," said Cork approvingly. "Mine's
McManus - Cor - er - Eddie McManus."
"Oh, you can't help that," laughed Ruby. "Don't apologize."
Cork looked seriously at the big clock on Rooney's wall. The girl's
ubiquitous eyes took in the movement.
"I know it's late," she said, reaching for her bag; "but you know how
you want a smoke when you want one. Ain't Rooney's all right? I never
saw anything wrong here. This is twice I've been in. I work in a
bookbindery on Third Avenue. A lot of us girls have been working
overtime three nights a week. They won't let you smoke there, of course.
I just dropped in here on my way home for a puff. Ain't it all right in
here? If it ain't, I won't come any more."
"It's a little bit late for you to be out alone anywhere," said Cork.
"I'm not wise to this particular joint; but anyhow you don't want to
have your picture taken in it for a present to your Sunday School
teacher. Have one more beer, and then say I take you home."
"But I don't know you," said the girl, with fine scrupulosity. "I don't
accept the company of gentlemen I ain't acquainted with. My aunt never
would allow that."
"Why," said Cork McManus, pulling his ear, "I'm the latest thing in
suitings with side vents and bell skirt when it comes to escortin' a
lady. You bet you'll find me all right, Ruby. And I'll give you a tip as
to who I am. My governor is one of the hottest cross-buns of the Wall
Street push. Morgan's cab horse casts a shoe every time the old man
sticks his head out the window. Me! Well, I'm in trainin' down the
Street. The old man's goin' to put a seat on the Stock Exchange in my
stockin' my next birthday. But it all sounds like a lemon to me. What I
like is golf and yachtin' and - er - well, say a corkin' fast ten-round
bout between welter-weights with walkin' gloves."
"I guess you can walk to the door with me," said the girl hesitatingly,
but with a certain pleased flutter. "Still I never heard anything extra
good about Wall Street brokers, or sports who go to prize fights,
either. Ain't you got any other recommendations?"
"I think you're the swellest looker I've had my lamps on in little old
New York," said Cork impressively.
"That'll be about enough of that, now. Ain't you the kidder!" She
modified her chiding words by a deep, long, beaming, smile-embellished
look at her cavalier. "We'll drink our beer before we go, ha?"
A waiter sang. The tobacco smoke grew denser, drifting and rising in
spirals, waves, tilted layers, cumulus clouds, cataracts and suspended
fogs like some fifth element created from the ribs of the ancient four.
Laughter and chat grew louder, stimulated by Rooney's liquids and
Rooney's gallant hospitality to Lady Nicotine.
One o'clock struck. Down-stairs there was a sound of closing and
locking doors. Frank pulled down the green shades of the front windows
carefully. Rooney went below in the dark hall and stood at the front
door, his cigarette cached in the hollow of his hand. Thenceforth
whoever might seek admittance must present a countenance familiar to
Rooney's hawk's eye - the countenance of a true sport.
Cork McManus and the bookbindery girl conversed absorbedly, with their
elbows on the table. Their glasses of beer were pushed to one side,
scarcely touched, with the foam on them sunken to a thin white scum.
Since the stroke of one the stale pleasures of Rooney's had become
renovated and spiced; not by any addition to the list of distractions,
but because from that moment the sweets became stolen ones. The flattest
glass of beer acquired the tang of illegality; the mildest claret punch
struck a knockout blow at law and order; the harmless and genial company
became outlaws, defying authority and rule. For after the stroke of one
in such places as Rooney's, where neither bed nor board is to be had,
drink may not be set before the thirsty of the city of the four million.
It is the law.
"Say," said Cork McManus, almost covering the table with his eloquent
chest and elbows, "was that dead straight about you workin' in the
bookbindery and livin' at home - and just happenin' in here - and - and
all that spiel you gave me?"
"Sure it was," answered the girl with spirit. "Why, what do you think?
Do you suppose I'd lie to you? Go down to the shop and ask 'em. I handed
it to you on the level."
"On the dead level?" said Cork. "That's the way I want it; because - "
"Because what?"
"I throw up my hands," said Cork. "You've got me goin'. You're the girl
I've been lookin' for. Will you keep company with me, Ruby?"
"Would you like me to - Eddie?"
"Surest thing. But I wanted a straight story about - about yourself, you
know. When a fellow had a girl - a steady girl - she's got to be all
right, you know. She's got to be straight goods."
"You'll find I'll be straight goods, Eddie."
"Of course you will. I believe what you told me. But you can't blame me
for wantin' to find out. You don't see many girls smokin' cigarettes in
places like Rooney's after midnight that are like you."
The girl flushed a little and lowered her eyes. "I see that now," she
said meekly. "I didn't know how bad it looked. But I won't do it any
more. And I'll go straight home every night and stay there. And I'll
give up cigarettes if you say so, Eddie - I'll cut 'em out from this
minute on."
Cork's air became judicial, proprietary, condemnatory, yet sympathetic.
"A lady can smoke," he decided, slowly, "at times and places. Why?
Because it's bein' a lady that helps her pull it off."
"I'm going to quit. There's nothing to it," said the girl. She flicked
the stub of her cigarette to the floor.
"At times and places," repeated Cork. "When I call round for you of
evenin's we'll hunt out a dark bench in Stuyvesant Square and have a
puff or two. But no more Rooney's at one o'clock - see?"
"Eddie, do you really like me?" The girl searched his hard but frank
features eagerly with anxious eyes.
"On the dead level."
"When are you coming to see me - where I live?"
"Thursday - day after to-morrow evenin'. That suit you?"
"Fine. I'll be ready for you. Come about seven. Walk to the door with me
to-night and I'll show you where I live. Don't forget, now. And don't
you go to see any other girls before then, mister! I bet you will,
though."
"On the dead level," said Cork, "you make 'em all look like rag-dolls to
me. Honest, you do. I know when I'm suited. On the dead level, I do."
Against the front door down-stairs repeated heavy blows were delivered.
The loud crashes resounded in the room above. Only a trip-hammer or a
policeman's foot could have been the author of those sounds. Rooney
jumped like a bullfrog to a corner of the room, turned off the electric
lights and hurried swiftly below. The room was left utterly dark except
for the winking red glow of cigars and cigarettes. A second volley of
crashes came up from the assaulted door. A little, rustling, murmuring
panic moved among the besieged guests. Frank, cool, smooth, reassuring,
could be seen in the rosy glow of the burning tobacco, going from table
to table.
"All keep still!" was his caution. "Don't talk or make any noise!
Everything will be all right. Now, don't feel the slightest alarm. We'll
take care of you all."
Ruby felt across the table until Cork's firm hand closed upon hers. "Are
you afraid, Eddie?" she whispered. "Are you afraid you'll get a free
ride?"
"Nothin' doin' in the teeth-chatterin' line," said Cork. "I guess
Rooney's been slow with his envelope. Don't you worry, girly; I'll look
out for you all right."
Yet Mr. McManus's ease was only skin- and muscle-deep. With the police
looking everywhere for Buck Malone's assailant, and with Corrigan still
on the ocean wave, he felt that to be caught in a police raid would mean
an ended career for him. He wished he had remained in the high rear room
of the true Capulet reading the pink extras.
Rooney seemed to have opened the front door below and engaged the police
in conference in the dark hall. The wordless low growl of their voices
came up the stairway. Frank made a wireless news station of himself at
the upper door. Suddenly he closed the door, hurried to the extreme rear
of the room and lighted a dim gas jet.
"This way, everybody!" he called sharply. "In a hurry; but no noise,
please!"
The guests crowded in confusion to the rear. Rooney's lieutenant swung
open a panel in the wall, overlooking the back yard, revealing a ladder
already placed for the escape.
"Down and out, everybody!" he commanded. "Ladies first! Less talking,
please! Don't crowd! There's no danger."
Among the last, Cork and Ruby waited their turn at the open panel.
Suddenly she swept him aside and clung to his arm fiercely.
"Before we go out," she whispered in his ear - "before anything happens,
tell me again, Eddie, do you l - do you really like me?"
"On the dead level," said Cork, holding her close with one arm, "when it
comes to you, I'm all in."
When they turned they found they were lost and in darkness. The last
of the fleeing customers had descended. Half way across the yard they
bore the ladder, stumbling, giggling, hurrying to place it against an
adjoining low building over the roof of which their only route to
safety.
"We may as well sit down," said Cork grimly. "Maybe Rooney will stand
the cops off, anyhow."
They sat at a table; and their hands came together again.
A number of men then entered the dark room, feeling their way about. One
of them, Rooney himself, found the switch and turned on the electric
light. The other man was a cop of the old regime - a big cop, a thick
cop, a fuming, abrupt cop - not a pretty cop. He went up to the pair at
the table and sneered familiarly at the girl.
"What are youse doin' in here?" he asked.
"Dropped in for a smoke," said Cork mildly.
"Had any drinks?"
"Not later than one o'clock."
"Get out - quick!" ordered the cop. Then, "Sit down!" he countermanded.
He took off Cork's hat roughly and scrutinized him shrewdly. "Your
name's McManus."
"Bad guess," said Cork. "It's Peterson."
"Cork McManus, or something like that," said the cop. "You put a knife
into a man in Dutch Mike's saloon a week ago."
"Aw, forget it!" said Cork, who perceived a shade of doubt in the
officer's tones. "You've got my mug mixed with somebody else's."
"Have I? Well, you'll come to the station with me, anyhow, and be looked
over. The description fits you all right." The cop twisted his fingers
under Cork's collar. "Come on!" he ordered roughly.
Cork glanced at Ruby. She was pale, and her thin nostrils quivered.
Her quick eye danced from one man's face to the other as they spoke or
moved. What hard luck! Cork was thinking - Corrigan on the briny; and
Ruby met and lost almost within an hour! Somebody at the police station
would recognize him, without a doubt. Hard luck!
But suddenly the girl sprang up and hurled herself with both arms
extended against the cop. His hold on Cork's collar was loosened and he
stumbled back two or three paces.
"Don't go so fast, Maguire!" she cried in shrill fury. "Keep your hands
off my man! You know me, and you know I'm givin' you good advice. Don't
you touch him again! He's not the guy you are lookin' for - I'll stand
for that."
"See here, Fanny," said the Cop, red and angry, "I'll take you, too, if
you don't look out! How do you know this ain't the man I want? What are
you doing in here with him?"
"How do I know?" said the girl, flaming red and white by turns. "Because
I've known him a year. He's mine. Oughtn't I to know? And what am I
doin' here with him? That's easy."
She stooped low and reached down somewhere into a swirl of flirted
draperies, heliotrope and black. An elastic snapped, she threw on the
table toward Cork a folded wad of bills. The money slowly straightened
itself with little leisurely jerks.
"Take that, Jimmy, and let's go," said the girl. "I'm declarin' the
usual dividends, Maguire," she said to the officer. "You had your usual
five-dollar graft at the usual corner at ten."
"A lie!" said the cop, turning purple. "You go on my beat again and I'll
arrest you every time I see you."
"No, you won't," said the girl. "And I'll tell you why. Witnesses saw me
give you the money to-night, and last week, too. I've been getting fixed
for you."
Cork put the wad of money carefully into his pocket, and said: "Come on,
Fanny; let's have some chop suey before we go home."
"Clear out, quick, both of you, or I'll - "
The cop's bluster trailed away into inconsequentiality.
At the corner of the street the two halted. Cork handed back the
money without a word. The girl took it and slipped it slowly into her
hand-bag. Her expression was the same she had worn when she entered
Rooney's that night - she looked upon the world with defiance, suspicion
and sullen wonder.
"I guess I might as well say good-bye here," she said dully. "You won't
want to see me again, of course. Will you - shake hands - Mr. McManus."
"I mightn't have got wise if you hadn't give the snap away," said Cork.
"Why did you do it?"
"You'd have been pinched if I hadn't. That's why. Ain't that reason
enough?" Then she began to cry. "Honest, Eddie, I was goin' to be the
best girl in the world. I hated to be what I am; I hated men; I was
ready almost to die when I saw you. And you seemed different from
everybody else. And when I found you liked me, too, why, I thought I'd
make you believe I was good, and I was goin' to be good. When you asked
to come to my house and see me, why, I'd have died rather than do
anything wrong after that. But what's the use of talking about it? I'll
say good-by, if you will, Mr. McManus."
Cork was pulling at his ear. "I knifed Malone," said he. "I was the one
the cop wanted."
"Oh, that's all right," said the girl listlessly. "It didn't make any
difference about that."
"That was all hot air about Wall Street. I don't do nothin' but hang out
with a tough gang on the East Side."
"That was all right, too," repeated the girl. "It didn't make any
difference."
Cork straightened himself, and pulled his hat down low. "I could get a
job at O'Brien's," he said aloud, but to himself.
"Good-by," said the girl.
"Come on," said Cork, taking her arm. "I know a place."
Two blocks away he turned with her up the steps of a red brick house
facing a little park.
"What house is this?" she asked, drawing back. "Why are you going in
there?"
A street lamp shone brightly in front. There was a brass nameplate at
one side of the closed front doors. Cork drew her firmly up the steps.
"Read that," said he.
She looked at the name on the plate, and gave a cry between a moan and a
scream. "No, no, no, Eddie! Oh, my God, no! I won't let you do that - not
now! Let me go! You shan't do that! You can't - you mus'n't! Not after
you know! No, no! Come away quick! Oh, my God! Please, Eddie, come!"
Half fainting, she reeled, and was caught in the bend of his arm. Cork's
right hand felt for the electric button and pressed it long.
Another cop - how quickly they scent trouble when trouble is on the
wing! - came along, saw them, and ran up the steps. "Here! What are you
doing with that girl?" he called gruffly.
"She'll be all right in a minute," said Cork. "It's a straight deal."
"Reverend Jeremiah Jones," read the cop from the door-plate with true
detective cunning.
"Correct," said Cork. "On the dead level, we're goin' to get married."
XXI
THE VENTURERS
Let the story wreck itself on the spreading rails of the _Non Sequitur_
Limited, if it will; first you must take your seat in the observation
car "_Raison d'etre_" for one moment. It is for no longer than to
consider a brief essay on the subject - let us call it: "What's Around
the Corner."
_Omne mundus in duas partes divisum est_ - men who wear rubbers and pay
poll-taxes, and men who discover new continents. There are no more
continents to discover; but by the time overshoes are out of date and
the poll has developed into an income tax, the other half will be
paralleling the canals of Mars with radium railways.
Fortune, Chance, and Adventure are given as synonymous in the