Chapter 8

"Oh," said the woman lightly, "we're good enough for one another--he and I. He deserved what he got when he married me. But that's not saying I'm content to see him duck what's coming to him for to-night's deviltry. In fact, I mean to get him before he gets me. Are you game to lend me a hand?"

"Me, madam!" cried P. Sybarite in alarm. "Far be it from me to come between husband and wife!"

"Don't be afraid: I'm not asking you to dabble your innocent hands in a fellow-human's blood--merely to run an errand for me."

"Really--I'd rather be excused."

"Really," she mocked pleasantly, "you won't be. I'm a gentle creature but determined--frail but firm, you know. Perhaps you've heard of me--Mrs. Jefferson Inche?"

Decidedly he had; and so had nine-tenths of New York's newspaper-reading population. His eyes widened with new interest.

"Truly?" he said, civilly responsive to the challenge in her announcement. "But _I_ never knew Mrs. Jefferson Inche was beautiful."

"It needs a beautiful woman to be known as the most dangerous in Town," she explained with modest pride.

"But--ah--Mr. Inche, I understand, died some years ago."

"So he did."

"Yet you speak of your husband--?"

"Of my present husband, whose name I don't wear for reasons of real-estate. I took the rotter on because he's rich and will be richer when his father dies; he married me because he was rotten and I had the worst reputation he could discover. So we're quits _there_. If our marriage comes out prematurely, he'll be disinherited; so we've agreed to a _sub-rosa_ arrangement which leaves him, ostensibly, a marketable bachelor. Now, I happen to know a marriage has recently been offered him through which he would immediately come into control of a big pot of money, and naturally he's strong for it. But I refused his offer of a cool half-million to play the Reno circuit, and so he concluded to sue for a divorce with a revolver, a Maxim silencer, and a perfect alibi. Do you follow me?"

"As far as the alibi."

"Oh, that's quite simple. We don't live together, and he's in sure-enough society, and I'm not. To-night the annual Hadley-Owen post-lenten masquerade's in full swing just around the corner, and friend husband's there with the rest of the haughty bunch. Can't you see how easy it would be for him to drop round here between dances, murder his lawful wedded wife, and beat it back, without his absence ever being noticed?"

"It does sound feasible, if--ah--sickening," P. Sybarite admitted. "But really, it's hard to believe. Are you positive--?"

"I tell you," said the woman impatiently, "I recognised him; I saw his mouth--his mask wouldn't hide that--and knew him instantly."

P. Sybarite was silent: he, too, had recognized that mouth.

Briefly he meditated upon this curious freak of _Kismet_ that was linking his fortunes of the night with those of the man with the twisted mouth.

"Now you know the lay of the land--how about helping me out?"

Now the trail of the man with the twisted mouth promised fair to lead to Molly Lessing. P. Sybarite didn't linger on his decision.

"I'm awf'ly impressionable," he conceded with a sigh; "some day, I'm afraid, it'll get me in a peck of trouble."

"I can count on you, then?"

"Short of trying a 'prentice hand at assassination--"

"Don't be an ass. I only want to protect myself. Besides, you can't refuse. Consider how lenient I've been with you."

P. Sybarite lifted questioning eyebrows, and dragged down the corners of a dubious mouth.

"If I wanted to be nasty," Mrs. Inche explained, "you'd be on your way now to a cell in the East Fifty-first Street station. But I was grateful."

"The Saints be praised for that!" exclaimed the little man fervently. "What's it for?"

"For waking me up in time to prevent my murder in my sleep," she returned coolly; "and also for being the spunky little devil you are and chasing off that hound of a husband of mine. If it wasn't for you, he'd've got me sure. Or else," she amended, "I'd've got him; which would have been almost as unpleasant--what with being pinched and tried and having juries disagree and getting off at last only on the plea of insanity--and all that."

"Madam," said P. Sybarite, rising, "the more I see of you, the more you claim my admiration. I entreat you, permit me to go away before my emotion deepens into disastrous infatuation."

"Sit down," countered Mrs. Inche amiably; "don't be afraid--I don't bite. Now you know who I am, but before you go, I mean to know who you are."

"Michael Monahan, madam." This was the first alliterative combination to pop into his optimistic mind.

"Can that," retorted the lady serenely--"solder it up tight, along with the business of pretending to be a cop. It won't get you anything. I've a proposition to make to you."

"But, madam," he declared with his naïf and disarming grin--"believe me--my young affections are already engaged."

"You're not half the imbecile you make yourself out," she judged soberly. "Come--what's your name?"

Taking thought, he saw no great danger in being truthful for once.

"P., unfortunately, Sybarite," he said: "bookkeeper for Whigham and Wimper--leather merchants, Frankfort Street."

"And how did you come by that coat and hat?"

"Borrowed it from a drunken cop in Penfield's, a little while ago. They were raiding the place and I kind of wanted to get away. Strange to say, my disguise didn't take, and I had to leave by way of the back fences in order to continue uninterrupted enjoyment of the inalienable rights of every American citizen--life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness."

"I don't know why I believe you," said Mrs. Inche reflectively, when he paused for breath. "Perhaps it's your spendthrift way with language. Do you talk like that when sober?"

"Judge for yourself."

"All right," she laughed indulgently: "I believe everything you say. Now what'll you take to do me a service?"

"My services, madam, are yours to command: my reward--ah--your smile."

"Bunk," observed the lady elegantly. "How would a hundred look to you? Good, eh?"

"You misjudge me," the little man insisted. "Money is really no object."

"Still"--she frowned in puzzlement--"I should think a clerk in the leather business--!"

"I'm afraid I've misled you. I should have said that I _was_ a clerk in the leather business until to-day. Now I happen to be independently wealthy, a clerk no longer."

"How's that--wealthy?"

"Came into a small fortune this evening--nothing immodest, but ample for one of my simple tastes and modest ambitions."

"I think," announced the lady thoughtfully, "that you are one of the slickest young liars I ever listened to."

"That must be considerable eminence," considered P. Sybarite with humility.

"On the other hand, you're unquestionably a perfect little gentleman," she pursued. "And anyhow I'm going to take you at your word and trust you. If you ever change your mind about that hundred, all you've got to do is to come back and speak for it.... Do I make you right? You're willing to go a bit out of your way to do me a favour to-night?"

"Or any other night."

"Very well." Mrs. Inche rose. "Wait here a moment."

Wrapping her negligee round her, she swept magnificently out of the "den," and a moment later again crossed P. Sybarite's range of vision as she ascended the stairs. Then she disappeared, and there was silence in the house: a breathing spell which the little man strove to employ to the best advantage by endeavouring to assort and rearrange his sadly disordered impressions.

Aware that he would probably do wisely to rise and flee the place, he none the less lingered, vastly intrigued and more than half inclined to see the affair through to the end.

His confused reverie was presently interrupted by the sound of the woman's high, clear voice at a telephone located (he fancied) somewhere in the hallway of the second story.

"Hello! Columbus, seven, four hundred, please.... Hello--Mason?... Taxicab, please--Mrs. Jefferson Inche.... Yes--charge.... Yes--immediately.... Thank you!"

A moment later she reappeared on the stairs, carrying a wrap of some sort over her arm: a circumstance which caused P. Sybarite uneasily to wonder if she meant to push her notorious indifference to convention to the limit of going out in a taxicab with no other addition to her airy costume than a cloak.

But when she again entered the "den," it proved to be a man's coat and soft hat that she had found for him.

"Get up," she ordered imperiously, "and change to these before you get pinched for impersonating an officer. I've called a taxi for you, and this is what I want you to do: go to Dutch House--that's a dive on Fortieth Street--"

"I've heard of it," nodded P. Sybarite. "Any sober man who stays away from it is almost perfectly safe, I believe."

"I'll back you to take care of yourself," said the lady. "Ask for Red November.... You know who he is?"

"The gangster? Yes."

"If he isn't in, wait for him if you wait till daylight--"

"Important as all that, eh?"

"It's life or death to me," said Mrs. Inche serenely. "I've got to have protection--you've seen yourself how had I need it. And the police are not for the likes of me. Besides," she added with engaging candour, "if I squeal and tell the truth, then friend husband will be disinherited for sure, and I'll have had all my trouble for nothing."

"You make it perfectly clear, Mrs. Inche.... And when I see Mr. Red November--?"

"Say to him three words: _Nella wants you_. He'll understand. Then you can go home."

"_If_ I get out alive."

"You're safe if you don't drink anything there."

"Doubtless; but I'll feel safer if you'll lend me the loan of this pretty toy," said P. Sybarite, weighing in one hand her automatic pistol.

"It's yours."

"Anything in it?"

"Three shots left, I believe. No matter. I'll get you a handful of cartridges and you can reload the clip in the taxicab. Not that you're likely to need it at Dutch House."

From the street rose the rumble of a motor, punctuated by a horn that honked.

"There's the cab, now," announced Mrs. Inche briskly. "Shake yourself out of that coat and into this--and hustle!"

"It's my impressionable nature makes all my troubles," observed P. Sybarite disconsolately. "However..."

Shrugging into the coat Mrs. Inche held for him, he cocked the felt hat jauntily on the side of his head.

"Always," he proclaimed with gesture--hand on heart--"always the ladies' slave!"

XIII

RESPECTABILITY

But when it came to viscid second thought, alone in the gloom of an unsympathetic taxicab, P. Sybarite inclined to concede himself more ass than hero. It was all very well to say that, having spread his sails to the winds of _Kismet_, he was bound to let himself drift to their vagrant humour: but there are certain channels of New York life into which even the most courageous mariner were ill-advised to adventure under pilotage no more trustworthy than that of sufficient champagne and a run of good luck.

Dutch House in Fortieth Street, West, wore the reputation of being as sinister a dive as ever stood cheek-by-jowl with Broadway and brazenly flaunted an all-night liquor license in the face of law-abiding New York; of which it was said that no sober man ever went there, other than those who went to prey, and that no drunkard ever escaped from it unfleeced; haunt of the most deadly riff-raff to be found in Town, barring inmates of certain negro stews on the lower West Side and of some of the dens to which the sightseer does _not_ penetrate in the tour of Chinatown.

Grim stories were current of men who had wandered thither in their cups, "for the lark of it," only to return to consciousness days afterwards, stripped, shorn, and shattered in health bodily and mental, to find themselves in some vile kennel miles from Dutch House; and of other men who passed once through its foul portals and--passed out a secret way, never to return to the ken of their friends....

Yet it stood, and it stands, waxing fat in the folly of man and his greed.

And to this place P. Sybarite was travelling to deliver a message from a famous demi-rep to a notorious gang leader; with only a .25 calibre Colt's automatic and his native wit and audacity to guard the moderate fortune that he carried with him in cash--a single hundredth part of which would have been sufficient to purchase his obliteration at the hands of the crew that ran the place.

However, in their ignorance his safety inhered; and it was not really necessary that he advertise his swollen fortunes; and as for the gold in his trousers pocket--a ponderable weight, liable to chink treacherously when he moved--P. Sybarite removed this and thoughtfully cached it under one of the cushions of his cab. It seemed a long chance to take with a hundred dollars: but a hundred dollars wasn't a great deal, after all, to a man as flush as he; and better lose it all (said he) than make a noise like a peripatetic mint in a den of thieves and worse....

The cab drawing up to the curb, out P. Sybarite hopped, a dollar in hand for the chauffeur, and the admonition: "I'm keeping you; wait till I come out, if I'm all night; and don't let your motor die, 'cause I _may_ be in a hurry."

"Gotcha," said the chauffeur tersely; pocketed the bill; lighted a cigarette....

P. Sybarite held back an instant to inspect the approach.

This being Sunday morning, Dutch House was decorously dull to the street; the doors to the bar closed, the lights within low and drowsy; even the side door, giving access to the "restaurant," was closed much of the time--when, that is to say, it wasn't swinging to admit an intermittent flow of belated casuals and habitués of both sexes.

A row of vehicles lined the curb: nighthawk taxicabs for the most part, with one or two four-wheelers, as many disreputable and dilapidated hansoms, and (aside from that in which P. Sybarite had arrived) a single taxicab of decent appearance. This last stood, with door ajar, immediately opposite the side entrance, its motor pulsing audibly--evidently waiting under orders similar to those issued by P. Sybarite.

Now as the latter advanced to enter Dutch House, shadows appeared on the ground glass of the side door; and opening with a jerk, it let out a gush of fetid air together with Respectability on the prowl--Respectability incognito, sly, furtive of air, and in noticeable haste.

He paused for a bare instant on the threshold; affording P. Sybarite opportunity for a good, long look.

"Two-thirty," said Respectability brusquely over his shoulder.

The man behind him growled affirmation: "Two-thirty--don't worry: I'll be on the job."

"And take care of that boy."

"Grab it from me, boss, when he wakes up, he won't know where he's been."

"Good-night, then," said Respectability grudgingly.

"G'd-night."

The door closed, and with an ineradicable manner of weight and consequence Respectability turned toward the waiting taxicab: a man of, say, well-preserved sixty, with a blowsy plump face and fat white side-whiskers, a fleshy nose and arrogant eyes, a double chin and a heavy paunch; one who, in brief, had no business in that galley at that or any other hour of day or night, and who knew it and knew that others (worse luck!) would know it at sight.

All this P. Sybarite comprehended in a glance and, comprehending, bristled like a truculent game-cock or the faithful hound in the ghost-story. The aspect of Respectability seemed to have upon him the effect of a violent irritant; his eyes took on a hot, hard look, his lips narrowed to a thin, inflexible crease, and his hands unconsciously closed.

And as Respectability strode across the sidewalk, obviously intending to bury himself in the body of his waiting cab as quickly as possible, P. Sybarite--with the impudence of a tug blocking the fairway for an ocean liner--stepped in his path, dropped a shoulder, and planted both feet firmly.

Immediately the two came together; the shoulder of P. Sybarite in the paunch of Respectability, evoking a deep grunt of choleric surprise and bringing the gentleman to an abrupt standstill.

Upon this, P. Sybarite's mouth relaxed; he smiled faintly, almost placatingly.

"Well, old top!" he cried with malicious cordiality. "Who'd think to meet _you_ here! What's the matter? Has high finance turned too risky for your stomach? Or are you dabbling in low-life for the sheer fun of it--to titillate your jaded senses?"

Respectability's cheeks puffed out like red toy balloons; so likewise his chest.

"Sir!" he snorted--"you are drunk!"

"Sir!" retorted P. Sybarite, none too meekly--"you lie."

The ebony-and-gold cane of Respectability quivered in mid-air.

"Out of my way!"

"Put down that cane, Mr. Brian Shaynon," said P. Sybarite peaceably, "unless you want me to play horse with you in a way to let all New York know how you spend the wee sma' hours!"

At the mention of his name Respectability stiffened in dismay.

"Damnation!" he cried hoarsely. "Who are you?"

"Why, have you forgotten me? Careless of you, Mr. Shaynon. I'm the little guy that put the speck in Respectability: I'm the noisy little skeleton in the cupboard of your conscience. Don't you know me now?"

With a gasp (prudently lowering his stick) Mr. Shaynon bent to peer into the face exposed as P. Sybarite pushed back his hat; stared an instant, goggling; wheeled about, and flung heavily toward his taxicab.

"The Bizarre!" wheezed he to the chauffeur; and dodging in, banged the door.

As for P. Sybarite, he watched the vehicle swing away and round the corner of Seventh Avenue, a doubtful glimmer in eyes that had burned hot with hostility, a slight ironic smile wreathing lips that had shown hatred.

"But what's the good of that?" he said in self-disgust, as the taxicab disappeared.

With a sigh, shaking himself together, he went into Dutch House.

XIV

WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD

From street door to restaurant entrance, the hallway of Dutch House was some twenty-five feet long, floored with grimy linoleum in imitation of tiling, greasy as to its walls and ceiling, and boasting an atmosphere rank with a reek compounded of a dozen elements, in their number alcohol, cheap perfumery, cooked meats, the sweat of unclean humanity, and stale tobacco smoke.

Save for this unsavoury composite wraith, the hall was empty when P. Sybarite entered it. But it echoed with sounds of rowdy revelry from the room in back: mechanical clatter of galled and spavined piano, despondent growling of a broken-winded 'cello, nervous giggling and moaning of an excoriated violin--the three wringing from the score of _O You Beautiful Doll_ an entirely adequate accompaniment to the perfunctory performance of a husky contralto.

Though by no means squeamish, on the testimony of his nose and ears P. Sybarite then and there concluded that he would have to have become exceedingly blasé indeed to find Dutch House amusing.

And when he had gone on into the restaurant itself, slipping his modest person inconspicuously into a chair at the nearest unoccupied table, the testimony of his other senses as to the character of his company served to confirm this impression.

"It's no use," he sighed: "I'm too old a dog.... Be it ever so typical, there's _no_ place like one's own hash-foundry." ...

This room was broad and deep, and boasted, at its far end, a miniature stage supporting the orchestra and, temporarily, the gyrations of a lady in a vivacious scarlet costume--mistress of the shopworn contralto--who was "vamping with the feet" the interval between two verses of her ballad.

The main floor was strewn with tables round which sat a motley gathering of gangsters, fools, pretty iniquities and others by no stretch of the imagination to be termed pretty, confidence men, gambling touts, and the sprinkling of drunkards--plain, common, transient, periodical, suburban, habitual, and unconscious--for and by whom the place was, and is, maintained. In and out among these circulated several able-bodied waiters with soiled shirt-bosoms, iron jaws and, not infrequently, cauliflower ears.

Spying out P. Sybarite, one of these bore down upon him with an air of the most flattering camaraderie.

It was true that the little man, in a dark coat and hat alike too large for him, with his shabby shoes and trousers and apologetic demeanour, promised no very profitable plucking; but the rule of Dutch House is to neglect none, however lowly.

"Well, bo'," grunted the waiter cheerfully, polishing off the top of the table with a saturated towel, "yuh don't come round's often as y' uster."

"That's a fact," P. Sybarite agreed. "I've been a long time away--haven't I?"

"Yuh said somethin' _then_. Mus' be months sinst I seen yuh last. What's the trouble? Y' ain't soured on the old joint, huh?"

"No," P. Sybarite apologised. "I've been--away. Where's Red?"

"MacManus--?" asked the waiter, beginning to believe that this strange little creature must in fact be a "regular" of the "bunch"--one whose name and face had somehow, unaccountably, slipped from his memory.

"November," P. Sybarite corrected.

"Oh, he's stickin' round--pretty busy to-night. Wouldn't fuss him, 'f I was yuh, 'less it's somethin' extra."

"I make you," said the little man. "But this is his business. Tell him I have a message for him, will you?"

"Just as yuh say, bo'," returned the other cautiously. "What's it goin' to be? Bucket of grape or a tub of suds?"

"Do I look like the foolish waters?" enquired P. Sybarite with mild resentment. "Back me up a shell of lather."

Grinning amiably at this happy metaphorical description of the glass of lager regularly served at Dutch House, the waiter shouldered through the swinging doors to the bar....

Then fell a brief lull in the mélange of music and tongues, during which a boyish voice lifted up in clear remonstrance at a table some three removed from that at which P. Sybarite sat:

"But I don't _want_ anything more to drink!"

P. Sybarite looked that way. The owner of the voice (now again drowned) was apparently a youngster of twenty years--not more--clean of limb and feature, with a hot flush discolouring his good-looking face, a hectic glitter in his eyes, and a stubborn smile on his lips.

Lounging low in a straight-backed chair, with his hands in his pockets and his head wagging obstinately, he was plainly intoxicated, but as yet at a stage sufficiently mild to admit of his recognising the self-evident truth that he needed not another drop.

Yet his companions would have him drink more deeply.

Of these, one was a woman of no uncertain caste, a woman handsome in a daring and costly gown, and as yet not old, but in whose eyes flickered a curious febrile glare ("as though," commented P. Sybarite, moralist, "reflected back from the mouth of Hell").

The other was a man singularly handsome in a foreign way--Italian, at an indifferent guess--slight and graceful of person in well-tailored if somewhat flashy clothing; boasting too much jewellery; his teeth gleaming a vivid white against his dark colouring as he smiled good-humouredly in his attempts to press more drink upon the other.

The music stopped altogether for a time, and again the boy's voice rang out clearly:

"Tell you--'ve had enough."

The Italian said something urgent, in an undertone. The woman added inaudible persuasion to his argument. The boy looked from one to another with a semi-stupid smile; but wagged an obdurate head.

"I will _not_. No--and I don't want--lie down jus' for few minutes. I'm goin' sit here till these--ah--foolish legs 'mine straighten 'emselves out--then 'm going home." ...

"Here's your beer, bo'," P. Sybarite's waiter announced.

"Keep the change," said the guest, tendering a quarter.

"T'anks"--with a look of surprise. Then familiarly knuckling the top of the table, the waiter stroked a rusty chin and surveyed the room. "There's Red, now," he observed.

"Where?"