Part 11

To these types the attending women more or less corresponded. Most of them came alone, or in groups of two or three--a plain girl always befriended by one of more charm--because etiquette demanded that, if a man brought a companion, his companion must give him what dances he wanted, and so she would have few offers from his fellows, who observed a rigid code that forbade poaching upon a friend's preserve. There were some that could afford to wear gay dresses because they were frankly in a business that, of however brief duration, made gay dresses possible as a luxury and necessary as an advertisement, and this appearance of wealth was never absent from the hungry eyes of the young women about them. There were others, also few, who were plainly new either to the country or to this particular form of amusement. But the majority came from the factories and shops, lured by nothing worse than youth's natural craving for its right to pleasure, seeking to forget the exertions of the day in these new exertions of the night, drifting whither they neither knew nor greatly cared, the necessary factors of an industrial system too fatuous to conserve their efficiency.

On every chair along the reeking walls, now trodden underfoot on the floor, and now picked up like dry leaves and twirled about in the little eddies of warm air created by the romping dancers, were cards and handbills--"throwaways" the patrons called them--which, often in curious English, announced special balls and "grand receptions" shortly to be given in this or some similar club. Here one was "cordially invited" to the "third annual dance given by the two well-known friends, Greaser Einstein and Kid Boslair, at New Starlight Hall, Gents Twenty-five and Ladies Fifteen"; there one was cautioned not to miss the "Devil Dance" that would form a part of the forthcoming "reception of the Harry Cronin Association, Young Theo, floor-manager"; and again, one was told that the "Special Extra Event of the Season" would be the ball of the "Ryan McCall Social, Incorporated, Tammany Hall, ticket admit gent including wardrobe, Thirty-five cents; ladies free."

Katie and the shirtwaist-maker got seats near the door, waved and called to half a dozen acquaintances and strained their eyes to see through the swirling mist.

"It looks like old times," said Carrie.

"Smells like 'em," Katie amended; "only I've been away from these places for awhile an' I notice that, new place or old, the faces change pretty quick. Who's the woman in red, with the yellow hair, Carrie?"

She pointed to a figure spinning about the center of the room, her crimson skirt flying far behind her like the trail of a comet.

"I know her," said Carrie. "A year ago she came to New York from the country to find work. When she was about starved, she rang a bell under the sign 'Helping Hand Home'--she didn't know what that meant except that it meant charity. The superintendent told her his place couldn't do anything for her; she might be spoiled by associating with the people he helped; his mission was for bad women that were sorry; not for good women that hadn't anything to be sorry about. 'But I'm hungry,' she told him. 'Can't help it,' he said; 'you're not qualified.' This girl went away, and came back a month later. 'I don't want to come in just yet,' she said; 'but I do want to tell you that I'm qualified now'--and she was."

Katie took the facts for what, amid surroundings where such facts are plentiful, they seemed worth.

"Hard luck," she said, though not without meaning.

"Yes, and look at her clothes."

"That's the trouble," said Katie; "we can't help lookin' at them--the likes of us--any more than she can help wearin' them. It's that or a tenement with two dark rooms an' the rent raised every year."

They danced, for among the soberer men there were many that knew them, and neither girl remembered the weariness of her work in the exhaustion of her dancing. Between dances, in the dressing-room, they talked with their acquaintances among the girls, gossiping of the men and the other women, and now and then, their throats dry and their faces streaming, they were taken into the dingy side-bar and were bought a glass of beer.

As midnight drew closer the dance became more stormy. Many of the working-girls went home, and their places were filled by women of the brighter dressed class. There were some that were plainly drunk, and these clumsily imitated the suggestive contortions of the salaried dancers now sent upon the floor to stimulate the amateurs. One girl, in a cleared space surrounded by laughing men and envious, though apparently scornful, women, performed a dance popularly supposed to be forbidden by the police. There were several fights, and in one especially nasty scuffle a lad was badly cut by the knife of a jealous partner.

"I guess that's about plenty for us," observed Katie, as she and Carrie shouldered their way from the crowd surrounding the wounded boy and his shrieking assailant.

Both girls were sufficiently familiar with such episodes to accept them with calm, but both were at last tired out.

"I suppose you're right," Carrie assented, "though I did have a good time."

"An' it was you didn't want to come!" grinned Katie as they went out upon the cool street.

"I know." Carrie's round face grew hard and puzzled. "I know," she admitted, "only sometimes----"

"Och, come on, an' cheer up! We must write our letter for the brewery-man before we get to bed, Carrie-girl."

They did write it, but Carrie, when she had gone into her own room for the last night she was to spend there, sat for some time motionless upon the edge of the cot.

"I know," she repeated as if to some invisible confessor; "I know both sides of it, and, honestly, I don't know which is worse. I know all that can be said, only--sometimes--I wonder----"

XIII

JAIL-DELIVERY

Rose was ill--she had been drinking too much for the past week--and Violet, in her no longer fresh red kimona, was in the kitchen talking to Cassie when, one morning, the new driver of the brewery-wagon stopped at the door.

"Morning," he said with what at once struck Violet, who was now constantly on the watch, as a visible effort at nonchalance.

Conrad Schultz was a tall, raw-boned German-American, with a long nose and pale, sorrowful mustache, but with an eye in the cerulean depths of which there lurked the cold fire of reliable strategy.

"Come in," said Violet, "an' have a drop of something."

"Thanks."

He came in cumbersomely, and took an uneasy seat.

"Some chilly for this season," he remarked, with a cool glance in the direction of the ebony Cassie, hovering glumly in the background.

Violet thought she caught the meaning of the man, whom she knew was Hermann Hoffmann's successor.

"It is chilly for this time of year," she said. "What will you have? It better be something warming. There's whiskey here, or, if you don't mind waiting till Cassie goes for it, there's some good brandy in the cellar."

Schultz appeared to hesitate, and Violet, watching him, could not, for a moment, decide whether there was, after all, any foundation for the hope that his appearance had wakened.

"Well, if it ain't no trouble," he at last blurted, "I would like a taste of real brandy."

"Cassie," said Violet, "bring up a fresh bottle of brandy for Mr.--Mr.----"

"Schultz," prompted that individual.

"For Mr. Schultz, Cassie."

Cassie, however, seemed to have scented surrounding mystery.

"Ah reckon there's a bottle som'ares about yhere, Miss Vi'let," she demurred.

"No, there isn't."

"But, Miss Vi'let, there was one jes' half empty las' night."

"Miss Rose took that to bed with her. Don't talk so much. Go down an' get a fresh bottle for Mr. Schultz."

The girl left the room slowly and sullenly.

Schultz sat silent and motionless until a moment had followed the closing of the door. Then the cold flame was relighted in his eye.

"She called you Miss Violet?" he asked, though still in the most commonplace of tones.

"That's my name."

"Did you ever talk to the man that had my job before I had it?"

Violet, with the catlike quiet and ease that always characterized her movements, stepped to the door through which Cassie had just passed. She flung it quickly open. The black girl nearly fell headlong into the room.

Without an instant's hesitation, Violet did the one effective thing. She smacked the negress smartly across the face.

"I heard you!" she said, in tones that were all the more awe-inspiring because they were low. "What do you mean by spying on me, you black devil? Think I want to cheat the house? I'd not be so clumsy about it, if I did! Think I'm trying to skidoo? I'd walk out if I felt like it! I'll go right to Miss Rose about this, an' have you fired so quick you won't have time to pack your duds!"

The servant remained as she had sprawled.

"Oh, please don', miss!" she wailed. "Please don' tell Miss Rose! Ah wasn't tryin' to spy on youse. Ah jes' drapped somethin' yhere, an' ah was jes' tryin' to fin'----"

"Don't you lie to me," said Violet, her cheeks, now always so wan in the morning light, flushing to something like their former color. "Get up off your knees."

"Miss Vi'let, please don' tell on me."

The black girl's voice threatened to rise to a dangerous wail.

"All right," said Violet, quickly. "I'll let it go this time; but you hurry up and get that brandy, or I might change my mind. Pull the cork while you're at it, and fetch a decent glass from the dining-room."

Cassie, murmuring thanks with her thick lips, and wiping her eyes with the big knuckles of her right fist, scrambled to her feet, and started again upon her errand.

This time Violet left the door open. She waited till the servant was out of earshot. Then she opened the door to the back stairway, which she herself had twice used to excellent purpose, and, finding nobody there, returned to Schultz.

"Got something for me?" she whispered.

But no haste upon her part would speed his Teutonic caution.

"I asked you," he said, as if he had not observed the little encounter through which he had sat serene and unconcerned, "whether you knew the man who had my job before what I had it."

"Yes--yes, I knew him. Quick!"

"And your name is Miss Violet?"

"You heard the girl call me that. Can't you hustle?"

"I don't want to hustle. If you're the girl I want, you've kept me waitin' here three mornings already."

"Well, I'm the person all right. You know that now. Oh, won't you please hurry? Don't you see how things are here?"

"I seen enough to make me want to go slow."

"You're going slow all right. What more do you want to know? I talked to the man you're telling me about and he said he'd see what he could do."

Her replies came with the rapidity of musketry, but Schultz spoke with stubborn deliberation.

"Was that all he told you?"

"Sure it was."

"Nothin' more?"

"No.--Can't you hurry? Can't you believe me?--He didn't say no more.--Quick!--Oh, yes, he said he'd talk to his girl Katie about me.--Quick!--Hush-t! Here she comes!"

Cassie's step sounded only a few yards away, but Schultz, now apparently satisfied of Violet's identity, displayed an unlooked for speed. The heavy hand that had been clumsily reposing in the bulging side-pocket of his coat shot free. Violet seized a fist that opened and withdrew as her own fingers closed on a bit of paper.

Cassie entered to find them the width of the kitchen apart. Violet was pouring herself a drink of whiskey into a soiled glass, and, if her hand trembled, the silk swathed back that was presented to the servant hid all tokens of nervousness.

She waited until Schultz had slowly drunk his brandy. She waited to exchange a few more words and to see him go. She even waited a little longer in order not to make her retreat too patently hurried and in order to subdue by threats and cajolery whatever suspicions might still be lingering in the black breast of the apparently penitent Cassie. But at last she made her way to her own room and unrolled the bit of paper.

It was a letter dated from Katie's address four days previous to the day of its receipt, and it was couched in stiff and formal phraseology. She read:

"Miss VIOLET,

"_Dear Miss Violet--_

"This is to inform you that I am Miss Katie Flanagan, particular friend of Mr. Hermann Hoffmann, who used to drive the brewery-wagon that left beer at your house. He told me about you and what you want, and I told a lady friend, Miss Carrie Berkowicz, who is coming to live with me. I have just got into a small job and Carrie has just got out of one, and we don't know of none yet for you, but we'll keep looking and sure will find one, and meantime we want you to come here and stop with us just as soon as you can beat it from that place where you are. Don't you lose your nerve, and don't bother to talk about things when you get here, because we know how it is. You needn't worry about how we feel, we have too many friends who had the same bad luck as you, and least said soonest mended, we think. So come right here first chance you get and stay as long as you like, and if we're not home when you get here sit on the step till we do get home, and if anybody asks any questions just say you're a friend of ours, because you are, and that's none of their business anyhow, and nobody won't bother you any more.

"Now keep your head cool and God bless you with best wishes!

"From your friend "MISS KATIE FLANAGAN."

Without daring to lessen her courage by giving way to the feelings that this letter stirred, Violet read it twice, tore off the address, concealed it in one of the "rats" on which the structure of her russet hair was founded, and then tore the rest of the epistle into small bits, which she flung out of the narrow space between the riveted shutters of her room. She was now almost ready to strike. In her captivity, she had, after the first shock, made it her business to learn what she could of those about her. She knew that Wesley Dyker had once been what was called a straw-bail man, an agent who, for a high consideration, provided bogus bail for such women as the police, to keep up appearances, were forced from time to time to arrest. She had been told that he was wont, for a still higher consideration, to appear at court for these clients, in the rôle of a defender of the wronged poor, and in a very different rôle in their behalf with the dispensers of justice to the underworld. She had gathered that his friendship with one political faction aided in securing Rose the chance to purchase that expensive police-protection toward which Angel, unknown to Dyker, assisted Rose through an opposing faction. And she believed that his ambition was now to gain a magistracy from which he could grant bail on bonds signed by his own servants, secure for prisoners the legal service of men that would return him a commission, and pronounce judgment or dispense mercy for the furtherance of his own fortune and the strengthening of his own power. Out of these threads of knowledge Violet resolved to weave the net in which to catch freedom.

That afternoon Evelyn informed her that Rose was still abed and had sent for her favorite, Wanda, to console her. This meant that she would not descend to the ground floor or be visible to any visitors before the next evening, and that the Englishwoman, promoted to temporary command, would have to pass the night in that reception of callers which necessitated the appearance of drinking much and the fact of drinking almost nothing.

"She does that every time she goes on a bust, my dear," complained Evelyn. "Of course she jolly well knows that she can trust me and that I have some manners too, but I wish she would remember that I also have a thirst and can't do without my drop of real liquor."

Violet's nerves tingled. With her best effort to bury all signs of her mounting hope, she ventured:

"I wish I could help you."

"You, my dear?" Evelyn's eyebrows raised and her contralto voice followed them. "Catch the madam letting anyone but me take charge! You know you're none of you allowed down in the front hall unless you're sent for. Things are ticklish enough, thank you, with that new girl upstairs."

It was almost the first mention that had been made to Violet of the latest captive since the recent day of Evelyn's exposition of the entire traffic. Violet had not dared to ask any more questions than those that she deemed necessary for the perfection of her own plans, and she dared ask none now.

"I do hate the job," Evelyn was continuing, "even if it does mean a few bits extra. Rose says that fellow Dyker is due to-night. She's not fit to see him above all men, and he's the one I most particularly hate to meet, because he was a friend of my friend the doctor and used to call with him now and again at my flat. I always fancy he's making comparisons under those narsty low lids of his."

Violet, in sudden reaction, felt choking with despair.

"I could see him," she said.

But Evelyn's honors sat heavily upon their possessor.

"You're not a trusty yet, my dear, by any manner of means," she responded. "No, no; you will go to your own room after dinner and stay there till you are wanted."

She tilted her sharp chin and strolled kitchenward for a drink; but, though she left behind Her a Violet discouraged, it was not a Violet beaten.

In fact, the girl made her own opportunity. Noticing that evening that Evelyn took up a dignified position in the parlor and had Cassie conduct all the guests thither, Violet quickly disposed of the first person that claimed her attention, and, having made her best toilet--having restored her cheeks to a resemblance of their pristine glow, coiffed her russet hair, and donned her best of linen--she descended quietly to the first landing on the stairway, there to take up her watch. Before she was again in demand, she saw the servant admit Wesley Dyker. She ran quickly downward and, just as Cassie stepped forward to precede him, brushed by him in the rosy twilight of the hall.

"Ask to see me," she whispered. "Ask to see Violet. Don't let on I told you. I've heard something you want to know about O'Malley."

Before the man's shadowy figure could come to pause, she had passed him and caught up to Cassie.

"Where have you been?" she asked. "I've been calling for you for five minutes. I need some more water in my room."

She turned and reascended the stairs, but her door had not long been closed before the servant was knocking upon the panel.

"Here's you' water, Miss Vi'let," said Cassie. "An' Miste' Dyker wants fer to see you daown in de back parlor."

Violet took the useless pitcher, made sure that the remnant of Katie's note was secure in its hiding-place, and hurried, with Cassie following, to the garish room in which Dyker was awaiting her.

He was seated on the lazy, pillowed sofa on which Violet had fallen asleep so soon after her arrival in this house. He was in evening-clothes that served him, on the East Side, much as the advertised portraits of certain patent-medicine makers serve their proprietors, the flaccid whiteness of his face still bearing traces of past beauty, the weakness of his mouth hidden by his crisp, short, brown mustache, and his heavy lids concealing the secret of his steel-gray eyes.

He half rose as she entered, but she motioned him to sit still.

"Hello!" she said, with the easy manner of the house, which always seemed to presuppose a previous acquaintance. "Have you ordered anything? I'm terribly dry."

He took her hand and caught her meaning,

"So am I, Miss Violet," he answered. "Let's have something."

Violet turned to the servant.

"Cassie," she said, "bring up a couple of bottles."

She waited for the door to close, and then sat down beside Dyker.

"Speak low," she cautioned. "That girl will listen if she can. You'll have to pretend to be making love to me."

Dyker regarded her with smiling approval. Her blue eyes shone with excitement and red blood fought through the rouge on cheek and fully ripe mouth.

"What you ask will be both easy and pleasant," he answered.

"No, no; none of that. This is no time for bluffing. Put your arm around my shoulder. That way. Now then, you heard what I told you in the hall?"

Dyker, with his type's disinclination to take seriously anything that any woman has to say upon serious matters, smiled assent.

"You seem to have been doing some listening yourself," he said, as his lingers tightened unnecessarily upon her shoulder.

"Yes, I did, and it's lucky for you I did it. Will you promise not to give me away?"

"Of course I promise."

"Not even to Miss Rose?"

"Not even to Rosie."

"And if I help you, will you do me a favor?"

"To look at you I should say that I'd do you any favor you asked, and do it without expecting anything in return."

His pale lips were curled in a half-scoffing smile, but Violet's next words brushed from his flaccid face all traces of amusement.

"You remember that night you told Miss Rose about what you wanted to get at the next election? You said you were afraid of O'Malley giving you the double cross."

Dyker stiffened.

"Did you hear that?" he demanded.

"Hush! Keep your voice down, or I won't tell you nothing of what I know. Remember you're supposed to be making love to me."

"All right, all right; but I want an answer to my question."

"Well, then, of course, I heard it. I was at the keyhole there--that's why I want you to whisper now.--And I heard more."

"What was that?"

"Wait a minute. You'll do me a favor if I tell you?"

"Anything," he smiled.

"But this is business. If I tell you something that it's worth your while to know, will you promise not to blow on me to Miss Rose?"

"I promise."

"And to do something more that I'll ask you?"

Wesley was now certain that he must not stick at promises.

"Surely."

"Then sit tight. I don't know as much about O'Malley as I pretended out there in the hall, but I do know about Miss Rose. I don't know whether O'Malley is goin' to double-cross you or not, but I do know that Miss Rose has given you the double-cross already."

She had thought that passion played a large part in his relations with her mistress, and she had counted upon awakening his jealousy. What, however, had far exceeded his affection was a poor pride of possession, and when Violet's words, in addition to touching his ambition, struck at that pride, they aroused an anger that was far more dangerous than any sense of love betrayed.

"What's that?" he demanded.

Two red beacons flashed into his pale checks, and his heavy lids, shooting upward for a single instant, disclosed hard, gray eyes gone hot and malevolent.

"Be careful. Speak low, I tell you," she cautioned; "and remember your promise."

"I don't believe----"

"Here's Cassie!"

They waited while the black opened the champagne and filled the glasses.

Violet brushed Dyker's hair over his eyes and laughed at the effect. Dyker caught the offending hand and kissed it by way of punishment.

"Cassie," he banteringly asked, "why didn't you ever tell me there was such a nice little girl in this house? I had to get the news from a friend on the outside."

He tossed the now grinning negress a dollar and, as soon as she had left them, dropped the farce as promptly as did Violet.

"I say I can't believe you," he resumed, the two spots of anger still glowering in his cheeks.

Violet knew that her whole hope rested upon her ability to force conviction.

"You've got to believe me," she said. "I'll tell you all that you told Miss Rose till I had to run away, that evening."

She did it, omitting scarcely a particular.

"That's right, ain't it?" she concluded.

"May be. But what does that prove? It only shows that you heard me."

"It shows that I can hear Miss Rose when she talks to somebody else. And I did hear her."

"Whom was she talking to?"