Chapter 14

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 blas� 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 m�lange 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?"

"Over there with the skirt and the kid souse. Yuh kin see for yourself he's busy. D' yuh want I sh'u'd stir him up now?"

"Oh, yes," said P. Sybarite, in the tone of one recognising an oversight. "What's doing over there--anything?" he proceeded casually.

The waiter favoured him with a hard stare. "Red November's business ain't none'r mine," he growled; "an' less you know him a heluva sight better'n I do, you'd better take a straight tip from me and--leave--it--lay!"

"Oh!" said the little man hastily--"I was only wondering.... But I wish you would slip Red the high sign: all I want is one word with him."

"All right, bo'--you're on."

Slouching off, obviously reluctant to interrupt the diversions of Mr. November, the man at length mustered up courage to touch that gentleman's elbow. The gangster turned sharply, a frown replacing the smile which had illuminated his attempts to overcome the boy's recently developed aversion to drink. The waiter murmured in his private ear.

Promptly P. Sybarite received a sharp look from eyes as black and hard as shoe buttons; and with equanimity endured it--even went to the length of a nod accompanied by his quaint, ingratiating smile. A courtesy ignored completely: the dark eyes veered back to the waiter's face and the white teeth flashed as he was curtly dismissed.

He shuffled back, scowling, reported sulkily: "Says yuh gotta wait"; and turned away in answer to a summons from another table.

Unruffled, P. Sybarite sipped his beer--sipped it sparingly and not without misgivings, but sedulously to keep in character as a familiar of the dive.

Presently there came yet another lull in the clatter of tongues; and again the accents of the boy sounded distinctly from the gangster's table:

"I won't--that's flat! I refuse positively--go up stairs--sleep it off. I'm a' right--give you m' word--in the head. All my trouble's--these mutinous dogs of legs. But I'll make 'em mind, yet. Trust me--"

And again the babel blotted out his utterance.

But P. Sybarite had experienced a sudden rush of intelligence to the head--was in the throes of that mental process which it is our habit wittily to distinguish by the expressive term, "putting two and two together."

Could this, by any chance, be "that boy" who, Mr. Brian Shaynon had been assured, wouldn't know where he'd been when he waked? Was an attempt to ensure that desired consummation through the agency of a drug, being made in the open restaurant?

If not, why was Red November neglecting all other affairs to press drink upon a man who knew when he had enough?

If so, what might be the nature of the link connecting the boy with the "job," to be on which at half-past two November had just now covenanted with Brian Shaynon?

What incriminating knowledge could this boy possess, to render old Shaynon, willing that his memory should be expurgated by such a mind- and nerve-shattering agent as the knock-out drop of White Light commerce?

Now Shaynon was capable of almost any degree of infamy, if not, perhaps, the absolute peer of Red November.

This strange development of that night of Destiny began to assume in P. Sybarite's esteem a complexion of baleful promise.

But the more keenly interested he grew, the more indifferent he made himself appear, slouching low and lower in his chair, his eyes listless and half closed--his look one of the most pronounced apathy: the while he conned the circumstances, physical as well as psychical, with the narrowest attention. Certainly, it would seem, a man who had enough instinctive decency to wish to escape the degradation of deeper drunkenness, should be humoured rather than opposed....

The table on which his attention was focussed stood against the wall, the young man sitting in the corner between November and the woman. Of two tables between it and P. Sybarite's, one was vacant, the other occupied by a brace of hatchet-faced male intimates of the dive and creatures of November's--or their looks libelled them shamefully.

It seemed unlikely that the boy could get away against the wishes of the gang leader, however steadfastly he might stand upon his determination to drink no more. For nothing was to be hoped for from the sots, prostitutes, and parasites who made up the balance of that company: one and all, either too indifferent or too sophisticated, if not in active sympathy with the practices of the establishment, to lift a hand to interfere....

Testimony in support of this inference P. Sybarite received within the next few minutes, when the boy's temper abruptly veered from good-natured obduracy to open irritation.

"Damn it, no!" he cried in a high voice and with an impatient movement struck the glass from November's hand.

Though it went to the floor with a splintering crash, the incident attracted little more than casual glances from those at neighbouring tables....

November's countenance, however, turned grey with anger beneath its olive shade.

Momentarily his glance clashed with the woman's; and of a sudden the paint upon her cheeks and lips stood out as starkly artificial as carmine splashed upon a whitewashed wall. At the same time he flashed a like warning to his two followers at the next table; and the legs of their chairs grated on the tiled flooring as they shifted position, making ready for the signal to "mix in."

At this, P. Sybarite rose and nonchalantly moved over to November; his approach remarked by the latter with an evil leer; by the woman with a start of consternation; by the boy with sudden suspicion. Indubitably this last was beginning to question a hospitality that would not permit him to do as to him seemed best. With relief P. Sybarite noted symptoms of this dawning distrust. It made the problem simpler, to have the boy alive to his peril.

Pausing, P. Sybarite met November's glare with eyes informed with an expression amazingly remote and dispassionate, and in a level and toneless voice addressed him.

"I've a message for you--a hurry call--won't keep--"

"Well?" snapped the gangster. "What's it about? Spit it out!"

"Why, Nella says--" P. Sybarite began deliberately; and paused to cough politely behind his hand; and leaned confidentially over the table.

At this juncture the boy pushed back his chair and rose.

"Pardon me, m' dear," he said thickly to the woman; "'m goin' home."

"Ah, sit down," November interrupted quickly, pitching his protean accents to a key of cajolery--"sit down and have another. What's your hurry?"

His eyes caught the woman's.

"That's right, dearie," she chimed in hurriedly, laying a soft detaining hand on the boy's forearm. "Be a good fellow. Stake me to just one more pint--"

"No," the boy insisted, shaking free--"I'm going home. Le' me alone."

"Nella," P. Sybarite interpolated in an imperative tone, momentarily distracting November's attention--"Nella says to tell you she wants you--now--immediately. Do you get that?"

"Damn Nella!" snapped the gang leader. "Tell her to go to the devil. And you"--he menaced P. Sybarite with a formidable look--"you slide outa here--in a hurry! See?"

With this, rising in his place, he put forth a hand to detain the boy, who was sullenly pushing past the woman.

"Wait!" he insisted. "You can't go before you pay up--"

Whipping from his pocket a note (of what denomination he never knew--but it was large) P. Sybarite slapped it down upon the table.

"That'll pay whatever he owes," he announced, and to the boy: "Clear out--quick--do you hear!--while you've got a chance--"

"What t'ell business is it of yours?" November demanded, turning upon him furiously.

With an enigmatic smile, P. Sybarite dexterously tipped up his side of the table and, overturning it, caught the gangster unprepared for any such manoeuvre and pinned him squirming in the angle of wall and floor.

Immediately the woman came to her feet shrieking; while the little man seized the befuddled boy and swung him toward the door actually before he realised what was happening.

Simultaneously, November's henchmen at the adjoining table leapt into the brawl with an alacrity that sent their chairs clattering back upon the floor.

But in his magnificent assurance P. Sybarite had foreseen and planned cunningly against precisely that same contingency. No sooner had he sent the boy staggering on his way than he whirled completely round with a ready guard--and in no more than the very wink of exigence.

Already one of the creatures was almost on his back--the other hanging off and singularly employed (it seemed, considering) with his hands; just what he was up to P. Sybarite had time neither to see nor to surmise.

Sidestepping a wild swing, he planted a left full on the nose of the nearer assailant and knocked him backwards over a sprawling chair. Then turning attention to the other, he was barely in time to duck an uppercut--and out of the corners of his eyes caught the glint of brass-knuckles on the fist that failed to land.

Infuriated, he closed in, sent a staggering left to the thug's heart and a murderous right to his chin, so that he reeled and fell as if shot--while P. Sybarite with a bound again caught the boy by the arm and whirled him out through the doorway into the hall.

"Hurry!" he panted. "We've one chance in ten thousand--"

Beyond doubt they had barely that.

Hardened though they were to scenes of violence, the clients of the dive had stilled in apprehension the moment November lifted his voice in anger; while P. Sybarite's first overtly offensive move had struck them all dumb in terror.

Red November was one who had shot down his man in cold blood on the steps of the Criminal Courts Building and, through the favour of The Organisation that breeds such pests, escaped scot-free under the convenient fiction of "suspended sentence"; and knowing well the nature and the power of the man, the primal concerted thought had been to flee the place before bullets began to fly. In blind panic like that of sheep, they rose as one in uproar and surged toward the outer doors. November himself, struggling up from beneath the table, was caught and swept on willy-nilly in the front rank of the stampede. In a thought he found himself wedged tight in a press clogging the door. Before his enraged vision P. Sybarite was winning away with the boy.

Maddened, the gang leader managed to free his right arm and send a haphazard shot after them.

Only the instinctive recoil of those about him deflected his aim.

The report was one with a shock of shattered plate-glass: the soft-nosed bullet, splashing upon the glazed upper half of the door, caused the entire pane to collapse and disappear with the quickness of magic.

Halting, P. Sybarite wheeled and dropped a hand to the pocket wherein rested Mrs. Inche's automatic.

"Get that door open!" he cried to the boy. "I've got a taxi waiting--"

His words were drowned out by the thunderous detonations set up by a second shot in that constricted space.

With a thick sob, the boy reeled and swung against the wall as sharply as though he had been struck with a sledge-hammer.

Whimpering with rage, P. Sybarite tugged at the weapon; but it stuck fast, caught the lining of his coat-pocket.

Most happily before he could get it in evidence, the door was thrust sharply in, and through it with a rush materialised that most rare of metropolitan phenomena--the policeman on the spot.

Young and ardent, with courage as unique as his ubiquity, he blustered in like a whirlwind, brushing P. Sybarite to one side, the wounded boy to the other, and pausing only a single instant to throw back the skirts of his tunic and grasp the butt of the revolver in his hip-pocket, demanded in the voice of an Irish stentor:

"What's-all-this? What's-all-this-now?"

"Robbery!" P. Sybarite replied, mastering with difficulty a giggle of hysterical relief. "Robbery and attempted murder! Arrest that man--Red November--with the gun in his hand."

With an inarticulate roar, the patrolman swung on toward the gangster--and P. Sybarite plucked the boy by the sleeve and drew him quickly to the sidewalk.

By the never-to-be-forgotten grace of Kismet his taxicab was precisely where he had left it, the chauffeur on the seat.

"Quick!" he ordered the reeling boy--"into that cab unless you want to be treated by a Bellevue sawbones--held as a witness besides. Are you badly hurt?"

"Not badly," gasped the boy--"shot through the shoulder--can wait for treatment--must keep out of the papers--"

"Right!" P. Sybarite jerked open the door, and his charge stumbled into the cab. "Drive anywhere--like sin," he told the chauffeur--"tell you where to stop when we get clear of this mess--"

Privately he blessed that man; for the cab was in motion almost before he could swing clear of the sidewalk. He tumbled in upon the floor, and picked himself up in time to close the door only when they were swinging on two wheels round the corner of Seventh Avenue.