Arthur B. Reeve Crime & Mystery Boxed Set. Arthur B. Reeve

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СКАЧАТЬ that there were, indeed, no bounds to what a jealous woman might dare.

      Beside the ornate grilled doorway of the carriage entrance of the Mayfair stood a gilt-and-black easel with the words, "Tango Tea at Four." Although it was considerably after that time, there was a line of taxi-cabs before the place and, inside, a brave array of late-afternoon and early-evening revellers. The public dancing had ceased, and a cabaret had taken its place.

      We entered and sat down at one of the more inconspicuous of the little round tables. On a stage, at one side, a girl was singing one of the latest syncopated airs.

      "We'll just stick around a while, Walter," whispered Craig. "Perhaps this Loraine Keith will come in."

      Behind us, protected both by the music and the rustle of people coming and going, a couple talked in low tones. Now and then a word floated over to me in a language which was English, sure enough, but not of a kind that I could understand.

      "Dropped by a flatty," I caught once, then something about a "mouthpiece," and the "bulls," and "making a plant."

      "A dip—pickpocket—and his girl, or gun-moll, as they call them," translated Kennedy. "One of their number has evidently been picked up by a detective and he looks to them for a good lawyer, or mouthpiece."

      Besides these two there were innumerable other interesting glimpses into the life of this meeting-place for the half -and underworlds. A motion in the audience attracted me, as if some favourite performer were about to appear, and I heard the "gun-moll" whisper, "Loraine Keith."

      There she was, a petite, dark-haired, snappy-eyed girl, chic, well groomed, and gowned so daringly that every woman in the audience envied and every man craned his neck to see her better. Loraine wore a tight-fitting black dress, slashed to the knee. In fact, everything was calculated to set her off at best advantage, and on the stage, at least, there was something recherché about her. Yet, there was also something gross about her, too.

      Accompanying her was a nervous-looking fellow whose washed-out face was particularly unattractive. It seemed as if the bone in his nose was going, due to the shrinkage of the blood-vessels. Once, just before the dance began, I saw him rub something on the back of his hand, raise it to his nose, and sniff. Then he took a sip of a liqueur.

      The dance began, wild from the first step, and as it developed, Kennedy leaned over and whispered, "The danse des Apaches."

      It was acrobatic. The man expressed brutish passion and jealousy; the woman, affection and fear. It seemed to tell a story—the struggle of love, the love of the woman against the brutal instincts of the thug, her lover. She was terrified as well as fascinated by him in his mad temper and tremendous superhuman strength. I wondered if the dance portrayed the fact.

      The music was a popular air with many rapid changes, but through all there was a constant rhythm which accorded well with the abandon of the swaying dance. Indeed, I could think of nothing so much as of Bill Sykes and Nancy as I watched these two.

      It was the fight of two frenzied young animals. He would approach stealthily, seize her, and whirl her about, lifting her to his shoulder. She was agile, docile, and fearful. He untied a scarf and passed it about her; she leaned against it, and they whirled giddily about. Suddenly, it seemed that he became jealous. She would run; he follow and catch her. She would try to pacify him; he would become more enraged. The dance became faster and more furious. His violent efforts seemed to be to throw her to the floor, and her streaming hair now made it seem more like a fight than a dance. The audience hung breathless. It ended with her dropping exhausted, a proper finale to this lowest and most brutal dance.

      Panting, flushed, with an unnatural light in their eyes, they descended to the audience and, scorning the roar of applause to repeat the performance, sat at a little table.

      I saw a couple of girls come over toward the man.

      "Give us a deck, Coke," said one, in a harsh voice.

      He nodded. A silver quarter gleamed momentarily from hand to hand, and he passed to one girl stealthily a small white-paper packet. Others came to him, both men and women. It seemed to be an established thing.

      "Who is that?" asked Kennedy, in a low tone, of the pickpocket back of us.

      "Coke Brodie," was the laconic reply.

      "A cocaine fiend?"

      "Yes, and a lobbygow for the grapevine system of selling the dope under this new law."

      "Where does he get the supply to sell?" asked Kennedy, casually.

      The pickpocket shrugged his shoulders.

      "No one knows, I suppose," Kennedy commented to me. "But he gets it in spite of the added restrictions and peddles it in little packets, adulterated, and at a fabulous price for such cheap stuff. The habit is spreading like wildfire. It is a fertile means of recruiting the inmates in the vice-trust hotels. A veritable epidemic it is, too. Cocaine is one of the most harmful of all habit-forming drugs. It used to be a habit of the underworld, but now it is creeping up, and gradually and surely reaching the higher strata of society. One thing that causes its spread is the ease with which it can be taken. It requires no smoking-dens, no syringe, no paraphernalia—only the drug itself."

      Another singer had taken the place of the dancers. Kennedy leaned over and whispered to the dip.

      "Say, do you and your gun-moll want to pick up a piece of change to get that mouthpiece I heard you talking about?"

      The pickpocket looked at Craig suspiciously.

      "Oh, don't worry; I'm all right," laughed Craig. "You see that fellow, Coke Brodie? I want to get something on him. If you will frame that sucker to get away with a whole front, there's a fifty in it."

      The dip looked, rather than spoke, his amazement. Apparently Kennedy satisfied his suspicions.

      "I'm on," he said quickly. "When he goes, I'll follow him. You keep behind us, and we'll deliver the goods."

      "What's it all about?" I whispered.

      "Why," he answered, "I want to get Brodie, only I don't want to figure in the thing so that he will know me or suspect anything but a plain hold-up. They will get him; take everything he has. There must be something on that man that will help us."

      Several performers had done their turns, and the supply of the drug seemed to have been exhausted. Brodie rose and, with a nod to Loraine, went out, unsteadily, now that the effect of the cocaine had worn off. One wondered how this shuffling person could ever have carried through the wild dance. It was not Brodie who danced. It was the drug.

      The dip slipped out after him, followed by the woman. We rose and followed also. Across the city Brodie slouched his way, with an evident purpose, it seemed, of replenishing his supply and continuing his round of peddling the stuff.

      He stopped under the brow of a thickly populated tenement row on the upper East Side, as though this was his destination. There he stood at the gate that led down to a cellar, looking up and down as if wondering whether he was observed. We had slunk into a doorway.

      A woman coming down the street, swinging a chatelaine, walked close to him, spoke, and for a moment they talked.

      "It's the gun-moll," remarked Kennedy. "She's getting Brodie off his guard. This must be the root of that grapevine system, as they call it."

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