The Ear in the Wall Part 42

Dorgan cut the words short.

Kennedy had touched the b.u.t.ton of an electric attachment which was under the table by which he could lock every door and window of the laboratory instantly and silently.

"Well?" demanded Dorgan fiercely, though there was a tremble in his voice that had never been heard before.

"Where is Betty Blackwell?" demanded Craig, turning to Sybil Seymour.

"Where did they take her?"

We hung breathlessly on the answer. Was she being held as a white slave in some obscure den? I knew that that did not mean that she was necessarily imprisoned behind locked doors and barred windows, although even that might be the case. I knew that the restraint might be just as effective, even though it was not actually or wholly physical.

An ordinary girl, I reasoned, with little knowledge of her rights or of the powers which she might call to her aid if she knew how to summon them, might she not be so hemmed in by the forces into whose hands she had fallen as to be practically held in bonds which she could not break?

Here was Sybil herself! Once she had been like Betty Blackwell. Indeed, when she seemed to have every chance to escape she did not. She knew how she could be pursued, hounded at every turn, forced back, and her only course was to sink deeper into the life. The thought of what might be accomplished by drugs startled me.

Clare bent over the poor girl rea.s.suringly. What was it that seemed to freeze her tongue now? Was it still some vestige of the old fear under which she had been held so long? Clare strove, although we could not hear what she was saying, to calm her.

At last Sybil raised her head, with a wild cry, as if she were sealing her own doom.

"It was Ike. He kept us all in terror. Oh, if he hears he will kill me," she blurted out.

"Where did he take her?" asked Clare.

She had broken down the girl's last fear.

"To that place on the West Side--that black and tan joint, where Marie Margot came from before the gang took her in."

"Carton," called Kennedy. "You and Walter will take Miss Kendall and Miss Seymour. Let me see. Dorgan, Ogleby, and myself will ride in the taxicab."

Carton was toying ostentatiously with a police whistle as Dorgan hesitated, then entered the cab.

I think at the joint, as we pulled up with a rush after our wild ride downtown, they must have thought that a party of revellers had dropped in to see the sights. It was perhaps just as well that they did, for there was no alarm at first.

As we entered the black and tan joint, I took another long look at its forbidding exterior. Below, it was a saloon and dance hall; above, it was a "hotel." It was weatherbeaten, dirty, and unsightly, without, except for the entrance; unsanitary, ramshackle, within, except for the tawdry decorations. At every window were awnings and all were down, although it was on the shady side of the street in the daytime and it was now getting late. That was the mute sign post to the initiated of the character of the place.

Instead of turning downstairs where we had gone on our other visit, Kennedy led the way up through a door that read, "Hotel Entrance--Office."

A clerk at a desk in a little alcove on the second floor mechanically pushed out a register at us, then seeming to sense trouble, pulled it back quickly and with his foot gave a sharp kick at the door of a little safe, locking the combination.

"I'm looking for someone," was all Kennedy said. "This is the District Attorney. We'll go through--"

"Yes, you will!"

It was Ike the Dropper. He had heard the commotion, and, seeing ladies, came to the conclusion that it was not a police plainclothes raid, but some new game of the reformers.

He stopped short in amazement at the sight of Dorgan and Ogleby.

"Well--I'll be--"

"Carton! Walter!" shouted Kennedy. "Take care of him. Watch out for a knife or gun. He's soft, though. Carton--the whistle!"

Our struggle with the redoubtable Ike was short and quickly over.

Sullen, and with torn clothes and bleeding face, we held him until the policeman arrived, and turned him over to the law.

At a room on the same floor Craig knocked.

"Come in," answered a woman's voice.

He pushed open the door. There was the woman who had fled so precipitately from the dope joint.

Evidently she did not recognize us. "You are under arrest," announced Kennedy.

The blonde woman laughed mockingly.

"Under arrest? For what?"

"You are Marie Margot. Never mind about your alias. All the arts of your employees and Dr. Harris himself cannot change you so that I cannot recognize you. You may feel safe from the portrait parle, but there are other means of detection that you never dreamed of. Where is Betty Blackwell? Marie, it's all off!"

All the brazen a.s.surance with which she had met us was gone. She looked from one to the other and read that it was the end. With a shriek, she suddenly darted past us, out of the door. Down the hall was Ike the Dropper with the policeman and Carton. Beside her was a stairway leading to the upper floors. She chose the stairs.

Following Kennedy we hurried through the hotel, from one dirty room to another, with their loose and creaking floors, rotten and filthy, sagging as we walked, covered with matting that was rotting away. Damp and unventilated, the air was heavy and filled with foul odours of tobacco, perfumery, and cheap disinfectants. There seemed to have been no attempt to keep the place clean.

The rooms were small and separated by thin part.i.tions through which conversations in even low tones could be heard. The furniture was cheap and worn with constant use.

Downstairs we could hear the uproar as the news spread that the District Attorney was raiding the place. As fast as they could the sordid crowd in the dance hall and cabaret was disappearing. Now and then we could hear a door bang, a hasty conference, and then silence as some of the inmates realized that upstairs all escape was cut off.

On the top floor we came to a door, locked and bolted. With all the force that he could gather in the narrow hall, Kennedy catapulted himself against it. It yielded in its rottenness with a crash.

A woman, in all her finery, lay across the foot of a bed, a formless heap. Kennedy turned her over. It was Marie, motionless, but still breathing faintly. In an armchair, with his hands hanging limply down almost to the floor, his head sagging forward on his chest, sprawled Harris.

Kennedy picked up a little silver receptacle on the floor where it lay near his right hand. It was nearly empty, but as he looked from it quickly to the two insensible figures before us he muttered: "Morphine.

They have robbed the law of its punishment."

He bent over the suicides, but it was too late to do anything for them.

They had paid the price.

"My heavens!" he exclaimed suddenly, as a thought flashed over his mind. "I hope they have not carried the secret of Betty Blackwell with them to the grave. Where is Miss Kendall?"

Down the hall, cut off from the rest of the hotel into a sort of private suite, Clare had entered one of the rooms and was bending over a pale, wan shadow of a girl, tossing restlessly on a bed. The room was scantily furnished with a dilapidated bureau in one corner and a rickety washstand equipped with a dirty washbowl and pitcher. A few cheap chromos on the walls were the only decorations, and a small badly soiled rug covered a floor innocent for many years of soap.

I looked sharply at the girl lying before us. Somehow it did not occur to me who she was. She was so worn that anyone might safely have transported her through the streets and never have been questioned, in spite of the fact that every paper in the country which prints pictures had published her photograph, not once but many times.

It was Betty Blackwell at last, struggling against the drugs that had been forced on her, half conscious, but with one firm and acute feeling left--resistance to the end.

Kennedy had dropped on his knees before her and was examining her closely.

"Open the windows--more air," he ordered. "Walter, see if you can find some ice water and a little stimulant."

While Craig was taking such restorative measures as were possible on the spur of the moment, Miss Kendall gently ma.s.saged her head and hands.