The Man Who Couldn't Sleep Part 50

"You'll take her to no pest-house," he was excitedly proclaiming.

"She'll come home with me--what's left of her. She _must_ come home with me!"

Mary Lockwood stared at him with her tragic and still slightly bewildered eyes.

"Very well," she quietly announced. "I'll take her home. I'll take you both home."

And at this the old man seemed immensely relieved.

"Where is it you want to go?" I rather impatiently demanded of him.

For I'd decided to get them away from there, for Mary's sake, before the inevitable patrolman or reporter happened along.

"On the other side of Brooklyn," explained the bereft one, with a vague hand-wave toward the east. I had to push back the crowd again, before I was able to gather the limp form up from its asphalted resting-place.

"And what's your name?" I demanded as the old man came shuffling along beside us on our way to the waiting car.

"Crotty," he announced. "Zachary Crotty."

It wasn't until I'd placed the injured girl in the softly-upholstered car-seat that that name of "Crotty," sent like a torpedo across the open s.p.a.ces of distraction, exploded against the hull-plates of memory.

Crotty! The very name of Crotty took my thoughts suddenly winging back to yet another street-accident, an accident in which I myself had figured so actively and so unfortunately. For Crotty was the name of the man, I remembered, who had confirmed my chauffeur Latreille's verdict as to the victim of that never-to-be-forgotten Hallow-e'en affair. Crotty was the individual who had brought word to Latreille that we had really killed a man. And Crotty was not a remarkably common name. And now, oddly enough, he was figuring in another accident of almost the same nature.

Something prompted me to reach in and feel the hand of the still comatose girl. That hand, I noticed, was warm to the touch. Then I turned and inspected the venerable-looking old man who was now weeping volubly into a large cotton handkerchief.

"You'll have to give us your street and number," I told him, as a mask to cover that continued inspection of mine.

He did so, between sobs. And as he did so I failed to detect any trace of actual tears on his face. What was more, I felt sure that the eye periodically concealed by the noisily-flourished handkerchief was a chronically roving eye, an unstable eye, an eye that seemed averse to meeting your own honestly inquiring glance.

That discovery, or perhaps I ought to say that suspicion, caused me to turn to Mary, who was already in her place in the driving-seat.

"Wouldn't it be better if I went with you?" I asked her, stung to the heart by the mute suffering which I could only too plainly see on her milk-white face.

"No," she told me as she motioned for the girl's uncle to climb into the car. "This is something I've got to do myself."

"And it's something that'll have to be paid for, and well paid for,"

declaimed our silvery-haired old friend as he stowed away his cotton handkerchief and took up his slightly triumphant position in that Nile-green roadster.

It was not so much this statement, I think, as the crushed and hopeless look in Mary Lockwood's eyes that prompted me to lean in across the car-door and meet the gaze of those eyes as they stared so unseeingly down at me.

"I wish you'd let me go with you," I begged, putting my pride in my pocket.

"What good would that do?" she demanded, with a touch of bitterness in her voice. Her foot, I could see, was already pressing down on the starter-k.n.o.b.

"I might be able to help you," I rather inadequately ventured. Even as I spoke, however, I caught sight of the blue-clad figure of a patrolman pus.h.i.+ng his way through the crowd along the curb. I imagine that Mary also caught sight of that figure, for a shadow pa.s.sed across her face and the pulse of the engine increased to a drone.

"I can't wait," she said in a sort of guilty gasp. "This girl needs help. And she needs it quickly."

Unconsciously my eyes fell to the other girl sitting back so limply in the padded seat. She was, clearly, coming round again. But as she drifted past my line of vision with the movement of the car I made a trivial and yet a slightly perplexing discovery. I noticed that the relaxed hand posed so impa.s.sively along the door-top bore a distinct yellow stain between the tips of the first and second fingers. That yellow stain, I knew, was customarily brought about by the use of cigarettes. It was a mark peculiar to the habitual smoker. Yet the meek and drab-colored figure that I had lifted into that car-seat could scarcely be accepted as a consumer of "coffin-nails." It left a wrinkle which the iron of Reason found hard to eradicate.

It left me squinting after that departing roadster, in fact, with something more than perplexity nibbling at my heart. I was oppressed by a feeling of undefined conspiracies weaving themselves about the tragic-eyed girl in the Nile-green car. And a sudden ache to follow after that girl, to stand between her and certain activities which she could never comprehend, took possession of me.

Any such pursuit, however, was not as easy as it promised. For I first had to explain to that inquiring patrolman that the accident had been a trivial one, that I hadn't even bothered about taking the license-number of the car, and that I could be found at my home in Gramercy Square in case any further information might be deemed necessary. Then, once clear of the neighborhood, I hesitated between two possible courses. One was to get in touch with Mary's father over the phone, with John Lockwood. The other was to hurry down to Police Headquarters and talk things over with my good friend Lieutenant Belton. But either movement, I remembered, would have stood distasteful to Mary herself. It meant publicity, and publicity was one thing to be avoided. So I solved the problem by taking an altogether different tack. I did what deep down in my heart I had been wanting to do all along. I hailed a pa.s.sing taxicab, hopped in, and made straight for that hinterland district of Brooklyn where Crotty had described his home as standing.

I didn't drive directly to that home, but dismissed my driver at a near-by corner and approached the house on foot. There was no longer any Nile-green car in sight. And the house itself, I noticed, was a distinctly unattractive-looking one, a shabby one, even a sordid one.

I stood in the shadow of the side-entrance to one of those gilt-lettered corner-saloons which loom like aromatic oases out of man's most dismal Saharas, studying that altogether repellent house-front. And as I stood there making careful note of its minutest characteristics a figure came briskly down its broken sandstone steps.

What made me catch my breath, however, was the fact that the figure was that of a man, and the man was Latreille, my ex-chauffeur. And still again, I remembered, the long arm of Coincidence was reaching out and plucking me by the sleeve.

But I didn't linger there to meditate over this abstraction, for I noticed that Latreille, sauntering along the opposite side of the street, had signaled to two other men leisurely approaching my caravansary from the near-by corner. One of these, I saw, was the old man known as Crotty. And it was obvious that within two minutes' time they would converge somewhere disagreeably close to the spot where I stood.

So I backed discreetly and quietly through the side-entrance of that many-odored beer-parlor. There I encountered an Hibernian bartender with an empty tray and an exceptionally evil eye. I detained him, however, with a fraternal hand on his sleeve.

"Sister," I hurriedly explained, "I've got a date with a rib here. Can you put me under cover?"

It was patois, I felt sure, which would reach his understanding. But it wasn't until he beheld the five-spot which I'd slid up on his tray that the look of world-weary cynicism vanished from his face.

"Sure," he said as he promptly and impa.s.sively pocketed the bill. Then without a word or the blink of an eye he pushed in past a room crowded with round tables on iron pedestals, took the key out of a door opening in the rear wall, thrust it into my fingers, and offhandedly motioned me inside.

I stepped in through that door and closed and locked it. Then I inspected my quarters. They were eloquent enough of sordid and ugly adventure. They smelt of sour liquor and stale cigar-smoke, with a vague over-tone of orris and patchouli. On one side of the room was an imitation Turkish couch, on the other an untidy washstand and a charred-edged card-table. Half-way between these there was a "speak-easy," a small sliding wall-panel through which liquid refreshments might be served without any undue interruption to the privacy of those partaking of the same. This speak-easy, I noticed as I slid it back the merest trifle, opened on the "beer parlor," at the immediate rear of the bar-room itself, the "parlor" where the thirsty guest might sit at one of the little round tables and consume his "suds" or his fusel-oil whisky at his leisure. And the whole place impressed me as the sort of thing that still made civilization a mockery and suburban recreation a viper that crawled on its belly.

I was, in fact, still peering through my little speak-easy slit in the wall when I became conscious of the three figures that came sidling into that empty room with the little round tables. I could see them distinctly. There was the silvery-haired old Crotty; there was Latreille; and there was a rather unkempt and furtive-eyed individual who very promptly and unmistakably impressed me as a drug-addict. And repugnant as eavesdropping was to me, I couldn't help leaning close to my speak-easy crevice and listening to that worthy trio as they seated themselves within six feet of where I stood, Latreille and old Crotty with their backs to me, the untidy individual whom they addressed as The Doc sitting facing the wall that s.h.i.+elded me.

"Swell kipping!" contentedly murmured one of that trio, out of their momentary silence. And at that I promptly p.r.i.c.ked up my ears, for I knew that swell kipping in the vernacular of the underworld stood for easy harvesting.

"What'll it be, boys?" interrupted a voice which I recognized as the bartender's.

"Bourbon," barked Latreille.

"A slug o' square-face, Mickey," companionably announced the old gentleman known as Crotty.

"Deep beer," sighed he who was designated as The Doc. Then came the sound of a match being struck, the sc.r.a.pe of a chair-leg, and the clump of a fist on the table-top, followed by a quietly contented laugh.

"It's a pipe!" announced a solemnly exultant voice. And I knew the speaker to be my distinguished ex-chauffeur. "It's sure one grand little cinch!"

"Nothing's a cinch until you get the goods in your jeans," contended Crotty, with the not unnatural skepticism of age.

"But didn't she hand her hundred and ten over to The Doc, just to cover running-expenses? Ain't that worth rememberin'? And ain't she got the fear o' Gawd thrown into her? And ain't she comin' back to-night wit'

that wine-jelly and old Port and her own check-book?"

This allocution was followed by an appreciative silence.

"But it's old Lockwood who's got o' come across," that individual known as The Doc finally reminded his confreres.

This brought a snort of contempt from Latreille. "I tell you again old Lockwood'll fight you to the drop of the hat. The girl's your meat.

She's your mark. You've got her! And if you've only got the brains to milk her right she's good for forty thousand. She's weakened already.

She's on the skids. And she's got a pile of her own to pull from!"

"Forty thousand?" echoed the other, with a smack of the lips.

"That's thirteen thousand a-piece," amended Latreille largely, "with one over for Car-Step Sadie."