A DEN OF THE UNDERWORLD
After dragging the Zoo telephone from its box and taking the scrap of
black cardboard from a shelf, Johnny sat down to tell his story. He told
it, too, from beginning to end; from the school fire to the discovery of
Ben Zook, dead upon his island.
When the story had ended Pant sat for a long time slumped down in his
chair. From his motionless attitude and his staring eyes, one might have
thought him in a trance.
He came out of this with a start and at once began to reel off to Johnny
the story he had just been told; only now there was association,
connection, and a proper sequence to it all. He had put the puzzle
together, piece by piece. No, it was more than that. The fires were one
puzzle; Johnny’s affairs at the island another; and those at the marsh
still another. After solving each of these separately and putting each
small part in its place, Pant had joined them all in one three-fold
puzzle board that was complete to the last letter.
“Sounds great!” said Johnny breathlessly as Pant concluded. “If all that
is true we have only to find the man.”
“Find that man!” said Pant in a tone that carried conviction.
Twelve o’clock the following night found Johnny and Pant in a strange
place. Standing with their backs against the unpainted and decaying side
of a frame building, they were watching a door.
The frame building formed one wall to an alley which was in reality more
path than an alley; a path of hard-beaten mud that ran between two
buildings. Although the path ran through from street to street, the hard
beaten part of the path ended before the door which the two boys were
watching.
“Here comes another,” Pant whispered, drawing Johnny back into the
shadows.
“And another,” Johnny whispered back.
Two shadow-like creatures, appearing to hug the darkness, came flitting
down the hard-trodden path. As each reached the end of the path the door
opened slightly, the shadows flitted in, and again the door went dark.
“Like shades of evil ones entering their last, dark abode,” whispered
Johnny with a shudder.
They were watching that door because they had seen a certain man enter
it—a tall, stooping, slouching figure of a man who walked with a decided
limp. They had picked up his trail in a more prosperous neighborhood and
had followed him at a distance through less and less desirable
neighborhoods, down dark streets and rubbish strewn alleys, past barking
dogs and beggars sleeping beneath doorsteps, until of a sudden he had
turned up this path and entered this door.
“Come on,” Johnny whispered impatiently, “it’s only a cheap eating place.
I heard the dishes rattle and caught the aroma of coffee. They’ll pay no
attention to us.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Pant grumbled. “Looks like something else to
me. But—all right, come on. Only,” he continued, “take a table near the
door.”
The place did prove to be some sort of eating place. There were small
round tables and steel framed chairs placed about the room. Around some
of these tables men and women were seated, playing cards. Openly roaring
at good fortune or cursing an evil turn of the deck, they paid no
attention whatever to the newcomers.
The card players were for the most part situated in the back of the room.
Tables at the front were covered with dishes. Men and women, engaged in
eating, smoking and talking, swarmed about these tables.
Indeed, the place was so crowded that for a time Johnny and Pant were at
great difficulty to find chairs. At last, as they were backing to a place
against the wall, a small animated being, a slender girl with dark,
vivacious eyes, rose and beckoned them to her table. She had been sitting
there alone sipping dark coffee.
Bowing his thanks, Johnny accepted a chair and motioned Pant to another.
The table was not as near the door as he might have liked, but “beggars
cannot be choosers.”
A waiter appeared.
“Coffee and something hot in a bowl,” said Johnny. “You know the kind,
red Mex. with plenty of pepper.”
“Make it the same,” said Pant.
“And waiter,” Johnny put out a hand, “something nice for her,” he nodded
his head toward the girl. “Anything she’d like.”
“The gentlemen are kind,” said the girl in a foreign accent, “but I have
no need. I will have none.”
Since their new-found friend did not accept of their hospitality and did
not start a conversation, the two boys sat silently staring about them.
It was a strange and motley throng that was gathered there. Dark Italians
and Greeks; a few Irish faces; some Americans; two Mexicans in broad
sombreros; three mulatto girls at a table by themselves and a great
number of men and women of uncertain nationality.
“There! There he is,” whispered Johnny, casting his eyes at the far
corner. “And there, by all that’s good, is Knobs, the New York firebug!
They’re at the same table. See! I can’t be mistaken. There’s the same
hooked nose, the identical stoop to his shoulders.”
“Together!” exclaimed Pant. “That changes my conclusions a little.”
“Don’t appear to see them,” whispered Johnny. “What are we to do?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps a police raid. But not yet; I want to study them.”
Their bowls of steaming red Mulligan had arrived. They had paid their
checks and had begun to sip the fiery stuff, when of a sudden there came
cries of “Jensie! Jensie!” and every eye was turned in their direction.
Johnny felt his face suddenly grow hot. Had he been recognized? This
beyond doubt was a den of the underworld. Was this a cry which was but a
signal for a “Rush the bulls”?
Since he could not tell, and since everyone remained in his seat, he did
not move.
“If the gentlemen will please hold their bowls,” said the girl, smiling
as she handed each his bowl.
What did this mean? They were soon to see. Stepping with a fairy-like
lightness from floor to chair, and chair to table, the girl made a low
bow and then as a piano in a corner struck up a lively air she began a
dance on the table top.
It was such a wild, whirling dance as neither of the boys had seen
before. It seemed incredible that the whole affair could be performed
upon so small a table top. Indeed, at one time Johnny did feel a slight
pat upon his knee and realized in a vague sort of way that the velvet
slippered foot of this little enchantress had rested there for an
instant.
No greater misfortune could have befallen the two boys than this being
seated by the dancer’s table. It focussed all eyes upon them. Their
detection was inevitable. They expected it. But, coming sooner than they
could dream, it caught them unawares. With a suddenness that was
terrible, at the end of the applause that followed the girl’s
performance, there came a death-like pause, broken by a single hissed-out
word.
The next instant a huge man with a great knife gleaming in his hand
launched himself at Pant.
Taken entirely unawares, the boy must have been stabbed through and
through had it not been for a curious interference. The man’s arm, struck
by a sudden weight, shot downward to drive the knife into the floor.
The next instant, as a tremendous uproar began, there came a sudden and
terrible flash of light followed by darkness black as ink.
Johnny, having struggled to his feet, was groping blindly about him when
a hand gripped his shoulder and a voice whispered:
“This way out.”
At the same moment he felt a tug at the back of his coat.
Moving forward slowly, led by Pant and being tugged at from behind, he at
last came to the door and ten seconds later found himself in the outer
semi-darkness of the street.
Feeling the tug at his coat lessening, he turned about to see Jensie, the
dancing girl.
“Do you know that she saved your life?” he whispered to Pant. “She leaped
squarely upon that big villain’s arm.”
“Rode it like I might a mule,” laughed the girl. “And you, Mister,” she
turned to Pant, “you are a Devil. You make a terrible light, you then
make terrible night. You are a wonderful Devil!” and with a flash of her
white teeth she was gone.
“Now what?” asked Johnny.
“We cannot do better than to follow. They will be out at us like a pack
of rats in another minute.”
“How about a police raid?”
“Not to-night. It wouldn’t do any good. The birds have flown.”
At this Pant led the way rapidly out of the narrow alley into more
frequented and safer ways.
Little did Johnny dream as he crept beneath the covers that night that
the following night would see the end of all this little drama in which
he had been playing a part. Yet so it was to be.
As for Pant, who slept upon a cot in one corner of Johnny’s room, he was
dreaming of a slender figure and of big, dark, Gypsy eyes. He was
indulging in romantic thoughts—the first of his life. That Gypsy-like
girl of the underworld den had somehow taken possession of his thoughts.
Many times before had he barely escaped death, but never before had his
life been saved by a girl.
“She’s a Gypsy,” he whispered to himself, “only a Gypsy girl. But me; who
am I? Who knows? Perhaps I am Gypsy myself.”
Through his mind there passed a wish that was more than half prayer: “May
the time come when I can repay her.” This wish was to be granted, far
sooner than he knew.