_The First Clue_
They did not refer to the incidents of that odd reception in New York
until they had located a small hotel for themselves, not three blocks
away. It was no cheaper, but they found a pleasant room, clean and
with electric lights. It was not until they had bathed and were
propped up in their beds for a good-night smoke, which cow-punchers
love, that Bill Gregg asked: "And what gave you the tip, Ronicky?"
"I dunno. In my business you got to learn to watch faces, Bill.
Suppose you sit in at a five-handed game of poker. One gent says
everything with his face, while he's picking up his cards. Another
gent don't say a thing, but he shows what he's got by the way he moves
in his chair, or the way he opens and shuts his hands. When you said
something about our wad I seen the taxi driver blink. Right after that
he got terrible friendly and said he could steer us to a friend of his
that could put us up for the night pretty comfortable. Well, it wasn't
hard to put two and two together. Not that I figured anything out.
Just was walking on my toes, ready to jump in any direction."
As for Bill Gregg, he brooded for a time on what he had heard, then he
shook his head and sighed. "I'd be a mighty helpless kid in this here
town if I didn't have you along, Ronicky," he said.
"Nope," insisted Ronicky. "Long as you use another gent for a sort of
guide you feel kind of helpless. But, when you step off for yourself,
everything is pretty easy. You just were waiting for me to take the
lead, or you'd have done just as much by yourself."
Again Bill Gregg sighed, as he shook his head. "If this is what New
York is like," he said, "we're in for a pretty bad time. And this is
what they call a civilized town? Great guns, they need martial law and
a thousand policemen to the block to keep a gent's life and pocketbook
safe in this town! First gent we meet tries to bump us off or get our
wad. Don't look like we're going to have much luck, Ronicky."
"We saved our hides, I guess."
"That's about all."
"And we learned something."
"Sure."
"Then I figure it was a pretty good night.
"Another thing, Bill. I got an idea from that taxi gent. I figure that
whole gang of taxi men are pretty sharp in the eye. What I mean is
that we can tramp up and down along this here East River, and now
and then we'll talk to some taxi men that do most of their work from
stands in them parts of the town. Maybe we can get on her trail that
way. Anyways, it's an opening."
"Maybe," said Bill Gregg dubiously. He reached under his pillow. "But
I'm sure going to sleep with a gun under my head in this town!" With
this remark he settled himself for repose and presently was snoring
loudly.
Ronicky presented a brave face to the morning and at once started
with Bill Gregg to tour along the East River. That first day Ronicky
insisted that they simply walk over the whole ground, so as to become
fairly familiar with the scale of their task. They managed to make the
trip before night and returned to the hotel, footsore from the hard,
hot pavements. There was something unkindly and ungenerous in those
pavements, it seemed to Ronicky. He was discovering to his great
amazement that the loneliness of the mountain desert is nothing at all
compared to the loneliness of the Manhattan crowd.
Two very gloomy and silent cow-punchers ate their dinner that night
and went to bed early. But in the morning they began the actual work
of their campaign. It was an arduous labor. It meant interviewing in
every district one or two storekeepers, and asking the mail carriers
for "Caroline Smith," and showing the picture to taxi drivers. These
latter were the men, insisted Ronicky, who would eventually bring them
to Caroline Smith. "Because, if they've ever drove a girl as pretty as
that, they'll remember for quite a while."
"But half of these gents ain't going to talk to us, even if they
know," Bill Gregg protested, after he had been gruffly refused an
answer a dozen times in the first morning.
"Some of 'em won't talk," admitted Ronicky, "but that's probably
because they don't know. Take 'em by and large, most gents like to
tell everything they know, and then some!"
As a matter of fact they met with rather more help than they wanted.
In spite of all their efforts to appear casual there was something
too romantic in this search for a girl to remain entirely unnoticed.
People whom they asked became excited and offered them a thousand
suggestions. Everybody, it seemed, had, somewhere, somehow, heard of a
Caroline Smith living in his own block, and every one remembered dimly
having passed a girl on the street who looked exactly like Caroline
Smith. But they went resolutely on, running down a thousand false
clues and finding at the end of each something more ludicrous than
what had gone before. Maiden ladies with many teeth and big glasses
they found; and they discovered, at the ends of the trails on which
they were advised to go, young women and old, ugly girls and pretty
ones, but never any one who in the slightest degree resembled Caroline
Smith.
In the meantime they were working back and forth, in their progress
along the East River, from the slums to the better residence
districts. They bought newspapers at little stationery stores and
worked up chance conversations with the clerks, particularly girl
clerks, whenever they could find them.
"Because women have the eye for faces," Ronicky would say, "and, if a
girl like Caroline Smith came into the shop, she'd be remembered for a
while."
But for ten days they labored without a ghost of a success. Then
they noticed the taxi stands along the East Side and worked them as
carefully as they could, and it was on the evening of the eleventh day
of the search that they reached the first clue.
They had found a taxi drawn up before a saloon, converted into an
eating place, and when they went inside they found the driver alone in
the restaurant. They worked up the conversation, as they had done a
hundred times before. Gregg produced the picture and began showing it
to Ronicky.
"Maybe the lady's around here," said Ronicky, "but I'm new in this
part of town." He took the picture and turned to the taxi driver.
"Maybe you've been around this part of town and know the folks here.
Ever see this girl around?" And he passed the picture to the other.
The taxi driver bowed his head over it in a close scrutiny. When he
looked up his face was a blank.
"I don't know. Lemme see. I think I seen a girl like her the other
day, waiting for the traffic to pass at Seventy-second and Broadway.
Yep, she sure was a ringer for this picture." He passed the picture
back, and a moment later he finished his meal, paid his check and went
sauntering through the door.
"Quick!" said Ronicky, the moment the chauffeur had disappeared. "Pay
the check and come along. That fellow knows something."
Bill Gregg, greatly excited, obeyed, and they hurried to the door of
the place. They were in time to see the taxicab lurch away from the
curb and go humming down the street, while the driver leaned out to
the side and looked back.
"He didn't see us," said Ronicky confidently.
"But what did he leave for?"
"He's gone to tell somebody, somewhere, that we're looking for
Caroline Smith. Come on!" He stepped out to the curb and stopped a
passing taxi. "Follow that machine and keep a block away from it," he
ordered.
"Bootlegger?" asked the taxi driver cheerily.
"I don't know, but just drift along behind him till he stops. Can you
do that?"
"Watch me!"
And, with Ronicky and Bill Gregg installed in his machine, he started
smoothly on the trail.
Straight down the cross street, under the roaring elevated tracks of
Second and Third Avenues, they passed, and on First Avenue they turned
and darted sharply south for a round dozen blocks, then went due east
and came, to a halt after a brief run.
"He's stopped in Beekman Place," said the driver, jerking open the
door. "If I run in there he'll see me."
Ronicky stepped from the machine, paid him and dismissed him with
a word of praise for his fine trailing. Then he stepped around the
corner.
What he saw was a little street closed at both ends and only two or
three blocks long. It had the serene, detached air of a village a
thousand miles from any great city, with its grave rows of homely
houses standing solemnly face to face. Well to the left, the
Fifty-ninth Street Bridge swung its great arch across the river, and
it led, Ronicky knew, to Long Island City beyond, but here everything
was cupped in the village quiet.
The machine which they had been pursuing was drawn up on the
right-hand side of the street, looking south, and, even as Ronicky
glanced around the corner, he saw the driver leave his seat, dart up a
flight of steps and ring the bell.
Ronicky could not see who opened the door, but, after a moment of
talk, the chauffeur from the car they had pursued was allowed to
enter. And, as he stepped across the threshold, he drew off his cap
with a touch of reverence which seemed totally out of keeping with his
character as Ronicky had seen it.
"Bill," he said to Gregg, "we've got something. You seen him go up
those steps to that house?"
"Sure."
Bill Gregg's eyes were flashing with the excitement. "That house has
somebody in it who knows Caroline Smith, and that somebody is excited
because we're hunting for her," said Bill. "Maybe it holds Caroline
herself. Who can tell that? Let's go see."
"Wait till that taxi driver goes. If he'd wanted us to know about
Caroline he'd of told us. He doesn't want us to know and he'd maybe
take it pretty much to heart if he knew we'd followed him."
"What he thinks don't worry me none. I can tend to three like him."
"Maybe, but you couldn't handle thirty, and coyotes like him hunt in
packs, always. The best fighting pair of coyotes that ever stepped
wouldn't have no chance against a lofer wolf, but no lofer wolf could
stand off a dozen or so of the little devils. So keep clear of these
little rat-faced gents, Bill. They hunt in crowds."
Presently they saw the chauffeur coming down the steps. Even at that
distance it could be seen that he was smiling broadly, and that he was
intensely pleased with himself and the rest of the world.
Starting up his machine, he swung it around dexterously, as only New
York taxi drivers can, and sped down the street by the way he had
come, passing Gregg and Ronicky, who had flattened themselves against
the fence to keep from being seen. They observed that, while he
controlled the car with one hand, with the other he was examining the
contents of his wallet.
"Money for him!" exclaimed Ronicky, as soon as the car was out of
sight around the corner. "This begins to look pretty thick, Bill.
Because he goes and tells them that he's taken us off the trail they
not only thank him, but they pay him for it. And, by the face of him,
as he went by, they pay him pretty high. Bill, it's easy to figure
that they don't want any friend near Caroline Smith, and most like
they don't even want us near that house."
"I only want to go near once," said Bill Gregg. "I just want to find
out if the girl is there."
"Go break in on 'em?"
"Break in! Ronicky, that's burglary!"
"Sure it is."
"Ill just ask for Caroline Smith at the door."
"Try it."
The irony made Bill Gregg stop in the very act of leaving and glance
back. But he went on again resolutely and stamped up the steps to the
front door of the house.
It was opened to him almost at once by a woman, for Bill's hat come
off. For a moment he was explaining. Then there was a pause in his
gestures, as she made the reply. Finally he spoke again, but was cut
short by the loud banging of the door.
Bill Gregg drew himself up rigidly and slowly replaced the hat on his
head. If a man had turned that trick on him, a .45-caliber slug would
have gone crashing through the door in search of him to teach him a
Westerner's opinion of such manners.
Ronicky Doone could not help smiling to himself, as he saw Bill Gregg
stump stiffly down the stairs, limping a little on his wounded leg,
and come back with a grave dignity to the starting point. He was still
crimson to the roots of his hair.
"Let's start," he said. "If that happens again I'll be doing a couple
of murders in this here little town and getting myself hung."
"What happened?"
"An old hag jerked open the door after I rang the bell. I asked her
nice and polite if a lady named Caroline Smith was in the house? 'No,'
says she, 'and if she was, what's that to you?' I told her I'd come a
long ways to see Caroline. 'Then go a long ways back without seeing
Caroline,' says this withered old witch, and she banged the door right
in my face. Man, I'm still seeing red. Them words of the old woman
were whips, and every one of them sure took off the hide. I used to
think that old lady Moore in Martindale was a pretty nasty talker, but
this one laid over her a mile. But we're beat, Ronicky. You couldn't
get by that old woman with a thousand men."
"Maybe not," said Ronicky Doone, "but we're going to try. Did you look
across the street and see a sign a while ago?"
"Which side?"
"Side right opposite Caroline's house."
"Sure. 'Room To Rent.'"
"I thought so. Then that's our room."
"Eh?"
"That's our room, partner, and right at the front window over the
street one of us is going to keep watch day and night, till we make
sure that Caroline Smith don't live in that house. Is that right?"
"That's a great idea!" He started away from the fence.
"Wait!" Ronicky caught him by the shoulder and held him back. "We'll
wait till night and then go and get that room. If Caroline is in the
house yonder, and they know we're looking for her, it's easy that she
won't be allowed to come out the front of the house so long as we're
perched up at the window, waiting to see her. We'll come back tonight
and start waiting."