In that company of the ignoble army of martyrs over which
circumstances had given Rose Légère command, there were five members.
Besides Mary, who now was Violet, Celeste, whom ancient conditions
had temperamentally predetermined for such service, and Fritzie, who
had chosen a partly moral slavery as less onerous than a wholly
economic servitude, there was the highly colored Englishwoman Evelyn,
who regarded her present station as one of the descending steps
inevitable for everyone that set foot upon the way they all were
treading, and Wanda, a dark little Russian Jewess, who, as soon as
she had landed at the South Ferry from Ellis Island, had fallen into
the hands of the slave-traders, and had thenceforward persistently
striven upward to the place she now inhabited.
For the maintenance of her authority upon these and their patrons,
Rose, unlike some of her fellows, did not have to depend upon the
assistance of any man quartered in the house. To the discipline of
the inmates her system of charge for clothes, food, and shelter was
admirably suited; for the regulation of the visitors the generally
nearby person of big Larry Riley, the policeman, amply sufficed. One
other outsider seemed, however, to have a regular connection with the
establishment, and this person early excited Violet's curiosity.
Dressed in the extreme of fashion, as fashion is known from
Fourteenth Street southward, his gray, almost white, suits always
fresh from the pressing-iron, and his flowered tie and ever evident
gay silk handkerchief always glaringly new, this dapper, dark young
man was unmistakably Neapolitan. His glossy black hair clustered
tight over his forehead; his brown skin shone as if rubbed with oil;
his eyes danced like merry, but sinister, bits of coal, and his too
red lips were continuously, loosely, patterned to a smile that was
more nearly contemptuous than good-humored.
For at least a part of every evening this Italian, who always entered
the house from the rear and without the formality of knocking, sat in
the kitchen, drinking his beer with infinite leisure and, in the
intervals of her discussions in the parlor, condescended to talk,
lazily, with Rose.
"Who is he?" asked Violet, on what was perhaps the fifth of his
visits that she had happened to observe.
Celeste, to whom the question had been addressed, shrugged her smooth
shoulders.
"He ees Angel," she answered.
"He don't look like one."
"No, not mooch, but hees name, eet ees that: Rafael Angelelli. Eef
he had the moostache, he would be almost 'andsome."
"Rose acts like she thought a good deal of him as he is."
"But why not?"--Celeste raised her heavy brows. "'e ees 'er
sweed'eart."
"He is?" repeated Violet, who could not yet understand the masculine
lover that would batten upon his conquest. "I notice he pretty
nearly lives here, an' he never pays out a cent, an' never seems to
work at anything, an' he always wears good clothes."
"My child, truly! That is the reason that I have tol' you: 'e ees
'er sweed'eart."
"Well, it's queer," said Violet, remembering another caller to whom,
though he was a less frequent visitor, Rose was equally attentive.
"I don't think he's half as nice as that fellow who comes here in a
taxi--the one that always wears a dress-suit an' sits in the back
parlor. He's a swell."
But at this Celeste grew enigmatic.
"Oh," she said, "that ees deeferent"--and would say no more.
Nevertheless, it happened, not long afterward, when the black Cassie
was absent on her "evening out," that Violet, descending the back
stair in unshod feet to steal from the ice-chest--as was her
companions' custom--a quiet bottle of the beer that she had come to
like, was brought to a palpitating stop by the sound, just then, of
Rose's and Angel's voices from the kitchen but a few steps below her.
The pair were plainly engaged in an important conversation, the woman
hurried and frightened, the man cold and obdurate.
"Naw," said the Neapolitan; "I maka naw move out o' deesa house."
"But he's coming in now, I tell you," Rose almost supplicated.
"He'll be in the back-parlor in half a minute, an' I've got to go in
an' talk to him."
"Olla righta; you go; I go alonga you."
"You can't do that; you know you can't. You know how things are
without my tellin' you. What makes you so stubborn all of a sudden?"
"I don' lika dees Meesta Wesley Dyker."
"That's no reason why you should double-cross me."
"'E's too mucha de fina gentleman."
"I don't care what he is; you ought to know what I am. Do you want
to tear up your own meal-ticket and throw down your easy money?"
"Easy mon'? You maka de joke!"
The woman's voice noticeably changed.
"Do you mean you want some more coin?" she asked.
The Italian did not answer.
"Because I won't give it to you," Rose continued, anger darting into
her still cautiously lowered voice. "I know what you're doing with
it. I know you had a girl from a department store out at shows twice
last week, an' the second time she had a new dress on."
Somewhere in the front of the house a door closed heavily.
"'E's comin'," the Italian coolly commented. "Do you wanta that I go
along in with you?"
As quickly as it had entered, all the anger fled from Rose's voice,
and Violet, accustomed to it in command or at satisfied ease, was
amazed now to hear it swaying between terror and genuine affection.
"I didn't mean it!" Rose pleaded. "I didn't believe it when I heard
it an' I don't believe it now, I know how much it costs a fellow to
live. Here's another ten-spot. I--I--you know how I hate Dyker, and
Angel, you know that I love you!"
The listener heard Angelelli rise and heard even his voice soften,
though probably less with affection than with gratification.
"Now you talka lika de person witha gooda sense," he said. "Don' you
listen to de beega lie no more. I lika you--nobody but only you.
You are de gooda girl."
There was a whispered word more, and then the kitchen door was softly
shut and Violet heard Rose, going into the next room, welcome that
Wesley Dyker who, Violet had, to Celeste, so favorably compared with
Angel.
The woman on the stairs hesitated. She wanted to pursue her
eavesdropping, and she knew that she could regain her room, should
the doorbell ring, before she was likely to be missed; but she was
afraid that, in the maid's absence, Rose might return to the kitchen
for a bottle of wine and discover her. Accordingly she waited the
few minutes that were required for the first of such errands, and,
those over, crept forward to the lighted keyhole, ready to retreat at
the first intimation of danger.
She gave her eye precedence over her ear, and, as it chanced that
Dyker was sitting directly in the limited shaft of her vision, she
was enabled to get what was her first careful view of him.
A man but little beyond thirty, Wesley Dyker's face, which might once
well have been handsome, was beginning to show that flaccid whiteness
which must later light to red and glow to purple. What his mouth
might have told, a crisp, short, brown mustache concealed, but the
regularity of his other features lost much of its effect because of
eyes that, though large and steel gray, were heavy-lidded and
calculating. Nevertheless, Violet's estimate of the man was not
without justification. He spoke easily and well in the voice of
education; his excellently made evening clothes displayed a figure
that had not yet lost its admirable lines, and even the face--to one
that either had known it during its gradual changes, or to one that
lacked a fund of experience for purposes of comparison--was not
wanting in attraction.
To the sturdy Rose, whose hand he held and who was looking at him
with what she patently believed to be a tender expression, he was
speaking with a certain formal politeness that was novel in the ears
of the listener.
"You think you can get it?" Rose was asking.
"I think that I have something more than a fighting chance," replied
Dyker.
"What does O'Malley say?"
"He is at least as liberal in his promise to me as he is in his
promise to the other man."
"And the big chief doesn't yip?"
"My dear Rose, you should know, by this time, enough of New York
politics to realize that the first qualification of a big boss is to
hold his tongue, and that the present incumbent, whatever his other
shortcomings, can always keep quiet as long as he has no pen in his
hand."
Rose freed her hand to pour the wine.
"May I smoke?" asked Dyker.
"You always ask me that, and you always know you can."
He bowed and, drawing a cigarette from a plain gun-metal case,
lighted it.
"Of course," he pursued, "I expect to win--I always expect to win,
because failure may fight its way to a perch on any man's banner, but
it's sure to lodge on the standard of the man that sits and waits for
it. But I can't be sure of O'Malley."
"I guess whatever headquarters orders will go with him, all right."
"On the surface, perhaps; but, if he wants to, he can have his own
candidate run on an independent ticket, and then he can quietly knife
me at the polls."
"Would he have the nerve?"
"It is precisely what he did election before last. I am sure of
that, and yet nobody has ever been able to prove it. That is where I
look for your help."
Rose took his hand again, and pressed it reassuringly.
"I always take care of my friends," she smiled, "and you sure have
been good to me. Where do I come in on this game?"
"Just yet you don't have to come in at all. It may be that
everything will be honest and above-board--I trust it will--and in
that case you need not disturb yourself."
"But if it ain't?"
"If it isn't,"--he looked at her kindly, but keenly, from under his
heavy lids--"I shall want you to let me know just as soon as O'Malley
begins to make preparations for registering voters from this house."
Rose bent forward and kissed him lightly on his flaccid cheek.
"That's easy," she laughed.
"Perhaps, but if you have to go so far at first, you will have to go
farther afterward."
"An' now?"
"Just now I want you to keep your ears open for gossip. You are in a
position to hear a lot: in this house men talk that are dumb outside."
"Who are you thinkin' of?"
"Several people, friends of O'Malley's. There's one cheap little
camp-follower who, I am told, gets around here rather frequently. I
don't suppose that he's of enough importance to know much, but he
would be worth watching."
"What's his name?"
Dyker filled Rose's glass, and poured more wine for himself.
"Angelelli," he answered.
From the darkened kitchen, Violet, her eye now fast to the keyhole,
drew a short breath, and watched Rose as the sophisticated spectator
watches an emotional actress when she approaches her "big scene."
But Rose, still the primitive Teuton of the brewery-calendar, never
quavered.
"Rafael Angelelli?" she inquired.
"I think so. He is a little Italian loafer with no work and plenty
of money. You know him, of course?"
"Sure I know him. He's in an' out of here all the time. We call him
'Angel'."
"Hum. Well, there are angels and angels, so that name may fit him as
well as any other. There may be nothing to it, but he does hang
about O'Malley a good deal, and it might be worth your while to find
out what, if anything, he knows."
"That's easy," purred Rose. "Here's success."
The pair clinked their glasses, and drained them.
"And--Rose?" began Dyker.
"Yes?"
"Neither this little fellow nor any of his crowd knows about--us?"
Rose's placid smile was eminently convincing.
"I guess I know my business," she said.
"I dare say you do. Only don't let him know that you know mine."
"Trust me for that, Wes' dear."
"Because, if O'Malley could get hold of it, he would have a rather
formidable weapon."
"He doesn't know I ever set my lamps on you."
"Good," said Dyker; "and he mustn't know it for a good many months to
come. Now, then, let's have just one pint more between us--only a
pint--my dear--and----"
But the woman at the keyhole waited to hear no more.