The material attraction of Grogan's was principally German beer; the
aesthetic appeal of the place was also characteristically Teutonic and
consisted of peculiarly offensive decorations, including much red
cherry, much imitation stained glass, many sprawling brass fixtures,
and many electric lights. Only former inmates of the Fatherland could
have conceived and executed the embellishments of Grogan's.
There was a palatial bar, behind which fat, white-jacketed Teutons
served slopping steins of beer upon a perforated brass surface. There
was a centre table, piled with those barbarous messes known to the
undiscriminating Hun as "delicatessen"--raw fish, sour fish, smoked
fish, flabby portions of defunct pig in various guises--all naturally
nauseating to the white man's olfactories and palate, and all equally
relished by the beer-swilling boche.
A bartender with Pekinese and apoplectic eyes and the scorbutic facial
symptoms of a Strassburg liver, took the order from Barres and set
before him a frosty glass of Pilsner, incidentally drenching the bar
at the same time with swipes, which he thriftily scraped through the
perforated brass strainer into a slop-bucket underneath.
Being a stranger there, Barres was furtively scrutinised at first, but
there seemed to be nothing particularly suspicious about a young man
who stopped in for a glass of Pilsner on a July night, and nobody
paid him any further attention.
Besides, two United States Secret Service men had just gone out,
followed, as usual, by one Johnny Klein; and the Germans at the tables
at the bar, and behind the bar were still sneeringly commenting on the
episode--now a familiar one and of nightly occurrence.
So only very casual attention was paid to Barres and his Pilsner and
his rye-bread and sardine sandwich, which he took over to a vacant
table to desiccate and discuss at his leisure.
People came and went; conversation in Hunnish gutturals became
general; soiled evening newspapers were read, raw fish seized in fat
red fingers and suckingly masticated; also, skat and pinochle were
resumed with unwiped hands, and there was loud slapping of cards on
polished table tops, and many porcine noises.
Barres finished his Pilsner, side-stepped the sandwich, rose, asked a
bartender for the wash-room, and leisurely followed the direction
given.
There was nobody in there. He had, for company, a mouse, a soiled
towel on a roller, and the remains of some unattractive soap. He
lighted a cigarette, surveyed himself in the looking glass, cast a
friendly glance at the mouse, and stood waiting, flexing his biceps
muscles with a smile of anticipated pleasure in renewing the use of
them after such a very long period wasted in the peaceful pursuit of
art.
For he was still a boy at heart. All creative minds retain something
of those care-free, irresponsible years as long as the creative talent
lasts. As it fails, worldly caution creeps in like a thief in the
night, to steal the spontaneous pleasures of the past and leave in
their places only the old galoshes of prudence and the finger-prints
of dull routine.
Barres stood by the open door of the wash-room, listening. The
corridor which passed it led on into another corridor running at right
angles. This was the Family Entrance.
Now, as he waited there, he heard the street door open, and instantly
the deadened shock of a rush and struggle.
As he started toward the Family Entrance, straining his ears for the
expected summons, a man in flight turned the corner into his corridor
so abruptly that he had him by the throat even before he recognised in
him the man with the thick eye-glasses who had hit him between the
eyes with a pistol--the "Watcher" of Dragon Court!
With a swift sigh of gratitude to Chance, Barres folded the fleeing
Watcher to his bosom and began the business he had to transact with
him--an account too long overdue.
The Watcher fought like a wildcat, but in silence--fought madly, using
both fists, feet, baring his teeth, too, with frantic attempts to use
them. But Barres gave him no opportunity to kick, bite, or to pull out
any weapon; he battered the Watcher right and left, swinging on him
like lightning, and his blows drummed on him like the tattoo of fists
on a punching bag until one stinging crack sent the Watcher's head
snapping back with a jerk, and a terrific jolt knocked him as clean
and as flat as a dead carp.
There were papers in his coat, also a knuckle-duster, a big
clasp-knife, and an automatic pistol. And Barres took them all,
stuffed them into his own pockets, and, dragging his still dormant but
twitching victim by the collar, as a cat proudly lugs a heavy rat, he
started for the Family Entrance, where Donnybrook had now broken
loose.
But the silence of the terrific struggle in that narrow entry, the
absence of all yelling, was significant. No Irish whoops, no Teutonic
din of combat shattered the stillness of that dim corridor--only the
deadened sounds of blows and shuffling of frantic feet. It was very
evident that nobody involved desired to be interrupted by the police,
or call attention to the location of the battle field.
Renoux, Souchez, and a third companion were in intimate and desperate
conflict with half a dozen other men--dim, furious figures fighting
there under the flickering gas jet from which the dirty globe had been
knocked into fragments.
Into this dusty maelstrom of waving arms and legs went Barres--first
dropping his now inert prey--and began to hit out enthusiastically
right and left, at the nearest hostile countenance visible.
His was a flank attack and totally unexpected by the attackees; and
the diversion gave Renoux time to seize a muscular, struggling
opponent, hold him squirming while Souchez passed his handkerchief
over his throat and the third man turned his pockets inside out.
Then Renoux called breathlessly to Barres:
"All right, mon vieux! Face to the rear front! March!"
For a moment they stiffened to face a battering rush from the stairs.
Suddenly a pistol spoke, and an Irish voice burst out:
"Whist, ye domm fool! G'wan wid yer fishtin' an' can th' goon-play!"
There came a splintering crash as the rickety banisters gave way and
several Teutonic and Hibernian warriors fell in a furious heap,
blocking the entry with an unpremeditated obstacle.
Instantly Souchez, Barres and the other man backed out into the
street, followed nimbly by Renoux and his plunder.
Already a typical Third Avenue crowd was gathering, though the ominous
glimmer of a policeman's buttons had not yet caught the lamplight from
the street corner.
Then the door of Grogan's burst open and an embattled Irishman
appeared. But at first glance the hopelessness of the situation
presented itself to him; a taxi loaded with French and American
franc-tireurs was already honking triumphantly away westward; an
excited and rapidly increasing throng pressed around the Family
Entrance; also, the distant glitter of a policeman's shield and
buttons now extinguished all hope of pursuit.
Soane glared at the crowd out of enraged and blood-shot eyes:
"G'wan home, ye bunch of bums!" he said thickly, and slammed the door
to the Family Entrance of Grogan's notorious cafe.
At 42d Street and Madison Avenue the taxi stopped and Souchez and
Alost got out and went rapidly across the street toward the Grand
Central depot. Then the taxi proceeded west, north again, then once
more west.
Renoux, busy with a bleeding nose, remarked carelessly that Souchez
and Alost were taking a train and were in a hurry, and that he himself
was going back to the Astor.
"You do not mind coming with me, Barres?" he added. "In my rooms we
can have a bite and a glass together, and then we can brush up. That
was a nice little fight, was it not, mon ami?"
"Fine," said Barres with satisfaction.
"Quite like the old and happy days," mused Renoux, surveying wilted
collar and rumpled tie of his comrade. "You came off well; you have
merely a bruised cheek." His eyes began to sparkle and he laughed: "Do
you remember that May evening when your very quarrelsome atelier
barricaded the Cafe de la Source and forbade us to enter--and my
atelier marched down the Boul' Mich' with its Kazoo band playing our
atelier march, determined to take your cafe by assault? Oh, my! What a
delightful fight that was!"
"Your crazy comrades stuffed me into the fountain among the goldfish.
I thought I'd drown," said Barres, laughing.
"I know, but your atelier gained a great victory that night, and you
came over to Mueller's with your Kazoo band playing the Fireman's
March, and you carried away our palms and bay-trees in their green
tubs, and you threw them over the Pont-au-Change into the Seine!----"
They were laughing like a pair of schoolboys now, quite convulsed and
holding to each other.
"Do you remember," gasped Barres, "that girl who danced the Carmagnole
on the Quay?"
"Yvonne Tete-de-Linotte!"
"And the British giant from Julien's, who threw everybody out of the
Cafe Montparnasse and invited the Quarter in to a free banquet?"
"McNeil!"
"What ever became of that pretty girl, Doucette de Valmy?"
"Oh, it was she who cheered on your atelier to the assault on
Muellers!----"
Laughter stifled them.
"What crazy creatures we all were," said Renoux, staunching the last
crimson drops oozing from his nose. Then, more soberly: "We French
have a grimmer affair over there than the joyous rows of the Latin
Quarter. I'm sorry now that we didn't throw every waiter in Mueller's
after the bay-trees. There would have been so many fewer spies to
betray France."
The taxi stopped at the 44th Street entrance to the Astor. They
descended, Renoux leading, walked through the corridor to Peacock
Alley, turned to the right through the bar, then to the left into the
lobby, and thence to the elevator.
In Renoux's rooms they turned on the electric light, locked the door,
closed the transom, then spread their plunder out on a table.
To Renoux's disgust his own loot consisted of sealed envelopes full of
clippings from German newspapers published in Chicago, Milwaukee, and
New York.
"That animal, Lehr," he said with a wry face, "has certainly played us
a filthy turn. These clippings amount to nothing----" His eyes fell on
the packet of papers which Barres was now opening, and he leaned over
his shoulder to look.
"Thank God!" he said, "here they are! Where on earth did you find
these papers, Barres? They're the documents we were after! They ought
to have been in Lehr's pockets!"
"He must have passed them to the fellow who bumped into me near the
wash-room," said Barres, enchanted at his luck. "What a fortunate
chance that you sent me around there!"
Renoux, delighted, stood under the electric light unfolding document
after document, and nodding his handsome, mischievous head with
satisfaction.
"What luck, Barres! What did you do to the fellow?"
"Thumped him to sleep and turned out his pockets. Are these really
what you want?"
"I should say so! This is precisely what we are looking for!"
"Do you mind if I read them, too?"
"No, I don't. Why should I? You're my loyal comrade and you understand
discretion.... _What_ do you think of _this_!" displaying a
typewritten document marked "Copy," enclosing a sheaf of maps.
It contained plans of all the East River and Harlem bridges, a tracing
showing the course of the new aqueduct and the Ashokan Dam, drawings
of the Navy Yard, a map of Iona Island, and a plan of the Welland
Canal.
The document was brief:
"Included in report by _K17_ to Diplomatic Agent controlling
Section 7-4-11-B. Recommended that detail plan of DuPont works be
made without delay.
"SKEEL."
Followed several sheets in cipher, evidently some intricate variation
of those which are always ultimately solved by experts.
But the documents that were now unfolded by Captain Renoux proved
readable and intensely interesting.
These were the papers which Renoux read and which Barres read over his
shoulder:
"(Copy)