"I think," announced the lady thoughtfully, "that you are one of the slickest young liars I ever listened to."

"That must be considerable eminence," considered P. Sybarite with humility.

"On the other hand, you're unquestionably a perfect little gentleman,"

she pursued. "And anyhow I'm going to take you at your word and trust you. If you ever change your mind about that hundred, all you've got to do is to come back and speak for it.... Do I make you right? You're willing to go a bit out of your way to do me a favour to-night?"

"Or any other night."

"Very well." Mrs. Inche rose. "Wait here a moment."

Wrapping her negligee round her, she swept magnificently out of the "den," and a moment later again crossed P. Sybarite's range of vision as she ascended the stairs. Then she disappeared, and there was silence in the house: a breathing spell which the little man strove to employ to the best advantage by endeavouring to a.s.sort and rearrange his sadly disordered impressions.

Aware that he would probably do wisely to rise and flee the place, he none the less lingered, vastly intrigued and more than half inclined to see the affair through to the end.

His confused reverie was presently interrupted by the sound of the woman's high, clear voice at a telephone located (he fancied) somewhere in the hallway of the second story.

"h.e.l.lo! Columbus, seven, four hundred, please.... h.e.l.lo--Mason?...

Taxicab, please--Mrs. Jefferson Inche.... Yes--charge....

Yes--immediately.... Thank you!"

A moment later she reappeared on the stairs, carrying a wrap of some sort over her arm: a circ.u.mstance which caused P. Sybarite uneasily to wonder if she meant to push her notorious indifference to convention to the limit of going out in a taxicab with no other addition to her airy costume than a cloak.

But when she again entered the "den," it proved to be a man's coat and soft hat that she had found for him.

"Get up," she ordered imperiously, "and change to these before you get pinched for impersonating an officer. I've called a taxi for you, and this is what I want you to do: go to Dutch House--that's a dive on Fortieth Street--"

"I've heard of it," nodded P. Sybarite. "Any sober man who stays away from it is almost perfectly safe, I believe."

"I'll back you to take care of yourself," said the lady. "Ask for Red November.... You know who he is?"

"The gangster? Yes."

"If he isn't in, wait for him if you wait till daylight--"

"Important as all that, eh?"

"It's life or death to me," said Mrs. Inche serenely. "I've got to have protection--you've seen yourself how had I need it. And the police are not for the likes of me. Besides," she added with engaging candour, "if I squeal and tell the truth, then friend husband will be disinherited for sure, and I'll have had all my trouble for nothing."

"You make it perfectly clear, Mrs. Inche.... And when I see Mr. Red November--?"

"Say to him three words: _Nella wants you_. He'll understand. Then you can go home."

"_If_ I get out alive."

"You're safe if you don't drink anything there."

"Doubtless; but I'll feel safer if you'll lend me the loan of this pretty toy," said P. Sybarite, weighing in one hand her automatic pistol.

"It's yours."

"Anything in it?"

"Three shots left, I believe. No matter. I'll get you a handful of cartridges and you can reload the clip in the taxicab. Not that you're likely to need it at Dutch House."

From the street rose the rumble of a motor, punctuated by a horn that honked.

"There's the cab, now," announced Mrs. Inche briskly. "Shake yourself out of that coat and into this--and hustle!"

"It's my impressionable nature makes all my troubles," observed P.

Sybarite disconsolately. "However..."

Shrugging into the coat Mrs. Inche held for him, he c.o.c.ked the felt hat jauntily on the side of his head.

"Always," he proclaimed with gesture--hand on heart--"always the ladies' slave!"

XIII

RESPECTABILITY

But when it came to viscid second thought, alone in the gloom of an unsympathetic taxicab, P. Sybarite inclined to concede himself more a.s.s than hero. It was all very well to say that, having spread his sails to the winds of _Kismet_, he was bound to let himself drift to their vagrant humour: but there are certain channels of New York life into which even the most courageous mariner were ill-advised to adventure under pilotage no more trustworthy than that of sufficient champagne and a run of good luck.

Dutch House in Fortieth Street, West, wore the reputation of being as sinister a dive as ever stood cheek-by-jowl with Broadway and brazenly flaunted an all-night liquor license in the face of law-abiding New York; of which it was said that no sober man ever went there, other than those who went to prey, and that no drunkard ever escaped from it unfleeced; haunt of the most deadly riff-raff to be found in Town, barring inmates of certain negro stews on the lower West Side and of some of the dens to which the sightseer does _not_ penetrate in the tour of Chinatown.

Grim stories were current of men who had wandered thither in their cups, "for the lark of it," only to return to consciousness days afterwards, stripped, shorn, and shattered in health bodily and mental, to find themselves in some vile kennel miles from Dutch House; and of other men who pa.s.sed once through its foul portals and--pa.s.sed out a secret way, never to return to the ken of their friends....

Yet it stood, and it stands, waxing fat in the folly of man and his greed.

And to this place P. Sybarite was travelling to deliver a message from a famous demi-rep to a notorious gang leader; with only a .25 calibre Colt's automatic and his native wit and audacity to guard the moderate fortune that he carried with him in cash--a single hundredth part of which would have been sufficient to purchase his obliteration at the hands of the crew that ran the place.

However, in their ignorance his safety inhered; and it was not really necessary that he advertise his swollen fortunes; and as for the gold in his trousers pocket--a ponderable weight, liable to c.h.i.n.k treacherously when he moved--P. Sybarite removed this and thoughtfully cached it under one of the cushions of his cab. It seemed a long chance to take with a hundred dollars: but a hundred dollars wasn't a great deal, after all, to a man as flush as he; and better lose it all (said he) than make a noise like a peripatetic mint in a den of thieves and worse....

The cab drawing up to the curb, out P. Sybarite hopped, a dollar in hand for the chauffeur, and the admonition: "I'm keeping you; wait till I come out, if I'm all night; and don't let your motor die, 'cause I _may_ be in a hurry."

"Gotcha," said the chauffeur tersely; pocketed the bill; lighted a cigarette....

P. Sybarite held back an instant to inspect the approach.

This being Sunday morning, Dutch House was decorously dull to the street; the doors to the bar closed, the lights within low and drowsy; even the side door, giving access to the "restaurant," was closed much of the time--when, that is to say, it wasn't swinging to admit an intermittent flow of belated casuals and habitues of both s.e.xes.

A row of vehicles lined the curb: nighthawk taxicabs for the most part, with one or two four-wheelers, as many disreputable and dilapidated hansoms, and (aside from that in which P. Sybarite had arrived) a single taxicab of decent appearance. This last stood, with door ajar, immediately opposite the side entrance, its motor pulsing audibly--evidently waiting under orders similar to those issued by P.

Sybarite.

Now as the latter advanced to enter Dutch House, shadows appeared on the ground gla.s.s of the side door; and opening with a jerk, it let out a gush of fetid air together with Respectability on the prowl--Respectability incognito, sly, furtive of air, and in noticeable haste.

He paused for a bare instant on the threshold; affording P. Sybarite opportunity for a good, long look.