The Ear in the Wall

X. The Afternoon Dance

It was early the following morning that I missed Kennedy from our apartment. Naturally I guessed from my previous experiences with that gentleman that he would most likely be found at his laboratory, and I did not worry, but put the finishing touches on a special article for the Star which I had promised for that day and had already nearly completed.

Consequently it was not until the forenoon that I sauntered around to the Chemistry Building. Precisely as I had expected, I found Kennedy there at work.

I had been there scarcely a quarter of an hour when the door opened and Clare Kendall entered with a cheery greeting. It was evident that she had something to report.

"The letter to Betty Blackwell which you sent to the Montmartre has come back, unopened," she announced, taking from her handbag a letter stamped with the post-office form indicating that the addressee could not be found and that the letter was returned to the sender. The stamped hand of the post-office pointed to the upper left-hand corner where Clare had written in a fictitious name and used an address to which she frequently had mail sent when she wanted it secret.

"Only on the back," she pursued, turning the letter over, "there are some queer smudges. What are they? They don't look like dirt."

Kennedy glanced at it only casually, as if he had fully expected the incident to turn out as it did.

"Not unopened, Miss Kendall," he commented. "We have already had a little scientific letter-opening. This was a case of scientific letter-sealing. That was a specially prepared envelope."

He reached down into his desk and pulled out another, sealed it carefully, dried it, then held it over a steaming pan of water until the gum was softened and it could be opened again. On the back were smudges just like those on the letter that had been returned.

"On the thin line of gum on the flap of the envelope," he explained, "I have placed first a coating of tannin, over which is the gum. Then on the part of the envelope to which the flap adheres when it is sealed I placed some iron sulphate. When I sealed the envelope so carefully I brought the two together separated only by the thin film of gum. Now when steam is applied to soften the gum, the usual method of the letter-opener, the tannin and the sulphate are brought together. They run and leave these blots or dark smudges. So, you see, someone has been found at the Montmartre, even if it is not Betty Blackwell herself, who has interest enough in the case to open a letter to her before handing it back to the postman. That shows us that we are on the right trail at least, even if it does not tell us who is at the end of the trail. Here's another thing; This 'Marie' is a new one. We must find out about her."

"At the Futurist Tea Room at four this afternoon, when she meets our good friend, young Dr. Harris," reminded Clare. "Between cabarets and tea rooms I don't know whether this is work or play."

"It's work, all right," smiled Kennedy, adding, "at least it would be if it weren't lightened by your help."

It was the middle of the afternoon when Craig and I left the laboratory to keep our appointment with Miss Kendall at the Futurist Tea Room, where we hoped to find Dr. Harris's friend "Marie," who seemed to want to see him so badly.

A long line of touring and town cars as well as taxicabs bore eloquent testimony not only to the popularity of this tea room and cabaret, but to the growth of afternoon dancing. One never realizes how large a leisure class there is in the city until after a visit to anything from a baseball game to a matinee--and a dance. People seemed literally to be flocking to the Futurist. They seemed to like its congeniality, its tone, its "atmosphere."

As we left our hats to the tender mercies of the "boys" who had the checking concession we could see that the place was rapidly filling up.

"If we are to get a table that we want here, we'd better get it now," remarked Kennedy, slipping the inevitable piece of change to the head waiter. "If we sit over there in that sort of little bower we can see when Miss Kendall arrives and we shall not be so conspicuous ourselves, either."

The Futurist was not an especially ornate place, although a great deal of money had evidently been expended in fitting it up to attract a recherche clientele.

Our table, which Kennedy had indicated, was, as he had said, in a sort of little recess, where we could see without being much observed ourselves, although that seemed almost an impossibility in such a place. In fact, I noticed before we had had time to seat ourselves that we had already attracted the attention of two show girls who sat down the aisle and were amusing themselves at watching us by means of a mirror. It would not have been very difficult to persuade them to dispense with the mirror.

A moment later Clare Kendall entered and paused at the door an instant, absorbing the gay scene as only a woman and a detective could. Craig rose and advanced to meet her, and as she caught sight of us her face brightened. The show girls eyed her narrowly and with but slight approval.

"We feel more at ease with a lady in the party," remarked Craig, as they reached the table and I rose to greet her. "Two men alone here are quite as noticeable as two ladies. Walter, I know, was quite uncomfortable."

"To say nothing of the fact which you omitted," I retaliated, "that it is a pleasure to be with Miss Kendall--even if we must talk shop all the time."

Clare smiled, for her quick intuition had already taken in and dismissed as of no importance the two show girls. We ordered as a matter of course, then settled back for a long interval until the waiter out of the goodness of his heart might retrieve whatever was possible from the mob of servitors where refreshments were dispensed.

"Opposite us," whispered Clare, resting her chin on her interlocked fingers and her elbows on the tip-edge of the table, "do you see that athletic-looking young lady, who seems to be ready for anything from tea to tango? Well, the man with her is Martin Ogleby."

Ogleby was of the tall, sloping-shouldered variety, whom one can see on the Avenue and in the clubs and hotels in such numbers that it almost seems that there must be an establishment for turning them out, even down to a trademark concealed somewhere about them, "Made in England." Only Ogleby seemed a little different in the respect that one felt that if all the others were stamped by the same die, he was the die, at least. Compared to him many of the others took on the appearance of spurious counterfeits.

"Dr. Harris," Craig whispered, indicating to us the direction with his eyes.

Outside on a settee, we could see in the corridor a man waiting, restless and ill at ease. Now and then he looked covertly at his watch as if he expected someone who was late and he wondered if anything could be amiss.

Just then a superbly gowned woman alighted from a cab. The starter bowed as if she were familiar. It was evident that this was the woman for whom Harris waited, the "Marie" of the letter.

She was a carefully groomed woman, as artificial as French heels. Yet indeed it was that studied artificiality which constituted her chief attraction. As Harris greeted her I noted that Clare was amazed at the daring cut of her gown, which excited comment even at the Futurist.

Her smooth, full, well-rounded face with its dark olive skin and just a faint trace of colour on either cheek, her snappy hazel eyes whose fire was heightened by the penciling of the eyebrows, all were a marvel of the dexterity of her artificial beautifier. And yet in spite of all there was an air of unextinguishable coarseness about her which it was difficult to describe, but easy to feel. "Her lips are too thick and her mouth too large," remarked Clare, "and yet in some incomprehensible way she gives you the impression of daintiness. What is it?"

"The woman is frankly deceptive from the tip of her aigrette to the toes of her shoes," observed Craig.

"And yet," smiled Clare, watching with interest the little stir her arrival had made among the revellers, "you can see that she is the envy of every woman here who has slaved and toiled for that same effect without approaching within miles of it or attracting one quarter the notice for her pains that this woman receives."

Dr. Harris was evidently in his element at the attention which his companion attracted. They seemed to be on very good terms indeed, and one felt that Bohemianism could go no further.

They paused, fortunately, at a just vacated table around an "L" from us and sat down. For once waiters seemed to vie in serving rather than in neglecting.

By this time I had gained the impression that the Futurist was all that its name implied--not up to the minute, but decidedly ahead of it. There was an exotic flavour to the place, a peculiar fascination, that was foreign rather than American, at seeing demi-monde and decency rubbing elbows. I felt sure that a large percentage of the women there were really young married women, whose first step downward was truly nothing worse than saying they had been at their whist clubs when in reality it was tango and tea. What the end might be to one who let the fascination blind her perspective I could imagine.

Dr. Harris and "Marie" were nearer the dancing floor than we were, but seemed oblivious to it. Now and then as the music changed we could catch a word or two.

He was evidently making an effort to be gay, to counteract the feeling which she had concealed as she came in, but which had the upper hand now that they were seated.

"Won't you dance?" I heard him say.

"No, Harry. I came here to tell you about how things are going."

There was a harshness about her voice which I recognized as belonging exclusively to one class of women in the city. She lowered it as she went on talking earnestly.

"It looks as though someone has squealed, but who--" I caught in the fragmentary lulls of the revelry.

"I didn't know it was as bad as that," Dr. Harris remarked.

They talked almost in whispers for several moments while I strained my ears to catch a syllable, but without success. What were they talking about? Was it about Dopey Jack? Or did they know something about Betty Blackwell? Perhaps it was about the Black Book. Even when the music stopped they talked without dropping a word.

The music started again. There was no mistaking the appeal that the rocking whirl of the rhythmic dance made. From the side of the table where Kennedy was seated he could catch an occasional glimpse of the face of Marie. I noticed that he had torn a blank page off the back of the menu and with a stub of a pencil was half idly writing.

At the top he had placed the word, "Nose," followed by "straight, with nostrils a trifle flaring," and some other words I could not quite catch. Beneath that he had written "Ears," which in turn was followed by some words which he was setting down carefully. Eyes, chin, and mouth followed, until I began to realize that he was making a sort of scientific analysis of the woman's features.

"I shall need some more--" I caught as the music softened unexpectedly.

A singer on the little platform was varying the programme now by a solo and I shifted my chair so as to get a better view and at the same time also a look at the table around the corner from us.

As I did so I saw Dr. Harris reach into his breast pocket and take out a little package which he quickly handed to Marie. As their hands met, their eyes met also. I fancied that the doctor struggled to demagnetize, so to speak, the look which she gave him.

"You'll come to see me--afterwards?" she asked, dropping the little package into her handbag of gold mesh and rattling the various accoutrements of beautification which tinkled next to it.

Harris nodded.

"You're a life saver to some--" floated over to me from Marie.

The solo had been completed and the applause was dying away.

" ... tells me he needs ... badly off ... don't forget to see ..."

The words came in intervals. What they meant I did not know, but I strove to remember them. Evidently Marie and a host of others were depending on Harris for something. At any rate, it seemed, now that she had talked she felt easier in mind, as one does after carrying a weight a long time in secret.

"Tanguez-vous?" he asked as the orchestra struck up again.

"Yes--thank you, Harry--just one."

We watched the couple attentively as they were alternately lost and found in the dizzy swaying mass. The music became wilder and they threw themselves into the abandon of the dance.

They had been absorbed so much in each other and the unburdening of whatever it was she had wanted to tell him, that neither had noticed the other couple on the other side of the floor whose presence had divided our own attention.

Martin Ogleby and his partner were not dancing. It was warm and they were among the lucky ones who had succeeded in getting something besides a cheque from the waiters. Two tall glasses of ginger ale with a long curl of lemon peel sepentining through the cracked ice stood before them.

The dance had brought Dr. Harris and Marie squarely around to within a few feet of where Ogleby was sitting. As Harris swung around she faced Ogleby in such a way that he could not avoid her, nor could she have possibly missed seeing him.

For a moment their eyes met. Not a muscle in either face moved. It was as if they were perfect strangers. She turned and murmured something to her partner. Ogleby leaned over, without the least confusion, and made a witty remark to his partner. It was over in a minute. The acting of both could not have been better if they had deliberately practised their parts. What did it mean?

As the dance concluded I saw Ogleby glance hastily over in the direction of Marie. He gave a quick smile of recognition, as much as to say "Thank you."

It was evident now that both Dr. Harris and Marie, whoever she was, were getting ready to leave. As they rose to move to the door, Kennedy quickly paid our own cheque, leaving the change to the waiter, and without seeming to do so we followed them.

Harris was standing near the starter with his hat off, apparently making his adieux. Deftly Kennedy managed to slip in behind so as to be next in line for a cab.

"Walter and I will follow Harris if they separate," he whispered to Clare Kendall. "You follow the woman."

The afternoon was verging toward dinner and people were literally bribing the taxicab starter. Our own cab stood next in line behind that which Harris had called.

"I have certainly enjoyed this little glimpse of Bohemia," commented Kennedy to Miss Kendall as we waited. "I shouldn't mind if detective work took me more often to afternoon dances. There, they are going down the steps. Here's the cab I called. Let me know how things turn out. Goodbye. Here--chauffeur, around that way--where that other cab is going--the lady will tell you where to drive."

Harris hesitated a moment as if considering whether to take a cab himself, then slowly turned and strolled down the street.

We followed, slowly also. There was something unreal about the bright afternoon sunshine after the atmosphere of the Futurist Tea Room, where everything had been done to promote the illusion of night.

Harris walked along meditatively, crossing one street after another, not as if debating where he was going, but rather in no great hurry to get there.

Instead of going down Broadway he swerved into Seventh Avenue, then after a few blocks turned into a side street, quickened his pace, and at last dived down into a basement under a saloon.

It was a wretched neighbourhood, one of those which reminds one of the life of an animal undergoing a metamorphosis. Once it had evidently been a rather nice residential section. The movement of population uptown had left it stranded to the real estate speculators, less desirable to live in, but more valuable for the future. The moving in of anyone who could be got to live there had led to rapid deterioration and a mixed population of whites and negroes against the day when the upward sweep of business should bring the final transformation into office and loft buildings. But for the present it was decaying, out of repair, a mass of cheap rooming-houses, tenements, and mixed races.

The joint into which Harris had gone was the only evidence of anything like prosperity on the block, and that evidence was confined to the two entrances on the street, one leading into the ground floor and the other down a flight of steps to the basement.

"Do you want to go in?" asked Kennedy in a tone that indicated that he himself was going.

Just then a negro, dazzling in the whiteness of his collar and the brilliancy of his checked suit, came up the stairs accompanied by a light mulatto.

"It's a black and tan joint," Craig went on, "at least downstairs- -negro cabaret, and all that sort of thing."

"I'm game," I replied.

We stumbled down the worn steps, past a swinging door near which stood the proprietor with a careful eye on arrivals and departures. The place was deceiving from the outside. It really extended through two houses, and even at this early hour it was fairly crowded.

There were negroes of all degrees of shading, down to those who were almost white. Scattered about at the various tables were perhaps half a dozen white women, tawdry imitations of the faster set at the Futurist which we had just left, the leftovers of a previous generation in the Tenderloin. There was also a fair sprinkling of white men, equally degraded. White men and coloured women, white women and coloured men, chatted here and there, but for the most part the habitues were negroes. At any rate the levelling down seemed to have produced something like an equality of races in viciousness.

As we sat down at a table, Kennedy remarked: "They used to drift down to Chinatown, a good many of these relics. You used to see them in the old 'suicide halls' of the Bowery, too. But that is all passing away now. Reform and agitation have closed up those old dives. Now they try to veneer it over with electric lights and bright varnish, but I suppose it comes to the same thing. After they are cast off Broadway, the next step lower is the black and tan joint. After that it is suicide, unless it is death."

"I don't think this is any improvement over the--the bad old days," I ventured.

Kennedy shook his head in agreement. "There's Harris, down there in the back, talking to someone, a white man, alone."

A waiter came over to us grinning, for we had assumed the role of sightseers.

"Who is that, 'way back there, with his chair tipped to the wall, talking to the man with his back to us?" asked Kennedy.

"Ike the Dropper, sah," informed the waiter with obvious pride that such a celebrity should be harboured here.

I looked with a feeling akin to awe at the famous character who, in common with many others of his type, had migrated uptown from the proverbial haunts of the gunmen on the East Side in search of pastures new and untroubled.

Ike the Dropper may have once been a strong-arm man, but at present I knew that he was chiefly noted for the fact, and he and his kind were reputed to be living on the earnings of women to whom they were supposed to afford "protection." I reflected on the passing glories of brutality which had sunk so low.

There were noise and life a plenty here. At a discordant box of a piano a negro performer was playing with a keen appreciation of time if of nothing else, and two others with voices that might not have been unpopular in a decent minstrel show were rendering a popular air. They wore battered straw hats and a make-up which was intended to be grotesque.

From time to time, as the pianist was moved, he played snatches of the same music as that which we had heard at the Futurist, and between us and Harris and Ike the Dropper several couples were one-stepping, each in their own sweet way. As the music became more lively their dancing came more and more to resemble some of the almost brutal Apache dances of Paris, in that the man seemed to exert sheer force and the woman agility in avoiding him. It was an entirely new phase of afternoon dancing, an entirely new "leisure class," this strange combination of Bohemia and Senegambia.

At a table next to us, so near that we could almost rub elbows with them, sat a white man and a white woman. They had been talking in low tones, but I could catch whole sentences now and then, for they seemed to be making no extraordinary effort at concealment.

"He was framing a sucker to get away with a whole front," I heard the man say, "or with a poke or a souper, but instead he got dropped by a flatty and was canned for a sleep."

"Two dips--pickpockets," whispered Craig. "Someone was trying to take everything a victim had, or at least his pocketbook or watch, but instead he was arrested by a detective and locked up over night."

"Good work," I laughed. "You are 'some' translator."

I looked at our neighbours with a certain amount of respect. Were they framing up something themselves? At any rate I felt that I would rather see them here and know what they were than to be jostled by them in a street car. The sleek proprietor kept a careful eye on them and I knew that a sort of unwritten law would prevent them from trying on anything that would endanger their welcome in a joint none too savoury already.

Nevertheless I was quite interested in the bits of pickpocket argot that floated across to us, expressions like "crossing the mit," "nipping a slang," a "mouthpiece," "making a holler" and innumerable other choice bits as unintelligible to me as "Beowulf."

After a few minutes the woman got up and went out, leaving the man still sitting at the table. Of course it was none of my business what they were doing, I suppose, but I could not help being interested.

That diversion being ended, I joined Kennedy in his scrutiny of Harris and his choice friend. Of course at our distance it was absolutely impossible to gain any idea of what they were talking about, and indeed our chief concern was not to attract any attention. Whatever it was, they were very earnest about it and paid no attention to us.

The dancing had ceased and the two "artists" were entertaining the select audience with some choice bits of ragtime. We could see Ike the Dropper and Dr. Harris still talking.

Suddenly Kennedy nudged me. I looked up in time to see Dr. Harris reach into his inside breast pocket again and quietly slip out a package much like that which we had already seen him hand to Marie at the Futurist. Ike took it, looked at it a moment with some satisfaction, then stuffed it down carefully into the right-hand outside pocket of his coat.

"I wonder what that is that Harris seems to be passing out to them?" mused Craig.

"Drugs, perhaps," I ventured offhand.

"Maybe. I'd like to know for certain."

Just then Harris and Ike rose and walked down on the other side of the place toward the door. Kennedy turned his head so that even if they should look in our direction they would not see his face. I did the same. Fortunately neither seemed interested in the other occupants. Harris having evidently fulfilled his mission, whether of delivering the package or receiving news which Ike seemed to be pouring into his ear, had but one thought, to escape from a place which was evidently distasteful to him. At the door they paused for a moment and spoke with the proprietor. He nodded reassuringly once or twice to Dr. Harris, much to the relief, I thought, of that gentleman.

Kennedy was chafing under the restraint which kept him in the background and prevented any of his wizardry of mechanical eavesdropping. I fancied that his roving eye was considering various means of utilizing his seemingly inexhaustible ingenuity if occasion should arise.

At last Harris managed to shake hands good-bye and disappeared up the steps to the sidewalk still followed by Ike.

Kennedy leaned over and looked the "dip" sitting alone back of us squarely in the face.

"Would you like to make twenty-five dollars--just like that?" he asked with a quick gesture that accorded very well with the slang.

The man looked at him very suspiciously, as if considering what kind of new game this was.

"That was your gun moll who just went out, wasn't it?" pursued Kennedy with assurance.

"Aw, come off. Whatyer givin' us?" responded the man half angrily.

"Don't stall. I know. I'm not one of the bulls, either. It's just a plain proposition. Will you or won't you take twenty-five of easy money?"

Kennedy's manner seemed to mystify him. For a moment he looked us over, then seemed to decide that we were all right.

"How?" he asked in a harsh but not wholly ungracious whisper. "I'll tip yer off if the boss is lookin'. He don't like no frame- ups in here."

"You saw Ike the Dropper go out with that man?"

"The guy with the glasses?"

"Yes."

"Well?"

"The guy with the glasses gave Ike a little package which Ike put into the right-hand outside pocket of his coat. Now it's worth twenty-five beans to me to get that package--get me?"

"I gotyer. Slip me a five now and the other twenty if I get it."

Kennedy appeared to consider.

"I'm on the level," pursued the dip. "Me and the goil is in hard luck with a mouthpiece who wants fifty bucks to beat the case for one of the best tools we ever had in our mob that they got right to-day."

"From that I take it that one of your pals needs fifty dollars for a lawyer to get him out of jail. Well, I'll take a chance. Bring the package to me at--well, the Prince Henry cafe. I'll be there at seven o'clock."

The pickpocket nodded, slid from his place and sidled out of the joint without attracting any attention.

"What's the lay?" I asked.

"Oh, I just want that package, that's all. Come on, Walter. We might as well go before any of these yellow girls speak to us and frame up something on us."

The proprietor bowed as much as to say, "Come again and bring your friends."