John Marvel, Assistant Part 49

"She ain't here, lady. He'd never let me go up there if she was there.

But I'll help you find her if you'll tell me about her. You can go home now. I'll see you safe."

"I am not afraid," said the girl. "My carriage is not far off," and with a pleasant bow and a word of renewed supplication to the proprietor, whose eye was resting on her with a curious, malign expression, she turned and pa.s.sed back through the room, with her gaze straight ahead of her, while every eye in the room was fastened on her; and just behind her walked the squatty figure of Red Talman. A few doors off a carriage waited, and as she reached the door she turned and gave him the name of the girl she was seeking, with a little account of the circ.u.mstances of her disappearance and of her reason for thinking she might be at Gallagin's place. She held out her hand to the man behind her.

"I don't know your name or what you alluded to, but if I can ever help any of your friends I shall be very glad to do what I can for them."

"My name's Talman. You've already done me a turn."

"'Talman!' 'Red--'! Are you the father of my little girl?"

"That's me."

"What I said just now I mean. If you want help, let me know, or go and see Mr. Marvel, the preacher, on the West side--you know him--and you will get it. And if you can find anything of that poor girl I shall be eternally grateful to you. Good-night."

"Good-night, ma'am."

The man watched the carriage until it had disappeared around the corner and then he returned to the saloon. He walked up to the bar, and Gallagin advanced to meet him.

"If you are lyin' to me," he said, "you better not let me know, but you better git that gal out of your place and into her home, or the first thing you know there will be a sign on that door."

The other gave a snarl.

"I am puttin' you wise," said Talman. "There's trouble brewing. That's big folks lookin' for her."

"I guess Coll McSheen is somethin' in this town still. But for him you wouldn' be walkin' around."

"But for--! He's a has-been," said Talman. "He's shot his bolt."

"You ought to know," sneered Gallagin.

"I do."

"That the reason you take no more jobs?"

"It's a good one."

"Have a drink," said Gallagin, with a sudden change of manner, and he did him the honor to lift a bottle and put it on the bar.

"I ain't drinkin'. I've got work to do."

"Who's your new owner?"

"Never mind, he's a man. Send the gal home or you'll be pulled before twenty-four hours."

"You're runnin' a Sunday-school, ain't you?"

"No, but I'm done workin' for some folks. That's all. So long. Git her out of your house if she's here. Git her out of your house."

He walked down the room, and as he pa.s.sed a table the big man with the two women accosted him.

"Who's your friend?" he asked with a sneer. It was Wringman, who having finished his labors for the day in proving to famished strikers how much better off they were than formerly, was now refreshing himself in one of his favorite haunts, at his favorite occupation.

Talman stopped and looked at him quietly, then he said: "That man up there"--with his thumb over his shoulder he pointed toward the bar--"that man there has been a friend of mine in the past and he can ask me questions that I don't allow folks like you to ask me. See? I have known a man to git his neck broke by b.u.t.tin' too hard into other folks' business. See?"

Wringman, with an oath, started to get out of his chair, but his companions held him down, imploring him to be quiet, and the next moment the big bouncer from the bar was standing beside the table, and after a word with him Talman made his way through the crowd and walked out of the door.

The bar-keeper beckoned to his bouncer and the two held a muttered conference at the end of the bar. "He's gittin' too big for his breeches," said the bar-keeper as he turned away. "He'll git back there if he fools with me and pretty quick too."

x.x.xI

JOHN MARVEL'S RAID

Had any one of the many detectives who were engaged in all sorts of work, legitimate and otherwise, in the limits of that great city, been watching among the half-sodden group of loafers and night-walkers who straggled through the side street on which opened the "Ladies' Entrance"

of Mr. Gallagin's establishment along toward the morning hours, he might have seen a young woman brought from the door of the "ladies' entrance,"

supported by two persons, one a man and one a woman, and bodily lifted into a disreputable looking hack of the type known as a "night-hawk,"

while the dingy pa.s.sers-by laughed among themselves and discussed how much it had taken to get the young woman as drunk as that. But there was no detective or other officer on that street at that hour, and but for the fact that a short, squatty man, nursing a grievance against an old pal of his, and turning over in his mind the unexpected kindness of a young woman and a threadbare preacher in an hour when all the rest of the world--even his pals in iniquity--appeared to have turned against him, was walking through the street with a dim idea of beginning a quarrel with the man who had deserted him, the destination of the drunken woman might never have been known. Red Talman's heart, however, callous as it was, foul with crimes too many and black to catalogue, had one single spot into which any light or feeling could penetrate. This was the secret corner, sacred to the thought of his one child, a little girl who alone of all the world truly thought him a good man. For John Marvel, who had helped his wife and child when he lay in prison under long sentence, and had been kind to him, he entertained a kindly feeling, but for the young lady who had taken his little girl and taught her and made her happy when the taunts of other children drove her from the public school, he had more than a liking. She and John Marvel alone had treated him in late years as a man and a friend, and a dim hope began to dawn in his mind that possibly he might yet be able to save his girl from the shame of ever truly knowing what he had been.

So, when the man, with his hat over his eyes, who had helped put the young woman in the carriage, re-entered the house and the drunken woman was driven off with her companion, Red Talman, after a moment of indecision, turned and followed the cab. He was not able to keep up with it, as, though the broken-kneed horses went at a slow gait, they soon outdistanced him, for he had to be on the watch for officers; but he knew the vehicle, and from the direction it took he suspected its destination. He turned and went back toward Gallagin's. When he reached the narrow, ill-lighted street, on which the side entrance opened, he slipped into the shadow at a corner and waited. An hour later the hack returned, a woman got out of it and, after a short altercation with the driver, ran across the pavement and entered the door. As the hack turned, Red Talman slipped out of the shadow and walked up to the front wheel.

"Which way you goin'?" he asked the driver, who recognized him.

"Home," he said.

"Gimme a ride?"

"Git up." He mounted beside him and drove with him to a dirty saloon in a small street at some little distance, where he treated him and let him go. A half-hour afterward he rang the bell of the family hotel which I had visited with an officer the day before, and asked to see the woman of the house. She could not be seen, the woman said who opened the door.

"Well, give her this message, then. Tell her that Galley says to take good care of the girl that he just sent around here and to keep her dark."

"Which one?" demanded the woman.

"The one as was doped, that come in the hack."

"All right."

"That's all," said Talman, and walked off.

The self-const.i.tuted detective pondered as he pa.s.sed down through the dark street. How should he use his information? Hate, grat.i.tude, and the need for money all contended in his breast. He had long harbored a feeling of revenge against McSheen and Raffity and his understrapper, Gallagin. They had deserted him in his hour of need and he had come near being hanged for doing their work. Only his fear of McSheen's power had kept him quiet. The desire for revenge and the feeling of grat.i.tude worked together. But how should he use his knowledge? It behooved him to be prudent. Coll McSheen and Mick Raffity and Mel Gallagin were powerful forces in the world in which he moved. They could land him behind the bars in an hour if they worked together. At last he solved it!

He would go to a man who had always been kind to him and his. Thus it was, that just before light that morning John Marvel was awakened by a knock on his door. A man was below who said a sick person needed his services. When he came down into the street in the dim light of the dawning day, there was a man waiting in the shadow. He did not recognize him at first, but he recalled him as the man told the object of his visit at such an hour, and John was soon wide-awake. Still he could scarcely believe the story he was told.

"Why, she can't be there," he protested. "A friend of mine was there to look for her day before yesterday with the police, and she was not there."

"She is there now, and if you pull the place you'll get her all right,"