The Life of the Party Part 4

with me."

"That's exactly what I desire to do," resumed the schemer. "I desire most earnestly to go with you."

"You're havin' your wish, ain't you? Well, then, the both of us should oughter be satisfied."

"I feel sure," continued the wheedling and designing Mr. Leary, "that as soon as we reach the station house I can make satisfactory atonement to you for my behaviour just now and can explain everything to your superiors in charge there, and then----"

"Station house!" snorted Patrolman Switzer. "Why, say, you ain't headin'

for no station house. The crowd that's over there where you're headin'

for should be grateful to me for bringin' you in. You'll be a treat to them, and it's few enough pleasures some of them gets----"

A new, a horrid doubt a.s.sailed Mr. Leary's sorely taxed being. He began to have a dread premonition that all was not going well and his brain whirled anew.

"But I prefer to be taken to the station house," he began.

"And who are you to be preferrin' anything at all?" countered Switzer.

"I'll phone back to the station where I am and what I've done; though that part of it's no business of yours. I'll be doin' that after I've arrainged you over to Jefferson Market."

"Jeff--Jefferson Market!"

"Sure, 'tis to Jefferson Market night court you're headin' this minute.

Where else? They're settin' late over there to-night; the magistrate is expectin' some raids somewheres about daylight, I dope it. Anyhow, they're open yet; I know that. So it'll be me and you for Jefferson Market inside of five minutes; and I'm thinkin' you'll get quite a reception."

Jefferson Market! Mr. Leary could picture the rows upon rows of gloating eyes. He heard the incredulous shout that would mark his entrance, the swell of unholy glee from the benches that would interrupt the proceedings. He saw stretched upon the front pages of the early editions of the afternoon yellows the glaring black-faced headlines:

WELL-KNOWN LAWYER CLAD IN PINK ROMPERS HALED TO NIGHT COURT

He saw--but Switzer's next remark sent a fresh shudder of apprehension through him, caught all again, as he was, in the coils of accursed circ.u.mstance.

"Magistrate Voris will be gettin' sleepy what with waitin' for them raids to be pulled off, and I make no doubt the sight of you will put him in a good humour."

And Magistrate Voris was his rival for the favours of Miss Milly Hollister! And Magistrate Voris was a person with a deformed sense of humour! And Magistrate Voris was sitting in judgment this moment at Jefferson Market night court. And now desperation, thrice compounded, rent the soul of the trapped victim of his own misaimed subterfuge.

"I won't be taken to any night court!" he shouted, wresting himself toward the edge of the sidewalk and dragging his companion along with him. "I won't go there! I demand to be taken to a station house. I'm a sick man and I require the services of a doctor."

"Startin' to be rough-house all over again, huh?" grunted Switzer vindictively. "Well, we'll see about that part of it, too--right now!"

Surrendering his lowermost clutch, the one in the silken seat of the suit of his writhing prisoner, he fumbled beneath the tails of his overcoat for the disciplinary nippers that were in his righthand rear trousers pocket.

With a convulsive twist of his body Mr. Leary jerked himself free of the mittened grip upon his neckband, and as, released, he gave a deerlike lunge forward for liberty he caromed against a burdened ash can upon the curbstone and sent it spinning backward; then recovering sprang onward and outward across the gutter in flight. In the same instant he heard behind him a crash of metal and a solid thud, heard a sound as of a scrambling solid body cast abruptly p.r.o.ne, heard the name of Deity profaned, and divined without looking back that the ash can, conveniently rolling between the plump legs of the personified Arm of the Law, had been Officer Switzer's undoing, and might be his salvation.

VIII

With never a backward glance he ran on, not doubting as a hare before the beagle, but following a straight course, like unto a hunted roebuck.

He did not know he could run so fast, and he could not have run so fast any other time than this. Beyond was a crossing. It was blind instinct that made him double round the turn. And it was instinct, quickened and guided by desperation, that made him dart like a rose-tinted flash up the steps to the stoop of an old-fashioned residence standing just beyond the corner, spring inside the storm doors, draw them to behind him, and crouch there, hidden, as pursuit went lumbering by.

Through a c.h.i.n.k between the door halves he watched breathlessly while Switzer, who moved with a p.r.o.nounced limp and rubbed his knees as he limped, hobbled halfway up the block, slowed down, halted, glared about him for sight or sign of the vanished fugitive, and then misled by a false trail departed, padding heavily with a galoshed tread, round the next turn.

With his body still drawn well back within the shadow line of the overhanging cornice Mr. Leary, coyly protruded his head and took visual inventory of the neighbourhood. So far as any plan whatsoever had formed in the mind of our diffident adventurer he meant to bide where he was for the moment. Here, where he had shelter of a sort, he would recapture his breath and rea.s.semble his wits. Even so, the respite from those elements which Mr. Leary dreaded most of all--publicity, observation, cruel jibes, the harsh raucous laughter of the populace--could be at best but a woefully transient one. He was not resigned--by no means was he resigned--to his fate; but he was helpless.

For what ailed him there was no conceivable remedy.

Anon jocund day would stand tiptoe on something or other; Greenwich Village would awaken and bestir itself. Discovery would come, and forth he would be drawn like a shy, unwilling periwinkle from its sh.e.l.l, once more to play his abased and bashful role of free entertainer to guffawing mixed audiences. For all others in the great city there were havens and homes. But for a poor, lorn, unguided vagrant, enmeshed in the burlesque garnitures of a three-year-old male child, what haven was there? By night the part had been hard enough--as the unresponsive heavens above might have testified. By the stark unmerciful sunlight; by the rude, revealing glow of the impending day how much more scandalous would it be!

His haggard gaze swept this way and that, seeking possible succour where reason told him there could be no succour; and then as his vision pieced together this outjutting architectural feature and that into a coherent picture of his immediate surroundings he knew where he was. The one bit of chancy luck in a sequence of direful catastrophes had brought him here to this very spot. Why, this must be West Ninth Street; it had to be, it was--oh joy, it was! And Bob Slack, his partner, lived in this identical block on this same side of the street.

With his throat throbbing to the impulse of new-born hope he emerged completely from behind the refuge of the storm doors, backed himself out and down upon the top step, and by means of a dubious illumination percolating through the fanlight above the inner door he made out the figures upon the lintel. This was such and such a number; therefore Bob Slack's number must be the second number to the eastward, at the next door but one.

IX

Five seconds later a fleet apparition of a prevalent pinkish tone gave a ranging house cat the fright of its life as former darted past latter to vault nimbly up the stone steps of a certain weatherbeaten four-story-and-bas.e.m.e.nt domicile. Set in the door jamb here was a vertical row of mail-slots, and likewise a vertical row of electric push b.u.t.tons; these objects attesting to the fact that this house, once upon a time the home of a single family, had eventually undergone the transformation which in lower New York befalls so many of its kind, and had become a layer-like succession of light-housekeeping apartments, one apartment to a floor, and the caretaker in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Since Bob Slack's bachelor quarters were on the topmost floor Bob Slack's push b.u.t.ton would be the next to the lowermost of the battery of b.u.t.tons. A chilled tremulous finger found that particular b.u.t.ton and pressed it long and hard, released it, pressed it again and yet again.

And in the interval following each period of pressing the finger's owner hearkened, all ears, for the answering click-click that would tell him the sleeper having been roused by the ringing had risen and pressed the master b.u.t.ton that released the mechanism of the street door's lock.

But no welcome clicking rewarded the expectant ringer. a.s.suredly Bob Slack must be the soundest sleeper in the known world. He who waited rang and rang and rerang. There was no response.

Eventually conviction was forced upon Mr. Leary that he must awaken the caretaker--who, he seemed dimly to recall as a remembrance of past visits to Bob Slack, was a woman; and this done he must induce the caretaker to admit him to the inside of the house. Once within the building the refugee promised himself he would bring the slumberous Slack to consciousness if he had to beat down that individual's door doing it. He centred his attack upon the bottom push b.u.t.ton of all.

Directly, from almost beneath his feet, came the sound of an areaway window being unlatched, and a drowsy female somewhat crossly inquired to know who might be there and what might be wanted.

"It's a gentleman calling on Mr. Slack," wheezed Mr. Leary with his head over the bal.u.s.ters. He was getting so very, very hoa.r.s.e. "I've been ringing his bell, but I can't seem to get any answer."

"A gentleman at this time o' night!" The tone was purely incredulous.

"Yes; a close friend of Mr. Slack's," a.s.sured Mr. Leary, striving to put stress of urgency into his accents, and only succeeding in imparting an added hoa.r.s.eness to his fast-failing vocal cords. "I'm his law partner, in fact. I must see him at once, please--it's very important, very pressing indeed."

"Well, you can't be seein' him."

"C-can't see him? What do you mean?"

"I mean he ain't here, that's what. He's out. He's went out for the night. He's ginerally always out on Friday nights--playin' cards at his club, I think. And sometimes he don't come in till it's near breakfast time. If you're a friend of his I sh'd think it'd be likely you'd know that same."

"Oh, I do--I do," a.s.sented Mr. Leary earnestly; "only I had forgotten it. I've had so many other things on my mind. But surely he'll be coming in quite soon now--it's pretty late, you know."

"Don't I know that for myself without bein' told?"

"Yes, quite so, of course; naturally so." Mr. Leary was growing more and more nervous, and more and more chilled, too. "But if you'll only be so very kind as to let me in I'll wait for him in his apartment."

"Let you in without seein' you or knowin' what your business is? I should guess not! Besides, you couldn't be gettin' inside his flat anyways. He's locked it, unless he's forgot to, which ain't likely, him bein' a careful man, and he must a-took the key with him. I know I ain't got it."

"But if you'll just let me inside the building that will be sufficient.

I would much rather wait inside if only in the hall, than out here on the stoop in the cold."

"No doubt, no doubt you would all of that." The tone of the unseen female was drily suspicious. "But is it likely I'd be lettin' a stranger into the place, that I never seen before, and ain't seen yet for that matter, just on the strength of his own word? And him comin'

unbeknownst, at this hour of the mornin'? A fat chancet!"