Traffic In Souls Part 13

"All right, Jimmie. Beat it yourself."

Baxter turned around as Jimmie quietly slipped away. Baxter leaned over the table to smirk into the face of the young girl.

"Say, Miss Lorna, some of my friends are over in another corner of the room, and I'm going to speak to them. Now, save the next tango for me.

Mr. Shepard will fix it for you, and if you jolly him right you can get into his new show, 'The Girl and the Dragon,' can't she, Sam?"

"Where are you going?" exclaimed Shepard in a gruff tone. "You've got to attend to something for me to-night."

There was a brutal dominance which vibrated in his voice. Here was a desperate character, thought Burke, who was accustomed to command others; he was not the flabby weakling type, like Baxter and Craig.

"It's better for you to do it, Sam. I'll tell you later. Jimmie just tipped me off that there's a bull on the trail that's lamped me."

Burke understood the shifting of their business arrangement, but to Lorna the crook's slang was so much gibberish.

"What did you say? I can't understand such funny talk, Mr. Baxter. I guess I had too strong a c.o.c.ktail, he! he!" she exclaimed. "What about a lamp?"

"That's all right, girlie," said Shepard, as Baxter walked quickly away. "Some of his friends want him to go down to the Lamb's Club, but he doesn't want to leave you. We'll have a little chat together while he is gone. I'm not very good at dancing or I'd get you to turkey trot with me."

Lorna's voice was whiny now as she responded.

"Oh, I'm feeling funny. That c.o.c.ktail was too much for me.... I guess I'd better go home."

"There, there, my dear," Shepard rea.s.sured her. "You get that way for a little while, but it's all right. You'd better have a little beer--that will straighten you up."

Only by the strongest will power could Burke resist his desire to interpose now, yet the words of the men prepared him for something which it would be more important to wait for--to interfere at the dramatic moment.

"Here, waiter, a bottle of beer!" ordered Shepard.

Burke turned half way around, and, by a side-long glance, he saw Shepard pulling a small vial from his hip pocket as he sat with his back to the policeman.

"Oh, ho! So here it comes!" thought Bobbie. "I'll be ready to stand by now."

He rose and pushed back his chair. The waiter had brought the bottle with surprising alacrity, and Shepard poured out a gla.s.s for the young girl. Bobbie stood fumbling with his change as an excuse to watch.

Lorna was engrossed in the bubbling foam of the beer and did not notice him.

"I guess he's afraid to do it now," thought Bobbie, as he failed to observe any suspicious move.

True, Shepard's hand pa.s.sed swiftly over the gla.s.s as he handed it to the girl.

She drank it at his urging, and then suddenly her head sank forward on her breast.

Bobbie stifled his indignation with difficulty as Shepard gave an exclamation of surprise.

"My wife! She is sick! She has fainted!" cried Shepard to Burke's amazement. The man acted his part cunningly.

He had sprung to his feet as he rushed around the table to catch the toppling girl. With a quick jump to her side Bobbie had caught her by an arm, but Shepard indignantly pushed him aside.

"How dare you, sir?" he exclaimed. "Take your hands off my wife."

The man's bravado was splendid, and even the diners were impressed.

Most of them laughed, for to them it was only another drunken woman, a familiar and excruciatingly funny object to most of them.

"Aw, let the goil alone," cried one red-faced man who sat with a small, heavily rouged girl of about sixteen. "Don't come between man and wife!" And he laughed with coa.r.s.e appreciation of his own humor.

Shepard had lifted Lorna with his strong arms and was starting toward the door. Burke saw the entrance to the men's cafe on the right. He quietly walked into it, and then hurried toward the front, out through the big gla.s.s door to the street.

There, about twenty feet to his right, he saw the purring taxicab which he had ordered waiting for a quick run.

In front of the restaurant entrance, now to his left, was another car, with a chauffeur standing by its open door, expectantly.

Burke ran up just as Shepard emerged from the restaurant entrance. The officer sprang at the big fellow and dealt him a terrible blow on the side of the head. The man staggered and his hold weakened. As he did so Burke caught the inanimate form of the young girl in his own arms.

He turned before Shepard or the waiting chauffeur could recover from their surprise and ran toward the car at the right. The two men were after him, but Burke lifted the girl into the machine and cried to the chauffeur:

"Go it!"

"Who are you?"

"I'm Mr. Green," said Burke. The chauffeur sprang into his seat, but as he did so Shepard was upon the young officer and trying to climb into the door.

Biff!

Here was a chance for every ounce of acc.u.mulated ire to a.s.sert itself, and it did so, through the hardened muscles of Officer 4434's right arm. Shepard sank backward with a groan, as the taxi-cab shot forward obedient to its throttle.

Burke was bounced backward upon the unconscious girl, but the machine sped swiftly with a wise chauffeur at its wheel. He did not know where his pa.s.senger wished to go, but his judgment told him it was away from pursuit.

He turned swiftly down the first street to the right.

Back on the sidewalk before the restaurant there was intense excitement. Baxter, Craig and Jimmie the Monk had followed the artful Shepard to the street by the side door. They a.s.sisted the chauffeur in picking up the bepummeled man from the sidewalk.

"Say, Jimmie! There's somebody shadowing us. Get into that cab of Mike's and we'll chase him!" cried Baxter.

They rushed for the other cab, leaving Craig to mop Shepard's wan face with a perfumed handkerchief.

After the slight delay of cranking it the second car whizzed along the street. But that delay was fatal to the purpose of the pursuers, for ere they had reached the corner down which the first machine had turned the entire block was empty. Burke's driver had made another right turn.

Bobbie opened the door and yelled to the chauffeur as he hung to the jamb with difficulty.

"Drive past the restaurant again very slowly, but don't stop. Then keep on going straight up the avenue."

The chauffeur knew the advantage of doubling on a trail, and by the time he had pa.s.sed the restaurant after a third and fourth right turn--making a trip completely around the block--the excitement had died down. The pursuers had gone on a wild-goose chase in the opposite direction, little suspecting such a simple trick.

The taxicab rumbled nonchalantly up the avenue for five or six blocks, while Burke worked in a vain effort to restore his fair prisoner to consciousness.

The car stopped in a dark stretch between blocks.

"Where shall I go, governor?" asked the chauffeur as he jumped down and opened the door. "Is your lady friend any better, governor?"

Burke looked at the man's face as well as he could in the dim light, wondering if he could be trusted. He decided that it was too big a chance, for there is a secret fraternity among chauffeurs and the denizens of the Tenderloin which is more powerful than any benevolent order ever founded. This man would undoubtedly tell of his destination to some other driver, surely to the starter at the restaurant. Then it would be a comparatively simple matter for Baxter and Jimmie the Monk to learn the details in enough fullness to track his own ident.i.ty. For certain reasons, already formulated, Bobbie Burke wished to keep Jimmie and his gangsters in blissful ignorance of his own knowledge of their activities.