The hotel and cabaret keeper smiled a sickly smile and greeted us with a covert, questioning glance.
"This attack on Mr. Carton has unnerved me," he shivered. "If any one dares to do that to him, what will they do to me?"
"Don"t get cold feet, Haddon," urged Carton. "You"ll be all right. I"ll swing it for you."
Haddon made no reply. At length he remarked: "You"ll excuse me for a moment. I must telephone to my hotel."
He entered a booth in the shadow of the back of the cafe, where there was a slot-machine pay-station. "I think Haddon has his suspicions,"
remarked Carton, "although he is too prudent to say anything yet."
A moment later he returned. Something seemed to have happened. He looked less nervous. His face was brighter and his eyes clearer. What was it, I wondered? Could it be that he was playing a game with Carton and had given him a double cross? I was quite surprised at his next remark.
"Carton," he said confidently, "I"ll stick."
"Good," exclaimed the district attorney, as they fell into a conversation in low tones.
"By the way," drawled Kennedy, "I must telephone to the office in case they need me."
He had risen and entered the same booth.
Haddon and Carton were still talking earnestly. It was evident that, for some reason, Haddon had lost his former halting manner. Perhaps, I reasoned, the bomb episode had, after all, thrown a scare into him, and he felt that he needed protection against his own a.s.sociates, who were quick to discover such dealings as Carton had forced him into. I rose and lounged back to the booth and Kennedy.
"Whom did he call?" I whispered, when Craig emerged perspiring from the booth, for I knew that that was his purpose.
Craig glanced at Haddon, who now seemed absorbed in talking to Carton.
"No one," he answered quickly. "Central told me there had not been a call from this pay-station for half an hour."
"No one?" I echoed almost incredulously. "Then what did he do?
Something happened, all right."
Kennedy was evidently engrossed in his own thoughts, for he said nothing.
"Haddon says he wants to do some scouting about," announced Carton, when we rejoined them. "There are several people whom he says he might suspect. I"ve arranged to meet him this afternoon to get the first part of this story about the inside working of the vice trust, and he will let me know if anything develops then. You will be at your office?"
"Yes, one or the other of us," returned Craig, in a tone which Haddon could not hear.
In the meantime we took occasion to make some inquiries of our own about Haddon and Loraine Keith. They were evidently well known in the select circle in which they travelled. Haddon had many curious characteristics, chief of which to interest Kennedy was his speed mania. Time and again he had been arrested for exceeding the speed limit in taxicabs and in a car of his own, often in the past with Loraine Keith, but lately alone.
It was toward the close of the afternoon that Carton called up hurriedly. As Kennedy hung up the receiver, I read on his face that something had gone wrong.
"Haddon has disappeared," he announced, "mysteriously and suddenly, without leaving so much as a clue. It seems that he found in his office a package exactly like that which was sent to Carton earlier in the day. He didn"t wait to say anything about it, but left. Carton is bringing it over here."
Perhaps a quarter of an hour later, Carton himself deposited the package on the laboratory table with an air of relief. We looked eagerly. It was addressed to Haddon at the Mayfair in the same disguised handwriting and was done up in precisely the same fashion.
"Lots of bombs are just scare bombs," observed Craig. "But you never can tell."
Again Kennedy had started to dissect.
"Ah," he went on, "this is the real thing, though, only a little different from the other. A dry battery gives a spark when the lid is slipped back. See, the explosive is in a steel pipe. Sliding the lid off is supposed to explode it. Why, there is enough explosive in this to have silenced a dozen Haddons."
"Do you think he could have been kidnapped or murdered?" I asked. "What is this, anyhow--gang-war?"
"Or perhaps bribed?" suggested Carton.
"I can"t say," ruminated Kennedy. "But I can say this: that there is at large in this city a man of great mechanical skill and practical knowledge of electricity and explosives. He is trying to make sure of hiding something from exposure. We must find him."
"And especially Haddon," Carton added quickly. "He is the missing link.
His testimony is absolutely essential to the case I am building up."
"I think I shall want to observe Loraine Keith without being observed,"
planned Kennedy, with a hasty glance at his watch. "I think I"ll drop around at this Mayfair I have heard so much about. Will you come?"
"I"d better not," refused Carton. "You know they all know me, and everything quits wherever I go. I"ll see you soon."
As we drove in a cab over to the Mayfair, Kennedy said nothing. I wondered how and where Haddon had disappeared. Had the powers of evil in the city learned that he was weakening and hurried him out of the way at the last moment? Just what had Loraine Keith to do with it? Was she in any way responsible? I felt that there were, indeed, no bounds to what a jealous woman might dare.
Beside the ornate grilled doorway of the carriage entrance of the Mayfair stood a gilt-and-black easel with the words, "Tango Tea at Four." Although it was considerably after that time, there was a line of taxi-cabs before the place and, inside, a brave array of late-afternoon and early-evening revellers. The public dancing had ceased, and a cabaret had taken its place.
We entered and sat down at one of the more inconspicuous of the little round tables. On a stage, at one side, a girl was singing one of the latest syncopated airs.
"We"ll just stick around a while, Walter," whispered Craig. "Perhaps this Loraine Keith will come in."
Behind us, protected both by the music and the rustle of people coming and going, a couple talked in low tones. Now and then a word floated over to me in a language which was English, sure enough, but not of a kind that I could understand.
"Dropped by a flatty," I caught once, then something about a "mouthpiece," and the "bulls," and "making a plant."
"A dip--pickpocket--and his girl, or gun-moll, as they call them,"
translated Kennedy. "One of their number has evidently been picked up by a detective and he looks to them for a good lawyer, or mouth-piece."
Besides these two there were innumerable other interesting glimpses into the life of this meeting-place for the half-and underworlds. A motion in the audience attracted me, as if some favourite performer were about to appear, and I heard the "gun-moll" whisper, "Loraine Keith."
There she was, a pet.i.te, dark-haired, snappy-eyed girl, chic, well groomed, and gowned so daringly that every woman in the audience envied and every man craned his neck to see her better. Loraine wore a tight-fitting black dress, slashed to the knee. In fact, everything was calculated to set her off at best advantage, and on the stage, at least, there was something recherche about her. Yet, there was also something gross about her, too.
Accompanying her was a nervous-looking fellow whose washed-out face was particularly unattractive. It seemed as if the bone in his nose was going, due to the shrinkage of the blood-vessels. Once, just before the dance began, I saw him rub something on the back of his hand, raise it to his nose, and sniff. Then he took a sip of a liqueur.
The dance began, wild from the first step, and as it developed, Kennedy leaned over and whispered, "The danse des Apaches."
It was acrobatic. The man expressed brutish pa.s.sion and jealousy; the woman, affection and fear. It seemed to tell a story--the struggle of love, the love of the woman against the brutal instincts of the thug, her lover. She was terrified as well as fascinated by him in his mad temper and tremendous superhuman strength. I wondered if the dance portrayed the fact.
The music was a popular air with many rapid changes, but through all there was a constant rhythm which accorded well with the abandon of the swaying dance. Indeed, I could think of nothing so much as of Bill Sykes and Nancy as I watched these two.
It was the fight of two frenzied young animals. He would approach stealthily, seize her, and whirl her about, lifting her to his shoulder. She was agile, docile, and fearful. He untied a scarf and pa.s.sed it about her; she leaned against it, and they whirled giddily about. Suddenly, it seemed that he became jealous. She would run; he follow and catch her. She would try to pacify him; he would become more enraged. The dance became faster and more furious. His violent efforts seemed to be to throw her to the floor, and her streaming hair now made it seem more like a fight than a dance. The audience hung breathless.
It ended with her dropping exhausted, a proper finale to this lowest and most brutal dance.
Panting, flushed, with an unnatural light in their eyes, they descended to the audience and, scorning the roar of applause to repeat the performance, sat at a little table.
I saw a couple of girls come over toward the man.