Part 12

This time Violet left the door open. She waited till the servant was out of earshot. Then she opened the door to the back stairway, which she herself had twice used to excellent purpose, and, finding nobody there, returned to Schultz.

"Got something for me?" she whispered.

But no haste upon her part would speed his Teutonic caution.

"I asked you," he said, as if he had not observed the little encounter through which he had sat serene and unconcerned, "whether you knew the man who had my job before what I had it."

"Yes--yes, I knew him. Quick!"

"And your name is Miss Violet?"

"You heard the girl call me that. Can't you hustle?"

"I don't want to hustle. If you're the girl I want, you've kept me waitin' here three mornings already."

"Well, I'm the person all right. You know that now. Oh, won't you please hurry? Don't you see how things are here?"

"I seen enough to make me want to go slow."

"You're going slow all right. What more do you want to know? I talked to the man you're telling me about and he said he'd see what he could do."

Her replies came with the rapidity of musketry, but Schultz spoke with stubborn deliberation.

"Was that all he told you?"

"Sure it was."

"Nothin' more?"

"No.--Can't you hurry? Can't you believe me?--He didn't say no more.--Quick!--Oh, yes, he said he'd talk to his girl Katie about me.--Quick!--Hush-t! Here she comes!"

Cassie's step sounded only a few yards away, but Schultz, now apparently satisfied of Violet's identity, displayed an unlooked for speed. The heavy hand that had been clumsily reposing in the bulging side-pocket of his coat shot free. Violet seized a fist that opened and withdrew as her own fingers closed on a bit of paper.

Cassie entered to find them the width of the kitchen apart. Violet was pouring herself a drink of whiskey into a soiled glass, and, if her hand trembled, the silk swathed back that was presented to the servant hid all tokens of nervousness.

She waited until Schultz had slowly drunk his brandy. She waited to exchange a few more words and to see him go. She even waited a little longer in order not to make her retreat too patently hurried and in order to subdue by threats and cajolery whatever suspicions might still be lingering in the black breast of the apparently penitent Cassie. But at last she made her way to her own room and unrolled the bit of paper.

It was a letter dated from Katie's address four days previous to the day of its receipt, and it was couched in stiff and formal phraseology. She read:

"Miss VIOLET,

"_Dear Miss Violet--_

"This is to inform you that I am Miss Katie Flanagan, particular friend of Mr. Hermann Hoffmann, who used to drive the brewery-wagon that left beer at your house. He told me about you and what you want, and I told a lady friend, Miss Carrie Berkowicz, who is coming to live with me. I have just got into a small job and Carrie has just got out of one, and we don't know of none yet for you, but we'll keep looking and sure will find one, and meantime we want you to come here and stop with us just as soon as you can beat it from that place where you are. Don't you lose your nerve, and don't bother to talk about things when you get here, because we know how it is. You needn't worry about how we feel, we have too many friends who had the same bad luck as you, and least said soonest mended, we think. So come right here first chance you get and stay as long as you like, and if we're not home when you get here sit on the step till we do get home, and if anybody asks any questions just say you're a friend of ours, because you are, and that's none of their business anyhow, and nobody won't bother you any more.

"Now keep your head cool and God bless you with best wishes!

"From your friend "MISS KATIE FLANAGAN."

Without daring to lessen her courage by giving way to the feelings that this letter stirred, Violet read it twice, tore off the address, concealed it in one of the "rats" on which the structure of her russet hair was founded, and then tore the rest of the epistle into small bits, which she flung out of the narrow space between the riveted shutters of her room. She was now almost ready to strike. In her captivity, she had, after the first shock, made it her business to learn what she could of those about her. She knew that Wesley Dyker had once been what was called a straw-bail man, an agent who, for a high consideration, provided bogus bail for such women as the police, to keep up appearances, were forced from time to time to arrest. She had been told that he was wont, for a still higher consideration, to appear at court for these clients, in the rôle of a defender of the wronged poor, and in a very different rôle in their behalf with the dispensers of justice to the underworld. She had gathered that his friendship with one political faction aided in securing Rose the chance to purchase that expensive police-protection toward which Angel, unknown to Dyker, assisted Rose through an opposing faction. And she believed that his ambition was now to gain a magistracy from which he could grant bail on bonds signed by his own servants, secure for prisoners the legal service of men that would return him a commission, and pronounce judgment or dispense mercy for the furtherance of his own fortune and the strengthening of his own power. Out of these threads of knowledge Violet resolved to weave the net in which to catch freedom.

That afternoon Evelyn informed her that Rose was still abed and had sent for her favorite, Wanda, to console her. This meant that she would not descend to the ground floor or be visible to any visitors before the next evening, and that the Englishwoman, promoted to temporary command, would have to pass the night in that reception of callers which necessitated the appearance of drinking much and the fact of drinking almost nothing.

"She does that every time she goes on a bust, my dear," complained Evelyn. "Of course she jolly well knows that she can trust me and that I have some manners too, but I wish she would remember that I also have a thirst and can't do without my drop of real liquor."

Violet's nerves tingled. With her best effort to bury all signs of her mounting hope, she ventured:

"I wish I could help you."

"You, my dear?" Evelyn's eyebrows raised and her contralto voice followed them. "Catch the madam letting anyone but me take charge! You know you're none of you allowed down in the front hall unless you're sent for. Things are ticklish enough, thank you, with that new girl upstairs."

It was almost the first mention that had been made to Violet of the latest captive since the recent day of Evelyn's exposition of the entire traffic. Violet had not dared to ask any more questions than those that she deemed necessary for the perfection of her own plans, and she dared ask none now.

"I do hate the job," Evelyn was continuing, "even if it does mean a few bits extra. Rose says that fellow Dyker is due to-night. She's not fit to see him above all men, and he's the one I most particularly hate to meet, because he was a friend of my friend the doctor and used to call with him now and again at my flat. I always fancy he's making comparisons under those narsty low lids of his."

Violet, in sudden reaction, felt choking with despair.

"I could see him," she said.

But Evelyn's honors sat heavily upon their possessor.

"You're not a trusty yet, my dear, by any manner of means," she responded. "No, no; you will go to your own room after dinner and stay there till you are wanted."

She tilted her sharp chin and strolled kitchenward for a drink; but, though she left behind Her a Violet discouraged, it was not a Violet beaten.

In fact, the girl made her own opportunity. Noticing that evening that Evelyn took up a dignified position in the parlor and had Cassie conduct all the guests thither, Violet quickly disposed of the first person that claimed her attention, and, having made her best toilet--having restored her cheeks to a resemblance of their pristine glow, coiffed her russet hair, and donned her best of linen--she descended quietly to the first landing on the stairway, there to take up her watch. Before she was again in demand, she saw the servant admit Wesley Dyker. She ran quickly downward and, just as Cassie stepped forward to precede him, brushed by him in the rosy twilight of the hall.

"Ask to see me," she whispered. "Ask to see Violet. Don't let on I told you. I've heard something you want to know about O'Malley."

Before the man's shadowy figure could come to pause, she had passed him and caught up to Cassie.

"Where have you been?" she asked. "I've been calling for you for five minutes. I need some more water in my room."

She turned and reascended the stairs, but her door had not long been closed before the servant was knocking upon the panel.

"Here's you' water, Miss Vi'let," said Cassie. "An' Miste' Dyker wants fer to see you daown in de back parlor."

Violet took the useless pitcher, made sure that the remnant of Katie's note was secure in its hiding-place, and hurried, with Cassie following, to the garish room in which Dyker was awaiting her.

He was seated on the lazy, pillowed sofa on which Violet had fallen asleep so soon after her arrival in this house. He was in evening-clothes that served him, on the East Side, much as the advertised portraits of certain patent-medicine makers serve their proprietors, the flaccid whiteness of his face still bearing traces of past beauty, the weakness of his mouth hidden by his crisp, short, brown mustache, and his heavy lids concealing the secret of his steel-gray eyes.

He half rose as she entered, but she motioned him to sit still.

"Hello!" she said, with the easy manner of the house, which always seemed to presuppose a previous acquaintance. "Have you ordered anything? I'm terribly dry."

He took her hand and caught her meaning,

"So am I, Miss Violet," he answered. "Let's have something."

Violet turned to the servant.

"Cassie," she said, "bring up a couple of bottles."

She waited for the door to close, and then sat down beside Dyker.

"Speak low," she cautioned. "That girl will listen if she can. You'll have to pretend to be making love to me."

Dyker regarded her with smiling approval. Her blue eyes shone with excitement and red blood fought through the rouge on cheek and fully ripe mouth.

"What you ask will be both easy and pleasant," he answered.

"No, no; none of that. This is no time for bluffing. Put your arm around my shoulder. That way. Now then, you heard what I told you in the hall?"

Dyker, with his type's disinclination to take seriously anything that any woman has to say upon serious matters, smiled assent.

"You seem to have been doing some listening yourself," he said, as his lingers tightened unnecessarily upon her shoulder.

"Yes, I did, and it's lucky for you I did it. Will you promise not to give me away?"

"Of course I promise."

"Not even to Miss Rose?"

"Not even to Rosie."

"And if I help you, will you do me a favor?"

"To look at you I should say that I'd do you any favor you asked, and do it without expecting anything in return."

His pale lips were curled in a half-scoffing smile, but Violet's next words brushed from his flaccid face all traces of amusement.

"You remember that night you told Miss Rose about what you wanted to get at the next election? You said you were afraid of O'Malley giving you the double cross."

Dyker stiffened.

"Did you hear that?" he demanded.

"Hush! Keep your voice down, or I won't tell you nothing of what I know. Remember you're supposed to be making love to me."

"All right, all right; but I want an answer to my question."

"Well, then, of course, I heard it. I was at the keyhole there--that's why I want you to whisper now.--And I heard more."

"What was that?"

"Wait a minute. You'll do me a favor if I tell you?"

"Anything," he smiled.

"But this is business. If I tell you something that it's worth your while to know, will you promise not to blow on me to Miss Rose?"

"I promise."

"And to do something more that I'll ask you?"

Wesley was now certain that he must not stick at promises.

"Surely."

"Then sit tight. I don't know as much about O'Malley as I pretended out there in the hall, but I do know about Miss Rose. I don't know whether O'Malley is goin' to double-cross you or not, but I do know that Miss Rose has given you the double-cross already."

She had thought that passion played a large part in his relations with her mistress, and she had counted upon awakening his jealousy. What, however, had far exceeded his affection was a poor pride of possession, and when Violet's words, in addition to touching his ambition, struck at that pride, they aroused an anger that was far more dangerous than any sense of love betrayed.

"What's that?" he demanded.

Two red beacons flashed into his pale checks, and his heavy lids, shooting upward for a single instant, disclosed hard, gray eyes gone hot and malevolent.

"Be careful. Speak low, I tell you," she cautioned; "and remember your promise."

"I don't believe----"

"Here's Cassie!"

They waited while the black opened the champagne and filled the glasses.

Violet brushed Dyker's hair over his eyes and laughed at the effect. Dyker caught the offending hand and kissed it by way of punishment.

"Cassie," he banteringly asked, "why didn't you ever tell me there was such a nice little girl in this house? I had to get the news from a friend on the outside."

He tossed the now grinning negress a dollar and, as soon as she had left them, dropped the farce as promptly as did Violet.

"I say I can't believe you," he resumed, the two spots of anger still glowering in his cheeks.

Violet knew that her whole hope rested upon her ability to force conviction.

"You've got to believe me," she said. "I'll tell you all that you told Miss Rose till I had to run away, that evening."

She did it, omitting scarcely a particular.

"That's right, ain't it?" she concluded.

"May be. But what does that prove? It only shows that you heard me."

"It shows that I can hear Miss Rose when she talks to somebody else. And I did hear her."

"Whom was she talking to?"

"The man you asked her about. To Rafael Angelelli."

"Well, but I told her to talk to him."

"An' she did it. But the first time I heard her was just before you told her to."

"That same night?"

"He was in the kitchen with her when you came in. Why, he's here all the time! I don't care what she pretends to you, she's stuck on him, an' every girl in the house knows it."

Rapidly, but as fully as she had sketched the dialogue between Rose and Dyker, she now described the first conversation that she had overheard between her mistress and the Italian.

"I'd come down to graft a drink," she said, "an' I heard them from the stairs. That's how, after he'd left, I came to listen to you too."

Dyker had quailed under the revelation, thus made to him, of political danger. He now quivered in anger at the comments upon himself, somewhat colored, that Violet had placed in the mouths of Rose and Angel.

"I'll find out about this!" he said, struggling against the desperate arms flung swiftly around him to keep him on the sofa. "Let me go! By God, I'll have that drunken cat down here and squeeze the truth out of her throat!"

All the caution, all the craft, all that she had counted upon as the real Wesley Dyker seemed to have escaped him. His voice was still low, but in every other respect he was a raging beast.

She fought with him, mentally and physically.

"You can't get anything out of her that way," Violet urged, as the man twisted under her strong hands. "Of course she'll say it's all lies. And you'd only be warning her. You don't want her to know that you know; you want a chance to block her game."

Partly convinced by this argument and partly subdued by the physical restraint that accompanied it, Dyker ceased his struggles.

"But I want to be sure," he muttered sullenly.

"You can't be sure by goin' to Miss Rose."

"Well, I ought to tell her." The high tide of his anger was slowly subsiding, and the rocky Dyker that she had built on was beginning to show its crest above the still hissing waves. "Look here, Violet," he said, "I'm sorry I behaved like such a fool. I beg your pardon, but you must see that I have got to put this thing up to Rose."

"You forget your promise."

"No, I don't, but I must make sure."

Violet thought rapidly.

"Listen," she said; "I told you I wanted you to do something for me an' you gave your word you'd do it.--Will you?"

"Of course I will, only I'm thinking a little about myself."

"This will help you, too."

"What do you want?"

Violet drew a long breath.

"I want you to go over to the avenue right away," she said, "and buy me a long cloak and a hat and bring them back, and then take me out of here without a word to anybody. You needn't walk more'n three squares with me, an' then I won't bother you no more."

Dyker drew away and whistled softly. His face grew quite composed again. The heavy lids fell over his eyes.

"So that's it, is it?" he asked.

"I want to get away," said Violet.

"And so you've cooked up this little mess of lies to make me the goat, eh?"

Violet felt the sands slipping beneath her feet. She laced her fingers together till the knuckles bruised her flesh.

"Don't do that," she pleaded; "don't take it that way; it's true, what I told you, every word of it. I only want you to keep your promise to me."

She stopped with a sob, and waited.

Wesley reached calmly for a glass of wine, drank it, put down the glass, thrust his hands deep into his trousers' pockets, and, stretching out his long legs, regarded, humming, the toes of his shining pumps.

"I don't believe you," he said at last.

"But, Mr. Dyker----"

"It's too thin."

"Even if it was a lie," Violet despairingly persisted, "you ought to help me. Do you know who I am?"

"That's the point."

"Do you know how I was brought here?"

"I can guess."

"I was tricked. The man said he wanted to marry me. I didn't know. I believed him. An' they beat me an' starved me and did things I couldn't think about an' couldn't help thinkin' about. An' all I want is just for you to do me this one little favor. I won't bother you. I won't blow on you----"

"What's that?"

"Oh, you know I wouldn't blow on you! I couldn't. I want to forget the whole thing. I've got friends to go to who'll get me work. I only want you to get me out of the door and safe away."

Like most men of his sort Dyker, although ready enough to make a living out of the results of cruelty, hated the sight of cruelty's self. The girl's words touched, though lightly, his selfish heart.

"But I can't afford to help you," he protested. "You see how I'm tied up here. I can't have Rose jump on me now."

"You know she's jumping on you already. You know she's knifing you in the back. The only way you can stop her is by using what I've told you."

"Of course," said Dyker in the tone of a man thinking aloud, "if she really was playing both ends against the middle, I could pull her teeth by going straight to O'Malley and telling him so."

Violet did not wholly understand this, but she agreed immediately.

"Of course you could," she said.

"And I suppose I could have her pinched then, if you'd testify against her. Would you do that? Would you go into court?"

Violet's fingers closed spasmodically.

"Just give me the chanc't," she said fervently.

"And of course there are other girls who've been in the same scrape here?"

"There's a new one upstairs this minute."

"There is? Um. That's good." He rattled the money in his pocket. "Only, look here," he persisted, "if you have been telling the truth, it will probably make me solid with O'Malley, but if you haven't, I'll go clean to smash."

Violet saw the turn of affairs and, with hope's revival, her mind cleared immediately.

"I haven't told you all," she said, "and I guess the rest will make you sure enough."

"There's more then?"

"A lot."

"What is it?"

"Will you help me out of here?"

"If you convince me.--Let's see; the shops around here are still open.--Yes, if you convince me, you'll be out of here in half an hour."

It was her only chance. She did not hesitate. She told him the whole of what she had heard of the later assuring interview between Rose and Angelelli.

This time he listened quietly, his face inscrutable.

"That all?" he asked when she had ended.

"That's all," she said.

"It's the truth?"

"Ain't I sayin' it proof that it's true? How could I make it up? I don't know all that it means."

"You knew enough to pass it on to me."

"Lucky for you I did, too; but I don't know all it means--how could I?--and you do know, an' that ought to be proof enough that it's God's truth, Mr. Dyker."

She stopped. Her case was with the jury.

Dyker rose.

"Cassie!" he called.

Violet leaped to her feet and laid her hands on his arm.

"What are you goin' to do?" she whispered.

He silenced her with a gesture.

"What you want," he said.

Cassie put her black head in at the door.

"Cassie," he continued, flipping the maid another dollar, "I'm a little off my feed. I'm going to the drugstore on the corner and get fixed up."

"Thank you, Miste' Dyker.--Ah kin go fer you, Miste' Dyker," said the negress. "Thank you, sah."

"No, thanks, Cassie, I can go myself; I want the air. But you can do something else for me. You can just not let this girl run away from me. I know she would run if she could, but I like her too well to let her, so if anybody wants her, just you say she's in here and engaged for the evening by me. I'll be back in fifteen minutes."