One Wonderful Night: A Romance of New York
instructions to the man in the inquiry office, and Devar tested the
realism of his appearance by disregarding the chauffeur of the
splendidly appointed automobile waiting at the exit. Walking up to the
car, he opened the door and said gruffly:
"Jump in, boys!"
The chauffeur wriggled out of his seat instantly, and leaped to the
pavement.
"Here, what the----" he began, whereupon Devar laughed.
"It's all right, Arthur," he said.
"What's all right? This car is here for Mr. Howard Devar," cried the
man angrily.
"Well, you cuckoo, and who am I?"
Something familiar in the voice caused the chauffeur to look closely at
the speaker, whom he had not seen for a considerable time except for a
fleeting glimpse on the arrival of the _Lusitania_ at New York that
afternoon. He was perplexed, but was evidently not devoid of humor.
"It's either you or your ghost, sir," he said, "and if it's your ghost
you must have been badly treated in the next world."
A roundsman was entering headquarters at the moment, and gave the
quartette a sharp glance.
"Here, Parker," said Steingall, "tell this man my name."
The policeman came up, looked at the detective, and laughed.
"This is Mr. Steingall, chief of the Detective Bureau," he said to the
bewildered driver, who resumed charge of the car without further ado,
but nevertheless remained uneasy in his mind. And not without cause.
He, poor fellow, all unconsciously, was now gathered into the net which
had spread its meshes so wide in New York that night. He could not
understand why his employer's son should be gallivanting around the
city in company with such questionable looking characters, even though
one of them might be the famous "man with the microscopic eye," but he
was far from realizing that he and his car would help to make history
before morning.
In obedience to orders, he ran along Grand Street, and halted the car
on the south side of W. H. Seward Park.
"Remain here, if we do not return earlier, till one o'clock," Steingall
told him, "and then run slowly along East Broadway to the corner of
Montgomery Street. We are going to Morris Siegelman's restaurant,
which is a few doors higher up, on the north side. If we stroll past
you, pay no heed, but follow at a little distance. Have you got that
right?"
"Yes, sir."
Devar was hugely delighted by the man's discomfited tone.
"Cheer up, Arthur," he said. "You'll be tickled to death to-morrow
when you read the newspapers, and discover the part you played in a big
news item."
"Now, don't forget to lurch about the sidewalk," was Steingall's next
injunction to the amateurs. "Think of all the bad language you ever
heard, and use it. We're toughs, and must behave as such. Can either
of you sing?"
"I can," admitted Curtis.
"That will help some. Strike up any sort of sailor's chanty when we're
in the restaurant."
Late as the hour, East Broadway was full to repletion with a
cosmopolitan crowd. It was a Thursday evening, and the Hebrew Sabbath
began at sunset on the following day, so the poor Jews of the quarter
were out in their thousands, either buying provisions for the coming
holiday or attracted by the light and bustle. Heavy looking Russians,
olive-skinned Italians, placid Germans, wild-eyed and pallid Czechs,
lounged along the thoroughfare, chatting with compatriots, or gathering
in amused groups to hear the strange patter of some voluble merchant
retailing goods from a barrow. From the interiors of tiny shops and
cellars came eldritch voices crying the nature and remarkable qualities
of the wares within. Every hand-cart carried a flaring naphtha-lamp,
and the glare of these innumerable torches created strong lights and
flickering shadows which would have gladdened the heart of Rembrandt
were his artistic wraith permitted to roam the by-ways of a city which,
perhaps, he never heard of, even in its early Dutch guise as New
Amsterdam.
The lofty tenement houses seemed to be crowded as the streets. Within
a square mile of that section of New York a quarter of a million people
find habitation, food, and employment. They supply each other's needs,
speak their own weird tongues, and by slow degrees become absorbed by
the great continent which harbors them, and then only when a second or
third generation becomes Americanized.
In such a motley throng four prowling stokers, ashore for a night's
spree, attracted scant attention, and Morris Siegelman's hospitable
door was reached without incident. A taxi-cab was standing by the
curb, and the driver, gazing at the living panorama of the street,
little guessed that he had changed garments with one of the
half-drunken firemen two hours earlier.
"Here y'are, mattes!" cried Steingall, joyously surveying a printed
legend displayed among the bottles of a dingy bar running along the
side of an apartment which had once been the parlor of a pretentious
house, "this is the right sort o' dope--vodka--same as is supplied to
the Czar of all the Roossias. Get a pint of vodka into yer gizzards
an' you'll think you've swallowed a lump of red-hot clinker."
Clancy hopped on to a high stool, and curled himself up on the rounded
seat in the accepted posture of Buddha, while Devar, who was by way of
being a gymnast, stood on his hands and beat a tattoo with his feet
against the edge of the counter. Not to be outdone, Curtis began to
sing. He had a good baritone voice, and entered with zest into the mad
spirit of the frolic. The song he chose was redolent of the sea. It
related a tar's escapades among witches, cruisers, and girls. Three of
the latter claimed him at one and the same time--so "What was a
sailor-boy to do? Yeo-ho, Yeo-ho, Yeo-ho!" The chorus decided the
point:
"Why, we went strolling down by the rolling,
Down by the rolling sea.
If you can't be true to One or Two,
You're much better off with Three."
Evidently, the roysterers' antics commanded the general approval of
Morris Siegelman's patrons, and loud cries of "Brava!" "Encore!" "Bis!"
"Herrlich!" rewarded Curtis's lyrical effort. Some thirty people or
more were scattered about the room, mostly in small parties seated
around marble-topped tables. Beer was the favorite beverage; a
minority was eating, the menu being strange and wondrous, and everyone
was smoking cigarettes. When Curtis received his share of the
poisonous decoction so vaunted by Steingall, he faced the company,
glass in hand, and saw Count Vassilan seated in a corner close to a
window. With him were a good-looking Italian girl and a youth, and the
three were deep in eager converse, giving no heed to the other
revelers, but rather taking advantage of the prevalent clatter of talk
and drinking utensils to discuss whatever topic it was which proved so
interesting.
Steingall's eyes carried a question, and Curtis shook his head.
Vassilan's male companion bore only the slight resemblance of a kindred
nationality to the men who committed the murder, while he differed
essentially from the treacherous "Anatole."
"I wish your best girl could see you now, John D.," whispered Devar,
who had just recovered from a violent fit of coughing induced by the
raw whisky which Siegelman dispensed under the seal of vodka. Curtis
laughed at the conceit, which was grotesque in its very essence. Wild
and bizarre as his experiences had been that night, none was more
whimsical than this bawling of a ballad in an East Broadway saloon
while posing as a sailor with three sheets in the wind.
"Mostly Hungarians here," muttered Steingall. "We seem to be in the
right place, anyhow."
"Let's eat," said Clancy suddenly.
Reflected in a cracked mirror he had seen a man and two women rise and
leave a table in the corner occupied by the Count. He skipped off the
stool, and made for the vacant place; the others followed, and Curtis
had several glasses raised to his honor as he passed through the
merry-makers.
Clancy noisily summoned a waitress, and ordered four plates of
spaghetti with tomatoes. He sat with his back to the absorbed party
beneath the window, and apologized with exaggerated politeness when his
chair touched that of the Italian girl, though his accent, needless to
say, was redolent of the East side.
"They do not come, then?" he heard Vassilan say impatiently.
"P'raps notta to-night," said the girl, "but you sure meet-a dem here,
mebbe to-morrow, mebbe de nex' day."
The Count tore a leaf from a notebook and scribbled something rapidly.
When he spoke, it was to the Hungarian, and in Magyar, but it was easy
to guess that he was giving earnest directions as to the delivery of
the note.
"Now would be a good time to raise a row if we could manage it,"
growled Steingall.
Curtis was toying with his fourth meal since sunset, and admitted that
he was ready for anything rather than spaghetti a la tomato.
"If there's enough varieties of Hungarians and Slavs in the street I
can start a riot in less than no time," confided Devar.
"How?" asked the detective.
"This way," and Devar began to sing. He owned a light tenor, clear and
melodious, and the air had a curiously barbaric lilt which, musically
considered, was reminiscent of the gypsies' chorus in "The Bohemian
Girl." But the words were couched in a strange tongue, sonorous and
full voweled, and the Hungarians in the room became greatly stirred
when it dawned on them that a semi-intoxicated American stoker was
chanting a forbidden national melody. Far better than he knew, he
sounded uncharted deeps in human nature. Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun
stated an eternal truth when he wrote to the Marquis of Montrose: "I
know a very wise man that believed that if a man were permitted to make
all the ballads he need not care who should make the laws of a nation."
Before Devar had finished the first verse people from the street were
crowding in through the open door, and flashing eyes and strange
ejaculations showed that the Czechs thought they were witnessing a
miracle. As the second verse rang out, vibrant and challenging, the
mob, eager to share in the interior excitement, rushed the entrance.
Many could hear, but few could see, and all were roused to exaltation
by a melody the public singing of which would have brought imprisonment
or death in their own land.
"Now for it!" roared Steingall, and over went table and crockery with a
crash. Of course, this added to the turmoil, and some women in the
cafe began to shriek. Not knowing in the least what was causing the
commotion, the crowd surged into that particular corner, and Steingall,
apparently frenzied, sprang to the window, opened it, and said to Count
Vassilan:
"Get out, quick! They'll be knifing you in a minute!"
The Italian girl screamed at that, so she was lifted into the safety of
the street. Vassilan followed, or rather was practically thrown out,
and the young Hungarian could have climbed after him nimbly enough had
not Curtis insisted on helping him, and, pinioning his arms, forced him
head foremost over the sill, but not so rapidly that Steingall should
be unable to "go through him" scientifically for the note.
"Be off, you two! Take the car and go home!"
It was no time for argument. Both Curtis and Devar read into
Steingall's muttered injunction the belief that the hunt had ended for
the night. They knew that the detectives could take care of
themselves, and they had scrambled through the window and made off
swiftly in the direction of the waiting automobile before the despoiled
Hungarian regained his feet. The hour yet wanted nearly ten minutes of
being one o'clock, so the chauffeur had not budged from his post in the
park. Devar told him to start the engine, and be ready to jump off
without delay. Then they waited, and watched the corner of the square