CHAPTER IX.
THE STRANGER AT THE BAR.
Richard Treadwell sent a description of Maggie Williams’ missing sister to the police authorities, and also inserted a cautious but alluring personal in all the leading newspapers; still the missing Lucille did not return, and nothing was heard of her.
“My God, what it is to be poor!” Richard mused one morning as he walked up Broadway. “Why, the glimpses I get during my visits to Mulberry Street, of the trials and privations the poor endure, makes me heartsick. There’s Gilbert, blind and helpless, forced to spend his time on a Broadway corner begging his living. Sitting there waiting for people to give him pennies, and yet he doesn’t want to die. Why, he clings to life as if he had the wealth of Monte Cristo. And all those untidy, unhappy women down there, with peevish, crying, dirty children, live on in their garrets and cellars, for what?
“They have no pleasures, no happiness, no comfort, and they are raising families to live out the same miserable existence. Ugh!
“And there are Maggie and Dido! They live in that miserable, God-forsaken room, and haven’t a decent-looking dress to their backs. There are no drives, no jewels, no pretty dresses, no fond petting for them, yet, bless their brave hearts, they are more cheerful than most girls I know who live on the Avenue. Dido is happy now that she has work, and Maggie would be happy if it wasn’t for her absent sister. By Jove, I respect those girls. I admire their spirit, and if I don’t find Maggie’s sister it won’t be my fault. It’s just as easy to solve the mystery of two girls, as it is to solve the mystery of one,” he thought, with grim humor, as he had made no progress in either case.
“I haven’t the least doubt that Maggie’s sister, tiring of the poverty at home, found snugger quarters and is sticking to them. If I only knew what she looked like I would likely run across her in some of my rounds. New York is a very little place to those that go about. I’ll wager if I knew that girl, and she was running around, I’d meet her inside of three evenings. If I could only identify her——By Jove! I have it. I’ll get Dido, who knows the girl, and I’ll take her to the places where we are likely to meet the missing sister. Whew! Why didn’t I think of it before? If I don’t know all about her inside of a week I’ll think—well, I’ll find the little scamp, that’s all.”
Delighted with his new scheme, Richard cut across Twenty-fourth Street and went into the Hoffman House bar-room. Without stopping he went through to the office, where he wrote and sent a note to Dido, asking her to take dinner with him that evening. Then he walked back to the bar to congratulate himself—after the manner of his sex—for taking the road, whose way, he thought, led to success.
Richard stood before the famous bar and marvelled how daylight seemed to rob the room of half its fascination. The men of the world, the men of fashion, the outlandish youth of dudedom, the be-diamonded actor and bejewelled men whose modes of life would ill bear investigation, had all fled with the night.
The Flemish tapestry looked dull, and the exquisite Eve was a less glaring white, and seemed to have lost expression in a newfound modesty, and the nymphs and satyr looked dull and tired. How different from the hours when the gas brought beautiful colors into the cut-glass pendants on the chandeliers, and everything seemed awake and alive where now they slept. The bartenders looked dull and uninterested, and a man who stood alone at the bar drank as if he had nothing else to do.
He was a low, heavy-set man, dressed handsomely. He wore a black beard and mustache, and his small, black, bright eyes critically surveyed, across his high nose, the handsome and genial Richard. He set down an empty whiskey glass from which he had just been drinking, and, after taking a swallow of ice water, he remarked, in a voice perfectly void of emotion:
“I beg your pardon, but do you know that you are being ‘shadowed’?”
“I knew they were after me some days ago, but I thought they had given me up,” Dick said, laughingly. “What do you know about it?”
“I saw a man dog after you to the office when you first went through, and when you returned he came after you and went on out the side door. He’ll be on the watch for you when you go out,” he continued, in that even, passionless voice.
“You are very kind,” Dick said, gratefully, “to warn me of the fellow.”
“The game was too easy, if you didn’t know,” he said, with a malicious grin. “I only wanted to give the fellow some work—make him earn his money. You can both work at the same game now.”
“You are very kind,” Dick repeated, mechanically. He had a faint impression that the stranger had warned him of his followers more with malicious motives than with any feeling of good will, still the next moment he felt ashamed of harboring such a thought against the man.
“If you care to know the fellow, I’ll walk out with you and point him out,” the man offered gruffly, still with a gleam in his eyes which showed that the expected discomfort of the two men afforded him if not exactly pleasure, at least, amusement.
“Thank you. Won’t you join me first?” asked Dick. “What will you have? Whiskey”—to the bartender. “I am very much obliged for your kindness, and if I can ever be of any service to you, command me,” and the impulsive Dick took his card case from his pocket and handed one of the rectangular bits of pasteboard to the man just as they both lifted their glasses.
The stranger glanced at the name and turned ghastly pale. His glass fell from his nerveless fingers to the floor with a crash, and he leaned heavily against the mahogany bar.