Phantom Wires: A Novel

by Arthur Stringer

  CHAPTER XX

  THE SPIDER AND THE FLY

  "And here's where we two hang out!" It was MacNutt who spoke.

  Frances Durkin was neither protesting nor struggling when he drew up infront of what she knew to be Penfield's lower gambling club. It stoodin that half-squalidly residential and half-heartedly commercialdistrict, lying south of Washington Square, a little to the west ofBroadway's great artery of traffic. A decorous and unbetraying door,bearing only the modest sign, "The Neptune Club," and a narrow stairwayleading to an equally decorous and uncompromising hall, gave no hint,to the uninitiated, of what the great gloomy walls of the buildingmight hold.

  But on one side of the narrow door she could make out an incongruouslyornate and showy cigarstore; on the other, an equally unlooked-forwoman's hair-dressing and manicuring parlor.

  In the one, indeed, you might sedately purchase a perfecto, and takeyour peaceful departure, never dreaming of how closely you had skirtedthe walls of the busiest poolroom south of all Twenty-third street. Inthe other you might have your hair quietly shampooed and Marcelled anddressed, and return to your waiting automobile, utterly oblivious ofthe fact that within thirty feet of you fortunes were being stillstaked and lost and won and again swept away at one turn of a wheel, orone stroke of a chalk on a red-lined blackboard.

  It was through the hair-dressing parlor that MacNutt led the dazed andunprotesting Frank, pinning her to his side by the great arm that was,seemingly, so carelessly linked through hers. He gave a curt nod tothe capped and aproned attendant, who touched a button on her desk,without so much as a word of challenge or inquiry. The machine-likeprecision with which each advance was watched and guarded, disheartenedthe imprisoned woman.

  "I'm boss here for a while, and I'm goin' to clean out the building, sothat you can have this little picnic all to your lonely!" remarkedMacNutt, as he pushed her on.

  A door to the rear of the second parlor swung open, and as she was ledthrough it she noticed that it was sheathed with heavy steel plating.Still another door, which opened as promptly to MacNutt's signal, wasarmored with steel, and it was not until this door had closed behindthem that her guardian released the cruel grip on her arm. Then hechuckled a little, gutturally, deep in his pendent and flaccid throat.

  "We're up to date, you see, doin' business in a regular armor-cladoffice!"

  Frank looked about her, with widening eyes. MacNutt laughed again, atthe sense of surprise which he read on her face.

  It was obviously a poolroom, but it was unlike anything she had everbefore seen. It was heavily carpeted, and, for a place of itscharacter, richly furnished. The walls were windowless, the lightbeing shed down from twelve heavily ornamented electroliers, eachcontaining a cluster of thirty lamps. These walls, which wereupholstered with green burlap, bordered at the bottom with a richfrieze of lacquered and embossed _papier-mache_, were divided intopanels, and dotted here and there with little canvases and etchings.On the east end of the room hung one especially large canvas, crownedwith a green-shaded row of electric lamps.

  MacNutt, with a chuckle of pride, touched a button near the door, andthe huge canvas and Bouguereau-looking group of bathing women paintedupon it disappeared from view, disclosing to Frank's startled eyes abulletin blackboard, such as is used in almost every poolroom, for thechalking up of entries and the announcement of jockeys and weights andodds.

  MacNutt pressed a second button, and the twelve electric fans ofburnished brass hummed and sang and droned, and filled the room with astir of air.

  "A little diff'rent, my dear, from the way they did business when youand me were pikers, up in the West Forties, eh?"

  Frank remained silent, as the bathing women, with a methodic click ofthe mechanism, once more dropped down through the slit in the pictureframe, and hid the red-lined bulletin board from view.

  "Gamblers, like us, always were weak on art," gibed MacNutt. "There'sDick Penfield, spendin' a hundred thousand a year on pictures an' vasesan' rugs, and Sam Brucklin makin' his Saratoga joint more like a secondSalon than a first-class bucket-shop, and Larry Wintefield, who knowsmore about a genuine Daghestan than you or me knows about a Morsesounder, and Al MacAdam, who can't buy chinaware fast enough! As forme, I must say I have a weakness for a first-class nood!" The womanbeside him shuddered. "That's all right--but I guess a heap o' thesepainters would be quittin' the profession if it wasn't for folks of ourcallin'!"

  Frank's roving but unresponding eyes were taking in the huge mahoganytable, in the centre of the room, the empty, high-backed chairsclustered around it, the countless small round tables, covered withgreen cloth, which flanked the walls, and the familiar Penfield symbol,of three interlaced crescents, which she saw stamped or embossed oneverything.

  He went to one of the five cherry-wood desks which were strewn aboutthe room, and still again touched a button.

  "Blondie," he said to the capped and aproned attendant who answered thecall from the hair-dressing parlors, "I want you to meet this ladyfriend of mine! Miss Frances Candler, this is Miss Blondie Bonnell,late of Wintefield's Saratoga Sanitarium for sick purses, and stilllater of MacAdam's Mott Street branch! Now, Blondie, like a good girl,run along and get the lady something to drink!"

  This proffered refreshment the outraged lady in question silentlyrefused, staring tight-lipped at the walls about her. But MacNutt, onthis score, made ample amends, for having gulped down one ominouslygenerous glass of the fiery liquid, he poured another, and stillanother, into the cavern of his pendulous throat, with repeatedgrateful smacks of the thick and purplish lips.

  "Now, I'm goin' to show you round a bit, just to make it plain to you,before business begins for the day. I want you to see that you're notshut up in any quarter-inch cedar bandbox!"

  He took her familiarly by the arm and led her to a door which, like theothers, was covered with a plating of steel, and heavily locked andbarred.

  "Necessity, you see, is still the mother of invention," he said, as hisfinger played on the electric signal and released the obstructing door."If we're goin' to do poolroom work, nowadays, we've got to do it bigand comprehensive, same as Morgan or Rockefeller would do their line o'business. You've got to lay out the stage, nowadays, to carry on theshow, or something'll swallow you up. Why, when we worked our lastwire-tapping scheme with a hobo from St. Louis, who was rotten withmoney, we escorted him, on two hours' notice, into as neat a lookin'Postal-Union branch office as you'd care to see, with half a dozen fakekeys a-goin' and twenty actors and supers helpin' to carry off the act._That's_ the up-to-date way o' doin' it! That's how a man likePenfield makes this kind o' graftin' respectable and aboveboard andjust about as honest as bein' down in the Cotton Exchange!"

  He was leading her down a narrow hallway, four feet wide, with unbrokenwalls on either side of them. At the end of this still another armoreddoor led into a medium-sized room, as bald and uninviting as adentist's waiting-room. Here he led her to two horizontal slits in thewall and told her to look down.

  She did so, and found herself peering below, out into the well-stockedcigar-store, with a clear view of the entrance.

  "That's the conning-tower of this here little floating fortress,"chuckled MacNutt, at her shoulder. "This place you're in issteel-lined, and it would take three hours o' chisel and sledge workfor anybody, from Eggers up to Braugham himself, to get inside, eventhough he did find us out, and even though he did escape the sulphuricbottles between the bricks. Each one o' these little slits is in linewith a nice gilded cigar sign on the shop side of the wall. So no onedown there, you see, knows who's eyin' them. _We_ don't need anylookout, hangin' round the street-front and tippin' us off. Our mandown below sizes up everyone who comes into that shop. If he's allright, the button's touched, and the white light flashes, and he getsthrough. If he's not, the cigar clerk rings another button, just underhis counter, and we know what to do. If it's a case o' raid, ourlookout flashes the red light through each o' the four rooms, with onepush of the bu
tton, and then our second man throws back the switch andputs out every light in the buildin'. Then with another button push,the locks of every door are thrown shut, and they're four inches thick,most of them, and of good oak and steel. If the electricity shouldgive out, here, you see, are the hand bolts, which can be run out atany time. Then we've got a little mercerized steel office, which youwon't see, where our cashier and our sheet-writers work!"

  Frank said nothing, but her still roving eyes took in each detail, bitby bit, as she warned and schooled herself to note and remember eachdoor and room and passage.

  "And now, in case you may be lookin' for it without my help, I'm goin'to take you down and show you the way out. We go through this littlepassage, and then we take up this steel trapdoor. It's heavy, you see!Then we go down this nice little grill-work iron ladder--don't pullback, I've got you!--and then we open this next very fine steeldoor--so; and here we are in what you'd call the safety-deposit vaults.It's a mighty handsome-lookin' safe, all laid in Portland cement, asyou can see, but we're not goin' to tarry lookin' into that just now."

  He was already feeling his way ahead of her, and she was stilldesperately struggling to impress each detail on her distracted mind.

  "You see, if we want to get out, we go through this hall, and followthis little passageway, one end openin' up right under the sidewalk, inthe refractin' glass manhole. Leading to the back, here, is a secondpassage, all barred, the same as the others. So, if our front is shutoff, and they're hot on our trail, we shut everything after us as wego, and then open this neat little steel trapdoor, and find ourselvessmellin' fresh air and five lines full of washin' from that Dagotenement just above us!"

  "And why are you showing me all this?" demanded Frank.

  He looked at her out of his pale-green furtive eyes, and locked thedoor with a vindictive snap of the bolts.

  "I'll tell you why, my gay young welcher, for we may as well understandone another, from the start. Now that Penfield's shut up his Newportplace and is coolin' his heels up in Montreal for a few months, I'mrunnin' this nickel-plated ranch myself. And I've got a few old scoresto wipe out--some old scores between that enterprisin' husband o' yoursan' myself!"

  "What has he ever done to you? Why, should you want to punish _him_?"argued Frank, helplessly.

  "I'm not goin' to punish him!" declared MacNutt, with a little laugh."That's just where the damned fine poetic justice of the thing comesin. _He's goin' to punish himself_!"