IV
At five o’clock the following morning, the mother of Sergeant Alan Nevins was startled by the raucous ring of the door bell. Looking out of a front window, she saw a girl standing at her door. A moment later, Alan Nevins was being shaken out of a profound slumber. “Miss Cornell is at the door, Alan. Alan! Wake up!”
When Alan, dressed completely, up to and including the correct knot in his scarf, came down, the girl was waiting in his sitting-room.
“But my dear Marguerite,” he began.
“Miss Rita Daly, if you please,” she corrected. Then, “I’ve come to inquire whether your little raid of last evening was a success.”
“We didn’t get a blamed thing on anybody,” he confessed, dejectedly. “But do you know, Marguerite—”
“Miss Daly!”
“Do you know, Miss Daly,” fiercely — “that they could almost give you life for turning out the lights?”
“They could, Mr. Nevins, if they had caught me. I crawled out right through the legs of the fat cop at the front door — honest I did,” she smiled disarmingly. “I’ve come for my lesson.”
“Lesson?”
“My lesson in slang. First, what is snow?”
“Snow!” — he leaned toward her eagerly: “Then there was snow in that place last—”
“What is it?” she insisted.
“Drugs, in powdered form.”
“And what is a gat?” she asked. “And a goof, and a billy, and a cake-eater, and a sniffer, and a hard-boiled egg, and a finale hopper, and a belly-wash, and a wet-blanket, and a dumb-bunny. And what do you do when you pull in your ears, kid, you’re coming to a tunnel, and when you should hope to kiss a pig, and when you shake a wicked shimmy, and are paralyzed above the Adam’s apple?” She crossed her legs and smiled wistfully. “I hoid all dem woids las’ night at the dance and I dunno wotinell dey mean. See?”
Sergeant Nevins scratched his chin. “Five o’clock in the morning is hardly an opportune time, Mar — Miss Daly, for a les—”
“All right. I’ll find another instruc—”
“No! No!” he seized her hand and pulled her back into her chair. So the lesson commenced.
And when she was up on definitions, she once again smiled wistfully into his sleepy eyes, and said simply: “Now teach me to swear.”
He glared at her with all the dignity a man of twenty-five can put into a glare, but the smile did not fade from her face.
So he taught her.
V
Two nights later, Rita Daly, on her way home from the department store in which she worked, found Mr. Rudie Breen waiting on her corner.
“I missed you last night, Miss Daly,” he said. “I–I kind of owe you something for that stunt you pulled. Will you let me take you to supper?”
“Where would you — take—?”
“Well, personally, I lean to Chinese grub. But you can name the place—”
“A chop-suey joint it is,” said Miss Daly. “I won’t have to change costumes.”
She had guessed — and correctly — that Breen would sit in one of the private booths with her. And it was part of her scheme to encourage his friendship.
“Where ya hail from, Miss Daly?” asked Breen, after they had been served.
“Chicago.”
After a long pause, Breen leaned across the table. “Now look here — I got more than fat above my ears, and while I ain’t perfect, conceit ain’t none of my faults. So I ain’t believin’ you pulled that trick that saved me because you were head over heels in love with sincerely yours.” He lowered his voice. “I take it consequently that the dicks got something on you, or, that you were getting square with ’em for something that happened previously. Now which is it?”
Then, for the first time was Rudie Breen favored with a smile. “Listen, Mr. Breen, my quarrel with the cops is a private affair. That’s that.”
“I ain’t inquisitive, Miss Daly. When you say you got a quarrel with ’em, that’s enough for me.
Again a pause.
Then Rudie, “Where you workin’?”
“Stapleton’s.”
“Gettin’ much?”
“No!”
“Can you typewrite and stenographate?”
“Little.”
“H’m.” Breen took a morning edition of a newspaper from his pocket and passed it to Miss Daly. He pointed to a want-ad. “Now here’s a job for someone with — brains. Someone like you.”
Rita Daly read the advertisement. J. Stanley Bradshaw, Trinidad Building, Broadway, wanted a stenographer.
“What makes it such a good job?” asked Rita.
“Well — I happen to know — never mind how — that this J. Stanley is a tricky customer. He’s in the promoting game and he generally promotes thin air. Now a person workin’ on the inside might get the goods on him and—”
“Squeeze him a hit, eh?”
“You ketch on fast, Miss Daly.”
“Thank you. But without references, how could I get—”
“I’d fix that part — the references. Well?”
“Almost anything is better than a department store,” said Rita Daly...
The next morning, when Rita came out of her house, Rudie Breen handed her a white envelope. On her way downtown in the subway, she took the letter out of the envelope and read it.
It was typewritten on paper which bore the letterhead, Hygrade Novelty Jewelry Co., 111 Fifth Avenue. It assured “whomever it may concern” that Miss Rita Daly had worked four years as stenographer for the undersigned and had always given splendid and efficient services. Harold Creighton was the undersigned.
Rita smiled rather grimly as she replaced the letter inside the envelope. She had evidently rendered a great service to someone when she turned out the lights of the Bird’s-Eye and that someone — or perhaps someones — was repaying the favor.
J. S. Bradshaw, a tall, white-haired, black-eyed man, theatrically handsome, took on Miss Daly immediately after reading her letter of introduction. After some two weeks, he made her his private secretary.
So began the maelstrom of incidents which was to sweep the lovely Rita into the net of the most powerful crime-organization in the city.
VI
The Bradshaw Mines Co., so Rita learned, had gone into the business three months before she entered into the employment of the firm. On the strength of a preliminary report by experts that the company actually owned mines in Mexico and that the mines actually held silver, Bradshaw sold stock.
Then, after Rita was private secretary, she inadvertently opened a letter addressed to Bradshaw and marked personal. This letter was the final report of the experts. It informed Bradshaw that it was hardly worth while to push his project since the value of the silver deposits in his mines could not possibly exceed ten thousand dollars. And Rita knew that over eighty thousand dollars’ worth of stocks and shares had already been sold.
Bradshaw was not in the least disconcerted by the fact that she had read the discouraging report. He shrugged his shoulders, put the letter into his safe and remarked to her, “Well, that needn’t worry us any. We’ll go right ahead.” And he did.
Thus was Rudie Breen’s shrewd guess as to Bradshaw’s character verified.
Now, all of Rita’s actions thus far, had been merely a blind groping stumble along a path which she felt instinctively would lead eventually to the companionship of men and women who would not be strangers to The Mogul.The hit-and-miss method was necessary since she knew of no direct connections. For the present, the important thing was to become involved in criminal acts and to get an unsavory reputation. If she could not seek The Mogul, she could at least make it worth while for him to seek her.