The police held the «Stovepipe» gang in perpetual suspicion and respect. As the nightingale's liquid note is heard in the deepest shadows, so along the «Stovepipe's» dark and narrow confines the whistle for reserves punctures the dull ear of night. Whenever there was smoke in the «stovepipe» the tasselled men in blue knew there was fire in «Hell's Kitchen.»
«Kid» Brady promised Molly to be good. «Kid» was the vainest, the strongest, the wariest and the most successful plotter in the gang. Therefore, the boys were sorry to give him up.
But they witnessed his fall to a virtuous life without protest. For, in the Kitchen it is considered neither unmanly nor improper for a guy to do as his girl advises.
Black her eye for love's sake, if you will; but it is all–to–the–good business to do a thing when she wants you to do it.
«Turn off the hydrant,» said the Kid, one night when Molly, tearful, besought him to amend his ways. «I'm going to cut out the gang. You for mine, and the simple life on the side. I'll tell you, Moll—I'll get work; and in a year we'll get married. I'll do it for you. We'll get a flat and a flute, and a sewing machine and a rubber plant and live as honest as we can.»
«Oh, Kid,» sighed Molly, wiping the powder off his shoulder with her handkerchief, «I'd rather hear you say that than to own all of New York. And we can be happy on so little!»
The Kid looked down at his speckless cuffs and shining patent leathers with a suspicion of melancholy.
«It'll hurt hardest in the rags department,» said he. «I've kind of always liked to rig out swell when I could. You know how I hate cheap things, Moll. This suit set me back sixty–five. Anything in the wearing apparel line has got to be just so, or it's to the misfit parlors for it, for mine. If I work I won't have so much coin to hand over to the little man with the big shears.»
«Never mind, Kid. I'll like you just as much in a blue jumper as I would in a red automobile.»
Before the Kid had grown large enough to knock out his father he had been compelled to learn the plumber's art. So now back to this honorable and useful profession he returned. But it was as an assistant that he engaged himself; and it is the master plumber and not the assistant, who wears diamonds as large as hailstones and looks contemptuously upon the marble colonnades of Senator Clark's mansion.
Eight months went by as smoothly and surely as though they had «elapsed» on a theater program. The Kid worked away at his pipes and solder with no symptoms of backsliding. The Stovepipe gang continued its piracy on the high avenues, cracked policemen's heads, held up late travelers, invented new methods of peaceful plundering, copied Fifth avenue's cut of clothes and neckwear fancies and comported itself according to its lawless bylaws. But the Kid stood firm and faithful to his Molly, even though the polish was gone from his fingernails and it took him 15 minutes to tie his purple silk ascot so that the worn places would not show.
One evening he brought a mysterious bundle with him to Molly's house.
«Open that, Moll!» he said in his large, quiet way. «It's for you.»
Molly's eager fingers tore off the wrappings. She shrieked aloud, and in rushed a sprinkling of little McKeevers, and Ma McKeever, dishwashy, but an undeniable relative of the late Mrs. Eve.
Again Molly shrieked, and something dark and long and sinuous flew and enveloped her neck like an anaconda.
«Russian sables,» said the Kid, pridefully, enjoying the sight of Molly's round cheek against the clinging fur. «The real thing. They don't grow anything in Russia too good for you, Moll.»
Molly plunged her hands into the muff, overturned a row of the family infants and flew to the mirror. Hint for the beauty column. To make bright eyes, rosy checks and a bewitching smile: Recipe—one set Russian sables. Apply.
When they were alone Molly became aware of a small cake of the ice of common sense floating down the full tide of her happiness.
«You're a bird, all right, Kid,» she admitted gratefully. «I never had any furs on before in my life. But ain't Russian sables awful expensive? Seems to me I've heard they were.»
«Have I ever chucked any bargain–sale stuff at you, Moll?» asked the Kid, with calm dignity. «Did you ever notice me leaning on the remnant counter or peering in the window of the five–and–ten? Call that scarf $250 and the muff $175 and you won't make any mistake about the price of Russian sables. The swell goods for me. Say, they look fine on you, Moll.»
Molly hugged the sables to her bosom in rapture. And then her smile went away little by little, and she looked the Kid straight in the eye sadly and steadily.
He knew what every look of hers meant; and he laughed with a faint flush upon his face.
«Cut it out,» he said, with affectionate roughness. «I told you I was done with that. I bought 'em and paid for 'em, all right, with my own money.»
«Out of the money you worked for, Kid? Out of $75 a month?»
«Sure. I been saving up.»
«Let's see—saved $425 in eight months, Kid?»
«Ah, let up,» said the Kid, with some heat. «I had some money when I went to work. Do you think I've been holding 'em up again? I told you I'd quit. They're paid for on the square. Put 'em on and come out for a walk.»
Molly calmed her doubts. Sables are soothing. Proud as a queen she went forth in the streets at the Kid's side. In all that region of low–lying streets Russian sables had never been seen before. The word sped, and doors and windows blossomed with heads eager to see the swell furs Kid Brady had given his girl. All down the street there were «Oh's» and «Ah's» and the reported fabulous sum paid for the sables was passed from lip to lip, increasing as it went. At her right elbow sauntered the Kid with the air of princes. Work had not diminished his love of pomp and show and his passion for the costly and genuine. On a corner they saw a group of the Stovepipe Gang loafing, immaculate. They raised their hats to the Kid's girl and went on with their calm, unaccented palaver.
Three blocks behind the admired couple strolled Detective Ransom, of the Central office. Ransom was the only detective on the force who could walk abroad with safety in the Stovepipe district. He was fair dealing and unafraid and went there with the hypothesis that the inhabitants were human. Many liked him, and now and then one would tip off to him something that he was looking for.
«What's the excitement down the street?» asked Ransom of a pale youth in a red sweater.
«Dey're out rubberin' at a set of buffalo robes Kid Brady staked his girl to,» answered the youth. «Some say he paid $900 for de skins. Dey're swell all right enough.»
«I hear Brady has been working at his old trade for nearly a year,» said the detective. «He doesn't travel with the gang any more, does he?»
«He's workin', all right,» said the red sweater, «but—say, sport, are you trailin' anything in the fur line? A job in a plumbin' shop don' match wid dem skins de Kid's girl's got on.»
Ransom overtook the strolling couple on an empty street near the river bank. He touched the Kid's arm from behind.
«Let me see you a moment, Brady,» he said, quietly. His eye rested for a second on the long fur scarf thrown stylishly back over Molly's left shoulder. The Kid, with his old–time police hating frown on his face, stepped a yard or two aside with the detective.
«Did you go to Mrs. Hethcote's on West 7—th street yesterday to fix a leaky water pipe?» asked Ransom.
«I did,» said the Kid. «What of it?»
«The lady's $1,000 set of Russian sables went out of the house about the same time you did. The description fits the ones this lady has on.»