Sweetwater slapped his trousers and laughed.
“I wasn’t born yesterday,” he cried; and following the officer’s directions, made straight for the Road. “Worse than the alley,” he muttered; “but too near to be slighted. I wonder if I shouldn’t have borrowed somebody’s old coat.”
It had been wiser, certainly. In Garden Street all the houses had been closed and dark, but here they were open and often brightly lighted and noisy from cellar to roof. Men, women, and frequently children, jostled him on the pavement, and he felt his pockets touched more than once. But he wasn’t Caleb Sweetwater of the New York department of police for nothing. He laughed, bantered, fought his way through and finally reached the quieter region and, at this hour, the almost deserted one, of the markets. Sixty-two was not far off, and, pausing a moment to consider his course, he mechanically took in the surroundings. He was surprised to find himself almost in the open country. The houses extending on his left were fronted by the booths and stalls of the market but beyond these were the fields. Interested in this discovery, and anxious to locate himself exactly, he took his stand under a favouring gas-lamp, and took out his map.
What he saw, sent him forward in haste. Shops had now taken the place of tenements, and as these were mostly closed, there were very few persons on the block, and those were quiet and unobtrusive. He reached a corner before coming to 62 and was still more interested to perceive that the street which branched off thus immediately from the markets was a wide and busy one, offering both a safe and easy approach to dealer and customer. “I’m on the track,” he whispered almost aloud in his secret self-congratulation. “Sixty-two will prove a decent quiet resort which I may not be above patronising myself.”
But he hesitated when he reached it. Some houses invite and some repel. This house repelled. Yet there was nothing shabby or mysterious about it. There was the decent entrance, lighted, but not too brilliantly; a row of dark windows over it; and, above it all, a sloping roof in which another sparkle of light drew his attention to an upper row of windows, this time, of the old dormer shape. An alley ran down one side of the house to the stables, now locked but later to be thrown open for the use of the farmers who begin to gather here as early as four o’clock. Nothing wrong in its appearance, everything ship-shape and yet—“I shall find some strange characters here,” was the Sweetwater comment with which our detective opened the door and walked into the house.
It was an unusual hour for guests, and the woman whom he saw bending over a sort of desk in one corner of the room he strode into, looked up hastily, almost suspiciously.
“Well, and what is your business?” she asked, with her eye on his clothes, which while not fashionable, were evidently of the sort not often seen in that place.
“I want a room,” he tipsily confided to her, “in which I can drink and drink till I cannot see. I’m in trouble I am; but I don’t want to do any mischief; I only want to forget. I’ve money, and—” as he saw her mouth open, “and I’ve the stuff. Whiskey, just whiskey. Give me a room. I’ll be quiet.”
“I’ll give you nothing.” She was hot, angry, and full of distrust. “This house is not for such as you. It’s a farmer’s lodging; honest men, who’d stare and go mad to see a feller like you about. Go along, I tell you, or I’ll call Jim. He’ll know what to do with you.”
“Then, he’ll know mor’n I do myself,” mumbled the detective, with a crushed and discouraged air. “Money and not a place to spend it in! Why can’t I go in there?” he peevishly inquired with a tremulous gesture towards a half-open door through which a glimpse could be got of a neat little snuggery. “Nobody’ll see me. Give me a glass and leave me till I rap for you in the morning. That’s worth a fiver. Don’t you think so, missus?—And we’ll begin by passing over the fiver.”