XI
THE RASCON REPORTS
We found The Ship Café, which Brooks had already investigated, on a river-front street in the outskirts of the Greenwich Village section of the city.
"The Ship" was a disreputable-looking frame building, a tavern of several generations ago, once historically famous, but now, like a decayed man about town, relegated to the company of those whom formerly he would have scorned.
Not many months ago it had been a saloon. Now a big sign declared that only soft drinks were sold in it. Even that change did not seem to have done much for the respectability of the place. The neighborhood was still quite as tough and squalid and "The Ship," itself, with a coat of paint, had not become even a whited sepulcher.
Kennedy, Brooks, and myself entered and passed into a typical, low-ceilinged back room of the old days. There at a number of greasy, dirty round tables sat a miscellaneous collection of river-rats, some talking and smoking ill-favored pipes, others reading newspapers. I felt sure that they were drinking something other than soft drinks, and wondered whence the stuff had come. Had it been smuggled in on vessels from the near-by wharves?
We sat down and for some moments Brooks and I did most of the talking, being careful to cover ourselves and pose neither as detectives nor even as newspaper men, lest the slightest slip might excite suspicion among the evil-looking customers of the den.
We had been sitting thus for some time, Kennedy saying very little, when Brooks leaned over toward me and whispered, in reality to Kennedy: "The fellow I discovered—the one they call Number Six—has a room up-stairs. If we could only register here we might get a room—and a chance to search the other rooms."
Kennedy nodded non-committally, but made no effort to put the suggestion into execution, and I saw that he was merely waiting for something to turn up.
For almost an hour we remained talking at the table, endeavoring to ingratiate ourselves with the waiter of the place, a rather burly fellow, who seemed to regard us with suspicion as strangers. Yet, as long as we did nothing or asked nothing indiscreet our burly waiter seemed unable to do anything else than tolerate us.