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 in front of what she knew to be Penfield's lower gambling club. It stood in that half-squalidly residential and half-heartedly commercial district, lying south of Washington Square, a little to the west of Broadway's great artery of traffic. A decorous and unbetraying door, bearing only the modest sign, "The Neptune Club," and a narrow stairway leading to an equally decorous and uncompromising hall, gave no hint, to the uninitiated, of what the great gloomy walls of the building might hold.
But on one side of the narrow door she could make out an incongruously ornate and showy cigarstore; on the other, an equally unlooked-for woman's hair-dressing and manicuring parlor.
In the one, indeed, you might sedately purchase a perfecto, and take your peaceful departure, never dreaming of how closely you had skirted the walls of the busiest poolroom south of all Twenty-third street. In the other you might have your hair quietly shampooed and Marcelled and dressed, and return to your waiting automobile, utterly oblivious of the fact that within thirty feet of you fortunes were being still staked and lost and won and again swept away at one turn of a wheel, or one stroke of a chalk on a red-lined blackboard.
It was through the hair-dressing parlor that MacNutt led the dazed and unprotesting Frank, pinning her to his side by the great arm that was, seemingly, so carelessly linked through hers. He gave a curt nod to the capped and aproned attendant, who touched a button on her desk, without so much as a word of challenge or inquiry. The machine-like precision with which each advance was watched and guarded, disheartened the imprisoned woman.
"I'm boss here for a while, and I'm goin' to clean out the building, so that you can have this little picnic all to your lonely!" remarked MacNutt, as he pushed her on.
A door to the rear of the second parlor swung open, and as she was led through it she noticed that it was sheathed with heavy steel plating. Still another door, which opened as promptly to MacNutt's signal, was armored with steel, and it was not until this door had closed behind them that her guardian released the cruel grip on her arm. Then he chuckled a little, gutturally, deep in his pendent and flaccid throat.
"We're up to date, you see, doin' business in a regular armor-clad office!"
Frank looked about her, with widening eyes. MacNutt laughed again, at the sense of surprise which he read on her face.