“It looked like this to me,” Mrs. Sweeny told him. “What do you think the Wop cared about Mr. Doyle? Nothin’. He wasn’t no fr’en’ of the Wop’s—just a’ acquaintance—a fr’en’ of a man that the sneakin’, lyin’ Sicilian didn’t like, anyway. Doyle was only a tool, that’s all. Nobody cared what happened to him.”
“I see,” said the Boarder.
“Well,” she resumed, “I fin’ly got settled down enough to tell Mrs. Big Joe the whole story. I didn’t hide a bit of it. But she didn’t have a word to say against me.
“‘I’d of did the same,’ she said. ‘A lady has got a puffec’ right to listen if she wants to. What do we have party lines for, if they ain’t to listen at, when a pusson ain’t got nothing else to do?’ she says. And I thought it was real lovely in her. Some folks is too narrow-minded to take her kind of a view of things.
“But she was full of the idee that we ought to find Danny and make him run away from that Whirlwind stuff. For the life of me, I didn’t know where to telephone to, for sometimes Danny left his pardner run the book and stayed in town, even when he was bettin’. And them times he was usually in a hotel room, playin’ poker and such a line of work.
“‘Be-lieve me,’ I said to Mrs. Big Joe, ‘I’m clean up in the air,’ I says, ‘for I don’t know where to look for him.’
“But she wanted to do somethin’.
“‘Belle,’ she says, ‘call up all the live dives along Broadway, close to Forty-second Street,’ she says, ‘and if he ain’t in one of ’em, we’ll get the track. Now begin.’ She takes the book from the table and hands it to me.
“For a while, it seemed as if the type just danced around, but soon I was able to read, and then I begun to call up numbers. My only hope was that, as Whirlwind, Junior, wasn’t to start till the fourth race, Danny might fool around with some of his pals till late, and then ride out to the track in a’ automobile. When I got that far in my reasonin’, I kept repeatin’ that word, ‘automobile, automobile, automobile.’ It struck me like a hunch, but it was several minutes before I knew what it meant. After that, I didn’t telephone no more places. I rung up Mrs. Gold Dollar Cohen.
“‘Say,’ I says, ‘somethin’ turrible has happened,’ I says, ‘and I must get to Danny,’ I says, ‘b’fore the fourth race. And will you lend me your car for a fast ride, and your choofer?' I says. Follerin’ which, I told her of the mean trick that the Wop had pulled on me and Danny. Mrs. Gold Dollar spoke right up, as soon as she seen what was happenin’.