“Here you are!” he announced briefly.
Bookie Skarvan looked out—upon a very shabby perspective. With the sole exception of a frankly dirty and disreputable saloon, designated as “O'Shea's,” which faced him across the sidewalk, the neighborhood appeared to consist of nothing but Chinese tea-shops, laundries, restaurants, and the like; while the whole street, gloomy and ill-lighted, was strewn with unprepossessing basement entrances where one descended directly from the sidewalk to the cellar level below.
Bookie Skarvan picked up his hand-bag, descended to the sidewalk, paid and dismissed the chauffeur, and pushed his way in through the swinging doors of the saloon.
“I guess I ain't drinking—not here!” confided Bookie Skarvan to himself, as he surveyed the unkempt, sawdust-strewn floor and dirty furnishings, and a group of equally unkempt and hard-looking loungers that lined the near end of the bar. “No, I guess not,” said Bookie to himself; “but I guess it's the place, all right.”
He made his way to the unoccupied end of the bar. The single barkeeper that the place evidently boasted disengaged himself from the group of loungers, and approached Bookie Skarvan.
“Wot's yours?” he inquired indifferently.
Bookie Skarvan leaned confidentially over the rail, “I'm looking for a gentleman by the name of Smeeks,” he said, and his left eyelid drooped, “Cunny Smeeks.”
The barkeeper's restless black eyes, out of an unamiable and unshaven face, appraised Bookie Skarvan, and Bookie Skarvan's well-to-do appearance furtively.
“It's a new one on me!” he observed blandly. “Never heard of him!”
Bookie Skarvan shifted his cigar butt—with his tongue.