And now he looked about him through half closed eyes. He was in a little compartment, whose doorway was a faded and stained hanging of flowered cretonne, and whose walls were but flimsy-boarded affairs that partitioned him off from like compartments on either side. It was very near to the pulse of the underworld. Above ground, opening on a street just off Chatham Square, Foo Sen’s, to the uninitiated, was but one of the multitudinous Chinese laundries in New York; below, below even the innocent cellar of the house, a half dozen sub-cellars were merged into one, and here Foo Sen plied his trade. And Foo Sen was cosmopolitan in his wares! Here, one, hard pressed, might find refuge from the law; here a pipe and pill were at one’s command; here one might hide his stolen goods, or hatch his projected crime, or gamble, or debauch at will—it was the entree only that was hard to obtain at Foo Sen’s!
Jimmie Dale’s lips twisted in a grim smile. The old days of Larry the Bat had supplied Smarlinghue with the means which, in the last six months, had been turned to such good account that the Smarlinghue of to-day was almost as fully in the confidence of the underworld as had been the Larry the Bat of yesterday. And yet there had been nothing! No clue! He had wormed himself again into the inner circle of crimeland; he lay here in Foo Sen’s to-night, as he had once lain in one of Foo Sen’s competitor’s dives as Larry the Bat, months ago, on the night the place had been raided—but there was still nothing—still no clue—only the shuffle of slippered feet, the stertorous breathings, a subdued curse, a blasphemous laugh, a coin ringing upon a table top, the murmur of voices, whisperings!
One might hear many things here if one listened, and he had heard many things in his frequent visits to these hidden dens of this lower world that shunned the daylight—many things, but never the one thing that he risked his life to hear—many things, from these friends of his who, if in Smarlinghue they but suspected for an instant the presence of Larry the Bat, would literally have torn him limb from limb—many things, but never the one thing, never a word of her—many things, the hatching of crime, as now, for instance, those muttering voices were hatching it from the other side of the partition next to his bunk. Subconsciously he had caught a word here and there, and now, without a sound, he edged his shoulders nearer to the partition until his ear was pressed close against a crack. It did not concern her, but he listened now intently.
“Aw, ferget it!” a voice rasped in a hoarse undertone. “Sure, I saw it! Ain’t I just told youse I saw Curley hand de dough over dis afternoon! Fifteen thousand dollars all in big new bills, five-hundred-dollar bills I t’ink dey was—dat’s wot!”
“How d’youse know it was fifteen thousand?” demanded another voice.
There was a short, vicious laugh; then the voice of the first speaker again:
“‘Cause I heard him say so, an’ de old guy counted it, an’ sealed it up in an envelope, an’ gave Curley a receipt, an’ tucked de green boys into de safe. Aw, say, dere’s nothin’ to it, I can open dat old tin box wid a toothpick!”
“Mabbe youse can, but mabbe de stuff ain’t dere now—mabbe it’s in de bank,” demurred the second voice.
“Don’t youse worry! It’s dere! Where else would it be! Ain’t I told youse it was near five o’clock when I went dere—an’ dat’s after de banks are closed, ain’t it? Well, wot d’youse say?”
“I don’t like pinchin’ any of Curley’s money.” The second speaker’s voice was still further lowered. “It ain’t healthy ter hand Curley anything.”