[CHAPTER XXX]
SAVING THE LEAGUE
By twos and threes the party drifted toward Davendorp’s resort. It had at various times been a dance hall, a hotel, a police headquarters, and at all times a resort for crooked gamblers. It had an evil notoriety, but though it had been frequently raided in the attempt to put it out of business, it had always bobbed up again under a new proprietor but with the same old shady clientele.
It was a rambling sort of structure, to which wings had been added at various times. The main floor was devoted to pool and billiards, and there were a large number of tables, for the place did a thriving business. There were few of the underworld who did not at some time or other frequent it.
The second floor was a shabby restaurant and saloon, with scores of tables for drinkers and card-players. On the third floor was a dance hall, and the fourth was reserved for the use of the proprietor and the inner ring of the gambling clique where they could lay their plots in comparative seclusion.
In the corner of this floor the largest room was located. There were several other rooms strung out in shambling fashion and more or less connected with each other, so as to afford facility for flight on the occasion of a raid.
On the night in question the large room held an assortment of men of hard faces that would have graced any Rogues’ Gallery. Many of them in fact had already achieved that undesirable fame, and there were others whose admission had only been deferred.
Joe and Jim were too well known to almost everybody in New York to venture into the place in their ordinary clothing and with their faces in full view. They would have been noticed at once, and their plans would have failed right then and there. They had secured, therefore, through one of the party who was an actor, some rough clothing and had had their faces touched up by his hand, so that, as he proudly said when he stood off and viewed his handiwork, their own mothers wouldn’t know them.
The rest of the party were not so likely to attract attention among the large crowd with which they mingled, most of the members of which were so intent on their own amusements that they gave but fleeting attention to anything or any one else.