"Housework? My dear, you overact your part. There's no housework done in those plices; but Wanda's won her w'y up in the world. Here she is at Rose's, if you please, though by what sort of housework I shan't tell you."
"I wish——"
"Not another word, my dear. Talking is a dry game. After all, drinking is the king of indoor sports. Come on down and rig a bit of fizz."
But Violet did not join in this predatory expedition. She forgot the plight of the new captive whose cries she had heard; she forgot even the details of Evelyn's just-related case; she remembered only so much of the general situation, now made clear to her, as bore upon her own position, and she came at last to a pitch of crafty courage that was far more promising of success than any of the hysterical determinations that she had previously experienced. Open revolt was futile; she would employ methods more circuitous, and would use whatever weapons were at hand.
It was, as Evelyn had said, a house of spies and eavesdroppers, and, at the next opportunity—which occurred that night—Violet sought again her secret place of vantage on the back stairs, and listened again to her jailer in conversation with the Italian. Her time, as it chanced, was brief, but she heard enough to know that Wesley Dyker was the subject of the conference, and that betrayal of some sort was its intent.
"Nothin' much," Rose was saying, in apparent answer to some question asked before the spy had taken up her breathless post in the darkened stairway. "I'll get more out of him later on."
"Yas," replied Angel, "but how mooch?"
"He said he thought he'd pull it off, all right, but wasn't sure of O'Malley. Said he'd got a bunch of kind words from up top, but was scared for fear O'Malley would knife him. He's a pretty wise guy for all he's a swell, and he's lookin' out for the double-cross from your crowd."
"He ast you to helpa keepa lookout?"
"Sure he did. Said if O'Malley's man put up a bluff at runnin' independent, I was to tip him off when O'Malley began registering votes here."