There was no arguing with her, as she was drunk with the sense of her advantage, and Bob could only depart, his ears ringing unpleasantly with her threats.
As to just what effect her unrestrained spleen would have, or in which direction it might work the greatest damage, he was uncomfortably in doubt. For himself, he had no particular fears, but he dreaded terribly the effect upon his wife. It seemed to him, therefore, that the only way of gaining time was to pay Lilas enough to satisfy her. The more he thought of this the more imperative seemed the necessity, but when he ventured to submit the proposition to Merkle the banker curtly refused to entertain it.
Sick with anxiety, weak at thought of the peril to his wife's health, Bob determined to call upon Max Melcher and demand immunity upon pain of violence. Accordingly he turned his steps in the direction of the Metropolitan Club. But as he neared his destination he found a crowd gathered in front of the place; two patrol-wagons were backed up to the curb opposite the gambling-house; a line of policemen streamed in and out of the premises. Some of the officers were armed with axes and sledges, others carried burdens that evoked jeers and taunts from the bystanders.
Doubting the evidence of his own eyes, Bob elbowed his way closer. It was true! The Metropolitan Club, the oldest, the safest, the best-protected palace of chance in the city, was the object of a daylight raid. Its sacred doors had been battered in, and the fragments of furniture that came out gave evidence that the raiders had used their destructive weapons with unusual violence. Racks of multi-colored ivory chips, faro-layouts, splintered remains of expensive roulette, crap, and poker tables of mahogany and rosewood were flung carelessly into the waiting wagons and driven away. Bob Wharton's amazement was shared by the onlookers, for nothing like this had even been known in the Tenderloin.
Bob was not a dull young man. In time a light broke through his troubled mind, and he returned to Broadway, lost in thought. Evidently Merkle's plan was working.
CHAPTER XXVII
Adventures of moment had also fallen to the lot of Jimmy Knight on this day. Lacking the hospitality of Tony's back room, Jim had of late taken up loafing-quarters in a Seventh Avenue saloon, frequented by a coterie of parasitic young men who subsisted on the crowds which passed daily in and out of the Pennsylvania Station. On the very afternoon of the Melcher raid Jim was sitting at a table with one of these fellows, lending a willing ear to tales of easy money, when he felt a touch upon his shoulder and, looking up, found a plain-clothes man standing over him. The stranger wore no visible badge of authority, but Jim knew him instantly for what he was. In the background another person with the same indefinable stamp of the bull watched proceedings with an expressionless face.
Now Jim had the heart of a rabbit, and, being forever busy in "framing" some one, his first suspicion was that he himself was being framed. This suspicion proved all too correct. Never in his worst dreams had he experienced anything so distressing as what followed his arrest, for it seemed as if these officers cherished a personal grudge against him. They seemed prejudiced for no reason whatever, and they made their aversion patent in several professionally effective ways. Jim found his arms twisted backward and upward until his bones cracked and his joints came loose; with wrists pinioned behind his shoulder-blades and walking on his toes he was propelled into the street. Since this was his first arrest, he did not know enough to go quietly, and when one of his captors released his grip he tried to wrench himself loose. Cossacks could not mistreat a prisoner more brutally than these policemen mistreated poor, cringing, spineless Jimmy Knight. He reached the station-house more dead than alive, and then when he saw a loaded revolver removed from his own pocket he utterly collapsed. Weeping like a woman, he was led to a cell and left to meditate upon the inconsistencies and injustices of the Sullivan law.
As the hours crept by and his efforts to obtain assistance proved unavailing he began to understand something of Young Sullivan's and Armistead's feelings. Then light came to him; he learned of the disaster to the Metropolitan Club and immediately lost faith in Melcher's ability to help him, with the result that when he was finally led to Inspector Snell's office for the third degree he "squealed" promptly. In his panic to save himself he volunteered even more of his private history than the Inspector desired to hear, and was only too willing to make known all of the facts of the Hammon case. Nor did he withhold the truth about the present attempt at blackmailing Bob Wharton and Merkle; the first question along this line served to unlock his lips, and he whiningly laid bare the entire conspiracy. It seemed, however, that his earnest desire to help the law was scarcely appreciated, for even after he had blindly affixed his signature to the documents which Inspector Snell placed before him he was led back to his cell.
Rules were far from strict at Lilas Lynn's hotel. The employees were not over-courteous at any time, and, although in theory callers announced themselves by telephone before going up-stairs, this was a custom generally honored in the breach. No question, therefore, was raised when a heavily built, capable-looking man, with large hands and feet, inquired for Miss Lynn's room-number and stepped into the elevator without declaring his business.