XXXI
JOHN MARVEL'S RAID
Had any one of the many detectives who were engaged in all sorts of work, legitimate and otherwise, in the limits of that great city, been watching among the half-sodden group of loafers and night-walkers who straggled through the side street on which opened the "Ladies' Entrance" of Mr. Gallagin's establishment along toward the morning hours, he might have seen a young woman brought from the door of the "ladies' entrance," supported by two persons, one a man and one a woman, and bodily lifted into a disreputable looking hack of the type known as a "night-hawk," while the dingy passers-by laughed among themselves and discussed how much it had taken to get the young woman as drunk as that. But there was no detective or other officer on that street at that hour, and but for the fact that a short, squatty man, nursing a grievance against an old pal of his, and turning over in his mind the unexpected kindness of a young woman and a threadbare preacher in an hour when all the rest of the world—even his pals in iniquity—appeared to have turned against him, was walking through the street with a dim idea of beginning a quarrel with the man who had deserted him, the destination of the drunken woman might never have been known. Red Talman's heart, however, callous as it was, foul with crimes too many and black to catalogue, had one single spot into which any light or feeling could penetrate. This was the secret corner, sacred to the thought of his one child, a little girl who alone of all the world truly thought him a good man. For John Marvel, who had helped his wife and child when he lay in prison under long sentence, and had been kind to him, he entertained a kindly feeling, but for the young lady who had taken his little girl and taught her and made her happy when the taunts of other children drove her from the public school, he had more than a liking. She and John Marvel alone had treated him in late years as a man and a friend, and a dim hope began to dawn in his mind that possibly he might yet be able to save his girl from the shame of ever truly knowing what he had been.
So, when the man, with his hat over his eyes, who had helped put the young woman in the carriage, re-entered the house and the drunken woman was driven off with her companion, Red Talman, after a moment of indecision, turned and followed the cab. He was not able to keep up with it, as, though the broken-kneed horses went at a slow gait, they soon outdistanced him, for he had to be on the watch for officers; but he knew the vehicle, and from the direction it took he suspected its destination. He turned and went back toward Gallagin's. When he reached the narrow, ill-lighted street, on which the side entrance opened, he slipped into the shadow at a corner and waited. An hour later the hack returned, a woman got out of it and, after a short altercation with the driver, ran across the pavement and entered the door. As the hack turned, Red Talman slipped out of the shadow and walked up to the front wheel.
"Which way you goin'?" he asked the driver, who recognized him.
"Home," he said.
"Gimme a ride?"
"Git up." He mounted beside him and drove with him to a dirty saloon in a small street at some little distance, where he treated him and let him go. A half-hour afterward he rang the bell of the family hotel which I had visited with an officer the day before, and asked to see the woman of the house. She could not be seen, the woman said who opened the door.
"Well, give her this message, then. Tell her that Galley says to take good care of the girl that he just sent around here and to keep her dark."
"Which one?" demanded the woman.