"Yu're a fly cop, ain't yu?" he ventured, after a familiar inspection.
I smiled, and shook my head, somehow vaguely flattered.
"Aw come off, y'are too. I watched yu trailin' de guinea fer de las' four blocks."
"Shhh!" I whispered melodramatically.
"Sure t'ing. Yu can't fool me. Wot's de game, havin' yu're pal chase along so far behind?"
"You can search me," I said, frankly puzzled. "Is some one else following?"
"Surest t'ing you know. He's right on de job."
I looked the youngster over; he seemed to be telling the truth. But the detectives, I knew, were off the case; and besides them and Sheila, who could have the slightest interest in Carucci? He might, to be sure, have committed crimes of which I knew nothing; but then, the police could have known nothing further against him at the time of our encounter in the field, and he could hardly have done anything since. I glanced in the direction in which I had come, and saw the unmistakable jerky figure of Doctor Reid coming around the corner.
Without stopping for a second look, I plunged inside. It was one of these really enormous halls which are scattered through the lower East Side, places half saloon, half music-hall, where tables fill a great floor space, where dusty, dyed palm trees vaunt a degraded splendor about the walls, and upon a low stage at the far end of the room, rouge-smeared slatterns dance in dreary simulation of a long-departed youth and mirth. A very fat and flabby woman was upon the stage as I entered, and the smoky air quivered to her raucous singsong and the jangle of a battered piano. Carucci was seated near by, watching the stumbling fingers of the pianist with the greatest interest and amiability. It pleased me vaguely that the woman did not interest him. Even when she had finished her crime against harmony, and clambered from the stage to beg for treats about the room and so swell the bar receipts of the house, she only received a grinning and good-natured negative from Carucci. He seemed much pleased with the place, nodding and marking time to the music, and plainly puffed up at the grudging attentions of the waiter.
I had seated myself in an obscure corner near the door, where a person entering would pass me by unnoticed and where Carucci must have turned full about to see me. If Reid had really been following me, he would have appeared by this time; yet I could hardly imagine what other errand might have brought him to this part of town. If he had been following me, instead of Carucci—the very possibility made me angry. And just then Doctor Reid walked in at the door. There was another man with him, a very large man with a broken nose and what is known among the sporting fraternity as a cauliflower ear. They stood together, looking about them for a moment; and I bowed my head upon my folded arms. I did not want to talk to Doctor Reid in that place—or in any place, for that matter. When I looked up again, they were seated at Carucci's table, and the waiter was bringing up drinks for all three. They seemed to be talking with the greatest good fellowship. Reid, I noticed, barely tasted his drink, and watched his chance to pour the rest with a certain medical accuracy into the cuspidor beneath the table. I smiled to see how pleased he was with the way he was carrying off a perfectly evident part. Every minute or so he would reach forth his hand and give the Italian a couple of staccato pats in the region of his shoulder, pulling back his hand as quickly, and beaming the while with a radiance of stagy friendliness. The giant with him took things more as a matter of course. He wasted none of his drink, but drained each glass as soon as it was set before him, leaning between whiles with mighty elbows upon the table, his great disfigured hands cradling his brutal face. He seemed the last person in the world that a man of Reid's type would sit at table with. Perhaps Reid had reason to be afraid of Carucci and had employed this fellow as a sort of bodyguard.