Cast Adrift Part 23

And he did let it alone. He had a wife and three little children, and couldn't afford to lose his place. So he minded his own business, and let it alone.

Pinky and her friend entered this small third-story back room. Behind a narrow, unpainted counter, having a desk at one end, stood a middle-aged man, with dark, restless eyes that rarely looked you in the face. He wore a thick but rather closely-cut beard and moustache. The police knew him very well; so did the criminal lawyers, when he happened to come in their way; so did the officials of two or three State prisons in which he had served out partial sentences. He was too valuable to political "rings" and a.s.sociations antagonistic to moral and social well-being to be left idle in the cell of a penitentiary for the whole term of a commitment. Politicians have great influence, and governors are human.

On the walls of the room were pasted a few pictures cut from the ill.u.s.trated papers, some of them portraits of leading politicians, and some of them portraits of noted pugilists and sporting-men. The picture of a certain judge, who had made himself obnoxious to the fraternity of criminals by his severe sentences, was turned upside down. There was neither table nor chair in the room.

The woman in black had pa.s.sed in just before the girls, and was waiting her turn to examine the drawn numbers. She had not tasted food since the day before, having ventured her only dime on a policy, and was feeling strangely faint and bewildered. She did not have to wait long. It was the old story. Her combination had not come out, and she was starving.

As she moved back toward the door she staggered a little. Pinky, who had become curious about her, noticed this, and watched her as she went out.

"It's about up with the old lady, I guess," she said to her companion, with an unfeeling laugh.

And she was right. On the next morning the poor old woman was found dead in her room, and those who prepared her for burial said that she was wasted to a skeleton. She had, in fact, starved herself in her infatuation, spending day after day in policies what she should have spent for food. Pinky's strange remark was but too true. She had become a policy-drunkard--a vice almost as disastrous in its effects as its kindred, vice, intemperance, though less brutalizing and less openly indulged.

"Where now?" was the question of Pinky's friend as they came down, after spending in policies all the money they had received from the sale of Flora Bond's clothing. "Any other game?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"Come along to my room, and I'll tell you."

"Round in Ewing street?"

"Yes. Great game up, if I can only get on the track."

"What is it?"

"There's a cast-off baby in Dirty Alley, and Fan Bray knows its mother, and she's rich."

"What?"

"Fan's getting lots of hush-money."

"Goody! but that is game!"

"Isn't it? The baby's owned by two beggar-women who board it in Dirty Alley. It's 'most starved and frozen to death, and Fan's awful 'fraid it may die. She wants me to steal it for her, so that she may have it better taken care of, and I was going to do it last night, when I got into a muss."

"Who's the woman that boards it?"

"She lives in a cellar, and is drunk every night. Can steal the brat easily enough; but if I can't find out who it belongs to, you see it will be trouble for nothing."

"No, I don't see any such thing," answered Nell Peter. "If you can't get hush-money out of its mother, you can bleed f.a.n.n.y Bray."

"That's so, and I'm going to bleed her. The mother, you see, thinks the baby's dead. The proud old grandmother gave it away, as soon as was born, to a woman that Fan Bray found for her. Its mother was out of her head, and didn't know nothing. That woman sold the baby to the women who keep it to beg with. She's gone up the spout now, and n.o.body knows who the mother and grandmother are but Fan, and n.o.body knows where the baby is but me and Fan. She's bleeding the old lady, and promises to share with me if I keep track of the baby and see that it isn't killed or starved to death. But I don't trust her. She puts me off with fives and tens, when I'm sure she gets hundreds. Now, if we have the baby all to ourselves, and find out the mother and grandmother, won't we have a splendid chance? I'll bet you on that."

"Won't we? Why, Pinky, this is a gold-mine!"

"Didn't I tell you there was great game up? I was just wanting some one to help me. Met you in the nick of time."

The two girls had now reached Pinky's room in Ewing street, where they continued in conference for a long time before settling their plans.

"Does Fan know where you live?" queried Nell Peter.

"Yes."

"Then you will have to change your quarters."

"Easily done. Doesn't take half a dozen furniture-cars to move me."

"I know a room."

"Where?"

"It's a little too much out of the way, you'll think, maybe, but it's just the dandy for hiding in. You cart keep the brat there, and n.o.body--"

"Me keep the brat?" interrupted Pinky, with a derisive laugh. "That's a good one! I see myself turned baby-tender! Ha! ha! that's funny!"

"What do you expect to do with the child after you steal it?" asked Pinky's friend.

"I don't intend to nurse it or have it about me."

"What then?"

"Board if with some one who doesn't get drunk or buy policies."

"You'll hunt for a long time."

"Maybe, but I'll try. Anyhow, it can't be worse off than it is now. What I'm afraid of is that it will be out of its misery before we can get hold of it. The woman who is paid for keeping it at night doesn't give it any milk--just feeds it on bread soaked in water, and that is slow starvation. It's the way them that don't want to keep their babies get rid of them about here."

"The game's up if the baby dies," said Nell Peter, growing excited under this view of the case. "If it only gets bread soaked in water, it can't live. I've seen that done over and over again. They're starving a baby on bread and water now just over from my room, and it cries and frets and moans all the time it's awake, poor little wretch! I've been in hopes for a week that they'd give it an overdose of paregoric or something else."

"We must fix it to-night in some way," answered Pinky. "Where's the room you spoke of?"

"In Grubb's court. You know Grubb's court?--a kind of elbow going off from Rider's court. There's a room up there that you can get where even the police would hardly find you out."

"Thieves live there," said Pinky.

"No matter. They'll not trouble you or the baby."

"Is the room furnished?"

"Yes. There's a bed and a table and two chairs."

After farther consultation it was decided that Pinky should move at once from her present lodgings to the room in Grubb's court, and get, if possible, possession of the baby that very night. The moving was easily accomplished after the room was secured. Two small bundles of clothing const.i.tuted Pinky's entire effects; and taking these, the two girls went quietly out, leaving a week's rent unpaid.

The night that closed this early winter day was raw and cold, the easterly wind still prevailing, with occasional dashes of rain. In a cellar without fire, except a few bits of smouldering wood in an old clay furnace, that gave no warmth to the damp atmosphere, and with scarcely an article of furniture, a woman half stupid from drink sat on a heap of straw, her bed, with her hands clasped about her knees. She was rocking her body backward and forward, and crooning to herself in a maudlin way. A lighted tallow candle stood on the floor of the cellar, and near it a cup of water, in which was a spoon and some bread soaking.

"Mother Hewitt!" called a voice from the cellar door that opened on the street. "Here, take the baby!"

Mother Hewitt, as she was called, started up and made her way with an unsteady gait to the front part of the cellar, where a woman in not much better condition than herself stood holding out a bundle of rags in which a fretting baby was wrapped.