Part 7 (1/2)
That fetched us up Second Avenue, but there wasn't any conversin' done until we'd put fifty blocks behind us. Then I reckon the Boss asked the Lady Brigandess if she'd missed any meals lately. From the way he gave orders to steer for a food refinery she must have allowed that she had.
Not having time to be particular, we hit a goulash emporium where they spell the meat card mostly with cz's. But they gave us a private room upstairs, which was what we wanted. And it wasn't until we got inside that we had a full length view of her. Say, I was glad we'd landed so far east of Broadway. Post me for a welcher if she wasn't rigged out in the same kind of a chorus costume that she wore when we saw her last, over there in It'ly! Only it was more so. It was the kind of costume that'd been all right on a cigarette card, or outside a Luna Park joint, and it would have let her into the Arion ball without a ticket; but it wasn't built for circulatin' 'round New York in.
”Piffle! Piffle!” says I to the Boss. ”They'll think we've pinched her out of a Kiralfy ballet. Hadn't we better send for yer lady-fren's trunk?”
The Boss grinned, but he looked her over as satisfied as if she'd been dressed accordin' to his own water color sketches. She was something of a star, yes, yes! If you were lookin' for figure and condition, she had 'em. And when it came to the color scheme--well, no grease paint manipulator ever mixed caffy-o-lay and raspb'ry pink the way it grew on her. For a made-in-It'ly girl she was the real meringue.
”We'll see about clothes later,” says the Boss, and ordered up seventeen kinds of sckeezedsky, to be served in relays.
She brought her appet.i.te with her, all right, even if she had mislaid her suit case. And, while she was pitchin' into what pa.s.ses for grub on Second Avenue, she told the Boss the story of her life. Leastways, that's what it sounded like to me.
The way I gets it from the Boss was like this: Her father, the old brigand pantanta, couldn't get over the way we'd bansheed his bunch of third rate kidnappers with our tin armor play. He acc.u.mulated a sort of ingrowin' grouch and soured on the whole push because they wouldn't turn state's evidence as to who had given us the dope to do 'em.
The Lady Brigandess she had stood that for a while, until one day she gets her Irish up, tells the old man how she tipped us off herself, and then makes tracks out of the country. One way and another she'd heard a lot about America. So she takes out yellow tickets on a few spare sparks and buys a steerage berth for New York.
Well, she hadn't more'n got past Sandy Hook before a Malabisto runner spotted her. So did the advance man of another gang. They sized up the gold hoops in her ears, her real money necklace and some of the other furniture she sported, and they invited her home to tea. Just how the sc.r.a.p began or what it was all about she didn't know, so the story by rounds hasn't been told. The next thing she knew though, they'd hustled her into the Bend and bottled her up in that back room, but not before she'd done a little extemporaneous carvin' on her own account. I gathered that three or four of the Malabistos needed some plain sewin'
done on 'em after the bell rang, and that the rest wasn't so anxious for her society as at first. She'd been cooped up for two days when she managed to get hold of a Dago woman who promised to carry that cuff to the place where old Vincenzo had told her we hung out in New York.
”So far it's as good as playin' leading heavy in 'The Shadows of a Great City,'” says I, ”but what's down for the next act? Where does she want to go now?”
Say, you'd thought the Boss had been nipped with the goods on. He goes strawb'ry color back to his ears. Next he takes a look across the table at her where she sits, quiet and easy, and as much to home as Lady Graftwad on the back seat of the tonneau. She was takin' notice of him, too, kind of runnin' over his points like he was something rich she'd won at a raffle and was glad to get. But the Boss he braced up and looked me straight in the eye.
”Shorty,” says he, ”I want to call your attention to the fact that this young lady is something like three thousand miles from home, that we're the only two human beings on this side of the ocean she knows by sight, and that once she risked a good deal to do us a service.”
”I'll put my name to all that,” says I, ”but what does it lead up to; where do we exit?”
”That,” says the Boss, ”is a conundrum.”
”Ain't she got any programme?” says I.
”She--er--that is,” says the Boss, trying to duck, ”she says she wants to go with us.”
”Whe-e-e-ew!” says I, through my front teeth. ”This is _so_ sudden. Just tell the lady, will you, that I've resigned.”
”No you don't, Shorty,” says the Boss. ”You'll see this thing through.”
”But look at them circus clothes,” says I. ”I've got no aunts or grandmothers, or second cousins that I could unload a Lady Brigandess on.”
”Nor I,” says the Boss.
But he didn't look half so worried as he might. Say, when I came to figure out what we were up against, I could feel little cold storage whiffs on my shoulder blades. Suppose someone should meet you in the middle of Herald Square, hand you a ring-tailed tiger, and then skiddoo.
What? That would be an easy one compared to our proposition. It wasn't a square deal to shake her, and she'd made up her mind not to stay put anywhere again.
”Wait here until I telephone someone,” says the Boss.
”De-lighted!” says I. ”Better ring up the Gerry Society, too, while you're about it. They might help us out.”
The Lady Brigandess and I didn't have a real sociable time while the Boss was gone. I could see she was watchin' every move I made, as much as to say, ”You can't lose me, Charlie.” It was just as cheery as waitin' in the Sergeant's room for bail.
When the Boss does show up he wears a regular breakfast food smile that made me leary, for when he looks tickled it don't signify that things are coming his way. Generally it only means that he's goin' to break out in a new spot.
”It just occurred to me,” says he, ”that I had accepted an invitation from the Van Urbans for the opera.”