Authors, English -- 20th century -- Biography; Blackwood, Algernon, 1869-1951
As a reporter I knew the various places well already, and felt quite
equal to making my search alone, but the doctor, though in no condition
to traipse about the icy street after dark, insisted on accompanying
me. Nothing I said could prevent him coming. Truth to tell, I was not
sorry to have him with me--in some of the saloons; besides which I had
no money, and something--lager beer cost only five cents a glass--had
to be ordered in each place. We hurried from one saloon to another,
looking in at various gambling hells, opium joints, dancing places and
music-halls of the poorer kind where men and women met on easy terms,
and we stayed at each one just long enough to make inquiries, and
to benefit by the warmth and comfort, without being pestered by the
habitual frequenters.
I had in my possession a small photograph of Boyde; it was on tin,
showing the head and shoulders; it had been taken one day earlier in
our acquaintance when we went together to a Dime Museum in 14th Street.
It now proved very useful. It showed his full face, big eyes, drooping
moustaches and eyeglass. The absence of the moustache altered him a
great deal, but the eyeglass and the six feet two inches in height
counterbalanced this.
At every “joint” I produced this photograph, asking the attendants,
bar-tenders, and any women I judged to be frequenters of the place,
whether they had seen the original recently, or anyone like him. Some
laughed and said they had, others said the opposite, but the majority
refused to say anything, showed insolently their suspicion of me and
my purpose, and, more than once, made it advisable for us to get out
before we were put out. At such places customers are chary about
information of each other. Among the women, however, were some who knew
clearly who it was we “wanted,” though saying nothing useful, and soon
the doctor decided it was a mistake to show the photograph too much,
for Boyde would be warned by these women, while many, fearful that
they themselves were “wanted,” would merely lie in self protection,
and set us upon false trails. Any woman who had not paid her weekly
blackmail money to the ward man was in danger, and few, to judge by
their appearance, were not involved in robbery, knock-out drops, or
the ubiquitous “badger-game.” Yet these, I knew, were the places Boyde
would feel at home in. My being a newspaper man proved of value to us
more than once, at any rate. My thoughts, as we sat in a curtained
corner of some “hell,” whose overheated atmosphere of smoke, scent,
alcohol and dope was thick enough to cut with a knife, watching,
waiting, listening, must be imagined. I watched every arrival. The
tension on nerves already overstrained was almost unbearable. A habit
of the doctor’s intensified this strain. He did not, I think, remember
Boyde very well, and was constantly imagining that he saw him. The
street door would open; he would nudge me and whisper “_Sehen Sie, da
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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