GIRL IN DOORWAY
It was now that Derek Wingblade had reason to believe his story was “opening up.”
For, as he neared a doorway, he caught sight of a girl standing in it, a newspaper under her arm. She might, so far as he knew, have been going in—or might have been coming out. But right now she was standing, watching him. Her black eyes—the one feature of her appearance which, curiously, riveted his attention immediately—were hard, calculating. But the slender oval face that surrounded the eyes was indubitably pretty. Her cheeks were delicately pink—if they were rouged, the rouge had been put on most artistically. Her hair was raven black. And as his eyes swept momentarily off of her petite face, he saw that her slender self was dressed in a neatly fitting black dress of such unobtrusive lines as to make anyone’s attention fly firmly back to that face. Which his now did!
She tossed him the lightest, subtlest of “come-hither” smiles.
He stopped.
Now began his story for the Courier!
He ambled clumsily over.
“Gooda eevanneeng, Mees,” he said, in the best pseudo-Mexican dialect he could essay. “Keen you tal me w’ere eeez theez street she call Bro’dway?”
“Broadway?” the girl returned. Her voice was hard. “What for, Mex, d’ya want Broadway?”
“Oh—I like for to see citee.”
“Stranger, heh?”
“I strangaire—yes.”
“Where you from? Whaddya do?”
“I fram ou’side New York. W’ere wurk I on saction gang. Get day off—an’ theenk I lik’ com’ New York—and mebbe spen’ leetle beet of saveengs.”
Her black eyes opened questioningly.
“Section—gang—worker?” she repeated. And seemed considerably crestfallen. “You wouldn’t kid me, would ya? Meaning—you aren’t maybe really a Mex musician?—looking to pick up some easy after-midnight coin in one of the honkies along here? Why—with that pink silk shirt you got on you!—and that velvet hat!—I’d have bet my li—”
“I onlee in my Sunday clo’,” he made haste to explain. Berating himself inwardly that he hadn’t stated himself to be the other of the only two personalities that a Mexican in New York could logically be: laborer—or musician! “I joos saction-gang wurker, drass’ up leetle bit, an’ com’ New York to span leetle bit saveengs.”
Now he saw a hard relentless look creep over her face. “You’re—you’re no section-gang worker, Mex. If you’d a-pretended to be a musician, like most dolled-up Mex’s are—along this piece of stem—I might have swallowed that. But I know what you are now. You’re—you’re that Mexican copper that joined the police force here. And you’re trying to yank in a few clip-girls. But you better change that ‘me-Mex-but-me-got-money’-line of yours, copper, because it’s getting known up and down this town. Christ—but I was certain you looked goddamned familiar to me when you came up to me—plain you’ve been along this row before in the last few days, in ordinary clothes, casing the street ahead of time. Well, just don’t forget, copper, if you’re figuring to pinch me, that the crip with the one fin who stands up street begging jitneys was going past here when you highballed me first. And I’ll call him into court sure’s my name is—well, what my name is. And you won’t get nowhere, see? Nowhere, copper!”
Derek Wingblade stared at her, throughout her attack, in mock amazement.
“Copper?” he ejaculated. “Tryeeng tak’ cleep-gals? W’at eez cleep-gals, an’way? But I no copper. An’ you mak’eeng bloff, heh, w’en you say you see me before? Becoze me, I ain’ never be on theez street before. I Pedro Gomez—saction-gang wurker. See—look—”
He felt into his left coat pocket and, with the ball of his thumb, which was a bit—just a bit—sticky from that idiotic stain he’d tried out tonight on his hands and wrists only, slid off, from two bank checks, the rearmost of the two. Devoutly hoping he hadn’t gotten them mixed!
He drew the one forth. And handed it to her.
“See!” he commanded triumphantly.
She grumpily surveyed the check he had handed her. No less, indeed, than the one bearing the script-undersigned printed signature “New York Central Railroad.” Particularly did she survey the name typed in, in violet ink, on the payee’s line. And which read “Pedro Gomez, Employee Number 74,898.”
“Now, preety gal,” he asked gaily, “am I copper—or am I Pedro Gomez of N. Y. C. lines?”
Ah—it had worked. As was evident by the change of expression that came over her really pretty face.
“You win, Mex!” she said, obviously convinced. “For a moment I thought another police clean-up had started. So—you’re just a poor section-gang worker, heh? Why’nt you go down in Harlem, eh? The black stuff’s cheap!”
“Black stoff”? I no know w’at you mean. I am saction wurker—yes—but not mebbe so dam’ poor—mebbe got 50 dollars—who know?—me I can save monee, don’ fo’git—by leeving in box-car camp—but mebbe got to come New York. Like mebbe catch me gal. Drink a leetle. Mak’ jolly.”
She was fingering the check undecidedly.
“So you like,” she imitated him, “to catch leetle drink? And make jolly?”
“Yes,” he admitted. But his voice grew dolorous. “But, to mak’ jolly, got to ’ave gal! An’ I ain’t even catch myself a gal yet. Thaz’ troble.”
“Sure you have,” she informed him, with a cheery laugh. “I’m—she! No fooling! But come on upstairs. And we’ll shake up a cocktail. Before figuring out some dine-and-dance jernt where the two of us can raise hell. Though, you being a Mex, and me white, we may have to go down to Harlem. But come on up, first. For some fly-mug may question us two chewing the fat down here.”
She led the way up the dingy stairway which terminated in the door where they had talked. It was a long long stairway—at least when looking upward—and became, at two different points in its course, a small landing, with a fly-specked light burning above, and a single door fronting the landing. The stairway appeared to terminate at its far top at a rickety counter, surmounted by a tin-shaded electric light focusing down on a bright, nickeled gleaming pushbell. Something, of course, to summon the landlady with. Though landlady there was none up there. Derek Wingblade followed the girl quietly. And noted, as she shifted her newspaper under her other arm to get her key out from somewhere, that her paper was the Evening Handglass, most sensational of all the New York dailies, and the least reliable. Too bad, he reflected, that she read the Handglass instead of the Courier, as otherwise she might, within a few nights, be reading about this whole episode! On the landing next above the lowest landing, she unlocked the door, with a casual glance upward at that landlady’s bench where, however, no landlady still was. And reaching in past the door jamb, and snapping on some source of light inside, she threw wide the door and beckoned him in.
“Go on in, Pedro.”
He went in, velvet sombrero in hand. Holding it as embarrassedly as he could. As would a track-laborer who was entering a lady’s boudoir. And never had Derek Wingblade seen so small a room for a human being to live in. It was no more than 8 feet by 8 feet in dimensions, and seemed even smaller because of the giant roses in its cheap wallpaper. It permitted, as furniture, only a half-width white iron bed, which lay completely along its entire left wall as they entered. And a sticky-looking square table in its center, on which lay a pack of greasy cards. And up to which—rightward—and leftward—were drawn two wooden chairs—drawn, doubtlessly, to keep their protruding seats out of the way! The chamber was—mirabile dictu for such a miserable joint!—provided with running water, for a cracked porcelain washbowl had been installed in the right-hand wall. A worn stained rug covered the floor. A window, in the wall opposite the door, looked out on a gloomy interior court of some sort, where some lights reflected dolorously against a blank brick wall. Between cot head and window edge was a rickety bureau with cracked glass. Covered with celluloid toilet articles. And a handbag which stood open. Indicating that the girl had just moved in—or, perhaps, was just about to move out!
She turned the key in the door. Smilingly. And tossed her evening paper on the left of the two chairs.
“Well, Pedro, not so hot—as a boudoir! But it’s the occupant, I take it, that counts—and not the boudoir, heh? For—”
Her smile faded. She was staring at him.
As he stood uncertainly, velvet sombrero in hand, under the bright light coming from the ceiling. Her eyes swept downward—rested on his hands—went back to his face.
Without a word, she swept across the room. To her bureau. Where she drew out the top drawer. And held it thus a moment. Nodding. Then, without closing it, she turned to him.
“Bot com’, my gud Mex-i-can fran’,” she said mimickingly. “Do catch yoursalf a seat. There eez onlee two seats to be catch’. Yes—do! Eet eez great treat to meet weeth Mex-i-can w’at got stain’ hands—but eez greater treet to meet weeth—”
She paused, and changed to straight English:
“—with Mister Derek Wingblade—blue-blood—newspaperman—and heir to Sophronia Highsmith!”