It was very
near to the pulse of the underworld. Above ground, opening on a street
just off Chatham Square, Foo Sen's, to the uninitiated, was but one of
the multitudinous Chinese laundries in New York; below, below even the
innocent cellar of the house, a half dozen sub-cellars were merged into
one, and here Foo Sen plied his trade. And Foo Sen was cosmopolitan in
his wares! Here, one, hard pressed, might find refuge from the law; here
a pipe and pill were at one's command; here one might hide his stolen
goods, or hatch his projected crime, or gamble, or debauch at will--it
was the entree only that was hard to obtain at Foo Sen's!
Jimmie Dale's lips twisted in a grim smile. The old days of Larry the
Bat had supplied Smarlinghue with the means which, in the last six
months, had been turned to such good account that the Smarlinghue of
to-day was almost as fully in the confidence of the underworld as had
been the Larry the Bat of yesterday. And yet there had been nothing! No
clue! He had wormed himself again into the inner circle of crimeland; he
lay here in Foo Sen's to-night, as he had once lain in one of Foo Sen's
competitor's dives as Larry the Bat, months ago, on the night the place
had been raided--but there was still nothing--still no clue--only the
shuffle of slippered feet, the stertorous breathings, a subdued curse, a
blasphemous laugh, a coin ringing upon a table top, the murmur of
voices, whisperings!
One might hear many things here if one listened, and he _had_ heard many
things in his frequent visits to these hidden dens of this lower world
that shunned the daylight--many things, but never the _one_ thing that
he risked his life to hear--many things, from these _friends_ of his
who, if in Smarlinghue they but suspected for an instant the presence of
Larry the Bat, would literally have torn him limb from limb--many
things, but never the one thing, never a word of _her_--many things, the
hatching of crime, as now, for instance, those muttering voices were
hatching it from the other side of the partition next to his
bunk.
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