Local Color Part 18

On the frieze overhead might be made out, in lettering that once had been gold-leafed, the line: Scudder's Family Theatre. The words were scarcely decipherable now. Bill-posters had coated every available inch of s.p.a.ce with snipes and sheets.

Verba shook the gates until the hasps gritted and the chains clanged.

"n.o.body at home," he said. "I guess the sheriff locked her up when the lawsuits started and then threw away the key. Well, let's scout round.

Somebody's sure to know our man; they told me Bateman was a neighbourhood character down here. A cop ought to be able to help us--only I don't see one. Maybe they don't have cops in this street."

Speculatively his eyes ranged the vista up and down the block and opposite. He pointed to a saloon diagonally across the way, next door to the first corner south.

"When in doubt," he said, "ask everybody's friend. Come on; we'll go over and brace the barkeep."

A young man, with a humorous slant to his eyebrows and dark hair combed back from the forehead in neatly ornate scallops, pulled down the front of a reasonably clean white jacket and spread both hands on the bar, awaiting their pleasure.

"Mister Wine Clerk," said Verba, using the ceremonial t.i.tle of his Tenderloin range, "we're trying to find an old boy named Bateman--Burton Bateman, retired actor by profession. Ever hear of him?"

"Sure!" a.s.sented the barkeeper. "He's part of the fixtures--Old Bird is; but he ain't about now. To ketch him, you've come an hour late."

"Lives round here somewhere, doesn't he?"

"Search me," said the young man succinctly. "I guess he don't exactly live anywhere--not in a regular lodging house or anything like that.

See? I never asked him--him being sort of touchy about his private affairs--but I guess he sleeps in some hole somewhere. He mostly does his scoffin' here though--as a guest of the house."

"Does his what here?" asked Verba.

"His scoffin'--his feedin'. See?" The young man flirted a thumb in the direction of the free-lunch counter.

"Oh! He eats here?"

"You said it! The boss--man that owns this liquor store--is a kind of an old-timer round here himself. I've heard him say he knowed The Bird away back yonder when the old theatre 'crost the street was runnin' and things was breakin' better for the old boy than what they do now. So he stakes him to a drink every now and then--Old Bird won't take a piece of change, but he will take a drink--and he lets him browse off the free lunch all he's a mind to.

"He comes driftin' in here twicet a day regular and fills up on chow for nothin'! But he's been here already and left to-day--'bout an hour ago. I figure he won't be back now till 'long about four or five o'clock."

Verba became cognisant of a tugging at his coat. An incredibly small, incredibly ragged boy, with some draggled first editions under his arm, had wormed silently in between his legs and was looking up at him with one eye. The boy had only one eye to look with. The other eye was a flattened slit over a sunken socket.

"Mister! Say, Mister!" beseeched the gamin earnestly. "Gimme fi' cent and I'll----"

"Hey, you, Blinky!" interposed the barkeeper, bending over the bar to see the small intruder. "Beat it!"

There was a scurrying thud of bare feet on the tiled floor and the wizened intruder magically had vanished between the swinging doors.

"You gents can sit down and wait if you want to," said the barkeeper.

"It's liable to be a long time though. Or I can tell Old Bird, when he comes in, somebody's askin' for him and try to hold him for you. I could phone you even, if it's important--if you'll gimme your number."

"It is important--in a way," said Verba. "Suppose we do that, Offutt--give the wine clerk our telephone number."

He laid a coin and a card on the bar. The young man regarded the name and the address on the card briefly.

"All right!" he said, depositing the coin in his pocket and the card against the mirror at his back. "I won't forget. The old boy don't have many people lookin' for him. Fact is, I don't remember he ever had anybody lookin' for him before. Are you gents friends of his? ... No?

Well, anyhow, I'll fix it."

"Funny old sneezer!" he continued. "Dippy a little up here, I guess."

He tapped himself on the forehead.

"If he had a habit I'd say sometimes he was hopped. F'r instance, he'll come in here and spiel off something to me 'bout havin' been in his Louie Kahn's drawin'-room--anyhow, that's what it sounds like. The only Louie Kahn round here that I know of runs a junk shop over in Ninth Street. And it's a cinch that Louie Kahn ain't got no drawin'-room. Or he'll tell me he's been spendin' the day on the seabeach. Only yes'day he was handin' me that junk."

"Mightn't he have taken a little run down to Coney?" suggested Verba hopefully.

"Go to Coney--him!" scoffed the barkeeper. "Where'd he raise the coin for carfare down to Coney? You can take it from me, gents, Old Bird forgot what the sad sea waves sound like, long time ago. I'll lay you a little eight-to-five he ain't been a quarter of a mile away from this liquor store in ten years. ... Well, good day, gents."

"It strikes me, Verba," began Offutt as they pa.s.sed out, "that possibly we're only wasting our time. If what that gabby young drink wrestler just said is right we're----"

Something wriggled at his knees and caromed off against Verba. A single bright, greedy eye appraised them with an upward flash.

"Mister! Mister, listen!" pleaded a voice, the owner of which managed somehow to be in the path of both of them at once. "I heard yous spielin' in there. I know where Old Boid is. I kin show yous where he is."

"Where is he?" demanded Verba.

"Gimme fi' cent--gimme ten cent--first. It's a secrut. It's worth ten cent."

"It is," agreed Verba gravely. "It's worth all of ten cents now and it'll be worth a quarter more to you, sonny, if you deliver the goods."

He tendered the advance instalment of the fee and a hand, all claws like a bird's foot, s.n.a.t.c.hed it away from him.

Blinky carefully pouched the dime in some unfathomable inner recess of his rags. Having provided against any attempt to separate him from the retainer in the event of the negotiations falling through, his code of honour a.s.serted itself.

"It's a secrut. See? They ain't n.o.body but me and two-t'ree udder kids wise to it. Yous gotta swear yous won't tell 'im nor n.o.body 'twas me tipped yous off. If yous did it'd spoil me graft--he'd be sore. See?

Cold nights he lets us kids bunk in there wit' 'im. And daytimes we plays audiunce for 'im. See?"

"You play what for him?" asked Offutt.

"C'm on, an' I'll show yous," bade Blinky. "Only yous is gotta lay dead w'ile it's comin' off. See?"

"We'll lay dead," pledged Verba.

Satisfied, Blinky led the way. Mystified, they followed. He led them back across University Place again; and on past Scudder's Family Theatre, with the lowering stone frontal bone above and, below, the wide maw, bitted and gagged by its scold's bridle of snaffled iron; and on round the corner below into a fouled, dingy cross street.

Beyond the canvas marquee of a small walled-in beer garden the child went nimbly through a broken panel in a short stretch of aged and tottery wooden fencing. Wriggling through the gap behind him they found themselves in a small inclosure paved with cracked flagging. Confronting them was a short flight of iron steps, leading up to a wide, venerable-appearing doorway, which once, as the visible proof showed, had been sealed up with plank shorings, nailed on in vertical strips.

"One of the old side entrances to Scudder's," said Verba. "Where the carriages used to wait, I guess. The plot thickens--eh, Offutt?"

Offutt nodded, his eyes being on their small guide. A little sense of adventure possessed them both. They had the feeling of being co-conspirators in a little intrigue.

"Wotcher waitin' fur?" demanded Blinky. "Stick wit' me and don't make no noise." He climbed the iron steps and shoved the nail-pocked door ajar.

"Watch yer step!" he counselled as he vanished within. "It's kind o'

dark in yere."

Kind o' dark was right. Straining their eyes they stumbled along a black pa.s.sage, with Blinky going on ahead silently. They turned once to the left and once to the right and emerged, where the light was somewhat clearer, into the shelter of a recess just behind the lower boxes of the abandoned playhouse.

"Wow!" said Verba in a sort of reverential undertone, as though he stood in the presence of death. "I haven't been here in twenty-odd years. Why, the last time I was here I was a kid!"