Chapter 2 DYBALL'S CLUB.

Dyball's Club-room was not the most high-toned of the New York clubs, nor is it frequented by what are, as a rule, termed the highest of high-toned men.

Situated on the second floor of a building on the Bowery, not far from the corner of Canal street, its nightly patrons were those of a decidedly low-toned sort.

Small clerks in wholesale stores, small sporting men, not yet arrived at the dignity of the more fashionable clubs, and small-oh, very small-card-flippers and poker playing cheats, who considered the ability to store aces and kings, ad libitum, in the sleeves of their small-tailed coats, the very highest touch of art, and who used their skill, as may be readily believed, to fleece such of the small clerks who were bold enough to challenge them to a friendly game.

For card-playing-and that means plain poker and nothing else-was all they did at Dyball's Club-room, except to consume the vile liquor and smoke Regalia de Avenue B cigars served over the bar; but, although limited in variety, the entertainment furnished made up in quantity what it otherwise lacked; nor did the votaries at the Dyball shrine often separate until morning had well-nigh dawned.

Upon the evening referred to in the last chapter, at a few minutes after eleven o'clock, just as the sidewalks along the brilliantly-lighted Bowery were beginning to whiten with what promised to be a heavy fall of snow, there entered Dyball's club room no less celebrated a person than Mr. Detective Cutts, a young but already popular special on the force of the New York police.

He was in citizen's dress, of course-in fact, the same in which we have already met him on this night once before-and as he pushed his way among the card tables, a long cigar stuck in one corner of his mouth, his cane under his left arm, and his Derby hat set rakishly upon the side of his head, several of the small clerks rejoicing in a speaking acquaintance with so prominent an official, greeted him with an air of great respect, their less fortunate companions regarding them with feelings of envy not unmingled with awe.

But the young detective paid little attention to any of the players at the card tables.

Pushing his way among them through the stifling atmosphere, fairly blue with tobacco smoke, and reeking with the stale odors of whisky and beer, he approached a small table in a remote corner of the room, where sat four young men who, if the chips upon its green baize top and the anxious faces of the players themselves could be taken as a guide, were indulging in a pretty stiff sort of game.

"Frank, I want to see you," he said, quietly, placing his hand lightly upon the shoulder of the youngest man of the four.

"All right, Billy, I'll be with you when I finish this hand."

"I'll wait for you in the wine-room."

"Very good. Two jacks and two queens-I'll take that pot, boys. I'll be with you in a second, Billy-just one hand more."

It is Frank Mansfield, and no one else, we are sorry to say, who again deals the cards around, and with flushed face, being evidently considerably the worse for drink, a moment later joins Detective Cutts in the private wine-room, to the left of Mr. Dyball's bar.

What brings the boy to a place like this?

Disappointment and a fatal love of exciting pleasures, yielded to too often-far too often-in the past.

Firm in his resolution to reform his ways, Frank, who loved the daughter of Elijah Callister, and was devotedly loved by her in return, had, at her own suggestion, asked of the stock operator the hand of his daughter in marriage with the ill success already told.

Now, instead of meeting that refusal like a man-instead of returning to the object of his affections at the house of a mutual friend, who loved them both, and where they had been in the habit of meeting at intervals in the past-Frank had sought to drown his sorrows by that fatal method-recourse to the whisky bottle and glass.

One drink had been followed by another, the second by a third, until, reckless of the consequences, the boy had yielded to a temptation which he had for days been struggling to resist, and which-- But that brings us back to Detective Cutts again!

"Well, young fellow, what shall it be?" asked that individual, touching the little call bell upon the table by which he had seated himself the moment Frank appeared.

"Oh! I don't care-whisky, I suppose. What do you want of me? The same old scheme?"

"Of course. What else should it be?" answered the detective, calling for the drinks, which were speedily produced and consumed. "You can't do better than to join me in that, and I suppose you have made up your mind to do so, since you are here by the appointment we made."

"I don't know about that. I want to make money as well as any one, and I'm more than ever in the mood for it to-night; but I'm afraid of your scheme, Billy, and I don't deny it. I'm afraid it'll get me in a hole."

"No, it won't-nothing of the sort. I don't want to get you in no hole, nor to land in one myself. I'm just as honest as any one else, but I'm bound to look out for No. 1 every time, and you owe it to yourself to do the same."

"But this letting a man into the bank at night is something that has a very nasty look."

"Well, I ain't a-goin' to steal nothin', am I? All I want is to look at a name in a book. Upon my word, young feller, you're a deal too squeamish. I can't see where's the possibility of harm comin' to you from a move like that."

"But it's against all rules. If it were known that I had shown the signatures of our depositors to an outsider, I'd lose my place before I knew where I was."

"Perhaps you would. But whose a-goin' to give you away? To show you that I mean to be perfectly square with you, I've asked Jim Morrow and Ed Wilson to meet us down by the bank and go and see the thing done."

"You have?"

"Yes. They are both good friends of yours, and in case anything was brought up against you, you could prove that you did nothing wrong. Come, now, what do you say? It's getting late, and if it's to be done at all it must be done to-night. All I want is to copy the signature of old Thomas Hendrickson. If you will help me to do it I'll give you five hundred dollars as soon as we leave the bank."

"But I don't understand what your man wants it for. Why can't he get it by some other means?"

"Because he can't, that's all I know, and I don't want to know any more. Hendrickson never leaves his room, and will see no one and answer no letters; my man has got them deeds I told you about, and wants to be sure that the old miser's signature is all O. K.; why, he don't tell me, and I'm sure I don't care to know, so long as he is willing to pay for the job he wants done."

Now this was not the first time Frank Mansfield had had this proposition made to him by Detective Cutts, nor the second nor the third.

He had been introduced to this individual about a month before, by two of his fast companions, the Jim Morrow and Ed Wilson the detective had just named, and in their presence this strange request had been first made, to be renewed upon several occasions since.

At first the proposal had been rejected outright.

Frank had positively refused to have anything to do with it at all.

But, upon its repetition, the boy had been more inclined to lend a willing ear.

He was more inclined than ever to do so upon this night.

To be sure, he did not more than half believe the detective's statement as to the reason of his singular request; but, after all, he was a member of the police force, an officer of the law, although little older than Frank himself.

Detectives were obliged, as he knew well enough, to attain their ends by all sorts of singular means. Surely, in these days of defaulting cashiers and pilfering tellers, there could be no serious harm in letting a police detective copy a signature from the bank's books.

Nor was the promised reward without its full weight in the mind of the boy.

"Come to me with proof that you are possessed of at least ten thousand dollars, and I will listen to you, and not before," the father of the girl he so devotedly loved had said.

Money makes money.

With five hundred dollars he would at least obtain a start.

Visions of successful speculations in the institutions known as "bucket shops," which cluster around the Stock Exchange, floated through his brain.

If he had luck, as many of his acquaintances had had before him, his five hundred might be doubled in no time at all, and the thousand thus increased to ten in a comparative short space of time.

And then--

"Well, Cutts, I'll do it!" he exclaimed at last; "but, mind, if you go back on me, I can make it as hot for you at police headquarters as you can for me at the bank. I'll show you the signature-book of the Webster Bank, and let you trace old Hendrickson's autograph from it-but don't expect me to do anything else."

"I shan't, my boy, for that's all I want," replied the detective, with an air of triumph. "Now let's have another drink."

There were two doors connecting with the private wine room of Dyball's club.

One opened into the main or card room, and the other out into the hallway, from which descended the stairs leading to the street.

Had Detective Cutts been a little older in the business, and a little more observing withal, he might have noticed that during all his conversation with Frank Mansfield this hall door stood open on the crack.

No sooner had the young men left Dyball's by the regular entrance, and gaining the stairs, descended to the street, than from the floor of the hall close to the wine room there arose the form of a woman.

She was of somewhat above the ordinary stature, but of withered features and attenuated form, while her long gray hair, hanging in a tangled mass down her neck and shoulders, and a pair of wild, restless eyes ever moving in their shrunken sockets, lent to her whole appearance an air of hopeless misery painful to behold.

Her dress neat, but shabby and worn; a faded shawl and a cheap woolen hood being the only outer wraps she wore.

And this strange creature crept after the two young men in the darkness and storm, dogging their steps as they moved down the Bowery towards Chatham Square never taking her restless eyes from their moving figures for so much as a moment of time.

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