Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/115

 "I should call that nerve."

"And also good judgment. It's a fine example of what you might term the privacy of conspicuity. Who'd ever think of digging out a gang of refugee counterfeiters from a rather fashionable private mansion with a two-figured address and a brownstone front?"

"Then what made you dig them out?"

"It began with Inky Davis and skipped to the young lady we knew as Cherry Dreiser. In West Forty-seventh Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, is a very chic little millinery shop. It is run by a very chic little woman who calls herself Mdlle. Baby. At different times of the day some very fashionable-looking women go to that shop. They go, in fact, in rather surprising numbers. Wilsnach, can you guess why?"

"It's a stall, as they say over here?"

"Exactly. Those plumes and Paris hats are merely a fence behind which one of the busiest of women's poolrooms is being run. They have wire connection with a distributing bureau that gives track-returns by 'phone. They also have a very comfortable room where tea and cigarettes can be served. Here ladies with too much time and money can escape the ennui of life by plunging on the ponies. And one of the heaviest plungers, at the present time, happens to be our young friend, Miss Sadie Wimpel, alias Cherry Dreiser."

A look of comprehension crept into Wilsnach's eyes.

"How did you spot her?" he inquired.

"I tailed her from the Grand Union Hotel, where