Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/90

 eh? Well, Capper, for one, could hardly blame him; who wouldn't, under the circumstances?

The Tavern of Thermopylæ was built for the Billy Cappers of the world—a place of genial deviltry where every man's gold was better than his name, and no man asked more than to see the color of the stranger's money. Here was gathered as sweet a company of assassins as one could find from Port Said to a Honmoku, all gentle to fellows of their craft under the freemasonry of hard liquor. Greeks, Levantines, Liverpool lime-juicers from the Cape, leech-eyed Finns from a Russian's stoke-hole, tanned ivory runners from the forbidden lands of the African back country—all that made Tyre and Sidon infamous in Old Testament police records was represented there.

Capper called for an absinth dripper and established himself in a deserted corner of the smoke-filled room. There was music, of sorts, and singing; women whose eyes told strange stories, and whose tongues jumped nimbly over three or four languages, offered their companionship to those who needed company with their drink. But Billy Capper ignored the