Page:The New Negro.pdf/96

70 he was too weak. He croaked next day. Evidently he hadn’t had money enough to buy any more.

“Well, this morning a little nigger that goes by the name of Froggy was brought into the precinct pretty well doped up. When he finally came to, he swore he got the stuff here at your store. Of course, we’ve just been trying to trick you into giving yourself away, but you don’t bite. Now what’s your game? Know anything about this?”

Tony understood. “I dunno,” he said slowly; and then his own problem, whose contemplation his callers had interrupted, occurred to him. “Sure!” he exclaimed. “Wait. Maybeso, I know somet’ing.”

“All right. Spill it.”

“I got a new man, work-a for me.” And he told them what he had noted since King Solomon Gillis came.

“Sounds interesting. Where is this guy?”

“Here in da store—all day.”

“Be here to-morrow?”

“Sure. All day.”

“All right. We’ll drop in to-morrow and give him the eye. Maybe he’s our man.”

“Sure. Come ten o’clock. I show you,” promised Tony.

Even the oldest and rattiest cabarets in Harlem have sense of shame enough to hide themselves under the ground—for instance, Edwards’s. To get into Edwards’s you casually enter a dimly lighted corner saloon, apparently—only apparently—a subdued memory of brighter days. What was once the family entrance is now a side entrance for ladies. Supporting yourself against close walls, you crouchingly descend a narrow, twisted staircase until, with a final turn, you find yourself in a glaring, long, low basement. In a moment your eyes become accustomed to the haze of tobacco smoke. You see men and women seated at wire-legged, white-topped tables, which are covered with half-empty bottles and glasses; you trace the slow-jazz accompaniment you heard as you came down the stairs to a