Jacqueline of Golden River | Page 3

into an unknown world, and the dog added to the strangeness of the picture.
The street loafers stared after her, and two men began walking abreast of her on the other side of the road. I followed more closely.
As she stood upon the curb on the east side of Sixth Avenue I saw her glance timidly up and down before venturing to cross. There was little traffic, and the cars were running at wide intervals, but it was quite half a minute before she summoned resolution to plunge beneath the structure of the elevated railroad. When she had reached the other side she stood still again before continuing westward.
The two men crossed the street and planted themselves behind her. They were speaking in a tongue that sounded like French, and one had a patch over his eye. A taxicab was crawling up behind them. I was sure that they were in pursuit of her.
The four of us were almost abreast in the middle of the long block between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. We were passing a dead wall, and the street was almost empty.
Suddenly the man with the patch turned on me, lowered his head, and butted me off my feet. I fell into the roadway, and at that instant the second fellow grasped the girl by the arm and the taxicab whirled up and stopped.
The girl's assailants seemed to be trying to force her into the cab. One caught at her arm, the other seized her waist. The bag flew open, scattering a shower of gold pieces upon the pavement.
And then, before I could get upon my feet again, the dog had leaped at the throat of the man with the patch and sent him stumbling backward. Before he recovered his balance I was at the other man, striking out right and left.
It was all the act of an instant, and in an instant the two men had jumped into the taxicab and were being driven swiftly away. I was standing beside the terrified girl, while an ill-looking crowd, gathering from God knows where, surrounded us and fought like harpies for the coins which lay scattered about.
I laid my hands on one who had grabbed a gold piece from between my feet, but the girl pulled at my arm distractedly. She was white and trembling, and her big grey eyes were full of fear.
"Help me!" she pleaded, clinging to my sleeve with her little gloved hands. "The money is nothing. I have eight thousand dollars more in my bag. Help me away!"
She spoke in a foreign, bookish accent, as though she had learned English at school. Fortunately for us the mob was too busily engrossed in its search to hear her words.
So I drew her arm through mine and we hurried toward Sixth Avenue, where we took an up-town car.
We had reached Herald Square when it occurred to me that my companion did not seem to know her destination. So we descended there. I intended to order a taxicab for her, had forgotten the dog, but now the beautiful creature came bounding up to us.
"Where are you going?" I asked the girl. "I will take you to your home--or hotel," I added with a slight upward intonation on the last word.
"I do not know where I am going," she answered slowly. "I have never been in New York until to-day."
"But you have friends here?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"But are you really carrying eight thousand dollars about with you in New York at night?" I asked in amazement. "Don't you know this city is full of thieves, and that you are in the worst district?"
For a moment it occurred to me that she might have been decoyed into Daly's. And yet I knew it was not that sort of place; indeed, Daly's chief desire was to remain as inconspicuous as possible. It was very difficult to get into Daly's.
"Do you know the character of the place you came out of?" I asked, trying to find some clue to her actions.
"The character?" she repeated, apparently puzzled at first. "Oh, yes. That is Mr. Daly's gaming-house. I came to New York to play at roulette there."
She was looking at me so frankly that I was sure she was wholly ignorant of evil.
"My father is too ill to play himself," she explained, "so I must find a hotel near Mr. Daly's house, and then I shall play every night until our fortune is made. Tonight I lost nearly two thousand dollars. But I was nervous in that strange place. And the system expressly says that one may lose at first. To-morrow I raise the stakes and we shall begin to win. See?"
She pulled a little pad from her bag covered with a maze of figuring.
"But where do you come from?" I asked. "Where