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By Root 3106 0

Tweed court house, hailed another hansom, and headed back up to Hudson Street: “Hudson Street Hospital,” was what I told the driver, again to make him feel more secure about the ride. The hospital was close to the Dusters’ joint, and by the time we reached the little medical facility Betty had managed to get herself more alert by blowing some burny what she had in her ratty little bag. I didn’t even try to lecture her or stop her—my lookout was Kat, just then—but it wasn’t ever what you’d call a heartening thing to see a girl so young beating her body up with that vicious white powder, especially in the morning. Still, it helped her face the idea of going into the Dusters’ with a little more courage, so that by the time I left her and raced back up onto the rooftop where El Niño was still positioned, I had good reason to think that the plan would be successful.

This outlook was reinforced when the aborigine reported that he had, in fact, laid eyes on Libby Hatch: she’d appeared very briefly just after I left, to flag down a passing milk wagon. She hadn’t looked any too pleased about being up and attending to what were pretty obviously baby Ana’s needs at that early hour, but the fact that she’d headed back inside seemed to indicate that, at least for the moment, she wasn’t contemplating any drastic move. Not that there was any real reason for her to yet: she knew that it would take time for the Doctor and the others to catch up with her, and that even when they did they’d have to relate what’d happened to the cops and then convince somebody at headquarters on Mulberry Street to raid the Dusters’ headquarters: not the kind of thing any cop or squad of cops in their right minds were likely to undertake without one hell of a lot of persuading. But just knowing where the woman and the baby were was cause for some satisfaction.

Less encouraging was the fact that Betty came back out of the Dusters’ in just fifteen minutes, looking confused, disappointed—and not a little concerned. I whistled to her from our high perch, then directed her to meet me around the corner, at the mouth of the trucking alley. There she told me a story what was peculiar, to say the least: Libby Hatch had arrived at the Dusters’ at just past three that morning, and had immediately locked herself away in Goo Goo Knox’s chamber with Ana Linares. Kat, true to her word to Mr. Moore, had right away gone upstairs, and talked her way into Knox’s room by asking Goo Goo if she could be any help with the baby. But Libby’d remembered only too well that Kat was a friend of mine, and she’d flown into a rage, saying that Kat was a spy whose real purpose was to steal Ana away and bring the law after her. Now, Goo Goo would ordinarily have solved this problem by having Kat taken over to the river, killed, and thrown in; but at that point Ding Dong—as much, I figured, out of a desire to save face in the gang as out of any true concern for Kat—had stepped in, saying that nobody was going to do away with one of his girls without his say-so. Knox and Ding Dong had then gotten into a hell of a scrape, one what’d apparently been very entertaining to all those slummers we’d seen. At first Kat’d joined in the fight, trying to defend Ding Dong; but after about half an hour Libby herself, with that unpredictability what we’d, all come to know so well (and what usually didn’t indicate anything good), had put a stop to the battle by saying that she’d be satisfied if Kat would just get out of the joint. This Kat’d done, removing herself exactly as far as the nearest corner. I figured this meant that Kat’d intended to keep right on watching things from outside the place, so’s she’d be able to tell whichever of our party came back to the city first (she’d have been able to figure out that we wouldn’t be far behind Libby) where our adversary’d got to, if she’d left the building, and whether or not she still had the baby with her.

But then, for some reason what nobody inside the dive could figure, Kat’d suddenly disappeared, not long before El Niño and I’d arrived on the scene. Betty