Barney found
Gavegan exactly where he had counted: lingering over his late dinner
in the cafe of a famous Broadway restaurant--a favorite with some of
the detectives and higher officials of the Police Department--in which
cafe, in happier days now deeply mourned, Gavegan had had all the
exhilaration he wanted to drink at the standing invitation of the
proprietor, and where even yet on occasion a bit of the old
exhilaration was brought to Gavegan's table in a cup or served him in
a room above to which he had had whispered instructions to retire. The
proprietor had in the old days liked to stand well with the police;
and though his bar was now devoted to legal drinks--or at least
obliging Federal officers reported it to be--he still liked to stand
well with the police.
Gavegan was at a table with a minor producer of musical shows, to whom
Barney had been of occasional service in securing the predominant
essential of such music--namely, shapely young women. Barney nodded to
Gavegan, chatted for a few minutes with his musical-comedy friend,
during which he gave Gavegan a signal, then crossed to the once-
crowded bar, now sunk to isolation and the lowly estate of soft
drinks, and ordered a ginger ale. Not until then did he notice Barlow,
chief of the Detective Bureau, at a corner table.
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