Over on the East Side, we found the International Cafe, and
slouched into the back room. It was not the room devoted to stuss,
but the entrance to it, which Garrick informed me was through a
heavy door concealed in a little hallway, so that its very
existence would not be suspected except by the initiate.
We made no immediate attempt to get into the hang-out proper,
which was a room perhaps thirty feet wide and seventy feet deep.
Instead, we sat down at one of the dirty, round tables, and
ordered something from the waiter, a fat and oily Muscowitz in a
greasy and worn dinner coat.
It seemed that in the room where we were had gathered nearly every
variety of the populous underworld. I studied the men and women at
the tables curiously, without seeming to do so. But there could be
no concealment here. Whatever we might be, they seemed to know
that we were not of them, and they greeted us with black looks and
now and then a furtive scowl.
It was not long, however, before it became evident that in some
way word had been passed that we were not mere sightseers.
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