Late that night he received a tip from a dealer at one of
vingt-et-un tables. There were inquiries being made for him across
the border. That very evening he, the dealer, had gone across for
a sack of flour, and he had heard about it.
"You'd better get out," said the dealer.
"I'm as safe here as I'd be in Mexico City."
"Don't be too sure, son. You're not any too popular here. There's
such a thing as being held up and carried over the border. It's
been done before now."
"I'm sick of this hole, anyhow," Rudolph muttered, and moved away
in the crowd. The mechanical piano was banging in the dance-hall
as he slipped out into the darkness, under the clear starlight of
the Mexican night, and the gate of the compound stood open. He
passed it with an oath.
Long before, he had provided for such a contingency. By the same
agency which had got him to the border, he could now be sent
further on. At something after midnight, clad in old clothes and
carrying on his back a rough outfit of a blanket and his remaining
wardrobe, he knocked at the door of a small adobe house on the
border of the town.
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