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- <head>
- <title>
- The Apaches of New York, by Alfred Henry Lewis
- </title>
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-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Apaches of New York, by Alfred Henry Lewis
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: The Apaches of New York
-
-Author: Alfred Henry Lewis
-
-Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51909]
-Last Updated: March 12, 2018
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE APACHES OF NEW YORK ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by the Internet Archive
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
- <div style="height: 8em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h1>
- THE APACHES OF NEW YORK
- </h1>
- <h2>
- By Alfred Henry Lewis
- </h2>
- <h4>
- Author of “Wolfville,” “The Boss, Peggy O'Neal,” “The Sunset Trail,” “The
- Throwback,” “The Story of Paul Jones,” etc.
- </h4>
- <h5>
- M. A. Donohue & Company
- </h5>
- <h5>
- Chicago New York
- </h5>
- <h4>
- 1912
- </h4>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/0001.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0005.jpg" alt="0005 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/0005.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h3>
- TO
- </h3>
- <h3>
- ARTHUR WEST LITTLE
- </h3>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hese stories are
- true in name and time and place. None of them in its incident happened as
- far away as three years ago. They were written to show you how the other
- half live—in New York. I had them direct from the veracious lips of
- the police. The gangsters themselves contributed sundry details.
- </p>
- <p>
- You will express amazement as you read that they carry so slight an
- element of Sing Sing and the Death Chair. Such should have been no doubt
- the very proper and lawful climax of more than one of them, and would were
- it not for what differences subsist between a moral and a legal certainty.
- The police know many things they cannot prove in court, the more when the
- question at bay concerns intimately, for life or death, a society where
- the “snitch” is an abomination and to “squeal” the single great offense.
- </p>
- <p>
- Besides, you are not to forget the politician, who in defense of a
- valuable repeater palsies police effort with the cold finger of his
- interference. With apologies to that order, the three links of the Odd
- Fellows are an example of the policeman, the criminal and the politician.
- The latter is the middle link, and holds the other two together while
- keeping them apart.
- </p>
- <p>
- Alfred Henry Lewis. New York City, Dec. 22, 1911.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- <b>CONTENTS</b>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>THE APACHES OF NEW YORK</b> </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I.—EAT-'EM-UP JACK </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II.—THE BABY'S FINGERS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III.—HOW PIOGGI WENT TO ELMIRA </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV.—IKE THE BLOOD </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V.—INDIAN LOUIE </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI.—HOW JACKEEN SLEW THE DOC </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII.—LEONI THE TROUBLE MAKER </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII. THE WAGES OF THE SNITCH </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX.—LITTLE BOW KUM </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> X.—THE COOKING OF CRAZY BUTCH </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XI.—BIG MIKE ABRAMS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XII.—THE GOING OF BIFF ELLISON </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h1>
- THE APACHES OF NEW YORK
- </h1>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- I.—EAT-'EM-UP JACK
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hick Tricker kept
- a house of call at One Hundred and Twenty-eight Park Row. There he sold
- strong drink, wine and beer, mostly beer, and the thirsty sat about at
- sloppy tables and enjoyed themselves. When night came there was music, and
- those who would—and could—arose and danced. One Hundred and
- Twenty-eight Park Row was in recent weeks abolished. The Committee of
- Fourteen, one of those restless moral influences so common in New York,
- complained to the Powers of Excise and had the license revoked.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a mild February evening. The day shift had gone off watch at One
- Hundred and Twenty-eight, leaving the night shift in charge, and—all
- things running smoothly—Tricker decided upon an evening out. It
- might have been ten o'clock when, in deference to that decision, he
- stepped into the street. It was commencing to snow—flakes as big and
- soft and clinging as a baby's hand. Not that Tricker—hardy soul—much
- minded snow.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tricker, having notions about meeting Indian Louie, swung across to
- Roosevelt Street. Dodging down five steps, he opened the door of a dingy
- wine-cellar. It was the nesting-place of a bevy of street musicians, a
- dozen of whom were scattered about, quaffing chianti. Their harps, fiddles
- and hand-organs had been chucked into corners, and a general air of
- relaxation pervaded the scene. The room was blue with smoke, rich in the
- odor of garlic, and, since the inmates all talked at once, there arose a
- prodigious racket.
- </p>
- <p>
- Near where Tricker seated himself reposed a hand-organ. Crouched against
- it was a little, mouse-hued monkey, fast asleep. The day's work had told
- on him. 'Fatigued of much bowing and scraping for coppers, the diminutive
- monkey slept soundly. Not all the hubbub served to shake the serene
- profundity of his dreams.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tricker idly gave the handle of the organ a twist. Perhaps three notes
- were elicited. It was enough. The little monkey was weary, but he knew the
- voice and heard in it a trumpet-call to duty. With the earliest squeak he
- sprang up—winking, blinking—and, doffing his small red hat,
- began begging for pennies. Tricker gave him a dime, not thinking it right
- to disturb his slumbers for nothing. The mouse-hued one tucked it away in
- some recondite pocket of his scanty jacket, and then, the organ having
- lapsed into silence, curled up for another snooze.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tricker paid for his glass of wine, and—since he saw nothing of
- Indian Louie, and as a source of interest had exhausted the monkey—lounged
- off into the dark.
- </p>
- <p>
- In Chatham Square Tricker met a big-chested policeman. Tricker knew the
- policeman, having encountered him officially. As the latter strutted
- along, a small, mustard-colored dog came crouching at his heels.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's the dog for?” Tricker asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- Being in an easy mood, the trivial possessed a charm.
- </p>
- <p>
- The policeman bent upon the little dog a benign eye. The little dog
- glanced up shyly, wagging a wistful tail.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's lost,” vouchsafed the policeman, “and he's put it up to me to find
- out where he lives.” He explained that all lost dogs make hot-foot for the
- nearest policeman. “They know what a cop is for,” said the big-chested
- one. Then, to the little dog: “Come on, my son; we'll land you all right
- yet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Tricker continued his stroll. At Doyers Street and the Bowery he entered
- Barney Flynn's. There were forty customers hanging about. These loiterers
- were panhandlers of low degree; they were beneath the notice of Tricker,
- who was a purple patrician of the gangs. One of them could have lived all
- day on a quarter. It meant bed—ten cents—and three glasses of
- beer, each with a free lunch which would serve as a meal. Bowery beer is
- sold by the glass; but the glass holds a quart. The Bowery has refused to
- be pinched by the beer trust.
- </p>
- <p>
- In Flynn's was the eminent Chuck Connors, his head on his arm and his arm
- on a table. Intoxicated? Perish the thought! Merely taking his usual forty
- winks after dinner, which repast had consisted of four beef-stews. Tricker
- gave him a facetious thump on the back, but he woke in a bilious mood,
- full of haughtiness and cold reserve.
- </p>
- <p>
- There is a notable feature in Flynn's. The East Side is in its way
- artistic. Most of the places are embellished with pictures done on the
- walls, presumably by the old monsters of the <i>Police News</i>. On the
- rear wall of Flynn's is a portrait of Washington on a violent white horse.
- The Father of his Country is in conventional blue and buff, waving a
- vehement blade.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is it?” demanded Proprietor Flynn of the artist, when first brought
- to bay by the violent one on the horse.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is it?” retorted the artist indignantly. “Who should it be but
- Washin'ton, the Father of his Country?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Washin'ton?” repeated Flynn. “Who's Washin'ton?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't you know who Washin'ton is? Say, you ought to go to night school!
- Washin'ton's th' duck who frees this country from th' English.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' he bate th' English, did he? I can well be-lave it! Yez can see be
- th' face of him he's a brave man.” Then, following a rapt silence: “Say,
- I'll tell ye what! Paint me a dead Englishman right down there be his
- horse's fut, an' I'll give ye foor dollars more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The generous offer was accepted, and the foreground enriched with a dead
- grenadier.
- </p>
- <p>
- Coming out of Flynn's, Tricker went briefly into the Chinese Theater. The
- pig-tailed audience, sitting on the backs of the chairs with their feet in
- the wooden seats, were enjoying the performance hugely. Tricker listened
- to the dialogue but a moment; it was unsatisfactory and sounded like a
- cat-fight.
- </p>
- <p>
- In finding his way out of Doyers Street, Tricker stopped for a moment in a
- little doggery from which came the tump-tump of a piano and the scuffle of
- a dance. The room, not thirty feet long, was cut in two by a ramshackle
- partition. On the grimy wall hung a placard which carried this moderate
- warning:
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0018.jpg" alt="0018 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/0018.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <p>
- The management seemed to be in the hands of a morose personage, as red as
- a boiled lobster, who acted behind the bar. The piano was of that flat,
- tin-pan tone which bespeaks the veteran. It was drummed upon by a bleary
- virtuoso, who at sight of Tricker—for whose favor he yearned—began
- banging forth a hurly-burly that must have set on edge the teeth of every
- piano in the vicinity. The darky who was dancing redoubled his exertions.
- Altogether, Tricker's entrance was not without <i>éclat</i>. Not that he
- seemed impressed as, flinging himself into a chair, he listlessly called
- for apollinaris.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do youse pay him?” asked Tricker of the boiled barkeeper, indicating
- as he did so the hardworking colored person.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pad-money!”—with a slighting glance. “Pad-money; an' it's twict too
- much.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Pad-money means pay for a bed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I should say so!” coincided Tricker, with the weary yet lofty
- manner of one who is a judge.
- </p>
- <p>
- In one corner were two women and a trio of men. The men were thieves of
- the cheap grade known as lush-workers. These beasts of prey lie about the
- East Side grog shops, and when some sailor ashore leaves a place, showing
- considerable slant, they tail him and take all he has. They will plunder
- their victim in sight of a whole street. No one will tell. The first
- lesson of Gangland is never to inform nor give evidence. One who does is
- called snitch; and the wages of the snitch is death. The lush-workers pay
- a percentage of their pillage, to what saloons they infest, for the
- privilege of lying in wait.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tricker pointed to the younger of the two women—about eighteen, she
- was.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Two years ago,” said Tricker, addressing the boiled barman, “I had her
- pinched an' turned over to the Aid Society. She's so young I thought mebby
- they could save her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Save her!” repeated the boiled one in weary disgust. “Youse can't save
- 'em. I used to try that meself. That was long ago. Now”—tossing his
- hand with a resigned air—“now, whenever I see a skirt who's goin' to
- hell, I pay her fare.”
- </p>
- <p>
- One of the three men was old and gray of hair. He used to be a gonoph, and
- had worked the rattlers and ferries in his youth. But he got settled a
- couple of times, and it broke his nerve. There is an age limit in
- pocket-picking. No pickpocket is good after he passes forty years; so far,
- Dr. Osier was right. Children from twelve to fourteen do the best work.
- Their hands are small and steady; their confidence has not been shaken by
- years in prison. There are twenty New York Fagins—the police use the
- Dickens name—training children to pick pockets. These Fagins have
- dummy subjects faked up, their garments covered with tiny bells. The
- pockets are filled—watch, purse, card-case, handkerchief, gloves.
- Not until a pupil can empty every pocket, without ringing a bell, is he
- fit to go out into the world and look for boobs.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If Indian Louie shows up,” remarked Tricker to the boiled-lobster barman,
- as he made ready to go, “tell him to blow 'round tomorry evenin' to One
- Hundred and Twenty-eight.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Working his careless way back to the Bowery, Tricker strolled north to
- where that historic thoroughfare merges into Third Avenue. In Great Jones
- Street, round the corner from Third Avenue, Paul Kelly kept the New
- Brighton. Tricker decided to look in casually upon this hall of mirth, and—as
- one interested—study trade conditions. True, there was a coolness
- between himself and Kelly, albeit, both being of the Five Points, they
- were of the same tribe. What then? As members of the gang nobility, had
- they not won the right to nurse a private feud? De Bracy and Bois Guilbert
- were both Crusaders, and yet there is no record of any lost love between
- them.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the roll of gang honor Kelly's name was written high. Having been
- longer and more explosively before the public, his fame was even greater
- than Tricker's. There was, too, a profound background of politics to the
- New Brighton. It was strong with Tammany Hall, and, per incident, in right
- with the police. For these double reasons of Kelly's fame, and that
- atmosphere of final politics which invested it, the New Brighton was
- deeply popular. Every foot of dancing floor was in constant demand, while
- would-be merry-makers, crowded off for want of room, sat in a triple
- fringe about the walls.
- </p>
- <p>
- Along one side of the dancing room was ranged a row of tables. A young
- person, just struggling into gang notice, relinquished his chair at one of
- these to Tricker. This was in respectful recognition of the exalted
- position in Gangland held by Tricker. Tricker unbent toward the young
- person in a tolerant nod, and accepted his submissive politeness as though
- doing him a favor. Tricker was right. His notice, even such as it was,
- graced and illustrated the polite young person in the eyes of all who
- beheld it, and identified him as one of whom the future would hear.
- </p>
- <p>
- Every East Side dance hall has a sheriff, who acts as floor manager and
- settles difficult questions of propriety. It often happens that, in an
- excess of ardor and a paucity of room, two couples in their dancing seek
- to occupy the same space on the floor. He who makes two blades of grass
- grow where but one grew before, may help his race and doubtless does. The
- rule, however, stops with grass and does not reach to dancing. He who
- tries to make two couples dance, where only one had danced before, but
- lays the bed-plates of a riot. Where all the gentlemen are spirited, and
- the ladies even more so, the result is certain in its character, and in no
- wise hard to guess. Wherefore the dance hall sheriff is not without a
- mission. Likewise his honorable post is full of peril, and he must be of
- the stern ore from which heroes are forged.
- </p>
- <p>
- The sheriff of the New Brighton was Eat-'Em-Up-Jack McManus. He had been a
- prize-fighter of more or less inconsequence, but a liking for mixed ale
- and a difficulty in getting to weight had long before cured him of that.
- He had won his <i>nom de guerre</i> on the battle-field, where good
- knights were wont to win their spurs. Meeting one of whose conduct he
- disapproved, he had criticized the offender with his teeth, and thereafter
- was everywhere hailed as Eat-'Em-Up-Jack.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eat-'Em-Up-Jack wore his honors modestly, as great souls ever do, and
- there occurred nothing at the New Brighton to justify that re-baptism.
- There he preserved the proprieties with a black-jack, and never once
- brought his teeth into play. Did some boor transgress, Eat-'Em-Up-Jack
- collared him, and cast him into the outer darkness of Great Jones Street.
- If the delinquent foolishly resisted, Eat-'Em-Up-Jack emphasized that
- dismissal with his boot. In extreme instances he smote upon him with a
- black-jack—ever worn ready on his wrist, although delicately hidden,
- when not upon active service, in his coat sleeve.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tricker, drinking seltzer and lemon, sat watching the dancers as they
- swept by. He himself was of too grave a cast to dance; it would have
- mismatched with his position.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eat-'Em-Up-Jack, who could claim social elevation by virtue of his being
- sheriff, came and stood by Tricker's table. The pair greeted one another.
- Their manner, while marked of a careful courtesy, was distant and owned
- nothing of warmth. The feuds of Kelly were the feuds of Eat-'Em-Up-Jack,
- and the latter knew that Tricker and Kelly stood not as brothers.
- </p>
- <p>
- As Eat-'Em-Up-Jack paused by Tricker's table, passing an occasional remark
- with that visitor from Park Row, Bill Harrington with Goldie Cora whirled
- by on the currents of the <i>Beautiful Blue Danube</i>. Tricker's expert
- tastes rejected with disfavor the dancing of Goldie Cora.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't like the way she t'rows her feet,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Now Goldie Cora was the belle of the New Brighton. Moreover,
- Eat-'Em-Up-Jack liked the way she threw her feet, and was honest in his
- admiration. As much might be said of Harrington, who had overheard
- Tricker's remark. Eat-'Em-Up-Jack, defending his own judgment, declared
- that Goldie Cora was the sublimation of grace, and danced like a leaf in a
- puff of wind. He closed by discrediting not only the opinion but the
- parentage of Tricker, and advised him to be upon his way lest worse happen
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Beat it, before I bump me black-jack off your bean!” was the way it was
- sternly put by Eat-'Em-Up-Jack.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tricker, cool and undismayed, waved his hand as though brushing aside a
- wearisome insect.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can that black-jack guff,” he retorted. “Un'er-stan'; your bein' a
- fighter don't get youse nothin' wit' me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Harrington came up. Having waltzed the entire length of the <i>Beautiful
- Blue Danube</i>, he had abandoned Goldie Cora, and was now prepared to
- personally resent the imputation inherent in Tricker's remark anent that
- fair one's feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He don't like the way you t'row your feet, eh? I'll make him like it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus spake Harrington to Goldie Cora, as he turned from her to seek out
- Tricker.
- </p>
- <p>
- No, Gangland is not so ceremonious as to demand that you lead the lady to
- a seat. Dance ended, it is good form to leave her sticking in the furrow,
- even as a farmer might his plow, and walk away.
- </p>
- <p>
- Harrington bitterly added his views to Eat-'Em-Up-Jack's, and something
- was said about croaking Tricker then and there. The threats of Harrington,
- as had those of Eat-'Em-Up-Jack, glanced off the cool surface of Tricker
- like the moon's rays off a field of ice. He was sublimely indifferent, and
- didn't so much as get off his chair. Only his right hand stole under his
- coat-skirt in an unmistakable way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, you big stiff! w'at be youse tryin' to give me?” was his only
- separate notice of Harrington. Then, to both: “Unless you guys is lookin'
- to give th' coroner a job, youse won't start nothin' here. Take it from me
- that, w'en I'm bounced out of a dump like this, the bouncin' 'll come off
- in th' smoke.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eat-'Em-Up-Jack, being neither so quick nor so eloquent as Tricker, could
- only retort, “That's all right! I'll hand you yours before I'm done!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Harrington, after his first outbreak, said nothing, being privily afraid
- of Tricker, and more or less held by the spell of his fell repute.
- Eat-'Em-Up-Jack, who feared no man, was kept in check by his obligations
- as sheriff—that, and a sense of duty. True, the situation irked him
- sorely; he felt as though he were in handcuffs. But the present was no
- common case. Tricker would shoot; and a hail of lead down the length of
- the dancing floor meant loss in dollars and cents. This last was something
- which Kelly, always a business man and liking money, would be the first to
- condemn and the last to condone. It would black-eye the place; since few
- care to dance where the ballroom may become a battle-field and bullets zip
- and sing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If it was only later!” said Eat-'Em-Up Jack, wistfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Later?” retorted Tricker. “That's easy. You close at one, an' that's ten
- minutes from now. Let the mob make its getaway; an' after that youse ducks
- 'll find me waitin' 'round the corner in Thoid Avenue.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Tricker, manner nonchalant to the point of insult, loitered to the door,
- pausing on his way to take a leisurely drink at the bar.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You dubs,” he called back, as he stepped out into Great Jones Street,
- “better bring your gatts!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Gatts is East Sidese for pistols.
- </p>
- <p>
- Harrington didn't like the looks of things. He was sorry, he said,
- addressing Eat-'Em-Up-Jack, but he wouldn't be able to accompany him to
- that Third Avenue tryst. He must see Goldie Cora home. The Police had just
- issued an order, calculated invidiously to inconvenience and annoy every
- lady found in the streets after midnight unaccompanied by an escort.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eat-'Em-Up-Jack hardly heard him. Personally he wouldn't have turned hand
- or head to have had the company of a dozen Harringtons. Eat-'Em-Up-Jack,
- while lacking many things, lacked not at all in heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- The New Brighton closed in due time. Eat-'Em-Up-Jack waited until sure the
- junction of Great Jones Street and Third Avenue was quite deserted. As he
- came 'round the corner, gun in hand, Tricker—watchful as a cat—stepped
- out of a stairway. There was a blazing, rattling fusillade—twelve
- shots in all. When the shooting was at an end, Eat-'Em-Up-Jack had
- vanished. Tricker, save for a reason, would have followed his vanishing
- example; there was a bullet embedded in the calf of his leg.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tricker hopped painfully into a stairway, where he might have advantage of
- the double gloom. He had lighted a cigarette, and was coolly leaning
- against the entrance, when two policemen came running up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What was that shooting?” demanded one.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, a couple of geeks started to hand it to each other,” was Tricker's
- careless reply.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did either get hurt?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “One of 'em cops it in th' leg. Th' other blew.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What became of the one who's copped?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, him? He hops into one of th' stairways along here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The officers didn't see the spreading pool of blood near Tricker's foot.
- They hurried off to make a ransack of the stairways, while Tricker hobbled
- out to a cab he had signaled, and drove away.
- </p>
- <p>
- Twenty-four hours later!
- </p>
- <p>
- Not a block from where he'd fought his battle with Tricker,
- Eat-'Em-Up-Jack was walking in Third Avenue. He was as lone as Lot's wife;
- for he nourished misanthropic sentiments and discouraged company. It was a
- moonless night and very dark, the snow still coming down. What with the
- storm and the hour, the streets were as empty as a church.
- </p>
- <p>
- As Eat-'Em-Up-Jack passed the building farthest from the corner lamp, a
- crouching figure stepped out of the doorway. Had it been two o'clock in
- the afternoon, instead of two o'clock in the morning, you would have seen
- that he of the crouching figure was smooth and dark-skinned as to face,
- and that his blue-black hair had been cut after a tonsorial fashion
- popular along the Bowery as the Guinea Lop. The crouching one carried in
- his hand what seemed to be a rolled-up newspaper. In that rolled-up paper
- lay hidden a two-foot piece of lead pipe.
- </p>
- <p>
- The crouching blue-black one crept after Eat-'Em-Up-Jack, making no more
- noise than a cat. He uplifted the lead pipe, grasping it the while with
- both hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eat-'Em-Up-Jack, as unaware of his peril as of what was passing in the
- streets of Timbuctoo, slouched heavily forward, deep in thought, Perhaps
- he was considering a misspent youth, and chances thrown away.
- </p>
- <p>
- The lead pipe came down.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a dull crash, and Eat-'Em-Up-Jack—without word or cry—fell
- forward on his face. Blood ran from mouth and ears, and melted redly into
- the snow.
- </p>
- <p>
- The crouching blue-black one shrank back into the stairway, and was seen
- no more. The street returned to utter emptiness. There remained only the
- lifeless body of Eat-'Em-Up-jack. Nothing beyond, save the softly falling
- veil of snow, with the street lamps shining through.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- II.—THE BABY'S FINGERS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was a Central
- Office man who told me how the baby lost its fingers. I like Central
- Office men; they live romances and have adventures. The man I most shrink
- from is your dull, proper individual to whom nothing happens. You have
- seen a hundred such. Rigidly correct, they go uneventfully to and fro upon
- their little respectable tracks. Evenings, from the safe yet severe
- vantage of their little respectable porches, they pass judgment upon
- humanity from across the front fence. After which, they go inside and
- weary their wives with their tasteless, pale society, while those
- melancholy matrons question themselves, in a spirit of tacit despair,
- concerning the blessings of matrimony. In the end, first thanking heaven
- that they are not as other men, they retire to bed, to rise in the dawning
- and repeat the history of every pulseless yesterday of their existence.
- Nothing ever overtakes them that doesn't overtake a clam. They are
- interesting, can be interesting, to no one save themselves. To talk with
- one an hour is like being lost in the desert an hour. I prefer people into
- whose lives intrudes some element of adventure, and who, as they roll out
- of their blankets in the morning, cannot give you, word and minute, just
- what they will be saying and doing every hour in the coming twelve.
- </p>
- <p>
- My Central Office friend, in telling of the baby's absent fingers, began
- by speaking of Johnny Spanish. Spanish has been sent to prison for no less
- than seven years. Dribben and Blum arrested him, and when the next morning
- he was paraded at the Central Office looking-over, the speech made upon
- him by Commissioner Flynn set a resentful pulse to beating in his swarthy
- cheek.
- </p>
- <p>
- Not that Spanish had been arrested for the baby's lost fingers. That story
- in the telling came later, although the wrong it registered had happened
- months before. Dribben and Blum picked him up—as a piece of work it
- did them credit—for what occurred in Mersher Miller's place.
- </p>
- <p>
- As all the world knows, Mersher Miller, or as he is called among his
- intimates, Mersher the Strong-Arm, conducts a beer house at 171 Norfolk
- Street. It was a placid April evening, and Mersher's brother, as
- bottle-tosser, was busy behind the bar. Mersher himself was not in, which—for
- Mersher—may or may not have been greatly to the good.
- </p>
- <p>
- Spanish came into the place. His hat was low-drawn over his black eyes.
- Mersher's brother, wiping glasses, didn't know him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where's Mersher?” asked Spanish.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not here,” quoth Mersher's brother.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You'll do,” returned Spanish. “Give me ten dollars out of the damper.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mersher's brother held this proposal in finance to be foolishly
- impossible, and was explicit on that head. He insisted, not without scorn,
- that he was the last man in the world to give a casual caller ten dollars
- out of the damper or anything else.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll be back,” replied Spanish, “an' I bet then you'll give me that
- ten-spot.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's Johnny Spanish,” declared a bystander, when Spanish, muttering his
- discontent, had gone his threatening way.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mersher's brother doubted it. He had heard of Spanish, but had never seen
- him. It was his understanding that Spanish was not in town at all, having
- lammistered some time before.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's wanted be th' cops,” Mersher's brother argued. “You don't suppose
- he's sucker enough to walk into their mitts? He wouldn't dare show up in
- town.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't con yourself,” replied the bystander, who had a working knowledge
- of Gangland and its notables. “That's Spanish, all right. He was out of
- town, but not because of the bulls. It's the Dropper he's leary of; an'
- now th' Dropper's in hock he's chased back. You heard what he said about
- comin' 'round ag'in? Take my tip an' rib yourself up wit' a rod. That
- Spanish is a tough kid!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The evening wore on at Mersher's; one hour, two hours, three went
- peaceably by. The clock pointed to eleven.
- </p>
- <p>
- Without warning a lowering figure appeared at the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There he is!” exclaimed the learned bystander. Then he added with a note
- of pride, albeit shaky as to voice: “What did I tell youse?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The figure in the doorway strode forward. It was Spanish. A second figure—hat
- over eyes—. followed hard on his heels. With a flourish, possible
- only to the close student of Mr. Beadle's dime literature, Spanish drew
- two Colt's pistols.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come through wit' that ten!” said he to Mersher's brother.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mersher's brother came through, and came through swiftly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought so!” sneered Spanish, showing his side teeth like a dog whose
- feelings have been hurt. “Now come through wit' th' rest!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mersher's brother eagerly gave him the contents of the cash drawer—about
- eighty dollars.
- </p>
- <p>
- Spanish, having pocketed the money, wheeled upon the little knot of
- customers, who, after the New York manner when crime is afoot, had stood
- motionless with no thought of interfering.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hands up! Faces to the wall!” cried Spanish. “Everybody's dough looks
- good to me to-night!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The customers, acting in such concert that it seemed as though they'd been
- rehearsed, hands held high, turned their faces to the wall.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You keep them covered,” said Spanish to his dark companion in arms,
- “while I go through 'em.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The dark companion leveled his own pistol in a way calculated to do the
- most harm, and Spanish reaped an assortment of cheap watches and a handful
- of bills.
- </p>
- <p>
- Spanish came round on Mersher's brother. The latter had stooped down until
- his eyes were on a par with the bar.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now,” said Spanish to Mersher's brother, “I might as well cook you. I've
- no use for barkeeps, anyway, an' besides you're built like a pig an' I
- don't like your looks!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Spanish began to shoot, and Mersher's brother began to dodge. Ducking and
- dodging, the latter ran the length of the bar, Spanish faithfully
- following with his bullets. There were two in the ice box, two through the
- mirror, five in the top of the bar. Each and all, they had been too late
- for Mersher's brother, who, pale as a candle, emerged from the bombardment
- breathing heavily but untouched.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' this,” cried Ikey the pawnbroker, ten minutes after Spanish had
- disappeared—Ikey was out a red watch and sixty dollars—“an'
- this iss vat Mayor Gaynor calls 'outvard order an' decency'!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was upon the identification of the learned bystander that Dribben and
- Blum went to work, and it was for that stick-up in Mersher's the two made
- the collar.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's lucky for you guys,” said Spanish, his eye sparkling venomously like
- the eye of a snake—“it's lucky for you guys that you got me wit'out
- me guns. I'd have croaked one of you bulls sure, an' maybe both, an' then
- took th' Dutch way out me-self.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Dutch way out, with Spanish and his immediate circle, means suicide,
- it being a belief among them that the Dutch are a melancholy brood, and
- favor suicide as a means of relief when the burdens of life become more
- than they can bear.
- </p>
- <p>
- Spanish, however, did not have his gun when he was pinched, and therefore
- did not croak Dribben and Blum, and do the Dutch act for himself. Dribben
- and Blum are about their daily duties as thief takers, as this is read,
- while Spanish is considering nature from between the Sing Sing bars.
- Dribben and Blum say that, even if Spanish had had his guns, he would
- neither have croaked them nor come near it, and in what bluffs he put up
- to that lethal effect he was talking through his hat. For myself, I say
- nothing, neither one way nor the other, except that Dribben and Blum are
- bold and enterprising officers, and Spanish is the very heart of
- quenchless desperation.
- </p>
- <p>
- By word of my Central Office informant, Spanish has seen twenty-two years
- and wasted most of them. His people dwell somewhere in the wilds of Long
- Island, and are as respectable as folk can be on two dollars a day.
- Spanish did not live with his people, preferring the city, where he cut a
- figure in Suffolk, Norfolk, Forsyth, Hester, Grand, and other East Side
- avenues.
- </p>
- <p>
- At one time Spanish had a gallery number, and his picture held an
- important place in Central Office regard. It was taken out during what
- years the inadequate Bingham prevailed as Commissioner of Police. A row
- arose over a youth named Duffy, who was esteemed by an eminent Judge.
- Duffy's picture was in the gallery, and the judge demanded its removal. It
- being inconvenient to refuse the judge, young Duffy's picture was taken
- out; and since to make fish of one while making flesh of others might have
- invited invidious comment, some hundreds of pictures—among them that
- of Spanish—were removed at the same time.
- </p>
- <p>
- It pleased Spanish vastly when his mug came out of the gallery. Not that
- its presence there was calculated to hurt his standing; not but what it
- was bound to go back as a certain incident of his method of life. Its
- removal was a wound to police vanity; and, hating the police, he found joy
- in whatsoever served to wring their azure withers.
- </p>
- <p>
- When, according to the rules of Bertillon, Spanish was thumb-printed,
- mugged and measured, the police described him on their books as Pickpocket
- and Fagin. The police affirmed that he not only worked the Broadway
- rattlers in his own improper person, but—paying a compliment to his
- genius for organization—that he had drawn about himself a group of
- children and taught them to steal for his sinful use. It is no more than
- truth to say, however, that never in New York City was Spanish convicted
- as either a Fagin or a pickpocket, and the police—as he charges—may
- have given him these titles as a cover for their ignorance, which some
- insist is of as deep an indigo as the hue of their own coats.
- </p>
- <p>
- Spanish was about seventeen when he began making an East Side stir. He did
- not yearn to be respectable. He had borne witness to the hard working
- respectability of his father and mother, and remembered nothing as having
- come from it more than aching muscles and empty pockets. Their clothes
- were poor, their house was poor, their table poor. Why should he fret
- himself with ideals of the respectable?
- </p>
- <p>
- Work?
- </p>
- <p>
- It didn't pay.
- </p>
- <p>
- In his blood, too, flowed malignant cross-currents, which swept him
- towards idleness and all manner of violences.
- </p>
- <p>
- Nor did the lesson of the hour train him in selfrestraint. All over New
- York City, in Fifth Avenue, at the Five Points, the single cry was, Get
- the Money! The rich were never called upon to explain their prosperity.
- The poor were forever being asked to give some legal reason for their
- poverty. Two men in a magistrate's court are fined ten dollars each. One
- pays, and walks free; the other doesn't, and goes to the Island. Spanish
- sees, and hears, and understands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah!” cries he, “that boob went to the Island not for what he did but for
- not having ten bones!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And the lesson of that thunderous murmur—reaching from the Battery
- to Kingsbridge—of Get the Money! rushes upon him; and he makes up
- his mind to heed it. Also, there are uncounted scores like Spanish, and
- other uncounted scores with better coats than his, who are hearing and
- seeing and reasoning the same way.
- </p>
- <p>
- Spanish stood but five feet three, and his place was among the
- lightweights. Such as the Dropper, who tilted the scales at 180, and whose
- name of Dropper had been conferred upon him because every time he hit a
- man he dropped him—such as Ike the Blood, as hard and heavy as the
- Dropper and whose title of the Blood had not been granted in any spirit of
- factitiousness—laughed at him. What matter that his heart was high,
- his courage proof? Physically, he could do nothing with these dangerous
- ones—as big as dangerous! And so, ferociously ready to even things
- up, he began packing a rod.
- </p>
- <p>
- While Spanish, proceeding as best he might by his dim standards, was
- struggling for gang eminence and dollars, Alma, round, dark, vivacious,
- eyes as deep and soft and black as velvet, was the unchallenged belle of
- her Williamsburg set. Days she worked as a dressmaker, without getting
- rich. Nights she went to rackets, which are dances wide open and unfenced.
- Sundays she took in picnics, or rode up and down on the trolleys—those
- touring cars of the poor.
- </p>
- <p>
- Spanish met Alma and worshipped her, for so was the world made. Being thus
- in love, while before he, Spanish, had only needed money, now he had to
- have it. For love's price to a man is money, just as its price to a woman
- is tears.
- </p>
- <p>
- Casting about for ways and means, Spanish's money-hunting eye fell upon
- Jigger. Jigger owned a stuss-house in Forsyth Street, between Hester and
- Grand. Jigger was prosperous beyond the dreams of avarice. Multitudes,
- stabbing stuss, thronged his temple of chance. As a quick, sure way to
- amass riches, Spanish decided to become Jigger's partner. Between them
- they would divide the harvest of Forsyth Street stuss.
- </p>
- <p>
- The golden beauty of the thought lit up the dark face of Spanish with a
- smile that was like a splash of vicious sunshine. Alma, in the effulgence
- of her toilets, should overpower all rivalry! At rout and racket, he,
- Spanish, would lead the hard walk with her, and she should shine out upon
- Gangland fashion like a fire in a forest.
- </p>
- <p>
- His soul having wallowed itself weary in these visions, Spanish sought
- Jigger as a step towards making the visions real. Spanish and his
- proposition met with obstruction. Jigger couldn't see it, wouldn't have
- it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Spanish was neither astonished nor dismayed. He had foreseen the Jiggerian
- reluctance, and was organized to break it down. When Jigger declined his
- proffered partnership—in which he, Jigger, must furnish the capital
- while Spanish contributed only his avarice—and asked, “Why should
- I?” he, Spanish, was ready with an answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should you?” and Spanish repeated Jigger's question so that his reply
- might have double force. “Because, if you don't, I'll bump youse off.”
- Gangland is so much like Missouri that you must always be prepared to show
- it. Gangland takes nothing on trust. And, if you try to run a bluff, it
- calls you. Spanish wore a low-browed, sullen, sour look. But he had killed
- no one, owned no dread repute, and Jigger was used to sullen, sour,
- lowbrowed looks. Thus, when Spanish spoke of bumping Jigger off, that
- courtier of fortune, full of a case-hardened scepticism, laughed low and
- long and mockingly. He told the death-threatening Spanish to come
- a-running.
- </p>
- <p>
- Spanish didn't come a-running, but he came much nearer it than Jigger
- liked. Crossing up with the perverse Jigger the next evening, at the
- corner of Forsyth and Grand, he opened upon that obstinate stuss dealer
- with a Colt's-38. Jigger managed to escape, but little Sadie Rotin, <i>otat</i>
- eight, was killed. Jigger, who was unarmed, could not return the fire.
- Spanish, confused and flurried, doubtless, by the poor result of his
- gun-play, betook himself to flight.
- </p>
- <p>
- The police did not get Spanish; but in Gangland the incident did him
- little good. At the Ajax Club, and in other places where the best blood of
- the gangs was wont to unbuckle and give opinions, such sentiment-makers as
- the Dropper, Ike the Blood, Kid Kleiney, Little Beno, Fritzie Rice, Kid
- Strauss, the Humble Dutchman, Zamo, and the Irish Wop, held but one view.
- Such slovenly work was without precedent as without apology. To miss
- Jigger aroused ridicule. But to go farther, and kill a child playing in
- the street, spelled bald disgrace. Thereafter no self-respecting lady
- would drink with Spanish, no gentleman of gang position would return his
- nod. He would be given the frozen face at the rackets, the icy eye in the
- streets.
- </p>
- <p>
- To be sure, his few friends, contending feebly, insisted that it wasn't
- Spanish who had killed the little Rotin girl. When Spanish cracked off his
- rod at Jigger, others had caught the spirit. A half dozen guns—they
- said—had been set blazing; and it was some unknown practitioner who
- had shot down the little Rotin girl. What were the heart-feelings of
- father and mother Rotin, to see their baby killed, did not appeal as a
- question to either the friends or foes of Spanish. Gangland is interested
- only in dollars or war.
- </p>
- <p>
- That contention of his friends did not restore Spanish in the general
- estimation. All must confess that at least he had missed Jigger. And
- Jigger without a rod! It crowded hard upon the unbelievable, and could be
- accounted for only upon the assumption that Spanish was rattled, which is
- worse than being scared. Mere fear might mean no more than an excess of
- prudence. To get rattled, everywhere and under all conditions, is the mean
- sure mark of weakness.
- </p>
- <p>
- While discussion, like a pendulum, went swinging to and fro, Spanish—possibly
- a-smart from what biting things were being said in his disfavor—came
- to town, and grievously albeit casually shot an unknown. Following which
- feat he again disappeared. None knew where he had gone. His whereabouts
- was as much a mystery as the identity of the unknown whom he had shot, or
- the reason he had shot him. These two latter questions are still borne as
- puzzles upon the ridge of gang conjecture.
- </p>
- <p>
- That this time he had hit his man, however, lifted Spanish somewhat from
- out those lower reputational depths into which missing Jigger had cast
- him. The unknown, to be sure, did not die; the hospital books showed that.
- But he had stopped a bullet. Which last proved that Spanish wasn't always
- rattled when he pulled a gun. The incident, all things considered, became
- a trellis upon which the reputation of Spanish, before so prone and
- hopeless, began a little to climb.
- </p>
- <p>
- The strenuous life doesn't always blossom and bear good fruit. Balked in
- his intended partnership with Jigger, and subsequently missing Jigger—to
- say nothing of the business of the little Rotin girl, dead and down under
- the grass roots—Spanish not only failed to Get the Money! but
- succeeded in driving himself out of town. Many and vain were the gang
- guesses concerning him. Some said he was in Detroit, giving professional
- aid to a gifted booster. The latter was of the feminine gender, and, aside
- from her admitted genius for shoplifting, was acclaimed the quickest hand
- with a hanger—by which you are to understand that outside pendant
- purse wherewith women equip themselves as they go forth to shop—of
- all the gon-molls between the two oceans. Others insisted that Spanish was
- in Baltimore, and had joined out with a mob of poke-getters. The great,
- the disastrous thing, however—and to this all Gangland agreed—was
- that he had so bungled his destinies as to put himself out of New York.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Detroit! Baltimore!” exclaimed the Dropper. “W'y, it's woise'n bein' in
- stir! A guy might as well be doin' time as live in them burgs!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Dropper, in his iron-fisted way, was sincere in what he said. Later,
- he himself was given eighteen spaces in Sing Sing, which exile he might
- have missed had he fled New York in time. But he couldn't, and didn't. And
- so the Central Office got him, the District Attorney prosecuted him, the
- jury convicted him, and the judge sentenced him to that long captivity.
- Living in New York is not a preference, but an appetite—like
- drinking whiskey—and the Dropper had acquired the habit.
- </p>
- <p>
- What was the Dropper settled for?
- </p>
- <p>
- Robbery.
- </p>
- <p>
- It's too long to tell here, however, besides being another story. Some
- other day I may give it to you.
- </p>
- <p>
- Spanish, having abandoned New York, could no longer bear Alma loving
- company at picnic, rout and racket. What was Alma to do? She lived for
- routs, reveled in rackets, joyed in picnics. Must these delights be swept
- away? She couldn't go alone—it was too expensive. Besides, it would
- evince a lack of class.
- </p>
- <p>
- Alma, as proud and as wedded to her social position as any silken member
- of the Purple and Fine Linen Gang that ever rolled down Fifth Avenue in
- her brougham, revolved these matters upon her wheel of thought. Also, she
- came to conclusions. She, an admitted belle, could not consent to social
- obliteration. Spanish had fled; she worshipped his black eyes, his high
- courage; she would keep a heart-corner vacant for him in case he came
- back. Pending his return, however, she would go into society; and, for
- those reasons of expense and class and form, she would not go alone.
- </p>
- <p>
- Alma submitted her position to a beribboned jury of her peers. Their
- judgment ran abreast of her own.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A goil would be a mutt,” they said, “to stay cocked up at home. An' yet a
- goil couldn't go chasin' around be her lonesome. Alma”—this was
- their final word—“you must cop off another steady.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what would Johnny say?” asked Alma; for she couldn't keep her
- thoughts off Spanish, of whom she stood a little bit in fear.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Johnny's beat it, ain't he?” returned the advisory jury of friends.
- “There ain't no kick comin' to a guy what's beat it. He ain't no longer in
- th' picture.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Alma, thus free to pick and choose by virtue of the absence of Spanish,
- picked the Dropper. The latter chieftain was flattered. Taking Alma
- proudly yet tenderly under his mighty arm, he led her to suppers such as
- she had never eaten, bought her drinks such as she had never tasted,
- revolved with her at rackets where tickets were a dollar a throw, the
- orchestra seven pieces, and the floor shone like glass. It was a cut or
- two above anything that Spanish had given her, and Alma, who thought it
- going some, failed not to say so.
- </p>
- <p>
- Alma was proud of the Dropper; the Dropper was proud of her. She told her
- friends of the money he spent; and the friends warmed the cockles of her
- little heart by shrilly exclaiming at pleasant intervals:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ain't he th' swell guy!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Betcher boots he's th' swell guy,” Alma would rejoin; “an' he's got money
- to boin a wet dog! Th' only t'ing that worries me,” Alma would conclude,
- “is Johnny. S'ppose he blows in some day, an' lays for th' Dropper?'
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' Dropper could do him wit' a wallop,” the friends would consolingly
- return. “He'd swing onct; an' after that there wouldn't be no Johnny
- Spanish.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Round Back Rangers—it was, I think, the Round Backs—gave
- an outdoor racket somewhere near Maspeth. The Dropper took Alma. Both were
- in high, exultant feather. They danced, they drank, they rode the wooden
- horses. No more gallant couple graced the grounds.
- </p>
- <p>
- Cheese sandwiches, pig's knuckles and beer brought them delicately to the
- banquet board. They were among their friends. The talk was always
- interesting, sometimes educational.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ike the Blood complained that certain annoying purists were preaching a
- crusade against the Raines Law Hotels. Slimmy, celebrated not only for his
- slimness, but his erudition, declared that crusades had been the common
- curse of every age.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at do youse know about it?” sourly propounded the Humble Dutchman, who
- envied Slimmy his book-fed wisdom.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at do I know about it?” came heatedly from Slimmy. “Do youse think I
- ain't got no education? Th' last time I'm in stir, that time I goes up for
- four years, I reads all th' books in th' prison library. Ask th' warden if
- I don't. As to them crusades, it's as I tells you. There's always been
- crusades; it's th' way humanity's gaited. Every sport, even if he don't go
- 'round blowin' about it, has got it tucked somewhere away in his make-up
- that he, himself, is th' real thing. Every dub who's different from him he
- figgers is worse'n him. In two moves he's out crusadin'. In th' old days
- it's religion; th' Paynims was th' fall guys. Now it's rum, or racin', or
- Raines Hotels, or some such stall. Once let a community get the crusade
- bug, an' something's got to go. There's a village over in Joisey, an,'
- there bein' no grog shops an' no vice mills to get busy wit', they ups an'
- bounces an old geezer out of th' only church in town for pitchin'
- horse-shoes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Slimmy called for more beer, with a virtuously superior air.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But about them Paynims, Slimmy?” urged Alma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's hundreds of years ago,” Slimmy resumed. “Th' Paynims hung out in
- Palestine. Bein' they're Paynims, the Christians is naturally sore on 'em;
- an' so, when they feels like huntin' trouble, th' crusade spirit'd flare
- up. Richard over in England would pass th' woid to Philip in France, an'
- th' other lads wit' crowns.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'How about it?' he'd say. 'Cast your regal peepers toward Palestine.
- D'you make them Paynims? Ain't they th' tough lot? They won't eat pork;
- they toe in when they walk; they don't drink nothin' worse'n coffee;
- they've got brown skins. Also,' says he, 'we can lick 'em for money,
- marbles or chalk. W'at d'youse say, me royal brothers? Let's get our
- gangs, an' hand them Paynims a swift soak in behalf of the troo faith.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “Philip an' the other crowned lads at this would agree wit' Richard. 'Them
- Paynims is certainly th' worst ever!' they'd say; an' one woid'd borry
- another, until the crusade is on. Some afternoon you'd hear the newsies in
- th' streets yellin', 'Wux-try!' an' there it'd be in big black type,
- 'Richard, Philip an' their gallant bands of Strong-Arms have landed in
- Palestine.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' then w'at, Slimmy?” cooed Alma, who hung on every word.
- </p>
- <p>
- “As far as I can see, th' Christians always had it on th' Paynims, always
- had 'em shaded, when it comes to a scrap. Th' Christian lads had th'
- punch; an' th' Paynims must have been wise to it; for no sooner would
- Richard, Philip an' their roly-boly boys hit th' dock, than th' Paynims
- would take it on th' run for th' hills. Their mullahs would try to rally
- 'em, be tellin' 'em that whoever got downed fightin' Christians, the
- prophet would punch his ticket through for paradise direct, an' no
- stop-overs.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'That's all right about the prophet!' they'd say, givin' th' mullahs th'
- laugh. An' then they'd beat it for th' next ridge.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Them Paynims must have been a bunch of dead ones,” commented the Dropper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not bein' able to get on a match,” continued Slimmy, without heeding the
- Dropper, “th' Paynims declinin' their game, th' Christian hosts would
- rough house th' country generally, an' in a way of speakin' stand th' Holy
- Land on its head. Do what they would, however, they couldn't coax th'
- Paynims into th' ring wit' 'em; an' so after a while they decides that
- Palestine's th' bummest place they'd ever struck. Mebby, too, they'd begin
- havin' woid from home that their wives was gettin' a little gay, or their
- kids was goin' round marryin' th' kids of their enemies, an' that one way
- an' another their domestic affairs was on th' fritz. At this, Richard'd go
- loafin' over to Philip's tent, an' say:
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Philly, me boy, I don't know how this crusade strikes youse, but if I'm
- any judge of these great moral movements, it's on th' blink. An' so,' he'd
- go on, 'Philly, it's me for Merrie England be th' night boat.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wit' that, they'd break for home; an', when they got there, they'd mebby
- hand out a taste of th' strap to mamma an' th' babies, just to teach 'em
- not to go runnin' out of form th' next time father's far away.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Youse don't bank much on crusades, Slimmy?” Ike the Blood said.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Blood had more than a passing interest in the movement, mention of
- which had started the discussion, being himself a part proprietor in one
- of those threatened Raines Law Hotels.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Blood,” observed Slimmy, oracularly, “them moral movements is like a
- hornet; they stings onct an' then they dies.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Alma's attention was drawn to Mollie Squint—so called because of an
- optical slant which gave her a vague though piquant look. Mollie Squint
- was motioning from the outskirts of the little group. Alma pointed to the
- Dropper. Should she bring him? Mollie Squint shook her head.
- </p>
- <p>
- Leaving the Dropper, Alma joined Mollie Squint.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's Johnny,” gasped Mollie Squint. “He wants you; he's over be that
- bunch of trees.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Alma hung back; some impression of peril seized her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Better go,” whispered Mollie Squint. “He's onto you an' the Dropper, an'
- if you don't go he'll come lookin' for you. Then him an' the Dropper'll go
- to th' mat wit' each other, an' have it awful. Give Johnny one of your
- soft talks, an' mebby youse can smooth him down. Stall him off be tellin'
- him you'll see him to-night at Ding Dong's.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mollie Squint's advice seemed good, and as the lesser of two evils Alma
- decided to go. Mollie Squint did not accompany her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell th' Dropper I'll be back in a moment,” said Alma to Mollie Squint,
- “an' don't wise him up about Johnny.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Alma met Spanish at the far corner of the clump of trees. There was no
- talk, no time for talk. They were all alone. As she drew near, he pulled a
- pistol and shot her through and through the body.
- </p>
- <p>
- Alma's moaning cry was heard by the Dropper—that, and the sound of
- the shot. When the Dropper reached her, she was lying senseless in the
- shadow of the trees—a patch of white and red against the green of
- the grass. Spanish was nowhere in sight..
- </p>
- <p>
- Alma was carried to the hospital, and revived. But she would say nothing,
- give no names—staunch to the spirit of the Gangs. Only she whispered
- feebly to Mollie Squint, when the Dropper had been sent away by the
- doctors:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Johnny must have loved me a lot to shoot me up like he did. A guy has got
- to love a goil good and plenty before he'll try to cook her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did youse tell th' hospital croakers his name?” asked Mollie Squint.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course not! I never squealed to nobody. Do youse think I'd put poor
- Johnny in wrong?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then I won't,” said Mollie Squint.
- </p>
- <p>
- An attendant told Mollie Squint that she must go; certain surgeons had
- begun to assemble. Mollie Squint, tears falling, kissed Alma good-by.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Give Johnny all me love,” whispered Alma. “Tell him I'm no snitch; I'll
- stick.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Dropper did not have to be told whose bullet had struck down his star,
- his Alma. That night, Kid Kleiney with him, he went looking for Spanish.
- The latter, as jealous as Satan, was looking for the Dropper. Of the two,
- Spanish must have conducted his hunting with the greater circumspection or
- the greater luck; for about eleven of the clock he crept up behind the
- Dropper, as the latter and Kid Kleiney were walking in East Broadway, and
- planted a bullet in his neck. Kid Kleiney 'bout faced at the crack of the
- pistol, and was in fortunate time to stop Spanish's second bullet with one
- of the big buttons on his coat. Kid Kleiney fell by the side of the
- wounded Dropper, jarred off his feet by the shock.' He was able, however,
- when the police came up, to help place the Dropper in an ambulance.
- </p>
- <p>
- Spanish?
- </p>
- <p>
- Vanished—as usual.
- </p>
- <p>
- The police could get no line on him, did get no line on him, until months
- later, when, as related—the Dropper having been lagged for robbery,
- and safely caged—he came back to stick up the joint of Mersher the
- Strong-Arm, and be arrested by Dribben and Blum.
- </p>
- <p>
- The baby and I met casually in a Williamsburg street, where Alma had
- brought it to take the air, which was bad. Alma was thin-faced,
- hollow-eyed, but I could see that she had been pretty. She said she was
- twenty and the baby less than a year, and I think she told the truth.
- </p>
- <p>
- No one among Alma's friends finds fault with either the baby or herself,
- although both are without defence by the canons of high morality. There is
- warmth in the world; and, after all, the case of Alma and the baby is not
- so much beyond the common, except as to the baby's advent, which was
- dramatic and after the manner of Cæsar.
- </p>
- <p>
- Folk say the affair reflects illustriously upon the hospital. Also, what
- surgeons officiated are inclined to plume themselves; for have not Alma
- and the baby lived? I confess that those boastful scientists are not
- wanting in excuse for strutting, although they ought, perhaps, in honor,
- to divide credit with Alma and the baby as being hard to kill.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is not an ugly baby as babies go. Not that I pretend to be a judge. As
- I paused by its battered perambulator, it held up a rose-leaf hand, as
- though inviting me to look; and I looked. The little claw possessed but
- three talons; the first two fingers had been shot away. When I asked how,
- Alma lowered her head sadly, saying nothing. It would have been foolish to
- ask the baby. It couldn't talk. Moreover, since the fingers were shot away
- before it was born, it could possess no clear memory as to details.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is a healthy baby. Alma loves it dearly, and can be depended upon to
- give it every care. That is, she can be if she lives; and on that head her
- worn thinness alarms her friends, who wish she were fatter. Some say her
- thinness is the work of the bullet. Others believe that a sorrow is
- sapping her heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- III.—HOW PIOGGI WENT TO ELMIRA
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he Bottler was
- round, inoffensive, well-dressed, affable. He was also generous, as the
- East Side employs the term. Any one could touch him for a quarter upon a
- plea of beef stew, and if plaintively a bed were mentioned, for as much as
- fifty cents. For the Bottler was a money-maker, and had Suffolk Street
- position as among its richest capitalists.
- </p>
- <p>
- What bridge whist is to Fifth Avenue so is stuss to the East Side. No one
- save the dealer wins at stuss, and yet the device possesses an alluring
- feature. When the victim gets up from the table, the bank under the
- descriptive of viggresh returns him one-tenth of his losings. No one ever
- leaves a stuss game broke, and that final ray of sure sunshine forms
- indubitably the strong attraction. Stuss licks up as with a tongue of fire
- a round full fifth of all the East Side earns, and to viggresh should be
- given the black glory thereof.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Bottler owned talents to make money. Morally careless, liking the easy
- way, with, over all, that bent for speculation which sets some folk to
- dealing in stocks and others to dealing cards, those moneymaking talents
- found expression in stuss. Not that the Bottler was so weak-minded as to
- buck the game. Wise, prudent, solvent, he went the other way about it, his
- theater of operations being 135 Suffolk. Also, expanding liberally, the
- Bottler endowed his victims, as—stripped of their last dollar—they
- shoved back their hopeless chairs, with not ten, but fifteen per cent, of
- what sums they had changed in. This rendered 135 Suffolk a most popular
- resort, and the foolish stood four deep about the Bottler's tables every
- night in the week.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Bottler lacked utterly the war-heart, and was in no wise a fighter. He
- had the brawn, but not the soul, and this heart-sallowness would have
- threatened his standing save for those easy generosities. Gangland is not
- dull, and will overlook even a want of courage in one who, for bed and
- beef stews, freely places his purse at its disposal.
- </p>
- <p>
- There are two great gangs on the East Side. These are the Five Points and
- the Monk Eastmans. There are smaller gangs, but each owes allegiance to
- either the one or the other of the two great gangs, and fights round its
- standard in event of general gang war.
- </p>
- <p>
- There is danger in belonging to either of these gangs. But there is
- greater danger in not. I speak of folk of the Bottler's ways and walks.
- The Five Points and Eastmans are at feud with one another, and the fires
- of their warfare are never permitted to die out. Membership in one means
- that it will buckler you against the other while you live, and avenge you
- should you fall. Membership in neither means that you will be raided and
- rough-housed and robbed by both.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Bottler's stuss house was—like every other of its kind—a
- Castle Dangerous. To the end that the peril of his days and nights be
- reduced to minimum, he united himself with the Five Points. True, he could
- not be counted upon as a <i>shtocker</i> or strong-arm; but he had money
- and would part with it, and gang war like all war demands treasure. Bonds
- must be given; fines paid; the Bottler would have his uses. Wherefore the
- Five Points opened their arms and their hearts to receive him.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Eastmans had suffered a disorganizing setback when the chief, who gave
- the sept its name, went up the river for ten years. On the heels of that
- sorrowful retirement, it became a case of York and Lancaster; two
- claimants for the throne stood forth. These were Ritchie Fitzpatrick and
- Kid Twist, both valorous, both with reputations of having killed, both
- with clouds of followers at their backs.
- </p>
- <p>
- Twist, in whom abode the rudiments of a savage diplomacy, proposed a
- conference. Fitzpatrick at that conference was shot to death, and Kid
- Dahl, a near friend of Twist, stood for the collar. Dahl was thus
- complacent because Fitzpatrick had not died by his hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- The police, the gangs and the politicians are not without a sinister
- wisdom. When life has been taken, and to punish the slayer would be an
- inconvenience, some one who didn't do the killing submits to arrest. This
- covers the retreat of the guilty. Also, the public is appeased. Later,
- when the public's memory sleeps, the arrested one—for lack of
- evidence—is set at liberty.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Fitzpatrick was killed, to clear the path to gang leadership before
- the aspiring feet of Twist, the police took Dahl, who all but volunteered
- for the sacrifice. Dahl went smilingly to jail, while the real murderer of
- Fitzpatrick attended that dead personage's wake, and later appeared at the
- funeral. This last, however, by the nicer tastes of Gangland, was
- complained of as bordering upon vulgarity.
- </p>
- <p>
- Fitzpatrick was buried with a lily in his hand, and Twist was hailed chief
- of the Eastmans. Dahl remained in the Tombs a reasonable number of weeks,
- and then resumed his position in society. It was but natural, and to the
- glory of stumbling human nature, that Dahl should dwell warmly in the
- grateful regard of Twist.
- </p>
- <p>
- Twist, now chief of the Eastmans, cast about to establish Dahl. There was
- the Bottler, with his stuss Golconda in Suffolk Street. Were not his
- affiliations with the Five Points? Was he not therefore the enemy? The
- Bottler was an Egyptian, and Twist resolved to spoil him in the interest
- of Dahl.
- </p>
- <p>
- Twist, with Dahl, waited upon the Bottler. Argument was short and to the
- point. Said Twist: “Bottler, the Kid”—indicating the expectant Dahl—“is
- in wit' your stuss graft from now on. It's to be an even break.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The news almost checked the beating of the Bottler's heart. Not that he
- was astonished. What the puissant Twist proposed was a commonest step in
- Gangland commerce—Gangland, where the Scotch proverb of “Take what
- you may; keep what you can!” retains a pristine force. For all that, the
- Bottler felt dismay. The more since he had hoped that his hooking up with
- the Five Points would have kept him against such rapine.
- </p>
- <p>
- Following the Twist fulmination, the Bottler stood wrapped in thought. The
- dangerous chief of the Eastmans lit a cigar and waited. The poor Bottler's
- cogitations ran off in this manner. Twist had killed six men. Also, he had
- spared no pains in carrying out those homicides, and could laugh at the
- law, which his prudence left bankrupt of evidence. Dahl, too, possessed a
- past as red as Twist's. Both could be relied upon to kill. To refuse Dahl
- as a partner spelled death. To acquiesce called for half his profits. His
- friends of the Five Points, to be sure, could come at his call. That,
- however, would not save his game and might not save his life. Twist's
- demand showed that he had resolved, so far as he, the Bottler, was
- concerned, to rule or ruin. The latter was easy. Any dozen of the
- Eastmans, picking some unguarded night, could fall upon his establishment,
- confiscate his bankroll, and pitch both him and his belongings into the
- street. The Five Points couldn't be forever at his threatened elbow. They
- would avenge him, certainly; but vengeance, however sweet, comes always
- over-late, and possesses besides no value in dollars and cents. Thus
- reasoned the Bottler, while Twist frowningly paused. The finish came when,
- with a sickly smile, the Bottler bowed to the inevitable and accepted
- Dahl.
- </p>
- <p>
- All Suffolk Street, to say nothing of the thoroughfares roundabout, knew
- what had taken place. The event and the method thereof did not provoke the
- shrugging of a shoulder, the arching of a brow. What should there be in
- the usual to invite amazement?
- </p>
- <p>
- For six weeks the Bottler and Dahl settled up, fifty-and-fifty, with the
- close of each stuss day. Then came a fresh surprise. Dahl presented his
- friend, the Nailer, to the Bottler with this terse remark:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bottler, youse can beat it. The Nailer is goin' to be me partner now.
- Which lets you out, see?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Bottler was at bay. He owned no stomach for battle, but the sentiment
- of desperation, which the announcement of Dahl provoked, drove him to make
- a stand. To lose one-half had been bad. To lose all—to be wholly
- wiped out in the annals of Suffolk Street stuss—was more than even
- his meekness might bear. No, the Bottler did not dream of going to the
- police. That would have been to squeal; and even his friends of the Five
- Points had only faces of flint for such tactics of disgrace.
- </p>
- <p>
- The harassed Bottler barred his doors against Dahl. He would defend his
- castle, and get word to the Five Points. The Bottler's doors having been
- barred, Dahl for his side at once instituted a siege, despatching the
- Nailer, meanwhile, to the nearest knot of Eastmans to bring
- reinforcements.
- </p>
- <p>
- At this crisis O'Farrell of the Central Office strolled into the equation.
- He himself was hunting a loft-worker; of more than common industry, and
- had no thought of either the Bottler or Dahl. Happening, however, upon a
- situation, whereof the elemental features were Dahl outside with a gun and
- the Bottler inside with a gun, he so far recalled his oath of office as to
- interfere.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Better an egg to-day than a hen to-morrow,” philosophized O'Farrell, and
- putting aside for the moment his search for the loft-worker, he devoted
- himself to the Bottler and Dahl.
- </p>
- <p>
- With the sure instinct of his Mulberry Street caste, O'Farrell opened
- negotiations with Dahl. He knew the latter to be the dangerous angle, and
- began by placing the muzzle of his own pistol against that marauder's
- back.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Make a move,” said he, “and I'll shoot you in two.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The sophisticated Dahl, realizing fate, moved not, and with that the
- painstaking O'Farrell collected his armament.
- </p>
- <p>
- Next the Bottler was ordered to come forth. The Bottler obeyed in a sweat
- and a tremble. He surrendered his pistol at word of the law, and O'Farrell
- led both off to jail. The two were charged with Disturbance.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the station house, and on the way, Dahl ceased not to threaten the
- Bottler's life.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This pinch'll cost a fine of five dollars,” said Dahl, glaring round
- O'Farrell at the shaking Bottler. “I'll pay it, an' then I'll get square
- wit' youse. Once we're footloose, you won't last as long as a drink of
- whiskey!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The judge yawningly listened, while O'Farrell told his tale of that
- disturbance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Five an' costs!” quoth the judge, and called the next case.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Bottler returned to Suffolk Street, Dahl sought Twist, while O'Farrell
- again took the trail of the loft-worker.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dahl talked things over with Twist. There was but one way: the Bottler
- must die. Anything short 'of blood would unsettle popular respect for
- Twist, and without that his leadership of the Eastmans was a farce.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Bottler's killing, however, must be managed with a decent care for the
- conventionalities. For either Twist or Dahl to walk in upon that offender
- and shoot him to death, while feasible, would be foolish. The coarse
- extravagance of such a piece of work would serve only to pile needless
- difficulties in the pathway of what politicians must come to the rescue.
- It was impertinences of that character which had sent Monk Eastman to Sing
- Sing. Eastman had so far failed as to the proprieties, when as a
- supplement to highway robbery he emptied his six-shooter up and down
- Forty-second Street, that the politicians could not save him without
- burning their fingers. And so they let him go. Twist had justified the
- course of the politicians upon that occasion. He would not now, by lack of
- caution and a reasonable finesse, force them into similar peril. They must
- and would defend him; but it was not for him to render their labors too
- up-hill and too hard.
- </p>
- <p>
- Twist sent to Williamsburg for his friend and ally, Cyclone Louie. The
- latter was a bull-necked, highly muscled individual, who was a
- professional strong man—so far as he was professionally anything—and
- earned occasional side-show money at Coney Island by bending iron bars
- about his neck and twisting pokers into corkscrews about his brawny arms.
- </p>
- <p>
- Louie, Twist and Dahl went into council over mutual beer, and Twist
- explained the imperative call for the Bottler's extermination. Also, he
- laid bare the delicate position of both himself and Dahl.
- </p>
- <p>
- In country regions neighbors aid one another in bearing the burdens of an
- agricultural day by changing work. The custom is not without what one
- might call gang imitation and respect. Only in the gang instance the work
- is not innocent, but bloody. Louie, having an appreciation of what was due
- a friend, could not do less than come to the relief of Twist and Dahl.
- Were positions reversed, would they not journey to Williamsburg and do as
- much for him? Louie did not hesitate, but placed himself at the disposal
- of Twist and Dahl. The Bottler should die; he, Louie, would see to that.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But when?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Twist, replying, felt that the thing should be done at once, and mentioned
- the following evening, nine o'clock. The place should be the Bottler's
- establishment in Suffolk Street. Louie, of whom the Bottler was unafraid
- and ignorant, should experience no difficulty in approaching his man.
- There would be others present; but, practiced in gang moralities, slaves
- to gang etiquette, no one would open his mouth. Or, if he did, it would be
- only to pour forth perjuries, and say that he had seen nothing, heard
- nothing.
- </p>
- <p>
- Having adjusted details, Louie, Twist and Dahl compared watches. Watches?
- Certainly. Louie, Twist and Dahl were all most fashionably attired and—as
- became members of a gang nobility—singularly full and accurate in
- the important element of a front, <i>videlicet</i>, that list of personal
- adornments which included scarf pin, ring and watch. Louie, Dahl and Twist
- saw to it that their timepieces agreed. This was so that Dahl and Twist
- might arrange their alibis.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the next evening. At 8.55 o'clock Twist was obtrusively in the
- Delancey Street police station, wrangling with the desk sergeant over the
- release of a follower who had carefully brought about his own arrest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come,” urged Twist to the sergeant, “it's next to nine o'clock now. Fix
- up the bond; I've got a date over in East Broadway at nine-thirty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- While Twist stood thus enforcing his whereabouts and the hour upon the
- attention of the desk sergeant, Dahl was eating a beefsteak in a Houston
- street restaurant.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What time have youse got?” demanded Dahl of the German who kept the
- place.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Five minutes to nine,” returned the German, glancing up at the clock.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, t'aint no such time as that,” retorted Dahl peevishly. “That clock's
- drunk! Call up the telephone people, and find out for sure.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The 'phone people say it's nine o'clock,” reported the German, hanging up
- the receiver.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hully gee! I didn't think it was more'n halfpast eight!” and Dahl looked
- virtuously corrected.
- </p>
- <p>
- While these fragments of talk were taking place, the Bottler was attending
- to his stuss interests. He looked pale and frightened, and his hunted eyes
- roved here and there. Five minutes went by. The clock pointed to nine. A
- slouch-hat stranger entered. As the clock struck the hour, he placed the
- muzzle of a pistol against the Bottler's breast, and fired twice. Both
- bullets pierced the heart, and the Bottler fell—dead without a word.
- There were twenty people in the room. When the police arrived they found
- only the dead Bottler.
- </p>
- <p>
- O'Farrell recalled those trade differences which had culminated in the
- charge of disturbance, and arrested Dahl.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You ain't got me right,” scoffed Dahl.
- </p>
- <p>
- And O'Farrell hadn't.
- </p>
- <p>
- There came the inquest, and Dahl was set free. The Bottler was buried, and
- Twist and Dahl sent flowers and rode to the grave.
- </p>
- <p>
- The law slept, a bat-eyed constabulary went its way, but the gangs knew.
- In the whispered gossip of Gangland every step of the Bottler's murder was
- talked over and remembered. He must have been minus ears and eyes and
- understanding who did not know the story. The glance of Gangland turned
- towards the Five Points. What would be their action? They were bound to
- avenge. If not for the Bottler's sake, then for their own. For the Bottler
- had been under the shadow of their protection, and gang honor was
- involved. On the Five Points' part there was no stumbling of the spirit.
- For the death of the Bottler the Five Points would exact the penalty of
- blood.
- </p>
- <p>
- Distinguished among the chivalry of the Five Points was Kid Pioggi. Only a
- paucity of years—he was under eighteen—withheld Pioggi from
- topmost honors. Pioggi was not specifically assigned to avenge the
- departed Bottler. Ambitious and gallantly anxious of advancement, however,
- he of his own motion carried the enterprise in the stomach of his
- thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- The winter's snow melted into spring, spring lapsed into early summer. It
- was a brilliant evening, and Pioggi was disporting himself at Coney
- Island. Also Twist and Cyclone Louie, following some plan of relaxation,
- were themselves at Coney Island.
- </p>
- <p>
- Pioggi had seated himself at a beer table in Ding Dong's. Twist and Louie
- came in. Pioggi, being of the Five Points, was recognized as a foe by
- Twisty who lost no time in mentioning it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Being in a facetious mood, and by way of expressing his contempt for that
- gentleman, Twist made Pioggi jump out of the window. It was no distance to
- the ground, and no physical harm could come. But to be compelled to leave
- Ding Dong's by way of the window, rubbed wrongwise the fur of Pioggi's
- feelings. To jump from a window stamps one with disgrace.
- </p>
- <p>
- Twist and Louie—burly, muscular, strong as horses—were adepts
- of rough-and-tumble. Pioggi, little, light and weak, knew that any thought
- of physical conflict would have been preposterous. And yet he was no one
- to sit quietly down with his humiliation. That flight from Ding Dong's
- window would be on every tongue in Gangland. The name of Pioggi would
- become a scorning; the tale would stain the Pioggi fame.
- </p>
- <p>
- Louie and Twist sat down at the table in Ding Dong's, from which Pioggi
- had been driven, and demanded refreshment in the guise of wine. Pioggi,
- rage-swollen as to heart, busied himself at a nearby telephone. Pioggi got
- the ear of a Higher Influence of his clan. He told of his abrupt dismissal
- from Ding Dong's, and the then presence of Louie and Twist. The Higher
- Influence instructed Pioggi to keep the two in sight. The very flower of
- the Five Points should be at Coney Island as fast as trolley cars could
- carry them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tail 'em,” said the Higher Influence, referring to Twist and Louie; “an'
- when the fleet gets there go in wit' your cannisters an' bump 'em off.”
- </p>
- <p>
- While waiting the advent of his promised forces, Pioggi, maintaining the
- while an eye on Twist and Louie to the end that they escape not and
- disappear, made arrangements for a getaway. He established a coupé, a fast
- horse between the shafts and a personal friend on the box, where he,
- Pioggi, could find it when his work was done.
- </p>
- <p>
- By the time this was accomplished, Pioggi's recruits had put in an
- appearance. They did not descend upon Coney Island in a body, with savage
- uproar and loud cries. Much too military were they for that. Rather they
- seemed to ooze into position around Pioggi, and they could not have made
- less noise had they been so many ghosts.
- </p>
- <p>
- The campaign was soon laid out. Louie and Twist still sat over their wine
- at Ding Dong's. Now and then they laughed, as though recalling the
- ignominious exit of Pioggi. Means must be employed to draw them into the
- street. That accomplished, the Five Points' Danites were to drift up
- behind them, and at a signal from Pioggi, empty their pistols into their
- backs. Pioggi would fire a bullet into Twist; that was to be the signal.
- As Pioggi whispered his instructions, there shone a licking eagerness in
- the faces of those who listened. Nothing so exalts the gangster like blood
- in anticipation; nothing so pleases him as to shoot from behind.
- </p>
- <p>
- Pioggi pitched upon one whose name and face were unknown to Twist and
- Louie. The unknown would be the bearer of a blind message—it
- purported to come from a dancer in one of the cheap theaters of the place—calculated
- to bring forth Twist and Louie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Stall 'em up this way,” said Pioggi, indicating a spot within touching
- distance of that coupé. “It's here we'll put 'em over the jump.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The place pitched upon for the killing was crowded with people. It was
- this very thronged condition which had led to its selection. The crowd
- would serve as a cover to Five Points operations. It would prevent a
- premature recognition of their assailants by Twist and Louie; it would
- screen the slayers from identification by casual citizens looking on.
- </p>
- <p>
- Pioggi's messenger did well his work, and Twist and Louie moved
- magnificently albeit unsteadily into the open. They were sweeping the walk
- clear of lesser mortals, when the voice of Pioggi arrested their
- attention.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, there, Twist; look here!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The voice came from the rear and to the right; Pioggi's position was one
- calculated to place the enemy at a double disadvantage.
- </p>
- <p>
- Twist turned his head. A bullet struck him above the eye! He staggered!
- The lead came in a storm! Twist went down; Louie fell across him! There
- were twelve bullets in Twist and eight in Louie. The coroner said that
- they were the deadest people of whom he owned official recollection.
- </p>
- <p>
- As the forethoughtful Pioggi was dashing away in his coupé, a policeman
- gave chase. Pioggi drove a bullet through the helmet of the law. It
- stopped pursuit; but Gangland has ever held that the shot was an error. A
- little lower, and the policeman would have been killed. Also, the death of
- a policeman is apt to entail consequences.
- </p>
- <p>
- Pioggi went into hiding in Greenwich, where the Five Points had a
- hold-out. There were pullings and haulings and whisperings in dark
- political corners. When conditions had been whispered and hauled and
- pulled into shape satisfactory, Pioggi sent word to a favorite officer to
- come and arrest him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Pioggi explained to the court that his life had been threatened; he had
- shot only that he himself might live. His age was seventeen. Likewise
- there had been no public loss; the going of Twist and Louie had but raised
- the average of all respectability. The court pondered the business, and
- decided that justice would be fulfilled by sentencing Pioggi to the Elmira
- Reformatory.
- </p>
- <p>
- The best fashion of the Five Points visited Pioggi in the Tombs on the
- morning of his departure.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's only thirteen months, Kid,” came encouragingly from one. “You won't
- mind it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mind it!” responded Pioggi, in disdain of the worst that Elmira might
- hold for him; “mind it! I could do it standin' on me head.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- IV.—IKE THE BLOOD
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>henever the police
- were driven to deal with him officially, he called himself Charles Livin,
- albeit the opinion prevailed at headquarters that in thus spelling it, he
- left off a final ski. The police, in the wantonness of their ignorance,
- described him on their books as a burglar. This was foolishly wide. He
- should have been listed as a simple Strong-Arm, whose methods of divorcing
- other people from their money, while effective, were coarse. Also, it is
- perhaps proper to mention that his gallery number at the Central Office
- was 10,394.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was during the supremacy of Monk Eastman that he broke out, and he had
- just passed his seventeenth birthday. Being out, he at once attached
- himself to the gang-fortunes of that chief; and it became no more than a
- question of weeks before his vast physical strength, the energy of his
- courage and a native ferocity of soul, won him his proud war-name of Ike
- the Blood. Compared with the herd about him, in what stark elements made
- the gangster important in his world, he shone out upon the eyes of folk
- like stars of a clear cold night.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ike the Blood looked up to his chief, Monk Eastman, as sailors look up to
- the North Star, and it wrung his soul sorely when that gang captain went
- to Sing Sing. In the war over the succession and the baton of gang
- command, waged between Ritchie Fitzpatrick and Kid Twist, Ike the Blood
- was compelled to stand neutral. Powerless to take either side, liking both
- ambitious ones, the trusted friend of both, his hands were tied; and later—first
- Fitzpatrick and then Twist—he followed both to the grave, sorrow not
- only on his lips but in his heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was one recent August day that I was granted an introduction to Ike the
- Blood. I was in the company of an intimate friend of mine—he holds
- high Central Office position in the police economy of New York. We were
- walking in Henry Street, in the near vicinity of that vigorous
- organization, the Ajax Club—so called, I take it, because its
- members are forever defying the lightnings of the law. My Central Office
- friend had mentioned Ike the Blood, speaking of him as a guiding light to
- such difficult ones as Little Karl, Whitey Louie, Benny Weiss, Kid
- Neumann, Tomahawk, Fritzie Rice, Dagley and the Lobster.
- </p>
- <p>
- Even as the names were in his mouth, his keen Central Office glance went
- roving through the open doorway of a grogshop.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's Ike the Blood now,” said he, and tossed a thumb, which had
- assisted in necking many a malefactor with tastes to be violent, towards
- the grogshop.
- </p>
- <p>
- Since to consider such pillars of East Side Society was the great reason
- of my ramble, we entered the place. Ike the Blood was sitting in state at
- a table to the rear of the unclean bar, a dozen of his immediate followers—in
- the politics of gang life these formed a minor order of nobility—with
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Being addressed by my friend, he arose and joined us; none the less he
- seemed reticent and a bit disturbed. This was due to the official
- character of my friend, plus the fact that the jealous eyes of those
- others were upon him. It is no advantage to a leader, like Ike the Blood,
- to be seen in converse with a detective. Should one of his adherents be
- arrested within a day or a week, the arrested one reverts to that
- conversation, and imagines vain things.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Take a walk with us, Ike,” said my friend.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ike the Blood was obviously reluctant. Sinking his voice, and giving a
- glance over his shoulder at his myrmidons—not ten feet away, and
- every eye upon him—he remonstrated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say, I don't want to leave th' push settin' here, to go chasin' off wit'
- a bull. Fix it so I can come uptown sometime.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Very well,” returned my friend, relenting; “I don't want to put you in
- Dutch with your fleet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a whispered brief word or two, and an arrangement for a meet was
- made; after which Ike the Blood lapsed into the uneasy circle he had
- quitted. As we left the grogshop, we could hear him loudly calling for
- beer. Possibly the Central Office nearness of my friend had rendered him
- thirsty. Or it may have been that the beer was meant to wet down and allay
- whatever of sprouting suspicion had been engendered in the trustless
- breasts of his followers.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a week later.
- </p>
- <p>
- The day, dark and showery, was—to be exact—the eighth of
- August. Faithful to that whispered Henry Street arrangement, Ike the Blood
- sat awaiting the coming of my friend and myself in the Bal Tabarin. He had
- spoken of the stuss house of Phil Casey and Paper Box Johnny, in
- Twenty-ninth Street, but my friend entered a protest. There was his
- Central Office character to be remembered. A natural embarrassment must
- ensue were he brought face to face with stuss in a state of activity.
- Stuss was a crime, by surest word of law, and he had taken an oath of
- office. He did not care to pinch either Paper Box or Casey, and therefore
- preferred not to be drawn into a situation where the only alternative
- would be to either pull their joint or lay the bedplates of complaint
- against himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's no good time to be up on charges,” remonstrated my friend, “for the
- commish that's over us now would sooner grab a copper than a crook.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus instructed, and feeling the delicacy of my friend's position, Ike the
- Blood had shifted suggestion to the Bal Tabarin. The latter house of
- entertainment, in Twenty-eighth Street, was innocent of stuss and indeed
- cards in any form. Kept by Sam Paul, it possessed a deserved popularity
- with Ike and the more select of his acquaintances.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ike the Blood appeared to better advantage in the Bal Tabarin than on that
- other, Henry Street, grogshop occasion. Those suspicious ones, of lowering
- eye and doubtful brow, had been left behind, and their absence contributed
- to his relief, and therefore to his looks. Not that he had been sitting in
- the midst of loneliness at the Bal Tabarin; Whitey Dutch and Slimmy were
- with him, and who should have been better company than they? Also, their
- presence was of itself an honor, since they were of his own high caste,
- and many layers above a mere gang peasantry. They would take part in the
- conversation, too, and, if to talk and touch glasses with a Central Office
- bull were an offense, it would leave them as deep in the police mud as was
- he in the police mire.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ike the Blood received us gracefully, if not enthusiastically, and was so
- polite as to put me on a friendly footing with his companions. Greetings
- over, and settled to something like our ease, I engaged myself mentally in
- taking Ike's picture. His forehead narrow, back-sloping at that lively
- angle identified by carpenters as a quarter-pitch, was not the forehead of
- a philosopher. I got the impression, too, that his small brown eyes, sad
- rather than malignant, would in any heat of anger blaze like twin balls of
- brown fire. Cheek-bones high; nose beaky, predatory—such a nose as
- Napoleon loved in his marshals; mouth coarsely sensitive, suggesting
- temperament; the broad, bony jaw giving promise of what staying qualities
- constitute the stock in trade of a bulldog; no mustache, no beard; a
- careless liberality of ear—that should complete the portrait. Fairly
- given, it was the picture of one who acted more than he thought, and whose
- atmosphere above all else conveyed the feeling of relentless force—the
- picture of one who under different circumstances might have been a Murat
- or a Massena.
- </p>
- <p>
- My friend managed the conversation, and did it with Central Office tact.
- Knowing what I was after, he brought up Gangland and the gangs, upon which
- topics Whitey Dutch, seeing no reasons for silence, spoke instructively.
- Aside from the great gangs, the Eastmans and the Five Points, I learned
- that other smaller yet independent gangs existed. Also, from Whitey's
- discourse, it was made clear that just as countries had frontiers, so also
- were there frontiers to the countries of the gangs. The Five Points, with
- fifteen hundred on its puissant muster rolls, was supreme—he said—between
- Broadway and the Bowery, Fourteenth Street and City Hall Park. The
- Eastmans, with one thousand warriors, flourished between Monroe and
- Fourteenth Streets, the Bowery and the East River. The Gas House Gang,
- with only two hundred in its nose count, was at home along Third Avenue
- between Eleventh and Eighteenth Streets. The vivacious Gophers were
- altogether heroes of the West Side. They numbered full five hundred, each
- a holy terror, and ranged the region bounded by Seventh Avenue, Fourteenth
- Street, Tenth Avenue and Forty-second Street. The Gophers owned a
- rock-bottom fame for their fighting qualities, and, speaking in the sense
- militant, neither the Eastmans nor the Five Points would care to mingle
- with them on slighter terms than two to one. The fulness of Whitey Dutch,
- himself of the Five Points, in what justice he did the Gophers, marked his
- splendid breadth of soul.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ike the Blood, overhung by some cloud of moodiness, devoted himself
- moderately to beer, taking little or less part in the talk. Evidently
- there was something bearing him down.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I ain't feelin' gay,” he remarked; “an' at that, if youse was to ast me,
- I couldn't tell youse why.”
- </p>
- <p>
- As though a thought had been suggested, he arose and started for the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I won't be away ten minutes,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Slimmy looked curiously at Whitey Dutch.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's chased off to one of them fortune-tellers,” said Whitey.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do youse take any stock in them ginks who claims they can skin a deck of
- cards, or cock their eye into a teacup, an' then put you next to
- everyt'ing that'll happen to you in a year?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Slimmy aimed this at me.
- </p>
- <p>
- Upon my assurance, given with emphasis, that I attached no weight to
- so-called seers and fortunetellers, he was so magnanimous as to indorse my
- position.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They're a bunch of cheap bunks,” he declared. “I've gone ag'inst 'em time
- an' time, an' there's nothin' in it. One of 'em gives me his woid—after
- me comin' across wit' fifty cents—th' time Belfast Danny's in
- trouble, that Danny'll be toined out all right. Two days later Danny gets
- settled for five years.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ike's stuck on 'em,” remarked Whitey.
- </p>
- <p>
- Slimmy and Whitey Dutch, speaking freely and I think veraciously, told me
- many things. Whitey explained that, while he and Slimmy were shining
- lights of the Five Points, yet to be found fraternizing with Ike the Blood—an
- Eastman—was in perfect keeping with gang proprieties. For, as he
- pointed out, there was momentary truce between the Eastmans and the Five
- Points. Among the gangs, in seasons of gang peace, the nobles—by
- word of Whitey—were expected to make stately calls of ceremony and
- good fellowship upon one another, as had been the wont among Highland
- chieftains in the days of Bruce and Wallace.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Speaking of the Gas House Gang: how do they live?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Stickin' up lushes mostly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How much of this stick-up work goes on?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well”—thoughtfully—“they'll pull off as many as twenty-five
- stick-ups to-night.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's no such number of squeals coming in at headquarters.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The contradiction emanated from my Central Office friend, who felt
- criticized by inference.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Squeals!” exclaimed Whitey Dutch with warmth, “w'y should they squeal?
- The Gas House push'd cook 'em if they squealed. Suppose right now I was to
- go out an' get put in th' air; do you think I'd squeal? Well, I should say
- not; I'm no mutt! They'd about come gallopin' 'round tomorry wit'
- bale-sticks, an' break me arms an' legs, or mebby knock me block off. W'y,
- not a week ago, three Gas House <i>shtockers</i> stands me up in
- Riving-ton Street, an' takes me clock—a red one wit' two doors. Then
- they pinches a fiver out of me keck. They even takes me bank-book.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at license has a stiff like youse got to have $375 in th' bank?' they
- says—like that.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Next night they comes bluffin' round for me three hundred and
- seventy-five dollar plant—w'at do you t'ink of that? But I'm there
- wit' a gatt me-self that time, an' ready to give 'em an argument. W'en
- they sees I'm framed up, they gets cold feet. But you can bet I don't do
- no squealin'!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you get back your watch?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How could I get it back?” peevishly. “No, I don't get back me watch. All
- the same, I'll lay for them babies. Some day I'll get 'em right, an' trim
- 'em to the queen's taste.”
- </p>
- <p>
- My friend, leading conversation in his specious Central Office way, spoke
- of Ike the Blood's iron fame, and slanted talk in that direction.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ike can certainly go some!” observed Slimmy meditatively. “Take it from
- me, there ain't any of 'em, even th' toughest ever, wants his game.”
- Turning to Whitey: “Don't youse remember, Whitey, when he tears into
- Humpty Jackson an' two of his mob, over in Thirteenth Street, that time?
- There's nothin' to it! Ike simply makes 'em jump t'rough a hoop! Every
- lobster of 'em has his rod wit' him, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They wouldn't have had the nerve to fire 'em if they'd pulled 'em,”
- sneered Whitey. “Ike'd have made 'em eat th' guttaperchy all off th'
- handles, too. Say, I don't t'ink much of that Gas House fleet. They talk
- strong; but they don't bring home th' goods, see!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It appeared that, in spite of his sanguinary title, Ike the Blood had
- never killed his man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's tried,” explained Slimmy, who felt as though the absent one, in his
- blood-guiltlessness, required defense; “but he all th' time misses. Ike's
- th' woist shot wit' a rod in th' woild.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure, Mike!”—from Whitey Dutch, his nose in his drink; “he couldn't
- hit th' Singer Buildin'.” '“How does he make his money?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Loft worker,” broke in my friend.
- </p>
- <p>
- The remark was calculated to explode the others into fresh confidences.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't youse believe it!” came in vigorous denial from Whitey Dutch. “Ike
- never cracked a bin in his life. You bulls”—this was pointed
- especially at my friend—“say he's a dip, too. W'y, it's a laugh! Ike
- couldn't pick th' pocket of a dead man—couldn't put his hand into a
- swimmin' tank! That's how fly he is.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now don't try to string me,” retorted my friend, severely. “Didn't Ike
- fill in with Little Maxie and his mob, when they worked the Jersey fairs?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But that was only to do the strong-arm work, in case there's a scrap,”
- protested Whitey. “On th' level, Ike is woise than Big Abrams. He can't
- even stall. An' as for gettin' a leather or a watch, gettin' a perfecto
- out of a cigar box would be about his limit.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That Joisey's a bum place; youse can go there for t'ree cents.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The last was interjected by Slimmy—who had a fine wit of his own—with
- the hopeful notion of diverting discussion to less exciting questions than
- pocket-picking at the New Jersey fairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- It developed that while Ike the Blood had now and then held up a stuss
- game for its bank-roll, during some desperate ebb-tide of his fortunes, he
- drew his big income from a yearly ball.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He gives a racket,” declared Whitey Dutch; “that's how Ike gets his
- dough. Th' last one he pulls off nets him about twenty-five hundred
- plunks.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What price were the tickets?” I inquired. Twenty-five hundred dollars
- sounded large.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' tickets is fifty cents,” returned Whitey, “but that's got nothin' to
- do wit' it. A guy t'rows down say a ten-spot at th' box-office, like that”—and
- Whitey made a motion with his hand, which was royal in its generous
- openness. “'Gimme a pasteboard!' he says; an' that ends it; he ain't
- lookin' for no change back. Every sport does th' same. Some t'rows in
- five, some ten, some guy even changes in a twenty if he's pulled off a
- trick an' is feelin' flush. It's all right; there's nothin' in bein' a
- piker. Ike himself sells th' tickets; an' th' more you planks down th'
- more he knows you like him.” It was becoming plain. A gentleman of gang
- prominence gives a ball—a racket—and coins, so to speak, his
- disrepute. He of sternest and most bloody past takes in the most money. To
- discover one's status in Gangland, one has but to give a racket.. The
- measure of the box-receipts will be the dread measure of one's reputation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “One t'ing youse can say of Ike,” observed Slimmy, wearing the while a
- look of virtue, “he never made no money off a woman.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Never in all his life took a dollar off a doll!” added Whitey,
- corroboratively.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ike the Blood reappearing at this juncture, it was deemed best to cease—audibly,
- at least—all consideration of his merits. He might have regarded
- discussion, so personal to himself, with disfavor. Laughing lightly, he
- took his old place at the table, and beckoned the waiter. Compared with
- what had been its former cloudy expression, his face wore a look of
- relief.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say, I don't mind tellin' youse guys,” he said at last, breaking into an
- uneasy laugh, “but th' fact is, I skinned round into Sixt' Avenoo to a
- fortune teller—a dandy, she is—one that t'rows a fit, or goes
- into a trance, or some such t'ing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A fortune teller!” said Slimmy, as though he'd never heard the word
- before.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's on account of a dream. In all th' years”—Ike spoke as might
- one who had put a century behind him—“in all th' years I've been
- knockin' about, an' I've had me troubles, I never gets a notch on me gun,
- see? Not that I went lookin' for any; not that I'm lookin' for any now.
- But last night I had a dream:—I dreams I croaks a guy. Mebby it's
- somet'in' I'd been eatin'; mebby it's because of me havin' a pretty hot
- argument th' mornin' before; but anyhow it bothers me—that dream
- does. You see”—this to my friend—“I'm figgerin' on openin' a
- house over in Twenty-fift' Street, an' these West Side ducks is all for
- givin' me th' frozen face. They say I oughter stick down on th' East Side,
- where I belongs, an' not come chasin' up here, cuttin' in on their graft.
- Anyhow, I dreams I puts th' foist notch on me gun———-”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And so you consult a fortune teller,” laughed my friend, who was not
- superstitious, but practical.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wait till I tells you. As I says, I blows in on that trance party. I
- don't wise her up about any dream, but comes t'rough wit' th' little old
- one buck she charges, an' says: 'There you be! Now roll your game for th'
- limit!'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Which she proceeded to do,” broke in my friend.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Listen! Th' old dame—after coppin' me dollar—stiffens back
- an' shuts her eyes; an' next, th' foist flash out of th' box she says—speakin'
- like th' wind in a keyhole: 'You're in th' midst of trouble; a man is
- killed!' Then she wakes up. 'W'y didn't youse go t'rough?' I says; T want
- th' rest. Who is it gets croaked, th' other dub or me?' Th' old dame
- insists that to go back, an' get th' address of th' party who's been
- bumped off, she must have another dollar. Oh, they're th' birds, them
- fortune tellers, to grab th' dough! But of course I can't stop there, so I
- bucks up wit' another bone. 'There you be,' I says; 'now, is it me that
- gets it, or does he?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at he?” demanded Whitey.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do I know?” The tone and manner were impatient. “It's th' geek I'm
- havin' trouble wit'.” Ike looked at me, as one who would understand and
- perhaps sympathize, and continued: “This time th' old dame says th' party
- who's been cooked is some other guy; it ain't me. T can see now that it
- ain't you,' she says. 'You're ridin' away in a patrol wagon, wit' a lot of
- harness bulls.' That's good so far. 'So I gets th' collar?' I says. 'How
- about th' trial?' She answers, 'There ain't no trial;' an' then she comes
- out of her trance, same as a diver comes up out o' the water.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is that all?” asked Slimmy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's where she lets me off.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'y don't youse dig for another dollar,” said Whitey, “an' tell th' old
- hag to put on her suit an' go down ag'in for th' rest?” Whitey had been
- impressed by that simile of the diver.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at more is there to get? I ain't killed; an' I ain't tried—that
- oughter do me. Th' coroner t'rows me loose, most likely. Anyhow, I ain't
- goin' to sit there all day, skinnin' me roll for that old sponge—a
- plunk a crack, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Talk of th' cost of livin'!” remarked Slimmy, with a grin. “Ain't it
- fierce, th' way them fortune tellers'll slim a guy's bank-roll for him,
- once they has him hooked? They'll get youse to goin'; an' after that it's
- like one of them stories w'at ends wit' 'Continued in our next.' W'y, it's
- like playin' th' horses, only woise. Th' foist day you goes out to win;
- an' after that, you keep goin' back to get even.” Ike the Blood paid no
- heed to the pessimistic philosophy of Slimmy; he was too wholly wrapped up
- in what he had been told.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” he broke forth, following a ruminative pause, “anyhow, I'd sooner
- he gets it than me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There you go ag'in about that 'he,'” protested Whitey, and the manner of
- Whitey was querulous.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' guy she sees me hooked up wit'!” This came off a bit warmly. “You
- know w'at I mean.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Take it easy!—take it easy!” urged my friend. “What is there to get
- hot about? You don't mean to say, Ike, you're banking on that guff the old
- dame handed you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Next week”—the shadow of a smile playing across his face—“I
- won't believe it. But it sounds like th' real t'ing now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The door of the Bal Tabarin opened to the advent of a weasel-eyed
- individual.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hello, Whitey!” exclaimed Weasel-eye cheerily, shaking hands with Whitey
- Dutch. “I just leaves a namesake of yours; an' say, he's in bad!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at namesake?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whitey Louie. A bunch of them West Side guerrillas has him cornered, over
- in a dump at Twenty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenoo. It looks like
- there'd be somethin' doin'; an', as I don't Avant no part of it, I screws
- out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- At the name of Whitey Louie, Ike the Blood arose to his feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whitey Louie?” he questioned; “Seventh Avenoo an' Twenty-seventh Street?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's th' ticket,” replied Weasel-eye; “an' youse can cash on it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Ike the Blood hurried out the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whitey Louie is Ike's closest pal,” observed Whitey Dutch, explaining the
- hurried departure. “Will there be trouble?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't t'ink so,” said Slimmy. “It's four for one they'll lay down to
- Ike.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't put your swell bet on it!” came warningly from Whitey Dutch; “them
- Gophers are as tough a bunch as ever comes down the pike.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tough nothin'!” returned Slimmy: “they'll be duck soup to Ike.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why don't you look into it?” I asked, turning to my friend. As a
- taxpayer, I yearned for some return on that $16,000,000 a year which New
- York City pays for its police.
- </p>
- <p>
- That ornament of the Central Office yawned, and motioned to the waiter to
- bring his bill.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That sort of thing is up to the cop on the beat,” said he.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whitey an' me 'ud get in on it,” explained Slimmy—his expression
- was one of half apology—“only you see we belong at th' other end of
- th' alley. We're Five Points; Ike an' Whitey Louie are Eastmans; an' in a
- clash between Eastmans an' Gophers, it's up to us to stand paws-off, see!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's straight talk,” coincided Whitey.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Suppose, seeing it's stopped raining, we drift over there,” said my
- friend, adjusting his Panama at the exact Central Office angle.
- </p>
- <p>
- As we journeyed along, I noticed Slimmy and Whitey Dutch across the
- street. It was already written that Whitey Dutch, himself, would be shot
- to death in the Stag before the year was out; but the shadow of that
- impending taking-off was not apparent in his face. Indeed, from that face
- there shone forth only pleasure in anticipation, and a lively interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They'd no more miss it than they'd miss a play at the theater,” remarked
- my friend, who saw where my glance was directed.
- </p>
- <p>
- About a ginmill, on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Twenty-seventh
- Street, a crowd had collected. A patrol wagon was backing up.
- </p>
- <p>
- An officer in uniform tossed a prisoner into the wagon, with no more
- ceremony than should attend the handling of a bag of bran.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's Dubillier!” exclaimed Whitey Dutch, naming the prisoner.
- </p>
- <p>
- The two Five Pointers had taken position on the edge of the crowd,
- directly in front of my friend and me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's Ike!” said Slimmy, as two policemen were seen pushing their way
- towards the patrol wagon, Ike the Blood between them. “Them bulls is
- holdin' him up, too, an' his face is as pale as paper! By thunder, they've
- nailed him!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I told you them Gophers were tough students,” was the comment of Whitey
- Dutch.
- </p>
- <p>
- My friend began forcing his way forward. As he plowed through the crowd,
- Whitey Dutch and Slimmy, having advantage of his wake, kept close at his
- heels.
- </p>
- <p>
- Slimmy threw me a whispered word: “Be th' way th' mob is actin', I t'ink
- Ike copped one.” Slimmy, before the lapse of many minutes, was again at my
- side, attended by Whitey Dutch. The pair wore that manner of quick yet
- neutral appreciation which belongs—we'll say—with such as
- English army officers visiting the battlefield of Santiago while the
- action between the Spaniards and the Americans is being waged. It wasn't
- their fight, it was an Eastman-Gopher fight, but as fullblown Five
- Pointers it became them vastly to be present. Also, they might learn
- something.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ike dropped one,” nodded Whitey Dutch, answering the question in my eye.
- “It's Ledwich.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What was the row about?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whitey Louie. The Gophers was goin' to hand it to him; but just then Ike
- comes through th' door on th' run, an' wit' that they outs wit' their rods
- an' goes to peggin' at him. Then Ike gets to goin' an' cops Ledwich.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' best th' Gophers can get,” observed Slimmy—and his manner was
- as the manner of one balancing an account—“th' best th' Gophers can
- get is an even break; an' to do that they'll have to cash on Ike. Whitey
- Louie? He makes his get-away all right. Say, Whitey, let's beat it round
- to the Tenderloin Station, an' get th' finish.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The finish was soon told. Ike the Blood lay dead on the station house
- floor; a bullet had drilled its dull way through his lungs. An officer was
- just telephoning his people in Chrystie Street.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now do youse see?” said Whitey Dutch, correcting what he conceived to be
- Slimmy's skepticism; “that fortune tellin' skirt handed out th' right
- dope. 'One croaked!—Ike in th' hurry-up wagon!—no trial!'
- That's th' spiel she makes; an' it falls true, see!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ike oughter have dug down for another bone,” returned Slimmy, more than
- half convinced; “she'd have put him hep to that bullet in his breather,
- mebby.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at good 'ud that have done?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good? If he'd got th' tip, he might have ducked—you can't tell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's a bad business,” I commented to my friend, who had rejoined me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would be a good thing”—shrugging his cynical Central Office
- shoulders—“if, with a change of names, it could happen every day in
- the year. By the way, I forgot my umbrella; let's go back to the Bal
- Tabarin.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- V.—INDIAN LOUIE
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>o one knew his
- real name, not even the police, and the police, let me tell you, know much
- more than they can prove. The Central Office never once had the pleasure
- of mugging and measuring and parading him at the morning bawling out, and
- the Mulberry Street records to the last were barren concerning him. For
- one brief space and only one did Mulberry Street nourish hopes. That was
- when he himself let it be thought that somewhere, sometime, somehow, he
- had taken some one's life. At this, Mulberry Street fairly shook the wide
- earth like a tablecloth in search of proof, but got not so much as one
- poor crumb of confirmation.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was at Big Jack's in Chatham Square that local history first laid eyes
- on him. Big Jack is gone now; the Committee of Fourteen decided upon him
- virtuously as an immoralist, handed him the fatal blue paper, and he
- perished. Jack Sirocco—who was himself blue-papered in a Park Row
- hour—keeps the place now.
- </p>
- <p>
- Starting from Big Jack's, he soon began to be known in Flynn's, and Nigger
- Mike's, and about the Chatham Club. When his pals spoke to him they called
- him Louie. When they spoke of him they called him Indian Louie, or Spanish
- Louie, to the end that he be identified among the hosts of East Side
- Louies, who were and are as many as the leaves on a large tree.
- </p>
- <p>
- Rumor made Indian Louie a native of South America, and his dark skin,
- black eyes, thin lips, high cheek-bones and high curved nose helped rumor
- out in this. Also, he was supposed to be of Spanish or Portuguese
- extraction.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Louie was buried, this latter assumption received a jolt. His
- funeral, conducted by a rabbi, was according to strictest Hebrew
- ceremonial.
- </p>
- <p>
- Two pieces of porcelain were laid upon his eyes, as intimating that he had
- seen enough. A feather, which a breath would have disturbed, was placed
- upon his upper lip. This was to evidence him as fully and conclusively
- dead, although on that point, in all conscience, the coroner's finding
- should have been enough. The flowers, which Gangland sent to prove its
- grief, were put aside because too gay and pleasant. The body was laid upon
- straw. A would-be pallbearer, since his name was Cohen, had to be excluded
- from the rites, as any orthodox Jew could have told him must be the case.
- For death and the dead are unclean; and a Cohen, who by virtue of his name
- is of the high-priest caste—Aaron was a Cohen—and tends the
- altars, must touch nothing, approach nothing, that is unclean. The funeral
- was scrupulously held before the second sun went down, and had to be
- hurried a little, because the morgue authorities, hobbled of red tape,
- move as slowly as the sea itself in giving up the dead. The coffin—of
- poorest pine—was knocked to pieces in the grave, before the clods of
- earth were shoveled in and the doomsday sods laid on. The garments of him
- who acted as principal mourner were faithfully torn; that is to say, the
- rabbi cut a careful slit in the lapel of that mourner's waistcoat where it
- wouldn't show.
- </p>
- <p>
- You will see from this, that every detail was holy by most ancient Jewish
- prescription. And the business led to talk. Those about Flynn's, Nigger
- Mike's and the Chatham Club, to say naught of members of the Humpty
- Jackson gang, and others who in his latter days had been near if not dear
- to him, confessed that it went far in contradiction of any Spanish or
- Portuguese ancestry for Louie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Louie was a mystery, and studied to be so. And to be a mystery is as
- difficult as being a hypocrite. One wrong word, one moment off your guard,
- and lo, a flood of light! The mystery vanishes, the hypocrisy is laid
- bare. You are no longer a riddle. Or, if so, then a riddle that has been
- solved. And he who was a riddle, but has been solved, is everywhere
- scoffed at and despised.
- </p>
- <p>
- Louie must have possessed a genius for mystery, since not once did he fall
- down in that difficult rôle. He denied nothing, confirmed nothing, of the
- many tales told about him. A waif-word wagged that he had been in the
- army, without pointing to any regiment; and that he had been in the navy,
- without indicating what boat. Louie, it is to be thought, somewhat
- fostered this confusion. It deepened him as a mystery, and made him more
- impressive.
- </p>
- <p>
- Louie was careful, also, that his costume should assist. He made up all in
- black—black shoes, black trousers, black coat, black hat of
- semi-sombrero type. Even in what may be spoken of as the matter of linen—although
- there was no linen about it—he adhered to that funereal hue, and in
- lieu of a shirt wore a sweater, collar close up to the chin, and all as
- black as his coat. As he walked the streets, black eyes challenging,
- threatening, from underneath the black, wide-rimmed hat, he showed not
- from top to toe a fleck of white.
- </p>
- <p>
- Among what tales went here and there concerning Louie, there was one which
- described him as the deadest of dead shots. This he accentuated by a brace
- of big Colt's pistols, which bore him constant company, daylight and dark.
- There was no evidence of his having used this artillery, no word of any
- killing to his perilous glory. Indeed, he couldn't have pointed to so much
- as one wounded man.
- </p>
- <p>
- Only once did those pistols come into play. Valenski's stuss house, in
- Third Avenue near Fourteenth Street, was put in the air. The hold-ups
- descended upon Valenski's, grabbed $80 which was on the table, and sent
- Valenski into his safe for $300 more. While this went on, Louie stood in
- the door, a gun in each fist, defying the gaping, staring, pop-eyed public
- to interfere. He ran no risk, as everyone well knew. The East Side, while
- valorous, never volunteers. There was no more chance of outside
- interference to save Valenski from being plundered, than of outside
- contributions to make him up another roll.
- </p>
- <p>
- The incident might have helped in building up for Louie a reputation, had
- it not been that all that was starkly heroic therein melted when, two days
- later, the ravished $380 was privily restored to Valenski, with the
- assurance that the entire business was a jest. Valenski knew nothing
- humorous had been intended, and that his bundle was returned in deference
- only to the orders of one high in politics and power. Also, it was the
- common feeling, a feeling no less cogent for not being put into words,
- that had Louie been of the wood from which champions are carved, the $380
- would never have come back. To refrain from some intended stick-up upon
- grave orders given, might mean no more than prudence and a right
- discipline. But to send back money, once in actual hand and when the risk
- and work of which it stood the harvest had been encountered and performed,
- was to fly in the face of gang ethics. An order to that effect, however
- eminent its source, should have been met with stony refusal.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was one tale which should go, perhaps, to the right side of the
- reputational ledger, as indicating that Louie had nerve. Crazy Charlie was
- found dead in the mouth of a passageway, which opened off Mulberry Street
- near the Bowery. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. No one of sense
- supposed Louie did that throat slashing.
- </p>
- <p>
- Crazy Charlie was a hop-head, without a dollar in his jeans, and Louie
- never did anything except for money. He would no more have gone about a
- profitless killing, than he would have wasted time and effort by fishing
- in a bathtub.
- </p>
- <p>
- For all that, on the whispered hint of the Ghost—who himself was
- killed finally as a snitch—two plain-clothes men from the Eldridge
- Street station grabbed Louie. They did not tell him the reason of the
- pinch. Neither did they spread it on the books. The police have a habit of
- protecting themselves from the consequences of a foolish collar by a
- specious system of concealment, and put nothing on the blotter until sure.
- </p>
- <p>
- When searched at the desk, Louie's guns were discovered. Also, from inside
- his waistcoat was taken a seven-inch knife, which, as said the police
- sergeant, might have slit the windpipe of Crazy Charlie or any other bug.
- But, as anyone with eyes might see, the knife was as purely virginal as
- when it came from a final emery wheel in its far-off Sheffield home. It
- had slit nothing.
- </p>
- <p>
- Still, those plain-clothes dicks did not despair. They hoped to startle
- Louie into a confession. With a view to his moral and physical stampede,
- they conveyed Louie in a closed patrol wagon, at mirk midnight, to the
- morgue. He hadn't been told what he was charged with; he didn't know where
- he was going.
- </p>
- <p>
- The wagon backed up to the morgue door. Louie had never visited the morgue
- before, though fated in the end to appear there officially. The
- plainclothes men, one at each shoulder, steered him inside. All was thick
- blackness; you couldn't have seen your own nose. Feeling their wordless
- way, the painstaking plain-clothes folk manhandled Louie into position.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then they flashed on a flood of electric light.
- </p>
- <p>
- There, within two feet of Louie, and squarely beneath his eyes, lay the
- dead Crazy Charlie, posed so as to show effectively that gruesome slash
- across the throat. Louie neither started nor exclaimed. Gazing down on the
- dead Charlie, he searched forth a cigarette and turned to one of his
- plain-clothes escorts for a match.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you see this?” demanded the plain-clothes man, slewing round the dead
- head until that throat-gash yawned like some horrid mouth.
- </p>
- <p>
- The plain-clothes man was wroth to think he should have worked so hard to
- achieve so little.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” retorted Louie, as cold as a wedge. “Also, I'll tell you bulls
- another thing. You think to rattle me. Say, for ten cents I'd sit on this
- stiff all night an' smoke a pipe.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Those plain-clothes artists gave Louie up. They turned him loose at the
- morgue door.
- </p>
- <p>
- The affair worked round, and helped Louie to a better position in the
- minds of all fair men. It fell in lucky, too, since it more than stood off
- a setback which overtook him about the same time. Louie had called upon
- the Irish Wop, at the latter's poolroom in Fourth Avenue. This emigrant
- from Mayo was thin and slight and sickly, and Louie argued that he might
- bully him out of a handful of money. Putting on a darkest frown, he
- demanded fifty dollars, and intimated that dire indeed would be the
- consequences of refusal.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because,” said Louie, “when I go out for anything I get it, see?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Wop coughed timidly and made a suggestion. “Come round in half an
- hour,” said he, “when the last race from New Orleans is in; I'll have the
- cush ready for yez.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Louie withdrew, and the Wop shoved the poker into the blazing big-bellied
- stove.
- </p>
- <p>
- An hour later, that New Orleans race having been run, Louie returned. The
- poker being by this time white-hot, the Wop drew it forth from the stove.
- There were no stage waits. Applying the poker to the shrinking rear of
- Louie, the Wop compelled that yearner after fifty dollars to leap
- screechingly from a second-storey window.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's phwy I puts th' windy up,” explained the Wop; “I didn't want that
- chape skate to bre-a-ak th' glassh. Indian Louie! Spanish Louie!” he
- repeated with measureless contempt. “Let me tell youse ginks wan thing.”
- This to a circle who had beheld the flight of Louie. “If ever that bum
- shows up here ag'in, I'll put him out av business altogether. Does he
- think a two-cint Guinea from Sout' Ameriky can bluff a full-blown Mick?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Louie's flight through the Wop's window, as had his steadiness at the
- morgue, went the gossipy rounds. It didn't injure him as much as you might
- think.
- </p>
- <p>
- “For who,” said the general voice, “would face and fight a white-hot
- poker?”
- </p>
- <p>
- On the whole, public sentiment was inclined to sustain Louie in that
- second-storey jump.
- </p>
- <p>
- From what has been written, it will not astonish you to hear that, upon
- the important matter of courage, Louie's place in society had not been
- absolutely fixed. Some said one thing, some another. There are game men in
- Gangland; and there exist others who aren't the real thing. Sardinia Frame
- believes, with the Irish Wop, that Louie belonged in the latter class.
- Also, Sardinia Frank is entitled to an opinion. For he was born in
- Mulberry Bend, and has himself been tried twice on charges of murder.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Sardinia Frank, by the way, who smote upon Eat-'em-up Jack with
- that effective lead pipe, albeit, there being no proof, he was never
- arrested for it. No, he doesn't admit it, even among intimates and where
- such admission would be respected as sacred. But when joked concerning it,
- he has ever worn a cheerful, satisfied look—like the pictures of the
- cat that ate the canary—and while careful not to accept, was equally
- careful not to reject, the compliment implied. Moreover, when the dead
- Eat-'em-up-Jack was picked up, the lead pipe used to break his skull had
- been tucked jocosely under his arm. It was clear to knowing ones that none
- except Sardinia Frank would have thought of such a jest. To him it would
- have come readily enough, since death always appealed to his sense of
- humor.
- </p>
- <p>
- Clad in a Tuxedo and an open-face suit, Sardinia Frank, at the time I
- questioned him, was officiating as peace-preserver in the Normandie
- rathskeller. By way of opener, I spoke of his mission on the rathskeller
- earth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm here to keep out everybody I know,” said he simply.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a pathetic side to this which, in his ingenuousness, Frank
- failed wholly to remark.
- </p>
- <p>
- “About Indian Louie?” I at last said.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was within an hour after Louie had been killed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll tell youse about Louie,” returned Frank. “Of course, he's dead, an'
- lyin' on a slab in th' morgue right now. They 'phoned me woid ten minutes
- ago. But that don't make no difference. He was a bluff; he wasn't th'
- goods. He went around wit' his hat over his eyes, bulldozin' everybody he
- could, an' lettin' on to be a hero. An' he's got what heroes get.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you ever get tangled up with him?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let me show you,” and Frank became confidential. “This'll give youse a
- line. One time he's got two hundred bones. Mollie Squint climbs into a
- yap-wagon an' touches a rube for it. Louie takes it, an' plants it wit'
- Nigger Mike. That's about six months ago. Th' next night, me bein' wise to
- it, I chases to Mike an' says, 'Louie's over to Jigger's, pointin' stuss,
- an' he wants th' two hundred.' So Mike hands me th' dough. I splits it
- five ways wit' th' gang who's along, each of us gettin' his little old bit
- of forty dollars apiece.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Louie, when he finds out next day, makes an awful beef. He tells
- everybody he's goin' to hand it to me—goin' to cook me on sight,
- see? I hears of it, an' I hunts Louie up in Jack Sirocco's.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Say, Louie,' I says, 'about that cookin' me. Th' bully way would be to
- come right now over to Hoboken, an' bump me off to-night. I'll go wit'
- youse. An' there won't be no hang-over, see; 'cause no one in Joisey'll
- care, an' no one in New York'll know.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do youse think Louie'll come? Not on your necktie! He didn't want me game—just
- wanted to talk, that's all.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Not youse, Frank,' he said; 'I ain't gunnin' for youse. It's Nigger
- Mike; he's th' guy I'm goin' to croak. He oughtn't to have let youse have
- th' money.' No, of course, he don't go after Mike; that's simply his
- crawl.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Take it from me,” Frank concluded, “Louie wasn't th' goods. He'd run a
- bluff, but he never really hoited a guy in his whole life. As I says, he
- goes about frownin', an' glarin', an' givin' people th' fiery eye, an'
- t'rowin' a chest, an' lettin' it go broadcast that he's a hero. An' for a
- finish he's got w'at heroes get.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Such was the word of Sardinia Frank.
- </p>
- <p>
- When he fell with two bullets through his brain, and two more through his
- body, Louie had $170 in his pocket, $700 in his shoe, and $3,000 in the
- Bowery Bank. This prosperity needn't amaze. There was, for one thing, a
- racket reason to be hereinafter set forth. Besides, Pretty Agnes and
- Mollie Squint both walked the streets in Louie's loved behalf, and brought
- him all in the way of riches that came to their lure. Either was sure for
- five dollars a day, and Mollie Squint, who could graft a little, once came
- in with $800. Both Pretty Agnes and Mollie Squint most fiercely adored
- Louie, and well did he know how to play one loving heart against the
- other. Some say that of the pair he preferred Pretty Agnes. If so, he
- wasn't fool enough to let her find it out. She might have neglected her
- business to bask in his sweet society.
- </p>
- <p>
- Besides, when it came to that, Louie's heart was really given to a blonde
- burlesquer, opulent of charm. This <i>artiste</i> snubbed and neglected
- Louie for the love of a stage manager. But she took and spent Louie's
- money, almost if not quite as fast as Pretty Agnes and Mollie Squint could
- bring it to him from the streets.
- </p>
- <p>
- Louie never made any place his hangout long. There was no element of
- loyalty in him, whether for man or for woman, and he went from friend to
- friend and gang to gang. He would stay nowhere, remain with no one, after
- his supremacy had been challenged. And such hardy natures as Biff Ellison,
- Jimmy Kelly, Big Mike Abrams, Chick Tricker and Jack Sirocco were bound to
- challenge it. They had a way, too, of putting the acid on an individual,
- and unless his fighting heart were purest gold they'd surely find it out.
- And Louie never stood the test. Thus, beginning at Big Jack's in Chatham
- Square, Louie went from hangout to hangout, mob to mob, until, working
- through Nigger Mike's, the Chatham Club and Sharkey's, he came at last to
- pal in with the Humpty Jackson guerrillas.
- </p>
- <p>
- These worthies had a stamping ground in a graveyard between First and
- Second Avenue, in the block bounded north and south by Twelfth and
- Thirteenth Streets. There Louie was wont to meet such select company as
- Monahokky, Nigger Ruhl, Candy Phil, the Lobster Kid, Maxie Hahn, and the
- Grabber. As they lolled idly among the tombstones, he would give them his
- adventures by flood and by field. Louie, besides being conceited, was
- gifted with an imagination and liked to hear himself talk. Not that he
- felt obliged to accuracy in these narrations. It was enough that he made
- them thrilling, and in their telling shed an effulgent ray upon himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- While he could entertain with his stories, Louie was never popular. There
- was that doubt about his courage. Also, he was too frugal. No one had ever
- caught the color of his money. Save in the avaricious instance of the big
- blonde burlesquer, as hungry as false, he held by the selfish theology
- that it is more blessed to receive than to give.
- </p>
- <p>
- Taking one reason and another, those about Louie at the finish were mainly
- the Humpty Jackson bunch. His best hangout of any fashion was the Hesper
- Club. Had Humpty Jackson remained with his own, Louie might have been
- driven, in search of comradeship, to go still further afield. Humpty was
- no weakling, and while on the surface a whining, wheedling, complaining
- cripple, owned his volcanic side, and had once shot it out, gun to gun and
- face to face, with no less a paladin than Jimmy Kelly. Louie would have
- found the same fault with Humpty that he had found with those others. Only
- Humpty didn't last long enough after Louie joined his forces. Some robbery
- came off, and a dull jury held Humpty responsible. With that, the judge
- sent him up for a long term of years, and there he sticks to-day. Humpty
- took the journey crying that he had been jobbed by the police. However
- that may have been, his going made it possible for Louie to remain with
- the Jacksons, and shine at those ghoulish, graveyard meetings, much longer
- than might otherwise have been the case.
- </p>
- <p>
- While Louie had removed to the remote regions about Fourteenth Street and
- Third Avenue, and was seldom seen in Chatham Square or Chinatown, he was
- not forgotten in those latter precincts. Jew Yetta brought up his name one
- evening in the Chatham Club, and spoke scornfully of him in conjunction
- with the opulent blonde.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That doll's makin' a farmer of Louie,” was the view of Jew Yetta.
- </p>
- <p>
- “At that,” remarked the Dropper—for this was in the days of his
- liberty and before he had been put away—“farmer or no farmer, it's
- comin' easier for him now than when he was in the navy, eatin' sow-belly
- out of a harness cask an' drinkin' bilge. W'at's that ship he says he's
- sailin' in, Nailer?” continued the Dropper. “Ain't it a tub called <i>Atalanta?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There never is a ship in the navy named <i>Atalanta</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This declaration, delivered with emphasis, emanated from old Jimmy, who
- had a place by himself in East Side consideration. Old Jimmy was about
- sixty, with a hardwood-finish face and 'possum-colored hair. He had been a
- river pirate in the old days, and roamed the midnight waters for what he
- might pick up. Those were times when he troubled the police, who made him
- trouble in return. But one day old Jimmy salvaged a rich man's daughter,
- who—as though to make his fortune—had fallen overboard from a
- yacht, and bored her small hole in the water within a rod or two of
- Jimmy's skiff. Certainly, he fished her out, and did it with a boat hook.
- More; he sagaciously laid her willowy form across a thwart, to the end
- that the river water flow more easily from her rosebud mouth. Relieved of
- the water, the rescued beauty thanked Jimmy profusely; and, for his
- generous part, her millionaire father proceeded to pension his child's
- preserver for life. The pension was twenty-five dollars a week. Coming
- fresh and fresh with every Monday, Jimmy gave up his piracies and no
- longer haunted in the name of loot the nightly reaches of the river.
- Indeed, he became offensively idle and honest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No sir,” repeated old Jimmy; “there never is a ship in our navy named <i>Atalanta</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “All th' same,” retorted the dropper, “I lamps a yacht once w'at's called
- <i>Atalanta</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' who says No?” demanded old Jimmy, testily. “I'm talkin' about th'
- United States Navy. But speakin' of Louie, it ain't no cinch he's ever in
- th 'navy. I'd sooner bet he's been in jail.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' if he was,” said Jew Yetta, “there ain't no one here who's got
- anything on him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at does Atalanta mean, anyway?” questioned the Dropper, who didn't like
- the talk of jails. “Is it a place?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nixie,” put in Slimmy, the erudite, ever ready to display his learning.
- “Atalanta's the name of a skirt, who b'longs 'way back. She's some soon as
- a sprinter, too, an' can run her one hundred yards in better than ten
- seconds. Every god on Olympus clocked this dame, an' knew what she could
- do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at's her story?” asked the Dropper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It gets along, d'ye see, where Atalanta's folks thinks she ought to get
- married. But she won't have it; she'd sooner be a sprinter. With that,
- they crowd her hand; an' to get shut of 'em, she finally tacks it up on
- the bulletin board that she'll chase to th' altar only with some student
- who can beat her at a quarter mile dash. 'No lobsters need apply!' says
- she. Also, there's conditions. Under the rules, if some chump calls th'
- bluff, an' can't make good—if she lands him loses—her papa's
- headsman will be on th' job with his axe, an' that beaten gink'll get his
- block whacked off.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' does any one go against such a game?” queried Jew Yetta.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure! A whole fleet of young Archibalds and Reginalds went up ag'inst it.
- They all lose; an' his jiblets wit' th' cleaver chops off their youthful
- beans.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the luck turns. One day a sure-thing geek shows up whose monaker is
- Hippomenes. Hippy's a fly Indian; there ain't goin' to be no headsman in
- his. Hippy's hep to skirts, too, an' knows where th' board is off their
- fence. He organizes with three gold apples, see, an' every time little
- Atalanta Shootin' Star goes flashin' by, he chucks down one of 'em in
- front of her. She simply eats it up; she can't get by not one; an' she
- loses so much time grabbin' for 'em, Hippy noses in a winner.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good boy!” broke forth the Dropper. “An' do they hook up?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They're married; but it don't last. You see its Venus who shows Hippy how
- to crab Atalanta's act an' stakes him to th' gold apples. An' later, when
- he double-crosses Venus, that goddess changes him an' his baby mine into
- a-couple of lions.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Irish Wop had been listening impatiently. It was when Governor Hughes
- flourished in Albany, and the race tracks were being threatened. The Wop,
- as a pool-room keeper, was vastly concerned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I see,” said the Wop, appealing directly to old Jimmy as the East Side
- Nestor, “that la-a-ad Hughes is makin' it hot for Belmont an' Keene an'
- th' rist av th' racin' gang. Phwat's he so ha-a-ard on racin' for? Do yez
- look on playin' th' ponies as a vice, Jimmy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” responded old Jimmy with a conservative air, “I don't know as I'd
- call it a vice so much as a bonehead play.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They call it th' shpo-r-rt av kings,” observed die Wop, loftily.
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Jimmy snorted. “Sport of kings!” said he. “Sport of come-ons, rather.
- Them Sport-of-kings gezebos 'll go on, too, an' give you a lot of guff
- about racin' bein' healthy. But they ain't sayin' a word concernin' th'
- mothers an' youngones livin' in hot two-room tenements, an' jumpin'
- sideways for grub, while th' husbands and fathers is blowin' in their
- bank-rolls in th' bettin' ring, an' gettin' healthy. An' th' little jocks,
- too—mere kids! I've wondered th' Gerries didn't get after 'em. But I
- suppose th' Gerries know who to pass up, an' who to pinch, as well as th'
- oldest skipper on th' Force.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “F'r all that,” contended the Wop, stubbornly, “thim la-a-ads that's mixed
- up wit' th' racin' game is good feltys.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good fellows,” repeated old Jimmy with contempt. “I recollect seein' a
- picture once, a picture of a girl—a young wife, she is—lyin'
- with her head on an untouched dinner table—fallen asleep, poor
- thing! Th' clock in the picture is pointin' to midnight. There she's been
- waitin' with th' dinner she's cooked with her own little lovin' mitts, for
- that souse of a husband to come home. Under th' picture it says, 'For he's
- a jolly good fellow!'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Somebody'd ought to have put a head on him!” quoth Jew Yetta, whose
- sympathies were both active and militant.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say,” went on Jimmy, “that picture gets on my nerves. A week later I'm
- down be th' old Delmonico joint at Twenty-sixth an' Broadway. It's meb-by
- one o'clock in th' mornin'. As I'm goin' by th' Twenty-sixt' Street door,
- out floats a fleet of Willies, stewed to the gills, singin' in honor of a
- dude who's in th' middle, 'For he's a jolly good fellow.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Who's that galoot?' I asks th' dub who's slammin' carriage doors at the
- curb. 'Is he a married man?'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'He's married all right,” says th' door-slammin' dub.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wit that I tears into him. It's a good while ago, an' I could slug a
- little. Be th' time th' copper gets there, I've got that jolly good fellow
- lookin' like he'd been caught whistlin' <i>Croppies Lie Down</i> at
- Fiftieth Street an' Fift' Avenoo when th' Cathedral lets out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I'm not married,” remarked the Wop, snappishly;—“I'm not
- married; I niver was married; an' I niver will be married aloive.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did youse notice?” remarked the Dropper, “how they gets a roar out of old
- Boss Croker? He's for racin' all right.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Naturally,” said old Jimmy. “Him ownin' race horses, Croker's for th'
- race tracks. He don't cut no ice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How much do yez figger Croker had cleaned up, Jimmy, when he made his
- getaway for Ireland?” asked the Wop, licking an envious lip.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Without comin' down to book-keepin',” returned old Jimmy, carelessly, “my
- understandin' is that, be havin' th' whole wad changed into thousand
- dollar bills, he's able to get it down to th' dock on a dray.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Grabber came in. He beckoned Slimmy, and the two were at once immersed
- in serious whisperings.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What are youse two stews chinnin' about?” called out the Dropper lazily,
- from across the room. “Be youse thinkin' of orderin' th' beer?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's about Indian Louie,” replied Slimmy, angrily. “Th' Grabber here says
- Louie's out to skin us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Indian Louie,” remarked the Wop, with a gleam in his little gray eye.
- “That's th' labberick w'at's goin' to shti-i-ick up me poolroom f'r thim
- fifty bones. Anny wan that'd have annything to do wit' a bum loike him
- ought to get skinned.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at's he tryin' to saw off on youse?” asked the Dropper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is th' proposition.” It was the Grabber now. “Me an' Slimmy here
- goes in wit' Louie to give that racket last week in Tammany Hall. Now
- Louie's got th' whole bundle, an' he won't split it. Me an' Slimmy's been
- t'run down for six hundred good iron dollars apiece.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' be yez goin' to let him get away wit' it?” demanded the Wop.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at can we do?” asked the Grabber, disconsolately.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's that big blonde,” declared Jew Yetta' with acrimony. “She's goin'
- through Louie for every dollar. I wonder Mollie Squint an' Pretty Agnes
- don't put her on th' fritz.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Hesper Club was in Second Avenue between Sixth and Seventh Streets. It
- was one o'clock in the morning when Indian Louie took his accustomed seat
- at the big table in the corner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How's everybody?” he asked, easily. “I oversleeps meself, or I'd been
- here hours ago.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at tires you?” asked Candy Phil. Not that he cared, but merely by way
- of conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's th' big feed last night at Terrace Garden. I'm two days trainin' for
- it, an' all day gettin' over it. Them swell blowouts is something fierce!”
- and Louie assumed a wan and weary air, intended to be superior.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So you was at Terrace Garden?” said Nigger Ruhl.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Was I? Youse should have seen me! Patent leathers, white choker, and a
- diamond in th' middle of me three-sheet big enough to trip a dog.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's nothin' in them dress suits,” protested Maxie Hahn. “I'm ag'inst
- 'em; they ain't dimmycratic.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “All th' same, youse've got to wear 'em at these swell feeds,” said Candy
- Phil. “They'd give youse th' gate if you don't. An' as for not bein'
- dimmycratic”—Candy Phil had his jocose side—“they make it so
- you can't tell th' high-guys from th' waiters, an' if that ain't
- dimmycratic what is? Th' only thing I know ag'inst 'em is that youse can't
- go to th' floor wit' a guy in 'em. You've got to cut out th' scrappin',
- an' live up to the suit, see?” The Grabber strolled in, careless and
- smiling. Louie fastened him with eyes of dark suspicion, while Maxie Hahn,
- the' Lobster Kid and Candy Phil began pushing their chairs out of the line
- of possible fire. For they knew of those monetary differences.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not a chance, sports,” remarked the Grabber, reassuringly. “No one's
- goin' to start anything. Let's take a drink,” and the Grabber beat upon
- the table as a sign of thirst. “I ain't after no one here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Be youse alludin' to me, Grabber?” asked Louie, with a frown like a great
- cloud. “I don't like them cracks about startin' somethin'.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Keep your shoit on,” expostulated the Grabber, clinking down the change
- for the round of beers; “keep your shoit on, Louie. I ain't alludin' at
- nobody nor nothin', least of all at youse. Besides, I just gets a message
- for you—only you don't seem in no humor to receive it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who's it from?” asked Louie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's Laura”—Laura was the opulent blonde—“Mollie Squint an'
- Pretty Agnes runs up on her about an hour ago at Twelfth Street an' Second
- Avenoo, an' Mollie bounces a brick off her coco. A copper comes along an'
- chases Mollie an' Pretty Agnes. I gets there as they're carry in' Laura
- into that Dago's joint be th' corner. Laura asks me if I sees youse to
- tell w'at's happened her; that's all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Was Mollie and Agnes sloughed in?” asked Louie, whose practical mind went
- first to his breadwinners.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, they faded into th' next street. Th' cop don't want to pinch 'em
- anyway.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “About Laura; was she hoited much?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ten stiches, an' a week in Roosevelt Hospital; that's the best she can
- get.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I must chase round an' look her over,” was Louie's anxious conclusion.
- “W'at's that Dago joint she's at?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's be th' corner,” said the Grabber, “an' up stairs. I forgets the
- wop's monaker.” As Louie hesitated over these vague directions, the
- Grabber set down his glass. “Say, to show there's no hard feelin', I'll go
- wit' youse.”
- </p>
- <p>
- As Louie and the Grabber disappeared through the door, Candy Phil threw up
- both hands as one astonished to the verge of nervous shock.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, w'at do youse think of that?” he exclaimed. “I always figgered
- Louie had bats in his belfry; now I knows it. They'll croak him sure!”
- Nigger Ruhl and the Lobster Kid arose as though to follow. At this, Candy
- Phil broke out fiercely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at's wrong wit' youse stews? Stick where you be!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But they'll cook Louie!” expostulated the Lobster Kid.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It ain't no skin off your nose if they do. W'y should youse go buttin'
- in?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Louie and the Grabber were in Twelfth Street, hurrying towards Second
- Avenue. Not a soul, except themselves, was abroad. The Grabber walked on
- Louie's right, which showed that either the latter was not the gunplayer
- he pretended, or the word from Laura had thrown him off his guard.
- </p>
- <p>
- Suddenly, as the pair passed a dark hallway, the Grabber's left arm stole
- round Louie's neck.
- </p>
- <p>
- “About that dough, Louie!” hissed the Grabber, at the same time tightening
- his left arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- Louie half turned to free himself from the artful Grabber. As he did so,
- the Grabber's ready right hand brought his pistol into action, and one
- bullet and then another flashed through Louie's brain. A slim form rushed
- out of the dark hallway, and fired two bullets into Louie's body. Louie
- was dead before he struck the pavement.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Grabber, with his slim companion, darted through the dark hallway, out
- a rear door and over a back fence. Sixty seconds later they were quietly
- walking in Thirteenth Street, examples of law-abiding peace.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was th' easiest ever, Slimmy!” whispered the Grabber, when he had
- recovered his breath. “I knew that stall about Laura'd fetch him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who was at th' Hesper Club?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “On'y Candy Phil, th' Lobster Kid an' two or three other blokes. Every one
- of 'em's a right guy. They won't rap.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thim la-a-ads,” remarked the Wop, judiciously, when he heard of Louie's
- taking off—“thim la-a-ads musht 'av lost their heads. There's six or
- seven hundred bones on that bum, an' they niver copped a splinter!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The word came two ways to the Central Office. One report said “Indian
- Louie” and another “Johnny Spanish.” Detective O'Farrell invaded
- Chinatown, and dug up Big Mike Abrams, that the doubt might be removed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's Indian Louie, all right,” said Big Mike, following a moment's silent
- survey of the rigid form. Then, in a most unlooked for vein of sentiment:
- “They all get here at last!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's no dream!” agreed the morgue attendant. “An', say, Mike”—he
- liked his joke as well as any other—“I've been expectin' you for
- some time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure!” returned Big Mike, with a friendly grin; “I'll come chasin' along,
- feet foist, some mornin'. But don't forget that while I'm waitin' I'm
- workin'. I've sent two stiffs down here to youse already, to help keep you
- goin' till I comes. Accordin' to th' chances, however, me own turn
- oughtn't to be so very far away.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Big Mike Abram's turn was just three weeks away.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who were those two, Mike, you sent down here to the morgue?” asked
- O'Farrell, carelessly.
- </p>
- <p>
- O'Farrell had a catlike fame for slyness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say,” grinned Big Mike, derisively; “look me over! I ain't wearin' no
- medals, am I, for givin' meself up to you bulls?”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VI.—HOW JACKEEN SLEW THE DOC
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n person he was
- tall, languid, slender, as neat as a cat, and his sallow face—over
- which had settled the opium pallor—was not an ugly face. Also, there
- abode such weakness, some good, and no harm in him. His constitution was
- rickety. In the winter he coughed and invited pneumonia; in the summer,
- when the sun poured down, he trembled on the brink of a stroke. But
- neither pneumonia nor sunstroke ever quite killed him.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was written that Jackeen would do that—Jackeen Dalton, <i>alias</i>
- Brady; and Jackeen did it with five bullets from an automatic-38. Some
- said that opium was at the bottom of it; others laid it to love. It is
- still greatly talked over in what pipe joints abound in Mott, Pell and
- Doyers, not to mention the wider Catherine Street, in the neighborhood of
- number Nineteen, where he had his flat and received his friends.
- </p>
- <p>
- They called him the Doc. Twenty years ago the Doc studied dentistry with
- his father, who flourished reputably as a tooth surgeon at the Troy Dental
- Parlors in Roosevelt Street. The father died before the Doc had been given
- a diploma; and the Doc, having meanwhile picked up the opium habit, was
- never able afterwards to see the use. Why should he be examined or ask for
- a license? What foolishness! Magnanimously waving aside every thought of
- the sort, he plunged into the practice of his cheerless art among those
- who went in and out of Chinatown, and who lived precariously by
- pocket-picking, porch-climbing, safe-blowing and all-round strong-arm
- methods; and, careless of the statute in such case made and provided, he
- proceeded to file and drill and cap and fill and bridge and plug and pull
- their aching cuspids, bicuspids and molars, and all with as quick an
- instinct and as deft a touch as though his eyes were sharpened and his
- hand made steady by the dental sheepskins of a dozen colleges. That he was
- an outlaw among tooth-drawers served only to knit him more closely to the
- hearts of his patients—themselves merest outlaws among men.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Doc kept his flat in Catherine Street as bright and burnished as the
- captain's cabin of a man-of-war. There was no prodigious wealth of
- furniture, no avalanche of ornament to overwhelm the taste. Aside from an
- outfit of dental tools, the most expensive belongings appeared to be what
- lamps and pipes and kindred paraphernalia were required in the smoking of
- opium.
- </p>
- <p>
- Those who visited the Doc were compelled to one formality. Before he would
- open his door, they must push the bell four times and four times tap on
- the panel. Thus did they prove their friendly identity. Lawful dentists,
- in their jealousy, had had the Doc arrested and fined, from time to time,
- for intromitting with the teeth of his fellow worms without a license.
- Hence that precautionary quartet of rings, followed by the quartet of
- taps, indicative that a friend and not a foe was at his gate.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Doc had many callers who came to smoke opium. For these he did divers
- kindly offices, mostly in the letter-writing line. As they reclined and
- smoked, they dictated while the Doc transcribed, and many and weird were
- the epistles from Nineteen Catherine Street which found their way into the
- mails. For this service, as for his opium and dentistry, the Doc's callers
- never failed to press upon him an honorarium. And so he lived.
- </p>
- <p>
- Love, that flowerlike sentiment for which—as some jurist once
- remarked of justice—all places are palaces, all seasons summer, is
- not incompatible with either dentistry or opium. The Doc had a sweetheart
- named Lulu. Lulu was very beautiful and very jealous. Also, she was
- broadly popular. All Chinatown made songs to the deep glories of her eyes,
- which were supposed to have excited the defeated envy of many stars. The
- Doc, in what odd hours he could snatch from tooth-drawing and
- opium-smoking, worshipped at the shrine of Lulu; and Lulu was wrapped up
- in the Doc. Number Nineteen Catherine Street served as their Garden of
- Eden.
- </p>
- <p>
- Now it is among the many defects of opium that it renders migratory the
- fancy. An ebon evidence of this was to be given at number Nineteen. The I
- love of the Doc became, as it were, pipe-deflected, and one day left Lulu,
- and, after a deal of fond circling, settled like some errant dove upon a
- rival belle called May.
- </p>
- <p>
- Likewise, there was a dangerous side to this dulcet, new situation. The
- enchanting May, when the Doc chose her for his goddess, vice Lulu thrown
- down, could not be described as altogether disengaged. Was she not also
- the goddess of Jackeen? Had not that earnest safe-robber laid his heart at
- her feet?
- </p>
- <p>
- Moreover, there were reasons even more substantial. The gentle May was in
- her way a breadwinner. When the fortunes of Jackeen were low, she became
- their mutual meal-ticket. May was the most expert shoplifter in all of
- broad New York. If not upon heart arguments, then upon arguments of the
- pocket, not to say stomach, Jackeen might be expected to fiercely resent
- any effort to win her love away.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jackeen?
- </p>
- <p>
- Not much is to be told by an appearance, although physiognomists have sung
- otherwise. The egg of the eagle is less impressive than the egg of: the
- goose. And yet it hotly houses in its heart an' eagle. The egg of the
- nightingale shows but-meanly side by side with the egg of the crow. And:
- yet it hides within its modest bosom the limpid music of the moon.
- </p>
- <p>
- So it is with men.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jackeen was not an imposing personality. But neither is the tarantula. He
- was five feet and an inch in stunted stature, and weighed a mean shadow
- under one hundred and ten pounds. Like the Doc—who had stolen his
- love away—Jackeen's hollow cheeks were of that pasty gray which
- speaks of opium. Also, from opium, the pupils of his vermin eyes had
- become as the points of two dull pins. Shrivelled, degenerate, a tattered
- rag of humanity, Jackeen was none the less a perilous spirit, and so the
- Doc—too late—would learn.
- </p>
- <p>
- From that Eden at Nineteen Catherine Street, the fair Lulu had been put
- into the street. This was to make pleasant room for the visits of the
- fairer May. Jackeen was untroubled, knowing nothing about it. He was for
- the moment too wholly engaged, being in the throes of a campaign against
- the Savoy theatre safe, from which strongbox he looked forward to a
- harvest of thousands.
- </p>
- <p>
- The desolate Lulu went everywhere seeking Jackeen, to tell him of his
- wrongs. Her search was vain; those plans touching the Savoy safe had
- withdrawn him from his accustomed haunts. One night, however, the safe was
- blown and plundered. Alas and alack! Jackeen's share, from those hoped-for
- thousands, dwindled to a paltry sixty dollars—not enough for a
- single spree!
- </p>
- <p>
- In his resentment, Jackeen, with the aid of a bevy of friends, hastily
- stuck-up a wayfarer, whom he met in Division Street. The wayfarer's
- pockets proved empty. It was even more of a waterhaul than had been the
- Savoy safe. The double disappointment turned Jackeen's mood to gall and it
- was while his humor was thus bilious that he one day walked into the
- Chatham Club.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a distinguished company gathered at the Chatham Club. Nannie
- Miller, Blinky the Lob-bygow, Dago Angelo, Roxie, Jimida, Johnny Rice,
- Stagger, Jimmy Foy, and St. Louis Bill—all were there. And these
- were but a handful of what high examples sat about the Chatham Club, and
- with calls for beer, and still more beer, kept Nigger Mike and his
- assistants on the joyful jump.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Jackeen came in, Mike greeted him warmly, and placed a chair next to
- that of Johnny Rice. Conversation broke out concerning the dead and
- departed Kid Twist. While Twist was an Eastman and an enemy of Roxie—himself
- of the Five Points—the latter was no less moved to speak in highest
- terms of him. He defended this softness by remarking:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Twist's dead, see! An' once a guy's been put to bed wit' a shovel, if
- youse can't speak well of him youse had better can gabbin' about him
- altogether. Them's my sentiments.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dago Angelo, who had been a friend of the vanished Twist, applauded this,
- and ordered beer.
- </p>
- <p>
- Twist—according to the veracious Roxie—had not been wanting in
- brilliancy as a Captain of Industry. He had showed himself ingenious when
- he took his poolroom into the Hatmakers' Union, as a safeguard against
- raids by the police.
- </p>
- <p>
- Upon another occasion, strictly commercial—so said Roxie—Twist
- had displayed a generalship which would have glorified a Rockefeller. Baby
- Flax, named for the soft innocuousness of his countenance, kept a grogshop
- in Houston Street. One quiet afternoon Twist abruptly broke that cherubic
- publican's windows, mirrors, glasses, bottles.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lighting a cigar, Twist stood in the midst of that ruin undismayed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's up?” demanded the policeman, who came hot-foot to the scene.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” vouchsafed Twist, between puffs, “there's a party chases in,
- smashes things, an' then beats it up the street wit'out sayin' a woid.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The policeman looked at Baby Flax.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's straight,” chattered that ill-used proprietor, who, with the
- dangerous eye of Twist upon him, wouldn't have told the truth for gold and
- precious stones.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What started youse, Twist?” asked a friend.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's this way,” explained Twist. “I'm introducin' a celery bitters—because
- there's cush in it. I goes into Baby Flax's an' asks him to buy. He hands
- me out a 'No!' So I ups an' puts his joint on the bum. After this, when I
- come into a dump, they'll buy me bitters, see! Sure, I cops an order for
- two cases from Flax before I leaves.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Leaving Twist to sleep in peace, and by way of turning the laugh on that
- gentleman, Roxie related an adventure with Nigger Mike. It was when that
- sub-chief of the Eastmans kept at number Twelve Pell, by word of the
- vivacious Roxie, he, with certain roysterers belonging to the Five Points,
- had gone to Mike's to drink beer. They were the foe. But no less he served
- them, as he was doing now, for such was and is the bland etiquette of the
- gangs.
- </p>
- <p>
- One o'clock struck, and Mike locked his door. Key turned, the beer flowed
- on unchecked.
- </p>
- <p>
- At half after one, when Mike himself was a law-breaker under the excise
- statute by full thirty criminal minutes, Roxie with his Five Points
- merrymakers arose, beat up Mike and his few retainers, skinned the damper
- for fifty bones, and departed singing songs of victory.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mike was powerless.
- </p>
- <p>
- As was well said by Roxie: “W'at could he do? If he makes a roar to th'
- cops for us puttin' his joint in th' air, we'd have whipped one over on
- him for bein' open after hours.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mike laughed with the rest at Roxie's reminiscence. It was of another day.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at's th' matter wit' your mouth, Mike?” asked St. Louis Bill, for there
- was a lisping queerness, not only about Mike's talk, but about his laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- Nigger Mike proceeded to lay bare the causes of that queerness. While
- engaged in a joint debate—years ago, it was—with a gentleman
- given as much to sudden petulances as to positive views, he had lost three
- of his teeth. Their place had been artifically but not artistically
- supplied.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' lately they've been feelin' funny,” explained Mike, alluding to the
- supplemental teeth, “an' I toins 'em over to th' Doc to fix. That guy who
- made 'em for me foist must have been a bum dentist. An' at that, w'at do
- you t'ink he charges? I'm a Dutchman if he don't lash me to th' mast for
- forty bucks! He says th' gold plate is wort' twenty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, Mike,” said Nannie Miller, who'd been listening, “I don't want to
- make you sore, but on the level you talk like your mouth is full of mush.
- I'd make th' Doc come through wit' 'em as soon as I could.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He says he'll bring 'em in to-morry,” returned Mike.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's ten to one you don't see 'em for a week,” declared the pessimistic
- St. Louis Bill. “Youse can't tell nothin' about them hop-heads. They say
- 'to-morry' when they mean next year.”
- </p>
- <p>
- St. Louis Bill, being virtuously superior to opium, never lost a chance to
- speak scornfully of those who couldn't make that boast.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mike, at the discouraging view expressed, became doleful. “Say,” he
- observed, “I'd look like a sucker, wouldn't I, if anything happens th'
- Doc, an' I don't get 'em?”
- </p>
- <p>
- St. Louis Bill assured Mike that he would indeed look like a sucker, and
- re-declared his conviction—based upon certain occult creepings and
- crawlings in his bones—that Mike had seen the last of those teeth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Take my steer,” said St. Louis Bill in conclusion; “treat them teeth you
- gives th' Doc as a dead issue, an' go get measured for some more. Twenty
- dollars wort' of gold, you says! It ain't no cinch but the Doc's hocked
- 'em for hop.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothin' to that!” returned Mike, decisively. “Th' Doc's a square guy.
- Them teeth is all safe enough. Only, as you says, bein' he hits the pipe,
- he may be slow about chasin' in wit' 'em.”
- </p>
- <p>
- While Nigger Mike and his guests are in talk, run your eye over the scene.
- Those citizens of Gangland assembled about the Chatham Club tables would
- have made a study, and mayhap a chapter, for Lombroso. Speaking generally,
- they are a stunted litter, these gangmen, and seldom stand taller than
- five feet four. Their weight wouldn't average one hundred and twenty
- pounds. They are apt to run from the onslaught of an outsider. This is not
- perhaps from cowardice; but they dislike exertion, even the exertion of
- fighting, and unless it be to gain money or spoil, or a point of honor is
- involved—as in their duels and gang wars—they back away from
- trouble. In their gang battles, or when fighting the police, their
- strategy is to lie flat on the ground and shoot. Thus they save themselves
- a clubbing, and the chances from hostile lead are reduced.
- </p>
- <p>
- To be sure there are exceptions. Such as Chick Tricker, Ike the Blood, Big
- Mike Abrams, Jack Sirocco, the Dropper, and the redoubtable Jimmy Kelly
- never fly and always fight. No one ever saw their backs.
- </p>
- <p>
- You are inclined to doubt the bloody character of those gang battles. Why
- doesn't one hear of them?—you ask. Because the police conceal as
- much as may be all word and all sign of them. For the public to know might
- get the police criticized, and they are granted enough of that without
- inviting it through any foolish frankness. The hospitals, however, will
- tell you of a weekly average of fifty patients, suffering from knife or
- gun-shot wounds, not to name fractures born of bottles, bricks and
- blackjacks. A bottle judiciously wielded, or a beer stein prudently broken
- in advance to assure a jagged edge, is no mean weapon where warriors are
- many and the fields of battle close.
- </p>
- <p>
- While Roxie rattled on, and the others gave interested ear, Jackeen was
- commenting in discouraged whispers to Johnny Rice on those twin setbacks
- of the Division Street stick-up and the Savoy safe.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It looks like nobody's got any dough,” replied Rice, in a spirit of
- sympathy. “Take me own self. I ain't made a touch youse could call a
- touch, for a mont' of Sundays. Me rag, Josie, an' I was chin-nin' about it
- on'y last night, an' Josie herself says she never sees th' town so dead.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's somethin' fierce!” returned Jackeen, moodily.
- </p>
- <p>
- More beer, and a moment of silence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at's you' goil May doin'?” asked Rice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She's graftin' a little,” responded Jackeen; “but w'at wit' th' stores
- full of private dicks a booster can't do much.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, you can bet May ought to know!” returned Rice. “As a derrick, she'
- got the Darby Kid an' the best of 'em beat four ways from th' jack. She
- could bring home th' bacon, if any of them hoisters could.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then appeared Lulu the houseless—Lulu, the forlorn and outcast Eve
- of that Catherine Street Eden!
- </p>
- <p>
- Lulu stood a polite moment behind the chair of Jackeen. At a lull in the
- talk, she whispered a word in his ear. He looked up, nodded, and then
- followed her out into Doyers Street.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's this way,” said Lulu. “May's copped th' Doc from me, see! An' she's
- givin' you the cross, Jackeen. You ought to hand her out a good heatin'.
- She's over hittin' the pipe wit' th' Doc right now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “G'wan!” came jealously from Jackeen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Honest! You come wit' me to number Nineteen, an' I'll show youse.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jackeen paused as though weighing the pros and cons.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let me go get Ricey,” he said at last. “He's got a good nut, an' I'll put
- th' play up to him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “All right,” responded Lulu, impatient in her desolation; “but get a move
- on! I've wised you; an' now, if you're any good at all, you'll take May
- out of number Nineteen be th' mop. W'at license has she, or any other
- skirt for that matter, got to do me out of me Doc?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The last ended in a howl.
- </p>
- <p>
- Leaving Lulu in the midst of her complaints, Jackeen wheeled back into the
- Chatham Club for a word with Rice. Even during his absence, a change had
- come over the company. He found Rice, St. Louis Bill and Nannie Miller,
- holding anxious confab with a ratfaced person who had just come in.
- </p>
- <p>
- “See here, Jackeen,” said St. Louis Bill in an excited whisper, “there's
- been a rap about that Savoy safe trick, an' th' bulls are right now
- lookin' for th' whole mob. They say it's us, too, who put that rube in the
- air over in Division Street.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' th' question is,” broke in Nannie Miller, who was quick to act, “do
- we stand pat, or do we do a lammister?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's on'y one answer to that,” said St. Louis Bill. “For my end of it
- I'm goin' to lamm.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jackeen had May and his heart troubles upon the back of his regard. Still
- he heard; and he arrived at a decision. He would run—yes; for flight
- was preferable to four stone walls. But he must have revenge—revenge
- upon the Doc and May.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wit' th' bulls after me, an' me away, it 'ud be comin' too soft for 'em,”
- thought Jackeen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at do youse say?” asked St. Louis Bill, who was getting nervous.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How did youse get the woid?” demanded Jackeen, turning upon Ratface. It
- was he who had brought the warning.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm a stool for one of the bulls,” replied Ratface, “an' it's him tells
- me you blokes is wanted, see!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So you're stoolin' for a Central Office cop?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jackeen's manner was fraught with suspicion. “How do we know you're givin'
- us th' correct dope?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Miller knows me,” returned Ratface, “an' so does Bill. They'll tell youse
- I'm a right guy. That stool thing is only a stall. I gets more out of the
- bull than he gets out of me. Sure; I give him a dead one now an' then,
- just be way of puttin' in a prop for meself. But not youse;—w'en
- it's any of me friends I puts 'em hep, see!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you sign for this duck?” demanded Jackeen of St. Louis Bill. “He's a
- new one on me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Take it from me, he's all right,” said St. Louis Bill, decisively. “Why,
- you ought to know him, Jackeen. He joined out wit' that mob of gons Goldie
- Louie took to Syracuse last fall. He's no farmer, neither; Ricey there
- ain't got nothin' on him as a tool.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This endorsement of Ratface settled all doubt. Jackeen's mind was made up.
- Addressing the others, he said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fade's the woid! I'll meet youse over in Hoboken to-night at Beansey's.
- Better make th' ferry one at a time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at do youse want to wait till night for?” asked Nannie Miller. “Th'
- foist t'ing you know you'll get th' collar.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm goin' to take the chance, though,” retorted Jackeen. “It's some
- private business of me own. An' say”—looking at Rice—“I want a
- pal. Will youse stick, Ricey?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure, Mike!” said Rice, who had nerve and knew how to be loyal.
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus it was adjusted. Ratface went his way, to exercise his gifts of
- mendacity upon his Central Office principal, while the others scattered—all
- save Jackeen and Rice.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jackeen gave his faithful friend the story of his wrongs.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wouldn't have thought it of the Doc,” was the pensive comment of Rice.
- He had exalted the Doc, because of his book learning, and groaned to see
- his idol fall. “No, I wouldn't have guessed it of him! Of course, it's
- different wit' a doll. They'd double-cross their own mothers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Over in Catherine Street at number Nineteen the Doc was teaching May how
- to cook opium. The result fell below the Doc's elevated notions.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You aren't to be compared with Lulu,” he complained, as he trimmed the
- peanut-oil lamp. “All Chinatown couldn't show Lulu's equal for cooking
- hop. She had a genius for it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Doc took the needle from May, and cooked for himself. May looked
- discouraged and hurt.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's all right,” said the Doc, dreamily, replying to the look of injury.
- “You'll get it right in time, dear. Only, of course, you'll never quite
- equal Lulu; that would be impossible.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Doc twirled the little ball of opium in the flame of the lamp,
- watching the color as it changed. May looked on as upon the labors of a
- master.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll smoke a couple of pipes,” vouchsafed the Doc; “then I must get to
- work on Nigger Mike's, teeth. Mike's a good fellow; they're all good
- fellows over at the Chatham Club,” and the Doc sank back upon the pallet.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was the sound of someone in the hall. Then came those calmative four
- rings and four taps.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's Mike now,” said the Doc, his eyes half closed. “Let him in; I
- suppose he's come for his teeth. I'll have to give him a stand-off. Mike
- ought to have two sets of teeth. Then he could wear the one while I'm
- fixing the other. It's a good idea; I'll tell him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- May, warned by some instinct, opened the door but a timorous inch. What
- she saw did not inspire confidence, and she tried with all her little
- strength to close and bolt it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Too late!
- </p>
- <p>
- The door was flung inward, and Jackeen, followed by Rice, entered the
- room. They paid no heed to the opium fumes; almost stifling they were, but
- Jackeen and Rice had long been used to them.
- </p>
- <p>
- May gazed at Jackeen like one planet-struck. The Doc, moveless on the
- pallet, hardly raised his opium-weighted lids.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is a fine game I'm gettin'!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jackeen sneered out the words. The Doc pulled tranquilly at his pipe;
- while May stood voiceless, staring with scared eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'd ought to peg a bullet into you,” continued Jackeen, addressing May.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had drawn his heavy gun. May stood as if the sight of the weapon had
- frozen her. Jackeen brought it down on her temple. The Doc never moved.
- Peace—the peace of the poppy—was on his brow and in his heart.
- May fell to the floor, her face a-reek with blood.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now you've got yours!” said Jackeen.
- </p>
- <p>
- May struggled unsteadily to her feet, and began groping for the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That ought to do youse till I get back,” was Jackeen's good-by. “You'll
- need a few stitches for that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Unruffled, untroubled, the Doc drew blandly at the mouthpiece of the pipe.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jackeen surveyed him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go on!” cried Rice; “hand it to him, if you're goin' to!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Rice was becoming fretted. He hadn't Jackeen's sustaining interest.
- Besides, he was thinking of that word from the Central Office, and how
- much safer he would be with Beansey, on the Hoboken side of the Hudson.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jackeen took a step nearer. The Doc smiled, eyes just showing through the
- dreamy lids.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Turn it loose!” cried Rice.
- </p>
- <p>
- The gun exploded five times, and five bullets ploughed their way into the
- Doc's body.
- </p>
- <p>
- Not a cry, not a movement! The bland, pleased smile never left the sallow
- face. With his mouth to the pipestem, the Doc dreamed on.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the street, Jackeen and Rice passed Lulu. As they brushed by her, Rice
- fell back a pace and whispered:
- </p>
- <p>
- “He croaked th' Doc.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lulu gave a gulping cry and hurried on.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is that you, Lulu?” asked the Doc, his drug-uplifted soul untouched,
- untroubled by what had passed, and what would come. Still, he must have
- dimly known; for his next words, softly spoken, were: “I'm sorry about
- Mike's teeth! Cook me a pill, dear; I want one last good smoke.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VII.—LEONI THE TROUBLE MAKER
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was a perfect
- day for a funeral. The thin October air had in it a half-chill, like the
- cutting edge of the coming winter, still six weeks away. The leaves, crisp
- and brown from early frosts, seemed to rustle approval of the mournful
- completeness of things.
- </p>
- <p>
- Florists' shops had been ransacked, greenhouses laid waste, the leading
- carriages were moving jungles of blossoms. It was magnificent, and as the
- procession wound its slow way into Calvary, the heart of the undertaker
- swelled with pride. Not that he was justified; the glory was the glory of
- Paper-Box Johnny, who stood back of all this gloomy splendor with his
- purse.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Remember,” was Paper-Box's word to the undertaker, “I'm no piker, an'
- neither was Phil; so wade in wit' th' bridle off, an' make th' spiel same
- as if you was buryin' yourself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus exhorted, and knowing the solvency of Paper-Box, the undertaker had
- no more than broken even with his responsibilities.
- </p>
- <p>
- Later, Paper-Box became smitten of concern because he hadn't thought to
- hire a brass band. A brass band, he argued, breathing Chopin's Funeral
- March, would have given the business a last artistic touch.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'd ought to have me nut caved in for forget-tin' it,” he declared; “but
- Phil bein' croaked like he was, got me rattled. I'm all in th' air right
- now! Me head won't be on straight ag'in for a mont'.”
- </p>
- <p>
- In the face of Paper-Box's self-condemnation, ones expert in those
- sorrowful matters of crape and immortelles, averred that the funeral was a
- credit to Casey, and regrets were expressed that the bullet in that dead
- hero's brain forbade his sitting up in the hearse and enjoying what was
- being done in his honor.
- </p>
- <p>
- As the first shovelful of earth awoke the hollow responses of the coffin,
- there occurred what story writers are fond of describing as a dramatic
- incident. As though the hollow coffin-note had been the dead voice of
- Casey calling, Dago Frankie knelt at the edge of the grave. Lifting his
- hands to heaven, he vowed to shed without mercy the blood of Goldie Louie
- and Brother Bill Orr, on sight. The vow was well received by the uncovered
- ring of mourners, and no one doubted but Casey's eternal slumbers would be
- the sounder for it.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the beginning, she went by the name of Leoni; the same being
- subsequently lengthened, for good and sufficient reasons, to Leoni the
- Trouble Maker. As against this, however, her monaker, with the addition,
- “Badger,” as written upon her picture—gallery number 7409—to
- be found in that interesting art collection maintained by the police, was
- given as Mabel Grey.
- </p>
- <p>
- Leoni—according to Detective Biddinger of that city's Central Office—was
- born in Chicago, upon a spot not distant from the banks of the classic
- Drainage Canal. She came to New York, and began attracting police
- attention about eight years ago. In those days, radiant as a star, face of
- innocent beauty, her affections were given to an eminent pickpocket known
- and dreaded as Crazy Barry, and it was the dance she led that bird-headed
- person's unsettled destinies which won her the <i>nom de cour</i> of
- Trouble Maker.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was unfortunate, perhaps, since it led to many grievous complications,
- that Leoni's love lacked every quality of the permanent. Hot, fierce, it
- resembled in its intensity a fire in a lumber yard. Also, like a fire in a
- lumber yard, it soon burned itself out. Her heart was as the heart of a
- wild goose, and wondrous migratory.
- </p>
- <p>
- Having loved Crazy Barry for a space, Leoni turned cool, then cold, then
- fell away from him altogether. At this, Crazy Barry, himself a volcano of
- sensibility, with none of Leoni's saving genius to grow cold, waxed wroth
- and chafed.
- </p>
- <p>
- While in this mixed and storm-tossed humor, he came upon Leoni in the
- company of a fellow gonoph known as McTafife. In testimony of what
- hell-pangs were tearing at his soul, Crazy Barry fell upon McTaffe, and
- cut him into red ribbons with a knife. He would have cut his throat, and
- spoke of doing so, but was prevailed upon to refrain by Kid Jacobs, who
- pointed out the electrocutionary inconveniences sure to follow such a
- ceremony.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They'd slam youse in th' chair, sure!” was the sober-headed way that
- Jacobs put it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Crazy Barry, one hand in McTafife's hair, had drawn the latter's head
- across his knee, the better to attend to the throat-cutting. Convinced,
- however, by the words of Jacobs, he let the head, throat all unslashed,
- fall heavily to the floor. After which, first wiping the blood from his
- knife on McTafife's coat—for he had an instinct to be neat—he
- lam-mistered for parts unknown, while McTafife was conveyed to the New
- York Hospital. This chanced in the Sixth Avenue temple of entertainment
- kept by the late Paddy the Pig.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once out of the hospital and into the street, McTafife and the fair Leoni
- found no trouble in being all the world to one another. Crazy Barry was a
- thing of the past and, since the Central Office dicks wanted him, likely
- to remain so.
- </p>
- <p>
- McTafife was of the swell mob. He worked with Goldie Louie, Fog-eye Howard
- and Brother Bill Orr. Ask any Central Office bull, half learned in his
- trade of crook-catcher, and he'll tell you that these names are of a
- pick-purse peerage. McTaffe himself was the stinger, and personally
- pinched the poke, or flimped the thimble, or sprung the prop, of whatever
- boob was being trimmed. The others, every one a star, were proud to act as
- his stalls; and that, more than any Central Office assurance, should show
- how near the top was McTaffe in gonoph estimation.
- </p>
- <p>
- Every profession has its drawbacks, and that of picking pockets possesses
- several. For one irritating element, it is apt to take the practitioner
- out of town for weeks on end. Some sucker puts up a roar, perhaps, and
- excites the assiduities of the police; or there is a prize fight at Reno,
- or a World's Fair at St. Louis, or a political convention at Chicago, or a
- crowd-gathering tour by some notable like Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Taft, which
- gives such promise of profit that it is not to be refused. Thus it befell
- that McTaffe, with his mob, was greatly abroad in the land, leaving Leoni
- deserted and alone.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once McTaffe remained away so long that it caused Leoni uneasiness, if not
- alarm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mack's fell for something,” was the way she set forth her fears to Big
- Kitty: “You can gamble he's in hock somewheres, or I'd have got the office
- from him by wire or letter long ago.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When McTaffe at last came back, his face exhibited pain and defeat. He
- related how the mob had been caught in a jam in Chihuahua, and Goldie
- Louie lagged.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The rest of the fleet managed to make a getaway,” said McTaffe, “all but
- poor Goldie. Those Greasers have got him right, too; he's cinched to do a
- couple of spaces sure. When I reached El Paso, I slimmed me roll for five
- hundred bucks, an' hired him a mouthpiece. But what good is a mouthpiece
- when there ain't the shadow of a chance to spring him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So Goldie got a rumble, did he?” said Leoni, with a half sigh.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her tones were pensive to the verge of tears; since her love for Goldie
- was almost if not quite equal to the love she bore McTaffe.
- </p>
- <p>
- Goldie Louie lay caged in the Chihuahua calaboose, and Sanky Dunn joined
- out with McTaffe and the others in his place. With forces thus
- reorganized, McTaffe took up the burdens of life again, and—here one
- day and gone the next—existence for himself and Leoni returned to
- old-time lines.
- </p>
- <p>
- Leoni met Casey. With smooth, dark, handsome face, Casey was the superior
- in looks of either McTaffe or Goldie Louie. Also, he had fame as a
- gun-fighter, and for a rock-like steadiness under fire. He was credited,
- too, by popular voice, with having been busy in the stirring, near
- vicinity of events, when divers gentlemen got bumped off. This had in it a
- fascination for Leoni, who—as have the ladies of every age and clime—dearly
- loved a warrior. Moreover, Casey had money, and, unlike those others, he
- was always on the job. This last was important to Leoni, who at any moment
- might find herself at issue with the powers, and Casey, because of his
- political position, could speak to the judge.
- </p>
- <p>
- Leoni loved Casey, even as she had aforetime loved McTaffe, Goldie Louie
- and Crazy Barry. True, Casey owned a wife. But there arose nothing in his
- conduct to indicate it; and since he was too much of a gentleman to let it
- get in any one's way, Leoni herself was so generous as to treat it as a
- technicality.
- </p>
- <p>
- McTaffe and his mob returned from a losing expedition through the West.
- Leoni asked as to results.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why,” explained McTaffe, sulkily, “th' trip was not only a waterhaul, but
- it leaves me on the nut for twelve hundred bones.”
- </p>
- <p>
- McTaffe turned his pockets inside out, by way of corroboration.
- </p>
- <p>
- While thus irritated because of that financial setback, McTaffe heard of
- Leoni's blushing nearness to Casey. It was the moment of all moments when
- he was least able to bear the blow with philosophy.
- </p>
- <p>
- And McTaffe stormed. Going farther, and by way of corrective climax, he
- knocked Leoni down with a club. After which—according to
- eye-witnesses, who spoke without prejudice—he proceeded to beat her
- up for fair.
- </p>
- <p>
- Leoni told her adventures to Casey, and showed him what a harvest of
- bruises her love for him had garnered. Casey, who hadn't been born and
- brought up in Mulberry Bend to become a leading light of Gangland for
- nothing, took his gun and issued forth on the trail of McTaffe. McTaffe
- left town. Also, that he didn't take his mob with him proved that not
- graft, but fear of Casey, was the bug beneath the chip of his
- disappearance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's sherried,” Casey told Leoni, when that ill-used beauty asked if he
- had avenged her bruises. “But he'll blow in ag'in; an' when he does I'll
- cook him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Goldie Louie came up from Chihuahua, his yellow hair shot with gray, the
- prison pallor in the starved hollows of his cheeks. Mexicans are the most
- merciless of jailers. Fog-eye Howard, who was nothing if not a gossip,
- wised him up as to Leoni's love for Casey. In that connection Fog-eye
- related how McTaffe, having rebuked Leoni's heart wanderings with that
- convincing club, had now become a fugitive from Casey's gun.
- </p>
- <p>
- Having heard Fog-eye to the end, Goldie faithfully hunted up Leoni and
- wore out a second club on her himself. Again did Leoni creep to Casey with
- her woes and her wrongs, and again did that Knight of Mulberry Bend gird
- up his fierce loins to avenge her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Let us step rearward a pace.
- </p>
- <p>
- After the Committee of Fourteen, in its uneasy purities, had caused Chick
- Tricker's Park Row license to be revoked, Tricker, seeking a livelihood,
- became the owner of the Stag in Twenty-eighth Street, just off Broadway.
- That license revocation had been a financial jolt, and now in new
- quarters, with Berlin Auggy, whom he had brought with him as partner, he
- was striving, in every way not likely to invoke police interference to
- re-establish his prostrate destiny.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the evening next after the one upon which Goldie Louie, following
- the example of the vanished McTaffe, had expressed club-wise his
- disapproval of Leoni's love for Casey. The Stag was a riot of life and
- light and laughter; music and conversation and drink prevailed. In the
- rear room—fenced off from the bar by swinging doors—was Goldie
- Louie, together with Fog-eye Howard, Brother Bill Orr and Sanky Dunn.
- There, too, Whitey Dutch was entertaining certain of the choicest among
- the Five Pointers. Scattered here and there were Little Red, the Baltimore
- Rat, Louis Buck, Stager Bennett, Jack Cohalan, the Humble Dutchman, and
- others of renown in the grimy chivalry of crime. There were fair ones,
- too, and the silken sex found dulcet representation in such unchallenged
- belles as Pretty Agnes, Jew Yetta, Dutch Ida, and Anna Gold. True, an
- artist in womanly beauty might have found defects in each of these. And if
- so? Venus had a mole on her cheek, Helen a scar on her chin.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tricker was not with his guests at the Stag that night. His father had
- been reported sick, and Tricker was in filial attendance at the Fourteenth
- Street bedside of his stricken sire. In his absence, Auggy took charge,
- and under his genial management beer flowed, coin came in, and all Stag
- things went moving merrily.
- </p>
- <p>
- Whitey Dutch, speaking to Stagger Bennett concerning Pioggi, aforetime put
- away in the Elmira Reformatory for the Coney Island killing of Cyclone
- Louie and Kid Twist, made quite a tale of how Pioggi, having served his
- time, had again shown up in town. Whitey mentioned, as a matter for
- general congratulation, that Pioggi's Elmira experience had not robbed him
- of his right to vote, as would have been the blighting case had he gone to
- Sing Sing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's nothing in that disfranchisement thing, anyhow,” grumbled the
- Humble Dutchman, who sat sourly listening. “I've been up th' river twict,
- an' I've voted a dozen times every election since. Them law-makin' stiffs
- is goin' to take your vote away! Say, that gives me a pain!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Humble Dutchman got off the last in tones of supreme contempt.
- </p>
- <p>
- Grouped around a table near the center, and under convoy of a Central
- Office representative who performed towards them in the triple rôle of
- guide, philosopher and friend, were gathered a half dozen Fifth Avenue
- males and females, all members in good standing of the Purple and Fine
- Linen Gang. Auggy, in the absence of Tricker, had received them
- graciously, pressed cigars and drinks upon them, declining the while their
- proffered money of the realm in a manner composite of suavity and princely
- ease.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's an honor, loides an' gents,” said Auggy, “merely to see your maps in
- the Stag at all. As for th' booze an' smokes, they're on th' house. Your
- dough don't go here, see!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Purple and Fine Linen contingent called their visit slumming. If they
- could have heard what Auggy, despite his beaming smiles and royal
- liberality touching those refreshments, called both them and their visit,
- after they had left, it might have set their patrician ears afire.
- </p>
- <p>
- Having done the Stag, and seen and heard and misunderstood things to their
- slumming souls' content, the Purple and Fine Linen Gang said goodbye. They
- must drop in—they explained—at the Haymarket, just around the
- corner in Sixth Avenue. Auggy invited them to come again, but was visibly
- relieved once they had gone their slumming way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was afraid every minute some duck'd start something,” said Auggy, “an'
- of course if anything did break loose—any little t'ing, if it ain't
- no more than soakin' some dub in th' jaw—one of them Fift' Avenoo
- dames's 'ud be bound to t'row a fit.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say!” broke in Anna Gold resentfully; “it's somethin' fierce th' way them
- high s'ciety fairies comes buttin' in on us. W'at do they think they're
- tryin' to give us, anyway? For th' price of a beer, I'd have snatched one
- of them baby-dolls baldheaded. I'd have nailed her be th' mop; an' w'en
- I'd got t'rough doin' stunts wit' her, she wouldn't have had to tell no
- one she'd been slummin'.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now, forget it!” interposed Auggy warningly. “You go reachin' for any
- skirt's puffs round here, an' it'll be the hurry-up wagon at a gallop an'
- you for the cooler, Anna. The Stag's a quiet joint, an' that rough-house
- stuff don't go. Chick won't stand for no one to get hoited.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Chick won't stand for no one to get hoited!” retorted the acrid Anna,
- in mighty dudgeon. “An' the Stag's a quiet joint! Why, it ain't six weeks
- since a guy pulls a cannister in this very room, an' shoots Joe Rocks full
- of holes. You helps take him to the hospital yourself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cut out that Joe Rocks stuff,” commanded Aug-gy, with vast heat, “or
- you'll hit the street on your frizzes—don't make no mistake!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Observing the stormy slant the talk was taking, Whitey Dutch
- diplomatically ordered beer, and thus put an end to debate. It was a move
- full of wisdom. Auggy was made nervous by the absence of Tricker, and Anna
- the Voluble, on many a field, had shown herself a lady of spirit.
- </p>
- <p>
- While the evening at the Stag thus went happily wearing towards the
- smaller hours, over in Twenty-ninth Street, a block away, the stuss game
- of Casey and Paper-Box Johnny was in full and profitable blast. Paper-Box
- himself was in active charge. Casey had for the moment abandoned business
- and every thought of it. Leoni had just informed him of those visitations
- at the hands of Goldie Louie, and set him to thinking on other things than
- cards.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' he says,” concluded Leoni, preparing to go, “after he's beat me half
- to death, 'now chase 'round an' tell your Dago friend, Casey, that my
- monaker ain't McTaffe, an' that if he starts to hand me anythin', I'll put
- him down in Bellevue for the count.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- The dark face of Casey displayed both anger and resolution. He made
- neither threat nor comment, but his eyes were full of somber fires. Leoni
- departed with an avowed purpose of subjecting her injuries to the curative
- effects of arnica, while Casey continued to gloom and glower, drinking
- deeply the while to take the edge off his feelings.
- </p>
- <p>
- Harry Lemmy, a once promising prize-fighter of the welter-weight variety,
- showed up. Also, he had no more than settled to the drink, which Casey—whom
- the wrongs of his idolized Leoni could not render unmindful of the claims
- of hospitality—had ordered, when Jack Kenny and Charlie Young
- appeared.
- </p>
- <p>
- The latter, not alive to the fatal importance of such news, spoke of the
- Stag, which he had left but the moment before, and of the presence there
- of Goldie Louie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “McTaffe's stalls, Fog-eye, Brother Bill an' Sanky Dunn, are lushin' wit'
- him,” said Young. “You know Sanky filled in wit' th' mob th' time Goldie
- gets settled in Mexico.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Goldie Louie, only a block away, set the torch to Casey's heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where's Dago Frankie?” he asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dago Frankie was his nearest and most trusted friend.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's over in Sixt' Avenoo shootin' craps,” replied Lemmy. “Shall I go dig
- him up?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It don't matter,” said Casey, after a moment's thought. Then, getting up
- from his chair, he inquired, “Have you guys got your cannons?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure t'ing!” came the general chorus, with a closer from Kenny.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've got two,” he said. “A sport might get along wit'out a change of
- shoits in Noo York, but he never ought to be wit'out a change of guns.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at's on, Phil?” asked Charlie Young, anxiously, as Casey pulled a
- magazine pistol, and carefully made sure that its stomach was full of
- cartridges; “w'at's on?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm goin' over to the Stag,” replied Casey. “If you ducks'll listen
- you'll hear a dog howl in about a minute.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We'll not only listen, but we'll go 'long,” returned Young.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lemmy and Kenny fell behind the ethers. “W'at's th' muss?” whispered
- Lemmy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's Leoni,” explained Kenny guardedly. “Goldie give her a wallop or two
- last night, an' Phil's goin' to do him for it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Casey strode into the Stag, his bosom a storm-center for every black
- emotion. The sophisticated Auggy smelled instant trouble on him, as one
- smells fire in a house. Bending over the friendly shoulder of Whitey
- Dutch, Auggy spoke in a low tone of warning.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's Phil Casey,” he said, “an' t'ree of his bunch. It's apples to
- ashes he's gunnin' for Goldie. If Chick were here, now, he'd somehow put
- the smother on him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Give him a call-down your own self,” was Whitey's counsel. “W'at with
- Chick's license bein' revoked in Park Row, an' Joe Rocks goin' to the
- hospital from here only a little over a mont' ago, the least bit of
- cannonadin' 's bound to put th' joint in Dutch all the way from
- headquarters to the State excise dubs in Albany.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know it,” returned Auggy, in great trouble of mind. “If a gun so much
- as cracks once, it'll be th' fare-you-well of the Stag.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, w'at do youse say?” demanded the loyal Whitey. “I'm wit' youse, an'
- I'm wit' Chick, an' I'm wit' Goldie. Give th' woid, an' I'll pull in a
- harness bull from off his beat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, none of that! Chick'd sooner burn the joint than call a cop.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll go give Casey a chin,” said Whitey, “meb-by I can hold him down. You
- put Goldie wise. Tell him to keep his lamps on Casey, an' if Casey reaches
- for his gatt to beat him to it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Casey the decisive moved swiftly, however, and the proposed peace
- intervention failed for being too slow. Casey got a glimpse of Goldie
- through the separating screen doors. It was all he wanted. The next moment
- he had charged through.
- </p>
- <p>
- Chairs crashed, tables were overthrown, women shrieked and men cursed.
- Twenty guns were out. Casey fired six times at Goldie Louie, and six times
- missed that lucky meddler with other people's pocket-books. Not that
- Casey's efforts were altogether thrown away. His first bullet lodged in
- the stomach of Fog-eye, while his third broke the arm of Brother Bill.
- </p>
- <p>
- Whitey Dutch reached Casey as the latter began his artillery practice, and
- sought by word and moderate force to induce a truce. Losing patience,
- however, Whitey, as Casey fired his final shot, pulled his own gun and put
- a bullet through and through that berserk's head. As Casey fell forward, a
- second bullet—coming from anywhere—buried itself in his back.
- </p>
- <p>
- “By the Lord, I've croaked Phil!” was the exclamation of Whitey, addressed
- to no one in particular.
- </p>
- <p>
- They were Whitey's last words; some one shoved the muzzle of a gun against
- his temple, and he fell by the side of Casey.
- </p>
- <p>
- No sure list of dead and wounded for that evening's battle of the Stag
- will ever be compiled. The guests scattered like a flock of blackbirds.
- Some fled limping and groaning, others nursing an injured arm, while three
- or four, too badly hurt to travel, were dragged into nooks of safety by
- friends who'd come through untouched. There was blood to the east, blood
- to the west, on the Twenty-eighth Street pavements, and a wounded
- gentleman was picked up in Broadway, two blocks away. The wounded one,
- full of a fine prudence and adhering strictly to gang teachings, declared
- that the bullet which had struck him was a bullet of mystery. Also, he
- gave his word of honor that, personally, he had never once heard of the
- Stag.
- </p>
- <p>
- When the police reached the field of battle—wearing the ill-used
- airs of folk who had been unwarrantably disturbed—they found Casey
- and Whitey Dutch dead on the floor, and Fog-eye groaning in a corner. To
- these—counting the injured Brother Bill and the prudent one picked
- up in Broadway, finally identified as Sanky Dunn—rumor added two
- dead and eleven wounded.
- </p>
- <p>
- Leoni?
- </p>
- <p>
- The Central Office dicks who met that lamp of loveliness the other evening
- in Broadway reported her as in abundant spirits, and more beautiful than
- ever. She had received a letter from McTaffe, she said, who sent his love,
- and her eyes shone like twin stars because of the joy she felt.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mack always had a good heart,” said Leoni.
- </p>
- <p>
- Paper-Box Johnny—all in tears—bore sorrowful word of her loss
- to Mrs. Casey, calling that matron from her slumbers to receive it.
- Paper-Box managed delicately.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's time to dig up black!” sobbed Paper-Box; “they've copped Phil.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Copped Phil?” repeated Mrs. Casey, sleepily. “Where is he?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “On a slab in the morgue. Youse'd better chase yourself over.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “All right,” returned Mrs. Casey, making ready to go back to bed, “I will
- after awhile.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VIII. THE WAGES OF THE SNITCH
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">K</span>nowledge is power,
- and power is a good thing, as you yourself well know. Since Eve opened the
- way, and she and Adam paid the price—a high one, I sometimes think—you
- are entitled to every kind of knowledge. Also, you are entitled to all
- that you can get.
- </p>
- <p>
- But having acquired knowledge, you are not entitled to peddle it out in
- secret to Central Office bulls, at a cost of liberty and often life to
- other men. When you do that you are a snitch, and have thrown away your
- right to live. Anyone is free to kill you out of hand, having regard only
- to his own safety. For such is the common law of Gangland.
- </p>
- <p>
- Let me ladle out a cautionary spoonful.
- </p>
- <p>
- As you go about accumulating knowledge, you should fix your eye upon one
- or two great truths. You must never forget that when you are close enough
- to see a man you are close enough to be seen. It is likewise foolish,
- weakly foolish, to assume that you are the only gas jet in the chandelier,
- the only pebble on the beach, or possess the only kodak throughout the
- entire length of the boardwalk. Bear ever in mind that while you are
- getting the picture of some other fellow, he in all human chance is
- snapping yours.
- </p>
- <p>
- This last is not so much by virtue of any law of Gangland as by a law of
- nature. Its purpose is to preserve that equilibrium, wanting which, the
- universe itself would slip into chaos and the music of the spheres become
- but the rawest tuning of the elemental instruments. The stars would no
- longer sing together, but shriek together, and space itself would be
- driven to stop its ears. Folk who fail to carry these grave matters upon
- the constant shoulder of their regard, get into trouble.
- </p>
- <p>
- At Gouverneur hospital, where he died, the register gave his name as
- “Samuel Wendell,” and let it go at that. The Central Office, which finds
- its profit in amplification, said, “Samuel Wendell, <i>alias</i> Kid
- Unger, <i>alias</i> the Ghost,” and further identified him as “brother to
- Johnny the Mock.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Samuel Wendell, <i>alias</i> Kid Unger, <i>alias</i> the Ghost, brother to
- Johnny the Mock, was not the original Ghost. Until less than two years ago
- the title was honorably worn by Mashier, who got twenty spaces for a night
- trick he turned in Brooklyn. Since Mashier could not use the name in Sing
- Sing, Wendell, <i>alias</i> Kid Unger, brother to Johnny the Mock, adopted
- it for his own. It fitted well with his midnight methods and noiseless,
- gliding, skulking ways. Moreover, since it was upon his own sly rap to the
- bulls, who made the collar, that Mashier got pinched, he may have felt
- himself entitled to the name as part of his reward. The Indian scalps his
- victim, and upon a similar principle Wendell, <i>alias</i> Unger, brother
- to Johnny the Mock, when Mashier was handed that breath-taking twenty
- years, may have decided to call himself the Ghost.
- </p>
- <p>
- It will never be precisely known how and why and by whose hand the Ghost
- was killed, although it is common opinion that Pretty Agnes had much to do
- with it. Also, common opinion is more often right than many might believe.
- In view of that possible connection with the bumping off of the Ghost,
- Pretty Agnes is worth a word. She could not have been called old. When
- upon a certain Saturday evening, not remote, she stepped into Jack
- Sirocco's in Chatham Square, her years counted fewer than nineteen. Still,
- she had seen a good deal—or a bad deal—whichever you prefer.
- </p>
- <p>
- Pretty Agnes' father, a longshoreman, had found his bread along the docks.
- None better ever-shaped for a boss stevedore, or trotted up a gangplank
- with a 280-pound sack of sugar on his back. One day he fell between the
- side of a moored ship and the stringpiece of the wharf; and the ship,
- being at that moment ground against the wharf by the swell from a passing
- steamer, he was crushed. Those who looked on called him a fool for having
- been killed in so poor a way. He was too dead to resent the criticism, and
- after that his widow, the mother of Pretty Agnes, took in washing.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her mother washed, and Pretty Agnes carried home the clothes. This went on
- for three years. One wind-blown afternoon, as the mother was hanging out
- clothes on the roof—a high one—and refreshing her energies
- with intermittent gin from the bottle of her neighbor, the generous Mrs.
- Callahan, she stepped backward down an airshaft. She struck the flags ten
- stories below, and left Pretty Agnes to look out for herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- Looking out for herself, Pretty Agnes worked in a sweatshop in Division
- Street. Here she made three dollars a week and needed five. The sweatshop
- owner—for she was a dream of loveliness, with a fog of blue-black
- hair and deep brown eyes—offered to make up the lacking two, and was
- accepted.
- </p>
- <p>
- Round, ripe, willowy, Pretty Agnes graduated from the Division Street
- sweatshop to a store in Twenty-third Street. There she served as a cloak
- model, making fourteen dollars a week while needing twenty. The manager of
- the cloak store was as generous as had been the owner of the sweatshop,
- and benevolently made up the absent six.
- </p>
- <p>
- For Pretty Agnes was lovelier than ever.
- </p>
- <p>
- All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy. Also, it has the same effect
- on Jill. Pretty Agnes—she had a trunkful of good clothes and yearned
- to show them—went three nights a week to one of those dancing
- academies wherewith the East Side was and is rife. As she danced she met
- Indian Louie, and lost no time in loving him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Having advantage of her love, that seeker after doubtful dollars showed
- Pretty Agnes where and how she could make more money than would come to
- her as a cloak model in any Twenty-third Street store. Besides, he
- jealously disapproved of the benevolent manager, though, all things
- considered, it is hard to say why.
- </p>
- <p>
- Pretty Agnes, who had grown weary of the manager and to whom Louie's word
- was law, threw over both the manager and her cloak-model position. After
- which she walked the streets for Louie—as likewise did Mollie Squint—and,
- since he often beat her, continued to love him from the bottom of her
- heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- Between Pretty Agnes and Mollie Squint, Louie lived sumptuously. Nor could
- they themselves be said to have altogether suffered; for each knew how to
- lick her fingers as a good cook should. Perhaps Louie was aware that his
- darlings held out on him, but regarded it as just an investment. He must
- have known that to dress well stood first among the demands of their
- difficult profession, which was ancient and had been honorable, albeit in
- latter days ill spoken of.
- </p>
- <p>
- Louie died, and was mourned roundly by Pretty Agnes for eight weeks. Then
- she gave her love to Sammy Hart, who was out-on-the-safe. Charlie Lennard,
- <i>alias</i> Big Head, worked pal to Sammy Hart, and the Ghost went with
- them as outside man and to help in carrying the tools.
- </p>
- <p>
- Commonly Sammy and Big Head tackled only inferior safes, in cracking which
- nothing nobler nor more recondite than a can-opener was demanded. Now and
- then, however, when a first-class box had to be blown and soup was an
- absolute requirement, the Ghost came in exceeding handy. No yegg who ever
- swung under and traveled from town to town without a ticket, knew better
- than did the Ghost how to make soup.
- </p>
- <p>
- The soup-making process, while ticklish, ought to be worth reading about.
- A cake of dynamite is placed in the cold bottom of a kettle. Warm water is
- added, and the kettle set a-simmer over a benzine lamp. As the water
- heats, the dynamite melts into oil, and the oil—being lighter—rises
- to the top of the water.
- </p>
- <p>
- The oil is drawn softly off with a syringe, and as softly discharged into
- a bottle half filled with alcohol. The alcohol is to prevent explosion by
- jarring. Soup, half oil, half alcohol, can be fired with a fuse, but will
- sustain quite a jolt without resenting it.
- </p>
- <p>
- This was not true in an elder day, before our box workers discovered that
- golden alcoholic secret. There was a yegg once who was half in, half out,
- of the window of a P. O. Pie had the bottle of soup in his hip pocket. The
- sash fell, struck the consignment of hip-pocket soup, and all that was
- found of the yegg were the soles of his shoes. Nothing so disconcerting
- would have happened had the Ghost made the soup.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Ghost, while believed in by Big Head and Sammy, was distrusted by
- Pretty Agnes. She distrusted him because of his bad repute as a snitch.
- She called Sammy's attention to what tales were abroad to the black effect
- that the Ghost was a copper in his mildewed soul, and one time and another
- had served stoolpigeon to many dicks.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sammy took no stock in these reports, and told Pretty Agnes so.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' Ghost's all right,” he said; “he's been wit' me an' Big Head when we
- toins off twenty joints.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He may go wit' you,” retorted Pretty Agnes, “for twenty more tricks, an'
- never rap. But mark me woids, Sammy; in th' end he'll make a present of
- youse to th' bulls.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Sammy only laughed, holding that the feminine intelligence, while
- suspicious, was not a strong intelligence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” said Sammy, when he had ceased laughing, “if th' Ghost does
- double-cross me, w'at'll youse do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at'll I do? As sure as my monaker is Pretty Agnes, I'll have him
- cooked.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good goil!” said Sammy Hart.
- </p>
- <p>
- Gangland discusses things social, commercial, political, and freely forms
- and gives opinions. From a panic in Wall Street to the making of a
- President, nothing comes or goes uncommented upon and unticketed in
- Gangland. Even the fashions are threshed out, and sage judgments rendered
- concerning frocks and hats and all the latest hints from Paris. This you
- can test for yourself, on any evening, at such hubs of popular interest as
- Sirocco's, Tony's, Jimmy Kelly's or the Chatham Club.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sirocco's was a-swarm with life that Saturday evening when Pretty Agnes
- dropped in so casually. At old Jimmy's table they were considering the
- steel trust investigation, then proceeding—ex-President Roosevelt
- had that day testified—and old Jimmy and the Irish Wop voiced their
- views, and gave their feelings vent. Across at Slimmy's the dread doings
- of a brace of fair ones, who had excited Coney Island by descending upon
- that lively suburb in harem skirts, was under discussion.
- </p>
- <p>
- Speaking of the steel trust investigation and its developments, old Jimmy
- was unbelting after this wise. Said he, bringing down his hairy fist with
- a whack that startled every beer glass on the table into an upward jump of
- full three inches:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' more I read of th' doin's of them rich guys, th' more I begin to
- think that th' makin' of a mutt lurks in every million dollars. Say, Wop,
- they don't know how to pick up a hand an' play it, after it's been dealt
- 'em. Take 'em off Wall Street an' mix 'em up wit' anything except stocks,
- an' they can't tell a fire plug from a song an' dance soubrette. If some
- ordinary skate was to go crabbin' his own personal game th' way they do
- theirs, th' next you'd hear that stew would be in Blooming-dale.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Phwat's eatin' yez now, Jimmy?” inquired the Wop, carelessly. “Is it that
- steel trusht thing th' pa-a-apers is so full of?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That an' th' way Morgan an' th' balance of that fur-lined push fall over
- themselves. Th' big thing they're shy on is diplomacy. When it comes to
- diplomacy, they're a lot of dead ones.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' phwat's diplom'cy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Wop didn't like big words; his feeling was to first question, then
- resent them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Phwat's diplom'cy?” he repeated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Diplomacy,” said old Jimmy, “is any cunnin' move that lands th' trick.
- You wake up an' hear a noise; an' you think it's some porch-climber, like
- th' Nailer here, turnin' off th' joint. At that, not knowin' but he's
- framed up with a gun, you don't feel like goin' to th' mat with him. What
- do you do? Well, you use diplomacy. You tosses mebby a dumbbell over th'
- bannisters, an' lets it go bumpin' along from step to step, makin' more
- row than some geezer failin' down stairs with a kitchen stove. Th' racket
- throws a scare into th' Nailer, an' he beats it, see?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' that's diplom'cy!” said the Wop.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Also, it's exactly what them Wall Streeters ain't got. Look at th' way
- they're always fightin' Roosevelt. For twenty-five years they've been
- roustin' Teddy; an' for twenty-five years they've done nothin' but keep
- him on th' map. When Teddy was in Mulberry Street th' Tammany ducks gets
- along with him as peaceful as a basketful of pups. Diplomacy does it;
- that, an' payin' strict attention to Teddy's blind side. 'What's th' use
- of kickin' in th' gate,' says they, 'when we knows where a picket's off
- th' fence?' You remember Big Florrie Sullivan puttin' young Brady on th'
- Force? Teddy's in Mulberry Street then. Do you think Big Florrie goes
- queerin' th' chances, be tellin' Teddy how Brady passes th' cush box in
- Father Curry's church? Not on your life! It wouldn't have been diplomacy;
- Teddy wouldn't have paid no attention. Big Florrie gets in his work like
- this:
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Say, Commish,' he says, 'I sees th' fight of my life last night.
- Nineteen rounds to a knockout! It's a left hook to th' jaw does it.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'No!' Teddy says, lightin' up like Chinatown on th' night of a Chink
- festival; 'you int'rest me! Pull up a stool,' says he, 'an' put your feet
- on th' desk. There; now you're comfortable, go on about th' fight. Who
- were they?'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'A lad from my district named Brady,' says Big Florry, 'an' a
- dock-walloper from Williamsburg. You ought to have seen it, Commish! Oh,
- Brady's th' goods! Pie's th' lad to go th' route! He's all over that
- Williamsburg duffer like a cat over a shed roof! He went 'round him like a
- cooper 'round a barrel!'
- </p>
- <p>
- “Big Florrie runs on like that, using diplomacy, an' two weeks later
- Brady's thumpin' a beat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ye're r-r-right, Jimmy,” said the Wop, after a pause which smelled of
- wisdom; “I agrees wit' yez. Morgan, Perkins, Schwab an' thim rich omadauns
- is th' bum lot. Now I think av it, too, Fatty Walsh minchons that wor-r-rd
- diplom'cy to me long ago. Yez knew Fatty, Jimmy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fatty an' me was twins.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fatty's th' foine la-a-ad; on'y now he's dead—Mary resht him! Th'
- time I'm in th' Tombs for bouncin' th' brick off th' head av that
- Orangeman, who's whistlin' th' Battle av th' Boyne to see how long I can
- shtand it, Fatty's th' warden; an' say, he made th' place home to me. He's
- talkin', Fatty is, wan day about Mayor Hughey Grant, an' it's then he
- shpeaks av diplom'cy. He says Hughey didn't have anny.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't you believe it!” interrupted old Jimmy; “Fatty had Hughey down
- wrong. When it comes to diplomacy, Hughey could suck an egg an' never chip
- th' shell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's a special case loike. Fatty's dishtrict, d'yez see, has nothin' in
- it but Eyetalians. Wan day they'r makin' ready to cilibrate somethin'.
- Fatty's in it, av course, bein' leader, an' he chases down to th' City
- Hall an' wins out a permit for th' Dago parade.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's Hughey got to do with that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lishten! It shtrikes Hughey, him bein' Mayor, it'll be th' dead wise
- play, when Fatty marches by wit' his Guineas, to give them th' gay,
- encouragin' face. Hughey thinks Fatty an' his pushcart la-a-ads is
- cilibratin' some Dago Saint Patrick's day, d'yez see. It's there Fatty
- claims that Hughey shows no diplom'cy; he'd ought to have ashked.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Asked what?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm comin' to it. Fatty knows nothin' about phwat's on Hughey's chest.
- His first tip is when he sees Hughey, an' th' balance av th' Tammany
- administration cocked up in a hand-me-down grandstand they've faked
- together in City Hall Park. Fatty pipes 'em, as he an' his Black Hand
- bunch comes rowlin' along down Broadway, an' th' sight av that grandshtand
- full av harps, Hughey at th' head, almosht gives him heart failure.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fatty halts his Eyetalians, sets them to ma-a-arkin' toime, an' comes
- sprintin' an' puffin' on ahead.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Do a sneak!' he cries, when he comes near enough to pass th' wor-r-rd.
- 'Mother above! don't yez know phwat these wops av mine is cilibratin'?
- It's chasin' th' pope out av Rome. Duck, I tell yez, duck!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure; Hughiy an' th' rist av th' gang took it on th' run. Fatty could
- ma-a-arch all right, because there's nobody but blackhanders in his
- dish-trict. But wit' Hughey an' th' others it's different. They might have
- got his grace, th' archbishop, afther thim.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Goin' back to Teddy,” observed old Jimmy, as he called for beer, “them
- rich lobsters is always stirrin' him up. An' they always gets th' worst of
- it. They've never brought home th' bacon yet. Tie's put one over on 'em
- every time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yez can gamble that Tiddy's th' la-a-ad that can fight!” cried the Wop in
- tones of glee; “he's th' baby that's always lookin' f'r an argument!” Then
- in a burst, both rapturous and irrelevant: “tie's th' idol av th' criminal
- illimint!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't think that's ag'inst him,” interjected the Nailer, defensively.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nor me neither,” said old Jimmy. “When it comes down to tacks, who's
- quicker wit' th' applaudin' mitt at sight of an honest man than th'
- crim'nal element?—only so he ain't bumpin' into their graft. Who is
- it hisses th' villyun in th' play till you can hear him in Hoboken? Ain't
- it some dub just off the Island? Once a Blind Tom show is at Minor's, an'
- a souse in th' gallery is so carried away be grief at th' death of Little
- Eva, he falls down two flights of stairs. I gets a flash at him as they
- tosses him into th' ambulance, an' I hopes to join th' church if it ain't
- a murderer I asks Judge Battery Dan to put away on Blackwell's for beatin'
- up his own little girl till she can't get into her frock. Wall Streeters
- an' college professors, when it comes to endorsin' an honest man, can't
- take no medals off th' crim'nal element.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Phwy has Morgan an' th' rist av thim Wall Street geeks got it in f'r
- Tiddy?” queried the Wop. “Phwat's he done to 'em?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothin'; only they claims it ain't larceny if you steal more'n a hundred
- thousand dollars, an' Teddy won't stand for a limit.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If that's phwat they're in a clinch about, then I'm for Tiddy,” declared
- the Wop. “Ain't it him, too, that says th' only difference bechune a rich
- man an' a poor man is at th' bank? More power to him!—why not? Would
- this beer be annythin' but beer, if it came through a spigot av go-o-old,
- from a keg av silver, an' th' bar-boy had used a dia-mond-shtudded
- bung-starter in tappin' it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Over at Slimmy's table, where the weaker sex predominated, the talk was
- along lighter lines. Mollie Squint spoke in condemnation of those harem
- skirts at Coney Island.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do youse think,” she asked, “of them she-scouts showin' up at Luna
- Park in harem skirts? Coarse work that—very coarse. It goes to prove
- how some frails ain't more'n half baked.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why does a dame go to th' front in such togs?” asked Slimmy disgustedly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because she's stuck on herself,” said the Nailer, who had drifted over
- from old Jimmy and the Wop, where the talk was growing too heavy for him;
- “an' besides, it's an easy way of gettin' th' spot-light. Take anything
- like this harem skirt stunt, an' oodles of crazy Mollies'll fall for it.
- Youse can't hand it out too raw! So if it's goin' to stir things up, an'
- draw attention, they're Johnny-at-the-rat-hole every time!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We ladies,” remarked Jew Yetta, like a complacent Portia giving judgment,
- “certainly do like to be present at th' ball game! An' if we can't beat
- th' gate—can't heel in—we'll climb th' fence. Likewise, we're
- right there whenever it's th' latest thing. Especially, if we've got a
- face that'd stop traffic in th' street. Do youse remember”—this to
- Anna Gold—“when bicycles is new, how a lot of old iron-bound
- fairies, wit' maps that'd give youse a fit of sickness, never wastes a
- moment in wheelin' to th' front?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do I remember when bicycles is new?” retorted Anna Gold, resentfully.
- “How old do youse think I be?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' Nailer's right,” said Slimmy, cutting skilfully in with a view to
- keeping the peace. “Th' reason why them dames breaks in on bicycles, an'
- other new deals, is because it attracts attention; an' attractin'
- attention is their notion of bein' great. Which shows that they don't know
- th' difference between bein' famous an' bein' notorious.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Slimmy, having thus declared himself, looked as wise as a treeful of owls.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, w'at is th' difference?” demanded Anna Gold.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's th' difference between fame an' notoriety?” repeated Slimmy, brow
- lofty, manner high. “It's th' difference, Goldie, between havin' your
- picture took at th' joint of a respectable photographer, an' bein' mugged
- be th' coppers at th' Central Office. As to harem skirts, however, I'm
- like Mollie there. Gen'rally speakin', I strings wit' th' loidies; but
- when they springs a make-up like them harem skirts, I pack in. Harem
- skirts is where I get off.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course,” said Big Kitty, who while speaking little spoke always to the
- point, “youse souses understands that them dolls who shakes up Coney has
- an ace buried. They're simply a brace of roof-gardeners framin' up a
- little ink. I s'pose they fig-gered they'd make a hit. Did they?”—this
- was in reply to Mollie Squint, who had asked the question. “Well, if
- becomin' th' reason why th' bull on post rings in a riot call, an' brings
- out th' resoives, is your idee of a hit, Mollie, them dames is certainly
- th' big scream.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Them harem skirts won't do!” observed the Nailer, firmly; “youse hear me,
- they won't do!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' that goes f'r merry widdy hats, too,” called out the Wop, from across
- the room. “Only yister-day a big fat baby rounds a corner on me, an' bang!
- she ketches me in th' lamp wit' th' edge av her merry widdy. On the livil,
- I thought it was a cross-cut saw! She came near bloindin' me f'r loife. As
- I side-steps, a rooshter's tail that's sproutin' out av th' roof, puts me
- other optic on th' blink. I couldn't have seen a shell av beer, even if
- Jimmy here was payin' fer it. Harem skirts is bad; but th' real minace is
- merry widdys.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought them lids was called in,” remarked Slimmy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If they was,” returned the Wop, “they got bailed out ag'in. Th' one I'm
- nailed wit' is half as big as Betmont Pa-a-ark. Youse could 've raced a
- field av two-year olds on it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” remarked the Nailer, resignedly, “it's th' fashion, an' it's up to
- us, I s'pose, to stand it. That or get off the earth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who invints th' fashions?” and here the Wop appealed to the deep
- experience of old Jimmy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' French.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Jimmy—his pension had just been paid—motioned to the
- waiter to again take the orders all 'round.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' French. They're the laddy-bucks that shoves 'em from shore. Say
- 'Fashion!' an' bing! th' French is on th' job, givin' orders.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thim Frinch 're th' great la-a-ads,” commented the Wop, admiringly.
- “There's a felly on'y this mornin' tellin' me they can cook shnails so's
- they're almosht good to eat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell that bug to guess ag'in, Wop,” said Mollie Squint. “Snails is never
- good to eat. As far as them French are concerned, however, I go wit' old
- Jimmy. They're a hot proposition.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jack Sirocco had been walking up and down, his manner full of uneasiness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's wrong, Jack?” at last asked old Jimmy, who had observed that
- proprietor's anxiety.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sirocco explained that divers gimlet-eyed gentlemen, who he believed were
- emissaries of an antivice society, had been in the place for hours.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They only now screwed out,” continued Sirocco. Then, dolefully: “It'd be
- about my luck, just as I'm beginnin' to get a little piece of change for
- myself, to have some of them virchoo-toutin' ginks hand me a wallop. I
- wonder w'at good it does 'em to be always tryin' to knock th' block off
- somebody. I ain't got nothin' ag'inst virchoo. Vir-choo's all right in its
- place. But so is vice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Jimmy's philosophy began manoeuvring for the high ground.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This vice and virtue thing makes me tired,” he said; “there's too much of
- it. Also, there's plenty to be said both ways. Th' big trouble wit' them
- anti-vice dubs is that they're all th' time connin' themselves. They feel
- moral when it's merely dyspepsia; they think they're virchous when they're
- only sick. In th' end, too, virchoo always falls down. Virchoo never puts
- a real crimp in vice yet. Virchoo's a sprinter; an' for one hundred yards
- it makes vice look like a crab. But vice is a stayer, an' in th' Marathon
- of events it romps in winner. Virchoo likes a rockin'-chair; vice puts in
- most of its time on its feet. Virchoo belongs to th' Union; it's for th'
- eight hour day, with holidays an' Saturday afternoons off. Vice is always
- willin' to break th' wage schedule, work overtime or do anythin' else to
- oblige. Virchoo wants two months in th' country every summer; vice never
- asks for a vacation since th' world begins.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Wop loudly cheered old Jimmy's views. Sirocco, however, continued
- gloomy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “For,” said the latter with a sigh, “I can feel it that them anti-vice
- guys has put th' high-sign on me. They'll never rest now until they've got
- me number.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Pretty Agnes, on comin' in, had taken a corner table by herself. She
- heard, but did not join in the talk. She even left untouched the glass of
- beer, which, at a word from old Jimmy, a waiter had placed before her.
- Silent and sad, with an expression which spoke of trouble present or
- trouble on its way, she sat staring into smoky space.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at's wrong wit' her?” whispered Slimmy, who, high-strung and sensitive,
- could be worked upon by another's troubles.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why don't youse ask her?” said Big Kitty.
- </p>
- <p>
- Slimmy shook a doubtful head. “She ain't got no use for me,” he explained,
- “since that trouble wit' Indian Louie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She sure couldn't expect you an' th' Grabber,” remarked Anna Gold, quite
- scandalized at the thought of such unfairness, “to lay dead, while Louie
- does you out of all that dough!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's th' rent,” said Jew Yetta. She had been canvassing Pretty Agnes out
- of the corners of her eyes. “I know that look from me own experience. She
- can't come across for the flat, an' some bum of an agent has handed her a
- notice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's nothin' in that,” declared Mollie Squint. “She could touch me for
- th' rent, an' she's hep to it.” Then, in reproof of the questioning looks
- of Anna Gold: “Sure; both me an' Agnes was stuck on Indian Louie, but w'at
- of that? Louie's gone; an' besides, I never blames her. It's me who's th'
- butt-in; Agnes sees Louie first.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Youse 're wrong, Yetta,” spoke up the Nailer, confidently. “Agnes ain't
- worryin' about cush. There ain't a better producer anywhere than Sammy
- Hart. No one ever sees Sammy wit'out a roll.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Nailer lounged across to Pretty Agnes; Mollie Squint, whose heart was
- kindly, followed him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'y don't youse lap up your suds?” queried the Nailer, pointing to the
- beer. Without waiting for a return, he continued, “Where's Sammy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I don't know,” returned Pretty Agnes, her manner half desperate.
- “Nailer, I'm simply fretted batty!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at's gone crooked, dear?” asked Mollie Squint, soothingly. “Youse ain't
- been puttin' on th' mitts wit' Sammy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” replied Pretty Agnes, the tears beginning to flow; “me an' Sammy's
- all right. On'y he won't listen!” Then suddenly pointing with her finger,
- she exclaimed; “There! It's him I'm worryin' about!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Nailer and Mollie Squint glanced in the direction indicated by Pretty
- Agnes. The Ghost had just come in and was sidling into a chair. It must be
- admitted that there was much in his appearance to dislike. His lips were
- loose, his eyes half closed and sleepy, while his chin was catlike,
- retreating, unbased. In figure he was undersized, slope-shouldered,
- slouching. When he spoke, his voice drawled, and the mumbled words fell
- half-formed from the slack angles of his mouth. He was an eel—a
- human eel—slippery, slimy, hard to locate, harder still to hold. To
- find him you would have to draw off all the water in the pond, and then
- poke about in the ooze.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's him that's frettin' me,” repeated Pretty Agnes. “He's got me wild!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Nailer donned an expression, cynical and incredulous.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at's this?” said he. “W'y Agnes, youse ain't soft on that mutt, be
- youse? Say, youse must be gettin' balmy!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It ain't that,” returned Pretty Agnes, indignantly. “Do youse think I'd
- fall for such a chromo? I'd be bughouse!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bughouse wouldn't half tell it!” exclaimed Mollie Squint fervently.
- “Him?”—nodding towards the Ghost. “W'y he's woise'n a wet dog!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” returned the puzzled Nailer, who with little imagination, owned
- still less of sentimental breadth, “if youse ain't stuck on him, how's he
- managin' to fret youse? Show me, an' I'll take a punch at his lamp.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Punchin' wouldn't do no good,” replied Pretty Agnes, resignedly. “This is
- how it stands. Sammy an' Big Head's gettin' ready to do a <i>schlam</i>
- job. They've let th' Ghost join out wit' 'em, an' I know he's goin' to
- give 'em up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Nailer looked grave.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Unless youse've got somethin' on him, Agnes.” he remonstrated, “you
- oughtn't to make a squawk like that. How do youse know he's goin' to rap?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cause he always raps,” she cried fiercely. “Where's Mashier? Where's
- Marky Price? Where's Skinny Goodstein? Up th' river!—every mother's
- son of 'em! An' all his pals, once; every one! He's filled in wit' th'
- best boys that ever cracked a bin. An' every one of 'em's doin' their
- bits, while he's here drinkin' beer. I tell youse th' Ghost's a snitch!
- Youse can see 'Copper' written on his face.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I t'ought so,” growled the Nailer, an evil shine in his beady eyes,
- “I'd croak him right here.” Then, as offering a solution: “If youse 're so
- sure he's a stool, w'y don't youse tail him an' see if he makes a meet
- wit' any bulls?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tail nothin'!” scoffed Pretty Agnes, bitterly; “me mind's made up. All
- I'll do is wait. If Sammy falls, it'll be th' Ghost's last rap. I know a
- party who's crazy gone on me. For two weeks I've been handin' him th' ice
- pitcher. All I has to do is soften up a little, an' he'll cook th' Ghost
- th' minute I says th' woid.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Pretty Agnes, as though the sight of the Ghost were too much for her
- feelings, left the place. The Ghost himself, appeared uneasy, and didn't
- remain long.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Nailer turned soberly to Mollie Squint. “Do youse t'ink,” said he,
- “there's anythin' in that crack of Agnes?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Search me!” returned Mollie Squint, conservatively. “I ain't sayin' a
- woid.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's funny about youse skoits,” remarked the Nailer, his manner an
- imitation of old Jimmy's. “Here's Agnes talkin' of havin' th' Ghost
- trimmed in case he tips off Sammy to th' dicks, an' yet when Slimmy an'
- th' Grabber puts Indian Louie over th' jump, neither Agnes nor you ever so
- much as yelps!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't understand,” said Mollie Squint, tolerantly. “Sammy's nice to
- Agnes. Louie? Th' best he ever hands us is to sting us for our rolls, an'
- then go blow 'em on that blonde. There's a big difference, Nailer, if
- youse could only see it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” replied the Nailer, who boasted a heart untouched, “all I can say
- is youse dolls are too many for me! You've got me wingin'.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Midnight!
- </p>
- <p>
- The theatre of operations was a cigar store, in Canal Street near the
- Bowery. The Ghost was on the outside. The safe was a back number; to think
- of soup would have been paying it a compliment. After an hour's work with
- a can-opener, Sammy and Big Head declared themselves within ten minutes of
- the money. All that remained was to batter in the inner-lining of the box.
- </p>
- <p>
- Big Head cocked a sudden and suspicious ear.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's that?” he whispered.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sammy had just reversed the can-opener, for an attack upon that sheet-iron
- lining. He paused in mid-swing, and listened.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's a pinch,” he cried, crashing down the heavy iron tool with a
- cataract of curses. “It's a pinch, an' th' Ghost is in on it. Agnes had
- him right!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a pinch sure enough. Even as Sammy spoke, Rocheford and Wertheimer
- of the Central Office were covering them with their pistols.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hands up!” came from Wertheimer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You've got us bang right!” sighed Big Head.
- </p>
- <p>
- Outside they found Cohen, also of the Central Office, with the ruffles on
- the Ghost.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's only a throw-off,” sneered Sammy, pointing to the bracelets.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Ghost began to whine. The loose lips became looser than ever, the
- drooping lids drooped lower still.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'y, Sammy,” he remonstrated weepingly, “youse don't t'ink I'd go an'
- give youse up!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's all right,” retorted Sammy, with sullen emphasis. “Youse'll get
- yours, Ghost.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Had the Ghost been wise he would have remained in the Tombs; it was his
- best chance. But the Ghost was-not wise. Within the week he was walking
- the streets, and trying to explain a freedom which so sharply contrasted
- with the caged condition of Big Head and Sammy Hart. Gangland turned its
- back on him; his explanations were not received. And, sluggish and thick
- as he was, Gangland made him feel it.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was black night in University Place. The Ghost was gumshoeing his way
- towards the Bridge Saloon. A taxicab came slowly crabbing along the curb.
- It stopped; a quick figure slipped out and, muzzle on the very spot, put a
- bullet through the base of the Ghost's brain.
- </p>
- <p>
- The quick figure leaped back into the cab. The door slammed, and the cab
- dashed off into the darkness at racing speed.
- </p>
- <p>
- In that splinter of time required to start the cab you might have seen—had
- you been near enough—two white small hands clutch with a kind of
- rapturous acceptance at the quick figure, as it sprang into the cab, and
- heard the eager voice of a woman saying “Promise for promise, and word for
- word! Who wouldn't give soul and body for th' death of a snitch?—for
- a snake that will bite no more?”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- IX.—LITTLE BOW KUM
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ince then no
- Chinaman will go into the room. I had this from Loui Fook, himself an
- eminent member of the On Leon Tong and a leading merchant of Chinatown.
- Loui Fook didn't pretend to know of his own knowledge, but spoke by
- hearsay. He said that the room was haunted. No one would live there, being
- too wise, although the owner had lowered the rent from twenty dollars a
- month to ten. Ten monthly dollars should be no inducement to live in a
- place where, at odd, not to say untoward hours, you hear sounds of
- scuffling and wing-beating, such as is made by a chicken when its head is
- chopped off. Also, little Bow Kum's blood still stains the floor in a
- broad red patch, and refuses to give way to soap and water. The wife of
- the Italian janitor—who cannot afford to be superstitious, and
- bemoans a room unrented—has scrubbed half through the boards in
- unavailing efforts to wash away the dull red splotch.
- </p>
- <p>
- Detective Raphael of the Central Office heard of the ghost. He thought it
- would make for the moral uplift of Chinatown to explode so foolish a tale.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yong Dok begged Raphael not to visit the haunted room where the blood of
- little Bow Kum spoke in dumb, dull crimson from the floor. It would set
- the ghosts to talking.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then come with me, and act as interpreter,” quoth Raphael, and he threw
- Yong Dok over his heavy shoulder and began to climb the stairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yong Dok fainted, and lay as limp as a wet bath towel. Loui Fook said that
- Yong Dok would die if taken to the haunted room, so Raphael forbore and
- set him down. In an hour Yong Dok had measurably recovered, but Tchin Foo
- insists that he hasn't been the same man since.
- </p>
- <p>
- Low Fong, Low Tching and Chu Wah, three hatchet men belonging to the Four
- Brothers, were charged with the murder. But the coroner let Chu Wah go,
- and the special sessions jury disagreed as to Low Fong and Low Tching; and
- so one way and another they were all set free.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is difficult to uncover evidence against a Chinaman. They never talk,
- and their faces are as void of expression as the wrong side of a
- tombstone. In only one way does a Chinaman betray emotion. When guilty,
- and pressed upon by danger, a pulse beats on the under side of his arm,
- just above the elbow. This is among the golden secrets known to what
- Central Office men do duty along Pell, Mott and Doyers streets, but for
- obvious reasons it cannot be used in court.
- </p>
- <p>
- Although the white devils' law failed, the Chinese law was not so
- powerless. Because of that murder, eight Four Brothers and five On Leon
- Tongs have been shot dead. Also, slippered feet have stolen into the
- sleeping rooms of offensive ones, as they dreamed of China the Celestial
- far away beyond the sunset, and unseen bird-claw fingers have turned on
- the white devils' gas. In this way a dozen more have died. They have
- awakened in Chinatown to the merits of the white devils' gas as a method
- of assassination. It bids fair to take the place of the automatic gun,
- just as the latter shoved aside the old-time barbarous hatchet.
- </p>
- <p>
- Little Bow Kum had reached her nineteenth year when she was killed. Her
- husband, Tchin Len, was worth $50,000. He was more than twice as old as
- little Bow Kum, and is still in Mott Street waiting for her spirit to
- return and strangle her destroyers. This will one day come to pass, and he
- is waiting for that day. Tchin Len has another wife in Canton, but he does
- not go back to her, preferring to live in Chinatown with the memory of his
- little lost Bow Kum.
- </p>
- <p>
- Little Bow Kum was born in the Canton district, China. Her father's name
- was Wong Hi. Her mother's name doesn't matter, because mothers do not
- amount to much in China. As she lay in her mother's lap, a chubby,
- wheat-hued baby, they named her Bow Kum, which means Sweet Flower, for
- they knew she would be very beautiful.
- </p>
- <p>
- When little Bow Kum was five years old, Wong Hi, her father, sold her for
- $300. Wong Hi was poor, and $300 is a Canton fortune. Also, the sale had
- its moral side, since everyone knows that children are meant to be a prop
- and support to their parents.
- </p>
- <p>
- Little Bow Kum was bought and sold, as was well understood by both Wong
- Hi, the father, and the man who chinked down his hard three hundred silver
- dollars as the price, with the purpose of rearing her to a profession
- which, while not without honor among Orientals, is frowned upon by the
- white devils, and never named by them in best society. Much pains were
- bestowed upon her education; for her owner held that in the trade which at
- the age of fifteen she was to take up, she should be able to paint,
- embroider, quote Confucius, recite verses, and in all things be a mirror
- of the graces. Thus she would be more valuable, being more attractive.
- </p>
- <p>
- Little Bow Kum accepted her fate and made no protest, feeling no impulse
- so to do. She knew that she had been sold, and knew her destiny; but she
- felt no shock, was stricken by no desire to escape. What had happened and
- would happen, had been for hundreds and thousands of years the life story
- of a great feminine fraction of her people. Wherefore, the thought was at
- home in her blood; her nature bowed to and embraced it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Of course, from the white devils' view-point the fate designed for little
- Bow Kum was as the sublimation of the immoral. But you must remember that
- morality is always a question of geography and sometimes a question of
- race. Climates, temperatures, also play their part.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, too, there is that element of support. In the tropics, where life is
- lazy, easy, and one may pick a dinner from every tree, man is polygamous.
- In the ice locked arctics, where one spears his dinner out of the cold,
- reluctant sea, and goes days and days without it, man is polyandrous, and
- one wife has many husbands. In the temperate zone, where life is neither
- soft nor hard and yet folk work to live, man is monogamous, and one wife
- to one husband is the only good form.
- </p>
- <p>
- Great is latitude!
- </p>
- <p>
- Take the business of steeping the senses in drinks or drugs. That eternal
- quantity of latitude still worms its way into the equation. In the arctic
- zone they drink raw alcohol, in the north temperate whiskey, in the south
- temperate wine, while in the tropics they give up drinking and take to
- opium, hasheesh and cocaine.
- </p>
- <p>
- Little Bow Kum watched her fifteenth year approach—that year when
- she would take up her profession—without shame, scandal or alarm.
- </p>
- <p>
- Had you tried to show her the horrors of her situation, she wouldn't have
- understood. She was beautiful beyond beauty. This she knew very well, and
- was pleased to have her charms confessed. Her owner told her she was a
- lamp of love, and that he would not sell her under $3,000. This of itself
- was the prettiest of compliments, since he had never before asked more
- than $2,000 for a girl. Koi Ton, two years older than herself, had brought
- just $2,000; and Koi Ton was acknowledged to be a vision from heaven. And
- so when Bow Kum learned that her price was to be $3,000, a glow overspread
- her—a glow which comes to beauty when it feels itself supreme.
- </p>
- <p>
- Little Bow Kum was four feet tall, and weighed only seventy pounds. Her
- color was the color of old ivory—that is, if you can imagine old
- ivory with the flush and blush of life. She had rose-red lips, onyx eyes,
- and hair as black as a crow's wing. One day her owner went mad with opium.
- As he sat and looked at her, and her star-like beauty grew upon him, he
- struck her down with a bamboo staff. This frightened him; for he saw that
- if he kept her he would kill her because of her loveliness. So, knowing
- himself and fearing her beauty, he sent little Bow Kum to San Francisco,
- and never laid eyes on her again.
- </p>
- <p>
- Having ripened into her fifteenth year, and the value of girls being up in
- San Francisco, little Bow Kum brought the price—$3,000—which
- her owner had fixed for her. She kissed the hand of Low Hee Tong, her new
- owner; and, having been adorned to the last limit of Chinese coquetry,
- went with him to a temple, dedicated to some Mongolian Venus, which he
- maintained in Ross Alley. Here little Bow Kum lived for nearly four years.
- </p>
- <p>
- Low Hee Tong, the Ross Alley owner of little Bow Kum, got into trouble
- with the police. Something he did or failed to do—probably the
- latter—vastly disturbed them. With that, waxing moral, they decided
- that Low Hee Tong's Temple of Venus in Ross Alley was an eyesore, and must
- be wiped out.
- </p>
- <p>
- And so they pulled it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Little Bow Kum—so small, so much the rose-flower which her name
- implied—aroused the concern of the judge. He gave her to a Christian
- mission, which years before had pitched its tent in Frisco's Chinatown
- with a hope of saving Mongol souls, which hope had failed. Thereafter
- little Bow Kum lived at the mission, and not in Ross Alley, and was chaste
- according to the ice-bound ideals of the white devils.
- </p>
- <p>
- The mission was ruled over by a middle-aged matron with a Highland name.
- This good woman was beginning to wonder what she should do with little Bow
- Kum, when that almond-eyed floweret came preferring a request. Little Bow
- Kum, while dwelling in Ross Alley, had met Tchin Len and thought him nice.
- Tchin Len owned a truck-farm near Stockton, and was rich. Would the
- Highland matron, in charge of the mission, write a letter to Tchin Len,
- near Stockton, and ask that bewitching truck-gardener to come down and see
- little Bow Kum?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because,” explained little Bow Kum, in her peculiar English, “I likee
- Tchin Len to mally me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Highland matron considered. A husband in the case of little Bow Kum
- would supply a long-felt want. Also, no harm, even if no good, could flow
- from Tchin Len's visit, since she, the Highland matron, sternly purposed
- being present while Tchin Len and little Bow Kum conferred.
- </p>
- <p>
- The matron wrote the letter, and Tchin Len came down to San Francisco. He
- and little Bow Kum talked quietly in a language which the managing matron
- did not understand. But she knew the signs; and therefore when, at the
- close of the conversation, they explained that they had decided upon a
- wedding, she was not astonished. She gave them her blessing, about which
- they cared nothing, and they pledged each other their faith after the
- Chinese manner—which is curious, but unimportant here—about
- which they cared much.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tchin Len went back to his Stockton truck garden, to put his house in
- order against the wifely advent of little Bow Kum. It is not of record
- that Tchin Len said anything about his Canton wife. The chances are that
- he didn't. A Chinaman is no great hand to mention his domestic affairs to
- anybody. Moreover, a wife more or less means nothing to him. It is
- precisely the sort of thing he would forget; or, remembering, make no
- reference to, lest you vote him a bore. What looks like concealment is
- often only politeness, and goodbreeding sometimes wears the face of fraud.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was settled that Tchin Len should marry little Bow Kum, and the latter,
- aided and abetted by the watchful mission matron, waited for the day.
- Affairs had reached this stage when the unexpected came rapping at the
- door. Low Hee Tong, who paid $3,000 for little Bow Kum and claimed to own
- her, had been keeping an eye on his delicate chattel. She might be living
- at the mission, but he no less bore her upon the sky-line of his
- calculations. Likewise he knew about the wedding making ready with Tchin
- Len. He didn't object. He simply went to Tchin Len and asked for $3,000.
- It was little enough, he said; especially when one considered that—excluding
- all others—he would convey to Tchin Len in perpetuity every right in
- and to little Bow Kum, who was so beautiful that she was hated by the
- moon.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tchin Len said the price was low enough; that is, if Low Hee Tong
- possessed any interest in little Bow Kum to convey, which he doubted.
- Tchin Len explained that he would talk things over with the mission matron
- of the Highland name, and later let Low Hee Tong know.
- </p>
- <p>
- Low Hee Tong said that this arrangement was agreeable, so long as it was
- understood that he would kill both Tchin Len and little Bow Kum in case he
- didn't get the money.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tchin Len, after telling little Bow Kum, laid the business before the
- mission matron with the Highland name. Naturally, she was shocked. She
- said that she was amazed at the effrontery of Low Hee Tong! Under the
- white devils' law he couldn't possess and therefore couldn't pretend to
- any title in little Bow Kum. Tchin Len would be wild to pay him $3,000.
- Low Hee Tong was lucky to be alive!—only the mission matron didn't
- put it in precisely these words. If Tchin Len had $3,000 which he didn't
- need, he might better contribute it to the mission which had sheltered his
- little Bow Kum. It would be criminal to lavish it upon a yellow Pagan, who
- threatened to shed blood.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tchin Len heard this with pigtailed phlegm and politeness, and promised to
- think about it. He said that it would give him no joy to endow Low Hee
- Tong with $3,000; he was willing that much should be understood.
- </p>
- <p>
- Little Bow Kum was placidly present at the discussion. When it ended she
- placidly reminded Tchin Len that he knew what she knew, namely, that he in
- all probability, and she in all certainty, would be killed if Low Hee
- Tong's claim were refused. Tchin Len sighed and confessed that this was
- true. For all that, influenced by the mission matron with the Highland
- name, he was loth to give up the $3,000. Little Bow Kum bent her
- flower-like head. Tchin Len's will was her law, though as the penalty of
- such sweet submission death, bitter death, should be her portion.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tchin Len and the mission matron held several talks; and Tchin Len and Low
- Hee Tong held several talks. But the latter did not get the $3,000. Still
- he threatened and hoped on. It was beyond his Chinese, comprehension that
- Tchin Len could be either so dishonest or so dull as not to pay him that
- money. Tchin Len was rich, and no child. Yes; he would pay. And Low Hee
- Tong, confident of his position, made ready his opium layout for a good
- smoke.
- </p>
- <p>
- The mission matron and Tchin Len hit upon a plan. Tchin Len would privily
- marry little Bow Kum—that must precede all else. Upon that point of
- wedding bells, the mission matron was as moveless as Gibraltar. The knot
- tied, Tchin Len should sell out his Stockton truck-farm and move to New
- York. Then he was to send money, and the mission matron was to outfit
- little Bow Kum and ship her East. With the wretched Low Hee Tong in San
- Francisco, and Tchin Len and little Bow Kum in far New York, an
- intervening stretch of three thousand five hundred miles might be expected
- to keep the peace.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tchin Len and little Bow Kum were married. A month later, Tchin Len left
- for New York with $50,000 under his bridal blouse. He settled down in Mott
- Street, dispatched New York exchange for $800 to the mission matron, who
- put little Bow Kum aboard the Overland Express at Oakland, together with
- three trunks and a ticket. Little Bow Kum arrived in due and proper time,
- and Tchin Len—who met her in Jersey City—after saluting her in
- the Chinese fashion, which is cold and lacks enthusiasm, bore her away to
- Seventeen Mott, where he had prepared for her a nest.
- </p>
- <p>
- There are three septs among Chinamen. These are the On Leon Tong, the Hip
- Sing Tong and the Four Brothers. The two first are associations; the last
- is a fraternity. You can join the Hip Sing Tong or the On Leon Tong. Your
- sole chance of becoming a Four Brother lies in being born into the tribe.
- </p>
- <p>
- Loui Fook told me these things late one night in the Port Arthur
- restaurant, where the red lamps glow and there is an all-pervading smell
- of preserved ginger, and added that the Four Brothers was very ancient.
- Its sources were lost in the dimmest vistas of Chinese antiquity, said
- Loui Fook.
- </p>
- <p>
- “One thousand years old?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Much older.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Five thousand?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Much older.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ten thousand?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Maybe!”
- </p>
- <p>
- From which I inferred that the Four Brothers had beheld the dawn and death
- of many centuries.
- </p>
- <p>
- Every member of the Four Brothers is to be known by his name. When you cut
- the slippered trail of a Chinaman whose name begins with Low or Chu or
- Tching or Quong, that Chinaman is a Four Brothers. A Chinaman's first name
- is his family name. In this respect he runs counter to the habit of the
- white devils; just as he does in the matter of shirts, which the white
- devil tucks in and the Chinaman does not. Wherefore, the names of Low,
- Chu, Tching and Quong, everywhere the evidence of the Four Brothers, are
- family names.
- </p>
- <p>
- Loui Fook gave me the origin of the Four Brothers—he himself is an
- On Leon Tong. Many thousands of years ago a Chinaman was travelling.
- Dusty, weary, he sat down by a well. His name was Low. Another
- travel-stained Chinaman joined him. They talked, and liked each other
- much. The second traveler's name was Chu. Then a third sat down, and the
- three talked and liked each other much. His name was Tching. Lastly, came
- a fourth Chinaman, and the weary dust lay deep upon his sandals. His name
- was Quong. He was equally talked to by the others, and by them equally
- well liked. They—the four—decided, as they parted, that
- forever and forever they and their descendants should be as brothers.
- </p>
- <p>
- Wherefore the Four Brothers.
- </p>
- <p>
- Low Hee Tong was a member of the Four Brothers—a descendant of the
- earliest Chinaman at that well, back in the world's morning. When he found
- that Tchin Len had married little Bow Kum and stolen her away to New York,
- his opium turned bitter and he lost his peace of mind. Low Hee Tong wrote
- a Chinese letter, giving the story of his injuries, and sent it via the
- white devils' mails to Low Hee Jit, chief of the Four Brothers.
- </p>
- <p>
- Low Hee Jit laid the case before Lee Tcin Kum, chief of the On Leon Tong.
- The wise men of the On Leon Tong appointed a hearing. Low Hee Jit came
- with the wise men of the Four Brothers to the company rooms of the On Leon
- Tong. Tchin Len and little Bow Kum were there. The question was, should
- the On Leon Tong command Tchin Len to pay Low Hee Tong $3,000—the
- price of little Bow Kum?
- </p>
- <p>
- Lee Tcin Kum and the wise men of the On Leon Tong, after long debate, said
- that Tchin Len should pay Low Hee Tong nothing. And they argued after this
- wise. The white devils' law had taken hold of little Bow Kum, and
- destroyed Low Hee Tong's title. She was no longer his property. She might
- marry whom she would, and the bridegroom owe Low Hee Tong nothing.
- </p>
- <p>
- This was in the On Leon Tong's Company rooms in Mott Street.
- </p>
- <p>
- Low Hee Jit and the wise men of the Four Brothers opposed this.
- Particularly they declined the white devils' laws as of controlling pith
- and moment. Why should a Chinaman heed the white devils' laws? The white
- devils were the barbarous inferiors of the Chinese. The latter as a race
- had long ago arrived. For untold ages they had been dwelling upon the
- highest peaks of all possible human advancement. The white devils,
- centuries behind, were still blundering about among the foothills far
- below. It was an insult, between Chinaman and Chinaman, for Lee Tcin Kum
- and the wise men of the On Leon Tong to quote the white devils' laws, or
- assume to yield them respect.
- </p>
- <p>
- With this the council broke up.
- </p>
- <p>
- War was declared by the Four Brothers against the On Leon Tong, and the
- dead-walls of Chinatown were plastered with the declaration. Since the
- white devils could not read Chinese, they knew nothing of all this. But
- the On Leon Tong knew, and the Four Brothers knew, and both sides began
- bringing in their hatchet-men.
- </p>
- <p>
- When a Chinaman is bent on killing, he hires an assassin. This is not
- cowardice, but convenience. The assassin never lives in the town where the
- killing is to occur. He is always imported. This is to make detection
- difficult. The Four Brothers and the On Leon Tong brought in their
- hatchet-men from Chicago, from Boston, from Pittsburg, from Philadelphia.
- </p>
- <p>
- Some impression of the extent of this conscription might be gathered from
- the following: When last New Year the On Leon Tong gave a public dinner at
- the Port Arthur, thirty hatchet-men were on the roof and eighty in the
- street. This was to head off any attempt the Four Brothers might make to
- blow that banquet up. I received the above from an esteemed friend of
- mine, who was a guest at the dinner, but left when told what profuse
- arrangements had been made to insure his skin.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tchin Len and little Bow Kum kept up the fires of their love at Seventeen
- Mott. They took their daily chop suey and sharkfin, not to mention their
- bird's-nest soup, across the way at Twenty-two with their friends, Sam Lee
- and Yong Dok.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a showery, August afternoon. Tchin Len had been all day at his
- store, and little Bow Kum was sitting alone in their room. Dismal as was
- the day outside, the room showed pleasant and bright. There were
- needlework screens, hangings of brocade and silk, vases of porcelain,
- statuettes in jade. The room was rich—a scene of color and Chinese
- luxury.
- </p>
- <p>
- Little Bow Kum was the room's best ornament—with her jade bracelets,
- brocade jacket, silken trousers, golden girdle, and sandaled feet as small
- as the feet of a child of six. It would be twenty minutes before the
- Chinese dinner hour, when she was to join Tchin Len across the street, and
- she drew out pen and ink and paper that she might practice the white
- devils' way of writing; and all with the thought of some day sending a
- letter of love and gratitude to the mission matron with the Highland name.
- </p>
- <p>
- So engrossed was little Bow Kum that she observed nothing of the soft
- opening of the door, or the dark savage face which peered through. The
- murderer crept upon her as noiselessly as a shadow. There was a hawk-'like
- swoop. About the slender throat closed a grip of steel. The fingers were
- long, slim, strong. She could not cry out. The dull glimmer of a Chinese
- knife—it was later picked up in the hall, a-drip with blood—flashed
- before her frightened eyes. She made a convulsive clutch, and the blade
- was drawn horribly through her baby fingers.
- </p>
- <p>
- Over across, not one hundred feet away, sat Tchin Len and his two friends
- in the eating room of Twenty-two. It was a special day, and they would
- have chicken and rice. This made them impatient for the advent of little
- Bow Kum. She was already ten minutes behind the hour. His friends rallied
- Tchin Len about little Bow Kum, and evolved a Chinese joke to the effect
- that he was a slave to her beauty and had made a foot-rest of his heart
- for her little feet. Twenty minutes went by, and his friends had grown too
- hungry to jest.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tchin Len went over to Seventeen, to bring little Bow Kum. As he pushed
- open the door, he saw the little silken brocaded form, like a child
- asleep, lying on the floor. Tchin Len did not understand; he thought
- little Bow Kum was playing with him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Poor little Bow Kum.
- </p>
- <p>
- The lean fingers had torn the slender throat. Her baby hand was cut half
- in two, where the knife had been snatched away. The long blade had been
- driven many times through and through the little body. A final slash,
- hari-kari fashion and all across, had been the awful climax.
- </p>
- <p>
- His friends found Tchin Len, seated on the floor, with little Bow Kum in
- his arms. Grief was neither in his eyes nor in his mouth, for his mind,
- like his heart, had been made empty.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tchin Len waits for the vengeance of little Bow Kum to fall upon her
- murderers. Some say that Tchin Len was a fool for not paying Low Hee Tong
- the $3,000. Some call him dishonest. All agree that the cross-fire of
- killings, which has raged and still rages because of it, can do little Bow
- Kum no good.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- X.—THE COOKING OF CRAZY BUTCH
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his is not so much
- to chronicle the bumping off of Crazy Butch, as to open a half-gate of
- justice in the maligned instance of the Darby Kid. There is subdued
- excitement in and about the Central Office. There is more excitement,
- crossed with a color of bitterness, in and about the Chatham Club. The
- Central Office, working out a tip, believes it has cut the trail of Harry
- the Soldier, who, with Dopey Benny, is wanted for the killing of Crazy
- Butch. The thought which so acrimoniously agitates the Chatham Club is
- “Who rapped?” with the finger of jealous suspicion pointing sourly at the
- Darby Kid.
- </p>
- <p>
- That you be not misled in an important particular, it is well perhaps to
- explain that the Darby Kid is a girl—a radiant girl—and in her
- line as a booster, a girl of gold. She deeply loved Crazy Butch, having
- first loved Harry the Soldier. If she owned a fault, it was that in
- matters of the heart she resembled the heroine of the flat boatman's
- muse.=
- </p>
- <p>
- ```There was a womern in our town
- </p>
- <p>
- ````In our town did dwell.
- </p>
- <p>
- ```She loved her husband dear-i-lee
- </p>
- <p>
- ````An' another man twict as well.=
- </p>
- <p>
- But that is not saying she would act as stool-pigeon. To charge that the
- Darby Kid turned copper, and wised up the Central Office dicks concerning
- the whereabouts of Harry the Soldier, is a serious thing. The imputation
- is a grave one. Even the meanest ought not to be disgraced as a snitch in
- the eyes of all Gangland, lightly and upon insufficient evidence. There
- were others besides the Darby Kid who knew how to locate Harry the
- Soldier. Might not one of these have given a right steer to the bulls? Not
- that the Darby Kid can be pictured as altogether blameless. She
- indubitably did a foolish thing. Having received that letter, she should
- never have talked about it. Such communications cannot be kept too secret.
- Some wretched talebearer must have been lounging about the Chatham Club.
- Why not? The Chatham Club can no more guarantee the character of its
- patrons than can the Waldorf-Astoria.
- </p>
- <p>
- The evening was a recent one. It was also dull. There wasn't an overflow
- of customers, hardly enough in waiting on them, to take the stiffness out
- of Nigger Mike's knees.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was nine of the clock, and those two inseparables, the Irish Wop and
- old Jimmy, sat in their usual chairs. The Wop spoke complainingly of the
- poolroom trade, which was even duller than trade at the Chatham Club.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at wit' killin' New York racin',” said the Wop dismally, “an' w'at wit'
- raidin' a guy's joint every toime some av them pa-a-pers makes a crack,
- it's got th' poolrooms on th' bum. For meself I'm thinkin' av closin'.
- Every day I'm open puts me fifty dollars on th' nut. An' Jimmy, I've about
- med up me moind to put th' shutters up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mebby you're in wrong with th' organization.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tammany? Th' more you shtand in wit' Tammany, th' ha-a-arder you get
- slugged.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Jimmy signalled to Nigger Mike for beer. “Over to th' Little Hungary
- last night,” remarked old Jimmy casually, “them swell politicians has a
- dinner. I was there.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The last came off a little proudly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They tell me,” said the Wop with a deprecatory shrug, “that Cha-a-arley
- Murphy was there, too, an' that Se-r-rgeant Cram had to go along to heel
- an' handle him. I can remimber whin chuck steak an' garlic is about
- Cha-a-arley's speed. Now, whin he's bushtin' 'em open as Chief av Tammany
- Hall, it's an indless chain av champagne an' tur'pin an' canvashback, with
- patty-de-foy-grass as a chaser.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Jimmy shook a severe yet lofty head. “If some guy tells you, Wop, that
- Charley needs anybody in his corner at a dinner that guy's stringin' you.
- Charley can see his way through from napkins to toothpicks, as well as old
- Chauncey Depew. There's a lot of duffers goin' 'round knockin' Charlie.
- They're sore just because he's gettin' along, see? They'll tell you how if
- you butt him up ag'inst a dinner table, he'll about give you an imitation
- of a blind dog in a meat-shop—how he'll try to eat peas with a knife
- an' let 'em roll down his sleeve an' all that. So far as them hoboes
- knockin' Charley goes, it's to his credit. You don't want to forget, Wop,
- they never knock a dead one.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “In th' ould gas house days,” enquired the Wop, “wasn't Cha-a-arley a
- conducthor on wan av th' crosstown ca-a-ars?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He was! an' a good one too. That's where he got his start. He quit 'em
- when they introduced bell punches; an' I don't blame him! Them big
- companies is all alike. Which of 'em'll stand for it to give a workin' man
- a chance?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did thim la-a-ads lasht night make spaches?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Speeches? Nothin' but Trusts is to be th' issue this next pres'dential
- campaign.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now about thim trushts? I've been wantin' to ashk yez th' long time. I've
- been hearin' av trushts for tin years, an' Mary save me! if I'd know wan
- if it was to come an' live next dure.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, Wop,” returned old Jimmy engigmatically, “a trust is anything you
- don't like—only so it's a corp'ration. So long as it stands in with
- you an' you like it, it's all right, see? But once it takes to handin' you
- th' lemon, it's a trust.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Speakin' av th' pris'dency, it looks loike this fat felly Taft's out to
- get it in th' neck.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Surest ever! Th' trusts is sore on him; an' th' people is sore on him.
- He's a frost at both ends of th' alley.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at crabbed him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Too small in th' hat-band, too big in th' belt. Them republicans better
- chuck Taft in th' discard an' take up Teddy. There's a live one! There's
- th' sturdy plow-boy of politics who'd land 'em winner!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Nailer came strolling in and pulled up a chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Roosevelt, Jimmy,” said he, “couldn't make th' run. Don't he start th'
- argument himself, th' time he's elected, sayin' it's his second term an'
- he'll never go out for th' White House goods again?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shure he did,” coincided the Wop. “An' r-r-right there he give himsilf
- th' gate. You're right, Nailer; he's barred.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Teddy oughtn't to have got off that bluff about not runnin' ag'in,”
- observed old Jimmy thoughtfully. “He sees it himself now. Th' next day
- after he makes his crack, a friend of mine, who's down to th' White House,
- asks him about it; is it for the bleachers,' says my friend, 'or does it
- go?'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Oh, it goes!' says Teddy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Then,' says my friend, 'you'll pardon me, but I don't think it was up to
- you to say it. It may wind up by puttin' everybody an' everything in
- Dutch. No sport can know what he'll want to do, or what he ought to do,
- four years ahead. Bein' pres'dent now, with four years to draw to, you can
- no more tell whether or no you'll want to repeat than you can tell what
- you'll want for dinner while you're eatin' lunch. Once I knew a guy who's
- always ready to swear off whiskey, when he's half full. Used to chase
- round to th' priest, on his own hunch; to sign th' pledge, every time he
- gets a bun. Bein' soaked, he feels like he'll never want another drink.
- After he'd gone without whiskey a couple of days, however, he'd wake up to
- it that he's been too bigoted. He'd feel that he's taken too narrow a view
- of th' liquor question, an' commence to see things in their true colors.'
- That's what my friend told him. And now that Teddy's show-in' signs, I've
- wondered whether he recalls them warnin' words.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at'll th' demmycrats do?” asked the Nailer. “Run Willyum Jennin's?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They will,” retorted the Wop scornfully, “if they want to get th' hoot.
- Three toimes has this guy Bryan run—an' always f'r th' end book.
- D'yez moind, Jimmy, how afther th' Denver Convention lie cha-a-ases down
- to th' depot to shake ha-a-ands wit' Cha-a-arley Murphy? There's no class
- to that! Would Washin'ton have done it?—Would Jefferson?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How was he hoited be shakin' hands wit' Murphy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Nailer's tones were almost defiant. He had been brought up with a
- profound impression of the grandeur of Tammany Hall.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How was he hur-r-rted? D'yez call it th' cun-nin' play f'r him to be at
- th' depot, hand stretched out, an' yellin' 'Mitt me, Cha-a-arley, mitt
- me?' Man aloive, d'yez think th' country wants that koind av a ska-a-ate
- in th' White House?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The acrid emphasis of the Wop was so overwhelming that it swept the Nailer
- off his feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Wop resumed:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wan thing, that depot racket wasn't th' way to carry New York. Th' way to
- bring home th' darby in th' Empire Shtate is to go to th' flure wit'
- Tammany at th' ringin' av th' gong. How was it Cleveland used to win? Was
- it be makin' a pet av Croker, or sendin' th' organization flowers? An' yez
- don't have to be told what happened to Cleveland. An' Tammany, moind yez,
- tryin' to thump his proshpecks on th' nut ivery fut av th' way! If Willyum
- Jinnin's had been th' wise fowl, he'd have took his hunch fr'm th' career
- av Cleveland, an' rough-housed Tammany whiniver an' wheriver found. If
- he'd only knocked Tammany long enough an' ha-a-ard enough, he'd have had
- an anchor-nurse on th' result.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This sounds like treason, Wop,” said old Jimmy in tones of mock reproach.
- “Croker was boss in th' Cleveland days. You'll hardly say that Charlie
- ain't a better chief than Croker?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jimmy, there's as much difference bechune ould man Croker an' Cha-a-arley
- Murphy as bechune a buffalo bull an' a billy-goat. To make Murphy chief
- was loike settin' a boy to carryin' hod. While yez couldn't say f'r shure
- whether he'd fall fr'm th' laddher or simply sit down wit' th' hod, it's a
- cinch he'd niver get th' bricks to th' scaffold. Murphy's too busy
- countin' th' buttons on his Prince Albert, an' balancin' th' gold
- eye-glasshes on th' ridge av his nose, to lave him anny toime f'r
- vict'ry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “While youse guys,” observed the Nailer, with a great air of knowing
- something, “is indulgin' in your spiels about Murphy, don't it ever strike
- youse that he's out to make Gaynor pres'dent?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gaynor?” repeated old Jimmy, in high offence. “Do you think Charlie's
- balmy? If it ever gets so that folks of th' Gaynor size is looked on as
- big enough for th' presidency, I for one shall retire to th' booby house
- an' devote th' remainder of an ill-spent life to cuttin' paper dolls. An'
- yet, Nailer, I oughtn't to wonder at youse either for namin' him. There's
- a Demmycrat Club mutt speaks to me about that very thing at th' Little
- Hungary dinner.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Gaynor is a college graduate,' says the Demmycrat Clubber. 'Is he?' says
- I. 'Well then he ought to chase around to that college an' make 'em give
- him back his money. They swindled him.' 'Look at th' friends he has!' says
- th' Clubber. 'I've been admirin' 'em,' I says. 'What with one thing an'
- another, them he's appointed to office has stole everything but th' back
- fence.' 'But didn't Croker, in his time, hook him up with Tammany Hall?'
- says th' Clubber; 'that ought to show you!' 'Croker did,' says I; 'it's an
- old Croker trick. Croker was forever get-tin' th' Gaynors an' th'
- Shepherds an' th' Astor-Chanlers an' th' Cord Meyers an' all them
- high-fly-in' guys into Tammany. He does it for th' same reason they puts a
- geranium in a tenement house window.' 'An' w'at may that be?' asks the
- Clubber. 'Th' geranium's intended,' says I, 'to engage th' eye of th'
- Health Inspector, an' distract his attention from th' drain.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Darby Kid, a bright dancing light in her eyes and all a-flutter,
- rushed in. The Nailer crossed over to a table at which sat Mollie Squint.
- The Darby Kid joined them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at do youse think?” cried the Darby Kid. “I'm comin' out of me flat
- when th' postman slips me a letter from Harry th' Soldier.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where is he?” asked Mollie Squint.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's th' funny part. He's in th' Eyetalian Army, an' headed for Africa.
- That's a fine layout, I don't think! An' he says I'm th' only goil he ever
- loves, an' asts me to join him! Ain't he got his nerve?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'y? You ain't mad because he croaks Butch?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No. But me for Africa!—the ideer!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “About Dopey Benny?” said the Nailer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Harry says Benny got four spaces in Canada. It's a bank trick—tryin'
- to blow a box in Montreal or somethin'.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then you won't join Harry?” remarked Mollie Squint.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In Africa? When I do, I'll toin mission worker.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The next day the Central Office knew all that the Darby Kid knew as to
- Harry the Soldier. But why say it was she who squealed? The Nailer and
- Mollie Squint were quite as well informed as herself, having read Harry's
- letter.
- </p>
- <p>
- To begin at the foundation and go to the eaves—which is the only
- right way to build either a house or a story. Crazy Butch had reached his
- twenty-eighth year, when he died and was laid to rest in accordance with
- the ceremonial of his ancient church. He was a child of the East Side, and
- his vices out-topped his virtues upon a principle of sixteen to one.
- </p>
- <p>
- The parents of Butch may be curtly dismissed as unimportant. They gave him
- neither care nor guidance, but left him to grow up, a moral straggler, in
- what tangled fashion he would. Never once did they show him the moral way
- in which he should go. Not that Butch would have taken it if they had.
- </p>
- <p>
- To Butch, as to Gangland in general, morality was as so much lost motion.
- And, just as time-is money among honest folk, so was motion money with
- Butch and his predatory kind. Old Jimmy correctly laid down the Gangland
- position, which was Butch's position. Said old Jimmy:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Morality is all to the excellent for geeks with dough to burn an' time to
- throw away. It's right into the mitts of W'ite Chokers, who gets paid for
- bein' good an' hire out to be virchuous for so much a year. But of what
- use is morality to a guy along the Bowery? You could take a cartload of it
- to Simpson's, an' you couldn't get a dollar on it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Not much was known of the childhood of Butch, albeit his vacuous lack of
- book knowledge assisted the theory that little or less of it had been
- passed in school. Nor was that childhood a lengthy one, for fame began
- early to collect upon Butch's scheming brow. He was about the green and
- unripe age of thirteen when he went abroad into the highways and byways of
- the upper city and stole a dog of the breed termed setter. This animal he
- named Rabbi, and trained as a thief.
- </p>
- <p>
- Rabbi, for many months, was Butch's meal ticket. The method of their
- thievish procedure was simple but effective. Butch—Rabbi alertly at
- his godless heels—would stroll about the streets looking for prey.
- When some woman drifted by, equipped of a handbag of promise, Butch
- pointed out the same to the rascal notice of Rabbi. After which the
- discreet Butch withdrew, the rest of it—as he said—being up to
- Rabbi.
- </p>
- <p>
- Rabbi followed the woman, his abandoned eye on the hand-bag. Watching his
- chance, Rabbi rushed the woman and dexterously whisked the handbag from
- out her horrified fingers. Before the woman realized her loss, Rabbi had
- raced around a nearest corner and was lost to all pursuit. Fifteen minutes
- later he would find Butch at Willett and Stanton Streets, and turn over
- the touch.
- </p>
- <p>
- Rabbi hated a policeman like a Christian. The sight of one would send him
- into growling, snarling, hiding. None the less, like all great characters,
- Rabbi became known; and, in the end, through some fraud which was
- addressed to his softer side and wherein a canine Delilah performed, he
- Avas betrayed into the clutches of the law.
- </p>
- <p>
- This mischance marked the close, as a hanger-snatcher, of the invaluable
- Rabbi's career. Not that the plain-clothes people who caught him affixed a
- period to his doggish days. Even a plains-clothes man isn't entirely hard.
- Rabbi's captors merely found him a home in the Catskills, where he spent
- his days in honor and his nights in sucking unsuspected eggs.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Rabbi was retired to private life, Butch, in his bread-hunting,
- resolved to seek new paths. Among the cruder crimes is house-breaking and
- to it the amateur law-breaker most naturally turns. Butch became a
- house-worker with special reference to flats.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the beginning, Butch worked in the day time, or as they say in
- Gangland, “went out on <i>skush.</i>” Hating the sun, however, as all true
- criminals, must, he shifted to night jobs, and took his dingy place in the
- ranks of viciousness as a <i>schlamwerker</i>. As such he turned off
- houses, flats and stores, taking what Fate sent him. Occasionally he
- varied the dull monotony of simple burglary by truck-hopping.
- </p>
- <p>
- Man cannot live by burglary alone, and Butch was not without his
- gregarious side. Seeking comradeship, he united himself with the Eastman
- gang. As a gangster he soon distinguished himself. He fought like a
- berserk; and it was a sort of war-frenzy, which overtook him in battle,
- that gave him his honorable prefix.
- </p>
- <p>
- Monk Eastman thought well of Butch. Not even Ike the Blood stood nearer
- than did Butch to the heart of that grim gang captain. Eastman's weakness
- was pigeons. When he himself went finally to Sing Sing, he asked the court
- to permit him another week in the Tombs, so that he might find a father
- for his five hundred feathered pets.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the days when Butch came to strengthen as well as ornament his forces,
- Eastman kept a bird store in Broome Street, under the New Irving Hall.
- Eastman also rented bicycles. Those who thirsted to stand well with him
- were sedulous to ride a wheel. They rented these uneasy engines of
- Eastman, with the view of drawing to themselves that leader's favor.
- Butch, himself, was early astride a bicycle. One time and another he paid
- into Eastman's hands the proceeds of many a <i>shush</i> or <i>schlam</i>
- job; and all for the calf-developing privilege of pedalling about the
- streets.
- </p>
- <p>
- Butch conceived an idea which peculiarly endeared him to Eastman. In
- Forsyth Street was a hall, and Butch—renting the same—organized
- an association which, in honorable advertisement of his chief's trade of
- pigeons and bicycles, he called the Squab-Wheelmen. Eastman himself stood
- godfather to this club, and at what times he reposed himself from his bike
- and pigeon labors, played pool in its rooms.
- </p>
- <p>
- There occurred that which might have shaken one less firmly established
- than Butch. As it was, it but solidified him and did him good. The world
- will remember the great gang battle, fought at Worth and Center Streets,
- between the Eastmans and the Five Points. The merry-making was put an end
- to by those spoil sports, the police, who, as much without noble
- sympathies as chivalric instincts, drove the contending warriors from the
- field at the point of their night sticks.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brief as was the fray, numerous were the brave deeds done. On one side or
- the other, the Dropper, the Nailer, Big Abrams, Ike the Blood, Slimmy,
- Johnny Rice, Jackeen Dalton, Biff Ellison and the Grabber distinguished
- themselves. As for Butch, he was deep within the warlike thick of things,
- and no one than he came more to the popular front.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sequential to that jousting, a thought came to Butch. The Squab-Wheelmen
- were in nightly expectation of an attack from the Five Pointers. By way of
- testing their valor, and settle definitely, in event of trouble, who would
- stick and who would duck, Butch one midnight, came rushing up the
- stairway, which led to the club rooms, blazing with two pistols at once.
- Butch had prevailed upon five or six others, of humor as jocose as his
- own, to assist, and the explosive racket the party made in the narrow
- stairway was all that heart could have wished. It was comparable only to a
- Mott Street Chinese New Year's, as celebrated in front of the Port Arthur.
- </p>
- <p>
- There were sixty members in the rooms of the Squab-Wheelmen when Butch led
- up his feigned attack, and it is discouraging to relate that most if not
- all of them fled. Little Kishky, sitting in a window, was so overcome that
- he fell out backwards, and broke his neck. Some of those who fled, by way
- of covering their confusion, were inclined to make a deal of the death of
- Little Kishky and would have had it set to the discredit of Butch.
- Gangland opinion, however, was against them. If Little Kishky hadn't been
- a quitter, he would never have fallen out. Butch was not only exonerated
- but applauded. He had devised—so declared Gangland—an ideal
- method of separating the sheep who would fly from the goats who would stay
- and stand fire.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, too, there was the laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- Gangland was quick to see the humorous side; and since humanity is prone
- to decide as it laughs, Gangland overwhelmingly declared in favor of
- Butch.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was about this time that Butch found himself in a jam. His <i>schlam</i>
- work had never been first class. It was the want of finish to it which
- earned him the name of Butch. The second night after his stampede of the
- Squab-Wheelmen, his clumsiness in a Brooklyn flat woke up a woman, who
- woke up the neighborhood. Whereupon, the neighborhood rushed in and sat
- upon the body of Butch, until the police came to claim him. Subsequently,
- a Kings County judge saw his way clear to send Butch up the river for four
- weary years. And did.
- </p>
- <p>
- Butch was older and soberer when he returned. Also, his world had changed.
- Eastman had been put away, and Ritchie Fitzpatrick ruled in his place.
- Butch cultivated discretion, where before he had been hot and headlong,
- and no longer sought that gang prominence which was formerly as the breath
- to his nostrils.
- </p>
- <p>
- Not that Butch altogether turned his back upon his old-time associates.
- The local Froissarts tell how he, himself, captained a score or so of
- choice spirits among the Eastmans, against the Humpty Jackson gang, beat
- them, took them prisoners and plundered them. This brilliant action
- occurred in that Fourteenth Street graveyard which was the common hang-out
- of the Humpty Jacksons. Also, Humpty Jackson commanded his partisans in
- person, and was captured and frisked with the rest. Butch gained much
- glory and some money; for the Jacksons—however it happened—chanced
- to be flush.
- </p>
- <p>
- Butch, returning from Sing-Sing exile, did not return to his <i>schlam</i>
- work. That trip up-the-river had shaken him. He became a Fagin, and taught
- boys of tender years to do his stealing for him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Butch's mob of kids counted as many as twenty, all trained in
- pocket-picking to a feather-edge. As aiding their childish efforts, it was
- Butch's habit to mount a bicycle, and proceed slowly down the street, his
- fleet of kids going well abreast of him on the walks. Acting the part of
- some half-taught amateur of the wheel, Butch would bump into a man or a
- woman, preferably a woman. There would be cries and a scuffle. The woman
- would scold, Butch would expound and explain. Meanwhile the wren-head
- public packed itself ten deep about the center of excitement.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was then that Butch's young adherents pushed their shrewd way in.
- Little hands went flying, to reap a very harvest of pokes. Butch began
- building up a bank account.
- </p>
- <p>
- As an excuse for living, and to keep his mob together, Butch opened a pool
- parlor. This temple of enjoyment was in a basement in Willett Street near
- Stanton. The tariff was two-and-a-half cents a cue, and what Charley
- Bateses and Artful Dodgers worked for Butch were wont to refresh
- themselves at the game.
- </p>
- <p>
- Butch made money with both hands. He took his share as a Fagin. Then, what
- fragmentary remnants of their stealings he allowed his young followers,
- was faithfully blown in by them across his pool tables.
- </p>
- <p>
- Imagination rules the world. Butch, having imagination, extended himself.
- Already a Fagin, Butch became a <i>posser</i> and bought stolen goods for
- himself. Often, too, he acted as a <i>melina</i> and bought for others.
- Thus Butch had three strings to his business bow. He was getting rich and
- at the same time keeping out of the fingers of the bulls. This caused him
- to be much looked up to and envied, throughout the length and breadth of
- Gangland.
- </p>
- <p>
- Butch was thus prosperous and prospering when it occurred to him to fall
- in love. Harry the Soldier was the Mark Antony of the Five Points, his
- Cleopatra the Darby Kid. There existed divers reasons for adoring the
- Darby Kid. There was her lustrous eyes, her coral mouth, her rounded
- cheek, her full figure, her gifts as a shop lifter. As a graceful crown to
- these attractions, the Darby Kid could pick a pocket with the best wire
- that ever touched a leather. In no wise had she been named the Darby Kid
- for nothing. Not even Mollie Squint was her superior at getting the bundle
- of a boob. They said, and with truth, that those soft, deep, lustrous eyes
- could look a sucker over, while yet that unconscious sucker was ten feet
- away, and locate the keck wherein he carried his roll. Is it astonishing
- then that the heart of Butch went down on its willing knees to the Darby
- Kid?
- </p>
- <p>
- Another matter:—Wasn't the Darby Kid the chosen one of Harry the
- Soldier? Was not Harry a Five Pointer? Had not Butch, elbow to elbow, with
- his great chief, Eastman, fought the Five Pointers in the battle at Worth
- and Center? It was a triumph, indeed, to win the heart of the Darby Kid.
- It was twice a triumph to steal that heart away from Harry the Soldier.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Darby Kid crossed over from Harry the Soldier to Butch, and brought
- her love along. Thereafter her smiles were for Butch, her caresses for
- Butch, her touches for Butch. Harry the Soldier was left desolate.
- </p>
- <p>
- Harry the Soldier was a gon of merit and deserved eminence. That he had
- been an inmate not only of the House of Refuge but the Elmira Reformatory,
- should show you that he was a past-master at his art. His steady partner
- was Dopey Benny. With one to relieve the other in the exacting duties of
- stinger, and a couple of good stalls to put up an effective back, trust
- them, at fair or circus or theatre break, to make leathers, props and
- thimbles fly.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Gangland decision that for Butch to win the Darby Kid away from
- Harry the Soldier, even as Paris aforetime took the lovely Helen from her
- Menelaus, touched not alone the honor of Harry but the honor of the Five
- Points. Harry must revenge himself. Still more must he revenge the Five
- Points. It had become a case of Butch's life or his. On no milder terms
- could Harry sustain himself in Gangland first circles. His name else would
- be despised anywhere and everywhere that the fair and the brave were wont
- to come together and unbuckle socially.
- </p>
- <p>
- Butch, tall and broad and strong, smooth of face, arched of nose, was a
- born hawk of battle. Harry the Soldier, dark, short, of no muscular power,
- was not the physical equal of Butch. Butch looked forward with confidence
- to the upcome.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' yet, Butch,” sweetly warned the Darby Kid, her arms about his neck,
- “you mustn't go to sleep at the switch. Harry'll nail you if youse do.
- It'll be a gun-fight, an' he's a dream wit' a gatt.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Never mind about that gatt thing! Do youse think, dearie, I'd let that
- Guinea cop a sneak on me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a cool evening in September. A dozen of Butch's young gons were
- knocking the balls about his pool tables. Butch himself was behind the
- bar. Outside in Willett Street a whistle sounded. Butch picked up a pistol
- off the drip-board, just in time to peg a shot at Harry the Soldier as
- that ill-used lover came through the front door. Dopey Benny, Jonathan to
- the other's David, was with Harry. Neither tried to shoot. Through a hail
- of lead from Butch's pistol, the two ran out the back door. No one killed;
- no one wounded. Butch had been shooting too high, as the bullet-raked
- ceiling made plain.
- </p>
- <p>
- Butch explained his wretched gun play by saying that he was afraid of
- pinking some valued one among his boy scouts.
- </p>
- <p>
- “At that,” he added, “it's just as well. Them wops 'll never come back.
- Now when they see I'm organized they'll stay away. There ain't no sand in
- them Sicilians.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Butch was wrong. Harry, with Dopey Benny, was back the next night. This
- time there was no whistle. Harry had sent forward a force of skirmishers
- to do up those sentinels, with whom Butch had picketed Willett' Street.
- Butch's earliest intimation that there was something doing came when a
- bullet from the gun of Harry broke his back. Dopey Benny stood off the
- public, while Harry put three more bullets into Butch. The final three
- were superfluous, however, as was shown at the inquest next day.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Darby Kid was abroad upon her professional duties as a gon-moll, when
- Harry hived Butch. Her absence was regretted by her former lover.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because,” said he, as he and Dopey Benny fled down Stanton Street, “I'd
- like to have made the play a double header, and downed the Kid along wit'
- Butch.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was not so written, however. Double headers, whatever the field of
- human effort, are the exception and not the rule of life.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was whispered that Harry the Soldier and Dopey Benny remained three
- days in the Pell Street room of Big Mike Abrams before their get-away.
- They might have been at the bottom of the lower bay, for all the Central
- Office knew. Butch was buried, and the Darby Kid wept over his grave.
- After which she cheered up, and came back smiling. There is no good in
- grief. Besides, it's egotistical, and trenches upon conceit.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Central Office declares that, equipped of the right papers, it will
- bring Harry the Soldier back from Africa. Also, it will go after Dopey
- Benny in Kanuckland, when his time is out. The chair—says the
- Central Office—shall yet have both.
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Jimmy doesn't think there's a chance, while the jaundiced Wop openly
- scoffs. Neither believes in the police. Meanwhile dark suspicions hover
- cloudily over the Darby Kid. Did she rap? She says not, and offers to pawn
- her soul.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should I?” asks the Darby Kid. “Of course I'd sooner it was Butch
- copped Harry. But it went the other way; an' why should I holler? Would
- beefin' bring Butch back?”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XI.—BIG MIKE ABRAMS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his was after
- Nigger Mike had gone into exile in cold and sorrowful Toronto, and while
- Tony Kelly did the moist honors at Number Twelve Pell. Nigger Mike, you
- will remember, hurried to his ruin on the combined currents of enthusiasm
- and many drinks, had registered a score or two of times; for he meditated
- casting full fifty votes at the coming election, in his own proper person,
- and said so to his friends.
- </p>
- <p>
- As Mike registered those numerous times, the snap-shot hirelings of
- certain annoying reformers were busy popping him with their cameras. His
- friends informed him of this, and counselled going slow. But Mike was
- beyond counsel, and knew little or less of cameras—never having had
- his picture taken save officially, and by the rules of Bertillon. In the
- face of those who would have saved him, he continued to stagger in and out
- upon that multifarious registration, inviting destruction. The purists
- took the pictures to the District Attorney, their hirelings told their
- tales, and Mike perforce went into that sad Toronto exile. He is back now,
- however, safe, sober, clothed and in his right mind; but that is another
- story.
- </p>
- <p>
- The day had been a sweltering July day for all of Chinatown. Now that
- night had come, the narrowness of Pell and Doyers and Mott Streets was
- choked with Chinamen, sitting along the curb, lolling in doorways, or
- slowly drifting up and down, making the most of the cool of the evening.
- </p>
- <p>
- Over across from Number Twelve a sudden row broke out. There were
- smashings and crashings, loopholed, as it were, with shrill Mongolian
- shrieks. The guests about Tony's tables glanced up with dull,
- half-interested eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's Big Mike Abrams tearin' th' packin' out of th' laundry across th'
- street,” said Tony.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony was at the front door when the war broke forth, and had come aft to
- explain. Otherwise those about his tables might have gone personally
- forth, seeking a solution of those yellings and smashings and crashings
- for themselves, and the flow of profitable beer been thereby interrupted.
- At Tony's explanation his guests sat back in their chairs, and ordered
- further beer. Which shows that Tony had a knowledge of his business.
- </p>
- <p>
- “About them socialists,” resumed Sop Henry, taking up the talk where it
- had broken off; “Big Tom Foley tells me that they're gettin' something
- fierce. They cast more'n thirty thousand votes last Fall.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say,” broke in the Nailer, “I can't understand about a socialist. He must
- be on the level at that; for one evenin', when they're holdin' a meetin'
- in the Bowery, a fleet of gons goes through a dozen of 'em, an', exceptin'
- for one who's an editor, and has pulled off a touch somewheres, there
- ain't street car fare in all their kecks. That shows there's nothin' in it
- for 'em. Th' editor has four bones on him—hardly enough for a round
- of drinks an' beef stews. Th' mob blows it in at Flynn's joint, down be
- th' corner.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm like you, Nailer,” agreed Sop Henry. “Them socialists have certainly
- got me goin'. I can't get onto their coives at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lishten, then.” This came from the Irish Wop, who was nothing if not
- political. “Lishten to me. Yez can go to shleep on it, I know all about a
- socialist. There's ould Casey's son, Barney—ould Casey that med a
- killin' in ashphalt. Well, since his pah-pah got rich, young Casey's a
- socialist. On'y his name ain't Barney now, it's Berna-a-ard. There's
- slathers av thim sons av rich min turnin' socialists. They ain't strong
- enough to git a fall out av either av th' big pa-a-arties, so they rush
- off to th' socialists, where be payin' fer th' shpot light, they're
- allowed to break into th' picture. That's th' way wit' young Barney, ould
- Ashphalt Casey's son. Wan evenin' he dr-r-ives up to Lyon's wit' his
- pah-pah's broom, two bob-tailed horses that spint most av their time on
- their hind legs, an' th' Casey coat av arms on the broom dure, th' same
- bein' a shtick av dynamite rampant, wit' two shovels reversed on a field
- av p'tatoes. 'How ar-r-re ye?' he says. 'I want yez to jump in an' come
- wit' me to th' Crystal Palace. It's a socialist meet-in',' he says. 'Oh,
- it is?' says I; 'an' phwat's a socialist? Is it a game or a musical
- inshtrumint?' Wit' that he goes into p'ticulars. 'Well,' thinks I,
- 'there's th' ride, annyhow; an' I ain't had a carriage ride since
- Eat-'em-up-Jack packed in—saints rest him! So I goes out to th'
- broom; an' bechune th' restlessness av thim bob-tailed horses an' me not
- seein' a carriage fer so long, I nearly br-r-roke me two legs gettin' in.
- However, I wint. An' I sat on th' stage; an' I lishtened to th'
- wind-jammin'; an' not to go no further, a socialist is simply an anarchist
- who don't believe in bombs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There arose laughter and loud congratulatory sounds about the door. Next,
- broadly smiling, utterly complacent, Big Mike Abrams walked in.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did youse lobsters hear me handin' it to th' monkeys?” he asked, and his
- manner was the manner of him who doubts not the endorsement of men. “That
- chink, Low Foo, snakes two of me shirts. I sends him five, an' he on'y
- sends back three. So I caves in his block wit' a flatiron. You ought to
- pipe his joint! I leaves it lookin' like a poolroom that won't prodooce,
- after the wardman gets through.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' Low Foo?” queried Tony, who had shirts of his own.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, a couple of monks carries him to his bunk out back. It'll take
- somethin' more'n a shell of hop to chase away his troubles!” Mike
- refreshed himself with a glass of beer, which he called suds. “Say,” he
- continued with much fervor, “I wisht I could get a job punchin' monks at a
- dollar a monk!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mike Abrams, <i>alias</i> Big Mike, was a pillar of Chinatown, and added
- distinctly to the life of that quarter. He was nearly six feet tall, with
- shoulders as square as the foretopsail yard of a brig. His nervous arms
- were long and slingy, his bony hands the size of hams. Neither the Dropper
- nor yet Big Myerson could swap blows with him, and his hug—if it
- came to rough-and-tumble—was comparable only to the hug of Mersher
- the Strong Arm, who had out-hugged a bear for the drinks.
- </p>
- <p>
- While he lived, Little Maxie greatly appreciated Big Mike. Little Maxie is
- dead now. He ranked in the eyes of Mulberry Street as the best tool that
- ever nailed a leather. To be allowed to join out with his mob was
- conclusive of one's cleverness as a gon. For Maxie would have no bunglers,
- no learners about him.
- </p>
- <p>
- And, yet, as he himself said, Big Mike's value
- </p>
- <p>
- Jay not in any deftness of fingers, but in his stout, unflinching heart,
- and a knock-down strength of fist like unto the blow of a maul.
- </p>
- <p>
- “As a stall he's worse'n a dead one,” Maxie had said. “No one ever put up
- a worse back. But let a sucker raise a roar, or some galoot of a country
- sheriff start something—that's where Mike comes on. You know last
- summer, when I'm followin' Ringling's show? Stagger, Beansey an' Mike's
- wit' me as bunchers. Over at Patterson we had a rumble. I got a rube's
- ticker, a red one. He made me; an' wit' that youse could hear th' yell he
- lets out of him in Newark. A dozen of them special bulls which Ringling
- has on his staff makes a grab at us. Youse should have lamped Mike! Th'
- way he laid out them circus dicks was like a tune of music. It's done in a
- flash, an' every last guy of us makes his get-away. Hock your socks, it's
- Mike for me every time! I'd sooner he filled in wit' a mob of mine than
- th' best dip that ever pinched a poke.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Big Mike had been a fixed star in the Gangland firmament for years. He
- knew he could slug, he knew he could stay; and he made the most of these
- virtues. When not working with Little Maxie, he took short trips into the
- country with an occasional select band of yeggs, out to crack a P. O. or a
- jug. At such times, Mike was the out-side man—ever a post of
- responsibility. The out-side man watches while the others blow the box. In
- case things take to looking queer or leary, he is to pass the whistle of
- warning to his pals. Should an officer show unexpectedly up, he must stand
- him off at the muzzle of his gatt, and if crowded, shoot and shoot to
- kill. He is to stand fast by his partners, busy with wedges, fuse and soup
- inside, and under no circumstances to desert them. Mike was that one of
- ten thousand, who had the nerve and could be relied upon to do and be
- these several iron things. Wherefore, he lived not without honor in the
- land, and never was there a fleet of yeggs or a mob of gons, but received
- him into its midst with joy and open hearts.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mike made a deal of money. Not that it stuck to hum; for he was born with
- his hands open and spent it as fast as he made it. Also, he drank deeply
- and freely, and moreover hit the pipe. Nor could he, in the latter
- particular, be called a pleasure smoker nor a Saturday nighter. Mike had
- the habit.
- </p>
- <p>
- At one time Mike ran an opium den at Coney Island, and again on the second
- floor of Number Twelve Pell. But the police—who had no sure way of
- gauging the profits of opium—demanded so much for the privilege that
- Mike was forced to close.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Them bulls wanted all I made an' more,” complained Mike, recounting his
- wrongs to Beansey. “I had a 50-pipe joint that time in Pell, an' from the
- size of the rake-off the captain's wardman asks, you'd have thought that
- every pipe's a roulette-wheel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Couldn't you do nothin' wit' 'em?” asked Bean-sey, sympathetically.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not a t'ing. I shows 'em that number-one hop is $87.50 a can, an'
- yen-chee or seconds not less'n $32. Nothin' doin'! It's either come across
- wit' five hundred bones th' foist of every month, or quit.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mike sighed over his fair prospects, blighted by the ignorant avarice of
- the police.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at was youse chargin' a smoke?” inquired Beansey.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Two bits a shell. Of course, that's for yen-chee. I couldn't give 'em
- number-one for two bits. After all, w'at I cares most for is me cats—two
- long-haired Persians.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cats?” repeated Beansey, suspiciously. “W'at be youse handin' me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Beansey by the way, knew nothing of opium.
- </p>
- <p>
- “W'at am I handin' youse?” said Mike. “I'm handin' you th' goods. Cats get
- th' habit same as people. My cats would plant be some party who's cookin'
- a pill, an' sniff th' hop an' get as happy as anybody. Take 'em off the
- pipe, an' it's th' same as if they're Christians. Dogs, too. Let 'em once
- get th' habit, an' then take 'em away from a pipe joint, an' they has
- pains in their stummicks, an' twists an' yowls till you think they're
- goin' mad. When th' cops shut down on me, I has to give me cats to th'
- monk who's runnin' th' opium dump on th' top floor. Sure t'ing! They'd
- have croaked if I hadn't. They're on'y half happy, though; for while they
- gets their hop they misses me. Them toms an' me has had many a good
- smoke.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Folks often wondered at the intimacy between Mike and Little Maxie—not
- that it has anything to do with this story. Little Maxie—his name on
- the Central Office books was Maxie Fyne, <i>alias</i> Maxie English, <i>alias</i>
- Little Maxie, <i>alias</i> Sharapatheck—was the opposite of Big
- Mike. He was small; he was weak; he didn't drink; he didn't hit the pipe.
- Also, at all times, and in cold blood, he was a professional thief. His
- wife, whom he called “My Kytie”—for Little Maxie was from
- Houndsditch, and now and then his accent showed it—was as good a
- thief as he, but on a different lay. Her specialty was robbing women. She
- worked alone, as all good gon-molls do, and because of her sure
- excellencies was known as the Golden Hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Little Maxie and his Golden Hand, otherwise his Kytie—her name was
- Kate—had a clean little house near Washington Square on the south.
- They owned a piano and a telephone—the latter was purely defensive—and
- their two children went to school, and sat book to book with the children
- of honest men and women.
- </p>
- <p>
- The little quiet home, with its piano and defensive telephone, is gone
- now. Little Maxie died and his Golden Hand married again; for there's no
- false sentiment in Gangland. If a husband's dead he's dead, and there's
- nothing made by mourning. Likewise, what's most wanted in any husband is
- that he should be a live one.
- </p>
- <p>
- Little Maxie died in a rather curious way. Some say he was drowned by his
- pals, Big Mike among them. The story runs that there was a quarrel over
- splitting up a touch, and the mob charged Little Maxie with holding out.
- Be that as it may, the certainty is that Little Maxie and his mob, being
- in Peekskill, got exceeding drunk—all but Little Maxie—and
- went out in a boat. Being out, Little Maxie went overboard abruptly, and
- never came up. Neither did anybody go after him. The mob returned to town
- to weep—crocodile tears, some said—into their beer, as they
- told and re-told their loss, and in due time Little Maxie's body drifted
- ashore and was buried. That was the end. Had it been some trust-thief of a
- millionaire, there would have been an investigation. But Little Maxie was
- only a pick-pocket.
- </p>
- <p>
- Big Mike, like all strong characters, had his weakness. His weakness was
- punching Chinamen; fairly speaking, it grew to be his fad. It wasn't
- necessary that a Chinaman do anything; it was enough that he came within
- reach. Mike would knock him cold. In a single saunter through Pell Street,
- he had been known to leave as many as four senseless Chinamen behind him,
- fruits of his fist.
- </p>
- <p>
- “For,” said Mike, in cheerful exposition of the motive which underlay that
- performance, “I do so like to beat them monks about! I'd sooner slam one
- of 'em ag'inst th' wall than smoke th' pipe.”
- </p>
- <p>
- One time and another Mike punched two-thirds of all the pig-tailed heads
- in Chinatown. Commonly he confined himself to punching, though once or
- twice he went a step beyond. Lee Dok he nearly brained with a stool. But
- Lee Dok had been insultingly slow in getting out of Mike's way.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mike was proud of his name and place as the Terror of Chinatown. Whether
- he walked in Mott or Pell or Doyers Street, every Chinaman who saw him
- coming went inside and locked his door.
- </p>
- <p>
- Those who didn't see him and so go inside and dock their doors—and
- they were few—he promptly soaked. And if to see a Chinaman run was
- as incense to Mike's nose, to soak one became nothing less than a sweet
- morsel under his tongue. The wonder was that Mike didn't get shot or
- knifed, which miracle went not undiscussed at such centers as Tony's,
- Barney Flynn's, Jimmy Kelly's and the Chatham Club. But so it was; the
- pig-tailed population of Chinatown parted before Mike's rush like so much
- water.
- </p>
- <p>
- One only had been known to resist—Sassy Sam, who with a dwarf's body
- possessed a giant's soul.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sassy Sam was a hatchet-man of dread eminence, belonging to the Hip Sing
- Tong. Equipped of a Chinese sword, of singular yet murderous appearance,
- he chased Mike the length of Pell Street. Mike out-ran Sassy Sam, which
- was just as well. It took three shells of hop to calm Mike's perturbed
- spirit; for he confessed to a congenital horror of steel.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's straight,” said Mike, as with shaking fingers he filled his
- peanut-oil lamp, and made ready to cook himself a pill, “I never could
- stand for a chive. An' say”—he shuddered—“that monk has: one
- longer'n your arm.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Sassy Sam and his snickersnee, however, did not cure Mike of his weakness
- for punching the Mongolian head. Nothing short of death could have done
- that.
- </p>
- <p>
- Some six months prior to his caving in the skull of Low Foo, because of those
- shirts improperly missing, Mike did that which led to consequences.
- Prompted by an overplus of sweet, heady Chinese rum, or perhaps it was the
- heroic example of Sassy Sam, Ling Tchen, being surprised by Mike in Pell
- Street, did not—pig-tail flying—clatter inside and lock his
- door. More and worse, he faced Mike, faced him, coughed contumeliously and
- spat upon the cobbles. To merely soak Ling Tchen would have been no
- adequate retort—Ling Tchen who thus studied to shame him. Wherefore
- Mike killed him with a clasp knife, and even went so far as to cut off the
- dead Tchen's head. The law might have taken notice of this killing, but
- some forethoughtful friend had had wit enough to tuck a gun beneath the
- dead Tchen's blouse, and thus it became at once and obviously a case of
- self-defence.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a loose screw in the killing of Ling Tchen. The loose screw
- dwelt not in the manner of that killing, which had been not only thorough
- but artistic. Indeed, cutting off Ling Tchen's head as a finale was
- nothing short of a stroke of genius. The loose screw was that Ling Tchen
- belonged to the Hip Sing Tong; and the Hip Sing Tongs lived in Pell
- Street, where Mike himself abode. To be sure, since Ling Tchen did the
- provoking, Mike had had no choice. Still, it might have come off better
- had Ling Tchen been an On Leon Tong. An On Leon Tong belongs in Mott
- Street and doesn't dare poke his wheat-hued nose into Pell Street, where
- the Four Brothers and the Hip Sing Tongs are at home.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mike's room was in the rear, on the second floor of Number Twelve. It
- pleased and soothed him, he said, as he smoked a pill, to hear the muffled
- revelry below in Tony's. He had just come from his room upon that shirt
- occasion which resulted so disastrously for Low Fee.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mike was among friends in Tony's. Having told in full how he did up Low
- Foo, and smashed that shirt thief's laundry, Mike drank two glasses of
- beer, and said that he thought now he'd go upstairs and have a smoke.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There must be somethin' in lickin' a chink,” expounded Mike, “that makes
- a guy hanker for th' hop.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's early yet; better stick 'round,” urged Tony, politely. “There is
- some high-rollers from Newport up here on a yacht, an' crazy to see
- Chinatown in th' summer when th' blankets is off. Th' dicks w'at's got 'em
- in tow, gives me th' tip that they'll come lungin' in here about ten.
- They're over in Mott Street now, takin' a peek at the joss house an'
- drinkin' tea in the Port Arthur.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't want to meet 'em,” declared Mike. “Them stiffs makes me sick. If
- youse'd promise to lock th' doors, Tony, an' put 'em all in th' air for
- what they've got on 'em, I might stay.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That'd be a wise play, I don't think,” remarked the Dropper, who had just
- come in. “Tony'd last about as long as a dollar pointin' stuss. Puttin' a
- chink on th' bum is easy, an' a guy can get away wit' it; but lay a finger
- on a Fift' Avenoo Willie-boy, or look cockeyed at a spark-fawney on th'
- finger of one of them dames, an' a judge'll fall over himself to hand
- youse twenty years.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Right youse be, Dropper!” said the sophistcated Tony.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mike climbed the creaking stairway to his room.
- </p>
- <p>
- Below, in Tony's, the beer, the gossip, the music, the singing and the
- dancing went on. Pretty Agnes sang a new song, and was applauded. That is,
- she was applauded by all save Mollie Squint, who uplifted her nose and
- said that “it wasn't so much.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mollie Squint was invited to sing, but refused.
- </p>
- <p>
- About ten o'clock came the Newport contingent, fresh from quaffing tea and
- burning joss sticks. They were led by a she-captain of the Four Hundred,
- who shall go here as Mrs. Vee. Mrs. Vee, young, pretty, be-jeweled, was in
- top spirits. For she had just been divorced from her husband, and they put
- brandy into the Port Arthur tea if you tell them to.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony did the honors for Number Twelve. He and Mrs. Vee, surrounded by a
- fluttering flock of purple doves, all from aristocratic cotes, became as
- thick as thieves. The Dropper, who was not wanting in good looks and could
- spiel like a dancing master, went twice around the room with Mrs. Vee—just
- for a lark, you know—to a tune scraped from Tony's fiddles and
- thumped from that publican's piano. After which, Mrs. Vee and her flutter
- of followers, Willieboys and all, went their purple way.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony, with never flagging courtesy, escorted them to the door. What he
- beheld filled his somewhat sluggish soul with wonder. Pell Street was
- thronged with Chinamen. They were sitting or standing, all silent, faces
- void of meaning. The situation, too, was strange in this. A Chinaman could
- have told you that they were all of the Hip Sing Tong, and not a Four
- Brothers among them. He wouldn't of course, for a Chinaman tells a white
- devil nothing. Pell, by the way, was as much the home street of the Four
- Brothers as of the Hip Sing Tong.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony expressed his astonishment at the pigtailed press which thronged the
- thoroughfare.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is how it is,” vouchsafed the explanatory Tony to Mrs. Vee and her
- purple fluttering doves. “Big Mike's just after standin' Low Foo's
- wash-shop on its nut, an' these monks are sizin' up th' wreck. When
- anything happens to a monk his tong makes good, see?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony might not have said this had he recalled that Low Foo was a Four
- Brothers, and understood that no one not a Hip Sing Tong was in the crowd.
- Tony, however, recalled nothing, understood nothing; for he couldn't tell
- one Chinaman from another.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How interesting!” cooed Mrs. Vee, in response to Tony's elucidation; and
- with that her flock of purple doves, in fluttering agreement, cooed, “How
- interesting!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did youse lamp th' ice on them dames?” asked Sop Henry, when the slumming
- Mrs. Vee and her suite were out of ear-shot.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sop had an eye for diamonds.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That bunch ain't got a thing but money!” observed the Wop, his eyes
- glittering enviously. “I wisht I had half their cush.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Money ain't th' whole box of tricks.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This deep declaration emanated from old Jimmy. Old Jimmy's home was a rear
- room on Second Street near the Bowery, which overlooked a graveyard hidden
- in the heart of the block. There, when not restoring himself at Tony's or
- Sirocco's or Lyon's, old Jimmy smoked a vile tobacco known as Sailors'
- Choice, in a vile clay pipe as black as sin, and meditated. Having nothing
- to do but think, he evolved in time into a philosopher, and it became his
- habit to unload chunks of wisdom on whomsoever seemed to stand in need.
- Also, since he was warlike and carried a knife, and because anyone in hard
- luck could touch him for a dollar, he was listened to politely in what
- society he favored with his countenance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Money ain't th' whole box of tricks,” old Jimmy repeated, severely,
- wagging a grizzled head at the Wop, “an' only you're Irish an' ignorant
- you wouldn't have to be told so.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jimmy, you're nutty,” returned the Wop. “Never mind me bein' nutty,”
- retorted old Jimmy, dogmatically. “I know all about th' rich.” Then, in
- forgetfulness of his pension and the liberal source of it, he continued:
- “A rich man is so much like a fat hog that he's seldom any good until he's
- dead.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Jimmy called for beer; wisdom is always dry. “Say?” observed the
- Dropper, airily, “do youse guys know that I'm thinkin' I'll just about cop
- off some dame with millions of dough, an' marry her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Would she have youse?” inquired Mollie Squint, with the flicker of a
- sneer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's easy money,” returned the Dropper; “all I has to do is put out me
- sign, see? Them rich frails would fall for me in a hully second.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You crooks can't think of a thing but money,” snorted old Jimmy. “Marry a
- rich dame! A guy might as well get a job as valet or butler or footman
- somewhere an' let it go at that. Do you mutts know what love is? Th' one
- married chance of happiness is love. An' to love, folks must be poor. Then
- they have to depend upon each other; and it's only when people depend upon
- each other they love each other.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jimmy,” quoth the Dropper, with mock sadness. “I can see your finish.
- You'll land in Bloomingdale, playin' wit' a string of spools.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you ever,” demanded old Jimmy, disregarding the irreverent Dropper,
- “see some strapping young party, up against the skyline on an iron
- building, workin' away wit' one of them rivetin' guns? Well, somewhere
- between th' two rivers there's a girl he's married to, who's doin' a
- two-step 'round a cook stove, fryin' steak an' onions for him, an' keepin'
- an eye out that their kids don't do a high dive off th' fire-escape. Them
- two people are th' happiest in th' world. Such boneheads as you can't
- appreciate it, but they are. Give 'em a million dollars an' you'll spoil
- it. They'd get a divorce; you'd put that household on th' toboggan. If
- this Mister Vee, now, had been poor an' drove a truck instead of bein'
- rich an' drivin' a 6-horse coach, an' if Mrs. Vee had been poor an' done a
- catch-as-catch-can with th' family washtub instead of havin' money to burn
- an' hirein' a laundress, she'd never have bucked th' divorce game, but
- lived happy ever after.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But, Jimmy,” interposed Tony, “I've seen poor folks scrap.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure,” assented Jimmy; “all married folks scrap—a little. But
- them's only love spats, when they're poor. Th' wife begins 'em. She thinks
- she'll just about try hubby out, an' see can he go some. Th' only risk is
- him bein' weak enough to let her win. She don't want to win; victory would
- only embarrass her. What she's after is a protector; an' if hubby lets her
- put him on th' floor for th' count, she don't know where she's at. She's
- dead sure she's no good; an' if he's a quitter she's left all in th' air.
- Havin' floored him, she thinks to herself, 'This thing protect me? Why, I
- can lick him myself!' After that, hubby might better keep close tabs on
- little Bright-eyes, or some mornin' he'll call the family roll an' she
- won't answer. Take a boy an' a girl, both young, both square, both poor—so
- they'll need each ether—an', so he's got her shaded a little should
- it come to th' gloves, two bugs in a rug won't have nothin' on them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Jimmy up-ended his glass, as one who had settled grave matters, while
- the Dropper and the Wop shook contemplative heads.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' yet,” said the Wop, after a pause, “goin' back to them rich babies
- who was here, I still say I wisht I had their bundle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's four for one,” returned old Jimmy, his philosophy again forging to
- the fore—“it's four for one, Wop, you'd have a dead bad time. What
- street shows th' most empty houses? Ain't it Fift' Ave-noo? Why be they
- empty? Because the ginks who lived in 'em didn't have a good time in 'em.
- If they had they'd have stuck. A guy don't go places, he leaves places. He
- don't go to Europe, he leaves New York.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Jimmy turned to Tony.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fill up th' crockery. I'm talkin' 'way over th' heads of these bums.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ain't he a wonder?” whispered Pretty Agnes to the Nailer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should say as much,” responded the admiring Nailer. “He ought to be
- sellin' gold bricks. He's talked th' Dropper an' th' Wop into a hard
- knot.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Dropper was not to be quelled, and insisted that Jimmy was conversing
- through his sou'wester.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't think so,” broke in Jew Yetta; “I strings wit' Jimmy. Take a
- tumble to yourself, Dropper. If you was to marry one of them money dames,
- you'd have to go into high society. An' then what? W'y, you'd look like a
- pig on a front porch.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't youse bet on it,” declared the Dropper loftily. “There's nothin' in
- that high society stuff. A smart guy like me could learn his way t'rough
- in a week.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Could he?” said the Nailer, and his tones were tones of derision.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's w'at I says!” replied the Dropper. Then, heatedly: “W'y, do you
- geeks think I've never been north of Fourteenth Street? Youse make me
- tired, Nailer. While you was up-th'-river, for toinin' off that loft in
- Chambers Street, don't I go to a shindy at th' Demmycrat Club in honor of
- Sen'tor Depew? There was loidies there—th' real thing, too. An'
- wasn't I another time at th' Charlie Murphy dinner? Talk of high society!—if
- that ain't high society, what is?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Having squelched the Nailer, the Dropper proceeded more moderately.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I remember th' scare that's t'run into me at the Depew racket. I've been
- put up ag'inst some hot propositions, but if ever I'm faded it's then
- when, for th' foist time, I lamps a full-blown dame in evenin' dress. On
- th' dead, I felt like yellin' 'Police!'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Phwat was it scared yez, Dropper?” asked the Wop.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It ain't that I'm so scared as rattled. There's too much free-board to
- them evenin' dresses.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' the Charlie Murphy banquet,” said Pretty Agnes, wistfully. “Didn't
- yez get cold feet?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Naw, I don't git cold feet. I admits I falls down, I don't try to
- sidestep that; but it wasn't my fault. Do it over again, an' I'd go
- t'rough wit' bells on.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How did youse fall down?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's be accident; I takes th' wrong steer, that's all. I makes it a
- point, knowin' I'm none too wise, to plant meself when we pulls up to the
- feed opposite to a gilded old bunk, who looked like ready money. 'Do as he
- does, Dropper' I says to meself, 'an' you're winner in a walk!' So, when
- he plays a fork, I plays a fork; if he boards a chive, I boards a chive;
- from soup to birds I'm steerin' be his wake. Then all of a sudden I cops a
- shock. We've just made some roast squabs look like five cents worth of
- lard in a paper bag, an' slopped out a bunch of fizz to wash 'em down,
- when what does that old Rube do but up an' sink his hooks in a bowl of
- water. Honest, I like to 've fell in a fit! There I'd been feelin' as
- cunning as a pet fox, an' me on a dead one from th' jump!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did any of them smart Alecks give youse th' laugh?” asked the Nailer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Give me th' laugh,” repeated the Dropper, disgustedly. “I'd have smashed
- whoever did in th' eye.”
- </p>
- <p>
- While beer and conversation were flowing in Number Twelve, a sophisticated
- eye would have noted divers outside matters which might or might not have
- had a meaning. On the heels of Big Mike's laundry deeds of desolation and
- destruction at Low Foo's, not a Chinaman was visible in Pell Street. It
- was the same when Mike came out of Tony's and climbed the stairs to his
- room. Mike safely retired from the field, a handful of Four Brothers—all
- of them Lows and of the immediate clan of Low Foo—showed up, and
- took a slanteyed squint at what ruin had been wrought. They spoke not
- above a murmur, but as nearly as a white devil might gather a meaning,
- they were of the view that no monsoon could have more thoroughly
- scrap-heaped the belongings of Low Foo.
- </p>
- <p>
- Other Chinamen began to gather, scores upon scores. These were Hip Sing
- Tongs, and they paid not the slightest heed to Low Foo's laundry, or what
- was left of it. What Four Brothers were abroad did not mingle with the Hip
- Sing Tongs, although the two tribes lived in friendship. The Four Brothers
- quietly withdrew, each to his own den, and left the Hip Sing Tongs in
- possession of the street.
- </p>
- <p>
- Being in possession, the Hip Sing Tongs did nothing beyond roost on the
- curb, or squat in doorways, or stand idly about. Now and then one smoked a
- cigarette.
- </p>
- <p>
- About 11.20 o'clock, a Chinaman entered Pell Street from the Bowery. Every
- one of the Hip Sing Tongs looked at him; none of them spoke to him. Only,
- a place was made for him in the darkness of the darkest doorway. Had some
- brisk Central Office intelligence been there and consulted its watch, it
- might have occurred to such intelligence that had the newcomer arrived
- from Philadelphia over the B. & O. by latest train, he—assuming
- him to have taken the ferry with proper dispatch—would have come
- poking into Pell Street at precisely that hour.
- </p>
- <p>
- Trinity struck midnight.
- </p>
- <p>
- The bells sounded dim and far away. It was as though it were the ghost of
- some dead midnight being struck. At the sound, and as if he heard in it a
- signal, the mysterious Chinaman came out of the double darkness of the
- doorway in which he had been waiting, and crossed to the stairway that led
- up to the room of Mike. Not a whisper came from the waiting Hip Sing
- Tongs, who watched him with that blend of apathy and eagerness observable
- only in the Oriental. No one went with the mysterious Chinaman. Nor did
- the stairs creak—as with Big Mike—beneath his velvet shoes.
- </p>
- <p>
- Five minutes passed.
- </p>
- <p>
- The mysterious one emerged from Mike's stairway as silently as he had
- entered it. He tossed a claw-like hand palm outward, toward the waiting,
- watching Hip Sing Tongs, and then went slippering towards the Bowery. Had
- that brisk Central Office intelligence been there to see, it might have
- reflected, recalling a time table, that by taking the Cortlandt Street
- ferry, the mysterious one would be in time for the 12.30 train to
- Philadelphia over the Pennsylvania.
- </p>
- <p>
- Before the mysterious one had reached the Bowery, those scores of waiting,
- watching Hip Sing Tongs had vanished, and Pell Street was as empty as the
- promise of a politician.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now,” whispered Ching Lee to Sam Kum, who kept the chop suey shop, as
- they turned to go—“now he meet Ling Tchen, mebby so!”
- </p>
- <p>
- One o'clock.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony began to think about locking his front door. This, out of respect for
- the law. Not that beer and revelry were to cease in Number Twelve, but
- because such was Tony's understanding with the precinct skipper. Some
- reformer might come snooping else, and lodge complaint against that
- skipper with the Commissioner of Police.
- </p>
- <p>
- Just as Tony, on bidding “Good-bye!” to Mrs. Vee and her purple fluttering
- flock, had been impressed by the crowded condition of Pell Street, so now,
- when he made ready to lock up, was he impressed by that causeway's
- profound emptiness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say,” he cried to his guests in the rear, “you stews come here! This is
- funny; there ain't a chink in sight!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “D'youse think th' bulls are gettin' ready for a raid?” asked Sop Henry.
- Sop, with the Nailer and the Wop, had joined Tony in the door. “Perhaps
- there's somethin' doin' over at th' Elizabeth Street station, an' the
- wardman's passed th' monks th' tip.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothin' in that,” responded Tony, confidently. “Wouldn't I be put wise,
- too?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Marvelling much, Tony fastened his door, and joined old Jimmy, Pretty
- Agnes and the others in the rear room. When he got there, he found old
- Jimmy sniffing with suspicious nose, and swearing he smelled gas.
- </p>
- <p>
- “One of your pipes is leakin', Tony,” said Jimmy, “leakin' for fair, too,
- or I'm a Dago!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony, in refutation, called attention to a patent truth. He used electric
- light, not gas.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But they use gas upstairs,” he added. Then, half-anxiously; “It can't be
- some hop-head has blown out the gas?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The thought was enough to start the Dropper, ever full of enterprise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let's have a look,” said he. “Nailer you an' th' Wop come wit' me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony again opened the front door, and the Dropper, followed by the Wop and
- the Nailer, filed into the stairway that led to the floor above. They made
- noise enough, blundering and stumbling in the sudden hurry of spirit which
- had gripped them. As they reached the landing near Mike's door, the odor
- of gas was even more pronounced than in Tony's rear room.
- </p>
- <p>
- The hall was blind black with the thick darkness that filled it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How about this?” queried the Dropper. “I thought a gas jet was always
- boinin' in th' hall.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Dropper, growing fearful, hung back. With that, the Wop pushed forward
- and took the lead. Only for a moment. Giving a cry, he sprang back with
- such sudden force that he sent the Dropper headlong down the stairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' Virgin save us!” exclaimed the Wop, “but I touched somethin' soft!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's th' row?” demanded Tony, coming to the foot of the stairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the Dropper's request, Tony brought a candle, used by him in excursions
- to those crypts wherein he kept his whiskey.
- </p>
- <p>
- In a moment all was plain. That something soft which had so told upon the
- Wop was a rubber tube. There was a gas jet in the hall. One end of the
- rubber tube had been fastened over the gas jet, and the other stuffed into
- the keyhole of Mike's door. Trap arranged, the gas had been set flowing
- full blast.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, what do youse think of that?” exclaimed Tony, who understood at a
- glance.
- </p>
- <p>
- With one swift move, Tony turned off the gas and tore away the rubber
- tube. There was no talk of keys. He placed his powerful shoulder against
- the door, and sent it crashing. The out-rush of gas drove them, choking
- and gasping, into the open air.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Take it from me,” said the Dropper, as soon as he could get his breath,
- “they've croaked Mike.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the window,” urged the Nailer; “mebbe Mike has the window open!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not a chance!” retorted the Dropper. “No one has his window up while he
- hits th' pipe. They don't jibe, fresh air an' dope.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Dropper was right. Big Mike, stark and still and yellow, lay dead in
- his bed—the last place his friends would have anticipated—poisoned
- by gas.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Better notify th' cops,” advised Jimmy, the practical.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who did it?” sobbed Pretty Agnes. “Mike never handed it to himself.”.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who did it?” repeated the Dropper, bitterly. “Th' chinks did it. It's for
- Low Foo's laundry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You're down wrong, Dropper,” said old Jimmy. “It's that Ling Tchen trick.
- I knew them Hip Sings would get Mike.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XII.—THE GOING OF BIFF ELLISON
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he jury returned a
- verdict of guilty. Thereupon the judge, fixing Ellison with hard and
- thoughtful eye, gave him “from eight to twenty years.” When a man gets
- “from eight to twenty years” he is worth writing about. He would be worth
- writing about, even though it had been for such crimes of the commonplace
- as poke-getting at a ferry or sticking up a drunken sailor. And Ellison
- was found guilty of manslaughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- Razor Riley would have been sentenced along with Ellison, only he had
- conveniently died. When the Gophers gather themselves together, they give
- various versions of Razor Riley's taking off. Some say he perished of
- pneumonia. Others lay it to a bullet in his careless mouth. In any case,
- he was dead, and therefore couldn't, in the nature of things, accompany
- Ellison to Sing Sing.
- </p>
- <p>
- Razor was a little one-hundred-and-ten-pound man, with weak muscles and a
- heart of fire. He had, razorwise, cut and slashed his way into much
- favorable mention, when that pneumonia or bullet—whichever it was—stopped
- short his career.
- </p>
- <p>
- While the width of the city apart, he and Ellison were ever friends. They
- drank together, fought together, and held their foes as they held their
- money, in common.
- </p>
- <p>
- When the jury said “Guilty,” it filled Ellison with resentful amazement.
- His angry wonder grew as the judge coldly mentioned that “from eight
- to-twenty years.” He couldn't understand! The politicians had promised to
- save him. It was only upon such assurance that he had concluded to return.
- Safe in Baltimore, he could have safely continued in Baltimore. Lured by
- false lights, misled by spurious promises, he had come back to get “from
- eight to twenty years!” Cray and Savage rounded him up. All his life a
- cop-fighter, he would have given those Central Office stars a battle, had
- he realized what was in store for him and how like a rope of sand were the
- promises of politicians!
- </p>
- <p>
- My own introduction to Ellison and Razor Riley was in the Jefferson Market
- court. That was several years ago. The day was the eighteenth of March,
- and Magistrate Corrigan had invited me to a seat on the bench. Ellison and
- Razor were arraigned for disorderly conduct. They had pushed in the door
- of a Sixth Avenue bird and animal store, kept by an agitated Italian, and
- in the language of the officer who made the collar, “didn't do a thing to
- it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They are guilty, your honor,” said their lawyer, manner deprecatory and
- full of conciliation, with a view to softening the magisterial heart—“they
- are guilty. And yet there is this in their defense. They had been
- celebrating Saint Patrick's Day, over-celebrating it, perhaps, your honor,
- and they didn't know what they were about. That's the mere truth, your
- honor. Befuddled by too much and too fervently celebrating the glorious
- day, they really didn't know what they were about.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The lawyer waved a virtuous hand, as one who submitted affairs to the
- mercy of an enlightened court.
- </p>
- <p>
- Magistrate Corrigan was about to impose sentence, when the agitated
- Italian broke forth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't I get-a my chance, judge?” he called out. “Certainly,” returned
- Magistrate Corrigan, “what is it you want to say?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Judge, that-a guy”—pointing the finger of rebuttal at the lawyer—“he
- say theese mans don't know what-a they do. One lie! They know what-a they
- do all right. I show you, judge. They smash-a th' canaries, they knock-a
- th' blocks off-a th' monks, they tear-a th' tails out of th' macaws, but”—here
- his voice rose to a screech—“they nevair touch-a th' bear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Magistrate Corrigan glanced at the policeman. The latter explained that,
- while Ellison and Razor had spread wreck and havoc among the monkeys and
- macaws, they had avoided even a remotest entanglement with a huge cinnamon
- bear, chained in the center of the room. They had prudently plowed 'round
- the bear.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Twenty-five and costs!” said Magistrate Corrigan, a smile touching the
- corners of his mouth. Then, raising a repressive palm towards the lawyer,
- who betrayed symptoms of further oratory: “Not a word. Your people get off
- very lightly. Upon the point you urge that these men didn't know what they
- were about, the testimony of our Italian friend is highly convincing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When a gentleman goes to Sing Sing for longer than five years, it is
- Gangland good manners to speak of him in the past tense. Thus, then, shall
- I speak of Ellison. His name, properly laid down, was James Ellison. As,
- iron on wrists, a deputy at his elbow, he stepped aboard the train, he
- gave his age as thirty-nine.
- </p>
- <p>
- His monaker of Biff came to him in the most natural way in the world.
- Gangland is ever ready to bestow a title. Therefore, when a recalcitrant
- customer of Fat Flynn's, having quaffed that publican's beer and then
- refused to pay for it, was floored as flat as a flounder by a round blow
- from Ellison's fist, Gangland, commemorating the event, renamed him Biff.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ellison was in his angular, awkward twenties when he made his initial
- appearance along the Bowery. He came from Maryland, no one knew why and a
- youthful greenness would have got him laughed at, had it not been for a
- look in his eye which suggested that while he might be green he might be
- game.
- </p>
- <p>
- Having little education and no trade Ellison met existence by hiring out
- as bar-keeper to Fat Flynn, who kept a grog shop of singular vileness at
- 34 Bond. Its beer glasses were vulgarly large, its frequenters of the
- rough-neck school. But it was either work in Flynn's or carry a hod, and
- Ellison, who was not fanatically fond of hard labor, and preferred to seek
- his bread along lines of least resistance, instantly and instinctively
- resolved on the side of Flynn's.
- </p>
- <p>
- Gangland is much more given to boxing gloves than books, and the
- conversation at Flynn's, as it drifted across the bar to Ellison—busy
- drawing beer—was more calculated to help his hands than help his
- head. Now and then, to be sure, there would come one who, like Slimmy, had
- acquired a stir education, that is, a knowledge of books such as may be
- picked up in prison; but for the most those whom Ellison met, in the
- frothy course of business, were not the ones to feed his higher nature or
- elevate his soul. It was a society where the strong man was the best man,
- and only fist-right prevailed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ellison was young, husky, with length of reach and plenty of hitting
- power, and, as the interests of Flynn demanded, he bowed to his
- environment and beat up many a man. There were those abroad in Bond Street
- whom he could not have conquered. But, commonly sober and possessed
- besides of inborn gifts as a matchmaker, he had no trouble in avoiding
- these. The folks whom he hooked up with were of the <i>genus</i> cinch, <i>species</i>
- pushover, and proceeding carefully he built up in time a standing for
- valor throughout all the broad regions lying between Fourteenth Street and
- City Hall Park.
- </p>
- <p>
- Let it be said that Ellison had courage. It was his prudence which taught
- him to hold aloof from the tough ones. Now and then, when a tough one did
- insist on war, Ellison never failed to bear himself with spirit. Only he
- preferred to win easily, with little exertion and no injury to his nose
- and eyes. For Ellison, proud of his appearance, was by Gangland's crude
- standards the glass of fashion and the mould of form, and flourished the
- idol of the ladies. Also, a swollen nose or a discolored eye is of no
- avail in winning hearts.
- </p>
- <p>
- Every dispenser of beer is by way of being a power in politics. Some soar
- higher, some with weaker wing—that is a question of genius. One
- sells beer and makes himself chief of Tammany Hall. Another rises on the
- tides of beer to a district leadership. Still others—and it is here
- that Ellison comes in—find their lower beery level as Tammany's
- shoulder-hitting aides.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the last rôle, Ellison was of value to Tammany Hall. Wherefore,
- whenever he fell into the fingers of the police—generally for
- assault—the machine cast over him the pinion of its prompt
- protection. As the strong-arm pet of the organization, he punched and
- slugged, knocked down and dragged out, and did all these in safety. Some
- soft-whispering politician was sure to show a magistrate—all ears—that
- the equities were on the side of Ellison, and what black eyes or broken
- noses had been distributed went where they truly belonged and would do the
- most Tammany good.
- </p>
- <p>
- In his double role of beer dispenser and underthug of politics, Ellison
- stood high in Gangland opinion. From Flynn's in Bond Street he went to
- Pickerelle's in Chrystie Street. Then he became the presiding influence at
- a dive of more than usual disrepute kept by one Landt, which had flung
- open its dingy doors in Forsyth Street near Houston.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ellison' took an impressive upward step at this time. That is, he nearly
- killed a policeman. Nicely timing matters so that the officer was looking
- the other way, he broke a bottle over the blue-coat's head. The blue-coat
- fell senseless to the floor. Once down and helpless, Ellison hoofed him
- after the rules of Gangland, which teach that only fools are fair, until
- the hoofed one was a pick-up for an ambulance.
- </p>
- <p>
- The officer spent two weeks in a hospital cot, Ellison two hours in a
- station house cell. The politicians closed the officer's mouth, and opened
- Ellison's cell. The officer got well after a while, and he and Ellison
- grew to be good friends. The politicians said that there was nothing in it
- for either the officer or Ellison to remain at loggerheads. No man may
- write himself “politician” who does not combine the strength to prosecute
- a war, with the wisdom to conclude a peace. Hence, at the command of the
- politicians, Ellison and the smitten officer struck hands, and pooled
- their differences.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ellison, smooth-faced, high-featured, well-dressed, a Gangland cavalier,
- never married. Or if he did he failed to mention it. He was not a
- moll-buzzer; no one could accuse him of taking money from a woman. He
- lived by the ballot and the bung-starter. In addition once a year he gave
- a racket, tinder the auspices of what he called the “Biff Ellison
- Association,” and as his fame increased his profits from a single racket
- were known to reach $2,000.
- </p>
- <p>
- At one time Ellison challenged fortune as part proprietor of Paresis Hall,
- which sink of sin, as though for contrast, had been established within the
- very shadow of Cooper Union. Terminating his connection with Paresis Hall,
- he lived a life of leisure between Chick Tricker's Park Row “store” and
- Nigger Mike's at Number Twelve Pell.
- </p>
- <p>
- Occasionally he so far unbuckled as to escort some lady to or from
- Sharkey's in Fourteenth Street. Not as a lobbygow; not for any ill-odored
- fee of fifty cents. But as a gentleman might, and out of sheer politeness.
- The law, as enforced from Mulberry Street, was prone to take a narrow view
- of ladies who roamed alone the midnight streets. The gallant Ellison was
- pleasantly willing to save night-bound dames of his acquaintance from this
- annoyance. That was all.
- </p>
- <p>
- Who has not heard of the celebrated Paul Kelly? Once upon a time, a good
- woman reading a newspaper saw reference to Paul Kelly in some interesting
- connection. She began to burn with curiosity; she wanted to meet Paul
- Kelly, and said so to her husband. Since her husband had been brought up
- to obey her in all things, he made no objection.
- </p>
- <p>
- Guided by a pathfinder from the Central Office, the gentleman went forth
- to find Paul Kelly, his wife on his arm. They entered Lyon's restaurant in
- the Bowery; the place was crowded. Room was made for them at a table by
- squeezing in three chairs. The lady looked about her. Across, stale and
- fat and gone to seed, sat an ex-eminent of the prize ring. At his elbow
- was a stocky person, with a visage full of wormwood and a chrysanthemum
- ear. He of the ear was given to misguided volubilities, more apt to
- startle than delight.
- </p>
- <p>
- The woman who wanted to see Paul Kelly looked at the champion gone to
- sulky seed, listened to the misguided conversationist with the
- chrysanthemum ear, and wished she hadn't come. She might have been driven
- from the field, had it not been for a small, dark personage, with black
- eyes and sallow cheeks, who sat next her on the left. His voice was low
- and not alarming; his manner bland but final. And he took quiet and
- quieting charge of the other two.
- </p>
- <p>
- The dark, sallow little man led those two others in the wordy way they
- should go. When the talk of him of the unsatisfactory ear approached the
- Elizabethan so closely as to inspire terror, he put him softly yet
- sufficiently back in his hole. Also, when not thus employed, in holding
- down the conversational lid, he talked French to one man, Italian to
- another, English to all. Purringly polite, Chesterfield might have studied
- him with advantage.
- </p>
- <p>
- The woman who wanted to see Paul Kelly was so taken with the little dark
- man's easy mastery of the situation, that she forgot the object of the
- expedition. When she was again in the street, and had drawn a deep, clear
- breath or two of long relief, she expressed astonishment that one
- possessed of so much grace and fineness, so full of cultured elegancies,
- should be discovered in such coarse surroundings.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Surely, he doesn't belong there,” she said. “Who is he?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is he?” repeated the Central Office delegate in a discouraged tone.
- “I thought your hubby wised you up. That's Paul Kelly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Paul Kelly owned the New Brighton in Great Jones Street. One evening, as
- the orchestra was tuning its fiddles for the final <i>valse</i>, a sudden
- but exhaustive bombardment then and there broke loose. In the hot midst of
- it, some cool hand turned off the lights. They were never again turned on.
- The guests departed through window and by way of door, and did not come
- back. It was the end of the New Brighton.
- </p>
- <p>
- Gangland, which can talk betimes, can also keep a secret. Coax, cozen,
- cross-question as you will, you cannot worm from it the secret of that New
- Brighton bombardment. Ask, and every one is silent. There is a silence
- which is empty, there is a silence which is full. Those who will not tell
- why the New Brighton was shot up that night are silent with the silence
- which is full.
- </p>
- <p>
- As usual, the Central Office is not without its theories. The Central
- Office is often without the criminal, but never without the explanation.
- One Mulberry Street whisper declared that it was a war over a woman,
- without saying which woman. Another whisper insisted that money lay at the
- roots of the business, without saying what money. Still another ran to the
- effect that it was one of those hit-or-miss mix-ups, in their sort
- extemporaneous, in their up-come inexplicable, the distinguishing mark of
- which is an utter lack of either rhyme or reason.
- </p>
- <p>
- One officer with whom I talked pointed to Ellison and Harrington as the
- principals. Paul Kelly, he said, was drawn into it as incident to his
- proprietorship of the New Brighton, while the redoubtable Razor became
- part of the picture only through his friendship for Ellison. Another
- officer, contradicting, argued that there had been a feud of long standing
- between Razor and Paul Kelly; that Ellison was there in Razor's behalf,
- and Harrington got killed because he butted in. Both officers agreed that
- the rumpus had nothing to do with Eat-'em-up-Jack's run in with Chick
- Tricker, then sundry months astern, or the later lead-pipe wiping out of
- Jack.
- </p>
- <p>
- The story of the taking off of Eat-'em-up-Jack has already been told. The
- New Brighton missed Jack. He whom Paul Kelly brought to fill his place no
- more than just rattled about in it. The new sheriff did not possess Jack's
- nice knowledge of dance hall etiquette, and his blackjack lacked decision.
- Some even think that had Jack been there that night, what follows might
- never have occurred at all. As said one who held this view:
- </p>
- <p>
- “If Eat-'em-up-Jack had been holdin' down th' floor, th' New Brighton
- wouldn't have looked so easy to Biff an' Razor, an' they might have passed
- it up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The dancing floor of the New Brighton was crowded with Gangland chivalry
- and fashion. Out in the bar, where waiters came rushing bearing trays of
- empty glasses to presently rushingly retire loaded to the beery guards,
- sat Paul Kelly and a select bevy. The talk was of business mixed with
- politics, for a campaign was being waged.
- </p>
- <p>
- “After election,” said Paul, “I'm going to close up this joint. I've got
- enough; I'm going to pack in.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's th' row?” asked Slimmy, who had drawn up a chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's too much talking,” returned Paul. “Only the other day a bull was
- telling me that I'm credited with being the first guy along the Bowery to
- carry a gun.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's crazy,” broke in Harrington, who with the lovely Goldie Cora had
- joined the group. “There were cannisters by the ton along the Bowery
- before ever you was pupped.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Irish Wop, whose mind ran altogether upon politics, glanced up from a
- paper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Spakin' av th' campaign,” said he, “how comes it things is so quiet? No
- one givin' th' banks a bawlin' out, no one soakin' th' railroads, no one
- handin' th' hot wallops to th' trusts! Phwat's gone wrong wit' 'em? I've
- found but wan man—jusht wan—bein' th' skate who's writin' in
- th' pa-a-aper here,”—and the Wop held up the paper as Exhibit A—“who
- acts loike he has somethin' to hand out. Lishten: After buck-dancin' a
- bit, he ups and calls Willyum Jinnins Bryan th' 'modern Brutus,' says
- 'Cæsarism is abroad,' an' that Willyum Jinnins is th' only laddybuck who
- can put it on th' bum.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's one of them hot-air students,” said Harrington.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But about this Brutus-Cæsar thing? Are they wit' th' organization?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's what a swell mouth-piece like Bourke Cock-ran calls a 'figger of
- speech',” interjected Slimmy, ever happy to be heard concerning the
- ancients. “Cesar an' Brutus were a couple of long-ago Dagoes. Accordin' to
- th' dope they lived an' croaked two thousand years ago.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Only a pair av old wops, was they! An' dead an' gone at that! Sure I
- thought be th' way this writin' gezebo carried on about 'em they was right
- here on th' job, cuttin' ice. An' they're nothin' more'n a brace av old
- dead Guineas after all!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Wop mused a moment over the unprofitable meanness of the discovery.
- Then his curiosity began to brighten up a trifle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How did yez come to be so hep to 'em, Slimmy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Be studyin'—how-else? An' then there's Counsellor Noonan. You ought
- to hear him when he gets to goin' about Brutus and Cæsar an' th' rest of
- th' Roman fleet. To hear Noonan you'd think he had been one of their
- pals.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' Counsellor's from Latrim,” said the Wop; “I'm a Mayo man meself. An'
- say, thim Latrim la-a-ads are th' born liars. Still, as long as the
- Counsellor's talkin' about phwat happened two thousand years ago, yez can
- chance a bet on him. It's only when he's repo-o-rtin' th' evints av
- yisterday he'll try to hand yez a lemon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wisht I was as wise as youse, Slimmy,” said Goldie Cora, wistfully
- rubbing her delicate nose. “It must be dead swell to know about Cæsar an'
- th' rest of them dubs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If they was to show up now,” hazarded the Wop, “thim ould fellies 'ud
- feel like farmers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I don't know,” observed Slimmy: “they was lyin', cheatin', swindlin',
- snitchin', double-crossin' an' givin' each other th' rinkey-dink in th'
- old days same as now. This Cæsar, though, must have been a stiff
- proposition. He certainly woke up young! When he's only nineteen, he toins
- out one mornin', yawns, puts on his everyday toga, rambles down town, an'
- makes a hurrah touch for five million of dollars. Think of it!—five
- million!—an' him not twenty! He certainly was a producer—Cæsar
- was!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I should yell,” assented Harrington.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' then phwat?” asked the Wop.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This what,” said Slimmy. “Havin' got his wad together, Cæsar starts in to
- light up Rome, an' invites the push to cut in. When he's got 'em properly
- keyed up, he goes into the forum an' says, 'Am I it?' An' the gang yells,
- 'You're it'!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cæsar could go some,” commented Goldie Cora, admiringly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rome's a republic then,” Slimmy went on, “an' Cæsar has himself elected
- the main squeeze. He declares for a wide-open town; his war cry is 'No
- water! No gas! No police!'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say, he was a live one!” broke in Harrington; “he was Rome's Big Tim!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Listen!” commanded Goldie Cora, shaking her yellow head at Harrington.
- “Go on, Slimmy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “About this time Brutus commences to show in th' runnin'. Brutus is th'
- head of th' Citizens' Union, an' him an' his fellow mugwumps put in their
- time bluffin' an' four-flushin' 'round about reform. They had everybody
- buffaloed, except Cæsar. Brutus is for closin' th' saloons, puttin' th'
- smother on horse racin', an' wants every Roman kid who plays baseball
- Sunday pinched.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He gives me a pain!” complained Goldie Cora.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' mind you, all th' time Brutus is graftin' with both hooks. He's in on
- the Aqueduct; he manages a forty per cent, hold out on the Appian way; an'
- what long green he has loose he loans to needy skates in Spain at pawn
- shop rates, an' when they don't kick in he uses the legions to collect.
- Brutus is down four ways from the jack on everything in sight. Nothin's
- calculated to embarrass him but a pair of mittens.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' at that,” remarked Harrington, who had a practical knowledge of
- politics, “him an' his mugwump bunch didn't have nothin' on th' New York
- reformers. Do youse guys remember when the city bought th' ferries? There
- was———”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'd sooner hear Slimmy,” said Goldie Cora.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Me too,” agreed the Wop.
- </p>
- <p>
- Slimmy looked flattered. “Well, then,” he continued, “all this time Caesar
- is the big screech, an' it makes Brutus so sore he gets to be a bug. So he
- starts to talkin'. 'This Cæsar guy,' says Brutus, 'won't do.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Right you be,' says Cassius, who's always been a kicker. 'That's what
- I've been tellin' you lobsters from th' jump.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “With this an old souse named Casca sits up, an' says he ain't seen
- nothin' wrong about Cæsar.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Oh, roll over!' says Cassius. 'Why even the newsboys are on. You know
- Cæsar's wardman—that fresh baby, Mark Antony? It's ribbed up right
- now that at th' Lupercal he's to hand Cæsar a crown.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “Casca an' th' other bone-heads turns to Brutus.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Yes,' says Brutus, answerin' their looks; 'Cassius has got good
- information. He's givin' youse th' correct steer.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' did Cæsar cop off the crown?” asked Goldie Cora, eagerly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Slimmy shook his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' Lupercal comes 'round,” said he, “an' Mark Antony is there with bells
- on. He makes a funny crack or two about a crown, but nothin' goes. Th'
- wind-up is that Brutus, Cassius, Casca, an' th' rest of th' Citizens'
- Union, gang Cæsar later in th' forum, go at him with their chives, an' cut
- an' slash till his hide won't hold his principles.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' wasn't there,” demanded the Wop, with heat, “so much as wan
- strong-arm la-a-ad up at Cæsar's end av th' alley, wit' th' nerve to git
- even?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Never fear!” returned Slimmy, reassuringly; “th' day they plant Cæsar,
- Mark Antony goes in to make th' funeral spiel. He's th' Roman Senator
- Grady, Mark Antony is, an' he burns 'em up. Brutus an' his bunch get th'
- tip up at their club house, an' take it on th' run. With that, Cæsar's
- gang gets to goin', an' they stand Rome on its nut from the Capitoline
- Hill to the Tarpeian Rock. Brutus an' the' other mugwumps gets it where
- th' baby wore th' beads, an' there ain't been a Seth Low or a Fulton
- Cutting along th' Tiber from that day to this. Oh, they've got us left
- standin' sideways, them Guineas have, in some things.”
- </p>
- <p>
- About the time Slimmy began his lucid setting forth of Brutus, Cæsar and
- their political differences, Ellison and Razor, down at Nigger Mike's in
- Pell Street, were laying their heads together. A bottle of whiskey stood
- between them, for they required inspiration. There were forty people in
- the room, some dancing, some drinking, some talking. But no one came near
- Ellison and Razor, for their manner showed that they did not wish to be
- disturbed. As the Nailer observed, “They had a hen on,” and when gentlemen
- have a hen on they prefer being quiet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've no use for Paul Kelly,” whispered Razor in response to some remark
- of Ellison's. “You bet he knows enough not to show his snout along Eighth
- Avenue. He'd get it good if he did.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My notion,” said Ellison, “is to turn th' trick right now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Just th' two of us?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He'd have his guerillas; youse have got to figure on that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They wouldn't stand th' gaff. It's the difference between guys who knows
- what they wants, and guys who don't. Once we started, they'd tear th' side
- out the Brighton in the get-away.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “All right,” said Razor, bringing down his hand; “I'm wit' you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Just a moment,” and Ellison motioned Razor back into his chair. “If
- Paul's dancin', we must stall him into th' bar. I don't want to hoit any
- of them skirts.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the delightful habit of Slimmy, on the tail of one of his lectures,
- to order beer for his hearers. That's why he was listened to with so much
- interest. Were every lecturer to adopt Slimmy's plan, he would never fail
- of an audience. Also, his fame would grow.
- </p>
- <p>
- Slimmy, having finished with Cæsar and the others, had just signed up to
- the waiter to go his merry rounds, when Ellison and Razor slipped in from
- the street. Their hands were on their guns, their eyes on Kelly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Harrington saw it coming.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your gatt, Paul, your gatt!” he shouted.
- </p>
- <p>
- The rule in Gangland is to let every man kill his own snakes. Harrington's
- conduct crowded hard upon the gross. It so disgusted Razor that, to show
- Harrington what he thought of it, he half turned and laced a bullet
- through his brain.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now you've got something of your own to occupy your mind,” quoth Razor.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ellison was too old a practitioner to be drawn aside by the Harrington
- episode. He devoted himself unswervingly to Paul Kelly. Ellison's first
- bullet cut a hole through Kelly's coat and did no further harm. The lights
- were switched out at this crisis, and what shooting followed came off in
- the dark. There was plenty of it. The air seemed sown as thickly full of
- little yellow spits of flame as an August swamp of fireflies. Even so, it
- didn't last. It was as short lived as a July squall at sea. There was one
- thunder and lightning moment, during which the pistols flashed and roared,
- and then—stillness and utter silence!
- </p>
- <p>
- It was fairish pistol practice when you consider conditions. Paul Kelly
- had three bullets in him when four weeks later he asked the coppers to
- come and get him. He had been up in Harlem somewhere lying low. And you
- are not to forget Harrington. There were other casualties, also, which the
- police and politicians worked hand in hand to cover up.
- </p>
- <p>
- Five minutes went by after the shooting; ten minutes!—no one was in
- a hurry. At last a policeman arrived. He might have come sooner, but the
- New Brighton was a citadel of politics. Would you have had him lose his
- shield?
- </p>
- <p>
- The policeman felt his official way into the barroom:—empty as a
- drum, dark as the inside of a cow!
- </p>
- <p>
- He struck a match. By its pale and little light he made out the dead
- Harrington on the floor. Not a living soul, not even Goldie Cora!
- </p>
- <p>
- Goldie Cora?
- </p>
- <p>
- Said that practical damsel, when the matter was put up to her by Big
- Kitty, who being sentimental called Goldie Cora a quitter for leaving her
- dead love lying in his blood, “What good could I do? If I'd stuck I'd have
- got pinched; an' then—me in th' Tombs—I'd have stood a swell
- chance, I don't chink, of bein' at Bill's funeral.”
- </p>
- <h3>
- THE END.
- </h3>
- <div style="height: 6em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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