chocolate creams. That'd give 'em some interest in life. What I want
is a masterful man that slugs you when he's jagged and hugs you when
he ain't jagged. Preserve me from the man that ain't got the sand to
do neither!"
Mrs. Fink sighed.
The hallways were suddenly filled with sound. The door flew open at
the kick of Mr. Cassidy. His arms were occupied with bundles. Mame
flew and hung about his neck. Her sound eye sparkled with the love
light that shines in the eye of the Maori maid when she recovers
consciousness in the hut of the wooer who has stunned and dragged
her there.
"Hello, old girl!" shouted Mr. Cassidy. He shed his bundles and
lifted her off her feet in a mighty hug. "I got tickets for Barnum
& Bailey's, and if you'll bust the string of one of them bundles I
guess you'll find that silk waist - why, good evening, Mrs. Fink - I
didn't see you at first. How's old Mart coming along?"
"He's very well, Mr. Cassidy - thanks," said Mrs. Fink. "I must be
going along up now. Mart'll be home for supper soon. I'll bring you
down that pattern you wanted to-morrow, Mame."
Mrs. Fink went up to her flat and had a little cry. It was a
meaningless cry, the kind of cry that only a woman knows about, a
cry from no particular cause, altogether an absurd cry; the most
transient and the most hopeless cry in the repertory of grief. Why
had Martin never thrashed her? He was as big and strong as Jack
Cassidy. Did he not care for her at all? He never quarrelled; he
came home and lounged about, silent, glum, idle. He was a fairly
good provider, but he ignored the spices of life.
Mrs. Fink's ship of dreams was becalmed. Her captain ranged between
plum duff and his hammock. If only he would shiver his timbers or
stamp his foot on the quarter-deck now and then! And she had thought
to sail so merrily, touching at ports in the Delectable Isles! But
now, to vary the figure, she was ready to throw up the sponge, tired
out, without a scratch to show for all those tame rounds with her
sparring partner. For one moment she almost hated Mame - Mame, with
her cuts and bruises, her salve of presents and kisses; her stormy
voyage with her fighting, brutal, loving mate.
Mr. Fink came home at 7. He was permeated with the curse of
domesticity. Beyond the portals of his cozy home he cared not to
roam, to roam. He was the man who had caught the street car, the
anaconda that had swallowed its prey, the tree that lay as it had
fallen.
"Like the supper, Mart?" asked Mrs. Fink, who had striven over it.
"M-m-m-yep," grunted Mr. Fink.
After supper he gathered his newspapers to read. He sat in his
stocking feet.
Arise, some new Dante, and sing me the befitting corner of perdition
for the man who sitteth in the house in his stockinged feet. Sisters
of Patience who by reason of ties or duty have endured it in silk,
yarn, cotton, lisle thread or woollen - does not the new canto belong?
The next day was Labor Day. The occupations of Mr. Cassidy and Mr.
Fink ceased for one passage of the sun. Labor, triumphant, would
parade and otherwise disport itself.
Mrs. Fink took Mrs. Cassidy's pattern down early. Mame had on her
new silk waist. Even her damaged eye managed to emit a holiday
gleam. Jack was fruitfully penitent, and there was a hilarious
scheme for the day afoot, with parks and picnics and Pilsener in it.
A rising, indignant jealousy seized Mrs. Fink as she returned to her
flat above. Oh, happy Mame, with her bruises and her quick-following
balm! But was Mame to have a monopoly of happiness? Surely Martin
Fink was as good a man as Jack Cassidy. Was his wife to go always
unbelabored and uncaressed? A sudden, brilliant, breathless idea
came to Mrs. Fink. She would show Mame that there were husbands as
able to use their fists and perhaps to be as tender afterward as any
Jack.
The holiday promised to be a nominal one with the Finks. Mrs. Fink
had the stationary washtubs in the kitchen filled with a two weeks'
wash that had been soaking overnight. Mr. Fink sat in his stockinged
feet reading a newspaper. Thus Labor Day presaged to speed.
Jealousy surged high in Mrs. Fink's heart, and higher still surged
an audacious resolve. If her man would not strike her - if he would
not so far prove his manhood, his prerogative and his interest in
conjugal affairs, he must be prompted to his duty.
Mr. Fink lit his pipe and peacefully rubbed an ankle with a
stockinged toe. He reposed in the state of matrimony like a lump
of unblended suet in a pudding. This was his level Elysium - to sit
at ease vicariously girdling the world in print amid the wifely
splashing of suds and the agreeable smells of breakfast dishes
departed and dinner ones to come. Many ideas were far from his
mind; but the furthest one was the thought of beating his wife.
Mrs. Fink turned on the hot water and set the washboards in the
suds. Up from the flat below came the gay laugh of Mrs. Cassidy. It
sounded like a taunt, a flaunting of her own happiness in the face
of the unslugged bride above. Now was Mrs. Fink's time.
Suddenly she turned like a fury upon the man reading.
"You lazy loafer!" she cried, "must I work my arms off washing and
toiling for the ugly likes of you? Are you a man or are you a
kitchen hound?"
Mr. Fink dropped his paper, motionless from surprise. She feared
that he would not strike - that the provocation had been insufficient.
She leaped at him and struck him fiercely in the face with her
clenched hand. In that instant she felt a thrill of love for him
such as she had not felt for many a day. Rise up, Martin Fink, and
come into your kingdom! Oh, she must feel the weight of his hand
now - just to show that he cared - just to show that he cared!
Mr. Fink sprang to his feet - Maggie caught him again on the jaw with
a wide swing of her other hand. She closed her eyes in that fearful,
blissful moment before his blow should come - she whispered his name
to herself - she leaned to the expected shock, hungry for it.
In the flat below Mr. Cassidy, with a shamed and contrite face was
powdering Mame's eye in preparation for their junket. From the flat
above came the sound of a woman's voice, high-raised, a bumping, a
stumbling and a shuffling, a chair overturned - unmistakable sounds
of domestic conflict.
"Mart and Mag scrapping?" postulated Mr. Cassidy. "Didn't know they
ever indulged. Shall I trot up and see if they need a sponge holder?"
One of Mrs. Cassidy's eyes sparkled like a diamond. The other
twinkled at least like paste.
"Oh, oh," she said, softly and without apparent meaning, in the
feminine ejaculatory manner. "I wonder if - wonder if! Wait, Jack,
till I go up and see."
Up the stairs she sped. As her foot struck the hallway above out
from the kitchen door of her flat wildly flounced Mrs. Fink.
"Oh, Maggie," cried Mrs. Cassidy, in a delighted whisper; "did he?
Oh, did he?"
Mrs. Fink ran and laid her face upon her chum's shoulder and sobbed
hopelessly.
Mrs. Cassidy took Maggie's face between her hands and lifted it
gently. Tear-stained it was, flushing and paling, but its velvety,
pink-and-white, becomingly freckled surface was unscratched,
unbruised, unmarred by the recreant fist of Mr. Fink.
"Tell me, Maggie," pleaded Mame, "or I'll go in there and find out.
What was it? Did he hurt you - what did he do?"
Mrs. Fink's face went down again despairingly on the bosom of her
friend.
"For God's sake don't open that door, Mame," she sobbed. "And don't
ever tell nobody - keep it under your hat. He - he never touched me,
and - he's - oh, Gawd - he's washin' the clothes - he's washin' the
clothes!"
"THE GUILTY PARTY"
A Red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a
window. He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with
great satisfaction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of
blue, faded carpet-slippers. With the morbid thirst of the confirmed
daily news drinker, he awkwardly folded back the pages of an evening
paper, eagerly gulping down the strong, black headlines, to be
followed as a chaser by the milder details of the smaller type.
In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper. Odors from strong
bacon and boiling coffee contended against the cut-plug fumes from
the vespertine pipe.
Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which,
as twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty
host of children danced and ran and played in the street. Some in
rags, some in clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as
young hawks, some gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude
and sinful words, some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar,
to embrace - here were the children playing in the corridors of the
House of Sin. Above the playground forever hovered a great bird. The
bird was known to humorists as the stork. But the people of Chrystie
street were better ornithologists. They called it a vulture.
A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading and
resting by the window, and said:
"Papa, won't you play a game of checkers with me if you aren't too
tired?"
The red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sitting shoeless by the window
answered, with a frown.
"Checkers. No, I won't. Can't a man who works hard all day have a
little rest when he comes home? Why don't you go out and play with
the other kids on the sidewalk?"
The woman who was cooking came to the door.
"John," she said, "I don't like for Lizzie to play in the street.
They learn too much there that ain't good for 'em. She's been in the
house all day long. It seems that you might give up a little of your
time to amuse her when you come home."
"Let her go out and play like the rest of 'em if she wants to be
amused," said the red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, "and don't
bother me."
* * * * * * *
"You're on," said Kid Mullaly. "Fifty dollars to $25 I take Annie to
the dance. Put up."
The Kid's black eyes were snapping with the fire of the baited and
challenged. He drew out his "roll" and slapped five tens upon the
bar. The three or four young fellows who were thus "taken" more
slowly produced their stake. The bartender, ex-officio stakeholder,
took the money, laboriously wrapped it, recorded the bet with an
inch-long pencil and stuffed the whole into a corner of the cash
register.
"And, oh, what'll be done to you'll be a plenty," said a bettor,
with anticipatory glee.
"That's my lookout," said the "Kid," sternly. "Fill 'em up all
around, Mike."
After the round Burke, the "Kid's" sponge, sponge-holder, pal,
Mentor and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the
saloon corner where all the official and important matters of the
Small Hours Social Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tan
shoes of the club's President and Secretary for the fifth time that
day, Burke spake words of wisdom to his chief.
"Cut that blond out, 'Kid,'" was his advice, "or there'll be
trouble. What do you want to throw down that girl of yours for?
You'll never find one that'll freeze to you like Liz has. She's
worth a hallful of Annies."
"I'm no Annie admirer!" said the "Kid," dropping a cigarette ash
on his polished toe, and wiping it off on Tony's shoulder. "But I
want to teach Liz a lesson. She thinks I belong to her. She's been
bragging that I daren't speak to another girl. Liz is all right - in
some ways. She's drinking a little too much lately. And she uses
language that a lady oughtn't."
"You're engaged, ain't you?" asked Burke.
"Sure. We'll get married next year, maybe."
"I saw you make her drink her first glass of beer," said Burke.
"That was two years ago, when she used to came down to the corner of
Chrystie bare-headed to meet you after supper. She was a quiet sort
of a kid then, and couldn't speak without blushing."
"She's a little spitfire, sometimes, now," said the Kid. "I hate
jealousy. That's why I'm going to the dance with Annie. It'll teach
her some sense."
"Well, you better look a little out," were Burke's last words. "If
Liz was my girl and I was to sneak out to a dance coupled up with an
Annie, I'd want a suit of chain armor on under my gladsome rags, all
right."
Through the land of the stork-vulture wandered Liz. Her black eyes
searched the passing crowds fierily but vaguely. Now and then she
hummed bars of foolish little songs. Between times she set her
small, white teeth together, and spake crisp words that the east
side has added to language.
Liz's skirt was green silk. Her waist was a large brown-and-pink
plaid, well-fitting and not without style. She wore a cluster ring
of huge imitation rubies, and a locket that banged her knees at the
bottom of a silver chain. Her shoes were run down over twisted high
heels, and were strangers to polish. Her hat would scarcely have
passed into a flour barrel.
The "Family Entrance" of the Blue Jay Cafe received her. At a table
she sat, and punched the button with the air of milady ringing for
her carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced
manner of respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with
a satisfied wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could order
and be waited upon. It was all that her world offered her of the
prerogative of woman.
"Whiskey, Tommy," she said as her sisters further uptown murmur,
"Champagne, James."
"Sure, Miss Lizzie. What'll the chaser be?"
"Seltzer. And say, Tommy, has the Kid been around to-day?"
"Why, no, Miss Lizzie, I haven't saw him to-day."
Fluently came the "Miss Lizzie," for the Kid was known to be one who
required rigid upholdment of the dignity of his fiancee.
"I'm lookin' for 'm," said Liz, after the chaser had sputtered under
her nose. "It's got to me that he says he'll take Annie Karlson to
the dance. Let him. The pink-eyed white rat! I'm lookin' for 'm. You
know me, Tommy. Two years me and the Kid's been engaged. Look at
that ring. Five hundred, he said it cost. Let him take her to the
dance. What'll I do? I'll cut his heart out. Another whiskey,
Tommy."
"I wouldn't listen to no such reports, Miss Lizzie," said the waiter
smoothly, from the narrow opening above his chin. "Kid Mullaly's not
the guy to throw a lady like you down. Seltzer on the side?"
"Two years," repeated Liz, softening a little to sentiment under
the magic of the distiller's art. "I always used to play out on the
street of evenin's 'cause there was nothin' doin' for me at home.
For a long time I just sat on doorsteps and looked at the lights
and the people goin' by. And then the Kid came along one evenin'
and sized me up, and I was mashed on the spot for fair. The first
drink he made me take I cried all night at home, and got a lickin'
for makin' a noise. And now - say, Tommy, you ever see this Annie
Karlson? If it wasn't for peroxide the chloroform limit would have
put her out long ago. Oh, I'm lookin' for 'm. You tell the Kid if
he comes in. Me? I'll cut his heart out. Leave it to me. Another
whiskey, Tommy."
A little unsteadily, but with watchful and brilliant eyes, Liz
walked up the avenue. On the doorstep of a brick tenement a
curly-haired child sat, puzzling over the convolutions of a tangled
string. Liz flopped down beside her, with a crooked, shifting smile
on her flushed face. But her eyes had grown clear and artless of a
sudden.
"Let me show you how to make a cat's-cradle, kid," she said, tucking
her green silk skirt under her rusty shoes.
And while they sat there the lights were being turned on for the
dance in the hall of the Small Hours Social Club. It was the
bi-monthly dance, a dress affair in which the members took great
pride and bestirred themselves huskily to further and adorn.
At 9 o'clock the President, Kid Mullaly, paced upon the floor with a
lady on his arm. As the Loreley's was her hair golden. Her "yes" was
softened to a "yah," but its quality of assent was patent to the
most Milesian ears. She stepped upon her own train and blushed,
and - she smiled into the eyes of Kid Mullaly.
And then, as the two stood in the middle of the waxed floor, the
thing happened to prevent which many lamps are burning nightly in
many studies and libraries.
Out from the circle of spectators in the hall leaped Fate in a green
silk skirt, under the _nom de guerre_ of "Liz." Her eyes were hard
and blacker than jet. She did not scream or waver. Most unwomanly,
she cried out one oath - the Kid's own favorite oath - and in his
own deep voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club went
frantically to pieces, she made good her boast to Tommy, the
waiter - made good as far as the length of her knife blade and the
strength of her arm permitted.
And next came the primal instinct of self-preservation - or was it
self-annihilation, the instinct that society has grafted on the
natural branch?
Liz ran out and down the street swift and true as a woodcock flying
through a grove of saplings at dusk.
And then followed the big city's biggest shame, its most ancient
and rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blight
and perversion, its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreproved
and cherished, handed down from a long-ago century of the basest
barbarity - the Hue and Cry. Nowhere but in the big cities does it
survive, and here most of all, where the ultimate perfection of
culture, citizenship and alleged superiority joins, bawling, in the
chase.
They pursued - a shrieking mob of fathers, mothers, lovers and
maidens - howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood.
Well may the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well may
his heart, the gentler, falter at the siege.
Knowing her way, and hungry for her surcease, she darted down the
familiar ways until at last her feet struck the dull solidity of the
rotting pier. And then it was but a few more panting steps - and good
mother East River took Liz to her bosom, soothed her muddily but
quickly, and settled in five minutes the problem that keeps lights
burning o' nights in thousands of pastorates and colleges.
* * * * * * *
It's mighty funny what kind of dreams one has sometimes. Poets call
them visions, but a vision is only a dream in blank verse. I dreamed
the rest of this story.
I thought I was in the next world. I don't know how I got there; I
suppose I had been riding on the Ninth avenue elevated or taking
patent medicine or trying to pull Jim Jeffries's nose, or doing some
such little injudicious stunt. But, anyhow, there I was, and there
was a great crowd of us outside the courtroom where the judgments
were going on. And every now and then a very beautiful and imposing
court-officer angel would come outside the door and call another
case.
While I was considering my own worldly sins and wondering whether
there would be any use of my trying to prove an alibi by claiming
that I lived in New Jersey, the bailiff angel came to the door and
sang out:
"Case No. 99,852,743."
Up stepped a plain-clothes man - there were lots of 'em there,
dressed exactly like preachers and hustling us spirits around just
like cops do on earth - and by the arm he dragged - whom, do you
think? Why, Liz!
The court officer took her inside and closed the door. I went up to
Mr. Fly-Cop and inquired about the case.
"A very sad one," says he, laying the points of his manicured
fingers together. "An utterly incorrigible girl. I am Special
Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones. The case was assigned to
me. The girl murdered her fiance and committed suicide. She had no
defense. My report to the court relates the facts in detail, all of
which are substantiated by reliable witnesses. The wages of sin is
death. Praise the Lord."
The court officer opened the door and stepped out.
"Poor girl," said Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones,
with a tear in his eye. "It was one of the saddest cases that I ever
met with. Of course she was" -
"Discharged," said the court officer. "Come here, Jonesy. First
thing you know you'll be switched to the pot-pie squad. How
would you like to be on the missionary force in the South Sea
Islands - hey? Now, you quit making these false arrests, or you'll
be transferred - see? The guilty party you've not to look for in
this case is a red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, sitting by the
window reading, in his stocking feet, while his children play in
the streets. Get a move on you."
Now, wasn't that a silly dream?
ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS
Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are
forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met
and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their
fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of
respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the
monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and
bumptious civic alma mater.
The captain was no longer a captain. One of those sudden moral
cataclysms that sometimes sweep the city had hurled him from a high
and profitable position in the Police Department, ripping off his
badge and buttons and washing into the hands of his lawyers the
solid pieces of real estate that his frugality had enabled him to
accumulate. The passing of the flood left him low and dry. One month
after his dishabilitation a saloon-keeper plucked him by the neck
from his free-lunch counter as a tabby plucks a strange kitten from
her nest, and cast him asphaltward. This seems low enough. But after
that he acquired a pair of cloth top, button Congress gaiters and
wrote complaining letters to the newspapers. And then he fought
the attendant at the Municipal Lodging House who tried to give
him a bath. When Murray first saw him he was holding the hand of
an Italian woman who sold apples and garlic on Essex street, and
quoting the words of a song book ballad.
Murray's fall had been more Luciferian, if less spectacular. All
the pretty, tiny little kickshaws of Gotham had once been his. The
megaphone man roars out at you to observe the house of his uncle on
a grand and revered avenue. But there had been an awful row about
something, and the prince had been escorted to the door by the
butler, which, in said avenue, is equivalent to the impact of the
avuncular shoe. A weak Prince Hal, without inheritance or sword, he
drifted downward to meet his humorless Falstaff, and to pick the
crusts of the streets with him.
One evening they sat on a bench in a little downtown park. The great
bulk of the Captain, which starvation seemed to increase - drawing
irony instead of pity to his petitions for aid - was heaped against
the arm of the bench in a shapeless mass. His red face, spotted by
tufts of vermilion, week-old whiskers and topped by a sagging white
straw hat, looked, in the gloom, like one of those structures that
you may observe in a dark Third avenue window, challenging your
imagination to say whether it be something recent in the way of
ladies' hats or a strawberry shortcake. A tight-drawn belt - last
relic of his official spruceness - made a deep furrow in his
circumference. The Captain's shoes were buttonless. In a smothered
bass he cursed his star of ill-luck.
Murray, at his side, was shrunk into his dingy and ragged suit of
blue serge. His hat was pulled low; he sat quiet and a little
indistinct, like some ghost that had been dispossessed.
"I'm hungry," growled the Captain - "by the top sirloin of the Bull
of Bashan, I'm starving to death. Right now I could eat a Bowery
restaurant clear through to the stovepipe in the alley. Can't
you think of nothing, Murray? You sit there with your shoulders
scrunched up, giving an imitation of Reginald Vanderbilt driving
his coach - what good are them airs doing you now? Think of some
place we can get something to chew."
"You forget, my dear Captain," said Murray, without moving, "that
our last attempt at dining was at my suggestion."
"You bet it was," groaned the Captain, "you bet your life it was.
Have you got any more like that to make - hey?"
"I admit we failed," sighed Murray. "I was sure Malone would be good
for one more free lunch after the way he talked baseball with me the
last time I spent a nickel in his establishment."
"I had this hand," said the Captain, extending the unfortunate
member - "I had this hand on the drumstick of a turkey and two
sardine sandwiches when them waiters grabbed us."
"I was within two inches of the olives," said Murray. "Stuffed
olives. I haven't tasted one in a year."
"What'll we do?" grumbled the Captain. "We can't starve."
"Can't we?" said Murray quietly. "I'm glad to hear that. I was
afraid we could."
"You wait here," said the Captain, rising, heavily and puffily to
his feet. "I'm going to try to make one more turn. You stay here
till I come back, Murray. I won't be over half an hour. If I turn
the trick I'll come back flush."
He made some elephantine attempts at smartening his appearance. He
gave his fiery mustache a heavenward twist; he dragged into sight a
pair of black-edged cuffs, deepened the crease in his middle by
tightening his belt another hole, and set off, jaunty as a zoo
rhinoceros, across the south end of the park.
When he was out of sight Murray also left the park, hurrying swiftly
eastward. He stopped at a building whose steps were flanked by two
green lights.
"A police captain named Maroney," he said to the desk sergeant, "was
dismissed from the force after being tried under charges three years
ago. I believe sentence was suspended. Is this man wanted now by the
police?"
"Why are ye asking?" inquired the sergeant, with a frown.
"I thought there might be a reward standing," explained Murray,
easily. "I know the man well. He seems to be keeping himself pretty
shady at present. I could lay my hands on him at any time. If there
should be a reward - "
"There's no reward," interrupted the sergeant, shortly. "The man's
not wanted. And neither are ye. So, get out. Ye are frindly with um,
and ye would be selling um. Out with ye quick, or I'll give ye a
start."
Murray gazed at the officer with serene and virtuous dignity.
"I would be simply doing my duty as a citizen and gentleman," he
said, severely, "if I could assist the law in laying hold of one of
its offenders."
Murray hurried back to the bench in the park. He folded his arms and
shrank within his clothes to his ghost-like presentment.
Ten minutes afterward the Captain arrived at the rendezvous, windy
and thunderous as a dog-day in Kansas. His collar had been torn
away; his straw hat had been twisted and battered; his shirt with
ox-blood stripes split to the waist. And from head to knee he
was drenched with some vile and ignoble greasy fluid that loudly
proclaimed to the nose its component leaven of garlic and kitchen
stuff.
"For Heaven's sake, Captain," sniffed Murray, "I doubt that I would
have waited for you if I had suspected you were so desperate as to
resort to swill barrels. I" -
"Cheese it," said the Captain, harshly. "I'm not hogging it yet.
It's all on the outside. I went around on Essex and proposed
marriage to that Catrina that's got the fruit shop there. Now, that
business could be built up. She's a peach as far as a Dago could be.
I thought I had that senoreena mashed sure last week. But look what
she done to me! I guess I got too fresh. Well there's another scheme
queered."
"You don't mean to say," said Murray, with infinite contempt, "that
you would have married that woman to help yourself out of your
disgraceful troubles!"
"Me?" said the Captain. "I'd marry the Empress of China for one bowl
of chop suey. I'd commit murder for a plate of beef stew. I'd steal
a wafer from a waif. I'd be a Mormon for a bowl of chowder."
"I think," said Murray, resting his head on his hands, "that I would
play Judas for the price of one drink of whiskey. For thirty pieces
of silver I would" -
"Oh, come now!" exclaimed the Captain in dismay. "You wouldn't do
that, Murray! I always thought that Kike's squeal on his boss was
about the lowest-down play that ever happened. A man that gives his
friend away is worse than a pirate."
Through the park stepped a large man scanning the benches where the
electric light fell.
"Is that you, Mac?" he said, halting before the derelicts. His
diamond stickpin dazzled. His diamond-studded fob chain assisted.
He was big and smooth and well fed. "Yes, I see it's you," he
continued. "They told me at Mike's that I might find you over here.
Let me see you a few minutes, Mac."
The Captain lifted himself with a grunt of alacrity. If Charlie
Finnegan had come down in the bottomless pit to seek him there must
be something doing. Charlie guided him by an arm into a patch of
shadow.
"You know, Mac," he said, "they're trying Inspector Pickering on
graft charges."
"He was my inspector," said the Captain.
"O'Shea wants the job," went on Finnegan. "He must have it. It's for
the good of the organization. Pickering must go under. Your testimony
will do it. He was your 'man higher up' when you were on the force.
His share of the boodle passed through your hands. You must go on the
stand and testify against him."
"He was" - began the Captain.
"Wait a minute," said Finnegan. A bundle of yellowish stuff came out
of his inside pocket. "Five hundred dollars in it for you. Two-fifty
on the spot, and the rest" -
"He was my friend, I say," finished the Captain. "I'll see you and
the gang, and the city, and the party in the flames of Hades before
I'll take the stand against Dan Pickering. I'm down and out; but I'm
no traitor to a man that's been my friend." The Captain's voice rose
and boomed like a split trombone. "Get out of this park, Charlie
Finnegan, where us thieves and tramps and boozers are your betters;
and take your dirty money with you."
Finnegan drifted out by another walk. The Captain returned to his
seat.
"I couldn't avoid hearing," said Murray, drearily. "I think you are
the biggest fool I ever saw."
"What would you have done?" asked the Captain.
"Nailed Pickering to the cross," said Murray.
"Sonny," said the Captain, huskily and without heat. "You and me are
different. New York is divided into two parts - above Forty-second
street, and below Fourteenth. You come from the other part. We both
act according to our lights."
An illuminated clock above the trees retailed the information that
it lacked the half hour of twelve. Both men rose from the bench and
moved away together as if seized by the same idea. They left the
park, struck through a narrow cross street, and came into Broadway,
at this hour as dark, echoing and de-peopled as a byway in Pompeii.
Northward they turned; and a policeman who glanced at their unkempt
and slinking figures withheld the attention and suspicion that he
would have granted them at any other hour and place. For on every
street in that part of the city other unkempt and slinking figures
were shuffling and hurrying toward a converging point - a point that
is marked by no monument save that groove on the pavement worn by
tens of thousands of waiting feet.
At Ninth street a tall man wearing an opera hat alighted from a
Broadway car and turned his face westward. But he saw Murray,
pounced upon him and dragged him under a street light. The Captain
lumbered slowly to the corner, like a wounded bear, and waited,
growling.
"Jerry!" cried the hatted one. "How fortunate! I was to begin a
search for you to-morrow. The old gentleman has capitulated. You're
to be restored to favor. Congratulate you. Come to the office in the
morning and get all the money you want. I've liberal instructions in
that respect."
"And the little matrimonial arrangement?" said Murray, with his head
turned sidewise.
"Why. - er - well, of course, your uncle understands - expects that
the engagement between you and Miss Vanderhurst shall be" -
"Good night," said Murray, moving away.
"You madman!" cried the other, catching his arm. "Would you give up
two millions on account of" -
"Did you ever see her nose, old man?" asked Murray, solemnly.
"But, listen to reason, Jerry. Miss Vanderhurst is an heiress,
and" -
"Did you ever see it?"
"Yes, I admit that her nose isn't" -
"Good night!" said Murray. "My friend is waiting for me. I am
quoting him when I authorize you to report that there is 'nothing
doing.' Good night."
A wriggling line of waiting men extended from a door in Tenth street
far up Broadway, on the outer edge of the pavement. The Captain and
Murray fell in at the tail of the quivering millipede.
"Twenty feet longer than it was last night," said Murray, looking up
at his measuring angle of Grace Church.
"Half an hour," growled the Captain, "before we get our punk."
The city clocks began to strike 12; the Bread Line moved forward
slowly, its leathern feet sliding on the stones with the sound of a
hissing serpent, as they who had lived according to their lights
closed up in the rear.
A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT'S DREAM
"The knights are dead;
Their swords are rust.
Except a few who have to hust-
Le all the time
To raise the dust."
Dear Reader: It was summertime. The sun glared down upon the city
with pitiless ferocity. It is difficult for the sun to be ferocious
and exhibit compunction simultaneously. The heat was - oh, bother
thermometers! - who cares for standard measures, anyhow? It was so
hot that -
The roof gardens put on so many extra waiters that you could hope to
get your gin fizz now - as soon as all the other people got theirs.
The hospitals were putting in extra cots for bystanders. For when
little, woolly dogs loll their tongues out and say "woof, woof!"
at the fleas that bite 'em, and nervous old black bombazine ladies
screech "Mad dog!" and policemen begin to shoot, somebody is
going to get hurt. The man from Pompton, N.J., who always wears
an overcoat in July, had turned up in a Broadway hotel drinking
hot Scotches and enjoying his annual ray from the calcium.
Philanthropists were petitioning the Legislature to pass a bill
requiring builders to make tenement fire-escapes more commodious,
so that families might die all together of the heat instead of one
or two at a time. So many men were telling you about the number of
baths they took each day that you wondered how they got along after
the real lessee of the apartment came back to town and thanked 'em
for taking such good care of it. The young man who called loudly for
cold beef and beer in the restaurant, protesting that roast pullet
and Burgundy was really too heavy for such weather, blushed when he
met your eye, for you had heard him all winter calling, in modest
tones, for the same ascetic viands. Soup, pocketbooks, shirt waists,
actors and baseball excuses grew thinner. Yes, it was summertime.
A man stood at Thirty-fourth street waiting for a downtown car.
A man of forty, gray-haired, pink-faced, keen, nervous, plainly
dressed, with a harassed look around the eyes. He wiped his forehead
and laughed loudly when a fat man with an outing look stopped and
spoke with him.
"No, siree," he shouted with defiance and scorn. "None of your old
mosquito-haunted swamps and skyscraper mountains without elevators
for me. When I want to get away from hot weather I know how to do
it. New York, sir, is the finest summer resort in the country. Keep
in the shade and watch your diet, and don't get too far away from
an electric fan. Talk about your Adirondacks and your Catskills!
There's more solid comfort in the borough of Manhattan than in
all the rest of the country together. No, siree! No tramping up
perpendicular cliffs and being waked up at 4 in the morning by a
million flies, and eating canned goods straight from the city for
me. Little old New York will take a few select summer boarders;
comforts and conveniences of homes - that's the ad. that I answer
every time."
"You need a vacation," said the fat man, looking closely at the
other. "You haven't been away from town in years. Better come with
me for two weeks, anyhow. The trout in the Beaverkill are jumping at
anything now that looks like a fly. Harding writes me that he landed
a three-pound brown last week."
"Nonsense!" cried the other man. "Go ahead, if you like, and boggle
around in rubber boots wearing yourself out trying to catch fish.
When I want one I go to a cool restaurant and order it. I laugh at
you fellows whenever I think of you hustling around in the heat
in the country thinking you are having a good time. For me Father
Knickerbocker's little improved farm with the big shady lane running
through the middle of it."
The fat man sighed over his friend and went his way. The man who
thought New York was the greatest summer resort in the country
boarded a car and went buzzing down to his office. On the way he
threw away his newspaper and looked up at a ragged patch of sky
above the housetops.
"Three pounds!" he muttered, absently. "And Harding isn't a liar.
I believe, if I could - but it's impossible - they've got to have
another month - another month at least."
In his office the upholder of urban midsummer joys dived,
headforemost, into the swimming pool of business. Adkins, his clerk,
came and added a spray of letters, memoranda and telegrams.
At 5 o'clock in the afternoon the busy man leaned back in his office
chair, put his feet on the desk and mused aloud:
"I wonder what kind of bait Harding used."
* * * * * * *
She was all in white that day; and thereby Compton lost a bet to
Gaines. Compton had wagered she would wear light blue, for she knew
that was his favorite color, and Compton was a millionaire's son,
and that almost laid him open to the charge of betting on a sure
thing. But white was her choice, and Gaines held up his head with
twenty-five's lordly air.
The little summer hotel in the mountains had a lively crowd that
year. There were two or three young college men and a couple of
artists and a young naval officer on one side. On the other there
were enough beauties among the young ladies for the correspondent of
a society paper to refer to them as a "bevy." But the moon among the
stars was Mary Sewell. Each one of the young men greatly desired to
arrange matters so that he could pay her millinery bills, and fix
the furnace, and have her do away with the "Sewell" part of her name
forever. Those who could stay only a week or two went away hinting
at pistols and blighted hearts. But Compton stayed like the
mountains themselves, for he could afford it. And Gaines stayed
because he was a fighter and wasn't afraid of millionaire's sons,
and - well, he adored the country.
"What do you think, Miss Mary?" he said once. "I knew a duffer in
New York who claimed to like it in the summer time. Said you could
keep cooler there than you could in the woods. Wasn't he an awful
silly? I don't think I could breathe on Broadway after the 1st of
June."
"Mamma was thinking of going back week after next," said Miss Mary
with a lovely frown.
"But when you think of it," said Gaines, "there are lots of jolly
places in town in the summer. The roof gardens, you know, and
the - er - the roof gardens."
Deepest blue was the lake that day - the day when they had the mock
tournament, and the men rode clumsy farm horses around in a glade in