Since 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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Great is latitude!
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.
Little Bow Kum watched her fifteenth year approach—that year when she would take up her profession—without shame, scandal or alarm.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And so they pulled it.
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.
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?
“Because,” explained little Bow Kum, in her peculiar English, “I likee Tchin Len to mally me.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“One thousand years old?” I asked.
“Much older.”
“Five thousand?”
“Much older.”
“Ten thousand?”
“Maybe!”
From which I inferred that the Four Brothers had beheld the dawn and death of many centuries.
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.
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.
Wherefore the Four Brothers.
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.
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?
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.
This was in the On Leon Tong's Company rooms in Mott Street.
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.
With this the council broke up.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Poor little Bow Kum.
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.
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.
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.
This 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.
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.=
```There was a womern in our town
````In our town did dwell.
```She loved her husband dear-i-lee
````An' another man twict as well.=
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
“Mebby you're in wrong with th' organization.”
“Tammany? Th' more you shtand in wit' Tammany, th' ha-a-arder you get slugged.”
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.”
The last came off a little proudly.
“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.”
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.”
“In th' ould gas house days,” enquired the Wop, “wasn't Cha-a-arley a conducthor on wan av th' crosstown ca-a-ars?”
“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?”
“Did thim la-a-ads lasht night make spaches?”
“Speeches? Nothin' but Trusts is to be th' issue this next pres'dential campaign.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Speakin' av th' pris'dency, it looks loike this fat felly Taft's out to get it in th' neck.”
“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.”
“W'at crabbed him?”
“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!”
The Nailer came strolling in and pulled up a chair.
“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?”
“Shure he did,” coincided the Wop. “An' r-r-right there he give himsilf th' gate. You're right, Nailer; he's barred.”
“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?'
“'Oh, it goes!' says Teddy.
“'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.”
“W'at'll th' demmycrats do?” asked the Nailer. “Run Willyum Jennin's?”
“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?”
“How was he hoited be shakin' hands wit' Murphy?”
The Nailer's tones were almost defiant. He had been brought up with a profound impression of the grandeur of Tammany Hall.
“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?”
The acrid emphasis of the Wop was so overwhelming that it swept the Nailer off his feet.
The Wop resumed:
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“'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.'”
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.
“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.”
“Where is he?” asked Mollie Squint.
“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?”
“W'y? You ain't mad because he croaks Butch?”
“No. But me for Africa!—the ideer!”
“About Dopey Benny?” said the Nailer.
“Harry says Benny got four spaces in Canada. It's a bank trick—tryin' to blow a box in Montreal or somethin'.”
“Then you won't join Harry?” remarked Mollie Squint.
“In Africa? When I do, I'll toin mission worker.”
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.
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.
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.
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:
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the beginning, Butch worked in the day time, or as they say in Gangland, “went out onskush.” 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 aschlamwerker. 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.
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.
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.
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 ashushorschlamjob; and all for the calf-developing privilege of pedalling about the streets.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Then, too, there was the laugh.
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.
It was about this time that Butch found himself in a jam. Hisschlamwork 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.
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.
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.
Butch, returning from Sing-Sing exile, did not return to hisschlamwork. That trip up-the-river had shaken him. He became a Fagin, and taught boys of tender years to do his stealing for him.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Imagination rules the world. Butch, having imagination, extended himself. Already a Fagin, Butch became aposserand bought stolen goods for himself. Often, too, he acted as amelinaand 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
“Never mind about that gatt thing! Do youse think, dearie, I'd let that Guinea cop a sneak on me?”
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.
Butch explained his wretched gun play by saying that he was afraid of pinking some valued one among his boy scouts.
“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.”
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.
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.
“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.”
It was not so written, however. Double headers, whatever the field of human effort, are the exception and not the rule of life.
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.
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.
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.
“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?”