This 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.
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.
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.
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.
“It's Big Mike Abrams tearin' th' packin' out of th' laundry across th' street,” said Tony.
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.
“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.”
“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.”
“I'm like you, Nailer,” agreed Sop Henry. “Them socialists have certainly got me goin'. I can't get onto their coives at all.”
“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.”
There arose laughter and loud congratulatory sounds about the door. Next, broadly smiling, utterly complacent, Big Mike Abrams walked in.
“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.”
“An' Low Foo?” queried Tony, who had shirts of his own.
“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!”
Mike Abrams,aliasBig 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.
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.
And, yet, as he himself said, Big Mike's value
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
“Couldn't you do nothin' wit' 'em?” asked Bean-sey, sympathetically.
“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.”
Mike sighed over his fair prospects, blighted by the ignorant avarice of the police.
“W'at was youse chargin' a smoke?” inquired Beansey.
“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.”
“Cats?” repeated Beansey, suspiciously. “W'at be youse handin' me?”
Beansey by the way, knew nothing of opium.
“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.”
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,aliasMaxie English,aliasLittle Maxie,aliasSharapatheck—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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
One only had been known to resist—Sassy Sam, who with a dwarf's body possessed a giant's soul.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“There must be somethin' in lickin' a chink,” expounded Mike, “that makes a guy hanker for th' hop.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Right youse be, Dropper!” said the sophistcated Tony.
Mike climbed the creaking stairway to his room.
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.”
Mollie Squint was invited to sing, but refused.
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.
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.
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.
Tony expressed his astonishment at the pigtailed press which thronged the thoroughfare.
“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?”
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.
“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!”
“Did youse lamp th' ice on them dames?” asked Sop Henry, when the slumming Mrs. Vee and her suite were out of ear-shot.
Sop had an eye for diamonds.
“That bunch ain't got a thing but money!” observed the Wop, his eyes glittering enviously. “I wisht I had half their cush.”
“Money ain't th' whole box of tricks.”
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.
“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.”
“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.”
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.”
“Would she have youse?” inquired Mollie Squint, with the flicker of a sneer.
“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.”
“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.”
“Jimmy,” quoth the Dropper, with mock sadness. “I can see your finish. You'll land in Bloomingdale, playin' wit' a string of spools.”
“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.”
“But, Jimmy,” interposed Tony, “I've seen poor folks scrap.”
“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.”
Old Jimmy up-ended his glass, as one who had settled grave matters, while the Dropper and the Wop shook contemplative heads.
“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.”
“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.”
Old Jimmy turned to Tony.
“Fill up th' crockery. I'm talkin' 'way over th' heads of these bums.”
“Ain't he a wonder?” whispered Pretty Agnes to the Nailer.
“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.”
The Dropper was not to be quelled, and insisted that Jimmy was conversing through his sou'wester.
“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.”
“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.”
“Could he?” said the Nailer, and his tones were tones of derision.
“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?”
Having squelched the Nailer, the Dropper proceeded more moderately.
“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!'”
“Phwat was it scared yez, Dropper?” asked the Wop.
“It ain't that I'm so scared as rattled. There's too much free-board to them evenin' dresses.”
“An' the Charlie Murphy banquet,” said Pretty Agnes, wistfully. “Didn't yez get cold feet?”
“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.”
“How did youse fall down?”
“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!”
“Did any of them smart Alecks give youse th' laugh?” asked the Nailer.
“Give me th' laugh,” repeated the Dropper, disgustedly. “I'd have smashed whoever did in th' eye.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Trinity struck midnight.
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.
Five minutes passed.
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.
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.
“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!”
One o'clock.
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.
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.
“Say,” he cried to his guests in the rear, “you stews come here! This is funny; there ain't a chink in sight!”
“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.”
“Nothin' in that,” responded Tony, confidently. “Wouldn't I be put wise, too?”
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.
“One of your pipes is leakin', Tony,” said Jimmy, “leakin' for fair, too, or I'm a Dago!”
Tony, in refutation, called attention to a patent truth. He used electric light, not gas.
“But they use gas upstairs,” he added. Then, half-anxiously; “It can't be some hop-head has blown out the gas?”
The thought was enough to start the Dropper, ever full of enterprise.
“Let's have a look,” said he. “Nailer you an' th' Wop come wit' me.”
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.
The hall was blind black with the thick darkness that filled it.
“How about this?” queried the Dropper. “I thought a gas jet was always boinin' in th' hall.”
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.
“Th' Virgin save us!” exclaimed the Wop, “but I touched somethin' soft!”
“What's th' row?” demanded Tony, coming to the foot of the stairs.
At the Dropper's request, Tony brought a candle, used by him in excursions to those crypts wherein he kept his whiskey.
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.
“Well, what do youse think of that?” exclaimed Tony, who understood at a glance.
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.
“Take it from me,” said the Dropper, as soon as he could get his breath, “they've croaked Mike.”
“But the window,” urged the Nailer; “mebbe Mike has the window open!”
“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.”
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.
“Better notify th' cops,” advised Jimmy, the practical.
“Who did it?” sobbed Pretty Agnes. “Mike never handed it to himself.”.
“Who did it?” repeated the Dropper, bitterly. “Th' chinks did it. It's for Low Foo's laundry.”
“You're down wrong, Dropper,” said old Jimmy. “It's that Ling Tchen trick. I knew them Hip Sings would get Mike.”
The 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.”
“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.”
The lawyer waved a virtuous hand, as one who submitted affairs to the mercy of an enlightened court.
Magistrate Corrigan was about to impose sentence, when the agitated Italian broke forth.
“Don't I get-a my chance, judge?” he called out. “Certainly,” returned Magistrate Corrigan, “what is it you want to say?”
“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.”
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 thegenuscinch,speciespushover, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Surely, he doesn't belong there,” she said. “Who is he?”
“Who is he?” repeated the Central Office delegate in a discouraged tone. “I thought your hubby wised you up. That's Paul Kelly.”
Paul Kelly owned the New Brighton in Great Jones Street. One evening, as the orchestra was tuning its fiddles for the finalvalse, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
“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.”
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.
“After election,” said Paul, “I'm going to close up this joint. I've got enough; I'm going to pack in.”
“What's th' row?” asked Slimmy, who had drawn up a chair.
“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.”
“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.”
The Irish Wop, whose mind ran altogether upon politics, glanced up from a paper.
“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.”
“It's one of them hot-air students,” said Harrington.
“But about this Brutus-Cæsar thing? Are they wit' th' organization?”
“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.”
“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!”
The Wop mused a moment over the unprofitable meanness of the discovery. Then his curiosity began to brighten up a trifle.
“How did yez come to be so hep to 'em, Slimmy?”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“If they was to show up now,” hazarded the Wop, “thim ould fellies 'ud feel like farmers.”
“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!”
“Well, I should yell,” assented Harrington.
“An' then phwat?” asked the Wop.
“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'!”
“Cæsar could go some,” commented Goldie Cora, admiringly.
“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!'”
“Say, he was a live one!” broke in Harrington; “he was Rome's Big Tim!”
“Listen!” commanded Goldie Cora, shaking her yellow head at Harrington. “Go on, Slimmy.”
“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.”
“He gives me a pain!” complained Goldie Cora.
“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.”
“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———”
“I'd sooner hear Slimmy,” said Goldie Cora.
“Me too,” agreed the Wop.
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.'
“'Right you be,' says Cassius, who's always been a kicker. 'That's what I've been tellin' you lobsters from th' jump.'
“With this an old souse named Casca sits up, an' says he ain't seen nothin' wrong about Cæsar.
“'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.'
“Casca an' th' other bone-heads turns to Brutus.
“'Yes,' says Brutus, answerin' their looks; 'Cassius has got good information. He's givin' youse th' correct steer.'”
“An' did Cæsar cop off the crown?” asked Goldie Cora, eagerly.
Slimmy shook his head.
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
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.
“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.”
“My notion,” said Ellison, “is to turn th' trick right now.”
“Just th' two of us?”
“Why not?”
“He'd have his guerillas; youse have got to figure on that.”
“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.”
“All right,” said Razor, bringing down his hand; “I'm wit' you.”
“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.”
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.
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.
Harrington saw it coming.
“Your gatt, Paul, your gatt!” he shouted.
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.
“Now you've got something of your own to occupy your mind,” quoth Razor.
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!
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.