Part 4

There was no reason why they should have called the play “The Casino Girls” except that it might have sounded attractive to the out-of-town people, and the word Casino, in the mind of the average manager, is always good for the money. But it was a good show, nevertheless, with lots of nice girls in tights and spangles, and you could spend two hours there about as well as you could anywhere.

But this isn’t to be a story about a show in general, nor is it written with the object of handing a bouquet to the estimable gentleman who had the “Casino Girls” under his wing. He had troubles of his own, but he was paid for that. If some one would sit down beside me for an hour or so--that is, some one who knew--and tell me nice little stories about all of the girls--or shall I say ladies?--with that show, I am quite sure I would have enough material to last me for a good many weeks to come, and it wouldn’t be scandal, either. I should leave that for the religious papers and a few of the sanctimonious dailies.

But it happens that just now I have only one good card up my sleeve, so I’ll play that for all it is worth, and then wait for something else to leak out and find its way to the mahogany desk where I do stunts like this one.

You will have noticed if you have seen the show, one of the young women who is a bit more athletic than the others. She has a fist that can hand out a scientific punch and an arm to back it up. She wears tights with the rest of the crowd and doesn’t attract special attention until the olio is put on, and then she shines forth as a specialist. She punches the bag in a manner that is truly marvelous, and what she doesn’t do to that pear-shaped leather pendant couldn’t be done by anybody--man or woman.

The medals dancing on her chest as she uppercuts and swings would signify that she is an artiste of more than usual merit, and the self-assurance and confidence she displays during the brief time she is on show that she is quite sure of herself and that she knows the business from the make-up box to the bow at the finish.

Furthermore, in addition to her other accomplishments, she has been known to kick the crown of a hat held six feet from the floor, which, by the way, is no mean trick.

Now a few turns of the leaves of the calendar backward, a wiping out of recent years, and you are at the beginning of the story. Not in New York, but in Ohio--the finish is in the big city, as all good finishes are.

A good-looking, rugged girl was there; a normal girl whose only heritage was health, strength and ambition, which, by the way, in many cases, is better than money. She took in all the shows that came to town, and had about as good a time as any other girl could have under the circumstances. She didn’t get stage struck. She had no ambition to sing or dance before the public, nor did she give a rap about Romeo and Juliet. Nothing like that for her.

You see her time hadn’t come and she had not yet struck her gait.

The first intimation she had that she was stung with the theatrical bee when she saw a bag-punching act in which the man made many misses, but faked it through so that it looked like the real thing.

That was what she had been waiting for all that time and she never knew it. The next day she bought a bag, had a platform rigged up and started in to practice. She worked in a woodshed, I think it was, with no one to teach her, and she hammered and punched until she was about ready to drop from exhaustion, but she never gave up. She would travel anywhere to see a bag-punching act and get a few tips, and although there were not many in the business at that time, especially out in Ohio, the few she did land told her all they knew and that wasn’t half enough.

She had reached that stage when she was fairly good, but didn’t know it, when there blew into the town a 120-pound boxer of about the fourth class who could pound the leather just enough to get a salary that would pay his board and buy a few drinks, but the fact that he was a bag puncher was enough for her, so she made his acquaintance and hustled him around to her improvised gymnasium to show her what he knew. To her surprise there was nothing in his routine that she wasn’t familiar with, and when she went at the bag herself she did a few stunts that made him open his eyes in amazement.

“Who put you next to that?” he asked.

“No one; I learned it myself.”

“Ever do an act?” was the next question he shot at her.

He had a quick mind--anybody has who knocks around on the road for a few seasons--and he was already beginning to figure.

“No, but some day when I get good I am going to ask some kind manager to give me a chance.”

“You don’t have to wait any longer, Sis; you can come with the show right away and we’ll do an act together.”

Here was a meal ticket that would be good for many a hard winter when the other fellows were eating snowballs, and, if he could help it, it wasn’t going to get away from him.

And that is the beginning of the story.

It didn’t get away from him, for he married her as soon as he could find the money to pay a minister, and that didn’t take very long.

He fixed up an act which might have been better, but which was good enough to get work with reasonable regularity. There was only one thing to it and that was her bag punching, and if it hadn’t been for his hustling around and getting dates he would have been a rank case of excess baggage. In the meantime, he was teaching her how to box, and when the act grew stale they had a boxing finish that never failed to go big with the crowd.

All this time she was learning. She hunted up every bag puncher of note in the country and gathered in the tips, and when she wasn’t busy with anything else she was framing up something new for herself. All this tended to give her a muscular development that was worth having and that many an athlete would have been proud of.

Her reputation was on the increase and she began to be known. The first step had been made, and it became a comparatively easy thing to get booking in Europe. The skate she was tied to began to swell up a bit, and during the seven days they were on the ship bound for Liverpool he got it into his head that he was the real one and that she was a side issue.

“Don’t ever forget,” he said to her when they reached London, “that I am the real fellow. I dug you out of a woodshed and put you where you are now and if you try to get gay with me, I’ll send you back there, and I’ll get another one just as good as you are.”

He thought he was the real candy boy, and he started in to cut a wide swath. He chased every petticoat that came along, blew in their joint salary at the cafes, and the only time she saw him was when they were doing their act.

In Berlin she happened to walk in the cafe connected with the music hall at which they were working, and she saw him sitting at one of the tables trying to fill a 160-pound blonde with Rhine wine.

“Don’t you think it is about time to cut this out?” she asked.

“Didn’t I tell you to keep away from me and not butt in where you’re not wanted?” he said.

“Yes; but I think I have something to say. I’m not a wooden image, am I?”

“Who is this woman?” asked the blonde, languidly.

“I’m his wife, if you want to know,” was the retort, “and anyone would think you had no home by the way you hang around here.”

“Tell her to go away; she annoys me.”

That was enough for the girl. With one swift jerk the blonde was pulled to her feet, then a vicious right hook found its way to her jaw, and as she dropped to the floor the “meal ticket” walked away.

It was the first blow she had ever struck except in a friendly contest with the gloves, and it stirred her blood as nothing else had ever done.

It did another thing--it set her to thinking, and from that time on she began a course of good, hard training.

Something definite and tangible had become established in her mind and she was after it like a hound after a rabbit. She paid as little attention to him as if he had never existed, and he carried on his love affairs--very numerous ones they were, too--with a free hand. He became a hot proposition, and he blew like a drunken sailor on every girl who caught his fancy. She lived like an automaton, doing everything mechanically except the conditioning work she was engaged in. At every show they boxed together, and once in a while, when she would get a chance, she would whip in a hard one in order to lay bare his weak spots. One night she hit him in the stomach. It was a short, sharp, snappy punch, and she felt the shock of it up to her elbow.

He turned white under his grease paint and then wobbled back a couple of paces.

When they came together again he whispered savagely:

“Cut those out or I’ll hand you one the next time.”

“It was a slip,” she said. “I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s a good thing for you that you didn’t,” he answered, surlily.

From Berlin they went to the Casino, in Paris, and if the trick that was pulled off there had never happened I wouldn’t be writing this story.

Paris to him was like a bone to a hungry dog and he was a hot sport from the night they hit the town, while she was a joke because she wouldn’t mix with the bunch and play the game of love on her own hook.

But all the time she was getting ready for the stunt that was to give her revenge and freedom together.

At last it came.

When he stumbled into the dressing room one night he had the beginnings of a good-sized jag. He had been putting away his share of absinthe and he began to abuse her.

“You’re a dead one,” he said, “and I don’t know what I ever saw in you. Here I’ve put you on your feet and give you the chance of your life to make good, but you don’t connect. Get in with the crowd and be a live one before it’s too late, for you’re getting to be a shine.”

“What do you expect me to do when you are mixed up with a bunch of cheap soubrettes, and drunk half the time?”

“Why, do the same as I do, of course. There’s that guy that came in last night and wanted to meet you. He’s got all kinds of coin, and----”

“Shut up,” she cried, “what do you think I am?”

“Not much.”

She began working at her gloves viciously, pushing the padding away from the knuckles so as to leave the fist with as little covering as possible. You know the trick if you’ve ever seen boxers just before a contest. It isn’t considered the right thing to do, but when done properly makes a punch well landed about twice as effective. When she was through there wasn’t much hair in the centre of her gloves, and then they were ready to go on. They sang their opening song, juggled the Indian clubs, after which she went at the bag. That concluded, they were to go three rounds to a quick finish.

They were ready.

He went forward to the footlights to make the usual announcement.

“My partner and myself will now box three exhibition rounds,” etc., etc.

“Time.”

When a man has been sparring exhibition rounds very long he is apt to grow a trifle careless, and to take chances that he wouldn’t take under ordinary circumstances. It was so in this case, and at the first rush he got a stiff, straight left in the mouth that brought the blood oozing from between his lips.

“What the hell,” he began in amazement, but he didn’t finish, for she was on him in an instant and a short right went home to his ribs. He caught a look in her eyes that suddenly sobered him, and he began to stall and cover up. He retreated a few steps, and she said tauntingly:

“What’s the matter, are you afraid of me, you cur?”

He wavered for a moment and then she went after him again.

He swung his right with all his might and caught her on the ear. Somewhere from out of the audience there came a sibilant hiss which was taken up by a hundred at once. She needed that punch just about that time, and it spurred her on, even though it hurt for a moment. She bored in, and throwing down her guard drove a right and left to his stomach--his weak spot. There was the place, but she had forgotten it in the excitement.

He dropped heavily and awkwardly on his back, rolled over slowly and pulled himself to his feet. He came up with a realizing sense that he must protect himself against this woman who was taking an unfair advantage of him, and in his ears rang the shouts and applause of a delighted audience. He knew they were not for him, but he would fight, anyhow, and show them what he could do. They were to see that an American boxer was no slouch. He saw her standing there waiting, with a grim smile on her compressed lips and he made up his mind that he would knock that smile off. He straightened up and went at her like a bull. She didn’t back off as he thought she would, and when he pulled back his right he got a jolt on the jaw that turned him half way around. He went in again and she hit him in the stomach. When his head dropped his nose met an uppercut that made the blood spurt in a stream. The sight seemed to madden her and she went at him fiercely and vindictively. There was revenge behind every blow and she felt that she was evening up the insults and humiliation of a year. He was groggy and almost helpless and there was pandemonium in the audience. Some of the women had gone out, but those who had stayed had risen in their seats and were cheering on this American girl who was fighting like a man. She heard nothing and saw only the man she loathed and hated. She noted his puffed and bleeding face and knew she had him.

“Put up your hands,” she said sharply.

He obeyed mechanically and she walked over to him. He tried to cover up, but she feinted him into an opening, and then drove a straight right to his jaw and he flopped over in the wings crying:

“I quit, I quit; I didn’t think you’d do this.”

She didn’t even look at him as she went past to her dressing room.

Ten minutes later he came in with a trace of his former bluster.

“What are you trying to do, anyhow?” he began, but she shut him up.

“I’ll lick you again right here if you don’t keep your mouth closed. From now on until the end of this engagement _I’m_ running this act, and I’m going to collect the money for it, too, and any time I catch you doing anything I don’t like _I’m_ going to beat your head off. Any time you think I can’t do it start something. In just two weeks more you can pack your clothes and shift for yourself, for I’m done.”

That’s all.

She has been shifting for herself ever since, and is doing pretty well, thank you.

KID AND HIS TEN THOUSAND

Just another restaurant scene with waiters and guests and steaming dishes and wine.

It’s the same old thing, repeated many times a day, but it’s like a stage on which a thousand plays have appeared. The setting is always the same--it’s only the scene that changes.

I just want to call your attention to that red-cheeked boy at the table over by the window. I said boy, although from the standpoint of years he is really a man. But he lacks experience to bring him to a man’s real estate. Years, you know, don’t always count in this world, that is, not in all things. In this woman is excepted, because years count for everything with her.

This particular boy has just had his first experience, and that is the excuse for this story--if an excuse is needed. He has laid the foundation stone upon which he is going to build his life, and in the building he will use many stones of many colors, sizes and shapes.

You see him sitting there disconsolate, miserable and wretched. His home, as luxurious a one as anybody would want, is not more than a dozen blocks away, and he will wind up there in the course of the next forty-eight hours, for he is practically broke.

I call him The Boy With The Ten Thousand Dollar Bill.

Just a few years ago his father died. A few weeks later the family lawyer was in the drawing room reading the will of the deceased, and near the end of the document he came to a clause which stipulated:

“On his twenty-first birthday my son shall receive from the balance of moneys unexpended a bill of the denomination of $10,000 to do with as he shall see fit, and he shall not be asked to account for the expenditure of it to anyone in any way whatsoever.”

That was a curious item for even a curious will, but the estate was big and the founder of that fortune felt evidently that he could afford to experiment with a mere ten thousand, even after his death, that the lesson might be of benefit to the heir.

The object is obvious.

The boy became of age, and on that day he received the bank note which to him seemed like a fortune, so he felt that he owned the world.

A man can do a lot of good in New York with that amount of money, and a boy can do a lot of harm.

This boy knew in advance the good fortune that was coming to him, and in looking around he made up his mind that the first thing a man of his means should buy would be an automobile costing $4,000, so the day he got the money he bought the car, and he received in exchange a bundle of crisp five hundred bills.

He must have thought those bills represented the wealth of Croesus, or that they were magic, and no matter how many he might use, some mysterious agency would replace them.

At 11.30 o’clock that night the new automobile was backed up against the stage door of a Broadway playhouse, and half an hour later it was filled with as many girls as could possibly be crowded in.

In that startling way the boy with the big bill made his debut into the society of the line. He gave the girls a dinner that they are talking of yet, and before two hours had gone by they were calling him pet names and incidentally trying to get a line on the actual size of his bank roll. They worked individually, and each one could in fancy see herself installed in a fine house, mistress of unlimited means and the wife of an especially easy mark, made to order for a chorus girl.

You see he was so liberal that he deceived them, although, as a matter of fact, young ladies with their wide experience ought to have known better, and have figured out the limit of his possibilities.

These ten thousand dollars were left by the dead man to be a bait for the wolves, and he had arranged it so that the hand of his son should feed it to them bit by bit. There were other thousands behind these and they were to be protected by the knowledge of the fate of the ones which had gone before. It was willed that ten thousand dollars of experience might be bought with it, and the boy was doing his share of it very well. He left his home and took a nice little apartment so that he could have more liberty, which he needed just about that time. He lunched with a soubrette and dined with a singer. If he liked a show or fancied one of the girls in it, he engaged a box every night for the week. The crowd dubbed him The Little Millionaire, and he deserved the title, for he was certainly playing the star part, and he was always present at what are known as rackets where the chief source of amusement were girls who cut capers and danced to the music of male voices.

His automobile, which always carried a bunch of freight from which ribbons and feathers fluttered, denoting the sex of the wearers, of course, shot up and down and in and out in a most spectacular manner, and it, as much as anything else, helped to make him popular.

He must have known a bit about finance, for it looked to those who were watching his career as if he was spending about ten thousand a week, and so he got the reputation of doing--as sometimes happens in this world--that which was impossible.

But through it all he never showed his hand.

He was dining one night with an especially nice little girl of the stage to whom he had shown a lot of attention--which means in stage parlance that he had bought her presents worth accepting.

They had come to the third bottle of wine, and to her way of thinking, the time seemed about ripe for what she had in mind.

“A man who’s been in the business a long time was telling me the other night that I ought to have a show of my own,” she mused, as she sipped her wine.

She had made a careful and skilful cast and she waited.

“Why don’t you?” he asked presently.

That was quicker action than she had dared to expect.

“I ought to have done it two years ago when I had a friend that wanted to start me out on the road. Don’t you think I’m as good as Blanche Bates?”

“How was it you didn’t go?” he queried, ignoring her question.

“Well, you see, I didn’t like this party, and I wouldn’t accept favors from no one I didn’t like. It don’t cost much to put a show on if you know how, and there’s a lot of money in it if it’s a hit.”

“About how much?”

“Twelve or fifteen thousand dollars would do it up in great shape. I think a nice little comic opera would be good. The kind Lillian Russell has. All she makes good on is her looks and that’s not so much. I could take a few music lessons while the play was being fixed up and it wouldn’t be long before I could make them all sit up and look me over.”

There was a moment’s pause and then she aimed at the bull’s eye:

“What’s the matter with you backing it?”

“That’s what I was just thinking about,” was the answer. “I’ll look into it and if it’s all right I’ll see my broker and give you a chance to see what you can do as a star.”

He was talking like an old timer and he had her going in a minute. But that was only one of his jokes and for two weeks he kept it up. Then he told her of some enormous investments he had made which had tied him up temporarily, while she had to go around explaining to her friends that it was all off about what she had been telling them.

There was one proposition this gay young sport hadn’t figured on, for all going out and nothing coming in makes a quick and, as a rule, a spectacular finish. A fellow starts out like a three-time winner and comes under the wire with nothing but a bundle of junk, without even knowing his right name.

Two months of the three had gone by and the most remarkable part of the whole affair was that there was any money left. But toward the latter part of the game he had been growing wise, or he thought he was, at any rate. He stopped the five-dollar tips and he was cutting out a night here and there. He might have retired with honors if he hadn’t met Blanche.

Good-looking, slick, clever Blanche, the regret of whose life was that she hadn’t met him first and got it all in one solid chunk. He didn’t know it, but he was made for Blanche, and what was more to the point, she knew it. In fact, there were very few things she didn’t know.

His talk about his brokers didn’t switch her in the least. There had been a time in her life when she might have believed it, but that time had gone by. She had lived in a fool’s paradise just once and that was enough for her.

He actually wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t consider it for a moment, because she didn’t figure him out as a future proposition for more than a couple of thousand at the most.

“You’re all right, Harry,” she said once, “but we won’t have any marrying just now. What we will do is go shopping. I want to furnish a flat so I can really have a home of my own and you will be just as welcome there as if you owned it yourself, so come along and we’ll pick the things out. You have very nice taste in such matters, I know, and we can have a good time buying.”

Good speech that, and very nicely delivered, and he liked her well enough to find no flaw in it. But when the time really came for the buying there was something else she had to do, so she said: