Part 11

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.

X.--THE COOKING OF CRAZY BUTCH

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 on _skush._” Hating the sun, however, as all true criminals, must, he shifted to night jobs, and took his dingy place in the ranks of viciousness as a _schlamwerker_. 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 a _shush_ or _schlam_ job; 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. His _schlam_ work had never been first class. It was the want of finish to it which earned him the name of Butch. The second night after his stampede of the Squab-Wheelmen, his clumsiness in a Brooklyn flat woke up a woman, who woke up the neighborhood. Whereupon, the neighborhood rushed in and sat upon the body of Butch, until the police came to claim him. Subsequently, a Kings County judge saw his way clear to send Butch up the river for four weary years. And did.

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.