Part 13

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.”

XII.--THE GOING OF BIFF ELLISON

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.”