Part 6

Besides, when it came to that, Louie's heart was really given to a blonde burlesquer, opulent of charm. This _artiste_ snubbed and neglected Louie for the love of a stage manager. But she took and spent Louie's money, almost if not quite as fast as Pretty Agnes and Mollie Squint could bring it to him from the streets.

Louie never made any place his hangout long. There was no element of loyalty in him, whether for man or for woman, and he went from friend to friend and gang to gang. He would stay nowhere, remain with no one, after his supremacy had been challenged. And such hardy natures as Biff Ellison, Jimmy Kelly, Big Mike Abrams, Chick Tricker and Jack Sirocco were bound to challenge it. They had a way, too, of putting the acid on an individual, and unless his fighting heart were purest gold they'd surely find it out. And Louie never stood the test. Thus, beginning at Big Jack's in Chatham Square, Louie went from hangout to hangout, mob to mob, until, working through Nigger Mike's, the Chatham Club and Sharkey's, he came at last to pal in with the Humpty Jackson guerrillas.

These worthies had a stamping ground in a graveyard between First and Second Avenue, in the block bounded north and south by Twelfth and Thirteenth Streets. There Louie was wont to meet such select company as Monahokky, Nigger Ruhl, Candy Phil, the Lobster Kid, Maxie Hahn, and the Grabber. As they lolled idly among the tombstones, he would give them his adventures by flood and by field. Louie, besides being conceited, was gifted with an imagination and liked to hear himself talk. Not that he felt obliged to accuracy in these narrations. It was enough that he made them thrilling, and in their telling shed an effulgent ray upon himself.

While he could entertain with his stories, Louie was never popular. There was that doubt about his courage. Also, he was too frugal. No one had ever caught the color of his money. Save in the avaricious instance of the big blonde burlesquer, as hungry as false, he held by the selfish theology that it is more blessed to receive than to give.

Taking one reason and another, those about Louie at the finish were mainly the Humpty Jackson bunch. His best hangout of any fashion was the Hesper Club. Had Humpty Jackson remained with his own, Louie might have been driven, in search of comradeship, to go still further afield. Humpty was no weakling, and while on the surface a whining, wheedling, complaining cripple, owned his volcanic side, and had once shot it out, gun to gun and face to face, with no less a paladin than Jimmy Kelly. Louie would have found the same fault with Humpty that he had found with those others. Only Humpty didn't last long enough after Louie joined his forces. Some robbery came off, and a dull jury held Humpty responsible. With that, the judge sent him up for a long term of years, and there he sticks to-day. Humpty took the journey crying that he had been jobbed by the police. However that may have been, his going made it possible for Louie to remain with the Jacksons, and shine at those ghoulish, graveyard meetings, much longer than might otherwise have been the case.

While Louie had removed to the remote regions about Fourteenth Street and Third Avenue, and was seldom seen in Chatham Square or Chinatown, he was not forgotten in those latter precincts. Jew Yetta brought up his name one evening in the Chatham Club, and spoke scornfully of him in conjunction with the opulent blonde.

“That doll's makin' a farmer of Louie,” was the view of Jew Yetta.

“At that,” remarked the Dropper--for this was in the days of his liberty and before he had been put away--“farmer or no farmer, it's comin' easier for him now than when he was in the navy, eatin' sow-belly out of a harness cask an' drinkin' bilge. W'at's that ship he says he's sailin' in, Nailer?” continued the Dropper. “Ain't it a tub called _Atalanta?_”

“There never is a ship in the navy named _Atalanta_.”

This declaration, delivered with emphasis, emanated from old Jimmy, who had a place by himself in East Side consideration. Old Jimmy was about sixty, with a hardwood-finish face and 'possum-colored hair. He had been a river pirate in the old days, and roamed the midnight waters for what he might pick up. Those were times when he troubled the police, who made him trouble in return. But one day old Jimmy salvaged a rich man's daughter, who--as though to make his fortune--had fallen overboard from a yacht, and bored her small hole in the water within a rod or two of Jimmy's skiff. Certainly, he fished her out, and did it with a boat hook. More; he sagaciously laid her willowy form across a thwart, to the end that the river water flow more easily from her rosebud mouth. Relieved of the water, the rescued beauty thanked Jimmy profusely; and, for his generous part, her millionaire father proceeded to pension his child's preserver for life. The pension was twenty-five dollars a week. Coming fresh and fresh with every Monday, Jimmy gave up his piracies and no longer haunted in the name of loot the nightly reaches of the river. Indeed, he became offensively idle and honest.

“No sir,” repeated old Jimmy; “there never is a ship in our navy named _Atalanta_.”

“All th' same,” retorted the dropper, “I lamps a yacht once w'at's called _Atalanta_.”

“An' who says No?” demanded old Jimmy, testily. “I'm talkin' about th' United States Navy. But speakin' of Louie, it ain't no cinch he's ever in th 'navy. I'd sooner bet he's been in jail.”

“An' if he was,” said Jew Yetta, “there ain't no one here who's got anything on him.”

“W'at does Atalanta mean, anyway?” questioned the Dropper, who didn't like the talk of jails. “Is it a place?”

“Nixie,” put in Slimmy, the erudite, ever ready to display his learning. “Atalanta's the name of a skirt, who b'longs 'way back. She's some soon as a sprinter, too, an' can run her one hundred yards in better than ten seconds. Every god on Olympus clocked this dame, an' knew what she could do.”

“W'at's her story?” asked the Dropper.

“It gets along, d'ye see, where Atalanta's folks thinks she ought to get married. But she won't have it; she'd sooner be a sprinter. With that, they crowd her hand; an' to get shut of 'em, she finally tacks it up on the bulletin board that she'll chase to th' altar only with some student who can beat her at a quarter mile dash. 'No lobsters need apply!' says she. Also, there's conditions. Under the rules, if some chump calls th' bluff, an' can't make good--if she lands him loses--her papa's headsman will be on th' job with his axe, an' that beaten gink'll get his block whacked off.”

“An' does any one go against such a game?” queried Jew Yetta.

“Sure! A whole fleet of young Archibalds and Reginalds went up ag'inst it. They all lose; an' his jiblets wit' th' cleaver chops off their youthful beans.

“But the luck turns. One day a sure-thing geek shows up whose monaker is Hippomenes. Hippy's a fly Indian; there ain't goin' to be no headsman in his. Hippy's hep to skirts, too, an' knows where th' board is off their fence. He organizes with three gold apples, see, an' every time little Atalanta Shootin' Star goes flashin' by, he chucks down one of 'em in front of her. She simply eats it up; she can't get by not one; an' she loses so much time grabbin' for 'em, Hippy noses in a winner.”

“Good boy!” broke forth the Dropper. “An' do they hook up?”

“They're married; but it don't last. You see its Venus who shows Hippy how to crab Atalanta's act an' stakes him to th' gold apples. An' later, when he double-crosses Venus, that goddess changes him an' his baby mine into a-couple of lions.”

The Irish Wop had been listening impatiently. It was when Governor Hughes flourished in Albany, and the race tracks were being threatened. The Wop, as a pool-room keeper, was vastly concerned.

“I see,” said the Wop, appealing directly to old Jimmy as the East Side Nestor, “that la-a-ad Hughes is makin' it hot for Belmont an' Keene an' th' rist av th' racin' gang. Phwat's he so ha-a-ard on racin' for? Do yez look on playin' th' ponies as a vice, Jimmy?”

“Well,” responded old Jimmy with a conservative air, “I don't know as I'd call it a vice so much as a bonehead play.”

“They call it th' shpo-r-rt av kings,” observed die Wop, loftily.

Old Jimmy snorted. “Sport of kings!” said he. “Sport of come-ons, rather. Them Sport-of-kings gezebos 'll go on, too, an' give you a lot of guff about racin' bein' healthy. But they ain't sayin' a word concernin' th' mothers an' youngones livin' in hot two-room tenements, an' jumpin' sideways for grub, while th' husbands and fathers is blowin' in their bank-rolls in th' bettin' ring, an' gettin' healthy. An' th' little jocks, too--mere kids! I've wondered th' Gerries didn't get after 'em. But I suppose th' Gerries know who to pass up, an' who to pinch, as well as th' oldest skipper on th' Force.”

“F'r all that,” contended the Wop, stubbornly, “thim la-a-ads that's mixed up wit' th' racin' game is good feltys.”

“Good fellows,” repeated old Jimmy with contempt. “I recollect seein' a picture once, a picture of a girl--a young wife, she is--lyin' with her head on an untouched dinner table--fallen asleep, poor thing! Th' clock in the picture is pointin' to midnight. There she's been waitin' with th' dinner she's cooked with her own little lovin' mitts, for that souse of a husband to come home. Under th' picture it says, 'For he's a jolly good fellow!'”

“Somebody'd ought to have put a head on him!” quoth Jew Yetta, whose sympathies were both active and militant.

“Say,” went on Jimmy, “that picture gets on my nerves. A week later I'm down be th' old Delmonico joint at Twenty-sixth an' Broadway. It's meb-by one o'clock in th' mornin'. As I'm goin' by th' Twenty-sixt' Street door, out floats a fleet of Willies, stewed to the gills, singin' in honor of a dude who's in th' middle, 'For he's a jolly good fellow.'

“'Who's that galoot?' I asks th' dub who's slammin' carriage doors at the curb. 'Is he a married man?'

“'He's married all right,” says th' door-slammin' dub.

“Wit that I tears into him. It's a good while ago, an' I could slug a little. Be th' time th' copper gets there, I've got that jolly good fellow lookin' like he'd been caught whistlin' _Croppies Lie Down_ at Fiftieth Street an' Fift' Avenoo when th' Cathedral lets out.”

“Well, I'm not married,” remarked the Wop, snappishly;--“I'm not married; I niver was married; an' I niver will be married aloive.”

“Did youse notice?” remarked the Dropper, “how they gets a roar out of old Boss Croker? He's for racin' all right.”

“Naturally,” said old Jimmy. “Him ownin' race horses, Croker's for th' race tracks. He don't cut no ice.”

“How much do yez figger Croker had cleaned up, Jimmy, when he made his getaway for Ireland?” asked the Wop, licking an envious lip.

“Without comin' down to book-keepin',” returned old Jimmy, carelessly, “my understandin' is that, be havin' th' whole wad changed into thousand dollar bills, he's able to get it down to th' dock on a dray.”

The Grabber came in. He beckoned Slimmy, and the two were at once immersed in serious whisperings.

“What are youse two stews chinnin' about?” called out the Dropper lazily, from across the room. “Be youse thinkin' of orderin' th' beer?”

“It's about Indian Louie,” replied Slimmy, angrily. “Th' Grabber here says Louie's out to skin us.”

“Indian Louie,” remarked the Wop, with a gleam in his little gray eye. “That's th' labberick w'at's goin' to shti-i-ick up me poolroom f'r thim fifty bones. Anny wan that'd have annything to do wit' a bum loike him ought to get skinned.”

“W'at's he tryin' to saw off on youse?” asked the Dropper.

“This is th' proposition.” It was the Grabber now. “Me an' Slimmy here goes in wit' Louie to give that racket last week in Tammany Hall. Now Louie's got th' whole bundle, an' he won't split it. Me an' Slimmy's been t'run down for six hundred good iron dollars apiece.”

“An' be yez goin' to let him get away wit' it?” demanded the Wop.

“W'at can we do?” asked the Grabber, disconsolately.

“It's that big blonde,” declared Jew Yetta' with acrimony. “She's goin' through Louie for every dollar. I wonder Mollie Squint an' Pretty Agnes don't put her on th' fritz.”

The Hesper Club was in Second Avenue between Sixth and Seventh Streets. It was one o'clock in the morning when Indian Louie took his accustomed seat at the big table in the corner.

“How's everybody?” he asked, easily. “I oversleeps meself, or I'd been here hours ago.”

“W'at tires you?” asked Candy Phil. Not that he cared, but merely by way of conversation.

“It's th' big feed last night at Terrace Garden. I'm two days trainin' for it, an' all day gettin' over it. Them swell blowouts is something fierce!” and Louie assumed a wan and weary air, intended to be superior.

“So you was at Terrace Garden?” said Nigger Ruhl.

“Was I? Youse should have seen me! Patent leathers, white choker, and a diamond in th' middle of me three-sheet big enough to trip a dog.”

“There's nothin' in them dress suits,” protested Maxie Hahn. “I'm ag'inst 'em; they ain't dimmycratic.”

“All th' same, youse've got to wear 'em at these swell feeds,” said Candy Phil. “They'd give youse th' gate if you don't. An' as for not bein' dimmycratic”--Candy Phil had his jocose side--“they make it so you can't tell th' high-guys from th' waiters, an' if that ain't dimmycratic what is? Th' only thing I know ag'inst 'em is that youse can't go to th' floor wit' a guy in 'em. You've got to cut out th' scrappin', an' live up to the suit, see?” The Grabber strolled in, careless and smiling. Louie fastened him with eyes of dark suspicion, while Maxie Hahn, the' Lobster Kid and Candy Phil began pushing their chairs out of the line of possible fire. For they knew of those monetary differences.

“Not a chance, sports,” remarked the Grabber, reassuringly. “No one's goin' to start anything. Let's take a drink,” and the Grabber beat upon the table as a sign of thirst. “I ain't after no one here.”

“Be youse alludin' to me, Grabber?” asked Louie, with a frown like a great cloud. “I don't like them cracks about startin' somethin'.”

“Keep your shoit on,” expostulated the Grabber, clinking down the change for the round of beers; “keep your shoit on, Louie. I ain't alludin' at nobody nor nothin', least of all at youse. Besides, I just gets a message for you--only you don't seem in no humor to receive it.”

“Who's it from?” asked Louie.

“It's Laura”--Laura was the opulent blonde--“Mollie Squint an' Pretty Agnes runs up on her about an hour ago at Twelfth Street an' Second Avenoo, an' Mollie bounces a brick off her coco. A copper comes along an' chases Mollie an' Pretty Agnes. I gets there as they're carry in' Laura into that Dago's joint be th' corner. Laura asks me if I sees youse to tell w'at's happened her; that's all.”

“Was Mollie and Agnes sloughed in?” asked Louie, whose practical mind went first to his breadwinners.

“No, they faded into th' next street. Th' cop don't want to pinch 'em anyway.”

“About Laura; was she hoited much?”

“Ten stiches, an' a week in Roosevelt Hospital; that's the best she can get.”

“I must chase round an' look her over,” was Louie's anxious conclusion. “W'at's that Dago joint she's at?”

“It's be th' corner,” said the Grabber, “an' up stairs. I forgets the wop's monaker.” As Louie hesitated over these vague directions, the Grabber set down his glass. “Say, to show there's no hard feelin', I'll go wit' youse.”

As Louie and the Grabber disappeared through the door, Candy Phil threw up both hands as one astonished to the verge of nervous shock.

“Well, w'at do youse think of that?” he exclaimed. “I always figgered Louie had bats in his belfry; now I knows it. They'll croak him sure!” Nigger Ruhl and the Lobster Kid arose as though to follow. At this, Candy Phil broke out fiercely.

“W'at's wrong wit' youse stews? Stick where you be!”

“But they'll cook Louie!” expostulated the Lobster Kid.

“It ain't no skin off your nose if they do. W'y should youse go buttin' in?”

Louie and the Grabber were in Twelfth Street, hurrying towards Second Avenue. Not a soul, except themselves, was abroad. The Grabber walked on Louie's right, which showed that either the latter was not the gunplayer he pretended, or the word from Laura had thrown him off his guard.

Suddenly, as the pair passed a dark hallway, the Grabber's left arm stole round Louie's neck.

“About that dough, Louie!” hissed the Grabber, at the same time tightening his left arm.

Louie half turned to free himself from the artful Grabber. As he did so, the Grabber's ready right hand brought his pistol into action, and one bullet and then another flashed through Louie's brain. A slim form rushed out of the dark hallway, and fired two bullets into Louie's body. Louie was dead before he struck the pavement.

The Grabber, with his slim companion, darted through the dark hallway, out a rear door and over a back fence. Sixty seconds later they were quietly walking in Thirteenth Street, examples of law-abiding peace.

“It was th' easiest ever, Slimmy!” whispered the Grabber, when he had recovered his breath. “I knew that stall about Laura'd fetch him.”

“Who was at th' Hesper Club?”

“On'y Candy Phil, th' Lobster Kid an' two or three other blokes. Every one of 'em's a right guy. They won't rap.”

“Thim la-a-ads,” remarked the Wop, judiciously, when he heard of Louie's taking off--“thim la-a-ads musht 'av lost their heads. There's six or seven hundred bones on that bum, an' they niver copped a splinter!”

The word came two ways to the Central Office. One report said “Indian Louie” and another “Johnny Spanish.” Detective O'Farrell invaded Chinatown, and dug up Big Mike Abrams, that the doubt might be removed.

“It's Indian Louie, all right,” said Big Mike, following a moment's silent survey of the rigid form. Then, in a most unlooked for vein of sentiment: “They all get here at last!”

“That's no dream!” agreed the morgue attendant. “An', say, Mike”--he liked his joke as well as any other--“I've been expectin' you for some time.”

“Sure!” returned Big Mike, with a friendly grin; “I'll come chasin' along, feet foist, some mornin'. But don't forget that while I'm waitin' I'm workin'. I've sent two stiffs down here to youse already, to help keep you goin' till I comes. Accordin' to th' chances, however, me own turn oughtn't to be so very far away.”

Big Mike Abram's turn was just three weeks away.

“Who were those two, Mike, you sent down here to the morgue?” asked O'Farrell, carelessly.

O'Farrell had a catlike fame for slyness.

“Say,” grinned Big Mike, derisively; “look me over! I ain't wearin' no medals, am I, for givin' meself up to you bulls?”

VI.--HOW JACKEEN SLEW THE DOC

In person he was tall, languid, slender, as neat as a cat, and his sallow face--over which had settled the opium pallor--was not an ugly face. Also, there abode such weakness, some good, and no harm in him. His constitution was rickety. In the winter he coughed and invited pneumonia; in the summer, when the sun poured down, he trembled on the brink of a stroke. But neither pneumonia nor sunstroke ever quite killed him.

It was written that Jackeen would do that--Jackeen Dalton, _alias_ Brady; and Jackeen did it with five bullets from an automatic-38. Some said that opium was at the bottom of it; others laid it to love. It is still greatly talked over in what pipe joints abound in Mott, Pell and Doyers, not to mention the wider Catherine Street, in the neighborhood of number Nineteen, where he had his flat and received his friends.

They called him the Doc. Twenty years ago the Doc studied dentistry with his father, who flourished reputably as a tooth surgeon at the Troy Dental Parlors in Roosevelt Street. The father died before the Doc had been given a diploma; and the Doc, having meanwhile picked up the opium habit, was never able afterwards to see the use. Why should he be examined or ask for a license? What foolishness! Magnanimously waving aside every thought of the sort, he plunged into the practice of his cheerless art among those who went in and out of Chinatown, and who lived precariously by pocket-picking, porch-climbing, safe-blowing and all-round strong-arm methods; and, careless of the statute in such case made and provided, he proceeded to file and drill and cap and fill and bridge and plug and pull their aching cuspids, bicuspids and molars, and all with as quick an instinct and as deft a touch as though his eyes were sharpened and his hand made steady by the dental sheepskins of a dozen colleges. That he was an outlaw among tooth-drawers served only to knit him more closely to the hearts of his patients--themselves merest outlaws among men.

The Doc kept his flat in Catherine Street as bright and burnished as the captain's cabin of a man-of-war. There was no prodigious wealth of furniture, no avalanche of ornament to overwhelm the taste. Aside from an outfit of dental tools, the most expensive belongings appeared to be what lamps and pipes and kindred paraphernalia were required in the smoking of opium.

Those who visited the Doc were compelled to one formality. Before he would open his door, they must push the bell four times and four times tap on the panel. Thus did they prove their friendly identity. Lawful dentists, in their jealousy, had had the Doc arrested and fined, from time to time, for intromitting with the teeth of his fellow worms without a license. Hence that precautionary quartet of rings, followed by the quartet of taps, indicative that a friend and not a foe was at his gate.

The Doc had many callers who came to smoke opium. For these he did divers kindly offices, mostly in the letter-writing line. As they reclined and smoked, they dictated while the Doc transcribed, and many and weird were the epistles from Nineteen Catherine Street which found their way into the mails. For this service, as for his opium and dentistry, the Doc's callers never failed to press upon him an honorarium. And so he lived.

Love, that flowerlike sentiment for which--as some jurist once remarked of justice--all places are palaces, all seasons summer, is not incompatible with either dentistry or opium. The Doc had a sweetheart named Lulu. Lulu was very beautiful and very jealous. Also, she was broadly popular. All Chinatown made songs to the deep glories of her eyes, which were supposed to have excited the defeated envy of many stars. The Doc, in what odd hours he could snatch from tooth-drawing and opium-smoking, worshipped at the shrine of Lulu; and Lulu was wrapped up in the Doc. Number Nineteen Catherine Street served as their Garden of Eden.

Now it is among the many defects of opium that it renders migratory the fancy. An ebon evidence of this was to be given at number Nineteen. The I love of the Doc became, as it were, pipe-deflected, and one day left Lulu, and, after a deal of fond circling, settled like some errant dove upon a rival belle called May.

Likewise, there was a dangerous side to this dulcet, new situation. The enchanting May, when the Doc chose her for his goddess, vice Lulu thrown down, could not be described as altogether disengaged. Was she not also the goddess of Jackeen? Had not that earnest safe-robber laid his heart at her feet?

Moreover, there were reasons even more substantial. The gentle May was in her way a breadwinner. When the fortunes of Jackeen were low, she became their mutual meal-ticket. May was the most expert shoplifter in all of broad New York. If not upon heart arguments, then upon arguments of the pocket, not to say stomach, Jackeen might be expected to fiercely resent any effort to win her love away.

Jackeen?