BAT JARVIS
Billy Windsor lived in a single room on East Fourteenth Street.
Space in New York is valuable, and the average bachelor's
apartments consist of one room with a bathroom opening off it.
During the daytime this one room loses all traces of being used for
sleeping purposes at night. Billy Windsor's room was very much like
a public-school study. Along one wall ran a settee. At night this
became a bed; but in the daytime it was a settee and nothing but a
settee. There was no space for a great deal of furniture. There was
one rocking-chair, two ordinary chairs, a table, a book-stand, a
typewriter--nobody uses pens in New York--and on the walls a mixed
collection of photographs, drawings, knives, and skins, relics of
their owner's prairie days. Over the door was the head of a young
bear.
Billy's first act on arriving in this sanctum was to release the
cat, which, having moved restlessly about for some moments, finally
came to the conclusion that there was no means of getting out, and
settled itself on a corner of the settee. Psmith, sinking
gracefully down beside it, stretched out his legs and lit a
cigarette. Mike took one of the ordinary chairs; and Billy Windsor,
planting himself in the rocker, began to rock rhythmically to and
fro, a performance which he kept up untiringly all the time.
"A peaceful scene," observed Psmith. "Three great minds, keen,
alert, restless during business hours, relax. All is calm and
pleasant chit-chat. You have snug quarters up here, Comrade
Windsor. I hold that there is nothing like one's own roof-tree.
It is a great treat to one who, like myself, is located in one of
these vast caravanserai--to be exact, the Astor--to pass a few
moments in the quiet privacy of an apartment such as this."
"It's beastly expensive at the Astor," said Mike.
"The place has that drawback also. Anon, Comrade Jackson, I think
we will hunt around for some such cubby-hole as this, built for
two. Our nervous systems must be conserved."
"On Fourth Avenue," said Billy Windsor, "you can get quite good
flats very cheap. Furnished, too. You should move there. It's not
much of a neighbourhood. I don't know if you mind that?"
"Far from it, Comrade Windsor. It is my aim to see New York in all
its phases. If a certain amount of harmless revelry can be whacked
out of Fourth Avenue, we must dash there with the vim of
highly-trained smell-dogs. Are you with me, Comrade Jackson?"
"All right," said Mike.
"And now, Comrade Windsor, it would be a pleasure to me to peruse
that little journal of which you spoke. I have had so few
opportunities of getting into touch with the literature of this
great country."
Billy Windsor stretched out an arm and pulled a bundle of papers
from the book-stand. He tossed them on to the settee by Psmith's
side.
"There you are," he said, "if you really feel like it. Don't say I
didn't warn you. If you've got the nerve, read on."
Psmith had picked up one of the papers when there came a shuffling
of feet in the passage outside, followed by a knock upon the door.
The next moment there appeared in the doorway a short, stout young
man. There was an indescribable air of toughness about him, partly
due to the fact that he wore his hair in a well-oiled fringe almost
down to his eyebrows, which gave him the appearance of having no
forehead at all. His eyes were small and set close together. His
mouth was wide, his jaw prominent. Not, in short, the sort of man
you would have picked out on sight as a model citizen.
His entrance was marked by a curious sibilant sound, which, on
acquaintance, proved to be a whistled tune. During the interview
which followed, except when he was speaking, the visitor whistled
softly and unceasingly.
"Mr. Windsor?" he said to the company at large.
Psmith waved a hand towards the rocking-chair. "That," he said, "is
Comrade Windsor. To your right is Comrade Jackson, England's
favourite son. I am Psmith."
The visitor blinked furtively, and whistled another tune. As he
looked round the room, his eye fell on the cat. His face lit up.
"Say!" he said, stepping forward, and touching the cat's collar,
"mine, mister."
"Are you Bat Jarvis?" asked Windsor with interest.
"Sure," said the visitor, not without a touch of complacency, as of
a monarch abandoning his incognito.
For Mr. Jarvis was a celebrity.
By profession he was a dealer in animals, birds, and snakes. He had
a fancier's shop in Groome street, in the heart of the Bowery. This
was on the ground-floor. His living abode was in the upper story of
that house, and it was there that he kept the twenty-three cats
whose necks were adorned with leather collars, and whose numbers
had so recently been reduced to twenty-two. But it was not the fact
that he possessed twenty-three cats with leather collars that made
Mr. Jarvis a celebrity.
A man may win a purely local reputation, if only for eccentricity,
by such means. But Mr. Jarvis's reputation was far from being
purely local. Broadway knew him, and the Tenderloin. Tammany Hall
knew him. Long Island City knew him. In the underworld of New York
his name was a by-word. For Bat Jarvis was the leader of the famous
Groome Street Gang, the most noted of all New York's collections of
Apaches. More, he was the founder and originator of it. And,
curiously enough, it had come into being from motives of sheer
benevolence. In Groome Street in those days there had been a
dance-hall, named the Shamrock and presided over by one Maginnis,
an Irishman and a friend of Bat's. At the Shamrock nightly dances
were given and well attended by the youth of the neighbourhood at
ten cents a head. All might have been well, had it not been for
certain other youths of the neighbourhood who did not dance and so
had to seek other means of getting rid of their surplus energy. It
was the practice of these light-hearted sportsmen to pay their ten
cents for admittance, and once in, to make hay. And this habit, Mr.
Maginnis found, was having a marked effect on his earnings. For
genuine lovers of the dance fought shy of a place where at any
moment Philistines might burst in and break heads and furniture. In
this crisis the proprietor thought of his friend Bat Jarvis. Bat at
that time had a solid reputation as a man of his hands. It is true
that, as his detractors pointed out, he had killed no one--a defect
which he had subsequently corrected; but his admirers based his
claim to respect on his many meritorious performances with fists
and with the black-jack. And Mr. Maginnis for one held him in the
very highest esteem. To Bat accordingly he went, and laid his
painful case before him. He offered him a handsome salary to be on
hand at the nightly dances and check undue revelry by his own
robust methods. Bat had accepted the offer. He had gone to Shamrock
Hall; and with him, faithful adherents, had gone such stalwarts as
Long Otto, Red Logan, Tommy Jefferson, and Pete Brodie. Shamrock
Hall became a place of joy and order; and--more important
still--the nucleus of the Groome Street Gang had been formed. The
work progressed. Off-shoots of the main gang sprang up here and
there about the East Side. Small thieves, pickpockets and the
like, flocked to Mr. Jarvis as their tribal leader and protector
and he protected them. For he, with his followers, were of use to
the politicians. The New York gangs, and especially the Groome
Street Gang, have brought to a fine art the gentle practice of
"repeating"; which, broadly speaking, is the art of voting a number
of different times at different polling-stations on election days.
A man who can vote, say, ten times in a single day for you, and who
controls a great number of followers who are also prepared, if they
like you, to vote ten times in a single day for you, is worth
cultivating. So the politicians passed the word to the police, and
the police left the Groome Street Gang unmolested and they waxed
fat and flourished.
Such was Bat Jarvis.
* * *
"Pipe de collar," said Mr. Jarvis, touching the cat's neck. "Mine,
mister."
"Pugsy said it must be," said Billy Windsor. "We found two fellows
setting a dog on to it, so we took it in for safety."
Mr. Jarvis nodded approval.
"There's a basket here, if you want it," said Billy.
"Nope. Here, kit."
Mr. Jarvis stooped, and, still whistling softly, lifted the cat. He
looked round the company, met Psmith's eye-glass, was transfixed by
it for a moment, and finally turned again to Billy Windsor.
"Say!" he said, and paused. "Obliged," he added.
He shifted the cat on to his left arm, and extended his right hand
to Billy.
"Shake!" he said.
Billy did so.
Mr. Jarvis continued to stand and whistle for a few moments more.
"Say!" he said at length, fixing his roving gaze once more upon
Billy. "Obliged. Fond of de kit, I am."
Psmith nodded approvingly.
"And rightly," he said. "Rightly, Comrade Jarvis. She is not
unworthy of your affection. A most companionable animal, full of
the highest spirits. Her knockabout act in the restaurant would
have satisfied the most jaded critic. No diner-out can afford to be
without such a cat. Such a cat spells death to boredom."
Mr. Jarvis eyed him fixedly, as if pondering over his remarks. Then
he turned to Billy again.
"Say!" he said. "Any time you're in bad. Glad to be of service.
You know the address. Groome Street. Bat Jarvis. Good night.
Obliged."
He paused and whistled a few more bars, then nodded to Psmith and
Mike, and left the room. They heard him shuffling downstairs.
"A blithe spirit," said Psmith. "Not garrulous, perhaps, but what of
that? I am a man of few words myself. Comrade Jarvis's massive
silences appeal to me. He seems to have taken a fancy to you,
Comrade Windsor."
Billy Windsor laughed.
"I don't know that he's just the sort of side-partner I'd go out of
my way to choose, from what I've heard about him. Still, if one got
mixed up with any of that East-Side crowd, he would be a mighty
useful friend to have. I guess there's no harm done by getting him
grateful."
"Assuredly not," said Psmith. "We should not despise the humblest.
And now, Comrade Windsor," he said, taking up the paper again, "let
me concentrate myself tensely on this very entertaining little
journal of yours. Comrade Jackson, here is one for you. For sound,
clear-headed criticism," he added to Billy, "Comrade Jackson's name
is a by-word in our English literary salons. His opinion will be
both of interest and of profit to you, Comrade Windsor."