of wit than he and he was used to telling me obvious things as he did
now. “Of course she was after the money, Steve.” He stopped a moment
and then said, “But not that way.”
“What way?”
“By the ‘bump off’; she wasn’t up to it. That was shoved on her, Steve;
and she’s sore.”
“At whom?”
He tapped his chest. “Our friend. Sit down, Steve.”
I sat on the chair; he on the bed.
“He’s traveling fast, Steve.”
“Who?”
Again he said, “Our friend. So far as I can trace him back, he hadn’t
been worse than a ‘gun’ up to that job on Dorothy Crewe; that was a
borderland act for him. He started it out like a ‘gun’ and finished up
rough. With Win Scofield, he was all the way a ‘gorilla’!”
“Gunman you mean by ‘gun’?” I asked.
“Almost the opposite, Steve. A ‘gun’s’ a guy who gives action to his
brain instead of to his cannon; he gets by without the shootings. A
gorilla’s a guy that goes in for the rough stuff. A girl doesn’t worry
when she’s got a good ‘gun’ for her gentleman friend; she’s personally
as safe with him as with any church warden. He hasn’t any hankering for
doing a croak; and he hasn’t any habit of getting out of his troubles
that way. But when a guy that a girl goes with takes to being a
gorilla, the skirt’s got to watch her step with him. She knows it.”
“Where is he now, Jerry?”
“Do you suppose I know?”
“You must know more than I do.”
“That’s right.” He tossed me a box of cigarettes. “Smoke if you want.
Nobody’ll come for a while. I allowed us a little time, particularly
so you may become better acquainted with my friend--” again he tapped
his chest--“Keeban, my childhood companion, more recently the robber
of Dorothy Crewe and the bumper off of old Win Scofield. He seems not
to be indigenous to Chicago soil, Steve. Assuming that he was--and
therefore is--a twin of mine, it is likely that my parents were merely
visiting here when they loosed me in the park, and you and I met, old
Top. Anyway, they must have moved on to New York, for my friend made
his reputation there.
“I haven’t been able to gather anything about my own people--no more
than you can judge from him and me. Maybe they turned us both loose at
the same time and I walked into the hands of a wholesale grocer while a
gerver picked him up.”
“Gerver?”
“Safe-blower, Steve. My friend seems to have made his start as a
‘peterman’ and then branched out. He’ll blow a peter yet, they say,
to keep his hand in; and he packs with him, when he thinks he’ll find
trouble, the peterman’s tube of his trade--a little, corked bottle of
soup for emergencies, Steve. Nitro-glycerine, that’s all. Interesting
idea, what?”
“The nitro?”
“No, that the difference between us is the direction we wandered when
we got loose--or were turned loose--twenty-five years ago in Lincoln
Park. I walked straight into the bean business and he into blowing
safes. Was that all there was to it--the angle our feet took across the
grass in the park? What do you think, Steve?”
I shook my head.
“A man likes to think with Shakespeare that he is master of his fate,”
Jerry went on, “and that fault or strength is in himself, not in his
stars. There is no bunch of bunk I hate worse than that environment is
to blame for crime and the individual has almost nothing to do with it.”
“Give Shakespeare credit for thinking it out further,” I said. ‘Julius
Cæsar’ always was a favorite of mine and one thing I knew. “He said,
‘Men _at some time_ are masters of their fates: the fault, dear Brutus,
is not in our stars but in ourselves.’”
Jerry nodded. “That’s right. My friend’s clever; he can see now, if he
couldn’t when he was younger. Then there’s something else--a twist in
his brain that’s not in mine? Yet I don’t know: maybe we’re identical,
inwardly as well as outside. Maybe the difference is that I never knew
what it was to want without being able, lawfully, to get. The cards are
stacked in this game of civilization which we play.”
That hit one of my pet ideas, as I’ve mentioned; so I objected, “No,
they’re not.”
“I remember what you think, Steve. I liked to think it too; but now
I’ve gone from the side the cards favor to the side that gets the worst
of the deal. What in the devil is law, Steve?”
“Law?” I said.
Again he laughed. “You said that, old Top, as though I’d asked ‘What
is the sun?’ It shines on you so, Steve; to ask about it is to you
the acme of foolish questions; but it’s not to the man who’s brought
up under the cloud. What is law? I never even looked up a dictionary
definition till I got talking to some of my present friends; now here’s
just what Webster says: ‘A rule of conduct established by an authority
able to enforce its will.’ That’s all there is to it--a set of rules
drawn up by the first men on the ground, who’ve grabbed everything
in sight, and who naturally want to perpetuate and increase their
possessions. Hence they fix up a lot of rules in their favor which they
call law. If you come along later, and are boob enough to believe it’s
best to work with them, you’re a good lawful citizen; if you carry a
few ideas of your own, and mean to get ahead without asking anybody’s
permission, you’re a lawbreaker.”
That peeved me; he saw it and smiled.
“I’m quoting, Steve; quoting.”
“Quoting who?”
“Oh, philosophers with any number of aliases. There’s no philosopher
like a flat-worker or a good gopher man. In the first place, they’ve
plenty of time to think; their hours of actual effort are short, if
rather intense; and between them are periods of leisure which may
become decidedly protracted, if they’re picked up. Those who complain
that the ancient Greek art of dialectics is declining simply confess
the constriction of their acquaintance. Socrates--so I am convinced,
Steve--was a burglar who’d served about two terms when he got so good
that Plato picked him up, covered his past and wrote him down. Possibly
you noticed in the delicatessen the other day a friend of mine not
lacking in muscular development----”
“Oh, the dyke-keeper!” I said.
“What?”
I explained.
Jerry smiled; he knew my ways. “Any time you’re overwhelmed with fear
that logic languishes, Steve, start a little argument with him. Now
imagine a little boy, like me in my white dress the day you picked me
up, walking into hands like his for education.”
“Oh, that’s what you’re getting to!”
“You’ve guessed it. Soon you’re likely to meet my friend Keeban
again--under circumstances which I confess I can’t completely foresee;
yet whatever they are, it can’t be anything but a help to better
understand his point of view.
“Now here we are or were, Steve--my brother and I. I walked into the
bean business, with its logic, such as it is. What is the end and aim
of Fanneal and Company, Steve?”
“Why,” I said, “why to----”
“To what?”
“To sell good food.”
“Why?”
“Why, for people to eat?”
“Your effort is to increase the consumption of food, isn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“You do it for profit, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Now which is the fact--that most people, here in this country, eat too
much or too little?”
“Too much.”
“Which is a decided detriment to health and longevity, is it not?”
“Yes.”
“Then the actual result of your business, which you steadily push for
your own profit, is to lessen health and shorten life?”
I laughed now. But he was at me. “Why the laugh, Steve?”
“That’s bunk and you know it.”
“Where’s it bunk, Steve? Where’s the flaw? Where, if anywhere, did
the fallacy creep in? Now let us leap to the safe-blowing business.
What, my foster-brother Stephen, is the fundamental curse of this
country at this time? I’m not asking you a question which seeks any
strange or heathen answer. Let us take only the answer that the pulpit
itself offers, let us quote not only Christ but the economists and
sociologists of our own and other leading conservative universities.
What has ruined more families, softened and destroyed the fiber of
more individuals, especially the young--who above all should be
preserved--than the accumulation of wealth? What else, Steve?”
I had no answer.
“Now where do men keep their accumulations of wealth?”
“In safes.”
“Exactly. So, in safes, lies the greatest danger to the individual
and to society. Consequently, what else does he do, who removes the
contents of the safe and dissipates it, than protect the accumulator
and society from the increasing menace of that wealth which, left in
the accumulator’s hands, would grow and grow till it destroyed all? Who
is the friend of society, Steve--he who confesses to increasing the
staggering sum of degenerative diseases brought on by overeating which
he encourages for his own profit, or he who, at tremendous risk to
himself, and with no hope of public favor when he succeeds, yet sets
himself to strike and strike again and again at the very source of
danger and decay?”
Jerry caught his breath. “Let us remain for a moment, Steve, not in the
school of Astor Street but in that of my brother, Keeban.
“I’ve often wondered, particularly during these last days, what went
through his head when he first discovered me. He got a hint of my
existence, you know, when we were at Princeton. He could have guessed
where I was; and maybe he came out a time or two, to look me over. I
wonder what he thought of me. I was to him a ‘toff,’ I suppose; to him,
I was running with those whom he despised. For hate and contempt comes
into all this, Steve. You’ve got to work up your feelings to carry on
any kind of war, and particularly the most personal war of all; you’ve
got to talk atrocities and have your hymn of hate. So probably he
started hating me.
“But he was curious about me, too, I bet. Of course he saw a big chance
to make a great clean-up by suddenly becoming me some day--or night.
There I was, identical with him; I bet, while he was watching and
waiting, he wondered a lot about me.
“He even had a girl like mine; you saw that Christina looked like
Dot. He came on here with Christina about six months ago and Win
Scofield met her at a cabaret and went crazy over her. We know what
happened from the Scofield point of view. From Christina’s and my
friend’s--well, he told her to go to it, pick up a million or so and
get out. Or maybe she’d do it nicely and legally, assert cruelty and
get a divorce with whopping alimony in the most proper way.
“Then Fred and Kenyon thought they’d stop anything like that; they
whipsawed the old man out of his control of the company when he was
away and had him on an allowance when he got home. They thought they
were awfully smart. All they did was sentence their father; that’s all.
Meanwhile my friend turned some of his attention back to me, letting
the well-known mill of the gods do its bit of grinding on the Scofield
affair.
“Harrison Crewe was arriving in dear old Chicago with a nice necklace
for daughter Dorothy. The newspapers not only appraised it but
advertised its first appearance with all details. I was to escort
daughter and necklace first to the Sparlings’ where there would be a
wedding, after which the line of march would be down the Boulevard to
the Drake. Probably my friend was still in Chicago; if he’d been called
to New York on business, he must have jumped the Century and come back
again with opportunity pounding on his door like that.
“Well, he arrived and we know what he did.”
Jerry looked down and then suddenly up at me. “Seen Dot recently,
Steve?”
I nodded.
“She still thinks it was me?”
I had to nod again.
“You’ve seen her since--” his voice hardened and he finished, “the
Scofield bump off?”
“Yes.”
“That was me, too?”
“She thinks, you see,” I said, “you’re no longer yourself.”
“Kind of her,” said he. “Very. Well, I’d gathered as much from the
papers. I don’t blame her. Where were we?”
“He’d got the necklace.”
“Oh, yes; and Fred and Ken Scofield were informing their father’s wife
that, after cutting off the old man with an allowance, they were also
going to let his insurance lapse. Now, about that time, a queer thing
was happening with that young wife--queer if you keep on staring at
just what you see from Astor Street. Christina got a hankering for
decency.”
“You mean she liked Win Scofield?”
“She liked being his wife--if only for the novelty. The old man, for
himself, was nothing to her. She was crazy about Keeban.”
“Yet married Win Scofield.”
“‘My friend’ told her to. Probably he was coming to one of the times
when he was getting tired of her, anyway; he took her up, off and on;
off times, he picked up with other girls. So, till he wanted her again,
he thought he’d park her with the Scofield family and let her gather
half a million for him.”
“What did she think when she first saw you?”
“Oh, she knew about me, sure enough. Part of ‘my friend’s’ plan in
planting her in society must have been to help his scheme with me;
she was his inside wire on that job and went through with her end so
smoothly that no one suspected, no one even mentioned her; she wasn’t
even “Among those present” printed in the paper after the Sparling
affair. Undoubtedly she’d have gone right through with the arrangement
rigged on old Win, if ‘my friend’ had stuck to original prospectus; but
Fred and Ken didn’t make that possible. And ‘my friend’, from his point
of view, was left with no other course than to croak old Win. If he was
to maintain any sort of discipline, he simply had to do it.”
“Discipline of whom? Shirley?”
“For one, among others. My brother,” said Jerry, avoiding his previous
euphemism of “friend” and speaking with a queer timbre of pride, “had
a leadership to maintain and improve, a certain record of success to
conserve. A man in his position must, above every one else, save his
face; he can let no one smile at him. Here he had let his girl go to
old Win Scofield to make him some money and Win’s sons had made it
impossible, unless somebody croaked Win; so Win had to be croaked; not
merely for the money, but to save ‘my friend’s’ face.
“Now Shirley, on the square, tried to stop that; from the time I spoke
to you, she was never against you. It’s right for her to have the
insurance money that’s paid; she was not in the scheme of the croaking;
nobody can ever show she was.”
“She accused you to me,” I said.
Jerry nodded. “I’ve seen the papers. You’ll see something else
to-night. Win Scofield’s widow has her money; and Harry Vine, my friend
and yours, Steve--Keeban, we called him--he’s saving his face. At the
Flamingo Feather, the affair will be.”
“Flamingo Feather?”
“You don’t know it? Well, neither did I a few weeks ago. I dreamed, no
more than you, that such a spot existed; yet to-night it’s my place of
fate. For ‘my friend’s’ friends go there to-night, Steve, to see what
he can show them. It’s a date; he’s got to be present. The Flamingo
Feather’s a hall, Steve--one of those halls that the police raid with
the reserves in force, with half a dozen wagons, or leave severely
alone. There’s a masque ball on there to-night--with fancy figures and
favors. There’s a celebration on, you see; and something to expect.”
“You going?”
“I? He’ll be there, I said. Do you want to chance it, Steve?”
XI
THE THIEVES’ BALL.
The approach to the floor of the Flamingo Feather was past a bakery,
a pawnshop, a drink parlor, all decorous and dreary. Then there was
a door distinguished by a bracket extending a black, iron basket in
which a yellow electric bulb glowed. Over the street, this and a single
iron feather painted flame color made a flaunt of festivity. From the
door stretched a hall, tinted Pompeian red and reaching toward gents’
smoking rooms and the placarded penetralia of ladies; upward led iron
stairs to the ballroom, let by the hour or evening, at rates proclaimed
on a card.
I realized, as I entered, that I had heard of this place--or at least
of its sister ballrooms--scores of times. For here revelled those
indefinite, intriguing organizations named, by their members, “The
Apollo Pleasure Club” and “The Brothers of Byzas” (whoever he was)
and “the Ten Terpsichoreans,” who from their handbill, pasted on the
Pompeian wall, evidently hoped to enroll, at a dollar per gent (ladies
with escort free) several hundred paying guests. In fact, few of the
coming social functions, advertised in this hall, appeared to be
exclusive. Yet I might be in error.
Judging from to-night’s bill, which simply said--“Special--To-night:
Mask and Costume Ball; Get your tickets in Advance--Special”--one might
assume a catholicity of welcome not sustained by the manner of two
tall--and masked--gentlemen in the hall beside a little table at the
foot of the stairs.
I did not doubt that to-night, at least, there had been an exercise
of selection by whomsoever (they were not named on the notice) sold
tickets in advance. And here, at the foot of the stairs, was a second
inspection. Each masker, or at least one in every group, lifted his
cover when passing the table. Jerry did that for the two of us; of
course he had tickets and we were passed and, after checking our outer
garments, we climbed to the ballroom where jazz was playing.
Jerry was a courtier in doublet and jerkin; he was Sir Walter Raleigh
as much as any one else. I was a monk, Erasmus for choice, in robe and
cowl; both of us, as I’ve suggested, wore masks; about us everywhere
were maskers, wigged Colonials, Barbara Frietchies, Mary Pickfords,
Cæsars, Cromwells, Charlie Chaplins; then there were Aphrodites,
devils and sailors, sashed pirates, queens and kings addicted not so
much to any particular personage or period as to an impression of the
generically royal in their garb. Many, of both sexes, went in for mere
fantastic innovation, concealing electric batteries under silk bodice
or skirt, switching on green, red and blue lights in their hair, on
their shoulders and elbows while they danced.
They betrayed a penchant for weaponry, too, keeping in decent
concealment the short, blue-barrelled automatics of contemporary
pattern but evidencing long, decorative--and yet not entirely
useless--daggers, rapiers and curved cutlasses.
I had picked my costume partly on the presumption that it had enjoyed
a smaller popularity than other offerings at Leventhal’s, lessor of
garments; partly I was influenced by its exceptional qualities for
concealment. There appeared to have been, among the gentlemen who would
have been supposed to have obtained one of those tickets in advance, a
peterman similar to me in height and familiarly known as “Beets”--I am
not sure of the spelling, perhaps an “a” appertained--who had affected
the monastic in earlier revels. He was, fortunately, a taciturn
individual; so nobody expected me to talk much; and nobody talked much
to me.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when we arrived, so the ball was already
rolling; “the thieves’ ball,” the papers dubbed it afterwards; yet,
of the three hundred persons in the hall at the hour of the swiftest
rolling, not fifty actually were thieves. Not fifty were either thieves
or worse; not if you counted both sexes, the shoplifters and lay
“wires”, along with the “guns” and “gervers.”
So much I had gathered from Jerry during the afternoon. The actual
go-getter in any society is in the small minority; he, or she, supports
a host of hangers-on; it is only the armchair dreamer who flatters
himself that he who holds him up, who blows his safe, who forges his
name, must be a fugitive, hiding and cowering between his sallies
forth with gat, with “soup” or with pen. Of course, the gunman or the
gerver goes about his business, keeps his hours, surrounds himself by
friends and family even as you and I. He might frequent the Drake or
the Blackstone for his pleasure, also, but it would be too suggestive
of business. He, too, requires his leisure; so here he was with his
friends at the Flamingo Feather.
Maybe a dozen knew what was on that night; not more than that, Jerry
told me. He vanished, Jerry did, after we’d been there an hour, leaving
me alone with ladies.
I danced, to mighty good music, with a crowned queen of Tudorish
bodice, modified by electric lights on the sleeves; with a green-robed
girl of red hair with amber lights on her comb; with a white-shouldered
Cleopatra, lithe and soft in my arms.
I danced again with Cleopatra and, after midnight, a couple of times
more and was having a better time with each encore. Also I was getting
acclimated to the diverting atmosphere of that ball. Its manners,
of course, were various and, as I explained to myself the different
developments, each masker made for himself a personal interpretation
of his rôle according to his costume; consequently I witnessed the
Puritanical portrayed in contrast with the piratical between which
extremes the private lighting plants extemporized pirouettes of their
own.
There was plenty of cheek-to-cheek proximity of partners; plenty of
knee to knee. Occasionally a floor committeeman pried a couple a few
inches farther apart; but surely it is better to see that done than to
observe the need ignored.
Jerry, unless he returned in some new costume, remained away from the
floor; and I gave up momentarily expecting him. I got to having a good
time on my own account, especially with Cleopatra.
I could not see her face between her brow and lips. Through her mask,
I got glimpse enough of her irises to see that they were blue. Her
forehead was smooth and white and pretty; intelligent looking, too. Her
lips were bowed and smiled pleasantly and were not too much carmined;
she had a fine little chin, pretty and also firm. She’d a lovely neck
and shoulders, smooth as satin; and she’d small, strong little hands
with beautiful, pink nails, and slender, shapely feet.
I’m not given to noticing quite so much about a girl; but with this
one, I couldn’t help it. She was an alluring little crook. I suppose
the vizor had something to do with it; the hidden always beckons a
fellow on; but what kept me coming was the thought,--what was she
doing there? What was her line or her lay? If she were merely a guest
of this ball, whose guest was she?
Naturally, at a masque--and most naturally at that masque--people
dispensed with introductions. She was Cleopatra and no one gave her a
modern name; as Cleopatra she lacked a Cæsar, though many were present.
She lacked even an Anthony; a Magellanic mariner seemed to be her
rallying point. I don’t know why I called the gentleman Magellan; if
he’d been huskier I’d have called him Columbus. Somehow I’ve always
imagined Magellan quick and slight and more given to liquor than
Columbus. This mariner was; given to liquor, I mean. Cleopatra bothered
about him for a time and then blithely abandoned him, much to my
benefit.
“What shall I call you?” she asked me. So far, we had got on without
names.
“Erasmus,” I said, to try her as much as anything.
To my amazement, she knew the old boy. “Holbein would be thrilled by
you.” And, as she danced with my arm about her, I could feel that she
was sizing me up anew. I had said “Erasmus” as I might have said
Claude or Skeezix; but since she knew Erasmus, naturally she wondered
how I knew. Beets, my predecessor in these garments, would not have
known; but Cleopatra had known for some time that I was not Beets.
About that time came a diversion; in fact, _the_ diversion. Sir Walter
Raleigh, escorting an Elizabethan lady, appeared on the floor. Both
were masked; but under the garb of Raleigh were the limbs of Jerry; and
I knew the Elizabethan lady, too. Here was Christina, come to the ball.
I looked again at her Raleigh, with rapier at his side, dagger at
his waist. Not Jerry, I told myself, with pulses thrilling; here was
Keeban. This was what I was to expect; Keeban, to show off, had carried
Christina to the ball. That day, she had won the last of her money;
this night he had regained her, he was to take her away; but before
going, here was his flourish, his defiance, his display!
He put his arm about her, and, as they began to dance, I heard in the
buzz of voices the whisper of his name. Here was Harry Vine, they
were saying; here was Christina. Between them, they’d more than half
a million; he’d put over his job just as he schemed it. Nobody could
beat that boy; if they tried to, the sod for them.
It looked like madness for them to be here to-night; but madness marks
the big job.
Here was Keeban, Harry Vine. He had boasted that he would bring his
woman, whom some thought had gone away from him. Surely he had arranged
his get-away with her; but before he used it, here he was proving that
she was his.