In his new position father was forced to travel much, often leaving me
to my own devices for weeks and sometimes months. I was put up at a
small boarding house kept by a widow, who had two children. She was
over-worked, sickly, and cranky. She had half a dozen boarders. Before
he left, father gave me the money I had saved up, and told me to look
about for a job.
There was nobody at the hotel that interested me. The widow was always
whining and I kept away from her. Her children were too small for
company, and I saw nothing of the other boarders except at mealtimes
when they ate much and talked little.
The widow gave me a trunkful of books she had taken for a board bill.
Among them I found a battered old volume of Dumas’ “The Count of Monte
Cristo,” on which I put in many nights. This sharpened my appetite for
reading, and I went around secondhand bookstores, and got hold of the
D’Artagnan tales and devoured them. Then “Les Misérables,” and on to the
master, Dickens. The books so fired me with the desire for travel,
adventure, romance, that I was miserable most of the time. As my money
dwindled I resolved to find a job. I’d ask the landlady for advice.
I found her out in front, scrubbing the steps, red in the face and
vicious looking. I told her I was thinking of going to work.
“Well, it’s about time you thought of that,” she snapped, “layin’ around
here readin’ and eatin’ up your father’s money. You can get a job just
like I did when my husband run off and left me with two brats on my
hands. I just started out and asked for it at every place I come to till
I got it, that’s all. And you can do it, too, if you got the gizzard.”
I left her and started my search. If there was a job in the city I
determined to get it. I went through block after block, store after
store, hour after hour. I got mostly “Noes” but some answered
pleasantly, taking my name and address. I kept going until one morning I
stopped in front of a cigar store—a dead-looking place, no customers. A
man was reading a paper spread out on the counter. I went in and put my
question to him. When he stood up I saw he was very tall and very thin.
He looked sick. I had never seen an eye like his. It attracted me
strangely. I could not have described it then, but I can now. It was a
larcenous eye. He was very nice, asking many questions. How old was I?
Did I ever work before? Where? I handed him Cy’s letter. He read it and
asked me more questions. I have never answered so many questions since,
except in a police station. At last he quit, and snapping himself
together like a man coming out of a trance, he rapped his knuckles on
the counter.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, kid. You come down here at nine
o’clock every morning, open this joint up, and stay here till one
o’clock. Then I come on and you go off till six in the evening. At six
you come on and stay till ten, and call it a day. You can go to work
right now. The sooner the better. In a week you will know the prices of
the different things as well as I do, and I can leave you by yourself.
Your wages will be three dollars a week and all the cigars you can
smoke.”
“But I do not smoke.”
“Well, that’s your bad luck, kid, not mine. What do you say? Want to
chance the job?”
I got right in behind the counter and he showed me the different cigars,
cigarettes, and tobaccos, and told me their prices. In a week I knew all
about the “store” and had learned to serve the few customers that came
in, and to make change properly. I further learned that the store was
but a “front” or blind for a poker game and dice games in the back room,
and that I was a part of the “front.” My business was to sweep the place
out in the morning, stand behind the counter in case any one wanted a
cigar, and to keep an eye out for “new coppers on the beat” in the
evening. The job was interesting. I soon came to know the poker players,
crap shooters, and dice sharks who brought their victims into the back
room to “clean” them. I often spent my afternoons in the back room
watching the games and learning the life.
When there was no game, the sharks sat around practicing their tricks
and bewailing their bad luck. Sometimes a poker player would show me
how to “shuffle up a hand,” or cut the cards at a given place or “go
out” with a hand. The dice shakers and crap shooters showed me their
favorite “shots.” I was an apt scholar, absorbing everything like a
young sponge. “Tex,” my boss (if he had any other name I never heard
it), admonished me never to gamble. “Lay away from it, kid; it’s a tough
racket. Look at me and my gatherings of forty years. I ain’t got a white
quarter to my name; if it was rainin’ soup I couldn’t buy myself a tin
spoon, and I’ve got a string of debts longer than a widow’s
clothesline.”
Next door to the cigar store there was a small milk depot kept by a man
and his wife. I used to go in every day for a glass of milk, and got
acquainted with them. He delivered milk around his routes and the wife
minded the shop. He was forever complaining about not being able to
collect his money from “them women.” “Them women” were women who kept
“parlor houses” in the Tenderloin district a few blocks from his milk
store. They were good pay, but he could not get away from his work at
the right hour to find them.
One day he told me he would pay me well if I would take the bills and go
to the places and stay till I got the money. Here was a chance to earn
more money, and I grabbed it. I went in and asked Tex, my boss, when
would be the best time to call at those places to collect the milk
bills.
If Tex had not gathered much of worldly goods in his forty years, he had
at least learned something of the habits of “them women.” “I’ll tell
you,” he said. “If you go in the morning you’ll find them asleep; in
the afternoon they are out riding or shopping; and at night they will be
either too busy or too drunk. Take my advice and go about five o’clock
in the evening and you will catch them at dinner, or breakfast, or
whatever they call it.”
I followed Tex’s advice that evening and collected three bills out of
five. The milkman was pleased with my enterprise and gave me a dollar.
Thereafter I collected his bills in the Tenderloin. I visited certain
places weekly and was paid promptly. The women I met were nice to me,
and I saw nothing of the other side of their lives. I worked faithfully
at my two jobs, saved my money, and began looking in the store windows
for my gray suit and gray hat. My work kept me so busy that I did not
read much. Thoughts of travel and adventure were in the back of my
mind, but that could wait. I was young; I must have money first. My
two old, rusty pistols, almost forgotten now, lay neglected in the
bottom of my little valise.
Tex had a “run of luck” and raised me to four dollars a week. I
collected more bills for the milkman. Some of them he called “bad
bills.” I kept after them persistently and nearly always got the money.
The more hopeless the bill, the greater my commission was. I enjoyed
going after them. The Tenderloin women were sure pay; and poor families
were good, always had the money ready. I called on a tough saloon man,
in a dingy little dive, about ten times to collect a two-dollar bill.
One day when I called he was serving several men at his bar, and when he
saw me he said: “No use comin’ in here with that bill, kid. I ain’t
goin’ to pay it. If your boss comes up here I’ll bust him in the nose.
His milk is no good and he’s no good.”
“Mister,” I said, “I know he is no good, but I have to work and want to
keep my job. If you knew just how hard my boss is you would feel sorry
for me instead of being angry. He is so hard and no good that he told me
if I did not collect your bill of two dollars to-day I need not come
to work to-morrow, and that’s why I’m here.”
The customers looked at me. I stood my ground.
“Hell,” said the man, “I didn’t think he was that bad. Here, take the
lousy money.”
I hurried back to the milkman. “Here’s Mr. Finucane’s two dollars.”
“How on earth did you ever collect it?”
“Oh, he just got tired and paid me, that’s all.”
“Well, I’ll make you a present of them,” said he handing me the money.
“You certainly earned them.”
The following week I called at Madam Kate Singleton’s with my bill. The
colored maid who opened the door showed me a seat in the hall and told
me to wait. The madam was dressing. I sat there a few minutes and there
was a ring at the door. The maid opened it and an excited little man
brushed in, followed by two big men who were not a bit excited. As the
door was closing I got a glimpse of a policeman in uniform on the steps.
One of the two men spoke to the maid who went upstairs, and in a minute
the madam came down. She waved the men into a room off the hall and
closed the door. I listened, but they talked too low for me to hear what
they were saying. Presently the madam opened the door and called out:
“Oh, girls, come downstairs every one of you.” Half a dozen girls
appeared as if by magic. They were all brought into the room and the
door closed again.
Nobody paid any attention to me. Now I heard loud voices in the room,
but so many were talking at once that I could make nothing of it. Then
one of the big men came out, went to the front door, opened it, and said
to the policeman: “Send Mike around to the back; tell him to let nobody
out. I’ll phone for the wagon. We’ll have to take them all to the
station. They won’t talk.”
He disappeared into the room. I got up and opened the front door.
“Where are you goin’?” said the policeman.
“I’m going out, if you please.”
“Get back in there, if you please,” he snarled, “and stay there.”
While the officers were waiting for the wagon one of the big men went
upstairs and brought down two “guests.” They were about half awake and
looked as if they had been on a drunk. They sat down beside me on the
settee. One of them fell into a sound sleep and the other sat with his
elbows on his knees and his hands on the sides of his head. Neither of
them spoke. In a few minutes the wagon arrived. The girls were all
ordered to go out and get in it, which they did. Then the two men and I
were ordered to do the same. The madam and one of the big men got into a
hack that appeared to be waiting and drove away.
The excited little man who had caused all the trouble got into the wagon
with the other big man and sat beside him.
When I was being put in the wagon I protested and tried to explain, but
the detectives roughly ordered me to shut up. The “harness cop” who had
been at the front door went back to his beat. I did not see anything of
Mike, who had been ordered to stay at the back door.
The girls laughed and joked on the way to the station and shouted
“rubberneck” at everybody that looked in at the back of the open wagon.
The police station was on one corner of Market Square, one of the
busiest corners in the city. Hundreds of people were there daily,
selling their produce. Their time was about evenly divided between
serving their customers and watching the patrol wagon spewing its loads
of humanity into the city prison. It seemed to me they were all there as
we were unloaded and hurried through a solid lane of them into the
police station. Madam Singleton was there before us, and with her was a
tall, sharp-looking man, gray and about fifty. I never found out who he
was, but he looked like a lawyer.
The madam, the tall man, and the two big men, who were plain-clothes
detectives, went to one side, talking earnestly for a minute or two. The
rest of us just stood there and waited. One of the detectives went into
an office off the big room we were in, and came out at once with a man
in uniform he called “captain.” The captain was a big, red-faced,
gray-haired, good-natured Irishman. “Well, what’s this all about?” he
said, smiling. The detective stepped over to the small, nervous man and
said to the captain:
“Captain, this man complains that one of the girls in Kate Singleton’s
place took one hundred dollars, two fifty-dollar bills, from him some
time last night or this morning. We went down to her place and saw the
girl. She denies that she took it.
“We searched her room and couldn’t find it. The balance of them don’t
know anything, so they say. He wants them all searched. We couldn’t do
it there, so we pinched everybody in the house and here they are, ten of
’em, seven women and three men.”
The captain took the little man in hand. “Who are you?” The little man
hesitated.
“Come on, out with it. If you want any help here you’ve got to come
clean.”
The little man gave him a name. I could not hear it.
“Where are you from?”
“Emporia, Kansas, is my town.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a hog raiser.”
“When did you come to the city?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“What did you come here for?”
“Oh, just to look around.”
The captain smiled. “How much money did you have when you got off the
train here yesterday morning?”
“I had two hundred dollars in paper money and some small change.”
“How much have you spent since you arrived here?”
“I spent twenty-five dollars for a suit of clothes and fifteen dollars
for an overcoat. I paid a dollar for a room and I spent about five
dollars around town.”
“Is that all? Are you sure, now? Think again.”
“Yes, that’s all,” said the hog man.
“You’re a liar,” Madam Singleton said in a cold, level voice. “You gave
Julia ten dollars.”
“Now, now, Kate,” said the captain, “don’t get excited. I’ll take care
of this thing all right.” Then to the hog man:
“Guess you forgot about that ten dollars, hey?”
“Yes, I forgot that,” he said meekly.
“All right; now, how much have you in your pockets?”
He took out some bills and counted them. “Forty-five dollars is all I
have.”
The captain counted them and returned them. “That’s correct. Now, which
girl took your money?”
The man pointed out the youngest girl of the bunch. She was about
twenty or twenty-two, a plump girl with a boyish face and lots of black
hair. She was pleasant looking, but not pretty, and she did not look as
worn and tired as the others.
She looked straight at him but never opened her mouth. The
lawyer-looking man said to her: “Julia, did you take that man’s money?”
“No,” she answered.
“Take all these women in and have the matron search them. Madam
Singleton, you have no objection to being searched, have you?” smiled
the captain.
“None at all, captain, only make it short and sweet. I am losing time
and money here.”
They all trooped off to a room down the hall.
An officer came out from behind the desk and searched me and the two
drunks. We had no fifty-dollar bills, so he told us to sit on a bench in
front of his desk. The lawyer, or bondsman, or fixer, or whatever he
was, paced up and down the room nervously. The captain had gone back to
his office.
In a few minutes a big, mannish-looking woman with red hands and a tough
walk came along.
“Well, what did you find?” said the lawyer.
“Nothing. They didn’t have a hundred dollars among them.”
The lawyer then hunted up the detective and the hog man. The detective
got the captain. The matron made her report and the officer who searched
me and the other two did the same.
The captain turned to the hog man.
“All these people have been searched and your money has not been found.
What do you want to do now?”
“I want that girl locked up. I know she got my money. I know I had two
fifty-dollar bills rolled up with my other bills when I went into that
house, and when I got to my room I looked at my money and they were
gone.”
“How long was it before you got to your room after you left Madam
Singleton’s?” asked the lawyer.
“Oh, I walked around for an hour or two.”
“Oh, you did, eh? Why, you probably had your pocket picked on the
street.”
The big captain roared out a laugh and said to the lawyer:
“It must have been an Emporia, Kansas, pickpocket. No Missouri dip
would take his roll, extract two fifty-dollar bills, and put the rest
back in his pocket.”
The lawyer appeared to get angry. “You’ve searched everybody but me.”
He turned to the hog man fiercely. “Do you want me searched?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, I want you searched. You are just the kind of a yap that gets up
in the middle of the night and hides his money so carefully that he has
to have a policeman find it for him in the morning. Go ahead and search
him,” he said to the detective.
“All right, go ahead,” said the hog man.
The detective went through his trousers carefully, placing everything on
a counter, then through his vest, then into his inner coat pocket. No
money. Then, as an afterthought, just to make a good job of it, he felt
in the coat pockets. In the first one was a bag of tobacco, and as he
pulled a handkerchief from the last coat pocket two bills fluttered to
the floor.
The lawyer stooped, picked up the two bills, looked at them, and handed
them to the captain. The hog man’s eyes bulged till they looked ready to
fall out of his head. He was making a dry noise down in his throat that
sounded like the quack of a duck. The captain handed him the bills.
“Is this your money?” he scowled.
After inspecting the bills and recovering his voice, the hog man said:
“Yes, I think it is.”
The lawyer plucked him by the lapel with one hand, and shook the other
in his face. “You dirty little swine, get your property off that
counter. Get out of here and back to your hog pastures before I have you
locked up.”
The dazed and thoroughly crushed victim hastily gathered up his things
and went out with them in his hands.
I was pop-eyed with amazement at this swift, smashing reversal of the
situation. The two drunks beside me were but mildly interested. Nobody,
from the captain down to Julia, the accused, seemed surprised. I could
not understand why the whole crowd did not fall on the hog man and tear
him to pieces. The captain disappeared into his office. The detective
walked out to the sidewalk. The lawyer turned to Kate and the girls,
bowing:
“Madam, and ladies, shall we depart?”
“It’s about time,” said the madam in a positive voice. “I’m hungry
enough to eat a raw dog.”
They all moved out into the street. I was left on the bench with the two
drunks. The detective strolled back in. The desk man pointed to us.
“What will I do with this outfit, Hayes?”
Hayes appeared to be disgusted. “Oh, charge them with drunk.”
“The kid’s not drunk.”
“Vag him then.”
“What were you doing in that joint, anyway?” to me.
“I went in there to collect a milk bill, sir, and was waiting for the
money when all this happened.”
“Where is the bill?”
I produced it.
“Do you work for this man?” he asked, after inspecting it.
“Yes, sir.”
“Why in hell didn’t you say so at the start?”
“I tried to, sir, but everybody told me to shut up. The policeman would
not let me go out.”
He turned to the drunks and asked them if they had ten dollars to put up
for bail to appear in the morning. They had, and the desk man took them
into another room. I saw them no more. When he came back, Hayes said:
“Take the kid upstairs: lock him up with George. I’ll find out about
him.”
The women were gone, the drunks were out, and I was the only one
detained. It looked all wrong to me. The sergeant took me down to the
end of the hall and opened an iron door. It was as if he had opened the
door to hell. My blood stopped circulating. We stepped inside and he
locked the door behind us. Never since, except perhaps in the half
dreams of opium, have I been so frozen with horror. We were standing on
a balcony overlooking the half basement that served as the city prison.
In front of us was a latticework iron door that opened on an iron
stairway leading down into the cell house. The cells were built around
the four sides of a cement-floored square, and opened into it. It was
supper time and pandemonium was on.
The sergeant rapped on the iron door with his heavy keys, trying to
attract the attention of some one below. Failing to make himself heard,
he told me to stay there till he could get a “trusty” to take me
upstairs. He went out the way we came in, and left me locked in between
the two doors on the balcony. The cells below had all been thrown open
and there were about fifty prisoners in the open space. They seemed to
be about equally divided between negroes and whites, of all ages. The
air choked me; it was putrid, heavy, and thick with the stench of foul
food, foul clothes, foul bodies, and foul sewers. In the farthest corner
of the square a gigantic black was standing guard over a huge smoking
caldron.
He was shirtless and barefoot. A leather belt supported his overalls,
his only clothing. Sweat glinted on his broad back and chest. He was
armed with a long-handled ladle which he dished out the “stew” with, or
beat back the stronger and more venturesome prisoners who crowded too
closely around the caldron.
I saw no jailers or guards. There was no pretense at order. The younger
and stronger men shoved and elbowed their way to the big stew pot,
snarling and snapping at each other like a pack of starved dogs. Old
men and young boys stood around waiting meekly for the strong to be fed
first.
The big negro wielded his ladle, filling the tin pans nearest him. Bread
was being served from a large box in another spot, but there appeared to
be plenty of it and there was no scramble there. Several new-looking
prisoners walked about, making no effort to get food. They were “fresh
fish,” new arrivals, who had not yet acquired the “chuck horrors,” that
awful animal craving for food that comes after missing half a dozen
meals.
At last the weaker ones were served. The cursing, shouting, and fighting
were stilled. The big negro wheeled his stew pot away and the empty
bread box disappeared. Some of the prisoners went into their cells to
eat; some sat down outside on the floor, while others ate standing. Some
had spoons, others ate with their fingers, sopping at the bottom of the
pan with a piece of bread.
The meal was quickly over. The tin pans, unwashed, were thrown into the
cells. The young negroes began singing and buck dancing. White men who
had been tearing at each other ten minutes before around the big pot
were now laughing and talking in a friendly fashion, and everybody lit
up a smoke. The air was so filled with tobacco smoke and steam from the
stew that I could barely distinguish forms below.
It was growing dark and gas jets were lighted but gave no light. I heard
a rattling of keys; somewhere some one shouted “Inside.” The shadowy
forms shuffled into their cells, and there came the tremendous din of
iron doors being slammed shut. The prison was locked up for the night.
I do not know how long I had been standing there. Not more than fifteen
minutes, but it seemed a lifetime. A trusty prisoner appeared at my
side.
“Come on, you.”
I followed him up a short stairway where he opened a door and we went
into a short hall with cells on either side. It was directly above the
city prison. As we passed down the hall I heard women’s voices; one of
them shouted, “Fresh fish, girls.”
Faces appeared at the barred doors. A colored girl, as we passed her
cell, said: “Hello, boy, what you-all been doin’?”
At the end of the hall the trusty stopped at a large room with a barred
door. I could look inside. The room was well lighted. Newspapers were
lying about. I saw two clean-looking cots, a table on which were books
and a box of cigars, and a couple of chairs.
A man was pacing up and down the room, smoking. He wore a
comfortable-looking pair of slippers and was in his shirt sleeves. He
paid no attention to us till the trusty said: “George, the skipper sent
up some company for you.”
He turned sharply and came to the door. He was a fine-looking man about
forty years of age, well groomed, fresh shaven. He was tall. His hair
was gray. His face was pleasant to look at. He might have been a doctor
or lawyer. I found myself wondering what he could have done to get
locked in a jail. He looked at me carefully for a minute. When he spoke
his voice was surprisingly pleasant. There was a suggestion of the South
in his drawl.
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, kid, but if you are lousy don’t
come in here, that’s all.”
The trusty assured George that I was not lousy, that there was no charge
against me and I would be out in an hour or two.
I was locked in.
I had no jail manners then, so I just stood at the door with my hat on,
intending to wait there till some one came to let me go. All prisoners
do that the first time. Presently my companion told me to take my hat
off and sit down, and try to be comfortable.
“You may get out in an hour and you may not. You never can tell. You are
beginning young. How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“What are you pinched for?”
I told him all about it.
“That’s everyday business here,” he said. “Usually the sucker is a
married man and can’t squawk. But when he does squawk, like this one,
the only thing to do is to blow back his money. Either the lawyer or one
of the girls eased it into his coat pocket. That’s better than returning
it to him and admitting that they tried to rob him.
“The whole thing was a stand-in from the captain down. Everybody’s
satisfied. The sucker has his money, the girls are all out, Kate will
charge Julia fifty dollars for the lawyer’s fee, and that ends it.
“You appear to be the only real sucker in the bunch. By God! Those
coppers are fierce. They’ll leave you here till you rot. I’ve always
said a copper is a copper till you cut his head off.”
He got a tin cup and scraped it across the bars of the door. The trusty
bounced in. “Go down and get the desk sergeant.”
I never saw a prisoner get quicker action. The sergeant came at once.
“It’s a rotten shame to keep this kid locked up, Sam. Did you hear his
story? Go down and get Hayes and tell him to let him go home. Send a
messenger to his boss. I’ve got plenty of money down there; charge it to
me.”
The sergeant went out, promising to “look into it right away.” Our
cell—it was more like a room—was in a small corridor set apart for the
women prisoners’ quarters. Down the hall I could hear them calling to
each other and chatting back and forth from their cells. Somewhere a
colored woman was singing a mournful dirge about “That Bad Stackalee.”
The verses were endless. The point of the song seemed to be that the
negro bully, Stackalee, had been killed with “a big forty-four gun over
a damned old Stetson hat.” In the most harrowing tones at the end of
every verse the singer moaned the sad refrain, “That ba-a-d Stackalee.”
Later I came to know that this song is a favorite among negroes when in
great trouble, such as being locked in jail, being double-crossed by a
friend, or parting with their money in a dice game. At such times thirty
or forty verses of “Stackalee” invariably restores the laughing good
humor and child-like confidence of the wronged one.
We heard a rattling of keys and a door opening. George put the side of
his face against the cell door, so he could see down the hall.
“Get your hat, kid; here they are.”
The detective came up with my two bosses—the milkman and Tex, the
gambler. The trusty opened the door.
“Out you go,” said the detective, “and the next time you get jammed up
say something before you get thrown in. Holler before you’re hurt;
that’s my motto.”
I said good-by to my benefactor, George, and thanked him awkwardly. When
I met him years after and had a chance to return his kindness, I learned
he was a most distinguished criminal; a man who had stolen fortunes and
spent them, who had killed a crooked pal, and served many prison
sentences.
“Forget it, kid, and don’t let them scare you out of your job. You go
right back next week and collect your bills.”
Tex and the milkman escorted me to the cigar store. The evening games
had not started when we went into the back room, so I told my story
again. The milkman sympathized and promised to raise my commission on
the bills. Tex was relieved to learn that I had not mentioned his
“store” to the police.
Collection day came around again, and I made my rounds without incident
till I got to Madam Singleton’s, the last place. A colored maid, the
only person that escaped arrest the week before, opened the door. When
she saw me she screamed at the top of her voice:
“Oh, Miss Kate, here’s the pore milk boy.”
“Bring him right up here, Jo, this minute.”
The maid led me upstairs, then down a hall and to the madam’s room. She
was in the midst of dressing for the evening, but when I appeared in the
door she stopped, kicked a bunch of clothes to one side, came over and,
putting her arm around me, led me into the room.
“Well, you poor boy,” she patted my back. “We are ashamed to face you
after going off and forgetting you in jail. Julia thought of you about
nine o’clock that night, and I sent down word right away about you.
They said you were out and gone home. We never expected to see you
again. You must have dinner with us. It’s ready now, and Julia wants to
apologize to you. Not that it was her fault,” she added quickly. “It
was just something that couldn’t be helped. Those men from the country
are always—ah—misplacing their money. We are continually having trouble
with them.”
She was so charming and friendly and natural, so different from the
crabby widow at my boarding house, the only woman I had any contact
with, that I found myself wondering if George had not been too severe in
judging them.
She went on with her dressing, and I looked about the room curiously. I
had a dim recollection of my mother’s room—a plain bed, a bureau, a big
rocking-chair, and a rag carpet. I had looked into the widow’s room at
the boarding house, too. That was plainer than my mother’s. It had a
cheap, single bed; a packing case covered with a sheet, and a cracked
mirror propped against the wall served as a bureau. There was a
hard-looking chair at the head of the bed. There was no carpet on the
widow’s floor.
Madam Singleton’s room had carpets an inch thick, and the biggest,
softest bed and the fattest pillows you could imagine. Her bureau was
half as large as the bed, but seemed too small for the things piled on
it—boxes, bottles, brushes, combs, pieces of jewelry, and a hundred
other articles I had never seen and could not guess the use of. Mirrors
were everywhere; from where I sat I could see my face, my profile, or my
back. A huge trunk, as big as a bungalow it looked, was in a corner. Its
top was thrown back and the tray was on the floor. It was piled high
with letters and cards and photos of men. The trunk was overflowing with
stockings, garters, ribbons, feathers, and soft, silky-looking garments.
My eyes strayed into the open door of a closet. It was full of coats and
cloaks, long and short, some of fur of different colors, and others of
expensive cloth. Wide rimmed and feathered hats hung everywhere, and the
carpet was half covered with shoes, slippers, sandals, gloves, and silk
dresses. Over everything hung the odor of perfume. Years after I heard
Madam Singleton described as a very beautiful woman. When she turned
from her mirror, I thought she looked as a queen ought to look.
Tall, straight, dark-haired with big, brave black eyes; warm, full of
color, glowing; a dominating woman.
I heard a small bell tinkling downstairs.
“That means dinner, young man. Come with me.”