A number of weeks had come and gone ere I again laid eyes upon
Checkers, and then it chanced most unexpectedly.
I had stayed at my office late one evening, finishing up some odd jobs
which I had allowed to accumulate. The additional work and the
lateness of the hour lent a keen edge to my appetite, and I decided to
dine down town and perhaps drop into one of the theaters.
As I hastened along on my way to Kinsley's (I am not a member of the
down-town clubs) a figure stepped out of a neighboring doorway, and
brushed against me in passing. It was Checkers. I knew him at once.
But I gave no sign of recognition and hoped to escape him unobserved.
A futile hope, for he knew me as quickly, and in an instant was by my
side.
"Why, Mr. Preston," he exclaimed grabbing and shaking my passive hand.
"Say, on the dead, I 'm glad to see you; why is it you have n't been
out to the track? I 've had 'something good' nearly every day. I wish
I had seen you an hour ago. I 've been playing 'the bank,' and they
've cleaned me flat. They say that's the squarest game on earth, but
the cards do run dead wrong for me. Where you going--to eat? Well,
say, as the tramp says, 'Me stomach tinks me troat's cut.' Back me
against a supper, will you? It's a hundred to one I get the best of
it." And so he rattled on and on, never waiting for his questions to
be answered, careless and slangy as ever.
As I turned into Kinsley's I hesitated, as to whether simply to dismiss
him straight, or to give him a dollar and tell him to go and satisfy
his evident hunger. He saw me pause and read my thoughts, but he did
not propose thus to be disposed of.
"Come on," he said, starting quickly ahead and entering the elevator.
"We 're going up to the cafe, ain't we?"
I was greatly minded to turn on my heel and tell him to go to the
deuce, if he chose. But his manner was wholly ingenuous, and "after
all," I said to myself, "I'm tired and he 's amusing. It's something
after 8 o'clock and no one will be here at such an hour." At all
events I disliked a scene, and so I simply acquiesced, and took him to
a quiet corner of the large dining-room, where I seated myself in such
a way as to have my back to whomsoever might come in.
Without consulting the taste of my guest, I ordered a steak with
mushrooms, potatoes, a salad, dessert and a bottle of claret, and began
to read the evening paper.
For perhaps ten minutes we both were silent. I glanced at Checkers
several times as I folded my paper in or out. He seemed to be lost in
a reverie. But at last his thoughts came back to earth, and glancing
up he said very softly, "The last time I took supper here was with my
wife a year ago."
"Your wife," I exclaimed, starting with surprise. "You do n't mean to
tell me you have a wife?"
"I had a wife," he answered sorrowfully, "but----"
"I beg you pardon, Checkers," I said, "I hope I have n't hurt your
feelings."
"No, you have n't hurt them," he replied. "I 've got my feelings
educated. I 've had so many ups and downs I 've learned to take my
medicine. But I 'll bet I 've had the toughest luck of any guy that
ever lived. A' year ago I had money, a wife and friends, and was doing
the Vanderbilt act. In two short weeks I lost them all. I 've been
'on my rollers' ever since.
"But say, you wouldn't have known me if you 'd seen me here with my
wife that time--my glad rags on, a stove-pipe lid, patent leather kicks
and a stone on my front. We came to Chicago to take in the Fair, and
dropped in here to eat, one night.
"We sat at that table over there; I remember it as though it was
yesterday. I ordered all kinds of supper, and at last the waiter
brings in some cheese and crackers. It was a kind of a greenish,
mouldy cheese--Rocquefort! Yes, I believe that's it. I goes against a
little piece of it, and 'on the grave,' I like to fainted. Good!
Well, maybe you think it's good, but scratch your Uncle Dudley out of
any race where they enter Rocquefort.
"Yes; those were happy days for me. I hate to think about them now. I
had a good time while it lasted, though, and when they got me 'on the
tram,' I had to go to hustlin'. Well, here comes supper. Excuse me
now, while I get busy with a piece of that steak."
"But, Checkers," I expostulated, "I 'd like to hear the particulars.
You must have an interesting story to tell. And if you don't mind----"
"Oh, I do n't know. It's a hard luck story. I've had the hot end of
it most of my life. But you can see for yourself that I'm no 'scrub.'
I come from good people, and I 've lived with good people. I can put
up a parlor talk, or a bar-room talk. I've seen it all. But of course
when a fellow 'hits the toboggan,' he gets to going down mighty fast."
"I appreciate all that, my boy," I said, "or I should n't have brought
you here; and now if you will, while we are eating our dinner, give me
a little sketch of how it all happened."
"Well, there is n't very much to tell as I know of--at least, anything
that would interest you. To look back now it kind of seems as though
things just pushed themselves along.
"You see, in the first place, my father and Uncle Giles, his brother,
both fought in the war. Well, father got shot and came home a cripple.
About ten years afterwards I was born. Then father died, and mother
got a pension. She had some little money besides. After the war Uncle
Giles came back and hung around our house. He was 'flat,' and he
couldn't get a job. But he finally got some pension-shark to push a
pension through for him, and after that he 'pulled his freight' and
went to Baltimore to live. Mother and I stayed here in Chicago.
"Well, I went to school until I was twelve, and then I went to work in
a store. Mother's health was very bad, though, and at last we went
South on account of her lungs. We went to San Antonio, and at first
the air kind of did her good. I gets a job in a dry goods store, and
things are rollin' pretty smooth, when one night mother takes to
coughing, has a hemorrhage and dies.
"There's no use trying to tell you my feelings. Mother was dead and I
was alone. There was hardly a soul to come to her funeral. The
minister and a few of the neighbors came in--my God, it was simply
awful. I was still a kid, only fifteen, you see, and I felt the
terrible lonesomeness of it.
"Well, mother had saved considerable money--twenty-six hundred dollars
in all. I sold our furniture and came to Chicago, and went to board
with some friends of the family. I worked more or less for two or
three years; but my money made me kind of 'flossy,' and whenever I 'd
feel like it, I 'd just throw up the job and quit.
"After a while I got so I did n't try to work. I fell in with a gang
of sports that used to hang around the pool-rooms, and pretty soon
'your little Willie' was losing his money right and left. The local
meeting came along, and I took to going out to the track. I was nearly
broke when one day a tout tried to 'get me down' on a 'good thing' he
had. I told him I would n't play it, but I afterwards shook him and
put twenty on it--I 'm a goat if it did n't win, and I pulled down a
thousand. I looked for the guy who gave me the tip, but I could n't
find him anywhere. I guess he fell dead with surprise himself--at
least I 've never seen him since.
"Now, about that time, I had to quit the family I was living with.
They broke up housekeeping and moved away, leaving me on a cold, cold
world. After that I did nothing but play the races. I followed them
from town to town--St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, New
Orleans--winning a little now and then, but up against it most of the
time.
"I got the malaria down south, and I took a notion I 'd go to Hot
Springs. You ever been there? No? Well say, you talk about your
sportin' life--there is the onliest place to see it. Every kind of a
gamblin' game you ever heard of runnin' wide--and everybody goes
against 'em.
"I had heard that some of the games were crooked, and I thought I 'd be
foxy and leave them alone. I left my leather full of bills with the
clerk up in the hotel safe.
"A little more potato, please. Thanks, I am hungry, and that's no
dream.
"Well, as I was saying, one day at the bath I meets a young guy in the
cooling-room, and he springs a system to beat roulette, which figures
out a mortal cinch. I do n't remember the system now, but I recollect
we tried it ourselves on a private wheel, and it could n't lose. The
only trouble with it was that with luck against us we might get soaked
in doubling up before we win. But we made up our minds to begin it
small, and be content with a little profit.
"We had a bank-roll of $600--four from me and two from him. I was to
have two-thirds of the profits, because I risked two thirds of the
stuff.
"It was Thursday night we set to try it. Thursday was always my Jonah
day. I wanted to wait until Saturday, but he did n't want to wait that
long. I was to do the playing while he kept tab and told me what to do
each whirl.
"Well, we buys a stack of a hundred chips, and runs them up to two
hundred and fifty. I says, 'let's quit,' but he was stuck on pushing
our luck while it came our way. We played along for half an hour, and
hardly varied $50; then, all at once, we 'struck the slide,' and I had
to buy another stack. We lost that; bought another and lost it, and
stood in the hole $300.
"All the while we were playing the system, and I had a 'hunch' that if
we kept on it would pull us out. So I starts to buy another stack when
Kendall--his name was Arthur Kendall--stops me and says he wants to
quit. Quit, with half our money gone! I was so sore I could have
smashed him. And while we stood there arguing, without a nickel on the
board, the wheel was rollin' dead our way--enough to have put us ahead
of the game.
"I gave him his hundred, and told him to 'take it and chase himself'--I
was through with him. I stuck to the game until five in the morning.
They got every cent I had in the world.
"Well, I went to the hotel and went to bed, but I lay there wondering
how I was going to dig up the money to pay my bill, and give me a start
when my luck turned again. The longer I wondered the tougher it
seemed. Finally I ordered an absinthe frappe--it kind of gave me a new
idea. I 'd put up a song to my Uncle Giles, and try to make a little
'touch.'
"I had n't seen or heard of him for half a dozen years, but I thought
after all we had done for him, he could n't hardly lay down on his
nephew.
"Well, I wrote him a letter that would have brought tears to a pair of
glass eyes. Say, it was the literary effort of my life. Of course, I
did n't just stick to the facts. Then I goes down and gets me a little
breakfast, and begins to feel like myself again.
"This was Friday. Saturday my hotel bill was coming due. I had to
make a killin' somehow to get my trunk and clothes away.
"I chased myself from joint to joint, but I could n't get next to
anything. There was n't a thing I could hock nor no one that I could
'give the borry.' Have you ever been flat broke, Mr. Preston, with not
a nickel in your jeans; no one to stake you; no place to go, and
nothing to keep you from starving to death? You haven't, eh? Well,
then you do n't begin to know what trouble is. You feel as though
every one had you 'sized,' or as though you were going to be arrested.
You can't help thinking about the stuff you blew so reckless when you
were flush--the night you got out and spent a hundred, and say, if you
only had it now! You take a paralyzed oath on your mother that if you
ever get right again you'll 'salt your stuff' and be a 'tight-wad'--and
then you remember you 're broke again. I 've been up against some dead
tough luck, and I 've had some fancy crimps put in me, but somehow I
've never felt so 'on my uppers' as I did at the Springs that night.
"Say, if this hard-luck story of mine gets tiresome to you, ring me
off. I did n't think I 'd be so long in getting to where my troubles
began."
I assured him that I felt the tale immensely interesting, as indeed I
did, not only in its mere detail, but taken in connection with the
youth who sat there, telling me his story in his naive way, as
unconcerned as though he had the Bank of England to draw upon. With
not a penny in his pocket, or for aught I knew a place to sleep, it
certainly seemed that, with the sparrows, he leaned most heavily on
Providence.
"Let 's have the rest of it, Checkers," I said; "I 'm anxious to hear
how you raised the wind."
He sipped his coffee and puffed his cigarette with a retrospective air,
inhaling the smoke at every draught, or blowing it forth in little
rings which he watched as they circled off into space.