[Illustration: IKE SWIFT]
SKETCHES
_of_ GOTHAM
BY
IKE SWIFT
A collection of
unusual stories
told in an un-
usual way ....
PUBLISHED BY
RICHARD K. FOX, New York
Copyright 1906
by
Richard K. Fox.
INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS
“Ike Swift” 2
A spectacular dance which helped her in meeting people 12
Her swell figure made her an attraction on the beach 18
She was once the real thing on physical culture 28
A dose of knockout drops proved the turning point in her life 38
A wonderful but untrue picture of love behind the scenes 50
She has been known to kick the crown of a hat held six feet
from the floor 60
Rackets where pretty girls cut capers to the music of male
voices 68
He often made an honest dollar teaching American women how to
smoke “hop” 78
There was disclosed the figure of a young woman rather scantily
clad 90
She had such a superb figure that she once posed for a sculptor 100
Disguised as a sailor boy she shipped on one of Uncle Sam’s ships 108
For three solid hours he sat there trussed up like a chicken 118
She put herself up at auction and was promptly bid on 128
She went into the smoking car and calmly lighted a cigarette
136
She had one or two fights on her hands, but she always won out 146
She had danced the fandango in a way that made the Mexicans
cheer 156
Atlantic City is the place for sporty girls who play the game
to the limit 164
They had a hot time in Minneapolis when the show hit town 174
“I wasn’t arrested, but I was put out as if I were a common
swindler” 184
There were times when she did things that were unconventional 192
A light flashed out on the landing and revealed the figure of
a beautiful woman 202
Put her in tights and she would have been an Oriental sensation 212
The first pair are in the ring, the talk ceases, and the show
is on 220
The glitter of a circus became too much for them to resist 230
Wild revelry of the masked ball and the perfect ladies with the
hot sports 240
It’s only a dream after the lobster course 250
She figured once at a masked ball that was raided by the police 260
Once she had been on the stage, but she got a rough deal and
quit 268
When the clock struck two she was on the table doing a dance 278
CONTENTS
A LITTLE EASY MONEY 7
CASTING AN OLD SHOE 19
THE LONG WAY ’ROUND 27
THE QUEEN OF CHINATOWN 39
A GIRL OF THE GOLDEN GATE 47
WHEN FISTS WERE TRUMPS 57
KID AND HIS TEN THOUSAND 69
AN ORIENTAL NOCTURNE 79
A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION 89
THE END OF THE ROAD 99
THE THROWBACK 109
FROM THE WOODS TO BROADWAY 117
THE WHIMS OF CURVES 127
CHEYENNE NELL; TRIMMER 137
TRAGEDY OF A DANCE 147
THE MONOLOGUE GIRL’S STORY 157
A TWISTED LOVE AFFAIR 163
WEDDING RINGS AND FOOTLIGHTS 173
TOLD BY THE MANICURE GIRL 183
INVESTING IN A HUSBAND 193
TRAINING AN OLD SPORT 201
CONCERNING A SYRIAN BEAUTY 211
THE REJUVENATION OF PATSY 221
A CASE OF KNOCKOUT DROPS 231
DISCOVERING A PRIMA DONNA 241
A THROW OF THE DICE 249
A VOICE IN THE SLUMS 259
A GIRL OF THE NIGHT 269
AFTER THE WEDDING BELLS 279
A LITTLE EASY MONEY
A great many years ago, when Tom Byrnes was the able and efficient
chief of the detective force of New York, a certain class of women,
very much in evidence around the hotels and resorts, were known, from
the peculiar manner of their work, as Badger Molls.
There was one in particular who had added a spectacular dance to her
many other accomplishments and which helped her not a little in meeting
the right kind of people.
To be a Badger Moll a woman had to have nerve, assurance, a fair amount
of good looks, be able to read character and keep her wits about her at
all times. There were occasions when she was up against it so good and
strong that it didn’t seem as if there was one chance in a hundred for
her to do her part of the trick, but in ninety times out of a hundred
she landed the bundle of the victim.
That is to say, of course, with the aid of her confederate.
The old days of the Moll have gone by, but the new days have come and
they are here now. The new representative is of a higher class, of a
superior education, is more adept, and, as a rule, gets more money.
It is worthy of note that during the past ten years only two big jobs
have fallen through--that is, so far as is known--and these things
usually become known when they are brought to the notice of the police.
A handsomely gowned woman, with a bearing that would deceive almost
anyone, comes down the line. She looks like my lady from Fifth avenue,
but if you will notice her eyes you will see in them the look of a
huntress.
She is on the trail of men, and it is a rare thing for her to make a
mistake. Mistakes in her business, you know, sometimes spell Sing Sing,
as a lady by the name of Moore will tell you if you ever meet her and
she should become confidential.
As she passes the hotels you will notice this particular woman
hesitates in her stride, she goes into the low gear and she looks
questioningly at the men who are standing about.
It is the glance of an expert, but it is cleverly veiled.
Even though you and I know her and know what her business is, we are
attracted by her to a certain extent, just as people are attracted by
a magnificent tigress or leopard in the menagerie. They have fangs and
claws, but they are hidden, and being concealed are forgotten for the
time.
This is a human tigress, but she is not on the scent of blood, she’s
trailing bank rolls.
There is, however, nothing unusual in that, when you come to think of
it, because that is what four-fifths of the world is doing, and the
other fifth is being chased and knows it.
The tigress throws in her high speed and passes on until she has
reached the entrance to another hotel, and here the scent of prey comes
strongly to her nostrils.
A fine-looking man of about fifty years is leaning carelessly against
one of the marble columns. He has dined well, anyone can see that, and
he is half way into his after-dinner cigar. He is in the ripe stage;
the time to ask a favor, or to have a courtesy extended. He is at peace
with himself and everybody else, and as the tigress passes by he gets a
flash of those black eyes which tell him a story that while it is not
new, is always interesting, especially under these circumstances, when
he is a thousand miles from home.
There are few men, anyhow, who can stand temptation when they are
strangers in a strange city. Man is a companionable sort of a
proposition and to be at his best must have society.
This one, who is perhaps the father of an interesting family, and who
is above reproach in his native city, and who would become indignant at
the thought of a street flirtation, involuntarily straightens himself
up, and taking a firmer hold of his cigar, glances after the slowly
retreating figure of the lady with the black eyes.
It’s a trim shape, by Jove; and look at that ankle.
A peach.
“Nothing common about her,” he soliloquizes. “Just a nice girl,
perhaps, who is a bit lonely, too.”
And then, at that particular moment, the “nice girl,” who has been
sauntering very slowly, turns around and looking directly at him,
smiles.
A woman’s smile.
Cast off your lines, my boy, and on your way, for the magnetism of that
smile has you lashed to the mast, but you don’t know it yet. What you
have in your mind is that you’ll just take a little walk and have a
little talk, just to fill in a few lonely hours, you know.
So he leaves the mooring of his hotel and trails the trailer.
One short block he walks, and then just as he is about to come abreast
of her she turns about and meets him with the same smile that has been
doing duty for the past five years.
She knew he had reached that particular spot by that woman’s intuition,
keyed up so fine as to be on feather edge all the time.
Her little bow is modest--even coy. It is like the bow of a school girl
who is afraid she is not doing quite the right thing, but who is just a
trifle reckless, and is willing to take a chance or two just for a lark.
“How do you do?” she asks.
“Great; how are you; fine night; where are you going?” he rattles off,
trying to appear at ease, and be the real fellow.
“I was just taking a walk. You see, it was so quiet in the house, and I
sat there all alone until I just thought I would die, so I came out to
get a little fresh air and see if I couldn’t walk myself tired before
bed time.”
That accounts for her being out, of course, and it is very nicely
delivered, too; besides, it gives the man a chance to say something,
and he is prompt to say it.
“All alone? You don’t mean to say that you live all alone?”
Oh, no; she doesn’t live all alone all the time. But Jack--that’s her
husband, you know--he is on the road--commercial man, you see, the best
and dearest fellow in all the world, and it’s such a horrid position
he has, too, always traveling. He went away just a month ago on his
Western trip, to be gone two months, think of it; almost an age. He’s
with the big dry goods house of Wools & Muslins, the biggest in New
York. But next year Jack is going to have an office position and then
everything will be all right.
“After that,” she goes on, “Jack and the baby and I will be quite
happy.”
“The baby? Have you a baby?”
“Why, of course.”
“And you say you are lonely? I should think that the baby would----”
“Yes, of course, so it would, but don’t you see, Jack’s mother, who
lives with us, went to visit some friends in the country--Montclair, do
you know where that is?--and she thought it would do the little fellow
good and she took him along, and now I am so sorry I let him go.”
Isn’t it too beautiful for anything, and isn’t she an artist of whom
Jack ought to be very proud?
“Well, I am a little lonely myself,” says the business man from Dayton,
O., “and I think you and I ought to cheer one another up. What do you
think about that proposition?”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s very nice to have you talk to me, but I
feel a little bit frightened about it all. You know I never spoke to
a strange man on the street before like this, and I am sure that Jack
wouldn’t like it if----”
“Yes, but Jack isn’t here now. Who knows what he is doing? You know
these traveling men when they get away from home and home ties have
been known to----”
“Yes, but not my Jack. You don’t know him. He would never do anything
wrong, for he told me so.”
[Illustration: A spectacular dance which helped her in meeting people]
And now they have walked four blocks.
There is a hack driver and his wagon at the corner.
“Cab, sir; have a cab?”
He’s on, and immediately takes the tip offered him.
“Suppose we take a little drive through the Park,” suggests the man.
“I don’t think it would be quite right. I would like to, but----Oh, if
we were only real well acquainted, I would like to, but you see----”
The end of it is that the cab drive is vetoed, and he begins to think
as to how he can best entertain her in some other way. He takes a hasty
sidelong glance at her, and his heart increases about ten beats to the
minute. She’s all right, you bet. Why, he wouldn’t mind staying in New
York another week if----
“Let’s go somewhere and have a nice bottle of wine,” he says.
“I hope you don’t mean to offend me, but you shouldn’t ask me anything
like that. I think I am doing very wrong in even talking to you, but
I can’t help it. There was something about you when I passed by that
seemed to attract me. I have done something to-night that I have never
been guilty of before, and never will be again. I don’t object to wine,
because we have it in the house, but I didn’t think you would ask me
to go to a common saloon with you--a place I have never been in in my
life. But I suppose I deserve it for speaking to you the way I did, and
for walking with you the way I am now.”
He protests, he apologizes, and he feels that he has made a great
mistake. He is humiliated beyond expression. Here is a nice little
woman with a husband and a baby, who has permitted him to accost her
on the street, probably because she felt that she needed some human
companionship, and he has insulted her by asking her to go to a public
place and drink a bottle of wine with him, just as if she were a woman
of the streets. He feels that he cannot do enough to make amends to her.
“I don’t believe,” she says, sweetly, “that you intended to hurt my
feelings for a moment. Let you and I be simply good friends. We are
both a little lonesome; let us spend a pleasant evening together, for
it isn’t likely that we will ever meet again after to-night. We will
act as if we were brother and sister; but if you would really like a
bottle of wine I have a lot home that Jack says is pretty good, and we
can go there and be all by ourselves.”
But a moment later she repents and says it will not do at all, for
suppose any of the neighbors should see them going in, what then?
He clutches at the idea like a drowning man clutches at a straw, for
this is a wonderfully nice girl he has met in this accidental way, and
he would like to become better acquainted.
So he begins to coax, and she laughingly refuses to listen. He pleads,
argues and promises, and then he stops in a shop and blows himself to a
five-pound box of candy for the baby--and her.
When he peels the bill off a roll that would choke an elephant she
sizes it all up out of the tail of her eye, and makes a mental
calculation as to how much is there.
She’s just a trifle more endearing to him after that, and it strikes
him that she is getting a little reckless.
“Come on,” she says, quite gayly, and with an affectation of
sportiness, “I will take you up to the house, but you must promise me
on your word of honor that you won’t remember the street or the number
and that you’ll never try to see me again. Remember, this is just for
one evening, and I don’t want you to think I am anything but what I
seem.”
“I could never think that,” he says, quite soberly.
“What must you think of a girl who will permit a stranger to speak to
her on the street?”
“I should think that in your case she would be very nice.”
She is laughing and chatting just like a girl out of school, and she
has interested him so much that he hasn’t noticed that they were
getting into quieter and darker streets, until she suddenly turns into
a hallway which is just like a thousand other New York hallways, and
announces:
“Here we are at last; now don’t make any noise.”
Up one flight, and she’s fumbling for a key, which she finds in a
moment, and then the door is opened.
The lights are turned low, and for some reason or other she doesn’t
turn them up, which he notes with a certain feeling of pleasure.
“Now take off your hat and coat, and we will have that bottle of wine
I told you about, for I am going to let you stay just one hour, after
which I am going to try and forgive myself for having spoken to you.”
It is all very nice and charming, and the wine is very good--a bit
better, in fact, than he had any idea it would be.
When the bottle and the glasses are empty he finds himself sitting
beside her on a divan. His arm is about her waist and she is
struggling to free herself. He leans over to kiss her, but she deftly
turns her face away.
“You must not try to kiss me,” she whispers, but as she speaks she
throws her arms about his neck.
It seems to the staid old business bulwark from the West as if he had
been sitting there for hours, when suddenly the electric bell rings.
Both jump to their feet.
“What is it?” he asks in a low voice.
“I don’t know; I can’t think,” she answers, holding her hand to her
head. “Perhaps it’s Jack. My God, if it should be Jack. He will kill
you if he finds you here. I could never explain it. Take your hat and
coat quick. Here, this way, the back door, and run, run as fast as you
can. Don’t stop, please, until you get to your hotel. Go, go, at once.”
With hat and coat in hand he finds himself pushed out in a dark
passageway. He gropes his way to the stairs.
A man is coming up, a man with a traveling case.
It’s Jack, as sure as you live.
Guiltily he walks down, steps hurriedly to the street door, passes out,
and starts on a brisk trot up the street. At the first corner he turns,
then he turns another block, then he turns again, with the instinct of
a hunted hare. So he pursued his zig-zag course for many blocks, until
he finally stops to ask directions.
“The Gilt-Edge Hotel? certainly; four blocks over to the avenue then
about twenty down.”
He walks the four blocks while he catches his breath, and then he gets
aboard a car only to find he hasn’t a cent.
Worse; he hasn’t a watch, nor a scarf pin.
He must have lost them while he was running.
He gets off and stands on the corner to think it over.
Eleven hundred dollars in good money gone; a watch worth $350 and a pin
worth at least $150.
The faint odor of violets comes back to him, and then he comes to his
senses.
Stung.
* * * * *
“It took you a long while to ring that bell, Billy, after I gave you
the tip. Don’t wait so long next time. You must be getting old, for
you’re working very slow lately.”
“I didn’t hear the buzzer at first; I don’t think you pressed it hard
enough. I’ll give it a look to-morrow and see. But I would never have
sized that old guy up for eleven hundred.”
“You never can tell what they’ve got until you take it away from them.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Her swell figure made her an attraction on the beach]
CASTING AN OLD SHOE
It may be that you--whoever you are or wherever you are--don’t know
what it means to go “down the line.” But in New York--in order that we
may start right--“The Line” means that part of Broadway where at night
the lights burn brightest, and where the mob--swell and otherwise--move
back and forth like the ebb and flow of the tide--hunting, hunting,
ever on the hunt.
From Twenty-third street to Forty-second, and back again, and you have
gone down The Line. Sometimes it costs you nothing for this innocent
little amusement; this feast of the eyes; and then again it is liable
to cost you a great deal.
It all depends upon who you are, and what you are and how easy you are.
And there you are.
I once knew a man, and this is pat while I am on this subject, who came
to New York from Buffalo. He was only going to remain for a day or so,
and then he was going to hike himself back to his home by the big lake.
He had sold out his business, and when he landed in New York he had a
bank roll of twenty-one thousand dollars.
It was enough to make any ordinary man round shouldered, but he was a
husky guy who was used to the long green, and it didn’t bother him any
more than if it had been beef-and-bean money.
He put up at a big swell hotel, and during the evening, when time hung
a bit heavy on his hands, he got it into his head that he would take a
walk down the line, and then turn in among the feathers.
With a perfecto between his teeth, he got as far as Thirty-eighth
street, where he met his finish.
When he arrived at his hotel at ten o’clock the next morning he asked
the proprietor to loan him twenty dollars to get home.
No explanations go with this, because he was sport enough never to tell
how it happened. It doesn’t even point a moral, for there are no morals
on the line.
Going down the street, like a yacht under full sail, is a woman whom
it cost not a cent less than $750 to put in commission. In the male
vernacular she is what might be termed a peach, and there is no need
to translate that for you, for the simple reason that you are familiar
enough with the different kinds of fruit to know what that means.
Because of her figure and the fact that she was a good fellow she was
an attraction at the beach.
She has a history, of course. They all have, to a certain extent, but
this is somewhat out of the ordinary.
In her day--and her day wasn’t so many years ago--she was a noted
beauty, and she had one of the most charming apartments in New York.
It was frequented by what might be termed the high-class sporting
crowd--lawyers with national reputations, actors whose names were in
big type on the billboards, business men who posed as the bulwarks of
the commercial world, and politicians who waxed sleek and fat at the
public cribs. They played poker there and were entertained royally by
her. She gave the choicest of dinners and served the best of wines,
and she was a perfect hostess. Her rooms were more like a club than
anything else, and she was never annoyed by any love-making on the part
of her guests, for a very good, substantial and simple reason--the man
who paid the shot and who figured as the real one in that charmed and
exclusive circle was none other than a high official of New York.
His hospitality, dispensed through her, was almost boundless, and there
are those who say that there was method in that gathering, and that
many a serious public question was discussed within the confines of
those gorgeously upholstered rooms.
Give a man the proper seat at the right kind of a table, beside a woman
who is beautiful, charming and magnetic, serve him with a perfect
dinner, with good wine selected by a connoisseur, then after the
dessert provide him with a cigar which cannot be bought in the open
market, and it is almost a sure thing that, if you have any proposition
to make, your battle is half won. What an ideal spot for lawyers,
politicians and capitalists to discuss things that it wouldn’t do to
have the public know.
And as the months rolled by this woman came to be known by the majority
of prominent men of New York.
Now you can get a good look at her as she stops to glance in that
window.
Not to have been her guest was to have missed a lot in life, and when
you lost to her in a little poker game you were almost sorry your
losses were not heavier.
She had more diamond rings than she could wear at any one time, and she
had the best wardrobe in town. No matter what she saw and wanted it was
hers. She scarcely needed to ask for it--she just wished, and it came
as though she had been blessed with some fairy godmother who waved a
magic wand, and brought things on the wind.
So there’s the picture, painted in the most ordinary colors, and
there’s the woman, who grew to think the world was made for her to play
with and do with as she liked.
When she was at the height of her career, this lawyer-political friend
of hers--this champion and provider--really and truly fell in love. He
was well past middle age, but that made no difference. After many years
of waiting--years which were punctuated with numerous affairs which he
thought spelled love--he found the girl at last in the daughter of a
man whose position left him nothing to wish for. She was a society girl
and charming enough for any man.
Before he fully realized what he was doing he had proposed marriage to
her and had been accepted without giving that other one a thought.
When he understood that he had to break with her, he knew that he had
the job of his life in front of him, but he was game enough to go at
it without a moment’s hesitancy, and so one night, after the crowd had
gone and the last poker chip cashed in, he told her the story.
“I am going to marry and settle down,” he said. “My position demands
it, and I cannot go on living this way forever. I feel that I have
a political future, and I must protect myself. If I ever came up
again for any prominent office, as I expect to in the near future, my
relations with you would mean the worst kind of defeat for me. I want
to be fair with you, and I am willing to settle any claim you may have
on me for anything within reason.”
His story took a long while in the telling, and through it all she
never moved nor spoke.
When he had quite finished she stretched and yawned.
“Is that all you have to say?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered, “that is all, except that I hope we will part
friends, and that if ever I can do anything for you, I----”
“Now whatever you do,” she spoke up sharply, “don’t get tiresome nor
sentimental. You’re a good fellow, and always have been--so you think.
I have come into your life and have answered your purpose. I have
entertained your friends and made it pleasant for you and them. I
suppose you think I did it simply because I was provided for and had
everything I wanted--that I was a sort of a high-class servant who was
satisfied with her wages. If I had been wise I would have anticipated
this and been prepared for it. I would have had enough money in the
bank to have been independent to a certain extent. I am like a poker
chip--you bought me, played with me, and now you are ready to cash me
in because you have finished with me. You are a good fellow--with the
men--but you are very tiresome and that reminds me that I am tired and
wish you would run along. Go home now, and dream of the nice girl you
are going to marry.”
He stood looking at her like a man under the influence of a drug. He
did not know what to say. He had expected a scene of some kind, and he
was disappointed. His vanity was touched. Why, here was a woman for
whom he had done everything in the world, and whom he thought loved
him, and she was parting from him without a tear or even so much as
a word of expostulation. That didn’t suit him at all. He wanted her
to throw her arms about his neck and beg him not to go. Of course, he
would have gone just the same, but he didn’t want to think that she
would let him go so easily.
The pride and vanity of man is a peculiar thing, and there are not ten
men in a thousand who understand women, even though they think they do.
This man, clever, handsome and brilliant, was of the majority who do
not know, and he had nothing to say to the woman who had entertained
him and with whom he had spent many pleasant hours.
He looked at her for a moment and then he went out as though he had
been whipped from the door.
She turned the key in the lock and then gave way to her real feelings
by crying as only a heart-broken woman can.
He had incriminated himself with her to such an extent that he dreaded
her. She had been too calm to suit him, and he feared trouble to come.
He had no definite idea as to what form it might take, but he wanted to
avoid it.
So he went direct to one of his most astute legal friends--the
same one, who, by the way, told me the whole story in a burst of
half-drunken confidence--and they sat up half the night figuring on
how to head her off in case she attempted to do anything that would
reflect on his “spotless” character. How careful the man is of his name
as a rule, and how despicably he can treat a woman when it suits either
his mood or convenience.
That midnight conference finally resolved itself into definite shape by
the counsellor saying:
“I’ll take $10,000 to her and get everything she has of yours and her
signature under a statement that will leave you free and clear.”
And so it was agreed.
Lawyers do not act very quickly unless their own interests are at
stake. Speed was required here and the action was fast enough for
anyone. The next day, at noon, the lawyer, who knew her well enough
to call her by her first name, called upon her, and as he was ushered
into the handsome apartment he involuntarily put his hand to his breast
pocket, which contained ten new, crisp one thousand dollar bills--the
price of her silence, from his standpoint.
It is interesting to be able to note that the interview was short,
sharp, sweet and to the point. He made his eloquent speech of how his
friend, who had always loved her devotedly, was forced by something
which she could not understand to break from her and marry a woman
whose position in society was assured. He was prepared to pay her an
amount of money--quite a liberal one, in fact--so that she should want
for nothing. All he desired was a certain package of letters and a
statement that she had only known his friend in the most casual way.
“How much are you going to pay me?” she asked.
“Ten thousand dollars, and here it is,” he said, producing the bills.
“I will do what he wants,” was all she said, and in ten minutes the job
was done.
Then he laid the money on the table.
“What is your fee?” She spoke very softly.
“My fee?” he repeated, as if he did not quite catch her meaning.
“Yes, your fee. How much are you charging this friend of yours for what
you are doing for him?”
“I am doing it through friendship. There is no such thing as fee in a
case like this.”
“You have earned this money, and I do not want it,” she went on. “I am
not a blackmailer nor can my promise of immunity be bought. I, too,
understand what the word friendship means, and I am not so degraded nor
lost but that I can take advantage of it. It is such men as you and he
that make such women as I am. Good-day.”
He was in the hall with the money in his hand before he quite realized
how it all happened.
Between you and me, my friends, I would sooner have her conscience than
the conscience of the very fine gentleman whose public career has since
been marked by repeated triumphs.
[Illustration]
THE LONG WAY ’ROUND
The Girl from Philadelphia wasn’t a beauty by any means, but she had a
nice fetching way, good teeth, and a cheerful, contagious laugh which
are three things that have beauty left at the post. Beauty, you see, is
only good for a short sprint at the best, and in a long race is liable
to lag a bit toward the finish, but the other propositions are stayers
nine times out of ten and generally manage to come under the wire in
good shape.
Thirty days in the big city, if spent in the right kind of company,
usually mean about a year in Quakertown, and force of circumstances had
thrown The Girl in pretty close contact with high-flyers. You see, it
all came about this way:
She had been playing the soubrette part in some amateur theatricals,
and everybody who saw her--except some girl friends who wanted to be
soubrettes, too--said she was the real thing and that she had Della
Fox in her palmy days beaten the length of Chestnut street, and as for
Millie James, why there was nothing to it.
That started the theatrical bee buzzing in her conning-tower, so she
immediately formed the habit of reading the theatrical papers instead
of the society notes, and she got the matinee habit so bad that she
didn’t miss one show a month. Before that her fad had been gymnastics
and she was the real thing on physical culture.
[Illustration: She was once the real thing on physical culture]
Now when a girl gets that way she needs either a husband and honeymoon
to distract her attention or a hard-faced guardian--female, of
course--to follow her wherever she goes.
So in view of the fact that this girl had neither, she studied the
play bills and did pretty much as she liked. She was just ripe to sign
with a traveling show or listen to the argument of any actor man who
offered her the bait of a chance to do a stunt behind the footlights.
She lived the way a soubrette ought to live--at least, she thought she
did. In a locked drawer in her dressing case she kept a box of make-up,
and when the rest of the family had retired she fixed her face up so
she looked like a comic valentine. She figured upon this as a sort of
preliminary training in case she should ever get a chance to break into
the business; look like a twenty-dollar gold piece to the public, and
feel like a plugged nickel when she was in her dollar-a-day room after
the show. She might have been dreaming yet if a young fellow who once
suped for Mansfield hadn’t made her acquaintance. He called on her at
her home, and they hadn’t been talking twenty minutes when she sprung
the soubrette business, and told him that some day she hoped to get on
the professional stage.
“The only way to get a chance is to go to New York,” he said. “There’s
where all the good shows start from, as well as a good many of the bad
ones, and if a girl has talent, an agent or a manager will grab her
just the same as a hobo will grab a ham sandwich, no matter what his
nationality is. Why, I once knew a girl who went there from Forked
River, New Jersey. She didn’t know anything, but she had ginger, and
she’s been on the road for two seasons with the Bon Ton Burlesquers.
What do you think of that? Philadelphia’s all right in a way, but
I’ll bet if Maude Adams had been born here she’d be behind the ribbon
counter in some big dry goods store instead of the swellest little
actress that ever took a bunch of roses over the footlights.”
That is what started the trouble, and that night when The Girl went up
to her room she packed a dress-suit case, putting in her grease paints
first, of course, and then she penned a neat little note of farewell
forever to her parents, after which she waited until the house was
quiet and then slipped out as quietly as a burglar. She had enough
money to make the breakaway and keep her about thirty days, by the end
of which time she figured she would have a job at about fifty per week,
with traveling expenses and Pullman car paid by the manager.
She had a roseate view of life, and she thought that as soon as she
hit the big burg the managers would be falling over each other trying
to get her to sign a contract. She didn’t know that making a hit in
a little show given by the Golden Rod Society for the Supplying of
Vegetables to the Cannibal Tribes of Africa was quite a different thing
to going on the professional stage, and she imagined if she could do
well in the part of _Betsey, the Romp_, in “Who Killed Cock Robin,” she
could do equally well on the stage of any big theatre.
She had as much hope as a piece of Swiss cheese has holes when she
climbed aboard the sleeping car which was scheduled to leave for New
York at 1 A. M., but when she landed in the cold, gray dawn a good part
of it had gone and had left her a trifle weak in the knees, which, by
the way, is a decided symptom of weakness.
It took her just two hours to find a boarding house, and until the next
day to get her nerve back. It was only because of her youth that it
came back at all. She got a list of the names of managers and started
out to do business, but no one seemed to want any amateur soubrettes
from Philadelphia. By two o’clock there was nothing that looked like a
job, but she had received eleven invitations to go out to lunch from
eleven different genials who didn’t seem to want to talk business; who
were inclined to be affectionate and who called her “My Dear” in every
other sentence.
That night she went to a vaudeville show, and she was so impressed with
the ease with which the turns were pulled off that she concluded she
would do an act of her own. That is how it happened that the day after
she forsook the legitimate for the variety, and knocked at the office
doors of a different species of managers. Very busy fellows these were,
too, and she got her dismissal in almost every case with startling
rapidity.
Here is a sample of the dialogue:
“Where have you worked before?”
“I have never been on the professional stage, but I played the part of
a soubrette in amateur shows in Philadelphia, and all my friends told
me that----”
“But have you an act of your own?”
“No, not yet, but----”
“Well, you frame up some kind of an act, then come around and see me,
and I may be able to get you a trial somewhere.”
And then twenty-three.
Many a good fighter has quit when he found every rush he made was
stopped with a tantalizing jab in the nose, and many a man has thrown
up the sponge when he has walked the streets day in and day out and
discovered that nobody wanted him.
At the end of a week The Girl would have written a letter home or taken
a train back if it had not been for her pride. She didn’t want to
acknowledge defeat, but she was on the verge of it.
She was coming out of a theatre one night when she met The Man.
There must be a man else there would be no story. He was about
forty-five years old, had been through enough campaigns to give him
self-possession, and he had been successful enough to be egotistic.
Two minutes later they were walking down Broadway together, and she
was rather glad that she had found someone who took an interest in
her. One-half hour after that and they were seated at a table in a big
restaurant; the order had been given and she was telling him all about
herself while he was looking her over with an exceedingly critical eye
and making up his mind that she showed up rather good under a strong
light, especially when she smiled.
A broiled lobster, a quart of claret, then a couple of birds and a
quart of wine are enough to change the ideas and opinions of a lot
of people, especially if such a bill of fare is unusual, and so it
happened that when the red began to come to The Girl’s cheeks, the
things The Man were saying to her didn’t seem so much out of the way
after all. Besides, that hall bedroom in the musty old boarding house
was rapidly becoming a nightmare. Between you and me, if she had never
smiled this thing would never have happened.
The Man lighted a cigar, and as he blew the first puff of blue smoke
toward the ceiling he observed:
“My dear, marriage is nothing more nor less than a useless and barbaric
rite, and when it is all summed up it amounts to nothing in the end.
Why should you be legally bound to any man in this world? It would be
all right as long as you loved him, then you wouldn’t care, but suppose
your feelings changed, what then? In order to get a divorce from him
you would have to catch him committing a crime for which the law would
grant you a divorce, or get good evidence, which amounts to the same
thing. You might separate from him if he was cruel to you or didn’t
support you, but suppose he was kind and gave you all the money you
wanted, then you would still have to live with him as his wife. Now,
on the other hand, if you were not married to him, you would have a
perfect right, as soon as your feelings changed, to leave him without
a moment’s notice. You would be under no obligations to him under
any circumstances, and he, knowing that you were free to go and come
as you pleased, would, in order to keep you, treat you with greater
consideration than if you were his wife. You can believe me or not,
just as you wish, but an understanding between a man and a woman is all
that is necessary to happiness in this world. Don’t be old-fashioned,
but let us make an agreement of some kind between ourselves. You will
be perfectly independent, free to go and come as you like, and do as
you wish.”
There was a certain amount of logic in this argument, especially when
the reverse of the picture is a cheap room in a cheap boarding house.
So the end of the first chapter was that the landlady wondered why her
lodger never came back, even to get her case and the few belongings
it contained. It was all mysterious to her, but as she was paid in
advance, she said nothing, and at the end of the week rented the room
to an old fellow with asthma who was living on an allowance.
So far as the stage was concerned, that bright bubble had burst,
and instead of haunting the offices of managers, The Girl took to
breakfasting at 10, lunching at 2 and dining at 8. The theatres to her
were merely places of amusement--good to fill in time which could be
used in no other way, and her ambition to shine as a footlight favorite
went when she found that she could live without being annoyed by any of
the responsibilities of life. She gradually grew to know that the name
of The Man was a very familiar one in the big cities and at times the
newspapers printed his picture. She had assumed that name--it was in
the compact, although there were few who knew it. Several times, when
he called on her, he brought some of his friends to dinner, but these
occasions were not frequent, by any means, and she knew she wasn’t a
part of his intimate life.
Now see how time makes puppets of both men and women, for this story
has one merit in that it is true.
The Man took sick in Chicago, and the first she knew of it was when she
read it in the newspapers. Every stage of his disease was chronicled
until he died, and when she read that the paper dropped from her hands
and she felt again that weakness of the knees which took her on that
first morning in New York. For four days she lived in a dream, vaguely
wondering what was to become of her, and then a brisk, alert, dapper
little man--a lawyer--called. There was nothing sentimental about him.
He was business from the drop of the hat.
“I represent the family of The Man,” he announced, abruptly. “There is
a codicil in his will which bequeaths you $250,000. Of course, we can
break that and not half try, but the widow and children don’t want any
unpleasant notoriety, and they are willing to settle for $50,000, which
I can pay to you at once. You will accept, if you are wise, for $50,000
is a nice little sum and it will leave you free and clear to do as you
please and will dispose of a very unpleasant situation.”
The death of The Man had given her a shock from which she hadn’t yet
recovered, and she asked for time to think.
“Come to-morrow or the day after,” she said, “and I will talk to you. I
can’t think now.”
He wanted to finish it up at once, but every time she gave him the same
answer, so there was nothing for him to do but to go.
And then that night there came another lawyer, one whom she had known
because The Man had brought him on one of his visits. His argument was
different:
“There is $250,000 coming to you; get it. It is a clean-cut, legal will
and they can’t break it, besides there is enough there for everybody
and to spare. Let me manage it for you and don’t worry. If they want to
contest let them go ahead and I’ll beat them.”
And because he said “Don’t worry; leave it all to me,” she consented.
That was the woman of it.
They did fight, and the newspapers printed columns about it, for it was
a great story, but they didn’t print the part I am telling here, for
that they didn’t know. With the articles appeared her portraits, and
she became as well known as The Man had been, in a way.
Before the finish had been reached the heirs concluded there had better
be a settlement, and so, rather than stand the delay of appeals in
case she won, which it was reasonably sure she would do, she accepted
$150,000 in cash.
The next day her maid brought her a card. It read:
“ALFRED D. COHEN,
Theatrical Promoter.”
“I’ll see him,” she said.
She had learned a thing or two since she had left Philadelphia, so she
knew what was coming and was prepared for it when the polite, suave Mr.
Cohen walked into the room.
“I have come,” he said, by way of introduction, “to make you an offer
to go on the stage.”
“Yes?” she queried, calmly.
“All you will have to do is to sing two or three songs twice a
day--once in the afternoon and once in the evening--and I am authorized
to offer you $750 a week.”
“And suppose I can’t sing?” she said, smiling, thinking of the last
time she had talked with a manager.
“That would make no difference; we would have you coached and can give
you ten weeks straight.” He fumbled at his coat nervously, for she
was really an important personage now. “I have the contracts here.”
He produced them and handed them over. She read them over carefully,
debated mentally as to the policy of signing at once or waiting until
another day, finally decided on the side of deliberation, and then said:
“Come and see me to-morrow at 2 and I will let you know then.”
He knew intuitively she would accept, so he bowed himself out without
further argument.
So that is how she at last went on the stage, and if your memory serves
you well enough to take you back a year or so you will know that she
made a hit as the singer of songs of long ago.
P. S.--She told her folks in Philadelphia that she had been studying
voice culture all the time.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: A dose of knockout drops proved the turning point in her
life]
THE QUEEN OF CHINATOWN
If you don’t think there are any interesting tales in the Tenderloin,
just go there some night and look around. You don’t have to look long
before you will find something that is worth going a distance for.
You’ll find tragedy and pathos as close together as the meat is to
the bread in a ham sandwich, and it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to
discover it, either.
I know a few things about the Bowery and the Tenderloin, and for the
past twenty years I have roamed about New York by night, simply because
I was fascinated by the life after dark. Of course, you know that this
night owl business is a disease, and when once you get it, and get it
good, it is one of the hardest things in the world to cure. In my day
I have seen many a nice, straightforward young fellow go to the bad
simply because he got the night habit.
It isn’t much of a combination that gets you, either, for it’s the
white lights, the music, the women and the drinks, not counting the
good fellowship, or what passes for good fellowship, on the side.
The lid is on in New York to a certain extent, that I’ll admit, but I’m
going to take you under the lid.
It’s all a bluff, anyhow, and things go on the same as they have been
going for years, with very little change.
The same kind of girls are roaming the streets, the same kind of booze
is being served on the little round tables in stuffy back rooms, and
the same class of waiters are making short change whenever the mark
looks easy. There may be a new police captain in the district or the
precinct, but there are some things in this world that can’t be held
down any more than a man can hold down a charge of dynamite after the
cap has been exploded.
Talk about your high pressure life--that’s it. Ten years is the limit
for the careful ones, and I’ve seen them go off in five. Why, only the
other day a hospital ambulance backed up to a downtown tenement, and
when it went away it carried a woman whose lease of life had about
expired.
There was a crowd which gathered, as usual--men, women and children,
all filled with a morbid curiosity, which makes people flock and gaze
with interest at anything which approaches a bit of human wreckage, and
of them all there was not more than one or two who knew that the sick
woman had once been known as the Queen of Chinatown, and had been made
the subject of many an interesting story.
It seems only a few years ago that they called her the Queen, and you
wondered why until you looked at her and heard her talk.
Then you knew.
She was more than good looking, and what was just a bit rarer, she
was educated. There was about her a certain amount of refinement
which forced itself to the surface like a life preserver under water,
every once in a while, but which as the years rolled on gradually
disappeared, just like any other veneer. If the constant dropping of
water will wear away a stone, in just so sure a way will environment
contaminate, and human nature seek the lower level.
So here is the picture:
This so-called Queen, coming into Chinatown--by what route only she can
tell--and creating a mild sensation among the Orientals who inhabit the
houses on those narrow, twisting streets. The story was that a dose of
knockout drops had proved the turning point in her life.
John Chinaman, you know, has a keen eye for the beautiful, not only in
decorative art and choice silks, but in women.
There is his one weak point, the defective link in the chain, the one
vulnerable spot in the armor of his stony reserve.
The lobbygows--the errand men of the Chinese--the whites, who execute
commissions for them, and do all sorts of services, both legitimate
and illegitimate, who will work in the dark as well as in the light,
and whose heels can be hurried by extra compensation, saw and noted
this Queen also, and in seeing, they, too, admired, but more or less
hopelessly. The one spot which is quick in a woman’s composition is
adulation. Let her be like ice, as cold and pure and reserved as her
likeness carved out of the whitest Parian marble, or the hardest of
flint-like granite, and admiration will make her as soft and supple as
a Cleopatra.
She comes into her own and knows it.
She smiles and looks about for a likely head upon which to drop the
wreath of her favors, and if she hesitates it is because the right head
has not been bowed, or that her whim bids her hold off that she may
only succumb after a struggle.
I am not putting up any defense for this Chinatown Queen. She was
simply a woman with moods and humors, and pretty ways. Furthermore,
which is essential in most cases, she was good to look at.
So many were the affairs that she had that there is no Solomon wise
enough to tell how or when the first one began. All that is known is
that she dressed in silks that were costly enough for a real queen, and
which smelled of the spices and perfume of the Orient.
When I say costly, I mean from a money standard. They were more costly
than that, so far as she was concerned personally, for in the end they
cost her her life, and if she is not dead yet they certainly cost her
happiness, which really amounts to the same thing.
For a while she lived furiously, with anything she wanted for the
asking. Fine clothes, fine jewels, and money to spend is part of every
woman’s life.
More than that, it is a keystone.
Besides, she was the most prominent woman in all the Quarter. For her
that was fame and glory enough.
Had she been placed, by a fortunate move, somewhere else on the
chess-board of life, her fame might have been more secure, but what
difference does that make, so long as she was satisfied?
It wasn’t long before her real life began, when her steps, instead of
being on the level or upward, traced their gradual way downward.
That was inevitable in that case, just as it is in other cases where
constancy is an unknown virtue.