in the country and gathered in the tips, and when she wasn’t busy with
anything else she was framing up something new for herself. All this
tended to give her a muscular development that was worth having and
that many an athlete would have been proud of.
Her reputation was on the increase and she began to be known. The first
step had been made, and it became a comparatively easy thing to get
booking in Europe. The skate she was tied to began to swell up a bit,
and during the seven days they were on the ship bound for Liverpool he
got it into his head that he was the real one and that she was a side
issue.
“Don’t ever forget,” he said to her when they reached London, “that I
am the real fellow. I dug you out of a woodshed and put you where you
are now and if you try to get gay with me, I’ll send you back there,
and I’ll get another one just as good as you are.”
He thought he was the real candy boy, and he started in to cut a wide
swath. He chased every petticoat that came along, blew in their joint
salary at the cafes, and the only time she saw him was when they were
doing their act.
In Berlin she happened to walk in the cafe connected with the music
hall at which they were working, and she saw him sitting at one of the
tables trying to fill a 160-pound blonde with Rhine wine.
“Don’t you think it is about time to cut this out?” she asked.
“Didn’t I tell you to keep away from me and not butt in where you’re
not wanted?” he said.
“Yes; but I think I have something to say. I’m not a wooden image, am
I?”
“Who is this woman?” asked the blonde, languidly.
“I’m his wife, if you want to know,” was the retort, “and anyone would
think you had no home by the way you hang around here.”
“Tell her to go away; she annoys me.”
That was enough for the girl. With one swift jerk the blonde was pulled
to her feet, then a vicious right hook found its way to her jaw, and as
she dropped to the floor the “meal ticket” walked away.
It was the first blow she had ever struck except in a friendly contest
with the gloves, and it stirred her blood as nothing else had ever done.
It did another thing--it set her to thinking, and from that time on she
began a course of good, hard training.
Something definite and tangible had become established in her mind
and she was after it like a hound after a rabbit. She paid as little
attention to him as if he had never existed, and he carried on his love
affairs--very numerous ones they were, too--with a free hand. He became
a hot proposition, and he blew like a drunken sailor on every girl
who caught his fancy. She lived like an automaton, doing everything
mechanically except the conditioning work she was engaged in. At every
show they boxed together, and once in a while, when she would get a
chance, she would whip in a hard one in order to lay bare his weak
spots. One night she hit him in the stomach. It was a short, sharp,
snappy punch, and she felt the shock of it up to her elbow.
He turned white under his grease paint and then wobbled back a couple
of paces.
When they came together again he whispered savagely:
“Cut those out or I’ll hand you one the next time.”
“It was a slip,” she said. “I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s a good thing for you that you didn’t,” he answered, surlily.
From Berlin they went to the Casino, in Paris, and if the trick that
was pulled off there had never happened I wouldn’t be writing this
story.
Paris to him was like a bone to a hungry dog and he was a hot sport
from the night they hit the town, while she was a joke because she
wouldn’t mix with the bunch and play the game of love on her own hook.
But all the time she was getting ready for the stunt that was to give
her revenge and freedom together.
At last it came.
When he stumbled into the dressing room one night he had the beginnings
of a good-sized jag. He had been putting away his share of absinthe and
he began to abuse her.
“You’re a dead one,” he said, “and I don’t know what I ever saw in you.
Here I’ve put you on your feet and give you the chance of your life to
make good, but you don’t connect. Get in with the crowd and be a live
one before it’s too late, for you’re getting to be a shine.”
“What do you expect me to do when you are mixed up with a bunch of
cheap soubrettes, and drunk half the time?”
“Why, do the same as I do, of course. There’s that guy that came in
last night and wanted to meet you. He’s got all kinds of coin, and----”
“Shut up,” she cried, “what do you think I am?”
“Not much.”
She began working at her gloves viciously, pushing the padding away
from the knuckles so as to leave the fist with as little covering as
possible. You know the trick if you’ve ever seen boxers just before
a contest. It isn’t considered the right thing to do, but when done
properly makes a punch well landed about twice as effective. When she
was through there wasn’t much hair in the centre of her gloves, and
then they were ready to go on. They sang their opening song, juggled
the Indian clubs, after which she went at the bag. That concluded, they
were to go three rounds to a quick finish.
They were ready.
He went forward to the footlights to make the usual announcement.
“My partner and myself will now box three exhibition rounds,” etc., etc.
“Time.”
When a man has been sparring exhibition rounds very long he is apt
to grow a trifle careless, and to take chances that he wouldn’t take
under ordinary circumstances. It was so in this case, and at the first
rush he got a stiff, straight left in the mouth that brought the blood
oozing from between his lips.
“What the hell,” he began in amazement, but he didn’t finish, for she
was on him in an instant and a short right went home to his ribs. He
caught a look in her eyes that suddenly sobered him, and he began to
stall and cover up. He retreated a few steps, and she said tauntingly:
“What’s the matter, are you afraid of me, you cur?”
He wavered for a moment and then she went after him again.
He swung his right with all his might and caught her on the ear.
Somewhere from out of the audience there came a sibilant hiss which
was taken up by a hundred at once. She needed that punch just about
that time, and it spurred her on, even though it hurt for a moment. She
bored in, and throwing down her guard drove a right and left to his
stomach--his weak spot. There was the place, but she had forgotten it
in the excitement.
He dropped heavily and awkwardly on his back, rolled over slowly and
pulled himself to his feet. He came up with a realizing sense that
he must protect himself against this woman who was taking an unfair
advantage of him, and in his ears rang the shouts and applause of a
delighted audience. He knew they were not for him, but he would fight,
anyhow, and show them what he could do. They were to see that an
American boxer was no slouch. He saw her standing there waiting, with a
grim smile on her compressed lips and he made up his mind that he would
knock that smile off. He straightened up and went at her like a bull.
She didn’t back off as he thought she would, and when he pulled back
his right he got a jolt on the jaw that turned him half way around. He
went in again and she hit him in the stomach. When his head dropped his
nose met an uppercut that made the blood spurt in a stream. The sight
seemed to madden her and she went at him fiercely and vindictively.
There was revenge behind every blow and she felt that she was evening
up the insults and humiliation of a year. He was groggy and almost
helpless and there was pandemonium in the audience. Some of the women
had gone out, but those who had stayed had risen in their seats and
were cheering on this American girl who was fighting like a man. She
heard nothing and saw only the man she loathed and hated. She noted his
puffed and bleeding face and knew she had him.
“Put up your hands,” she said sharply.
He obeyed mechanically and she walked over to him. He tried to cover
up, but she feinted him into an opening, and then drove a straight
right to his jaw and he flopped over in the wings crying:
“I quit, I quit; I didn’t think you’d do this.”
She didn’t even look at him as she went past to her dressing room.
Ten minutes later he came in with a trace of his former bluster.
“What are you trying to do, anyhow?” he began, but she shut him up.
“I’ll lick you again right here if you don’t keep your mouth closed.
From now on until the end of this engagement _I’m_ running this act,
and I’m going to collect the money for it, too, and any time I catch
you doing anything I don’t like _I’m_ going to beat your head off. Any
time you think I can’t do it start something. In just two weeks more
you can pack your clothes and shift for yourself, for I’m done.”
That’s all.
She has been shifting for herself ever since, and is doing pretty well,
thank you.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Rackets where pretty girls cut capers to the music of
male voices]
KID AND HIS TEN THOUSAND
Just another restaurant scene with waiters and guests and steaming
dishes and wine.
It’s the same old thing, repeated many times a day, but it’s like a
stage on which a thousand plays have appeared. The setting is always
the same--it’s only the scene that changes.
I just want to call your attention to that red-cheeked boy at the table
over by the window. I said boy, although from the standpoint of years
he is really a man. But he lacks experience to bring him to a man’s
real estate. Years, you know, don’t always count in this world, that
is, not in all things. In this woman is excepted, because years count
for everything with her.
This particular boy has just had his first experience, and that is
the excuse for this story--if an excuse is needed. He has laid the
foundation stone upon which he is going to build his life, and in the
building he will use many stones of many colors, sizes and shapes.
You see him sitting there disconsolate, miserable and wretched. His
home, as luxurious a one as anybody would want, is not more than a
dozen blocks away, and he will wind up there in the course of the next
forty-eight hours, for he is practically broke.
I call him The Boy With The Ten Thousand Dollar Bill.
Just a few years ago his father died. A few weeks later the family
lawyer was in the drawing room reading the will of the deceased, and
near the end of the document he came to a clause which stipulated:
“On his twenty-first birthday my son shall receive from the balance
of moneys unexpended a bill of the denomination of $10,000 to do with
as he shall see fit, and he shall not be asked to account for the
expenditure of it to anyone in any way whatsoever.”
That was a curious item for even a curious will, but the estate was big
and the founder of that fortune felt evidently that he could afford to
experiment with a mere ten thousand, even after his death, that the
lesson might be of benefit to the heir.
The object is obvious.
The boy became of age, and on that day he received the bank note which
to him seemed like a fortune, so he felt that he owned the world.
A man can do a lot of good in New York with that amount of money, and a
boy can do a lot of harm.
This boy knew in advance the good fortune that was coming to him, and
in looking around he made up his mind that the first thing a man of his
means should buy would be an automobile costing $4,000, so the day he
got the money he bought the car, and he received in exchange a bundle
of crisp five hundred bills.
He must have thought those bills represented the wealth of Croesus,
or that they were magic, and no matter how many he might use, some
mysterious agency would replace them.
At 11.30 o’clock that night the new automobile was backed up against
the stage door of a Broadway playhouse, and half an hour later it was
filled with as many girls as could possibly be crowded in.
In that startling way the boy with the big bill made his debut into the
society of the line. He gave the girls a dinner that they are talking
of yet, and before two hours had gone by they were calling him pet
names and incidentally trying to get a line on the actual size of his
bank roll. They worked individually, and each one could in fancy see
herself installed in a fine house, mistress of unlimited means and the
wife of an especially easy mark, made to order for a chorus girl.
You see he was so liberal that he deceived them, although, as a matter
of fact, young ladies with their wide experience ought to have known
better, and have figured out the limit of his possibilities.
These ten thousand dollars were left by the dead man to be a bait for
the wolves, and he had arranged it so that the hand of his son should
feed it to them bit by bit. There were other thousands behind these
and they were to be protected by the knowledge of the fate of the ones
which had gone before. It was willed that ten thousand dollars of
experience might be bought with it, and the boy was doing his share of
it very well. He left his home and took a nice little apartment so that
he could have more liberty, which he needed just about that time. He
lunched with a soubrette and dined with a singer. If he liked a show
or fancied one of the girls in it, he engaged a box every night for
the week. The crowd dubbed him The Little Millionaire, and he deserved
the title, for he was certainly playing the star part, and he was
always present at what are known as rackets where the chief source of
amusement were girls who cut capers and danced to the music of male
voices.
His automobile, which always carried a bunch of freight from which
ribbons and feathers fluttered, denoting the sex of the wearers, of
course, shot up and down and in and out in a most spectacular manner,
and it, as much as anything else, helped to make him popular.
He must have known a bit about finance, for it looked to those who were
watching his career as if he was spending about ten thousand a week,
and so he got the reputation of doing--as sometimes happens in this
world--that which was impossible.
But through it all he never showed his hand.
He was dining one night with an especially nice little girl of the
stage to whom he had shown a lot of attention--which means in stage
parlance that he had bought her presents worth accepting.
They had come to the third bottle of wine, and to her way of thinking,
the time seemed about ripe for what she had in mind.
“A man who’s been in the business a long time was telling me the other
night that I ought to have a show of my own,” she mused, as she sipped
her wine.
She had made a careful and skilful cast and she waited.
“Why don’t you?” he asked presently.
That was quicker action than she had dared to expect.
“I ought to have done it two years ago when I had a friend that wanted
to start me out on the road. Don’t you think I’m as good as Blanche
Bates?”
“How was it you didn’t go?” he queried, ignoring her question.
“Well, you see, I didn’t like this party, and I wouldn’t accept favors
from no one I didn’t like. It don’t cost much to put a show on if you
know how, and there’s a lot of money in it if it’s a hit.”
“About how much?”
“Twelve or fifteen thousand dollars would do it up in great shape. I
think a nice little comic opera would be good. The kind Lillian Russell
has. All she makes good on is her looks and that’s not so much. I could
take a few music lessons while the play was being fixed up and it
wouldn’t be long before I could make them all sit up and look me over.”
There was a moment’s pause and then she aimed at the bull’s eye:
“What’s the matter with you backing it?”
“That’s what I was just thinking about,” was the answer. “I’ll look
into it and if it’s all right I’ll see my broker and give you a chance
to see what you can do as a star.”
He was talking like an old timer and he had her going in a minute. But
that was only one of his jokes and for two weeks he kept it up. Then he
told her of some enormous investments he had made which had tied him up
temporarily, while she had to go around explaining to her friends that
it was all off about what she had been telling them.
There was one proposition this gay young sport hadn’t figured on, for
all going out and nothing coming in makes a quick and, as a rule, a
spectacular finish. A fellow starts out like a three-time winner and
comes under the wire with nothing but a bundle of junk, without even
knowing his right name.
Two months of the three had gone by and the most remarkable part of the
whole affair was that there was any money left. But toward the latter
part of the game he had been growing wise, or he thought he was, at any
rate. He stopped the five-dollar tips and he was cutting out a night
here and there. He might have retired with honors if he hadn’t met
Blanche.
Good-looking, slick, clever Blanche, the regret of whose life was that
she hadn’t met him first and got it all in one solid chunk. He didn’t
know it, but he was made for Blanche, and what was more to the point,
she knew it. In fact, there were very few things she didn’t know.
His talk about his brokers didn’t switch her in the least. There had
been a time in her life when she might have believed it, but that time
had gone by. She had lived in a fool’s paradise just once and that was
enough for her.
He actually wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t consider it for a
moment, because she didn’t figure him out as a future proposition for
more than a couple of thousand at the most.
“You’re all right, Harry,” she said once, “but we won’t have any
marrying just now. What we will do is go shopping. I want to furnish
a flat so I can really have a home of my own and you will be just as
welcome there as if you owned it yourself, so come along and we’ll pick
the things out. You have very nice taste in such matters, I know, and
we can have a good time buying.”
Good speech that, and very nicely delivered, and he liked her well
enough to find no flaw in it. But when the time really came for the
buying there was something else she had to do, so she said:
“Don’t you bother your head about this; just give me the money; I know
what I want; I have the list all made out. I’ll buy them and fix them
up and when everything is ready I’ll have you come up and look at them
and tell me what you think. I know my taste is not as good as yours,
but I’ll do the best I can.”
Please bear in mind that he was only a boy--just twenty-one years
old--then you will understand perhaps why it was he fell for so old a
story.
At this point you’ve got it all figured out. In your opinion she took
the coin and simply faded away.
Nothing of the kind.
He saw her once every twenty-four hours at least and she reported
progress, and then one day he got a note telling him to come up and see
the new place.
She received him at the door herself and if the little flat had been a
palace she couldn’t have been more delighted. It was so very fine that
when she told him she had gone into debt just a little bit he promptly
asked how much and paid up without even so much as a murmur. It was so
easy that she ought to have given it back to him a little while just to
hold.
When he went away he had a latch key and was about as proud a fellow as
it was possible to be and walk straight.
As in a play so in a story--the finish is everything.
It must be good and it must be quick.
The earlier parts of the story or the scenes may lag, but nothing like
that will do at the end.
Blanche had been on the stage, and consequently she knew the value of
“finis.”
He was to go on a hunting trip for a week, and in her opinion the
critical moment had about arrived. She intuitively divined the end of
the string. One night at a little dinner in the flat she talked to
him about money matters, and such was the charm of her manner that
presently he was telling her all about himself, and the romance of the
ten thousand dollar bill.
“And how much have you left of all this?” she asked softly.
“Oh, I don’t know, about seven or eight hundred.”
“Well, I think you’ve been very, very foolish. You’re going away on a
week’s trip and a hundred really ought to do you. Just give the rest
to me and I will take good care of it until you come back, and then
you will have it. You want to be careful of what you have now; you are
altogether too liberal, and you do too much for people.”
That was the reason when he went away on that trip that he was a trifle
shy financially, and so far to the bad that he had to borrow to get
back in good shape.
From the Grand Central station he took a cab to the flat. It seemed as
though he couldn’t get there quick enough. He went up the stairs two at
a time. He came to the door.
There was a light, dim, but still a light, shining feebly over the
transom. He put the key in the lock, turned it, opened the door and
went in. He took four steps in the private hall. Then a man’s arm went
around his neck and a voice asked:
“What are you doing here?”
He had nerve and he wasn’t the least bit flustered.
“If you’ll let go that strangle I’ll tell you,” he said. “Where’s
Blanche?”
That was the opening for the story, which he told very well under the
circumstances.
“She never owned this furniture,” spoke up the man, when the tale had
been concluded. “This flat is rented furnished. She left here about a
week ago, and I live here now.”
Now we get the curtain.
He has finished his dinner, and he’s going home. That’s the best place
anyhow. What right has a boy like that to be on Broadway with ten
thousand dollars?
[Illustration]
[Illustration: He often made an honest dollar teaching American women
how to smoke “hop”]
AN ORIENTAL NOCTURNE
It’s just one little step--in New York, anyhow--from the Caucasian to
the Oriental. As a matter of fact it’s only across the street, and that
doesn’t count for any distance at all. The Chinese have settled down on
that little part of the city which is split into wedge-shaped blocks
by Mott, Pell and Doyers streets, very much like a flock of birds
alight on some tree, and with apparently as little reason. They have
brought with them their manners, their customs, their habits and their
traditions. They have imported their own gods, and even the furniture
for the joss houses. They have introduced to American men and women the
choices of their Oriental vices, that of opium smoking, and they have
provided places where their patrons may enjoy the drug. They wash your
shirts and iron your collars; they take your money and smile at you;
they go to your Sunday schools and sing hymns in queer cracked voices
that would be worth big money to a comedian, and they profess to be
converted to your way of thinking, but they are smooth and wise.
They are never weaned from the worship of Confucius or Tao, or Buddha,
as the case may be, but don’t you see when a Chinese wants to learn
the language of the people with whom he lives, it is very nice to have
as a teacher a nice looking girl, and the English of the Bible is no
different than any other English. So, by saying he has foresworn the
gods and the faith of his fathers, he gets his education directly from
the red lips of a daughter of the white devils, and sometimes he puts
on the finishing touches by marrying her.
Can you beat it?
Much he thinks of women, for in that Empire from whence he comes a
woman is a chattel, a bit of merchandise, worth so much in money or
goods, as the case may be, and he buys her as a white man buys a horse.
She is his wife, his mistress, or his servant, and the price fluctuates
accordingly.
When Yen Gow, the slickest Oriental that ever cooked a pill, hit Mott
street for the first time, he noticed that there were very few women of
his race in the colony, and being a man who made money, no matter by
what means, he considered it was an evil that he was in duty bound to
remedy. He had a varied career, and among other things being an expert,
he had taught American women how to smoke “hop.”
Incidentally, it is pat to say here that Yen Gow represents a man and
not a dummy, and that this story is absolutely true in every detail and
is very far removed from fiction.
If you haven’t what you want, get it, is a maxim practiced by a certain
class of people in all countries in the world whose methods, both from
a moral as well as a legal standpoint, are not considered to be exactly
right. So being shy one female of his own blood and color, Yen took a
3,000 mile ride to ’Frisco to remedy the defect. No one knows just how
deep he had to dig for that slant-eyed lady, dressed in the clothes of
a boy, whom he smuggled into the top floor of a Mott street tenement
one night. But it was his investment, and he spent his money like
another man would buy ground or buildings.
He fitted the room up with couches and curtains and furniture, but
first of all he fitted a good, strong lock to the door that couldn’t be
tampered with either from the inside or outside unless one had the key.
There was only one key and he had it. When you buy property that has
feet you are not inclined to take chances.
Having attended to all of the details that he considered necessary, and
frightened the lady by telling her that the people of New York were
cannibals who liked nothing better than Mongolian flesh, he began to do
business.