the good people back in Sioux City by bringing home for a wife La
Petite Mabelle, skirt dancer from a vaudeville theatre in Des Moines.
The predictions of the sewing-club gossips were more than fulfilled,
for La Petite Mabelle ran away one fine day before the year was up,
leaving Sloan with a two-months-old baby boy, and a little note of
farewell. La Petite Mabelle told him in melodramatic sentences,
covering two sheets of note paper, that the attractions of the old
life, with its cheap finery and grease paint, were too strong for her.
She could never remain in Sioux City, where nobody called on her,
Stewart himself seemed ashamed of her, and where there was nothing
going on. She said further, that he mustn’t think too badly of her, and
that he ought to try and forget her.
This Sloan had certainly tried hard enough to do. That fall he secured
a divorce, and when the legislature convened in Des Moines next year,
he had the name that La Petite Mabelle had disgraced changed to
Richards, his mother’s maiden name. So young William Richards, as
Sloan rechristened the boy, grew up to manhood, never knowing the
tragedy of his father’s early life, and never having felt the softening
influence of a mother’s love.
His father died when the lad was twelve, naming as his son’s guardian
Colonel Wade, who looked after him as well as an old bachelor of fifty,
loaded down with business cares, could be expected to look after a
growing and spirited youth.
When Billy attained his majority, and had finished his college days,
bluff old Colonel Wade took him aside as gently as a warm-hearted old
man could do, told him the story of his first appearance on the stage
of life, turned over to him a property more than sufficient for every
reasonable need, and sent him out in the world which still called
him The Boy, a nickname he had acquired in college. The Boy pondered
over his early history for a few days, and then apparently forgot
that any such unpleasant thing as history existed, concerning himself
wholly with the present, which may be history, though at the time not
recognized as such.
Lately The Boy had been drinking and doing some other things more than
was good for him; but when the Colonel remonstrated in a fatherly way,
he promised to “take a brace,” the same as he would have promised
back in his college days, when he was under the discipline of the old
professors. Stebbins’s remark, therefore, that The Boy was going to
the devil, was rather a surprise to me, for I knew that he usually kept
his word.
“Did any of you see the fairy that came in on the express this
afternoon?” asked Perkins a little later, and as no one answered, he
proceeded to explain:
“I went down to the three o’clock to meet Kitty, who came in from
Denver to-day; and the first person who stepped off the train was the
d----st looking female you ever saw. She must have been forty-five; but
she had locks as golden as a maid of fifteen, and actually, I believe
there was half a box of rouge on her cheeks. She had a little woolly
dog in her arms, so covered with ribbons that I don’t believe it could
walk alone. Kitty said she was flirting with the conductor all the way
down from Butte, and some one on the train christened her ‘The Painted
Lady.’”
“Where’s she stopping?” asked the Colonel, and I knew what was in his
mind.
“She rode up town on the same ’bus with Kitty and me, and got out at
the Algonquin,” answered Perkins. “You’d better look out for that
protégé of yours, Colonel, he may be doing something rash. The Boy
appears to be partial to blondes.”
The next day as I was coming down town I nearly upset a woman hurrying
in the opposite direction. I picked up the parasol which I had knocked
out of her hand, and as I glanced at her, I knew from Perkins’s
description that she was The Painted Lady.
She probably wasn’t more than thirty-seven or thirty-eight, but there
were deep lines about her eyes and the corners of the mouth which
ought not to be in the face of a woman of sixty. Her hair, under the
stimulating influence of peroxide, was a bright yellow, and her cheeks
had on them the bloom usually found on buxom Irish lasses, or in small,
round boxes in a drug store. At the end of a silver chain, and covered
with ribbons, was a diminutive French poodle.
She was stylishly dressed, and her figure, though making me wonder at
the time (and strength) taken to produce it, was still quite pleasing
to look upon in the final result. Her name, as I found out at the club
that evening, was Madame Mabel Fortesque, and one of the evening papers
stated that she was a young widow taking a western trip for her health.
She had a suite at the Algonquin, and spent most of her time driving
about the city, for she had sent to Denver for a showy turnout, and it
was not long before it became a common sight to see her riding about
with some one of the young officers from Fort Blair beside her.
Dame Rumor, never inclined to be delicate in her handling of young
widows who travel about the country without chaperons, of course had
a fling at Madame Fortesque; and if only half the stories which were
circulated about her were true, she must have found Preston City a
lively place.
The day of her arrival The Boy had been called away to Chicago on
business, so the Colonel and I were relieved of any immediate worry as
to an acquaintance being established between him and The Painted Lady,
as nearly everyone in Preston City quickly came to call the widow.
The Boy came back two weeks later, however, and our worst fears were
then realized, for he immediately became as attentive to Madame
Fortesque as any of the young subalterns from the fort. Most of the men
at the club talked it over good-naturedly, and, man-fashion, considered
it a good joke; but the wives of these same club men regarded it
differently; it was even rumored that old Mrs. Burton, the worst gossip
in the city, had written to a girl in Boston to whom The Boy was
engaged.
“If she were only some young thing and good-looking,” groaned the
Colonel, “it wouldn’t be so bad; but what he can find in that fudged-up
old woman is more than I can see. Why, man, she is old enough to be his
mother.”
He intended to speak to The Boy about it but never did, for he knew he
could not talk to the young man when there was a woman in the case,
the same as he could when it was merely a question of his gambling or
drinking too much.
Things were going on badly enough, when one evening as I was seated
in the reading-room at the Sherwood, looking over a paper, I heard
Stebbins talking to a group in the next room.
“Yes, I’ve found out the whole history of The Painted Lady,” he was
saying; “she’s all that Old Lady Burton says, and more. She’s been
living down at the Rapids for a year or two; and I saw Jack Denvers
when I was down there last week, and he gave me the whole story. She
was a skirt-dancer among other things when she was young, and some way
got her hooks onto a young fellow from Sioux City named Sloan. He came
from a fine family, and his people were all broken up over the affair,
for she proved a bad lot, I reckon. She ran away from him before they
had been married a year, and has been going down the line ever since.
Denvers says that if she stops up here the married women would better
watch out. She’s the woman that was mixed up in the Stanley divorce
case down at the Rapids last year; and they say she got--Hello! what’s
the matter with Billy? Same old story?”
Alarmed, for I had not the slightest idea that The Boy was there, I
turned and saw him staggering blindly from the room. He ran against a
hat-tree, and some of the men laughed, but I saw his face, and I knew
that it was not the drink that made him look so ghastly.
I hurried up to the card-room where the Colonel was playing his evening
game of whist, and, whispering a word in his ear, I got him into an
alcove and told him what had just taken place.
“Good God! this is horrible,” he muttered; “why, it’s his own mother,
and he knows it.”
We hastened from the club, but there were no carriages in sight outside.
“The Boy just staggered out bareheaded, and drove off toward his hotel
in the only cab here,” said Perkins, who was coming up the steps.
“What’s the matter with him? I spoke to him, but he didn’t answer.
Stewed again?”
We did not stop to satisfy his curiosity, but walked rapidly up to the
Algonquin.
“He went up-stairs about ten minutes ago,” the clerk told us in answer
to our question, and grinned knowingly.
The door of his room was not locked, and after knocking several times
without getting any reply, we went in, and found just what I had feared
we should find, The Boy lying face downwards on the floor, one hand
clasping a discharged revolver. I looked at the powder-stained cheek,
and though I felt that it was absolutely hopeless, I left the Colonel
kneeling by his side, and hurried out in search of a doctor. As I
stood by the front door hesitating which way to go, a trap was driven
up under the electric lights, and a beardless youth in lieutenant’s
uniform helped a loudly-dressed woman to alight. They walked through
the foyer, and entered the elevator laughing and talking, while a
little yellow dog, covered with ribbons, capered and barked in front of
them.
It was The Painted Lady--and another boy.
THE PALACE OF SIN.
THE PALACE OF SIN.
The following advertisement, even had it ever appeared in any of
the great dailies, would probably have occasioned little comment or
curiosity:--
Those who are weary of the laws and so-called “society restrictions”
of the present day can find an immediate and complete relief by
applying at once to JENIFER VASS, Lock Box 3265B.
Even in 1885, though the business had not then attained the gigantic
proportions of the present day, the advertising genius was still
at work; and any one chancing to read such a notice would no doubt
have set it down as the bait thrown out by the vendor of some patent
medicine, weight lift, or equally undesirable article.
The promoters of the scheme for the “Pursuance of Vice,” as they
facetiously called it among themselves, realized this, and did not
attempt to reach the public by any such open means. To make known their
project they resorted to other methods which, though acting quietly
and unnoticed, nevertheless produced sufficient effect, so that on
the night of June 16, 1885, when the floating palace of Iniquity,
“Lawless,” left one of the North-river piers, she had on board eight
hundred souls. That is to say, there were eight hundred passengers;
but, judging from the declared object with which the “Lawless” put to
sea, it is more probable that the souls of those on board had been left
behind.
This voyage of the “Lawless” was the result of much thought on the
part of three individuals who, at one time or another, had figured
prominently in the police courts of New York and Chicago. Jenifer Vass,
in whose brain the plan had first found its inception, was at one time
proprietor of the Red Inn, a feeble imitation of the Moulin Rouge of
Paris; while Jackson Elbers and Louis Hopeman had both been mixed up in
various enterprises, all of which tended to cater to the animal rather
than the intellectual passions of their patrons.
Three miles from land, as you may not happen to know, is the limit of
distance to which the law of the neighboring country applies. When
beyond that point on the high seas no law on earth is valid save the
orders of the ship’s captain. Knowing this fact, and from the knowledge
of human nature gained in their various former pursuits, the three men
mentioned had gotten together a few thousand dollars and purchased the
Atlanta, once an ocean liner of the White Star line.
The Atlanta had been taken from the passenger service, being unable to
compete with her faster rivals on the Cunard and Hamburg-Bremen lines;
and it was planned to remodel and use her for a freight steamer.
Hearing of this, and as speed was no object in the excursions which the
Palace of Sin was to make, Jenifer Vass and his two companions made an
offer which was immediately accepted by the managers of the White Star
line.
Then a work of transformation began. According to the scheme of Jenifer
Vass, every vice which tempts men and women, every form of iniquity
of the old and the new world, was to be introduced, cultivated, and
pampered on board the “Lawless.” Ten staterooms were torn to pieces
and made into one. The floors were covered with Turkish rugs; Bagdad
curtains and Eastern ornaments were hung about the walls. The final
appearance of the room was totally different from the little holes in
the wall found in the Chinatown of nearly all the large cities, but its
object was the same. Here men and women could smoke opium from morning
till night, and with the additional advantage that no one would disturb
them. There was no danger of the place being raided and their names
appearing in the next morning’s police-court items. On one of the walls
was arranged a set of bunks on which the sleepers could be laid away
when the drug was really on.
One-half the ship was converted into a gambling hall. Here every game
of chance at Monte Carlo,--faro, roulette, poker, pinquette, fantan,
and every other game by which a man can win a fortune or lose his all
in a single night--was to be put in operation.
There was to be a bar where every known strong drink could be bought,
and each man was to be the judge of when he had had enough. No waiter
could inform him that the management refused to serve him anything
more, and he would have to go elsewhere. Here one could swill brandy,
absinthe, bhang, or any other nerve-destroying drink until his brain
reeled; and as long as he had the money to pay for more no one would
stop him.
Every drug and narcotic, whose sale is guarded by the laws of the
United States and other civilized countries, was to be sold as freely
as the chocolates of the confectioner. Cocaine, opium, laudanum, and
morphine were laid in in bulk for the use of the passengers of the
“Lawless,” without limit or restriction. In fact, there was wine for
the drinker, women for him who wanted company, song for him who would
sing, and each and every other evil thing ever devised by a wicked and
lustful world was to be found somewhere between the two decks of this
Palace of Sin.
The trips were to last one month, the “Lawless” merely getting into mid
ocean and steaming slowly down to the Gulf of Mexico, remaining there
until the month was up, when the passengers, saturated with vice and
steeped in corruption, were to be returned to the place of starting.
The crew was cut down to as small a number as possible, and consisted
mostly of the riffraff to be found about the wharves of any large
seaport city.
There was nothing about the scheme which could be punished by the laws
of any country, nevertheless the arrangements were kept as quiet as
possible, and nothing found its way into the papers.
On the night of June 16, 1885, the “Lawless,” as the boat was very
appropriately rechristened, steamed away from New York. The passengers
had begun to arrive in the evening as soon as it became dark, and at
12.30 every one who had engaged passage was on board. There was no one
down to the pier to speed the departing voyager, or to wish him good
luck. The sinister expedition set out without as much as the wave of a
handkerchief from shore. She was a little longer in getting under way
than had been anticipated, but at two o’clock in the morning of the
seventeenth, the “Lawless” was well out to sea, and the great hull,
which up till then, save for a few lights about deck, had been kept
dark, burst suddenly into light. Down in the hold a big Westinghouse
generator was whirling away, and, at a word from the captain, fifteen
hundred electric lights were suddenly switched into circuit and the
“Lawless” was on full blast. The limit was reached, and the ship had
come to her own.
There was one flaw, however, in the scheme of the Palace of Sin. That
flaw was Pierre Planchette, first assistant engineer. Like most of the
lower officers, he had been hired without knowing the object of the
voyage, thinking that the “Lawless” was merely bound on a pleasure
cruise in southern waters. He had just come from the Bellevue hospital,
where he had been dangerously sick with brain fever, and he was still
far from recovered, but hearing of the position and the high pay that
went with it, he had left the hospital against the orders of the house
physician. The man who had been originally hired for assistant having
disappointed Jenifer Vass, the patient, with traces of the fever still
upon him, was engaged on the very day of departure.
When, therefore, the three-mile limit was passed, and the hell up on
deck broke out, Pierre Planchette turned to his chief for explanation
of the sounds of revelry floating down below decks. “You don’t mean to
say you don’t know the object of this ship?” asked the chief. “Why,
the ‘Lawless’ is a floating hell. For the next thirty days every form
of vice known to the civilized world will be going on up above there.
There’s five hundred men and three hundred women in this gilded shell
whose only object in life for one month will be to commit acts which on
shore would be punished by fines and imprisonment.”
Without a word the assistant left the chief engineer, and seeking out
the captain, demanded to be put on shore.
“You’ve signed with us for one month, and, by G--d, you’ll have to
stay,” was all the answer he got from Jenifer Vass, to whom the captain
sent him.
Then a strange thing happened. Into the disordered brain of the man, a
short time before racked by fever, there came the thought that he had
been chosen by God to be the instrument to punish the iniquity which
had come to his knowledge.
He returned to the captain, and demanded a raise of fifteen dollars a
month in his pay, claiming he did not know the kind of a job he was
undertaking when he had signed. O, he was cunning, this fever stricken
assistant engineer. He knew how to allay suspicion.
The raise of pay was granted, for Jenifer Vass did not like the look
in the man’s eyes. Planchette went about his work, however, for the
next few days quietly and apparently satisfied. And when by chance his
duties took him up to where the painted women sang and gamed, and the
drunken men made ribald jests, he only smiled strangely to himself and
went on with his work. But he was busy all this time doing many things
for which an assistant engineer is not usually paid to perform.
One evening he came to Vass, the man who was really in command of the
“Lawless,” and asked to be shown about the ship. It was a strange
request for an under officer to make to the owner of a ship, but Vass,
as usual somewhat in his cups, and feeling particularly good-natured,
for the money was coming in faster than he had dared to hope, consented.
Together they went into the gaming room, and the young engineer saw
crowds of men and women standing about the whirling wheels, or sitting
about the tables with the light of greed in their eyes. Here a woman
laughed shrilly as the croupier pushed toward her a pile of money,
while beside her a man cursed his luck in language which would have
shamed a demon.
They went to the opium den and saw men and women, some safely tucked
away on the little shelves, others sitting on low divans, while half
a dozen grinning Chinamen cooked the little brown beads and brought
to them. They went into other rooms, seeing sights which I will not
describe, and everywhere suggestive songs and oaths met their ears.
That night about 12 o’clock a man slipped about the decks of the
“Lawless,” making little noise but working busily. He went to the
ship’s boats and removed from all save the one in the stern small
sections of the bottom which had been cunningly sawed out. He went down
in the hold to each of the pumps, and smiled to himself as he noted the
cylinders from which the plungers had been removed. Then he drew a few
more cans of oil and carried them down to where the coal was stored,
and when he returned the cans were empty. From there he went to his
cabin and carried a few more things to the one boat in the stern which
had not been tampered with.
Then, although everything was completed, he paused irresolutely. He
went to some of the rooms into which Jenifer Vass had taken him earlier
in the evening. He did not go into them, but stood and listened to the
sounds which came out through transoms and half-opened doors, and, as
he listened, the former look of determination began to come back to his
face.
He paused for a minute outside the drinking room, listening to the
chorus of a vulgar song. The door opened and a couple of men staggering
out started for the part of the ship given over to the women. As they
lurched past him Planchette heard a remark one of them made to the
other. He turned and walked swiftly to the hold, and lighting a match,
held it over the spot on the coal where nearly a barrel of oil had
soaked in. Then he stole back to the upper deck, slipped the ship’s
boat carefully over the side and dropped into the sea.
He remained perfectly motionless, watching the great form of the
“Lawless” as she steamed slowly past him. Taking up his oars he pulled
along for a little way, and the distance between him and the ship did
not increase greatly, for, as has been observed, speed of traveling was
not one of the pleasures promised to the passengers of the “Lawless.”
In a little while he saw a number of lights flash out on deck, and the
black forms of many men hurrying to and fro were silhouetted against
the sky. Then, suddenly, above the roar of the water he heard the
piercing shriek of a woman. He shivered slightly and ceased rowing.
The ship’s engines had stopped, and the boat was rolling heavily on the
swell. Great clouds of black smoke began to pour from the hatchways,
and across the water he heard the sound of men trying to get out the
boats, an undertaking followed immediately by an angry cursing in
which he heard his own name mingled. But he only smiled again, that
same strange smile that had been on his face for the last week when as
he worked down in the bowels of the ship, he heard the sounds of riot
above.
“They’ll be after the pumps now,” muttered the instrument of God to
himself, and he laughed mirthlessly.
He took up his oars and began rowing again. He knew it was many miles
to the nearest land, but he must get away from that great flaming eye,
which seemed to be winking at him. The cries and shrieks of despair
from those on board the burning ship were awful to hear, so he sang
loudly and drowned out the noise.
He rowed furiously till nearly daybreak, when, sinking to the bottom of
the boat, he slept from sheer exhaustion. When he opened his eyes again
the sun was high in the heavens. He looked around him for some trace
of his last night’s work, but only the great green expanse of water
met his eye. There was not a speck on the waters. Of the eight hundred
passengers who had set out a week before in pursuit of sin not one
remained.
Five days later the BORUS, a merchantman plying between Savannah and
New York, picked up a man off Hatteras, drifting about in a boat. He
had neither oars nor provisions, and was raving with delirium. He was
carried back to New York and taken to Bellevue hospital, where he was
identified by the house physician as the man who had left there against
orders two weeks before scarcely recovered from brain fever. He had a
lucid interval three days later, during which the nurse learned much of
the foregoing.
The man died that night muttering of a Palace of Sin which was smitten
by the hand of God.
THE MAN WHO WAS NOT AFRAID.
THE MAN WHO WAS NOT AFRAID.
Four young men sat around a table one winter’s night in an old New
England country house. Their host, Richard Churchill, was a civil
engineer, who had inherited some property, including this old estate,
from an aunt; and he was giving a little winter stag party to three
of his old college friends. On the table was a steaming punch bowl,
and scattered about were pipes, tobacco and cigars. The conversation
touched lightly on various subjects; the struggle in the Islands, the
coming great presidential contest, and other current events. Captain
Van Patten, a West Point graduate, who had done some things worthy of
mention, and won the bars on his shoulder straps at San Juan Hill, had
just made a statement regarding the courage of a recent great naval
commander.