It was a Central Office man who told me how the baby lost its fingers.
I like Central Office men; they live romances and have adventures. The
man I most shrink from is your dull, proper individual to whom nothing
happens. You have seen a hundred such. Rigidly correct, they go
uneventfully to and fro upon their little respectable tracks. Evenings,
from the safe yet severe vantage of their little respectable porches,
they pass judgment upon humanity from across the front fence. After
which, they go inside and weary their wives with their tasteless, pale
society, while those melancholy matrons question themselves, in a spirit
of tacit despair, concerning the blessings of matrimony. In the end,
first thanking heaven that they are not as other men, they retire to
bed, to rise in the dawning and repeat the history of every pulseless
yesterday of their existence. Nothing ever overtakes them that doesn't
overtake a clam. They are interesting, can be interesting, to no one
save themselves. To talk with one an hour is like being lost in the
desert an hour. I prefer people into whose lives intrudes some element
of adventure, and who, as they roll out of their blankets in the
morning, cannot give you, word and minute, just what they will be saying
and doing every hour in the coming twelve.
My Central Office friend, in telling of the baby's absent fingers, began
by speaking of Johnny Spanish. Spanish has been sent to prison for no
less than seven years. Dribben and Blum arrested him, and when the next
morning he was paraded at the Central Office looking-over, the speech
made upon him by Commissioner Flynn set a resentful pulse to beating in
his swarthy cheek.
Not that Spanish had been arrested for the baby's lost fingers. That
story in the telling came later, although the wrong it registered had
happened months before. Dribben and Blum picked him up--as a piece of
work it did them credit--for what occurred in Mersher Miller's place.
As all the world knows, Mersher Miller, or as he is called among his
intimates, Mersher the Strong-Arm, conducts a beer house at 171 Norfolk
Street. It was a placid April evening, and Mersher's brother, as
bottle-tosser, was busy behind the bar. Mersher himself was not in,
which--for Mersher--may or may not have been greatly to the good.
Spanish came into the place. His hat was low-drawn over his black eyes.
Mersher's brother, wiping glasses, didn't know him.
“Where's Mersher?” asked Spanish.
“Not here,” quoth Mersher's brother.
“You'll do,” returned Spanish. “Give me ten dollars out of the damper.”
Mersher's brother held this proposal in finance to be foolishly
impossible, and was explicit on that head. He insisted, not without
scorn, that he was the last man in the world to give a casual caller ten
dollars out of the damper or anything else.
“I'll be back,” replied Spanish, “an' I bet then you'll give me that
ten-spot.”
“That's Johnny Spanish,” declared a bystander, when Spanish, muttering
his discontent, had gone his threatening way.
Mersher's brother doubted it. He had heard of Spanish, but had never
seen him. It was his understanding that Spanish was not in town at all,
having lammistered some time before.
“He's wanted be th' cops,” Mersher's brother argued. “You don't suppose
he's sucker enough to walk into their mitts? He wouldn't dare show up in
town.”
“Don't con yourself,” replied the bystander, who had a working knowledge
of Gangland and its notables. “That's Spanish, all right. He was out of
town, but not because of the bulls. It's the Dropper he's leary of; an'
now th' Dropper's in hock he's chased back. You heard what he said about
comin' 'round ag'in? Take my tip an' rib yourself up wit' a rod. That
Spanish is a tough kid!”
The evening wore on at Mersher's; one hour, two hours, three went
peaceably by. The clock pointed to eleven.
Without warning a lowering figure appeared at the door.
“There he is!” exclaimed the learned bystander. Then he added with a
note of pride, albeit shaky as to voice: “What did I tell youse?”
The figure in the doorway strode forward. It was Spanish. A second
figure--hat over eyes--. followed hard on his heels. With a flourish,
possible only to the close student of Mr. Beadle's dime literature,
Spanish drew two Colt's pistols.
“Come through wit' that ten!” said he to Mersher's brother.
Mersher's brother came through, and came through swiftly.
“I thought so!” sneered Spanish, showing his side teeth like a dog whose
feelings have been hurt. “Now come through wit' th' rest!”
Mersher's brother eagerly gave him the contents of the cash
drawer--about eighty dollars.
Spanish, having pocketed the money, wheeled upon the little knot of
customers, who, after the New York manner when crime is afoot, had stood
motionless with no thought of interfering.
“Hands up! Faces to the wall!” cried Spanish. “Everybody's dough looks
good to me to-night!”
The customers, acting in such concert that it seemed as though they'd
been rehearsed, hands held high, turned their faces to the wall.
“You keep them covered,” said Spanish to his dark companion in arms,
“while I go through 'em.”
The dark companion leveled his own pistol in a way calculated to do
the most harm, and Spanish reaped an assortment of cheap watches and a
handful of bills.
Spanish came round on Mersher's brother. The latter had stooped down
until his eyes were on a par with the bar.
“Now,” said Spanish to Mersher's brother, “I might as well cook you.
I've no use for barkeeps, anyway, an' besides you're built like a pig
an' I don't like your looks!”
Spanish began to shoot, and Mersher's brother began to dodge. Ducking
and dodging, the latter ran the length of the bar, Spanish faithfully
following with his bullets. There were two in the ice box, two through
the mirror, five in the top of the bar. Each and all, they had been
too late for Mersher's brother, who, pale as a candle, emerged from the
bombardment breathing heavily but untouched.
“An' this,” cried Ikey the pawnbroker, ten minutes after Spanish had
disappeared--Ikey was out a red watch and sixty dollars--“an' this iss
vat Mayor Gaynor calls 'outvard order an' decency'!”
It was upon the identification of the learned bystander that Dribben
and Blum went to work, and it was for that stick-up in Mersher's the two
made the collar.
“It's lucky for you guys,” said Spanish, his eye sparkling venomously
like the eye of a snake--“it's lucky for you guys that you got me
wit'out me guns. I'd have croaked one of you bulls sure, an' maybe both,
an' then took th' Dutch way out me-self.”
The Dutch way out, with Spanish and his immediate circle, means suicide,
it being a belief among them that the Dutch are a melancholy brood, and
favor suicide as a means of relief when the burdens of life become more
than they can bear.
Spanish, however, did not have his gun when he was pinched, and
therefore did not croak Dribben and Blum, and do the Dutch act for
himself. Dribben and Blum are about their daily duties as thief takers,
as this is read, while Spanish is considering nature from between the
Sing Sing bars. Dribben and Blum say that, even if Spanish had had his
guns, he would neither have croaked them nor come near it, and in what
bluffs he put up to that lethal effect he was talking through his hat.
For myself, I say nothing, neither one way nor the other, except that
Dribben and Blum are bold and enterprising officers, and Spanish is the
very heart of quenchless desperation.
By word of my Central Office informant, Spanish has seen twenty-two
years and wasted most of them. His people dwell somewhere in the wilds
of Long Island, and are as respectable as folk can be on two dollars a
day. Spanish did not live with his people, preferring the city, where he
cut a figure in Suffolk, Norfolk, Forsyth, Hester, Grand, and other East
Side avenues.
At one time Spanish had a gallery number, and his picture held an
important place in Central Office regard. It was taken out during what
years the inadequate Bingham prevailed as Commissioner of Police. A row
arose over a youth named Duffy, who was esteemed by an eminent Judge.
Duffy's picture was in the gallery, and the judge demanded its removal.
It being inconvenient to refuse the judge, young Duffy's picture was
taken out; and since to make fish of one while making flesh of others
might have invited invidious comment, some hundreds of pictures--among
them that of Spanish--were removed at the same time.
It pleased Spanish vastly when his mug came out of the gallery. Not that
its presence there was calculated to hurt his standing; not but what it
was bound to go back as a certain incident of his method of life. Its
removal was a wound to police vanity; and, hating the police, he found
joy in whatsoever served to wring their azure withers.
When, according to the rules of Bertillon, Spanish was thumb-printed,
mugged and measured, the police described him on their books as
Pickpocket and Fagin. The police affirmed that he not only worked the
Broadway rattlers in his own improper person, but--paying a compliment
to his genius for organization--that he had drawn about himself a group
of children and taught them to steal for his sinful use. It is no more
than truth to say, however, that never in New York City was Spanish
convicted as either a Fagin or a pickpocket, and the police--as he
charges--may have given him these titles as a cover for their ignorance,
which some insist is of as deep an indigo as the hue of their own coats.
Spanish was about seventeen when he began making an East Side stir.
He did not yearn to be respectable. He had borne witness to the hard
working respectability of his father and mother, and remembered nothing
as having come from it more than aching muscles and empty pockets. Their
clothes were poor, their house was poor, their table poor. Why should he
fret himself with ideals of the respectable?
Work?
It didn't pay.
In his blood, too, flowed malignant cross-currents, which swept him
towards idleness and all manner of violences.
Nor did the lesson of the hour train him in selfrestraint. All over New
York City, in Fifth Avenue, at the Five Points, the single cry was, Get
the Money! The rich were never called upon to explain their prosperity.
The poor were forever being asked to give some legal reason for their
poverty. Two men in a magistrate's court are fined ten dollars each. One
pays, and walks free; the other doesn't, and goes to the Island. Spanish
sees, and hears, and understands.
“Ah!” cries he, “that boob went to the Island not for what he did but
for not having ten bones!”
And the lesson of that thunderous murmur--reaching from the Battery to
Kingsbridge--of Get the Money! rushes upon him; and he makes up his mind
to heed it. Also, there are uncounted scores like Spanish, and other
uncounted scores with better coats than his, who are hearing and seeing
and reasoning the same way.
Spanish stood but five feet three, and his place was among the
lightweights. Such as the Dropper, who tilted the scales at 180, and
whose name of Dropper had been conferred upon him because every time he
hit a man he dropped him--such as Ike the Blood, as hard and heavy as
the Dropper and whose title of the Blood had not been granted in any
spirit of factitiousness--laughed at him. What matter that his heart
was high, his courage proof? Physically, he could do nothing with these
dangerous ones--as big as dangerous! And so, ferociously ready to even
things up, he began packing a rod.
While Spanish, proceeding as best he might by his dim standards, was
struggling for gang eminence and dollars, Alma, round, dark, vivacious,
eyes as deep and soft and black as velvet, was the unchallenged belle of
her Williamsburg set. Days she worked as a dressmaker, without getting
rich. Nights she went to rackets, which are dances wide open and
unfenced. Sundays she took in picnics, or rode up and down on the
trolleys--those touring cars of the poor.
Spanish met Alma and worshipped her, for so was the world made. Being
thus in love, while before he, Spanish, had only needed money, now he
had to have it. For love's price to a man is money, just as its price to
a woman is tears.
Casting about for ways and means, Spanish's money-hunting eye fell upon
Jigger. Jigger owned a stuss-house in Forsyth Street, between Hester and
Grand. Jigger was prosperous beyond the dreams of avarice. Multitudes,
stabbing stuss, thronged his temple of chance. As a quick, sure way to
amass riches, Spanish decided to become Jigger's partner. Between them
they would divide the harvest of Forsyth Street stuss.
The golden beauty of the thought lit up the dark face of Spanish with
a smile that was like a splash of vicious sunshine. Alma, in the
effulgence of her toilets, should overpower all rivalry! At rout and
racket, he, Spanish, would lead the hard walk with her, and she should
shine out upon Gangland fashion like a fire in a forest.
His soul having wallowed itself weary in these visions, Spanish sought
Jigger as a step towards making the visions real. Spanish and his
proposition met with obstruction. Jigger couldn't see it, wouldn't have
it.
Spanish was neither astonished nor dismayed. He had foreseen the
Jiggerian reluctance, and was organized to break it down. When Jigger
declined his proffered partnership--in which he, Jigger, must furnish
the capital while Spanish contributed only his avarice--and asked, “Why
should I?” he, Spanish, was ready with an answer.
“Why should you?” and Spanish repeated Jigger's question so that his
reply might have double force. “Because, if you don't, I'll bump youse
off.” Gangland is so much like Missouri that you must always be prepared
to show it. Gangland takes nothing on trust. And, if you try to run a
bluff, it calls you. Spanish wore a low-browed, sullen, sour look. But
he had killed no one, owned no dread repute, and Jigger was used to
sullen, sour, lowbrowed looks. Thus, when Spanish spoke of bumping
Jigger off, that courtier of fortune, full of a case-hardened
scepticism, laughed low and long and mockingly. He told the
death-threatening Spanish to come a-running.
Spanish didn't come a-running, but he came much nearer it than Jigger
liked. Crossing up with the perverse Jigger the next evening, at the
corner of Forsyth and Grand, he opened upon that obstinate stuss dealer
with a Colt's-38. Jigger managed to escape, but little Sadie Rotin,
_otat_ eight, was killed. Jigger, who was unarmed, could not return the
fire. Spanish, confused and flurried, doubtless, by the poor result of
his gun-play, betook himself to flight.
The police did not get Spanish; but in Gangland the incident did him
little good. At the Ajax Club, and in other places where the best
blood of the gangs was wont to unbuckle and give opinions, such
sentiment-makers as the Dropper, Ike the Blood, Kid Kleiney, Little
Beno, Fritzie Rice, Kid Strauss, the Humble Dutchman, Zamo, and the
Irish Wop, held but one view. Such slovenly work was without precedent
as without apology. To miss Jigger aroused ridicule. But to go
farther, and kill a child playing in the street, spelled bald disgrace.
Thereafter no self-respecting lady would drink with Spanish, no
gentleman of gang position would return his nod. He would be given the
frozen face at the rackets, the icy eye in the streets.
To be sure, his few friends, contending feebly, insisted that it wasn't
Spanish who had killed the little Rotin girl. When Spanish cracked off
his rod at Jigger, others had caught the spirit. A half dozen guns--they
said--had been set blazing; and it was some unknown practitioner who had
shot down the little Rotin girl. What were the heart-feelings of father
and mother Rotin, to see their baby killed, did not appeal as a question
to either the friends or foes of Spanish. Gangland is interested only in
dollars or war.
That contention of his friends did not restore Spanish in the general
estimation. All must confess that at least he had missed Jigger. And
Jigger without a rod! It crowded hard upon the unbelievable, and could
be accounted for only upon the assumption that Spanish was rattled,
which is worse than being scared. Mere fear might mean no more than an
excess of prudence. To get rattled, everywhere and under all conditions,
is the mean sure mark of weakness.
While discussion, like a pendulum, went swinging to and fro,
Spanish--possibly a-smart from what biting things were being said in his
disfavor--came to town, and grievously albeit casually shot an unknown.
Following which feat he again disappeared. None knew where he had gone.
His whereabouts was as much a mystery as the identity of the unknown
whom he had shot, or the reason he had shot him. These two latter
questions are still borne as puzzles upon the ridge of gang conjecture.
That this time he had hit his man, however, lifted Spanish somewhat from
out those lower reputational depths into which missing Jigger had cast
him. The unknown, to be sure, did not die; the hospital books showed
that. But he had stopped a bullet. Which last proved that Spanish
wasn't always rattled when he pulled a gun. The incident, all things
considered, became a trellis upon which the reputation of Spanish,
before so prone and hopeless, began a little to climb.
The strenuous life doesn't always blossom and bear good fruit. Balked
in his intended partnership with Jigger, and subsequently missing
Jigger--to say nothing of the business of the little Rotin girl, dead
and down under the grass roots--Spanish not only failed to Get the
Money! but succeeded in driving himself out of town. Many and vain were
the gang guesses concerning him. Some said he was in Detroit, giving
professional aid to a gifted booster. The latter was of the feminine
gender, and, aside from her admitted genius for shoplifting, was
acclaimed the quickest hand with a hanger--by which you are to
understand that outside pendant purse wherewith women equip themselves
as they go forth to shop--of all the gon-molls between the two oceans.
Others insisted that Spanish was in Baltimore, and had joined out with
a mob of poke-getters. The great, the disastrous thing, however--and to
this all Gangland agreed--was that he had so bungled his destinies as to
put himself out of New York.
“Detroit! Baltimore!” exclaimed the Dropper. “W'y, it's woise'n bein' in
stir! A guy might as well be doin' time as live in them burgs!”
The Dropper, in his iron-fisted way, was sincere in what he said. Later,
he himself was given eighteen spaces in Sing Sing, which exile he might
have missed had he fled New York in time. But he couldn't, and didn't.
And so the Central Office got him, the District Attorney prosecuted
him, the jury convicted him, and the judge sentenced him to that long
captivity. Living in New York is not a preference, but an appetite--like
drinking whiskey--and the Dropper had acquired the habit.
What was the Dropper settled for?
Robbery.
It's too long to tell here, however, besides being another story. Some
other day I may give it to you.
Spanish, having abandoned New York, could no longer bear Alma loving
company at picnic, rout and racket. What was Alma to do? She lived for
routs, reveled in rackets, joyed in picnics. Must these delights be
swept away? She couldn't go alone--it was too expensive. Besides, it
would evince a lack of class.
Alma, as proud and as wedded to her social position as any silken member
of the Purple and Fine Linen Gang that ever rolled down Fifth Avenue in
her brougham, revolved these matters upon her wheel of thought. Also,
she came to conclusions. She, an admitted belle, could not consent to
social obliteration. Spanish had fled; she worshipped his black eyes,
his high courage; she would keep a heart-corner vacant for him in case
he came back. Pending his return, however, she would go into society;
and, for those reasons of expense and class and form, she would not go
alone.
Alma submitted her position to a beribboned jury of her peers. Their
judgment ran abreast of her own.
“A goil would be a mutt,” they said, “to stay cocked up at home. An' yet
a goil couldn't go chasin' around be her lonesome. Alma”--this was their
final word--“you must cop off another steady.”
“But what would Johnny say?” asked Alma; for she couldn't keep her
thoughts off Spanish, of whom she stood a little bit in fear.
“Johnny's beat it, ain't he?” returned the advisory jury of friends.
“There ain't no kick comin' to a guy what's beat it. He ain't no longer
in th' picture.”
Alma, thus free to pick and choose by virtue of the absence of Spanish,
picked the Dropper. The latter chieftain was flattered. Taking Alma
proudly yet tenderly under his mighty arm, he led her to suppers such
as she had never eaten, bought her drinks such as she had never tasted,
revolved with her at rackets where tickets were a dollar a throw, the
orchestra seven pieces, and the floor shone like glass. It was a cut or
two above anything that Spanish had given her, and Alma, who thought it
going some, failed not to say so.
Alma was proud of the Dropper; the Dropper was proud of her. She told
her friends of the money he spent; and the friends warmed the cockles of
her little heart by shrilly exclaiming at pleasant intervals:
“Ain't he th' swell guy!”
“Betcher boots he's th' swell guy,” Alma would rejoin; “an' he's got
money to boin a wet dog! Th' only t'ing that worries me,” Alma would
conclude, “is Johnny. S'ppose he blows in some day, an' lays for th'
Dropper?'
“Th' Dropper could do him wit' a wallop,” the friends would consolingly
return. “He'd swing onct; an' after that there wouldn't be no Johnny
Spanish.”
The Round Back Rangers--it was, I think, the Round Backs--gave an
outdoor racket somewhere near Maspeth. The Dropper took Alma. Both were
in high, exultant feather. They danced, they drank, they rode the wooden
horses. No more gallant couple graced the grounds.
Cheese sandwiches, pig's knuckles and beer brought them delicately to
the banquet board. They were among their friends. The talk was always
interesting, sometimes educational.
Ike the Blood complained that certain annoying purists were preaching a
crusade against the Raines Law Hotels. Slimmy, celebrated not only for
his slimness, but his erudition, declared that crusades had been the
common curse of every age.
“W'at do youse know about it?” sourly propounded the Humble Dutchman,
who envied Slimmy his book-fed wisdom.
“W'at do I know about it?” came heatedly from Slimmy. “Do youse think I
ain't got no education? Th' last time I'm in stir, that time I goes up
for four years, I reads all th' books in th' prison library. Ask th'
warden if I don't. As to them crusades, it's as I tells you. There's
always been crusades; it's th' way humanity's gaited. Every sport, even
if he don't go 'round blowin' about it, has got it tucked somewhere
away in his make-up that he, himself, is th' real thing. Every dub who's
different from him he figgers is worse'n him. In two moves he's out
crusadin'. In th' old days it's religion; th' Paynims was th' fall guys.
Now it's rum, or racin', or Raines Hotels, or some such stall. Once let
a community get the crusade bug, an' something's got to go. There's a
village over in Joisey, an,' there bein' no grog shops an' no vice mills
to get busy wit', they ups an' bounces an old geezer out of th' only
church in town for pitchin' horse-shoes.”
Slimmy called for more beer, with a virtuously superior air.
“But about them Paynims, Slimmy?” urged Alma.
“It's hundreds of years ago,” Slimmy resumed. “Th' Paynims hung out in
Palestine. Bein' they're Paynims, the Christians is naturally sore on
'em; an' so, when they feels like huntin' trouble, th' crusade spirit'd
flare up. Richard over in England would pass th' woid to Philip in
France, an' th' other lads wit' crowns.
“'How about it?' he'd say. 'Cast your regal peepers toward Palestine.
D'you make them Paynims? Ain't they th' tough lot? They won't eat pork;
they toe in when they walk; they don't drink nothin' worse'n coffee;
they've got brown skins. Also,' says he, 'we can lick 'em for money,
marbles or chalk. W'at d'youse say, me royal brothers? Let's get our
gangs, an' hand them Paynims a swift soak in behalf of the troo faith.'
“Philip an' the other crowned lads at this would agree wit' Richard.
'Them Paynims is certainly th' worst ever!' they'd say; an' one woid'd
borry another, until the crusade is on. Some afternoon you'd hear the
newsies in th' streets yellin', 'Wux-try!' an' there it'd be in big
black type, 'Richard, Philip an' their gallant bands of Strong-Arms have
landed in Palestine.'”
“An' then w'at, Slimmy?” cooed Alma, who hung on every word.
“As far as I can see, th' Christians always had it on th' Paynims,
always had 'em shaded, when it comes to a scrap. Th' Christian lads
had th' punch; an' th' Paynims must have been wise to it; for no sooner
would Richard, Philip an' their roly-boly boys hit th' dock, than th'
Paynims would take it on th' run for th' hills. Their mullahs would
try to rally 'em, be tellin' 'em that whoever got downed fightin'
Christians, the prophet would punch his ticket through for paradise
direct, an' no stop-overs.
“'That's all right about the prophet!' they'd say, givin' th' mullahs
th' laugh. An' then they'd beat it for th' next ridge.”
“Them Paynims must have been a bunch of dead ones,” commented the
Dropper.
“Not bein' able to get on a match,” continued Slimmy, without heeding
the Dropper, “th' Paynims declinin' their game, th' Christian hosts
would rough house th' country generally, an' in a way of speakin' stand
th' Holy Land on its head. Do what they would, however, they couldn't
coax th' Paynims into th' ring wit' 'em; an' so after a while they
decides that Palestine's th' bummest place they'd ever struck. Mebby,
too, they'd begin havin' woid from home that their wives was gettin'
a little gay, or their kids was goin' round marryin' th' kids of their
enemies, an' that one way an' another their domestic affairs was on th'
fritz. At this, Richard'd go loafin' over to Philip's tent, an' say:
“'Philly, me boy, I don't know how this crusade strikes youse, but if
I'm any judge of these great moral movements, it's on th' blink. An'
so,' he'd go on, 'Philly, it's me for Merrie England be th' night boat.'
“Wit' that, they'd break for home; an', when they got there, they'd
mebby hand out a taste of th' strap to mamma an' th' babies, just to
teach 'em not to go runnin' out of form th' next time father's far
away.”
“Youse don't bank much on crusades, Slimmy?” Ike the Blood said.
The Blood had more than a passing interest in the movement, mention of
which had started the discussion, being himself a part proprietor in one
of those threatened Raines Law Hotels.
“Blood,” observed Slimmy, oracularly, “them moral movements is like a
hornet; they stings onct an' then they dies.”
Alma's attention was drawn to Mollie Squint--so called because of an
optical slant which gave her a vague though piquant look. Mollie Squint
was motioning from the outskirts of the little group. Alma pointed to
the Dropper. Should she bring him? Mollie Squint shook her head.
Leaving the Dropper, Alma joined Mollie Squint.
“It's Johnny,” gasped Mollie Squint. “He wants you; he's over be that
bunch of trees.”
Alma hung back; some impression of peril seized her.
“Better go,” whispered Mollie Squint. “He's onto you an' the Dropper,
an' if you don't go he'll come lookin' for you. Then him an' the
Dropper'll go to th' mat wit' each other, an' have it awful. Give Johnny
one of your soft talks, an' mebby youse can smooth him down. Stall him
off be tellin' him you'll see him to-night at Ding Dong's.”
Mollie Squint's advice seemed good, and as the lesser of two evils Alma
decided to go. Mollie Squint did not accompany her.
“Tell th' Dropper I'll be back in a moment,” said Alma to Mollie Squint,
“an' don't wise him up about Johnny.”
Alma met Spanish at the far corner of the clump of trees. There was no
talk, no time for talk. They were all alone. As she drew near, he pulled
a pistol and shot her through and through the body.
Alma's moaning cry was heard by the Dropper--that, and the sound of
the shot. When the Dropper reached her, she was lying senseless in the
shadow of the trees--a patch of white and red against the green of the
grass. Spanish was nowhere in sight..
Alma was carried to the hospital, and revived. But she would say
nothing, give no names--staunch to the spirit of the Gangs. Only she
whispered feebly to Mollie Squint, when the Dropper had been sent away
by the doctors:
“Johnny must have loved me a lot to shoot me up like he did. A guy has
got to love a goil good and plenty before he'll try to cook her.”
“Did youse tell th' hospital croakers his name?” asked Mollie Squint.
“Of course not! I never squealed to nobody. Do youse think I'd put poor
Johnny in wrong?”
“Then I won't,” said Mollie Squint.
An attendant told Mollie Squint that she must go; certain surgeons had
begun to assemble. Mollie Squint, tears falling, kissed Alma good-by.
“Give Johnny all me love,” whispered Alma. “Tell him I'm no snitch; I'll
stick.”
The Dropper did not have to be told whose bullet had struck down his
star, his Alma. That night, Kid Kleiney with him, he went looking for
Spanish. The latter, as jealous as Satan, was looking for the Dropper.
Of the two, Spanish must have conducted his hunting with the greater
circumspection or the greater luck; for about eleven of the clock he
crept up behind the Dropper, as the latter and Kid Kleiney were walking
in East Broadway, and planted a bullet in his neck. Kid Kleiney 'bout
faced at the crack of the pistol, and was in fortunate time to stop
Spanish's second bullet with one of the big buttons on his coat. Kid
Kleiney fell by the side of the wounded Dropper, jarred off his feet by
the shock.' He was able, however, when the police came up, to help place
the Dropper in an ambulance.
Spanish?
Vanished--as usual.
The police could get no line on him, did get no line on him, until
months later, when, as related--the Dropper having been lagged for
robbery, and safely caged--he came back to stick up the joint of Mersher
the Strong-Arm, and be arrested by Dribben and Blum.
The baby and I met casually in a Williamsburg street, where Alma
had brought it to take the air, which was bad. Alma was thin-faced,
hollow-eyed, but I could see that she had been pretty. She said she was
twenty and the baby less than a year, and I think she told the truth.
No one among Alma's friends finds fault with either the baby or herself,
although both are without defence by the canons of high morality. There
is warmth in the world; and, after all, the case of Alma and the baby is
not so much beyond the common, except as to the baby's advent, which was
dramatic and after the manner of Cæsar.
Folk say the affair reflects illustriously upon the hospital. Also, what
surgeons officiated are inclined to plume themselves; for have not Alma
and the baby lived? I confess that those boastful scientists are not
wanting in excuse for strutting, although they ought, perhaps, in honor,
to divide credit with Alma and the baby as being hard to kill.
It is not an ugly baby as babies go. Not that I pretend to be a judge.
As I paused by its battered perambulator, it held up a rose-leaf hand,
as though inviting me to look; and I looked. The little claw possessed
but three talons; the first two fingers had been shot away. When I asked
how, Alma lowered her head sadly, saying nothing. It would have been
foolish to ask the baby. It couldn't talk. Moreover, since the fingers
were shot away before it was born, it could possess no clear memory as
to details.
It is a healthy baby. Alma loves it dearly, and can be depended upon to
give it every care. That is, she can be if she lives; and on that head
her worn thinness alarms her friends, who wish she were fatter. Some say
her thinness is the work of the bullet. Others believe that a sorrow is
sapping her heart.