In person he was tall, languid, slender, as neat as a cat, and his
sallow face--over which had settled the opium pallor--was not an ugly
face. Also, there abode such weakness, some good, and no harm in him.
His constitution was rickety. In the winter he coughed and invited
pneumonia; in the summer, when the sun poured down, he trembled on the
brink of a stroke. But neither pneumonia nor sunstroke ever quite killed
him.
It was written that Jackeen would do that--Jackeen Dalton, _alias_
Brady; and Jackeen did it with five bullets from an automatic-38. Some
said that opium was at the bottom of it; others laid it to love. It is
still greatly talked over in what pipe joints abound in Mott, Pell and
Doyers, not to mention the wider Catherine Street, in the neighborhood
of number Nineteen, where he had his flat and received his friends.
They called him the Doc. Twenty years ago the Doc studied dentistry
with his father, who flourished reputably as a tooth surgeon at the Troy
Dental Parlors in Roosevelt Street. The father died before the Doc had
been given a diploma; and the Doc, having meanwhile picked up the
opium habit, was never able afterwards to see the use. Why should he be
examined or ask for a license? What foolishness! Magnanimously waving
aside every thought of the sort, he plunged into the practice of his
cheerless art among those who went in and out of Chinatown, and who
lived precariously by pocket-picking, porch-climbing, safe-blowing and
all-round strong-arm methods; and, careless of the statute in such case
made and provided, he proceeded to file and drill and cap and fill and
bridge and plug and pull their aching cuspids, bicuspids and molars,
and all with as quick an instinct and as deft a touch as though his eyes
were sharpened and his hand made steady by the dental sheepskins of a
dozen colleges. That he was an outlaw among tooth-drawers served only to
knit him more closely to the hearts of his patients--themselves merest
outlaws among men.
The Doc kept his flat in Catherine Street as bright and burnished as
the captain's cabin of a man-of-war. There was no prodigious wealth of
furniture, no avalanche of ornament to overwhelm the taste. Aside from
an outfit of dental tools, the most expensive belongings appeared to
be what lamps and pipes and kindred paraphernalia were required in the
smoking of opium.
Those who visited the Doc were compelled to one formality. Before he
would open his door, they must push the bell four times and four times
tap on the panel. Thus did they prove their friendly identity. Lawful
dentists, in their jealousy, had had the Doc arrested and fined,
from time to time, for intromitting with the teeth of his fellow worms
without a license. Hence that precautionary quartet of rings, followed
by the quartet of taps, indicative that a friend and not a foe was at
his gate.
The Doc had many callers who came to smoke opium. For these he did
divers kindly offices, mostly in the letter-writing line. As they
reclined and smoked, they dictated while the Doc transcribed, and many
and weird were the epistles from Nineteen Catherine Street which
found their way into the mails. For this service, as for his opium
and dentistry, the Doc's callers never failed to press upon him an
honorarium. And so he lived.
Love, that flowerlike sentiment for which--as some jurist once
remarked of justice--all places are palaces, all seasons summer, is not
incompatible with either dentistry or opium. The Doc had a sweetheart
named Lulu. Lulu was very beautiful and very jealous. Also, she was
broadly popular. All Chinatown made songs to the deep glories of her
eyes, which were supposed to have excited the defeated envy of many
stars. The Doc, in what odd hours he could snatch from tooth-drawing and
opium-smoking, worshipped at the shrine of Lulu; and Lulu was wrapped up
in the Doc. Number Nineteen Catherine Street served as their Garden of
Eden.
Now it is among the many defects of opium that it renders migratory the
fancy. An ebon evidence of this was to be given at number Nineteen. The
I love of the Doc became, as it were, pipe-deflected, and one day left
Lulu, and, after a deal of fond circling, settled like some errant dove
upon a rival belle called May.
Likewise, there was a dangerous side to this dulcet, new situation. The
enchanting May, when the Doc chose her for his goddess, vice Lulu thrown
down, could not be described as altogether disengaged. Was she not also
the goddess of Jackeen? Had not that earnest safe-robber laid his heart
at her feet?
Moreover, there were reasons even more substantial. The gentle May was
in her way a breadwinner. When the fortunes of Jackeen were low, she
became their mutual meal-ticket. May was the most expert shoplifter in
all of broad New York. If not upon heart arguments, then upon arguments
of the pocket, not to say stomach, Jackeen might be expected to fiercely
resent any effort to win her love away.
Jackeen?
Not much is to be told by an appearance, although physiognomists have
sung otherwise. The egg of the eagle is less impressive than the egg of:
the goose. And yet it hotly houses in its heart an' eagle. The egg of
the nightingale shows but-meanly side by side with the egg of the crow.
And: yet it hides within its modest bosom the limpid music of the moon.
So it is with men.
Jackeen was not an imposing personality. But neither is the tarantula.
He was five feet and an inch in stunted stature, and weighed a mean
shadow under one hundred and ten pounds. Like the Doc--who had stolen
his love away--Jackeen's hollow cheeks were of that pasty gray which
speaks of opium. Also, from opium, the pupils of his vermin eyes
had become as the points of two dull pins. Shrivelled, degenerate, a
tattered rag of humanity, Jackeen was none the less a perilous spirit,
and so the Doc--too late--would learn.
From that Eden at Nineteen Catherine Street, the fair Lulu had been put
into the street. This was to make pleasant room for the visits of the
fairer May. Jackeen was untroubled, knowing nothing about it. He was for
the moment too wholly engaged, being in the throes of a campaign against
the Savoy theatre safe, from which strongbox he looked forward to a
harvest of thousands.
The desolate Lulu went everywhere seeking Jackeen, to tell him of his
wrongs. Her search was vain; those plans touching the Savoy safe had
withdrawn him from his accustomed haunts. One night, however, the safe
was blown and plundered. Alas and alack! Jackeen's share, from those
hoped-for thousands, dwindled to a paltry sixty dollars--not enough for
a single spree!
In his resentment, Jackeen, with the aid of a bevy of friends,
hastily stuck-up a wayfarer, whom he met in Division Street. The
wayfarer's pockets proved empty. It was even more of a waterhaul than
had been the Savoy safe. The double disappointment turned Jackeen's
mood to gall and it was while his humor was thus bilious that he one day
walked into the Chatham Club.
There was a distinguished company gathered at the Chatham Club. Nannie
Miller, Blinky the Lob-bygow, Dago Angelo, Roxie, Jimida, Johnny Rice,
Stagger, Jimmy Foy, and St. Louis Bill--all were there. And these were
but a handful of what high examples sat about the Chatham Club, and with
calls for beer, and still more beer, kept Nigger Mike and his assistants
on the joyful jump.
When Jackeen came in, Mike greeted him warmly, and placed a chair next
to that of Johnny Rice. Conversation broke out concerning the dead
and departed Kid Twist. While Twist was an Eastman and an enemy of
Roxie--himself of the Five Points--the latter was no less moved to speak
in highest terms of him. He defended this softness by remarking:
“Twist's dead, see! An' once a guy's been put to bed wit' a shovel, if
youse can't speak well of him youse had better can gabbin' about him
altogether. Them's my sentiments.”
Dago Angelo, who had been a friend of the vanished Twist, applauded
this, and ordered beer.
Twist--according to the veracious Roxie--had not been wanting in
brilliancy as a Captain of Industry. He had showed himself ingenious
when he took his poolroom into the Hatmakers' Union, as a safeguard
against raids by the police.
Upon another occasion, strictly commercial--so said Roxie--Twist had
displayed a generalship which would have glorified a Rockefeller.
Baby Flax, named for the soft innocuousness of his countenance, kept
a grogshop in Houston Street. One quiet afternoon Twist abruptly broke
that cherubic publican's windows, mirrors, glasses, bottles.
Lighting a cigar, Twist stood in the midst of that ruin undismayed.
“What's up?” demanded the policeman, who came hot-foot to the scene.
“Well,” vouchsafed Twist, between puffs, “there's a party chases in,
smashes things, an' then beats it up the street wit'out sayin' a woid.”
The policeman looked at Baby Flax.
“It's straight,” chattered that ill-used proprietor, who, with the
dangerous eye of Twist upon him, wouldn't have told the truth for gold
and precious stones.
“What started youse, Twist?” asked a friend.
“It's this way,” explained Twist. “I'm introducin' a celery
bitters--because there's cush in it. I goes into Baby Flax's an' asks
him to buy. He hands me out a 'No!' So I ups an' puts his joint on the
bum. After this, when I come into a dump, they'll buy me bitters, see!
Sure, I cops an order for two cases from Flax before I leaves.”
Leaving Twist to sleep in peace, and by way of turning the laugh on that
gentleman, Roxie related an adventure with Nigger Mike. It was when that
sub-chief of the Eastmans kept at number Twelve Pell, by word of the
vivacious Roxie, he, with certain roysterers belonging to the Five
Points, had gone to Mike's to drink beer. They were the foe. But no
less he served them, as he was doing now, for such was and is the bland
etiquette of the gangs.
One o'clock struck, and Mike locked his door. Key turned, the beer
flowed on unchecked.
At half after one, when Mike himself was a law-breaker under the excise
statute by full thirty criminal minutes, Roxie with his Five Points
merrymakers arose, beat up Mike and his few retainers, skinned the
damper for fifty bones, and departed singing songs of victory.
Mike was powerless.
As was well said by Roxie: “W'at could he do? If he makes a roar to th'
cops for us puttin' his joint in th' air, we'd have whipped one over on
him for bein' open after hours.”
Mike laughed with the rest at Roxie's reminiscence. It was of another
day.
“W'at's th' matter wit' your mouth, Mike?” asked St. Louis Bill, for
there was a lisping queerness, not only about Mike's talk, but about his
laugh.
Nigger Mike proceeded to lay bare the causes of that queerness. While
engaged in a joint debate--years ago, it was--with a gentleman given as
much to sudden petulances as to positive views, he had lost three of his
teeth. Their place had been artifically but not artistically supplied.
“An' lately they've been feelin' funny,” explained Mike, alluding to the
supplemental teeth, “an' I toins 'em over to th' Doc to fix. That guy
who made 'em for me foist must have been a bum dentist. An' at that,
w'at do you t'ink he charges? I'm a Dutchman if he don't lash me to th'
mast for forty bucks! He says th' gold plate is wort' twenty.”
“Well, Mike,” said Nannie Miller, who'd been listening, “I don't want
to make you sore, but on the level you talk like your mouth is full of
mush. I'd make th' Doc come through wit' 'em as soon as I could.”
“He says he'll bring 'em in to-morry,” returned Mike.
“It's ten to one you don't see 'em for a week,” declared the pessimistic
St. Louis Bill. “Youse can't tell nothin' about them hop-heads. They say
'to-morry' when they mean next year.”
St. Louis Bill, being virtuously superior to opium, never lost a chance
to speak scornfully of those who couldn't make that boast.
Mike, at the discouraging view expressed, became doleful. “Say,” he
observed, “I'd look like a sucker, wouldn't I, if anything happens th'
Doc, an' I don't get 'em?”
St. Louis Bill assured Mike that he would indeed look like a sucker,
and re-declared his conviction--based upon certain occult creepings and
crawlings in his bones--that Mike had seen the last of those teeth.
“Take my steer,” said St. Louis Bill in conclusion; “treat them teeth
you gives th' Doc as a dead issue, an' go get measured for some more.
Twenty dollars wort' of gold, you says! It ain't no cinch but the Doc's
hocked 'em for hop.”
“Nothin' to that!” returned Mike, decisively. “Th' Doc's a square guy.
Them teeth is all safe enough. Only, as you says, bein' he hits the
pipe, he may be slow about chasin' in wit' 'em.”
While Nigger Mike and his guests are in talk, run your eye over the
scene. Those citizens of Gangland assembled about the Chatham Club
tables would have made a study, and mayhap a chapter, for Lombroso.
Speaking generally, they are a stunted litter, these gangmen, and seldom
stand taller than five feet four. Their weight wouldn't average one
hundred and twenty pounds. They are apt to run from the onslaught of an
outsider. This is not perhaps from cowardice; but they dislike exertion,
even the exertion of fighting, and unless it be to gain money or spoil,
or a point of honor is involved--as in their duels and gang wars--they
back away from trouble. In their gang battles, or when fighting the
police, their strategy is to lie flat on the ground and shoot. Thus
they save themselves a clubbing, and the chances from hostile lead are
reduced.
To be sure there are exceptions. Such as Chick Tricker, Ike the Blood,
Big Mike Abrams, Jack Sirocco, the Dropper, and the redoubtable Jimmy
Kelly never fly and always fight. No one ever saw their backs.
You are inclined to doubt the bloody character of those gang battles.
Why doesn't one hear of them?--you ask. Because the police conceal as
much as may be all word and all sign of them. For the public to know
might get the police criticized, and they are granted enough of that
without inviting it through any foolish frankness. The hospitals,
however, will tell you of a weekly average of fifty patients, suffering
from knife or gun-shot wounds, not to name fractures born of bottles,
bricks and blackjacks. A bottle judiciously wielded, or a beer stein
prudently broken in advance to assure a jagged edge, is no mean weapon
where warriors are many and the fields of battle close.
While Roxie rattled on, and the others gave interested ear, Jackeen was
commenting in discouraged whispers to Johnny Rice on those twin setbacks
of the Division Street stick-up and the Savoy safe.
“It looks like nobody's got any dough,” replied Rice, in a spirit of
sympathy. “Take me own self. I ain't made a touch youse could call a
touch, for a mont' of Sundays. Me rag, Josie, an' I was chin-nin' about
it on'y last night, an' Josie herself says she never sees th' town so
dead.”
“It's somethin' fierce!” returned Jackeen, moodily.
More beer, and a moment of silence.
“W'at's you' goil May doin'?” asked Rice.
“She's graftin' a little,” responded Jackeen; “but w'at wit' th' stores
full of private dicks a booster can't do much.”
“Well, you can bet May ought to know!” returned Rice. “As a derrick,
she' got the Darby Kid an' the best of 'em beat four ways from th' jack.
She could bring home th' bacon, if any of them hoisters could.”
Then appeared Lulu the houseless--Lulu, the forlorn and outcast Eve of
that Catherine Street Eden!
Lulu stood a polite moment behind the chair of Jackeen. At a lull in the
talk, she whispered a word in his ear. He looked up, nodded, and then
followed her out into Doyers Street.
“It's this way,” said Lulu. “May's copped th' Doc from me, see! An'
she's givin' you the cross, Jackeen. You ought to hand her out a good
heatin'. She's over hittin' the pipe wit' th' Doc right now.”
“G'wan!” came jealously from Jackeen.
“Honest! You come wit' me to number Nineteen, an' I'll show youse.”
Jackeen paused as though weighing the pros and cons.
“Let me go get Ricey,” he said at last. “He's got a good nut, an' I'll
put th' play up to him.”
“All right,” responded Lulu, impatient in her desolation; “but get a
move on! I've wised you; an' now, if you're any good at all, you'll
take May out of number Nineteen be th' mop. W'at license has she, or any
other skirt for that matter, got to do me out of me Doc?”
The last ended in a howl.
Leaving Lulu in the midst of her complaints, Jackeen wheeled back into
the Chatham Club for a word with Rice. Even during his absence, a change
had come over the company. He found Rice, St. Louis Bill and Nannie
Miller, holding anxious confab with a ratfaced person who had just come
in.
“See here, Jackeen,” said St. Louis Bill in an excited whisper, “there's
been a rap about that Savoy safe trick, an' th' bulls are right now
lookin' for th' whole mob. They say it's us, too, who put that rube in
the air over in Division Street.”
“An' th' question is,” broke in Nannie Miller, who was quick to act, “do
we stand pat, or do we do a lammister?”
“There's on'y one answer to that,” said St. Louis Bill. “For my end of
it I'm goin' to lamm.”
Jackeen had May and his heart troubles upon the back of his regard.
Still he heard; and he arrived at a decision. He would run--yes;
for flight was preferable to four stone walls. But he must have
revenge--revenge upon the Doc and May.
“Wit' th' bulls after me, an' me away, it 'ud be comin' too soft for
'em,” thought Jackeen.
“W'at do youse say?” asked St. Louis Bill, who was getting nervous.
“How did youse get the woid?” demanded Jackeen, turning upon Ratface. It
was he who had brought the warning.
“I'm a stool for one of the bulls,” replied Ratface, “an' it's him tells
me you blokes is wanted, see!”
“So you're stoolin' for a Central Office cop?”
Jackeen's manner was fraught with suspicion. “How do we know you're
givin' us th' correct dope?”
“Miller knows me,” returned Ratface, “an' so does Bill. They'll tell
youse I'm a right guy. That stool thing is only a stall. I gets more out
of the bull than he gets out of me. Sure; I give him a dead one now an'
then, just be way of puttin' in a prop for meself. But not youse;--w'en
it's any of me friends I puts 'em hep, see!”
“Do you sign for this duck?” demanded Jackeen of St. Louis Bill. “He's a
new one on me.”
“Take it from me, he's all right,” said St. Louis Bill, decisively.
“Why, you ought to know him, Jackeen. He joined out wit' that mob of
gons Goldie Louie took to Syracuse last fall. He's no farmer, neither;
Ricey there ain't got nothin' on him as a tool.”
This endorsement of Ratface settled all doubt. Jackeen's mind was made
up. Addressing the others, he said:
“Fade's the woid! I'll meet youse over in Hoboken to-night at Beansey's.
Better make th' ferry one at a time.”
“W'at do youse want to wait till night for?” asked Nannie Miller. “Th'
foist t'ing you know you'll get th' collar.”
“I'm goin' to take the chance, though,” retorted Jackeen. “It's some
private business of me own. An' say”--looking at Rice--“I want a pal.
Will youse stick, Ricey?”
“Sure, Mike!” said Rice, who had nerve and knew how to be loyal.
Thus it was adjusted. Ratface went his way, to exercise his gifts
of mendacity upon his Central Office principal, while the others
scattered--all save Jackeen and Rice.
Jackeen gave his faithful friend the story of his wrongs.
“I wouldn't have thought it of the Doc,” was the pensive comment of
Rice. He had exalted the Doc, because of his book learning, and groaned
to see his idol fall. “No, I wouldn't have guessed it of him! Of course,
it's different wit' a doll. They'd double-cross their own mothers.”
Over in Catherine Street at number Nineteen the Doc was teaching May how
to cook opium. The result fell below the Doc's elevated notions.
“You aren't to be compared with Lulu,” he complained, as he trimmed the
peanut-oil lamp. “All Chinatown couldn't show Lulu's equal for cooking
hop. She had a genius for it.”
The Doc took the needle from May, and cooked for himself. May looked
discouraged and hurt.
“It's all right,” said the Doc, dreamily, replying to the look of
injury. “You'll get it right in time, dear. Only, of course, you'll
never quite equal Lulu; that would be impossible.”
The Doc twirled the little ball of opium in the flame of the lamp,
watching the color as it changed. May looked on as upon the labors of a
master.
“I'll smoke a couple of pipes,” vouchsafed the Doc; “then I must get
to work on Nigger Mike's, teeth. Mike's a good fellow; they're all
good fellows over at the Chatham Club,” and the Doc sank back upon the
pallet.
There was the sound of someone in the hall. Then came those calmative
four rings and four taps.
“That's Mike now,” said the Doc, his eyes half closed. “Let him in; I
suppose he's come for his teeth. I'll have to give him a stand-off.
Mike ought to have two sets of teeth. Then he could wear the one while
I'm fixing the other. It's a good idea; I'll tell him.”
May, warned by some instinct, opened the door but a timorous inch. What
she saw did not inspire confidence, and she tried with all her little
strength to close and bolt it.
Too late!
The door was flung inward, and Jackeen, followed by Rice, entered the
room. They paid no heed to the opium fumes; almost stifling they were,
but Jackeen and Rice had long been used to them.
May gazed at Jackeen like one planet-struck. The Doc, moveless on the
pallet, hardly raised his opium-weighted lids.
“This is a fine game I'm gettin'!”
Jackeen sneered out the words. The Doc pulled tranquilly at his pipe;
while May stood voiceless, staring with scared eyes.
“I'd ought to peg a bullet into you,” continued Jackeen, addressing May.
He had drawn his heavy gun. May stood as if the sight of the weapon had
frozen her. Jackeen brought it down on her temple. The Doc never moved.
Peace--the peace of the poppy--was on his brow and in his heart. May
fell to the floor, her face a-reek with blood.
“Now you've got yours!” said Jackeen.
May struggled unsteadily to her feet, and began groping for the door.
“That ought to do youse till I get back,” was Jackeen's good-by. “You'll
need a few stitches for that.”
Unruffled, untroubled, the Doc drew blandly at the mouthpiece of the
pipe.
Jackeen surveyed him.
“Go on!” cried Rice; “hand it to him, if you're goin' to!”
Rice was becoming fretted. He hadn't Jackeen's sustaining interest.
Besides, he was thinking of that word from the Central Office, and how
much safer he would be with Beansey, on the Hoboken side of the Hudson.
Jackeen took a step nearer. The Doc smiled, eyes just showing through
the dreamy lids.
“Turn it loose!” cried Rice.
The gun exploded five times, and five bullets ploughed their way into
the Doc's body.
Not a cry, not a movement! The bland, pleased smile never left the
sallow face. With his mouth to the pipestem, the Doc dreamed on.
In the street, Jackeen and Rice passed Lulu. As they brushed by her,
Rice fell back a pace and whispered:
“He croaked th' Doc.”
Lulu gave a gulping cry and hurried on.
“Is that you, Lulu?” asked the Doc, his drug-uplifted soul untouched,
untroubled by what had passed, and what would come. Still, he must have
dimly known; for his next words, softly spoken, were: “I'm sorry about
Mike's teeth! Cook me a pill, dear; I want one last good smoke.”