Jay not in any deftness of fingers, but in his stout, unflinching heart,
and a knock-down strength of fist like unto the blow of a maul.
“As a stall he's worse'n a dead one,” Maxie had said. “No one ever put
up a worse back. But let a sucker raise a roar, or some galoot of a
country sheriff start something--that's where Mike comes on. You know
last summer, when I'm followin' Ringling's show? Stagger, Beansey an'
Mike's wit' me as bunchers. Over at Patterson we had a rumble. I got a
rube's ticker, a red one. He made me; an' wit' that youse could hear th'
yell he lets out of him in Newark. A dozen of them special bulls which
Ringling has on his staff makes a grab at us. Youse should have lamped
Mike! Th' way he laid out them circus dicks was like a tune of music.
It's done in a flash, an' every last guy of us makes his get-away. Hock
your socks, it's Mike for me every time! I'd sooner he filled in wit' a
mob of mine than th' best dip that ever pinched a poke.”
Big Mike had been a fixed star in the Gangland firmament for years. He
knew he could slug, he knew he could stay; and he made the most of these
virtues. When not working with Little Maxie, he took short trips into
the country with an occasional select band of yeggs, out to crack a P.
O. or a jug. At such times, Mike was the out-side man--ever a post of
responsibility. The out-side man watches while the others blow the box.
In case things take to looking queer or leary, he is to pass the whistle
of warning to his pals. Should an officer show unexpectedly up, he must
stand him off at the muzzle of his gatt, and if crowded, shoot and shoot
to kill. He is to stand fast by his partners, busy with wedges, fuse and
soup inside, and under no circumstances to desert them. Mike was that
one of ten thousand, who had the nerve and could be relied upon to do
and be these several iron things. Wherefore, he lived not without honor
in the land, and never was there a fleet of yeggs or a mob of gons, but
received him into its midst with joy and open hearts.
Mike made a deal of money. Not that it stuck to hum; for he was born
with his hands open and spent it as fast as he made it. Also, he drank
deeply and freely, and moreover hit the pipe. Nor could he, in the
latter particular, be called a pleasure smoker nor a Saturday nighter.
Mike had the habit.
At one time Mike ran an opium den at Coney Island, and again on the
second floor of Number Twelve Pell. But the police--who had no sure way
of gauging the profits of opium--demanded so much for the privilege that
Mike was forced to close.
“Them bulls wanted all I made an' more,” complained Mike, recounting his
wrongs to Beansey. “I had a 50-pipe joint that time in Pell, an' from
the size of the rake-off the captain's wardman asks, you'd have thought
that every pipe's a roulette-wheel.”
“Couldn't you do nothin' wit' 'em?” asked Bean-sey, sympathetically.
“Not a t'ing. I shows 'em that number-one hop is $87.50 a can, an'
yen-chee or seconds not less'n $32. Nothin' doin'! It's either come
across wit' five hundred bones th' foist of every month, or quit.”
Mike sighed over his fair prospects, blighted by the ignorant avarice of
the police.
“W'at was youse chargin' a smoke?” inquired Beansey.
“Two bits a shell. Of course, that's for yen-chee. I couldn't give
'em number-one for two bits. After all, w'at I cares most for is me
cats--two long-haired Persians.”
“Cats?” repeated Beansey, suspiciously. “W'at be youse handin' me?”
Beansey by the way, knew nothing of opium.
“W'at am I handin' youse?” said Mike. “I'm handin' you th' goods. Cats
get th' habit same as people. My cats would plant be some party who's
cookin' a pill, an' sniff th' hop an' get as happy as anybody. Take 'em
off the pipe, an' it's th' same as if they're Christians. Dogs, too. Let
'em once get th' habit, an' then take 'em away from a pipe joint, an'
they has pains in their stummicks, an' twists an' yowls till you think
they're goin' mad. When th' cops shut down on me, I has to give me cats
to th' monk who's runnin' th' opium dump on th' top floor. Sure t'ing!
They'd have croaked if I hadn't. They're on'y half happy, though; for
while they gets their hop they misses me. Them toms an' me has had many
a good smoke.”
Folks often wondered at the intimacy between Mike and Little Maxie--not
that it has anything to do with this story. Little Maxie--his name on
the Central Office books was Maxie Fyne, _alias_ Maxie English, _alias_
Little Maxie, _alias_ Sharapatheck--was the opposite of Big Mike. He was
small; he was weak; he didn't drink; he didn't hit the pipe. Also, at
all times, and in cold blood, he was a professional thief. His wife,
whom he called “My Kytie”--for Little Maxie was from Houndsditch, and
now and then his accent showed it--was as good a thief as he, but on a
different lay. Her specialty was robbing women. She worked alone, as all
good gon-molls do, and because of her sure excellencies was known as the
Golden Hand.
Little Maxie and his Golden Hand, otherwise his Kytie--her name was
Kate--had a clean little house near Washington Square on the south.
They owned a piano and a telephone--the latter was purely defensive--and
their two children went to school, and sat book to book with the
children of honest men and women.
The little quiet home, with its piano and defensive telephone, is gone
now. Little Maxie died and his Golden Hand married again; for there's no
false sentiment in Gangland. If a husband's dead he's dead, and there's
nothing made by mourning. Likewise, what's most wanted in any husband is
that he should be a live one.
Little Maxie died in a rather curious way. Some say he was drowned by
his pals, Big Mike among them. The story runs that there was a quarrel
over splitting up a touch, and the mob charged Little Maxie with holding
out. Be that as it may, the certainty is that Little Maxie and his mob,
being in Peekskill, got exceeding drunk--all but Little Maxie--and went
out in a boat. Being out, Little Maxie went overboard abruptly, and
never came up. Neither did anybody go after him. The mob returned to
town to weep--crocodile tears, some said--into their beer, as they told
and re-told their loss, and in due time Little Maxie's body drifted
ashore and was buried. That was the end. Had it been some trust-thief of
a millionaire, there would have been an investigation. But Little Maxie
was only a pick-pocket.
Big Mike, like all strong characters, had his weakness. His weakness
was punching Chinamen; fairly speaking, it grew to be his fad. It wasn't
necessary that a Chinaman do anything; it was enough that he came within
reach. Mike would knock him cold. In a single saunter through Pell
Street, he had been known to leave as many as four senseless Chinamen
behind him, fruits of his fist.
“For,” said Mike, in cheerful exposition of the motive which underlay
that performance, “I do so like to beat them monks about! I'd sooner
slam one of 'em ag'inst th' wall than smoke th' pipe.”
One time and another Mike punched two-thirds of all the pig-tailed heads
in Chinatown. Commonly he confined himself to punching, though once or
twice he went a step beyond. Lee Dok he nearly brained with a stool. But
Lee Dok had been insultingly slow in getting out of Mike's way.
Mike was proud of his name and place as the Terror of Chinatown. Whether
he walked in Mott or Pell or Doyers Street, every Chinaman who saw him
coming went inside and locked his door.
Those who didn't see him and so go inside and dock their doors--and
they were few--he promptly soaked. And if to see a Chinaman run was as
incense to Mike's nose, to soak one became nothing less than a sweet
morsel under his tongue. The wonder was that Mike didn't get shot or
knifed, which miracle went not undiscussed at such centers as Tony's,
Barney Flynn's, Jimmy Kelly's and the Chatham Club. But so it was; the
pig-tailed population of Chinatown parted before Mike's rush like so
much water.
One only had been known to resist--Sassy Sam, who with a dwarf's body
possessed a giant's soul.
Sassy Sam was a hatchet-man of dread eminence, belonging to the Hip Sing
Tong. Equipped of a Chinese sword, of singular yet murderous appearance,
he chased Mike the length of Pell Street. Mike out-ran Sassy Sam, which
was just as well. It took three shells of hop to calm Mike's perturbed
spirit; for he confessed to a congenital horror of steel.
“That's straight,” said Mike, as with shaking fingers he filled his
peanut-oil lamp, and made ready to cook himself a pill, “I never could
stand for a chive. An' say”--he shuddered--“that monk has: one longer'n
your arm.”
Sassy Sam and his snickersnee, however, did not cure Mike of his
weakness for punching the Mongolian head. Nothing short of death could
have done that.
Some six months prior to his caving in the skull of Low Foo, because
of those shirts improperly missing, Mike did that which led to
consequences. Prompted by an overplus of sweet, heady Chinese rum,
or perhaps it was the heroic example of Sassy Sam, Ling Tchen, being
surprised by Mike in Pell Street, did not--pig-tail flying--clatter
inside and lock his door. More and worse, he faced Mike, faced him,
coughed contumeliously and spat upon the cobbles. To merely soak Ling
Tchen would have been no adequate retort--Ling Tchen who thus studied to
shame him. Wherefore Mike killed him with a clasp knife, and even went
so far as to cut off the dead Tchen's head. The law might have taken
notice of this killing, but some forethoughtful friend had had wit
enough to tuck a gun beneath the dead Tchen's blouse, and thus it became
at once and obviously a case of self-defence.
There was a loose screw in the killing of Ling Tchen. The loose screw
dwelt not in the manner of that killing, which had been not only
thorough but artistic. Indeed, cutting off Ling Tchen's head as a finale
was nothing short of a stroke of genius. The loose screw was that Ling
Tchen belonged to the Hip Sing Tong; and the Hip Sing Tongs lived in
Pell Street, where Mike himself abode. To be sure, since Ling Tchen did
the provoking, Mike had had no choice. Still, it might have come off
better had Ling Tchen been an On Leon Tong. An On Leon Tong belongs in
Mott Street and doesn't dare poke his wheat-hued nose into Pell Street,
where the Four Brothers and the Hip Sing Tongs are at home.
Mike's room was in the rear, on the second floor of Number Twelve.
It pleased and soothed him, he said, as he smoked a pill, to hear the
muffled revelry below in Tony's. He had just come from his room upon
that shirt occasion which resulted so disastrously for Low Fee.
Mike was among friends in Tony's. Having told in full how he did up Low
Foo, and smashed that shirt thief's laundry, Mike drank two glasses of
beer, and said that he thought now he'd go upstairs and have a smoke.
“There must be somethin' in lickin' a chink,” expounded Mike, “that
makes a guy hanker for th' hop.”
“It's early yet; better stick 'round,” urged Tony, politely. “There
is some high-rollers from Newport up here on a yacht, an' crazy to see
Chinatown in th' summer when th' blankets is off. Th' dicks w'at's got
'em in tow, gives me th' tip that they'll come lungin' in here about
ten. They're over in Mott Street now, takin' a peek at the joss house
an' drinkin' tea in the Port Arthur.”
“I don't want to meet 'em,” declared Mike. “Them stiffs makes me sick.
If youse'd promise to lock th' doors, Tony, an' put 'em all in th' air
for what they've got on 'em, I might stay.”
“That'd be a wise play, I don't think,” remarked the Dropper, who had
just come in. “Tony'd last about as long as a dollar pointin' stuss.
Puttin' a chink on th' bum is easy, an' a guy can get away wit' it;
but lay a finger on a Fift' Avenoo Willie-boy, or look cockeyed at a
spark-fawney on th' finger of one of them dames, an' a judge'll fall
over himself to hand youse twenty years.”
“Right youse be, Dropper!” said the sophistcated Tony.
Mike climbed the creaking stairway to his room.
Below, in Tony's, the beer, the gossip, the music, the singing and the
dancing went on. Pretty Agnes sang a new song, and was applauded. That
is, she was applauded by all save Mollie Squint, who uplifted her nose
and said that “it wasn't so much.”
Mollie Squint was invited to sing, but refused.
About ten o'clock came the Newport contingent, fresh from quaffing tea
and burning joss sticks. They were led by a she-captain of the Four
Hundred, who shall go here as Mrs. Vee. Mrs. Vee, young, pretty,
be-jeweled, was in top spirits. For she had just been divorced from her
husband, and they put brandy into the Port Arthur tea if you tell them
to.
Tony did the honors for Number Twelve. He and Mrs. Vee, surrounded by a
fluttering flock of purple doves, all from aristocratic cotes, became
as thick as thieves. The Dropper, who was not wanting in good looks and
could spiel like a dancing master, went twice around the room with Mrs.
Vee--just for a lark, you know--to a tune scraped from Tony's fiddles
and thumped from that publican's piano. After which, Mrs. Vee and her
flutter of followers, Willieboys and all, went their purple way.
Tony, with never flagging courtesy, escorted them to the door. What he
beheld filled his somewhat sluggish soul with wonder. Pell Street was
thronged with Chinamen. They were sitting or standing, all silent, faces
void of meaning. The situation, too, was strange in this. A Chinaman
could have told you that they were all of the Hip Sing Tong, and not a
Four Brothers among them. He wouldn't of course, for a Chinaman tells
a white devil nothing. Pell, by the way, was as much the home street of
the Four Brothers as of the Hip Sing Tong.
Tony expressed his astonishment at the pigtailed press which thronged
the thoroughfare.
“This is how it is,” vouchsafed the explanatory Tony to Mrs. Vee and
her purple fluttering doves. “Big Mike's just after standin' Low Foo's
wash-shop on its nut, an' these monks are sizin' up th' wreck. When
anything happens to a monk his tong makes good, see?”
Tony might not have said this had he recalled that Low Foo was a Four
Brothers, and understood that no one not a Hip Sing Tong was in the
crowd. Tony, however, recalled nothing, understood nothing; for he
couldn't tell one Chinaman from another.
“How interesting!” cooed Mrs. Vee, in response to Tony's elucidation;
and with that her flock of purple doves, in fluttering agreement, cooed,
“How interesting!”
“Did youse lamp th' ice on them dames?” asked Sop Henry, when the
slumming Mrs. Vee and her suite were out of ear-shot.
Sop had an eye for diamonds.
“That bunch ain't got a thing but money!” observed the Wop, his eyes
glittering enviously. “I wisht I had half their cush.”
“Money ain't th' whole box of tricks.”
This deep declaration emanated from old Jimmy. Old Jimmy's home was a
rear room on Second Street near the Bowery, which overlooked a graveyard
hidden in the heart of the block. There, when not restoring himself at
Tony's or Sirocco's or Lyon's, old Jimmy smoked a vile tobacco known
as Sailors' Choice, in a vile clay pipe as black as sin, and meditated.
Having nothing to do but think, he evolved in time into a philosopher,
and it became his habit to unload chunks of wisdom on whomsoever seemed
to stand in need. Also, since he was warlike and carried a knife,
and because anyone in hard luck could touch him for a dollar, he was
listened to politely in what society he favored with his countenance.
“Money ain't th' whole box of tricks,” old Jimmy repeated, severely,
wagging a grizzled head at the Wop, “an' only you're Irish an' ignorant
you wouldn't have to be told so.”
“Jimmy, you're nutty,” returned the Wop. “Never mind me bein' nutty,”
retorted old Jimmy, dogmatically. “I know all about th' rich.” Then, in
forgetfulness of his pension and the liberal source of it, he continued:
“A rich man is so much like a fat hog that he's seldom any good until
he's dead.”
Old Jimmy called for beer; wisdom is always dry. “Say?” observed the
Dropper, airily, “do youse guys know that I'm thinkin' I'll just about
cop off some dame with millions of dough, an' marry her.”
“Would she have youse?” inquired Mollie Squint, with the flicker of a
sneer.
“It's easy money,” returned the Dropper; “all I has to do is put out me
sign, see? Them rich frails would fall for me in a hully second.”
“You crooks can't think of a thing but money,” snorted old Jimmy. “Marry
a rich dame! A guy might as well get a job as valet or butler or footman
somewhere an' let it go at that. Do you mutts know what love is? Th' one
married chance of happiness is love. An' to love, folks must be poor.
Then they have to depend upon each other; and it's only when people
depend upon each other they love each other.”
“Jimmy,” quoth the Dropper, with mock sadness. “I can see your finish.
You'll land in Bloomingdale, playin' wit' a string of spools.”
“Did you ever,” demanded old Jimmy, disregarding the irreverent Dropper,
“see some strapping young party, up against the skyline on an iron
building, workin' away wit' one of them rivetin' guns? Well, somewhere
between th' two rivers there's a girl he's married to, who's doin'
a two-step 'round a cook stove, fryin' steak an' onions for him,
an' keepin' an eye out that their kids don't do a high dive off th'
fire-escape. Them two people are th' happiest in th' world. Such
boneheads as you can't appreciate it, but they are. Give 'em a million
dollars an' you'll spoil it. They'd get a divorce; you'd put that
household on th' toboggan. If this Mister Vee, now, had been poor an'
drove a truck instead of bein' rich an' drivin' a 6-horse coach, an'
if Mrs. Vee had been poor an' done a catch-as-catch-can with th' family
washtub instead of havin' money to burn an' hirein' a laundress, she'd
never have bucked th' divorce game, but lived happy ever after.”
“But, Jimmy,” interposed Tony, “I've seen poor folks scrap.”
“Sure,” assented Jimmy; “all married folks scrap--a little. But them's
only love spats, when they're poor. Th' wife begins 'em. She thinks
she'll just about try hubby out, an' see can he go some. Th' only risk
is him bein' weak enough to let her win. She don't want to win; victory
would only embarrass her. What she's after is a protector; an' if hubby
lets her put him on th' floor for th' count, she don't know where she's
at. She's dead sure she's no good; an' if he's a quitter she's left all
in th' air. Havin' floored him, she thinks to herself, 'This thing
protect me? Why, I can lick him myself!' After that, hubby might better
keep close tabs on little Bright-eyes, or some mornin' he'll call the
family roll an' she won't answer. Take a boy an' a girl, both young,
both square, both poor--so they'll need each ether--an', so he's got her
shaded a little should it come to th' gloves, two bugs in a rug won't
have nothin' on them.”
Old Jimmy up-ended his glass, as one who had settled grave matters,
while the Dropper and the Wop shook contemplative heads.
“An' yet,” said the Wop, after a pause, “goin' back to them rich babies
who was here, I still say I wisht I had their bundle.”
“It's four for one,” returned old Jimmy, his philosophy again forging
to the fore--“it's four for one, Wop, you'd have a dead bad time. What
street shows th' most empty houses? Ain't it Fift' Ave-noo? Why be they
empty? Because the ginks who lived in 'em didn't have a good time in
'em. If they had they'd have stuck. A guy don't go places, he leaves
places. He don't go to Europe, he leaves New York.”
Old Jimmy turned to Tony.
“Fill up th' crockery. I'm talkin' 'way over th' heads of these bums.”
“Ain't he a wonder?” whispered Pretty Agnes to the Nailer.
“I should say as much,” responded the admiring Nailer. “He ought to
be sellin' gold bricks. He's talked th' Dropper an' th' Wop into a hard
knot.”
The Dropper was not to be quelled, and insisted that Jimmy was
conversing through his sou'wester.
“I don't think so,” broke in Jew Yetta; “I strings wit' Jimmy. Take
a tumble to yourself, Dropper. If you was to marry one of them money
dames, you'd have to go into high society. An' then what? W'y, you'd
look like a pig on a front porch.”
“Don't youse bet on it,” declared the Dropper loftily. “There's nothin'
in that high society stuff. A smart guy like me could learn his way
t'rough in a week.”
“Could he?” said the Nailer, and his tones were tones of derision.
“That's w'at I says!” replied the Dropper. Then, heatedly: “W'y, do you
geeks think I've never been north of Fourteenth Street? Youse make me
tired, Nailer. While you was up-th'-river, for toinin' off that loft in
Chambers Street, don't I go to a shindy at th' Demmycrat Club in honor
of Sen'tor Depew? There was loidies there--th' real thing, too. An'
wasn't I another time at th' Charlie Murphy dinner? Talk of high
society!--if that ain't high society, what is?”
Having squelched the Nailer, the Dropper proceeded more moderately.
“I remember th' scare that's t'run into me at the Depew racket. I've
been put up ag'inst some hot propositions, but if ever I'm faded it's
then when, for th' foist time, I lamps a full-blown dame in evenin'
dress. On th' dead, I felt like yellin' 'Police!'”
“Phwat was it scared yez, Dropper?” asked the Wop.
“It ain't that I'm so scared as rattled. There's too much free-board to
them evenin' dresses.”
“An' the Charlie Murphy banquet,” said Pretty Agnes, wistfully. “Didn't
yez get cold feet?”
“Naw, I don't git cold feet. I admits I falls down, I don't try to
sidestep that; but it wasn't my fault. Do it over again, an' I'd go
t'rough wit' bells on.”
“How did youse fall down?”
“It's be accident; I takes th' wrong steer, that's all. I makes it a
point, knowin' I'm none too wise, to plant meself when we pulls up to
the feed opposite to a gilded old bunk, who looked like ready money. 'Do
as he does, Dropper' I says to meself, 'an' you're winner in a walk!'
So, when he plays a fork, I plays a fork; if he boards a chive, I boards
a chive; from soup to birds I'm steerin' be his wake. Then all of a
sudden I cops a shock. We've just made some roast squabs look like five
cents worth of lard in a paper bag, an' slopped out a bunch of fizz to
wash 'em down, when what does that old Rube do but up an' sink his hooks
in a bowl of water. Honest, I like to 've fell in a fit! There I'd been
feelin' as cunning as a pet fox, an' me on a dead one from th' jump!”
“Did any of them smart Alecks give youse th' laugh?” asked the Nailer.
“Give me th' laugh,” repeated the Dropper, disgustedly. “I'd have
smashed whoever did in th' eye.”
While beer and conversation were flowing in Number Twelve, a
sophisticated eye would have noted divers outside matters which might or
might not have had a meaning. On the heels of Big Mike's laundry deeds
of desolation and destruction at Low Foo's, not a Chinaman was visible
in Pell Street. It was the same when Mike came out of Tony's and climbed
the stairs to his room. Mike safely retired from the field, a handful
of Four Brothers--all of them Lows and of the immediate clan of Low
Foo--showed up, and took a slanteyed squint at what ruin had been
wrought. They spoke not above a murmur, but as nearly as a white devil
might gather a meaning, they were of the view that no monsoon could have
more thoroughly scrap-heaped the belongings of Low Foo.
Other Chinamen began to gather, scores upon scores. These were Hip Sing
Tongs, and they paid not the slightest heed to Low Foo's laundry, or
what was left of it. What Four Brothers were abroad did not mingle with
the Hip Sing Tongs, although the two tribes lived in friendship. The
Four Brothers quietly withdrew, each to his own den, and left the Hip
Sing Tongs in possession of the street.
Being in possession, the Hip Sing Tongs did nothing beyond roost on the
curb, or squat in doorways, or stand idly about. Now and then one smoked
a cigarette.
About 11.20 o'clock, a Chinaman entered Pell Street from the Bowery.
Every one of the Hip Sing Tongs looked at him; none of them spoke to
him. Only, a place was made for him in the darkness of the darkest
doorway. Had some brisk Central Office intelligence been there and
consulted its watch, it might have occurred to such intelligence that
had the newcomer arrived from Philadelphia over the B. & O. by
latest train, he--assuming him to have taken the ferry with proper
dispatch--would have come poking into Pell Street at precisely that
hour.
Trinity struck midnight.
The bells sounded dim and far away. It was as though it were the ghost
of some dead midnight being struck. At the sound, and as if he heard in
it a signal, the mysterious Chinaman came out of the double darkness of
the doorway in which he had been waiting, and crossed to the stairway
that led up to the room of Mike. Not a whisper came from the waiting
Hip Sing Tongs, who watched him with that blend of apathy and eagerness
observable only in the Oriental. No one went with the mysterious
Chinaman. Nor did the stairs creak--as with Big Mike--beneath his velvet
shoes.
Five minutes passed.
The mysterious one emerged from Mike's stairway as silently as he had
entered it. He tossed a claw-like hand palm outward, toward the waiting,
watching Hip Sing Tongs, and then went slippering towards the Bowery.
Had that brisk Central Office intelligence been there to see, it might
have reflected, recalling a time table, that by taking the Cortlandt
Street ferry, the mysterious one would be in time for the 12.30 train to
Philadelphia over the Pennsylvania.
Before the mysterious one had reached the Bowery, those scores of
waiting, watching Hip Sing Tongs had vanished, and Pell Street was as
empty as the promise of a politician.
“Now,” whispered Ching Lee to Sam Kum, who kept the chop suey shop, as
they turned to go--“now he meet Ling Tchen, mebby so!”
One o'clock.
Tony began to think about locking his front door. This, out of respect
for the law. Not that beer and revelry were to cease in Number Twelve,
but because such was Tony's understanding with the precinct skipper.
Some reformer might come snooping else, and lodge complaint against that
skipper with the Commissioner of Police.
Just as Tony, on bidding “Good-bye!” to Mrs. Vee and her purple
fluttering flock, had been impressed by the crowded condition of Pell
Street, so now, when he made ready to lock up, was he impressed by that
causeway's profound emptiness.
“Say,” he cried to his guests in the rear, “you stews come here! This is
funny; there ain't a chink in sight!”
“D'youse think th' bulls are gettin' ready for a raid?” asked Sop Henry.
Sop, with the Nailer and the Wop, had joined Tony in the door. “Perhaps
there's somethin' doin' over at th' Elizabeth Street station, an' the
wardman's passed th' monks th' tip.”
“Nothin' in that,” responded Tony, confidently. “Wouldn't I be put wise,
too?”
Marvelling much, Tony fastened his door, and joined old Jimmy, Pretty
Agnes and the others in the rear room. When he got there, he found old
Jimmy sniffing with suspicious nose, and swearing he smelled gas.
“One of your pipes is leakin', Tony,” said Jimmy, “leakin' for fair,
too, or I'm a Dago!”
Tony, in refutation, called attention to a patent truth. He used
electric light, not gas.
“But they use gas upstairs,” he added. Then, half-anxiously; “It can't
be some hop-head has blown out the gas?”
The thought was enough to start the Dropper, ever full of enterprise.
“Let's have a look,” said he. “Nailer you an' th' Wop come wit' me.”
Tony again opened the front door, and the Dropper, followed by the Wop
and the Nailer, filed into the stairway that led to the floor above.
They made noise enough, blundering and stumbling in the sudden hurry of
spirit which had gripped them. As they reached the landing near Mike's
door, the odor of gas was even more pronounced than in Tony's rear room.
The hall was blind black with the thick darkness that filled it.
“How about this?” queried the Dropper. “I thought a gas jet was always
boinin' in th' hall.”
The Dropper, growing fearful, hung back. With that, the Wop pushed
forward and took the lead. Only for a moment. Giving a cry, he sprang
back with such sudden force that he sent the Dropper headlong down the
stairs.
“Th' Virgin save us!” exclaimed the Wop, “but I touched somethin' soft!”
“What's th' row?” demanded Tony, coming to the foot of the stairs.
At the Dropper's request, Tony brought a candle, used by him in
excursions to those crypts wherein he kept his whiskey.
In a moment all was plain. That something soft which had so told upon
the Wop was a rubber tube. There was a gas jet in the hall. One end
of the rubber tube had been fastened over the gas jet, and the other
stuffed into the keyhole of Mike's door. Trap arranged, the gas had been
set flowing full blast.
“Well, what do youse think of that?” exclaimed Tony, who understood at a
glance.
With one swift move, Tony turned off the gas and tore away the rubber
tube. There was no talk of keys. He placed his powerful shoulder against
the door, and sent it crashing. The out-rush of gas drove them, choking
and gasping, into the open air.
“Take it from me,” said the Dropper, as soon as he could get his breath,
“they've croaked Mike.”
“But the window,” urged the Nailer; “mebbe Mike has the window open!”
“Not a chance!” retorted the Dropper. “No one has his window up while he
hits th' pipe. They don't jibe, fresh air an' dope.”
The Dropper was right. Big Mike, stark and still and yellow, lay dead in
his bed--the last place his friends would have anticipated--poisoned by
gas.
“Better notify th' cops,” advised Jimmy, the practical.
“Who did it?” sobbed Pretty Agnes. “Mike never handed it to himself.”.
“Who did it?” repeated the Dropper, bitterly. “Th' chinks did it. It's
for Low Foo's laundry.”
“You're down wrong, Dropper,” said old Jimmy. “It's that Ling Tchen
trick. I knew them Hip Sings would get Mike.”