Once the door with the faded gilt letters had closed, with him inside,
the legless man, who was none other than Blizzard, the manufacturer of
hats, put off those airs of helplessness and humility by which so many
coins were attracted into the little tin cup upon the top of his
hand-organ, and assumed the attitude of one accustomed to command and to
be served, to reward and to punish. He was no longer a beggar, but a
magnate. He swelled with power, and twenty girls of almost as many
nationalities, plaiting straw hats by the gas-light, cringed in their
hearts, and redoubled the speed of their hands. About the twenty girls
who slaved for Blizzard there were two peculiarities which at once
distinguished them from any other collection of female factory-hands on
the East Side. They were all strong and healthy looking, and they were
all pretty. He had collected them much as rich men in a higher station
of life collect paintings or pearls. If some of them bore the marks of
blows and pinchings, it was not upon any part of them which showed. If
some of them suffered from the fear of torture or even sudden death, it
did not prevent them from showing the master rows of even white teeth
between ingratiatingly parted lips whenever he deigned to speak to them.
If any girl among them thought to escape him, to find work elsewhere, to
betray what she knew of him, even, and vanish into the slums of some far
city, she was deterred by the memory of certain anecdotes constantly
related by her companions. The most terrible of these anecdotes was that
related of a certain Florence Magrue. She had fled with her story to the
nearest policeman, who had quietly returned her to the shop,
reluctantly, it was admitted, but with the determination of a man whose
very existence depends upon the favor of another. The master had
welcomed her and smiled upon her as upon an erring child. He had sent
her upon an errand into the cellar under the shop, himself unlocking
the door. And that was the last that any one had ever seen of
Florence Magrue.
In addition to fear, the master supplied certain creature comforts, not
lightly to be thrown away. If a girl could make up her mind to accept
shame, bodily injury if she displeased, and a life of toil, she fared
better under Blizzard's direction than her sister who worked for Ecbaum,
let us say, the lacemaker, or Laskar, or any of a thousand East Side
employers of labor. The man could be kind upon impulse, and generous. He
paid the highest wages. He supplied nourishing food at noon, and a
complete hour in which to discuss it. Furthermore, if a girl pleased
him, the work of her hands was subjected to less critical inspection,
and if she had any music in her, he invited her upstairs sometimes to
work the pedals of his grand piano, while his own powerful, hairy hands
rippled and thundered upon the keys. He was of a Godlike kindness when
his mind inclined to music, and the pedalling was skilful and sure. But
let the unfortunate crouched under the key-board, her trembling hands
taking the place of those feet which the master had lost, respond
stupidly to the signals conveyed to her shoulder by graduated pressures
from the stump of his right leg, and punishment of blows, pinchings, and
sarcasms was swift and sure.
The legless man was very much at home in his own house. He had inhabited
it for many years, and its arrangements were the expression of a
creature immensely able and ingenious, but maimed both in body
and soul.
The whole building, four stories tall, had once been a manufactory, but
Blizzard had subdivided its original lofts into pens, dens, passageways,
and rooms according to an elaborate plan of his own. And it was evident
to the most casual glance that expediency alone, untrammelled by any
consideration of purse, had been followed. Those walls, floors, and
ceilings, for instance, through which no sound of human origin, unaided
by mechanical device, could penetrate, must have cost a mint of money.
Nor could any man who depended for a living upon occasional pennies
dropped into a tin cup have got together so extensive a collection of
books upon scientific subjects, many of them handsomely bound and
printed in foreign countries. Works upon explosives, tunnelling,
electricity, and music were especially abundant, not only in English,
but in German. And there were books upon the organization of armies, and
upon the chemistry of precious stones. A cursory examination of his
books would have found the master of the house to be interested also in
obstetrics, in poisons, and in anesthesia; but of romance, humanity, or
poetry his library had but a single example, the "Monte Cristo" of the
elder Dumas.
Had all the doors and windows of the house been thrown open, and all its
inhabitants expelled, so that you could have free ingress with a
companion or two, and time and the mood to explore the whole of its
ramifications and arrangements, you must have concluded that the
designer of so much that was hideously obvious and so much that was
mysteriously obscure was a most extraordinary example of viciousness,
ability, purpose, and musicianship. You must have been staggered at
passing from a room containing a grand piano and a bust of Beethoven to
find yourself in a little operating-theatre such as any eminent surgeon
might wish to be at work in, to find beyond this a small but excellently
appointed gymnasium; above this, to be reached only by climbing a
knotted rope, a long room, lighted from above, containing
drawing-tables, many cases of drawing-instruments, and a host of
workman-like designs and specifications. Thence you might pass, still
wondering, into an apartment of soft divans, thick rags, and open
fireplace, a smell of incense, double windows and double doors.
Or you might descend by stairs or polished poles to the cellar under the
hat factory, and find yourself, prying into the most obscure corner and
lighting matches for guidance, confronted by the door of a mightily
strong safety vault, the knobs of the combination lock bright and easily
turned. And you might say: "Well, it's either the house of a man whose
scheme of life is utterly beyond my comprehension, or of a madman."