And now let us return to the newsboy, and trace his footsteps from the
time he left his benefactor on the corner of Broadway. He stood on the
street corner watching with his small, sharp eyes the street car until
it was out of sight, then he turned and trudged on to Third Avenue,
where he swung himself on board another car and was carried down to the
lower part of the city. He went direct to the lodging-house, and, as the
superintendent had said, told what was regarded at the time as an
invention of his own, about his mishap at the fire, and his experience
in the hospital, and was finally allowed to become a lodger for a short
time on credit. He said nothing about the four dollars and twenty-two
cents that Bruce had loaned him, and which he still had in his pocket.
He had already determined to devote that sum to a special purpose, and
to depend upon what he could pick up by selling newspapers or running
errands to defray his expenses. He had often slept and eaten in the
lodging house before, and, when the boys came trooping in just before
supper time, there were many among them who knew him and came over to
ask him where he had been. The general opinion among the boys, and it
was shared by the superintendent also, was that Skinny had been sent to
Blackwell’s Island for some misdemeanor, and had simply invented the
hospital and fire story to shield his good name.
“Dat’s what happens to me fer goin’ ter work reg’lar,” said the boy to
himself. “Before I was in dat factory a day it took fire, an’ I hadn’t
even had de time to learn de way out.” That night the boy sat down to
supper with a hundred or more lads representing a dozen races and
nationalities and innumerable callings, though the bulk of them made
their living by selling newspapers and blacking boots. Supper over, they
repaired to a big schoolroom on the floor above, and there, with slates
and pencils and spelling books, endeavored to master the rudiments of an
education. Skinny sat down at his desk with the others, and for an hour
worked diligently. But every once in a while the remembrance of his
friend, the fireman, would come into his mind. He knew intuitively that
Bruce was interested in the young girl who had come to see him, and the
tall, dark man who must be, the boy reasoned, connected with her in some
way. He would make it his business to seek out this man, and all that he
could learn about him he would place at the service of his new friend.
Born and brought up in the slums, having learned his trade in the
streets and in the face of the sharp, juvenile competition which goes on
there, Skinny was well suited to prosecute a search of the kind that now
engrossed his attention. The next morning he was up at daybreak with the
rest of the boys, and after breakfast betook himself to the big
newspaper buildings where the presses were turning out the damp, freshly
printed sheets by the thousands. Withdrawing from his hoarded capital
half a dollar, Skinny invested it in a stock of morning papers, and then
stationed himself near the entrance to the Bridge. By nine o’clock his
stock was exhausted, and he had also secured about twenty papers which
he had begged from passers-by who had read and were about to discard
them. These he had also disposed of, and he was now more than half a
dollar richer than he had been the night before. Satisfied with his
morning’s work, he returned to the lodging house and rested there until
it was time to resume business with the afternoon papers as his stock in
trade. The various editions of these kept him busy during the afternoon,
and netted him half a dollar. Then he went home, exhausted with his hard
work, ate his supper, spent an hour in the schoolroom, and then went to
bed.
For several weeks he labored industriously, and then beginning to tire
of newspaper selling, he determined to find some other job.
Early one morning he bent his steps in the direction of Chatham Square,
whence he walked along the Bowery till he came to Grand Street, and
then, turning to the east, walked on until he found himself in the
Jewish quarter of the town. As he walked he cast furtive and suspicious
glances about him from time to time, for the exigencies of his life had
taught him to be sharp and cunning, and distrustful of other people. It
was seven o’clock by this time, and the street was full of girls
hurrying toward the factories in which they worked. Turning into a side
street the boy slunk along the pavement, and finally stopped and fixed
his eyes on an old ramshackle building, the upper stories of which were
occupied as a tenement house, while the ground floor was used as a sort
of office. For some time the boy stood looking intently at this building
from the opposite side of the street, and then seeing no sign of life in
the office on the ground floor, he walked away, made a circuit of the
neighborhood, and at the end of an hour returned once more; this time he
found the office open and within it a small, dried up old man, who was
writing in a big leather-bound book. To him the boy addressed himself:
“Want any errands run to-day, boss?” he inquired.
“No!” replied the old man, shortly.
“Hey, boss,” went on Skinny, “I used ter do odd jobs for dat bloke wid
de black whiskers dat wuz here before, and I always done right by him.”
The old bookkeeper fixed his spectacles on his nose, and looked sharply
down at the lad who stood before him with upturned face and with his hat
on the back of his head.
“Are you the boy that he used to send up town last winter?” demanded the
clerk, suspiciously.
“Yes, I used ter take letters fer him way up above de bridge,” replied
the other.
“Where have you been keeping yourself of late? If you’d been here a few
days ago you might have earned a dollar or so, but you boys are never
around when you are wanted,” continued the bookkeeper, speaking in
sharp, stern tones.
“Well, ain’t dere no chance for me now, boss? I wuz burned out of a
factory, carried down de ladder by a mug dat found me burnin’ up, and
den dey took me to de hospital, and here I am. But where’s his nibs gone
ter?”
“Yes,” said the bookkeeper, scornfully, “you’ve been to the hospital, no
doubt, but I guess it was a judge sent you there. But you come in here
at twelve o’clock, and perhaps there’ll be a little work for you.”
“Dat’s it all de time,” said Skinny to himself, as he walked away.
“Wot’s de use of doin’ de right ting when nobody won’t believe yer, and
tinks all de time yer been up to der Island? Dat’s wot comes of goin’ to
work reg’lar,” he added, and he shook his head with a determination
never to do any business in the future except on his own account.
Twelve o’clock found him standing once more in the little office on the
side street, and when he entered, the old bookkeeper, who was still
making entries in the big leather-bound volume as if he had been at it
without a second’s interruption all the morning, scarcely raised his
eyes, while he said to him: “Do you remember going up to a house above
the Harlem river, one day, to take a letter to an old gentleman who
lived there?”
[Illustration: “So you’ve been in the hospital, have you?”—_Page 225._]
“A big, square house, wid evergreens around it? Yes, I could find it
again in de dark.”
“Very well,” continued the bookkeeper, whose pen did not cease
scratching for a single moment, “you’d better go up now and find it, for
there’s a gentleman up there who may give you a job; but let me give you
a bit of advice, young man. Don’t remember too much or see too much when
you’re sent on errands. It’s the boys who forget what they see, and the
places that they’re sent to, who make the most money nowadays. Here’s
twenty-five cents for car fare, and now you go up there, and you’ll find
the gentleman whom you politely refer to as ‘the bloke with the black
whiskers’ waiting for you.”
Skinny made haste to obey, and within an hour was entering the dark,
shady grounds of Mr. Dexter’s house with the same furtive, cautious way
of looking about him that he had shown further down town. His old
acquaintance, the man with the black beard and the deeply-scarred face,
was walking up and down the roadway in front of the house, smoking a
cigar.
“So you’ve been in the hospital, have you?” was his salutation. “What
sort of a hospital was it? One with bars to the window?”
“Naw, der wan’t no bars to de windows. I wuz in de New York hospital,
and I’ll leave it to de nurse, a dinky lady wot sat up all night wid us,
and wore a white cap. Dat’s on de level, boss.”
The tall man regarded him suspiciously for a moment, and the boy
squinted up at him with a defiant look in his sharp eyes that caused the
other to smile and say to him in more conciliatory tones: “Well, I’ve
got one or two errands for you to do, and if you do them properly,
you’ll be well paid for them. If not, you’ll come to grief. How would
you like to take a little trip into the country, to be gone two or three
days? I hope that you have no pressing business engagements in the city
that will interfere with the project.”
Skinny replied with perfect gravity that he had intended to take dinner
with Mr. Vanderbilt that night, but that he would try and get him to
excuse him, in which case he observed in his picturesque slang that it
would be necessary for him to eat elsewhere, and at an early moment. The
tall man was laughing broadly now—he always found a great deal of
amusement in Skinny—and so he bade him go into the kitchen and tell the
cook to let him have something to eat. “When you are through, come into
the library, I want to talk to you.”