“_WHO'S_ that, I wonder?” asked Nell Peter as the dark, close-veiled
figure glided past them on the stairs.
“Oh, she's a policy-drunkard,” answered Pinky, loud enough to be heard
by the woman, who, as if surprised or alarmed, stopped and turned her
head, her veil falling partly away, and disclosing features so pale and
wasted that she looked more like a ghost than living flesh and blood.
There was a strange gleam in her eyes. She paused only for an instant,
but her steps were slower as she went on climbing the steep and narrow
stairs that led to the policy-office.
“Good Gracious, Pinky! did you ever see such a face?” exclaimed Nell
Peter. “It's a walking ghost, I should say, and no woman at all.”
“Oh, I've seen lots of 'em,” answered Pinky. “She's a policy-drunkard.
Bad as drinking when it once gets hold of 'em. They tipple all the time,
sell anything, beg, borrow, steal or starve themselves to get money to
buy policies. She's one of 'em that's starving.”
By this time they had reached the policy-office. It was in a small room
on the third floor of the back building, yet as well known to the police
of the district as if it had been on the front street. One of these
public guardians soon after his appointment through political influence,
and while some wholesome sense of duty and moral responsibility yet
remained, caused the “writer” in this particular office to be arrested.
He thought that he had done a good thing, and looked for approval and
encouragement. But to his surprise and chagrin he found that he had
blundered. The case got no farther than the alderman's. Just how it was
managed he did not know, but it was managed, and the business of the
office went on as before.
A little light came to him soon after, on meeting a prominent politician
to whom he was chiefly indebted for his appointment. Said this
individual, with a look of warning and a threat in his voice,
“See here, my good fellow; I'm told that you've been going out of your
way and meddling with the policy-dealers. Take my advice, and mind your
own business. If you don't, it will be all day with you. There isn't a
man in town strong enough to fight this thing, so you'd better let it
alone.”
And he did let it alone. He had a wife and three little children, and
couldn't afford to lose his place. So he minded his own business, and
let it alone.
Pinky and her friend entered this small third-story back room. Behind a
narrow, unpainted counter, having a desk at one end, stood a middle-aged
man, with dark, restless eyes that rarely looked you in the face. He
wore a thick but rather closely-cut beard and moustache. The police knew
him very well; so did the criminal lawyers, when he happened to come in
their way; so did the officials of two or three State prisons in which
he had served out partial sentences. He was too valuable to political
“rings” and associations antagonistic to moral and social well-being
to be left idle in the cell of a penitentiary for the whole term of a
commitment. Politicians have great influence, and governors are human.
On the walls of the room were pasted a few pictures cut from the
illustrated papers, some of them portraits of leading politicians, and
some of them portraits of noted pugilists and sporting-men. The picture
of a certain judge, who had made himself obnoxious to the fraternity
of criminals by his severe sentences, was turned upside down. There was
neither table nor chair in the room.
The woman in black had passed in just before the girls, and was waiting
her turn to examine the drawn numbers. She had not tasted food since the
day before, having ventured her only dime on a policy, and was feeling
strangely faint and bewildered. She did not have to wait long. It was
the old story. Her combination had not come out, and she was starving.
As she moved back toward the door she staggered a little. Pinky, who had
become curious about her, noticed this, and watched her as she went out.
“It's about up with the old lady, I guess,” she said to her companion,
with an unfeeling laugh.
And she was right. On the next morning the poor old woman was found dead
in her room, and those who prepared her for burial said that she
was wasted to a skeleton. She had, in fact, starved herself in her
infatuation, spending day after day in policies what she should have
spent for food. Pinky's strange remark was but too true. She had become
a policy-drunkard--a vice almost as disastrous in its effects as its
kindred, vice, intemperance, though less brutalizing and less openly
indulged.
“Where now?” was the question of Pinky's friend as they came down, after
spending in policies all the money they had received from the sale of
Flora Bond's clothing. “Any other game?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Come along to my room, and I'll tell you.”
“Round in Ewing street?”
“Yes. Great game up, if I can only get on the track.”
“What is it?”
“There's a cast-off baby in Dirty Alley, and Fan Bray knows its mother,
and she's rich.”
“What?”
“Fan's getting lots of hush-money.”
“Goody! but that is game!”
“Isn't it? The baby's owned by two beggar-women who board it in Dirty
Alley. It's 'most starved and frozen to death, and Fan's awful 'fraid
it may die. She wants me to steal it for her, so that she may have it
better taken care of, and I was going to do it last night, when I got
into a muss.”
“Who's the woman that boards it?”
“She lives in a cellar, and is drunk every night. Can steal the brat
easily enough; but if I can't find out who it belongs to, you see it
will be trouble for nothing.”
“No, I don't see any such thing,” answered Nell Peter. “If you can't get
hush-money out of its mother, you can bleed Fanny Bray.”
“That's so, and I'm going to bleed her. The mother, you see, thinks
the baby's dead. The proud old grandmother gave it away, as soon as was
born, to a woman that Fan Bray found for her. Its mother was out of her
head, and didn't know nothing. That woman sold the baby to the women who
keep it to beg with. She's gone up the spout now, and nobody knows who
the mother and grandmother are but Fan, and nobody knows where the baby
is but me and Fan. She's bleeding the old lady, and promises to share
with me if I keep track of the baby and see that it isn't killed or
starved to death. But I don't trust her. She puts me off with fives and
tens, when I'm sure she gets hundreds. Now, if we have the baby all
to ourselves, and find out the mother and grandmother, won't we have a
splendid chance? I'll bet you on that.”
“Won't we? Why, Pinky, this is a gold-mine!”
“Didn't I tell you there was great game up? I was just wanting some one
to help me. Met you in the nick of time.”
The two girls had now reached Pinky's room in Ewing street, where they
continued in conference for a long time before settling their plans.
“Does Fan know where you live?” queried Nell Peter.
“Yes.”
“Then you will have to change your quarters.”
“Easily done. Doesn't take half a dozen furniture-cars to move me.”
“I know a room.”
“Where?”
“It's a little too much out of the way, you'll think, maybe, but
it's just the dandy for hiding in. You cart keep the brat there, and
nobody--”
“Me keep the brat?” interrupted Pinky, with a derisive laugh. “That's a
good one! I see myself turned baby-tender! Ha! ha! that's funny!”
“What do you expect to do with the child after you steal it?” asked
Pinky's friend.
“I don't intend to nurse it or have it about me.”
“What then?”
“Board if with some one who doesn't get drunk or buy policies.”
“You'll hunt for a long time.”
“Maybe, but I'll try. Anyhow, it can't be worse off than it is now. What
I'm afraid of is that it will be out of its misery before we can get
hold of it. The woman who is paid for keeping it at night doesn't give
it any milk--just feeds it on bread soaked in water, and that is slow
starvation. It's the way them that don't want to keep their babies get
rid of them about here.”
“The game's up if the baby dies,” said Nell Peter, growing excited under
this view of the case. “If it only gets bread soaked in water, it can't
live. I've seen that done over and over again. They're starving a baby
on bread and water now just over from my room, and it cries and frets
and moans all the time it's awake, poor little wretch! I've been
in hopes for a week that they'd give it an overdose of paregoric or
something else.”
“We must fix it to-night in some way,” answered Pinky. “Where's the room
you spoke of?”
“In Grubb's court. You know Grubb's court?--a kind of elbow going off
from Rider's court. There's a room up there that you can get where even
the police would hardly find you out.”
“Thieves live there,” said Pinky.
“No matter. They'll not trouble you or the baby.”
“Is the room furnished?”
“Yes. There's a bed and a table and two chairs.”
After farther consultation it was decided that Pinky should move at
once from her present lodgings to the room in Grubb's court, and get, if
possible, possession of the baby that very night. The moving was easily
accomplished after the room was secured. Two small bundles of clothing
constituted Pinky's entire effects; and taking these, the two girls went
quietly out, leaving a week's rent unpaid.
The night that closed this early winter day was raw and cold, the
easterly wind still prevailing, with occasional dashes of rain. In a
cellar without fire, except a few bits of smouldering wood in an old
clay furnace, that gave no warmth to the damp atmosphere, and with
scarcely an article of furniture, a woman half stupid from drink sat on
a heap of straw, her bed, with her hands clasped about her knees. She
was rocking her body backward and forward, and crooning to herself in a
maudlin way. A lighted tallow candle stood on the floor of the cellar,
and near it a cup of water, in which was a spoon and some bread soaking.
“Mother Hewitt!” called a voice from the cellar door that opened on the
street. “Here, take the baby!”
Mother Hewitt, as she was called, started up and made her way with an
unsteady gait to the front part of the cellar, where a woman in not
much better condition than herself stood holding out a bundle of rags in
which a fretting baby was wrapped.
“Quick, quick!” called the woman. “And see here,” she continued as
Mother Hewitt reached her arms for the baby; “I don't believe you're
doing the right thing. Did he have plenty of milk last night and this
morning?”
“Just as much as he would take.”
“I don't believe it. He's been frettin' and chawin' at the strings of
his hood all the afternoon, when he ought to have been asleep, and he's
looking punier every day. I believe you're giving him only bread and
water.”
But Mother Hewitt protested that she gave him the best of new milk, and
as much as he would take.
“Well, here's a quarter,” said the woman, handing Mother Hewitt some
money; “and see that he is well fed to-night and to-morrow morning. He's
getting 'most too deathly in his face. The people won't stand it if they
think a baby's going to die--the women 'specially, and most of all the
young things that have lost babies. One of these--I know 'em by the way
they look out of their eyes--came twice to-day and stood over him sad
and sorrowful like; she didn't give me anything. I've seen her before.
Maybe she's his mother. As like as nor, for nobody knows where he came
from. Wasn't Sally Long's baby; always thought she'd stole him from
somebody. Now, mind, he's to have good milk every day, or I'll change
his boarding-house. D'ye hear!”
And laughing at this sally, the woman turned away to spend in a night's
debauch the money she had gained in half a day's begging.
Left to herself, Mother Hewitt went staggering back with the baby in
her arms, and seated herself on the ground beside the cup of bread and
water, which was mixed to the consistence of cream. As she did so the
light of her poor candle fell on the baby's face. It was pinched and
hungry and ashen pale, the thin lips wrought by want and suffering into
such sad expressions of pain that none but the most stupid and hardened
could look at them and keep back a gush of tears.
But Mother Hewitt saw nothing of this--felt nothing of this. Pity and
tenderness had long since died out of her heart. As she laid the baby
back on one arm she took a spoonful of the mixture prepared for its
supper, and pushed it roughly into its mouth. The baby swallowed it with
a kind of starving eagerness, but with no sign of satisfaction on
its sorrowful little face. But Mother Hewitt was too impatient to get
through with her work of feeding the child, and thrust in spoonful after
spoonful until it choked, when she shook it angrily, calling it vile
names.
The baby cried feebly at this, when she shook it again and slapped it
with her heavy hand. Then it grew still. She put the spoon again to its
lips, but it shut them tightly and turned its head away.
“Very well,” said Mother Hewitt. “If you won't, you won't;” and she
tossed the helpless thing as she would have tossed a senseless bundle
over upon the heap of straw that served as a bed, adding, as she did so,
“I never coaxed my own brats.”
The baby did not cry. Mother Hewitt then blew out the candle, and
groping her way to the door of the cellar that opened on the street,
went out, shutting down the heavy door behind her, and leaving the child
alone in that dark and noisome den--alone in its foul and wet garments,
but, thanks to kindly drugs, only partially conscious of its misery.
Mother Hewitt's first visit was to the nearest dram-shop. Here she spent
for liquor five cents of the money she had received. From the dram-shop
she went to Sam McFaddon's policy-office. This was not hidden away,
like most of the offices, in an upper room or a back building or in some
remote cellar, concealed from public observation, but stood with open
door on the very street, its customers going in and out as freely and
unquestioned as the customers of its next-door neighbor, the dram-shop.
Policemen passed Sam's door a hundred times in every twenty-four hours,
saw his customers going in and out, knew their errand, talked with Sam
about his business, some of them trying their luck occasionally after
there had been an exciting “hit,” but none reporting him or in any way
interfering with his unlicensed plunder of the miserable and besotted
wretches that crowded his neighborhood.
From the whisky-shop to the policy-shop went Mother Hewitt. Here she put
down five cents more; she never bet higher than this on a “row.” From
the policy-shop she went back to the whisky-shop, and took another
drink. By this time she was beginning to grow noisy. It so happened that
the woman who had left the baby with her a little while before came in
just then, and being herself much the worse for drink, picked a quarrel
with Mother Hewitt, accusing her of getting drunk on the money she
received for keeping the baby, and starving it to death. A fight was the
consequence, in which they were permitted to tear and scratch and bruise
each other in a shocking way, to the great enjoyment of the little
crowd of debased and brutal men and women who filled the dram-shop. But
fearing a visit from the police, the owner of the den, a strong, coarse
Irishman, interfered, and dragging the women apart, pushed Mother Hewitt
out, giving her so violent an impetus that she fell forward into the
middle of the narrow street, where she lay unable to rise, not from any
hurt, but from sheer intoxication.
“What's up now?” cried one and another as this little ripple of
disturbance broke upon that vile and troubled sea of humanity.
“Only Mother Hewitt drunk again!” lightly spoke a young girl not out
of her teens, but with a countenance that seemed marred by centuries of
debasing evil. Her laugh would have made an angel shiver.
A policeman came along, and stood for a little while looking at the
prostrate woman.
“It's Mother Hewitt,” said one of the bystanders.
“Here, Dick,” and the policeman spoke to a man near him. “Take hold of
her feet.”
The man did as told, and the policeman lifting the woman's head and
shoulders, they carried her a short distance, to where a gate opened
into a large yard used for putting in carts and wagons at night, and
deposited her on the ground just inside.
“She can sleep it off there,” said the policeman as he dropped his
unseemly load. “She'll have a-plenty to keep her company before
morning.”
And so they left her without covering or shelter in the wet and chilly
air of a late November night, drunk and asleep.
As the little crowd gathered by this ripple of excitement melted away, a
single figure remained lurking in a corner of the yard and out of sight
in its dark shadow. It was that of a man. The moment he was alone with
the unconscious woman he glided toward her with the alert movements of
an animal, and with a quickness that made his work seem instant, rifled
her pockets. His gains were ten cents and the policy-slip she had just
received at Sam McFaddon's. He next examined her shoes, but they were of
no value, lifted her dirty dress and felt its texture for a moment, then
dropped it with a motion of disgust and a growl of disappointment.
As he came out from the yard with his poor booty, the light from a
street-lamp fell on as miserable a looking wretch as ever hid himself
from the eyes of day--dirty, ragged, bloated, forlorn, with scarcely a
trace of manhood in his swollen and disfigured face. His steps, quick
from excitement a few moments before, were now shambling and made
with difficulty. He had not far to walk for what he was seeking. The
ministers to his appetite were all about him, a dozen in every block of
that terrible district that seemed as if forsaken by God and man. Into
the first that came in his way he went with nervous haste, for he had
not tasted of the fiery stimulant he was craving with a fierce and
unrelenting thirst for many hours. He did not leave the bar until he had
drank as much of the burning poison its keeper dispensed as his booty
would purchase. In less than half an hour he was thrown dead drunk into
the street and then carried by policemen to the old wagon-yard, to take
his night's unconscious rest on the ground in company with Mother Hewitt
and a score besides of drunken wretches who were pitilessly turned out
from the various dram-shops after their money was spent, and who
were not considered by the police worth the trouble of taking to the
station-house.
When Mother Hewitt crept back into her cellar at daylight, the baby was
gone.