ANOTHER CLIENT.
Peter had seen his clients on the morning following the settlement of
the cases, and told them of their good fortune. They each had a look at
Bohlmann’s check, and then were asked how they would like their shares.
“Sure,” said Dooley, “Oi shan’t know what to do wid that much money.”
“I think,” said Peter, “that your two thousand really belongs to the
children.”
“That it does,” said Mrs. Dooley, quite willing to deprive her husband
of it, for the benefit of her children.
“But what shall Oi do wid it?” asked Mr. Dooley.
“I’d like Mr. Stirling to take charge of mine,” said Blackett.
“That’s the idea,” said Dooley.
And so it was settled by all. Peter said the best thing would be to put
it in the savings bank. “Perhaps later we’ll find something better.”
They all went around to a well-known institution on the Bowery, and
Peter interviewed the cashier. It proved feasible to endorse over the
check to the bank, and credit the proper share to each.
“I shall have to ask you to give me the odd two hundred and fifty,”
Peter said, “as that is my legal fee.”
“You had better let me put that in your name, Mr. Stirling?” said the
president, who had been called into the consultation.
“Very well,” said Peter. “I shall want some of it before long, but the
rest will be very well off here.” So a book was handed him, and the
president shook him by the hand with all the warmth that eight thousand
two hundred and fifty dollars of increased assets and four new
depositors implied.
Peter did not need to draw any of the two hundred and fifty dollars,
however. In November he had another knock at his door.
It proved to be Mr. Dennis Moriarty, of whom we have incidentally
spoken in connection with the half-price drinks for the Milligan wake,
and as spokesman of the torchlight procession.
“Good-mornin’ to yez, sir,” said the visitor.
It was a peculiarity of Peter’s that he never forgot faces. He did not
know Mr. Moriarty’s name, never having had it given him, but he placed
him instantly.
“Thank you,” said Peter, holding out his hand. Peter did not usually
shake hands in meeting people, but he liked the man’s face. It would
never take a prize for beauty. The hair verged on a fiery red, the nose
was a real sky-scraper and the upper lip was almost proboscidian in its
length. But every one liked the face.
“It’s proud Oi’m bein’ shakin’ the hand av Misther Stirling,” said the
Irishman.
“Sit down,” said Peter.
“My name’s Moriarty, sir, Dinnis Moriarty, an’ Oi keeps a saloon near
Centre Street, beyant.”
“You were round here in the procession.”
“Oi was, sir. Shure, Oi’m not much at a speech, compared to the likes
av yez, but the b’ys would have me do it.”
Peter said something appropriate, and then there was a pause.
“Misther Stirling,” finally said Moriarty, “Oi was up before Justice
Gallagher yesterday, an’ he fined me bad. Oi want yez to go to him, an’
get him to be easier wid me. It’s yezself can do it.”
“What were you fined for?” asked Peter.
“For bein’ open on Sunday.”
“Then you ought to be fined.”
“Don’t say that till Oi tell yez. Oi don’t want to keep my place open,
but it’s in my lease, an’ so Oi have to.”
“In your lease?” enquired Peter.
“Yes.” And the paper was handed over to him.
Peter ran over the three documents. “I see,” he said, “you are only the
caretaker really, the brewer having an assignment of the lease and a
chattel mortgage on your fixtures and stock.”
“That’s it,” said Dennis. “It’s mighty quick yez got at it. It’s
caretaker Oi am, an’ a divil of a care it is. Shure, who wants to work
seven days a week, if he can do wid six?”
“You should have declined to agree to that condition?”
“Then Oi’d have been turned out. Begobs, it’s such poor beer that it’s
little enough Oi sell even in seven days.”
“Why don’t you get your beer elsewhere then?”
“Why, it’s Edelhein put me in there to sell his stuff, an’ he’d never
let me sell anythin’ else.”
“Then Edelhein is really the principal, and you are only put in to keep
him out of sight?”
“That’s it”
“And you have put no money in yourself?”
“Divil a cent.”
“Then why doesn’t he pay the fine?”
“He says Oi have no business to be afther bein’ fined. As if any one
sellin’ his beer could help bein’ fined!”
“How is that?” said Peter, inferring that selling poor beer was a
finable offence, yet ignorant of the statute.
“Why yez see, sir, the b’ys don’t like that beer—an’ sensible they
are—so they go to other places, an’ don’t come to my place.”
“But that doesn’t explain your fines.”
“Av course it does. Shure, if the boys don’t come to my place, it’s
little Oi can do at the primary, an’ so it’s no pull Oi have in
politics, to get the perlice an’ the joodges to be easy wid me, like
they are to the rest.”
Peter studied his blank wall a bit.
“Shure, if it’s good beer Oi had,” continued Moriarty, “Oi’d be afther
beatin’ them all, for Oi was always popular wid the b’ys, on account of
my usin’ my fists so fine.”
Peter smiled. “Why don’t you go into something else?” he asked.
“Well, there’s mother and the three childers to be supported, an’ then
Oi’d lose my influence at the primary.”
“What kind of beer does Mr. Bohlmann make?” asked Peter, somewhat
irrelevantly.
“Ah,” said Moriarty, “that’s the fine honest beer! There’s never
anythin’ wrong wid his. An’ he treats his keepers fair. Lets them do as
they want about keepin’ open Sundays, an’ never squeezes a man when
he’s down on his luck.”
Peter looked at his wall again. Peter was learning something.
“Supposing,” he asked, “I was able to get your fine remitted, and that
clause struck out of the lease. Would you open on Sunday?”
“Divil a bit.”
“When must you pay the fine?”
“Oi’m out on bail till to-morrow, sir.”
“Then leave these papers with me, and come in about this time.”
Peter studied his wall for a bit after his new client was gone. He did
not like either saloon-keepers or law-breakers, but this case seemed to
him to have—to have—extenuating circumstances. His cogitations finally
resulted in his going to Justice Gallagher’s court. He found the judge
rather curt.
“He’s been up here three times in as many months, and I intend to make
an example of him.”
“But why is only he arrested, when every saloon keeper in the
neighborhood does the same thing?”
“Now, sir,” said the judge, “don’t waste any more of my time. What’s
the next case?”
A look we have mentioned once or twice came into Peter’s face. He
started to leave the court, but encountered at the door one of the
policemen whom he was “friends with,” according to the children, which
meant that they had chatted sometimes in the “angle.”
“What sort of a man is Dennis Moriarty?” he asked of him.
“A fine young fellow, supporting his mother and his younger brothers.”
“Why is Justice Gallagher so down on him?”
The policeman looked about a moment. “It’s politics, sir, and he’s had
orders.”
“From whom?”
“That’s more than we know. There was a row last spring in the primary,
and we’ve had orders since then to lay for him.”
Peter stood and thought for a moment. “What saloon-keeper round here
has the biggest pull?” he asked.
“It’s all of them, mostly, but Blunkers is a big man.”
“Thank you,” said Peter. He stood in the street thinking a little. Then
he walked a couple of blocks and went into Blunkers’s great gin palace.
“I want to see the proprietor,” he said.
“Dat’s me,” said a man who was reading a paper behind the bar.
“Do you know Justice Gallagher?”
“Do I? Well, I guess,” said the man.
“Will you do me the favor to go with me to his court, and get him to
remit Dennis Moriarty’s fine?”
“Will I? No. I will not. Der’s too many saloons, and one less will be
bully.”
“In that case,” said Peter quietly, “I suppose you won’t mind my
closing yours up?”
“Wot der yer mean?” angrily inquired the man.
“If it comes to closing saloons, two can play at that game.”
“Who is yer, anyway?” The man came out from behind the bar, squaring
his shoulders in an ugly manner.
“My name’s Stirling. Peter Stirling.”
The man looked at him with interest. “How’ll yer close my place?”
“Get evidence against you, and prosecute you.”
“Dat ain’t de way.”
“It will be my way.”
“Wot yer got against me?”
“Nothing. But I intend to see Moriarty have fair play. You want to
fight on the square too. You’re not a man to hit a fellow in the dark.”
Peter was not flattering the man. He had measured him and was telling
him the result of that measure. He told it, too, in a way that made the
other man realize the opinion behind the words.
“Come on,” said Blunkers, good-naturedly.
They went over to the court, and a whispered colloquy took place
between the justice and the bartender.
“That’s all right, Mr. Stirling,” presently said the judge. “Clerk,
strike Dennis Moriarty’s fine off the list.”
“Thank you,” said Peter to the saloon-keeper. “If I can ever do a turn
for you, let me know it.”
“Dat’s hunky,” said the man, and they parted.
Peter went out and walked into the region of the National Milk Company,
but this time he went to the brewery. He found Mr. Bohlmann, and told
him the story, asking his advice at the end.
“Dondt you vool von minute mit dod Edelheim. I dells you vot I do. I
harf choost a blace vacant down in Zender Streed, and your frient he
shall it haf.”
So they chatted till all the details had been arranged. Dennis was to
go in as caretaker, bound to use only Bohlmann’s beer, with a
percentage on that, and the profits on all else. He was to pay the
rent, receiving a sub-lease from Bohlmann, who was only a lesee
himself, and to give a chattel mortgage on the stock supplied him.
Finally he was to have the right of redemption of stock, lease, and
good-will at any time within five years, on making certain payments.
“You draw up der babers, Misder Stirling, and send der bill to me. Ve
vill give der yoonger a chance,” the brewer said.
When Dennis called the next day, he was “spacheless” at the new
developments. He wrung Peter’s hand.
“Arrah, what can Oi say to yez?” he exclaimed finally. Then having
found something, he quickly continued: “Now, Patsy Blunkers, lookout
for yezself. It’s the divil Oi’ll give yez in the primary this year.”
He begged Peter to come down the opening night, and help to “celebrate
the event.”
“Thank you,” said Peter, “but I don’t think I will.”
“Shure,” said Dennis, “yez needn’t be afraid it won’t be orderly. It’s
myself can do the hittin’, an’ the b’ys know it.”
“My mother brought me up,” Peter explained, “not to go into saloons,
and when I came to New York I promised her, if I ever did anything she
had taught me not to, that I would write her about it. She would hardly
understand this visit, and it might make her very unhappy.”
Peter earned fifty dollars by drawing the papers, and at the end of the
first month Dennis brought him fifty more.
“Trade’s been fine, sir, an’ Oi want to pay something for what yez
did.”
So Peter left his two hundred and fifty dollars in the bank, having
recouped the expenses of the first case out of his new client.
He wrote all about it to his mother:
“I am afraid you won’t approve of what I did entirely, for I know your
strong feeling against men who make and sell liquor. But I somehow have
been made to feel in the last few days that more can be done in the
world by kindness and help than by frowns and prosecutions. I had no
thought of getting money out of the case, so I am sure I was not
influenced by that. It seemed to me that a man was being unfairly
treated, and that too, by laws which are meant for other purposes. I
really tried to think it out, and do what seemed right to me. My last
client has a look and a way of speaking that makes me certain he’s a
fine fellow, and I shall try to see something of him, provided it will
not worry you to think of me as friendly with a saloon-keeper. I know I
can be of use to him.”
Little did Peter know how useful his last client would be to him.