As I entered the alley the bells of the dim city tolled for the passing
night. Far in the black maze of filthy lanes and mist-choked streets a
policeman whistled; I heard the distant din of an Elevated train, rushing
through the fog, nearer, nearer, duller now, now smothered in the vapour
which rolled from river to river, thick, heavy, stifling.
In the gloom of the alley a shadowy form loomed up and passed, leaving
no sound of footsteps in my ears, but all around me the vapour became
faintly tainted with opium and a flare of yellow light streamed out
across the fog from an opening door. There was a momentary murmur of
voices, the soft shuffle of felt-shod feet, the rustle of silken sleeves.
A painted paper lantern swung from the doorway, dipped, and disappeared.
I heard the deadened slam of the door and the black night veiled my eyes
again.
An empty truck, with broken shafts buried in the mud of the gutter,
blocked the sidewalk, and I crossed the greasy pavement to avoid it.
Around the pale flame of a gas lamp the fog spun an iridescent oval; the
wet sidewalk glimmered underneath. Far down the reeking throat of the
alley an arc-light shone like a grey star.
I raised my eyes to the dark house before me where from a rusting balcony
a sign hung low above the doorway.
“This was her house,” I said aloud to myself; but I passed on to the next
house. Here I paused a moment, looking back at the bamboo sign dripping
with fog, then turned and descended some wooden steps to an iron door.
Before I could find the handle, wrought in bronze like a dragon’s claw,
the door flew open and I heard McManus’ angry bellow; “Git t’ hell outer
here, yer dope suckin’ yap!” and a Chinaman was hustled into the area
beside me.
“Chin chin thlough hattee!” snarled the Chinaman, “walkee where dlam
please!”
“I’ll walkee you on yer neck!” growled McManus, and kicked the Chinaman
half way up the steps.
“Dlam! Dlam! Dlam!” screamed the Chinaman, dancing with rage, but
Charley, the bouncer, burst out of the door, and the Chinaman fled
chattering like an infuriated ape.
I stepped into the low-ceilinged room and took a chair at a cherry-wood
table beside the wall. Two young men sitting there said, “Hello, Jim!”
“Good evenin’,” said McManus, leaning over the bar, “did you see me
givin’ de bounce to Wah-Wo?”
“Yes,” I said, “when did he come back?”
“He jest come in. I told him to git an’ he give me de ha-ha, so Charley
trun him down. What t’hell, sez I, an’ he gives me back talk! Say, I
won’t do a t’ing to him!”
One of the young men at the table beside me looked up from the
Welsh-rabbit he was eating and called for ale. McManus brought it
himself, a brimming pewter mug, and wiped his hands on his blue apron.
Then he bawled for Charley to take my order.
“Sure,” said Charley coming in from the street where he had been
patiently waiting for a scrap, and he leaned with both fists on the table
and winked pleasantly at the company. Lynde, of the “Herald,” advised me
to try a rabbit, and Penlow, of the “Tribune,” spoke well of the chops,
so I left it to Charley and he retired to the grill, whistling, “Oh I
don’t know!”
“It’s a wonder to me,” I said, hanging my wet mackintosh on a peg
and kicking off my overshoes, “it’s a wonder to me that Wah-Wo was
discharged.”
“There was no evidence to hold him,” observed Lynde after a moment’s
silence.
Penlow lighted his pipe and rattled his mug on the table.
“No evidence,” I repeated; “do you fellows doubt that Wah-Wo did it?”
“I suppose he did,” said Penlow, “it was my scoop too.”
“We may scoop yet,” said Lynde, “the man’s bound to be caught. What did
they do with that young tough from Hell’s Kitchen?”
“Sheehan? Oh, his alibi is good,” said Penlow. “Mac, fill her up will
you?”
McManus replenished the pewter and stood for a moment beside us as if
undecided.
“Gents,” began McManus, “youse is dead off—excuse me.” He shifted his
toothpick and rubbed his thumb on the polished bar.
“Wah-Wo ain’t in it,” he said contemptuously: “I give him de
t’row-down,—fur why?—fur because I don’t give de glad hand to no dope
suckin’ come-on—an’ he’s dopy. But he didn’t do no dirt to the gal whut
youse gents was stuck on—he ain’t that kind! He give me the laugh an’ I
t’rowed him down, see? An’ I won’t do a t’ing but push his face in. See?”
“But,” said Penlow, “her dog flew at him when he went to the house.
Kerrigan, you know—‘Happy Days Mike’—said that Wah-Wo tried to cut a girl
in Doyers Street.”
“Nit! I don’t think,” said McManus scornfully: “Kerrigan’s a stuff—”
“Well, Mac,” said Lynde, “what’s your theory? You know as much about it
as anybody. The girl came in here every night, didn’t she? People say
that she lived alone, but of course she had company when she wanted it.
What’s your idea, Mac?”
McManus looked out of the window and drummed on the bar with the blade of
his oyster knife. Charley, clad in a blue checked jumper, arrived with
some chops and ale. I unfolded my napkin and began my supper.
For a while I ate in silence, thinking of Wah-Wo and the dead girl.
Caithness of the Consolidated Press came in looking cold and ill, and we
hastily made room for him at our table.
“You’re sick,” said Lynde sharply, “you ought to be in bed.”
“I’m all right,” said Caithness, glancing at us with his large dark eyes:
“Mac, get me something hot.”
I swallowed my ale and turned again to the chops, scarcely listening to
the hum of voices beside me, for I was thinking again of the dead girl.
I had no doubt that Wah-Wo had killed her. Again and again I had seen his
eyes fastened upon her as she sat chatting with us, here at this very
table. The motive was clear to me. I had spoken of this to the others but
they laughed at me. The District Attorney took no stock in it, either;
the result was the discharge of Wah-Wo.
How could anybody but a Chinaman, crazed with jealousy and opium, harm
the child? For she was a mere child, this pallid victim whose soul had
mounted to the Judgment seat from the filth of Chinatown.
Pale, slim, childish, depraved, she had never haunted Chinese resorts
nor, to my knowledge, had she ever touched needle to flame. She had
shunned the women of the quarter. I seldom saw her speak to any man
except the reporters and newspaper artists who came to McManus’s for a
midnight chop or rarebit.
Her acquaintance with us had been open and guileless. She chatted with us
about our business, discussed the latest police shake-up or the newest
Tammany scandal, gave us her views on politics and the City Hall, and
glided away into the street again followed by her dog. Her dog! A great
hulking brute, black as night, with sombre eyes and low hanging jowl,—a
creature silent, unmoved except when she bent her pale face to his ear
and whispered. Then and then only he would rise, shuffling from the
sawdust floor under the bar, and stalk after her into the night.
He never paid the slightest attention to us. Calls, caresses, threats,
left him unmoved.
“What is it you whisper into his ear, Lil?” we often asked, but she would
only smile and answer: “His name.”
And so, as none of us knew his name, we called him simply, “her dog.”
It had been two months now since Lil was found on her bed with a bullet
in her heart and the dog lying stolidly across her bare little feet. And
after we had clubbed together and buried her, we were kinder to her dog.
Every night he came gravely into McManus’ to lie down under the bar just
as he had done when Lil sat there chatting with us.
At first McManus was afraid that the dog would “hoodoo the place,” but
he left the silent brute undisturbed, and, after a while, began to grow
fond of it.
“That dog ain’t no mutt,” McManus would say as he stood behind the bar
opening oysters; “no an’ he ain’t no rube! Say! he’s in it all the time
when Charley trims the steaks.”
As I sat thinking of all these things and sipping my ale meditatively,
I heard the iron door creak on its hinges and the knocker fall once.
Then something heavy and hairy rubbed its body against the door outside.
McManus stood up saying: “Here he comes, gents!”
Her dog entered.
Lynde held out his hand as the brute passed, and Penlow flung a bone on
the floor. The dog noticed neither the caress nor the bone, but lay down
under the bar and stretched his great limbs across the floor, sighing
heavily.
“There is one thing certain,” said Lynde, looking at the dog: “the man
who killed the girl was in the habit of visiting her,—and that dog knew
him.”
“I also believe the murderer was known to the dog,” said Penlow.
“The murderer,” said Caithness, “was her lover.”
“It is strange,” said I, “that none of us suspects anybody except Wah-Wo.”
“Why strange?” asked Caithness, then he added impatiently, “yes, it is
strange! Do you think she would have looked at a Chinaman?”
“The Chinaman looked at her; I saw him,” I replied.
“After all, she was a common girl of the street,” said Penlow
unaffectedly, “and I guess pride cut no figure with her.”
“That is where you lie,” said Caithness in a low voice.
There was a dead silence. Then Penlow said: “Did I understand you,
Caithness?”
I rose and laid my hand on Penlow’s arm, which was twitching though his
face was calm.
“Are you crazy?” I said to Caithness.
“I think I am,” said Caithness slowly, “I beg your pardon, Penlow.”
Lynde turned his puzzled eyes from Penlow to Caithness and lifted his mug
mechanically. Penlow straightened in his chair but said nothing, and I
leaned back motioning McManus to remove the covers.
After a few moments the constraint became irksome. “Red,” the
tortoise-shell cat, mascotte of McManus and exterminator of mice by
special appointment, had cornered a vicious rat in the backyard, and now
came marching in to display the game for our benefit.
“Git!” said McManus with pardonable pride, “the gents here don’t give a
damn fur to see rats.”
Charley hustled the cat out again and McManus assured us for the
hundredth time that “Red” was the only cross-eyed cat in New York.
None of us had ever before seen a cross-eyed cat, so we did not deny it,
although I remonstrated with McManus concerning his pride in “Red’s”
ocular misfortune.
“What’s that?” demanded McManus.
“I don’t see why,” said I, “a cat should be the more valuable because it
happens to be afflicted with strabismus.”
“Sure!” said McManus doggedly.
“No, I don’t,” I repeated.
“It’s a mascot,” said McManus.
“How do you know?”
“Did youse gents ever see another cross-eyed cat?” demanded McManus hotly.
We all said no.
“Then what t’hell do youse gents know about mascots?” he exclaimed
triumphantly.
The constraint still weighed upon us, however, for Caithness had neither
spoken nor smiled, and Penlow, it was easy to see, had not forgotten.
Lynde picked up a paper and ran it through, unaffectedly searching for
his own matter; after a while Penlow did the same.
I looked at Caithness, and he felt my eyes, for presently he moved a
little and passed his hand over his sunken cheeks.
“What’s up?” I asked, dropping my voice and bending toward him.
“Nothing—why?”
“You look like the last rose of summer,—you’ve got a beastly cough.”
He smiled faintly. “It’s consumption,” he said, “I found out to-day.”