THEY went through to Broadway and there stood waiting for a
car, each under her own umbrella. "Holy Gee!" cried Susan's
new acquaintance. "Ain't this rain a soaker?"
It was coming in sheets, bent and torn and driven horizontally
by the wind. The umbrella, sheltering the head somewhat, gave
a wholly false impression of protection. Both girls were soon
sopping wet. But they were more than cheerful about it; the
whiskey made them indifferent to external ills as they warmed
themselves by its bright fire. At that time a famous and much
envied, admired and respected "captain of industry," having
looted the street-car systems, was preparing to loot them over
again by the familiar trickery of the receivership and the
reorganization. The masses of the people were too ignorant to
know what was going on; the classes were too busy, each man of
each of them, about his own personal schemes for graft of one
kind and another. Thus, the street-car service was a joke and
a disgrace. However, after four or five minutes a north-bound
car appeared.
"But it won't stop," cried Susan. "It's jammed."
"That's why it will stop," replied her new acquaintance. "You
don't suppose a New York conductor'd miss a chance to put his
passengers more on the bum than ever?"
She was right, at least as to the main point; and the conductor
with much free handling of their waists and shoulders added
them to the dripping, straining press of passengers, enduring
the discomforts the captain of industry put upon them with more
patience than cattle would have exhibited in like
circumstances. All the way up Broadway the new acquaintance
enlivened herself and Susan and the men they were squeezed in
among by her loud gay sallies which her young prettiness made
seem witty. And certainly she did have an amazing and amusing
acquaintance with the slang at the moment current. The worn
look had vanished, her rounded girlhood freshness had returned.
As for Susan, you would hardly have recognized her as the same
person who had issued from the house in Twenty-ninth Street
less than an hour before. Indeed, it was not the same person.
Drink nervifies every character; here it transformed,
suppressing the characteristics that seemed, perhaps were,
essential in her normal state, and causing to bloom in sudden
audacity of color and form the passions and gayeties at other
times subdued by her intelligence and her sensitiveness. Her
brilliant glance moved about the car full as boldly as her
companion's. But there was this difference: Her companion
gazed straight into the eyes of the men; Susan's glance shot
past above or just below their eyes.
As they left the car at Forty-second Street the other girl gave
her short skirt a dexterous upward flirt that exhibited her
legs almost to the hips. Susan saw that they were well shaped
legs, surprisingly plump from the calves upward, considering
the slightness of her figure above the waist.
"I always do that when I leave a car," said the girl.
"Sometimes it starts something on the trail. You forgot your
package--back in the saloon!"
"Then I didn't forget much," laughed Susan. It appealed to
her, the idea of entering the new life empty-handed.
The hotel was one that must have been of the first class in its
day--not a distant day, for the expansion of New York in
craving for showy luxury has been as sudden as the miraculous
upward thrust of a steel skyscraper. It had now sunk to
relying upon the trade of those who came in off Broadway for a
few minutes. It was dingy and dirty; the walls and plastering
were peeling; the servants were slovenly and fresh. The girl
nodded to the evil-looking man behind the desk, who said:
"Hello, Miss Maud. Just in time. The boys were sending out
for some others."
"They've got a nerve!" laughed Maud. And she led Susan down a
rather long corridor to a door with the letter B upon it. Maud
explained: "This is the swellest suite in the house parlor,
bedroom, bath." She flung open the door, disclosing a
sitting-room in disorder with two young men partly dressed,
seated at a small table on which were bottles, siphons,
matches, remains of sandwiches, boxes of cigarettes--a chaotic
jumble of implements to dissipation giving forth a powerful,
stale odor. Maud burst into a stream of picturesque profanity
which set the two men to laughing. Susan had paused on the
threshold. The shock of this scene had for the moment arrested the
triumphant march of the alcohol through blood and nerve and brain.
"Oh, bite it off!" cried the darker of the two men to Maud,
"and have a drink. Ain't you ashamed to speak so free before
your innocent young lady friend?" He grinned at Susan. "What
Sunday school do you hail from?" inquired he.
The other young man was also looking at Susan; and it was an
arresting and somewhat compelling gaze. She saw that he was
tall and well set up. As he was dressed only in trousers and
a pale blue silk undershirt, the strength of his shoulders,
back and arms was in full evidence. His figure was like that
of the wonderful young prize-fighters she had admired at moving
picture shows to which Drumley had taken her. He had a
singularly handsome face, blond yet remotely suggesting
Italian. He smiled at Susan and she thought she had never seen
teeth more beautiful--pearl-white, regular, even. His eyes
were large and sensuous; smiling though they were, Susan was
ill at ease--for in them there shone the same untamed,
uncontrolled ferocity that one sees in the eyes of a wild
beast. His youth, his good looks, his charm made the sinister
savagery hinted in the smile the more disconcerting. He poured
whiskey from a bottle into each of the two tall glasses, filled
them up with seltzer, extended one toward Susan.
"Shut the door, Queenie," he said to her in a pleasant tone that
subtly mingled mockery and admiration. "And let's drink to love."
"Didn't I do well for you, Freddie?" cried Maud.
"She's my long-sought affinity," declared Freddie with the same
attractive mingling of jest and flattery.
Susan closed the door, accepted the glass, laughed into his
eyes. The whiskey was once more asserting its power. She took
about half the drink before she set the glass down.
The young man said, "Your name's Queenie, mine's Freddie." He
came to her, holding her gaze fast by the piercing look from
his handsome eyes. He put his arms round her and kissed her
full upon the pale, laughing lips. His eyes were still smiling
in pleasant mockery; yet his kiss burned and stung, and the
grip of his arm round her shoulders made her vaguely afraid.
Her smile died away. The grave, searching, wondering
expression reappeared in the violet-gray eyes for a moment.
"You're all right," said he. "Except those pale lips. You're
going to be my girl. That means, if you ever try to get away
from me unless I let you go--I'll kill you--or worse." And he
laughed as if he had made the best joke in the world. But she
saw in his eyes a sparkle that seemed to her to have something
of the malignance of the angry serpent's.
She hastily finished her drink.
Maud was jerking off her clothes, crying, "I want to get out of
these nasty wet rags." The steam heat was full on; the
sitting-room, the whole suite, was intensely warm. Maud hung
her skirt over the back of a chair close to the radiator, took
off her shoes and stockings and put them to dry also. In her
chemise she curled herself on a chair, lit a cigarette and
poured a drink. Her feet were not bad, but neither were they
notably good; she tucked them out of sight. She looked at
Susan. "Get off those wet things," urged she, "or you'll take
your death."
"In a minute," said Susan, but not convincingly.
Freddie forced another drink and a cigarette upon her. As a
girl at home in Sutherland, she had several times--she and
Ruth--smoked cigarettes in secrecy, to try the new London and
New York fashion, announced in the newspapers and the novels.
So the cigarette did not make her uncomfortable. "Look at the
way she's holding it?" cried Maud, and she and the men burst
out laughing. Susan laughed also and, Freddie helping,
practiced a less inexpert manner. Jim, the dark young man with
the sullen heavy countenance, rang for more sandwiches and another
bottle of whiskey. Susan continued to drink but ate nothing.
"Have a sandwich," said Freddie.
"I'm not hungry."
"Well, they say that to eat and drink means to die of paresis,
while to only drink means dying of delirium tremens. I guess
you're right. I'd prefer the d.t.'s. It's quicker and livelier."
Jim sang a ribald song with some amusing comedy business. Maud
told several stories whose only claim to point lay in their
frankness about things not usually spoken. "Don't you tell any
more, Maudie," advised Freddie. "Why is it that a woman never
takes up a story until every man on earth has heard it at least
twice?" The sandwiches disappeared, the second bottle of
whiskey ran low. Maud told story after story of how she had
played this man and that for a sucker--was as full of such tales
and as joyous and self-pleased over them as an honest salesman
telling his delighted, respectable, pew-holding employer how he
has "stuck" this customer and that for a "fancy" price.
Presently Maud again noticed that Susan was in her wet clothes
and cried out about it. Susan pretended to start to undress.
Freddie and Jim suddenly seized her. She struggled, half
laughing; the whiskey was sending into her brain dizzying
clouds. She struggled more fiercely. But it was in vain.
"Gee, you _have_ got a prize, Freddie!" exclaimed Jim at last,
angry. "A regular tartar!"
"A damn handsome one," retorted Freddie. "She's even got feet."
Susan, amid the laughter of the others, darted for the bedroom.
Cowering in a corner, trying to cover herself, she ordered
Freddie to leave her. He laughed, seized her in his iron grip.
She struck at him, bit him in the shoulder. He gave a cry of
pain and drove a savage blow into her cheek. Then he buried
his fingers in her throat and the gleam of his eyes made her
soul quail.
"Don't kill me!" she cried, in the clutch of cowardice for the
first time. It was not death that she feared but the phantom
of things worse than death that can be conjured to the
imagination by the fury of a personality which is utterly
reckless and utterly cruel. "Don't kill me!" she shrieked.
"What the hell are you doing?" shouted Jim from the other room.
"Shut that door," replied Freddie. "I'm going to attend to my
lady friend."
As the door slammed, he dragged Susan by the throat and one arm
to the bed, flung her down. "I saw you were a high stepper the
minute I looked at you," said he, in a pleasant, cooing voice
that sent the chills up and down her spine. "I knew you'd have
to be broke. Well, the sooner it's done, the sooner we'll get
along nicely." His blue eyes were laughing into hers. With
the utmost deliberation he gripped her throat with one hand and
with the other began to slap her, each blow at his full
strength. Her attempts to scream were only gasps. Quickly the
agony of his brutality drove her into unconsciousness. Long
after she had ceased to feel pain, she continued to feel the
impact of those blows, and dully heard her own deep groans.
When she came to her senses, she was lying sprawled upon the
far side of the bed. Her head was aching wildly; her body was
stiff and sore; her face felt as if it were swollen to many
times its normal size. In misery she dragged herself up and
stood on the floor. She went to the bureau and stared at
herself in the glass. Her face was indeed swollen, but not to
actual disfigurement. Under her left eye there was a small cut
from which the blood had oozed to smear and dry upon her left
cheek. Upon her throat were faint bluish finger marks. The
damage was not nearly so great as her throbbing nerves
reported--the damage to her body. But--her soul--it was a
crushed, trampled, degraded thing, lying prone and bleeding to
death. "Shall I kill myself?" she thought. And the answer
came in a fierce protest and refusal from every nerve of her
intensely vital youth. She looked straight into her own
eyes--without horror, without shame, without fear. "You are as
low as the lowest," she said to her image--not to herself but
to her image; for herself seemed spectator merely of that body
and soul aching and bleeding and degraded.
It was the beginning of self-consciousness with her--a curious
kind of self-consciousness--her real self, aloof and far
removed, observing calmly, critically, impersonally the
adventures of her body and the rest of her surface self.
She turned round to look again at the man who had outraged
them. His eyes were open and he was gazing dreamily at her, as
smiling and innocent as a child. When their eyes met, his
smile broadened until he was showing his beautiful teeth. "You
_are_ a beauty!" said he. "Go into the other room and get me a
cigarette."
She continued to look fixedly at him.
Without change of expression he said gently, "Do you want
another lesson in manners?"
She went to the door, opened it, entered the sitting-room. The
other two had pulled open a folding bed and were lying in it,
Jim's head on Maud's bosom, her arms round his neck. Both were
asleep. His black beard had grown out enough to give his face
a dirty and devilish expression. Maud looked far more youthful
and much prettier than when she was awake. Susan put a
cigarette between her lips, lit it, carried a box of cigarettes
and a stand of matches in to Freddie.
"Light one for me," said he.
She obeyed, held it to his lips.
"Kiss me, first."
Her pale lips compressed.
"Kiss me," he repeated, far down in his eyes the vicious gleam
of that boundlessly ferocious cruelty which is mothered not by
rage but by pleasure.
She kissed him on the cheek.
"On the lips," he commanded.
Their lips met, and it was to her as if a hot flame, terrible
yet thrilling, swept round and embraced her whole body.
"Do you love me?" he asked tenderly.
She was silent.
"You love me?" he asked commandingly.
"You can call it that if you like."
"I knew you would. I understand women. The way to make a
woman love is to make her afraid."
She gazed at him. "I am not afraid," she said.
He laughed. "Oh, yes. That's why you do what I say--and
always will."
"No," replied she. "I don't do it because I am afraid, but
because I want to live."
"I should think! . . . You'll be all right in a day or so,"
said he, after inspecting her bruises. "Now, I'll explain to
you what good friends we're going to be."
He propped himself in an attitude of lazy grace, puffed at his
cigarette in silence for a moment, as if arranging what he had
to say. At last he began:
"I haven't any regular business. I wasn't born to work. Only
damn fools work--and the clever man waits till they've got
something, then he takes it away from 'em. You don't want to
work, either."
"I haven't been able to make a living at it," said the girl.
She was sitting cross-legged, a cover draped around her.
"You're too pretty and too clever. Besides, as you say, you
couldn't make a living at it--not what's a living for a woman
brought up as you've been. No, you can't work. So we're going
to be partners."
"No," said Susan. "I'm going to dress now and go away."
Freddie laughed. "Don't be a fool. Didn't I say we were to be
partners? . . . You want to keep on at the sporting business,
don't you?"
Hers was the silence of assent.
"Well--a woman--especially a young one like you--is no good unless
she has someone--some man--behind her. Married or single,
respectable or lively, working or sporting--N. G. without a
man. A woman alone doesn't amount to any more than a rich
man's son."
There had been nothing in Susan's experience to enable her to
dispute this.
"Now, I'm going to stand behind you. I'll see that you don't
get pinched, and get you out if you do. I'll see that you get
the best the city's got if you're sick--and so on. I've got a
pull with the organization. I'm one of Finnegan's lieutenants.
Some day--when I'm older and have served my apprenticeship--I'll
pull off something good. Meanwhile--I manage to live. I always
have managed it--and I never did a stroke of real work since I
was a kid--and never shall. God was mighty good to me when he
put a few brains in this nut of mine."
He settled his head comfortably in the pillow and smiled at his
own thoughts. In spite of herself Susan had been not only
interested but attracted. It is impossible for any human being
to contemplate mystery in any form without being fascinated.
And here was the profoundest mystery she had ever seen. He
talked well, and his mode of talking was that of education, of
refinement even. An extraordinary man, certainly--and in what
a strange way!
"Yes," said he presently, looking at her with his gentle,
friendly smile. "We'll be partners. I'll protect you and
we'll divide what you make."
What a strange creature! Had he--this kindly handsome
youth--done that frightful thing? No--no. It was another
instance of the unreality of the outward life. _He_ had not
done it, any more than she--her real self--had suffered it. Her
reply to his restatement of the partnership was:
"No, thank you. I want nothing to do with it."
"You're dead slow," said he, with mild and patient persuasion.
"How would you get along at your business in this town if you
didn't have a backer? Why, you'd be taking turns at the Island
and the gutter within six months. You'd be giving all your
money to some rotten cop or fly cop who couldn't protect you,
at that. Or you'd work the street for some cheap cadet who'd
beat you up oftener than he'd beat up the men who welched on you."
"I'll look out for myself," persisted she.
"Bless the baby!" exclaimed he, immensely amused. "How lucky
that you found me! I'm going to take care of you in spite of
yourself. Not for nothing, of course. You wouldn't value me
if you got me for nothing. I'm going to help you, and you're
going to help me. You need me, and I need you. Why do you
suppose I took the trouble to tame you? What _you_ want doesn't
go. It's what _I_ want."
He let her reflect on this a while. Then he went on:
"You don't understand about fellows like Jim and me--though
Jim's a small potato beside me, as you'll soon find out.
Suppose you didn't obey orders--just as I do what Finnegan
tells me--just as Finnegan does what the big shout down below
says? Suppose you didn't obey--what then?"
"I don't know," confessed Susan.
"Well, it's time you learned. We'll say, you act stubborn.
You dress and say good-by to me and start out. Do you think
I'm wicked enough to let you make a fool of yourself? Well,
I'm not. You won't get outside the door before your good angel
here will get busy. I'll be telephoning to a fly cop of this
district. And what'll he do? Why, about the time you are
halfway down the block, he'll pinch you. He'll take you to the
station house. And in Police Court tomorrow the Judge'll give
you a week on the Island for being a streetwalker."
Susan shivered. She instinctively glanced toward the window.
The rain was still falling, changing the City of the Sun into
a city of desolation. It looked as though it would never see
the sun again--and her life looked that way, also.
Freddie was smiling pleasantly. He went on:
"You do your little stretch on the Island. When your time's up
I send you word where to report to me. We'll say you don't
come. The minute you set foot on the streets again alone, back
to the Island you go. . . . Now, do you understand,
Queenie?" And he laughed and pulled her over and kissed her and
smoothed her hair. "You're a very superior article--you are,"
he murmured. "I'm stuck on you."
Susan did not resist. She did not care what happened to her.
The more intelligent a trapped animal is, the less resistance
it offers, once it realizes. Helpless--absolutely helpless.
No money--no friends. No escape but death. The sun was
shining. Outside lay the vast world; across the street on a
flagpole fluttered the banner of freedom. Freedom! Was there
any such thing anywhere? Perhaps if one had plenty of
money--or powerful friends. But not for her, any more than for
the masses whose fate of squalid and stupid slavery she was
trying to escape. Not for her; so long as she was helpless she
would simply move from one land of slavery to another. Helpless!
To struggle would not be courageous, but merely absurd.
"If you don't believe me, ask Maud," said Freddie. "I don't
want you to get into trouble. As I told you, I'm stuck on
you." With his cigarette gracefully loose between those almost
too beautifully formed lips of his and with one of his strong
smooth white arms about his head, he looked at her, an
expression of content with himself, of admiration for her in
his handsome eyes. "You don't realize your good luck. But
you will when you find how many girls are crazy to get on the
good side of me. This is a great old town, and nobody amounts
to anything in it unless he's got a pull or is next to somebody
else that has."
Susan's slow reflective nod showed that this statement
explained, or seemed to explain, certain mysteries of life that
had been puzzling her.
"You've got a lot in you," continued he. "That's my opinion,
and I'm a fair judge of yearlings. You're liable to land
somewhere some day when you've struck your gait. . . . If
I had the mon I'd be tempted to set you up in a flat and keep
you all to myself. But I can't afford it. It takes a lot of
cash to keep me going. . . . You'll do well. You won't
have to bother with any but classy gents. I'll see that the
cops put you wise when there's anyone round throwing his money
away. And I can help you, myself. I've got quite a line of
friends among the rich chappies from Fifth Avenue. And I
always let my girls get the benefit of it."
My girls! Susan's mind, recovering now from its daze, seized
upon this phrase. And soon she had fathomed how these two
young men came to be so luxuriously dressed, so well supplied
with money. She had heard of this system under which the girls
in the streets were exploited as thoroughly as the girls in the
houses. In all the earth was there anyone who was suffered to
do for himself or herself without there being a powerful idle
someone else to take away all the proceeds but a bare living?
Helpless! Helpless!
"How many girls have you?" she asked.
"Jealous already!" And he laughed and blew a cloud of smoke
into her face.
She took the quarters he directed--a plain clean room two
flights up at seven dollars a week, in a furnished room house
on West Forty-third Street near Eighth Avenue. She was but a
few blocks from where she and Rod had lived. New York--to a
degree unrivaled among the cities of the world--illustrates in
the isolated lives of its never isolated inhabitants how little
relationship there is between space and actualities of
distance. Wherever on earth there are as many as two human
beings, one may see an instance of the truth. That an infinity
of spiritual solitude can stretch uncrossable even between two
locked in each other's loving arms! But New York's solitudes,
its separations, extend to the surface things. Susan had no
sense of the apparent nearness of her former abode. Her life
again lay in the same streets; but there again came the sense
of strangeness which only one who has lived in New York could
appreciate. The streets were the same; but to her they seemed
as the streets of another city, because she was now seeing in
them none of the things she used to see, was seeing instead
kinds of people, aspects of human beings, modes of feeling and
acting and existing of which she used to have not the faintest
knowledge. There were as many worlds as kinds of people.
Thus, though we all talk to each other as if about the same
world, each of us is thinking of his own kind of world, the
only one he sees. And that is why there can never be sympathy
and understanding among the children of men until there is some
approach to resemblance in their various lots; for the lot
determines the man.
The house was filled with women of her own kind. They were
allowed all privileges. There was neither bath nor stationary
washstand, but the landlady supplied tin tubs on request. "Oh,
Mr. Palmer's recommendation," said she; "I'll give you two days
to pay. My terms are in advance. But Mr. Palmer's a dear
friend of mine."
She was a short woman with a monstrous bust and almost no hips.
Her thin hair was dyed and frizzled, and her voice sounded as
if it found its way out of her fat lips after a long struggle
to pass through the fat of her throat and chest. Her second
chin lay upon her bosom in a soft swollen bag that seemed to be
suspended from her ears. Her eyes were hard and evil, of a
brownish gray. She affected suavity and elaborate politeness;
but if the least thing disturbed her, she became red and coarse
of voice and vile of language. The vile language and the
nature of her business and her private life aside, she would
have compared favorably with anyone in the class of those who
deal--as merchants, as landlords, as boarding-house
keepers--with the desperately different classes of uncertain
income. She was reputed rich. They said she stayed on in
business to avoid lonesomeness and to keep in touch with all
that was going on in the life that had been hers from girlhood.
"And she's a mixer," said Maud to Susan. In response to
Susan's look of inquiry, she went on to explain, "A mixer's a
white woman that keeps a colored man." Maud laughed at Susan's
expression of horror. "You are a greenie," she mocked. "Why,
it's all the rage. Nearly all the girls do--from the
headliners that are kept by the young Fifth Avenue millionaires
down to nine out of ten of the girls of our set that you see in
Broadway. No, I'm not lying. It's the truth. _I_ don't do
it--at least, not yet. I may get round to it."
After the talk with Maud about the realities of life as it is
lived by several hundred thousand of the inhabitants of
Manhattan Island Susan had not the least disposition to test by
defiance the truth of Freddie Palmer's plain statement as to
his powers and her duties. He had told her to go to work that
very Sunday evening, and Jim had ordered Maud to call for her
and to initiate her. And at half-past seven Maud came. At
once she inspected Susan's swollen face.
"Might be a bit worse," she said. "With a veil on, no one'd
notice it."
"But I haven't a veil," said Susan.
"I've got mine with me--pinned to my garter. I haven't been
home since this afternoon." And Maud produced it.
"But I can't wear a veil at night," objected Susan.
"Why not?" said Maud. "Lots of the girls do. A veil's a dandy
hider. Besides, even where a girl's got nothing to hide and
has a face that's all to the good, still it's not a bad idea to
wear a veil. Men like what they can't see. One of the ugliest
girls I know makes a lot of money--all with her veil. She
fixes up her figure something grand. Then she puts on that
veil--one of the kind you think you can see a face through but
you really can't. And she never lifts it till the 'come on'
has given up his cash. Then----" Maud laughed. "Gee, but she
has had some hot run-ins after she hoists her curtain!"
"Why don't you wear a veil all the time?" asked Susan.
Maud tossed her head. "What do you take me for? I've got too
good an opinion of my looks for that."
Susan put on the veil. It was not of the kind that is a
disguise. Still, diaphanous though it seemed, it concealed
astonishingly the swelling in Susan's face. Obviously, then,
it must at least haze the features, would do something toward
blurring the marks that go to make identity.
"I shall always wear a veil," said Susan.
"Oh, I don't know," deprecated Maud. "I think you're quite
pretty--though a little too proper and serious looking to suit
some tastes."
Susan had removed veil and hat, was letting down her hair.
"What are you doing that for?" cried Maud impatiently. "We're
late now and----"
"I don't like the way my hair's done," cried Susan.
"Why, it was all right--real swell--good as a hairdresser could
have done."
But Susan went on at her task. Ever since she came East she
had worn it in a braid looped at the back of her head. She
proceeded to change this radically. With Maud forgetting to be
impatient in admiration of her swift fingers she made a
coiffure much more elaborate--wide waves out from her temples
and a big round loose knot behind. She was well content with
the result--especially when she got the veil on again and it
was assisting in the change.
"What do you think?" she said to Maud when she was ready.
"My, but you look different!" exclaimed Maud. "A lot
dressier--and sportier. More--more Broadway."
"That's it--Broadway," said Susan. She had always avoided
looking like Broadway. Now, she would take the opposite tack.
Not loud toilets--for they would defeat her purpose. Not loud
but--just common.
"But," added Maud, "you do look swell about the feet. Where
_do_ you get your shoes? No, I guess it's the feet."
As they sallied forth Maud said, "First, I'll show you our
hotel." And they went to a Raines Law hotel in Forty-second
Street near Eighth Avenue. "The proprietor's a heeler of
Finnegan's. I guess Freddie comes in for some rake-off. He
gives us twenty-five cents of every dollar the man spends,"
explained she. "And if the man opens wine we get two dollars
on every bottle. The best way is to stay behind when the man
goes and collect right away. That avoids rows--though they'd
hardly dare cheat you, being as you're on Freddie's staff.
Freddie's got a big pull. He's way up at the top. I wish to
God I had him instead of Jim. Freddie's giving up fast. They
say he's got some things a lot better'n this now, and that he's
likely to quit this and turn respectable. You ought to treat
me mighty white, seeing what I done for you. I've put you in
right--and that's everything in this here life."
Susan looked all round--looked along the streets stretching
away with their morning suggestion of freedom to fly, freedom
to escape--helpless! "Can't I get a drink?" asked she. There
was a strained look in her eyes, a significant nervousness of
the lips and hands. "I must have a drink."
"Of course. Max has been on a vacation, but I hear he's back.
When I introduce you, he'll probably set 'em up. But I
wouldn't drink if I were you till I went off duty."
"I must have a drink," replied Susan.
"It'll get you down. It got me down. I used to have a fine
sucker--gave me a hundred a week and paid my flat rent. But I
had nothing else to do, so I took to drinking, and I got so
reckless that I let him catch me with my lover that time. But
I had to have somebody to spend the money on. Anyhow, it's no
fun having a John."
"A John?" said Susan. "What's that?"
"You are an innocent----!" laughed Maud. "A John's a sucker--a
fellow that keeps a girl. Well, it'd be no fun to have a John
unless you fooled him--would it?"
They now entered the side door of the hotel and ascended the
stairs. A dyspeptic looking man with a red nose that stood out
the more strongly for the sallowness of his skin and the
smallness of his sunken brown eyes had his hands spread upon
the office desk and was leaning on his stiff arms. "Hello,
Max," said Maud in a fresh, condescending way. "How's business?"
"Slow. Always slack on Sundays. How goes it with you, Maudie?"
"So--so. I manage to pick up a living in spite of the damn
chippies. I don't see why the hell they don't go into the
business regular and make something out of it, instead of
loving free. I'm down on a girl that's neither the one thing
nor the other. This is my lady friend, Miss Queenie." She
turned laughingly to Susan. "I never asked your last name."
"Brown."
"My, what a strange name!" cried Maud. Then, as the proprietor
laughed with the heartiness of tradesman at good customer's
jest, she said, "Going to set 'em up, Max?"
He pressed a button and rang a bell loudly. The responding
waiter departed with orders for a whiskey and two lithias.
Maud explained to Susan:
"Max used to be a prize-fighter. He was middleweight champion."
"I've been a lot of things in my days," said Max with pride.
"So I've heard," joked Maud. "They say they've got your
picture at headquarters."
"That's neither here nor there," said Max surlily. "Don't get
too flip." Susan drank her whiskey as soon as it came, and the
glow rushed to her ghastly face. Said Max with great politeness:
"You're having a little neuralgia, ain't you? I see your face
is swhole some."
"Yes," said Susan. "Neuralgia." Maud laughed hilariously.
Susan herself had ceased to brood over the incident. In
conventional lives, visited but rarely by perilous storms, by
disaster, such an event would be what is called concise. But
in life as it is lived by the masses of the people--life in
which awful disease, death, maiming, eviction, fire, violent
event of any and every kind, is part of the daily routine in
that life of the masses there is no time for lingering upon the
weathered storm or for bothering about and repairing its
ravages. Those who live the comparatively languid, the
sheltered life should not use their own standards of what is
delicate and refined, what is conspicuous and strong, when they
judge their fellow beings as differently situated.
Nevertheless, they do--with the result that we find the puny mud
lark criticizing the eagle battling with the hurricane.
When Susan and Maud were in the street again, Susan declared
that she must have another drink. "I can't offer to pay for
one for you," said she to Maud. "I've almost no money. And I
must spend what I've got for whiskey before I--can--can--start in."
Maud began to laugh, looked at Susan, and was almost crying
instead. "I can lend you a fiver," she said. "Life's
hell--ain't it? My father used to have a good
business--tobacco. The trust took it away from him--and then
he drank--and mother, she drank, too. And one day he beat her
so she died--and he ran away. Oh, it's all awful! But I've
stopped caring. I'm stuck on Jim--and another little fellow he
don't know about. For God's sake don't tell him or he'd have
me pinched for doing business free. I get full every night and
raise old Nick. Sometimes I hate Jim. I've tried to kill him
twice when I was loaded. But a girl's got to have a backer
with a pull. And Jim lets me keep a bigger share of what I
make than some fellows. Freddie's pretty good too, they
say--except when he's losing on the races or gets stuck on some
actress that's too classy to be shanghaied--like you was--and
that makes him cough up."
Maud went on to disclose that Jim usually let her have all she
made above thirty dollars a week, and in hard weeks had
sometimes let her beg off with fifteen. Said she:
"I can generally count on about fifteen or twenty for myself.
Us girls that has backers make a lot more money than the girls
that hasn't. They're always getting pinched too--though
they're careful never to speak first to a man. _We_ can go
right up and brace men with the cops looking on. A cop that'd
touch us would get broke--unless we got too gay or robbed
somebody with a pull. But none of our class of girls do any
robbing. There's nothing in it. You get caught sooner or
later, and then you're down and out."
While Susan was having two more drinks Maud talked about
Freddie. She seemed to know little about him, though he was
evidently one of the conspicuous figures. He had started in
the lower East Side--had been leader of one of those gangs that
infest tenement districts--the young men who refuse to submit
to the common lot of stupid and badly paid toil and try to
fight their way out by the quick methods of violence instead of
the slower but surer methods of robbing the poor through a
store of some kind. These gangs were thieves, blackmailers,
kidnapers of young girls for houses of prostitution, repeaters.
Most of them graduated into habitual jailbirds, a few--the
cleverest--became saloon-keepers and politicians and high-class
professional gamblers and race track men.
Freddie, Maud explained, was not much over twenty-five, yet was
already well up toward the place where successful gang leaders
crossed over into the respectable class--that is, grafted in
"big figures." He was a great reader, said Maud, and had taken
courses at some college. "They say he and his gang used to
kill somebody nearly every night. Then he got a lot of money
out of one of his jobs--some say it was a bank robbery and some
say they killed a miner who was drunk with a big roll on him.
Anyhow, Freddie got next to Finnegan--he's worth several
millions that he made out of policy shops and poolrooms, and
contracts and such political things. So he's in right--and he's
got the brains. He's a good one for working out schemes for
making people work hard and bring him their money. And
everybody's afraid of him because he won't stop at nothing and
is too slick to get caught."
Maud broke off abruptly and rose, warned by the glazed look in
Susan's eyes. Susan was so far gone that she had difficulty in
not staggering and did not dare speak lest her uncertain tongue
should betray her. Maud walked her up and down the block
several times to give the fresh air a chance, then led her up
to a man who had looked at them in passing and had paused to
look back. "Want to go have a good time, sweetheart?" said
Maud to the man. He was well dressed, middle-aged, with a full
beard and spectacles, looked as if he might be a banker, or
perhaps a professor in some college.
"How much?" asked he.
"Five for a little while. Come along, sporty. Take me or my
lady friend."
"How much for both of you?"
"Ten. We don't cut rates. Take us both, dearie. I know a
hotel where it'd be all right."
"No. I guess I'll take your lady friend." He had been peering
at Susan through his glasses. "And if she treats me well, I'll
take her again. You're sure you're all right? I'm a married man."
"We've both been home visiting for a month, and walking the
chalk. My, but ma's strict! We got back tonight," said Maud
glibly. "Go ahead, Queenie. I'll be chasing up and down here,
waiting." In a lower tone: "Get through with him quick. Strike
him for five more after you get the first five. He's a blob."
When Susan came slinking through the office of the hotel in the
wake of the man two hours later, Maud sprang from the little
parlor. "How much did you get?" she asked in an undertone.
Susan looked nervously at the back of the man who was descending
the stairway to the street. "He said he'd pay me next time,"
she said. "I didn't know what to do. He was polite and----"
Maud seized her by the arm. "Come along!" she cried. As she
passed the desk she said to the clerk, "A dirty bilker! Tryin'
to kiss his way out!"
"Give him hell," said the clerk.
Maud, still gripping Susan, overtook the man at the sidewalk.
"What do you mean by not paying my lady friend?" she shouted.
"Get out!" said the man in a low tone, with an uneasy glance
round. "If you annoy me I'll call the police."
"If you don't cough up mighty damn quick," cried Maud so loudly
that several passers-by stopped, "I'll do the calling myself,
you bum, and have you pinched for insulting two respectable
working girls." And she planted herself squarely before him.
Susan drew back into the shadow of the wall.
Up stepped Max, who happened to be standing outside his place.
"What's the row about?" he demanded.
"These women are trying to blackmail me," said the man, sidling away.
Maud seized him by the arm. "Will you cough up or shall I
scream?" she cried.
"Stand out of the way, girls," said Max savagely, "and let me
take a crack at the----."
The man dived into his pocket, produced a bill, thrust it
toward Susan. Maud saw that it was a five. "That's only
five," she cried. "Where's the other five?"
"Five was the bargain," whined the man.
"Do you want me to push in your blinkers, you damned old bilk,
you?" cried Max, seizing him violently by the arm. The man
visited his pocket again, found another five, extended the two.
Maud seized them. "Now, clear out!" said Max. "I hate to let
you go without a swift kick in the pants."
Maud pressed the money on Susan and thanked Max. Said Max,
"Don't forget to tell Freddie what I done for his girl."
"She'll tell him, all right," Maud assured him.
As the girls went east through Forty-second Street, Susan said,
"I'm afraid that man'll lay for us."
"Lay for us," laughed Maud. "He'll run like a cat afire if he
ever sights us again."
"I feel queer and faint," said Susan. "I must have a drink."
"Well--I'll go with you. But I've got to get busy. I want a
couple of days off this week for my little fellow, so I must
hustle. You let that dirty dog keep you too long. Half an
hour's plenty enough. Always make 'em cough up in advance,
then hustle 'em through. And don't listen to their guff about
wanting to see you again if you treat 'em right. There's
nothing in it."
They went into a restaurant bar near Broadway. Susan took two
drinks of whiskey raw in rapid succession; Maud took one
drink--a green mint with ice. "While you was fooling away time
with that thief," said she, "I had two men--got five from one,
three from the other. The five-dollar man took a three-dollar
room--that was seventy-five for me. The three-dollar man
wouldn't stand for more than a dollar room--so I got only a
quarter there. But he set 'em up to two rounds of drinks--a
quarter more for me. So I cleared nine twenty-five. And you'd
'a' got only your twenty-five cents commission on the room if
it hadn't been for me. You forgot to collect your commission.
Well, you can get it next time. Only I wouldn't _ask_ for it,
Max was so nice in helping out. He'll give you the quarter."
When Susan had taken her second stiff drink, her eyes were
sparkling and she was laughing recklessly. "I want a
cigarette," she said.
"You feel bully, don't you?"
"I'm ready for anything," declared she giddily. "I don't give
a damn. I'm over the line. I--_don't_--give--a--damn!"
"I used to hate the men I went up with," said Maud, "but now
I hardly look at their faces. You'll soon be that way. Then
you'll only drink for fun. Drink--and dope--they are about the
only fun we have--them and caring about some fellow."
"How many girls has Freddie got?"
"Search me. Not many that he'd speak to himself. Jim's his
wardman--does his collecting for him. Freddie's above most of
the men in this business. The others are about like Jim--tough
straight through, but Freddie's a kind of a pullman. The other
men-even Jim--hate him for being such a snare and being able to
hide it that he's in such a low business. They'd have done him
up long ago, if they could. But he's to wise for them. That's
why they have to do what he says. I tell you, you're in
right, for sure. You'll have Freddie eating out of your hand,
if you play a cool hand."
Susan ordered another drink and a package of Egyptian
cigarettes. "They don't allow ladies to smoke in here," said
Maud. "We'll go to the washroom."
And in the washroom they took a few hasty puffs before sallying
forth again. Usually Sunday night was dull, all the men having
spent their spare money the night before, and it being a bad
night for married men to make excuses for getting away from
home. Maud explained that, except "out-of-towners," the
married men were the chief support of their profession--"and
most of the cornhuskers are married men, too." But Susan had
the novice's luck. When she and Maud met Maud's "little
gentleman friend" Harry Tucker at midnight and went to
Considine's for supper, Susan had taken in "presents" and
commissions twenty-nine dollars and a half. Maud had not done
so badly, herself; her net receipts were twenty-two fifty.
She would not let Susan pay any part of the supper bill, but
gave Harry the necessary money. "Here's a five," said she,
pressing the bill into his hand, "and keep the change."
And she looked at him with loving eyes of longing. He was a
pretty, common-looking fellow, a mere boy, who clerked in a
haberdashery in the neighborhood. As he got only six dollars
a week and had to give five to his mother who sewed, he could
not afford to spend money on Maud, and she neither expected nor
wished it. When she picked him up, he like most of his
fellow-clerks had no decent clothing but the suit he had to
have to "make a front" at the store. Maud had outfitted him
from the skin with the cheap but showy stuff exhibited for just
such purposes in the Broadway windows. She explained
confidentially to Susan:
"It makes me sort of feel that I own him. Then, too, in love
there oughtn't to be any money. If he paid, I'd be as cold to
him as I am to the rest. The only reason I like Jim at all is
I like a good beating once in a while. It's exciting. Jim--he
treats me like the dirt under his feet. And that's what we
are--dirt under the men's feet. Every woman knows it, when it
comes to a showdown between her and a man. As my pop used to
say, the world was made for men, not for women. Still, our
graft ain't so bum, at that--if we work it right."
Freddie called on Susan about noon the next day. She was still
in bed. He was dressed in the extreme of fashion, was wearing
a chinchilla-lined coat. He looked the idle, sportively
inclined son of some rich man in the Fifth Avenue district. He
was having an affair with a much admired young actress--was
engaged in it rather as a matter of vanity and for the
fashionable half-world associations into which it introduced
him rather than from any present interest in the lady. He
stood watching Susan with a peculiar expression--one he might
perhaps have found it hard to define himself. He bent over her
and carelessly brushed her ear with his lips. "How did your
royal highness make out?" inquired he.
"The money's in the top bureau drawer," replied she, the covers
up to her eyes and her eyes closed.
He went to the bureau, opened the drawer, with his gloved hands
counted the money. As he counted his eyes had a look in them
that was strangely like jealous rage. He kept his back toward
her for some time after he had crossed to look at the money.
When he spoke it was to say:
"Not bad. And when you get dressed up a bit and lose your
stage fright, you'll do a smashing business. I'll not take my
share of this. I had a good run with the cards last night.
Anyhow, you've got to pay your rent and buy some clothes. I've
got to invest something in my new property. It's badly run
down. You'll get busy again tonight, of course. Never lay
off, lady, unless the weather's bad. You'll find you won't
average more than twenty good business days a month in summer
and fall, and only about ten in winter and spring, when it's
cold and often lots of bad weather in the afternoons and
evenings. That means hustle."
No sign from Susan. He sat on the bed and pulled the covers
away from her face. "What are you so grouchy about, pet?" he
inquired, chucking her under the chin.
"Nothing."
"Too much booze, I'll bet. Well, sleep your grouch off. I've
got a date with Finnegan. The election's coming on, and I have
to work--lining up the vote and getting the repeaters ready.
It all means good money for me. Look out about the booze,
lady. It'll float you into trouble--trouble with me, I mean."
And he patted her bare shoulders, laughed gently, went to the door.
He paused there, struggled with an impulse to turn--departed.