_CHAPTER I_
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
In the slow swirl of Columbus Circle, at the southwest corner of
Central Park, two seedy, sinister individuals could hold an exceedingly
private conversation without drawing attention to themselves. There
were others like us on the scene, in that month of June, 1913, cast
up from the obscurest depths of New York. We could revolve there for
five or ten minutes, in company with other elements of the city’s life,
to be eliminated by degrees, sucked into other currents, forming new
combinations or reacting to the old ones.
In silence we shuffled along a few paces, though not exactly side
by side. Lovey was just sufficiently behind me to be able to talk
confidentially into my ear. My own manner was probably that of a man
anxious to throw off a dogging inferior. Even among us there are social
degrees.
“Yer’ll be sorry,” Lovey warned me, reproachfully.
“Very well, then,” I jerked back at him over my shoulder; “I shall be
sorry.”
“If I didn’t know it was a good thing I wouldn’t ’a’ wanted to take ye
in on it—not you, I wouldn’t; and dead easy.”
“I don’t care for it.”
“Ye’re only a beginner—”
“I’m not even that.”
“No, ye’re not even that; and this’d larn ye. Just two old ladies—lots of
money always in the ’ouse—no resistance—no weepons nor nothink o’ that
kind; and me knowin’ every hinch of the ground through workin’ for ’em
two years ago—”
“And suppose they recognized you?”
“That’s it. That’s why I must have a pal. If they’d git a look at any one
it’d have to be at you. But you don’t need to be afraid, never pinched
before nor nothink. Once yer picter’s in the rogues’ they’ll run ye in if
ye so much as blow yer nose. You’d just get by as an unknown man.”
“And if I didn’t get by?”
“Oh, but you would, sonny. Ye’re the kind. Just look at ye! Slim and
easy-movin’ as a snake, y’are. Ye’d go through a man’s clothes while he’s
got ’em on, and he wouldn’t notice ye no more’n a puff of wind. Look at
yer ’and.”
I held it up and looked at it. A year ago, a month ago, I should have
studied it with remorse. Now I did it stupidly, without emotions or
regrets.
It was a long, slim hand, resembling the rest of my person. It was
strong, however, with big, loosely articulated knuckles and muscular
thumbs—again resembling the rest of my person. At the Beaux Arts, and in
an occasional architect’s office, it had been spoken of as a “drawing”
hand; and Lovey was now pointing out its advantages for other purposes. I
laughed to myself.
“Ye’re too tall,” Lovey went on, in his appraisement. “That’s ag’in’ ye.
Ye must be a good six foot. But lots o’ men are too tall. They gits over
it by stoopin’ a bit; and when ye stoops it frightens people, especially
women. They ain’t near as scared of a man that stands straight up as
they’ll be of one that crouches and wiggles away. Kind o’ suggests evil
to ’em, like, it does. And these two old ladies—”
As we reached the corner of the Park I rounded slowly on my tempter. Not
that he thought of his offer as temptation, any more than I did; it was
rather on his part a touch of solicitude. He was doing his best for me,
in return for what he was pleased to take as my kindness to him during
the past ten days.
He was a small, wizened man, pathetically neat in spite of cruel
shabbiness. It was the kind of neatness that in our world so often
differentiates the man who has dropped from him who has always been
down. The gray suit, which was little more than a warp with no woof on
it at all, was brushed and smoothed and mended. The flannel shirt, with
turned-down collar, must have been chosen for its resistance to the show
of dirt. The sky-blue tie might have been a more useful selection, but
even that had had freshness steamed and pressed into it whenever Lovey
had got the opportunity. Over what didn’t so directly meet the eye the
coat was tightly buttoned up.
The boots were the weakest point, as they are with all of us. They were
not noticeably broken, but they were wrinkled and squashed and down at
the heel. They looked as if they had been worn by other men before having
come to the present possessor; and mine looked the same. When I went into
offices to apply for work it was always my boots that I tried to keep out
of sight; but it was precisely what the eye of the fellow in command
seemed determined to search out and judge me by.
You must not think of Lovey as a criminal. He had committed petty crimes
and he had gone to jail for them; but it had only been from the instinct
of self-preservation. He worked when he got a job; but he never kept a
job, because his habits always fired him. Then he lived as he could,
lifting whatever small object came his way—an apple from a fruit-stall, a
purse a lady had inadvertently laid down, a bag in a station, an umbrella
forgotten in a corner—anything! The pawnshops knew him so well that he
was afraid to go into them any more—except when he was so tired that
he wanted to be sent to the Island for a month’s rest. In general, he
disposed of his booty for a few pennies to children, to poverty-stricken
mothers of families, to pals in the saloons. As long as a few dollars
lasted he lived, as he himself would have said, honestly. When he was
driven to it he filched again; but only when he was driven to it.
It was ten days now since he had begun following me about, somewhat as a
stray dog will follow you when you have given him a bone and a drink of
water. For a year and more I had seen him in one or another of the dives
I hung about. The same faces always turn up there, and we get to have
the kind of acquaintance, silent, haunted, tolerant, that binds together
souls in the Inferno. In general, it is a great fraternity; but now and
then—often for reasons no one could fathom—some one is excluded. He comes
and goes, and the others follow him with resentful looks and curses.
Occasionally he is kicked out, which was what happened to Lovey whenever
his weakness afforded the excuse.
It was when he was kicked out of Stinson’s that I had picked him up. It
was after midnight. It was cold. The sight of the abject face was too
much for me.
“Come along home with me, Lovey,” I had said, casually; and he came.
Home was no more than a stifling garret, and Lovey slept on the floor
like a dog. But in the morning I found my shoes cleaned as well as he
could clean them without brush or blacking, my clothes folded, and the
whole beastly place in such order as a friendly hand could bring to it.
Lovey himself was gone.
Twice during the interval he had stolen in in the same way and stolen
out. He asked no more than a refuge and the privilege of sidling timidly
up to me with a beseeching look in his sodden eyes when we met in bars.
Once, when by hook or by crook he had got possession of a dollar, he
insisted on the honor of “buying me a drink.”
On this particular afternoon I had met him by chance in the region of
Broadway between Forty-second Street and Columbus Circle. I can still
recall the shy, half-frightened pleasure in his face as he saw me
advancing toward him. He might have been a young girl.
“Got somethin’ awful good, sonny, to let ye in on,” were the words with
which he stopped me.