Should your curiosity invite it, and the more since I promised you
the story, we will now, my friends, go about the telling of that one
operation in underground silk. It is not calculated to foster the pride
of an old man to plunge into a relation of dubious doings of his youth.
And yet, as I look backward on that one bit of smuggling of which I was
guilty, so far as motive was involved, I exonerate myself. I looked on
the government, because of the South’s conquest by the North, and that
later ruin of myself through the machinations of the Revenue office, as
both a political and a personal foe. And I felt, not alone morally free,
but was impelled besides in what I deemed a spirit of justice to myself,
to wage war against it as best I might. It was on such argument, where
the chance proffered, that I sought wealth as a smuggler. I would
deplete the government--forage, as it were, on the enemy--thereby to
fatten my purse.
As my hair has whitened with the sifting frosts of years, I confess
that my sophistries of smuggling seem less and less plausible, while
smuggling itself loses whatever of romantic glamour it may once have
been invested with, or what little color of respect to which it might
seem able to lay claim. This tale shall be told in simplest periods.
That is as should be; for expression should ever be meek and subjugated
when one’s story is the mere story of a cheat. There is scant room in
such recital for heroic phrase. Smuggling, and paint it with what genius
one may, can be nothing save a skulking, hiding, fear-eaten trade.
There is nothing about it of bravery or dash. How therefore and avoid
laughter, may one wax stately in any telling of its ignoble details?
When, following my unfortunate crash in tobacco, I had cleared away the
last fragment of the confusion that reigned in my affairs, I was driven
to give my nerves a respite and seek a rest. For three months I had been
under severest stress. When the funeral was done--for funeral it seemed
to me--and my tobacco enterprise and those hopes it had so flattered
were forever laid at rest, my soul sank exhausted and my brain was in
a whirl. I could neither think with clearness nor plan with accuracy.
Moreover, I was prey to that depression and lack of confidence in
myself, which come inevitably as the corollary of utter weariness.
Aware of this personal condition, I put aside thought of any present
formulation of a future. I would rest, recover poise, and win back that
optimism that belongs with health and youth.
This was wisdom; I was jaded beyond belief; and fatigue means dejection,
and dejection spells pessimism, and pessimism is never sagacious nor
excellent in any of its programmes.
For that rawness of the nerves I speak of, many apply themselves
to drink; some rush to drugs; for myself, I take to music. It was
midwinter, and grand opera was here. This was fortunate. I buried myself
in a box, and opened my very pores to those nerve-healthful harmonies.
In a week thereafter I might call myself recovered. My soul was cool,
my eye bright, my mind clear and sensibly elate. Life and its promises
seemed mightily refreshed.
No one has ever called me superstitious and yet to begin my
course-charting for a new career, I harked back to the old Astor House.
It was there that brilliant thought of tobacco overtook me two years
before. Perhaps an inspiration was to dwell in an environment. Again
I registered, and finding it tenantless, took over again my old room.
Still I cannot say, and it is to that hostelry’s credit, that my
domicile at the Astor aided me to my smuggling resolves. Those last had
growth somewhat in this fashion:
I had dawdled for two hours over coffee in the café--the room and the
employment which had one-time brought me fortune--but was incapable
of any thought of value. I could decide on nothing good. Indeed, I did
naught save mentally curse those revenue miscreants who, failing of
blackmail, had destroyed me for revenge.
Whatever comfort may lurk in curses, at least they carry no money
profit; so after a fruitless session over coffee and maledictions, I
arose, and as a calmative, walked down Broadway.
At Trinity churchyard, the gates being open, I turned in and began
ramblingly to twine and twist among the graves. There I encountered a
garrulous old man who, for his own pleasure, evidently, devoted himself
to my information. He pointed out the grave of Fulton, he of the
steamboats; then I was shown the tomb of that Lawrence who would “never
give up the ship;” from there I was carried to the last low bed of the
love-wrecked Charlotte Temple.
My eye at last, by the alluring voice and finger of the old guide, was
drawn to a spot under the tower where sleeps the Lady Cornbury, dead now
as I tell this, hardby two hundred years. Also I was told of that Lord
Cornbury, her husband, once governor of the colony for his relative,
Queen Anne; and how he became so much more efficient as a smuggler and
a customs cheat, than ever he was as an executive, that he lost his high
employ.
Because I had nothing more worthy to occupy my leisure, I
listened--somewhat listlessly, I promise you, for after all I was
thinking on the future, not the past, and considering of the living
rather than those old dead folk, obscure, forgotten in their slim
graves--I listened, I say, to my gray historian; and somehow, after I
was free of him, the one thing that remained alive in my memory was the
smuggling story of our Viscount Cornbury.
Among those few acquaintances I formed during my brief prosperity, was
one with a gentleman named Harris, who owned apartments under mine
on Twenty-second Street. Harris was elegant, educated, traveled, and
apparently well-to-do of riches. Busy with my own mounting fortunes, the
questions of who Harris was? and what he did? and how he lived? never
rapped at the door of my curiosity for reply.
One night, however, as we sat over a late and by no means a first bottle
of wine, Harris himself informed me that he was employed in smuggling;
had a partner-accomplice in the Customs House, and perfect arrangements
aboard a certain ship. By these last double advantages, he came aboard
with twenty trunks, if he so pleased, without risking anything from
the inquisitiveness or loquacity of the officers of the ship; and later
debarked at New York with the certainty of going scatheless through the
customs as rapidly as his Inspector partner could chalk scrawlingly “O.
K.” upon his sundry pieces of baggage.
Coming from Old Trinity, still mooting Corn-bury and his smugglings,
my thoughts turned to Harris. Also, for the earliest time, I began to
consider within myself whether smuggling was not a field of business
wherein a pushing man might grow and reap a harvest. The idea came to
me to turn “free-trader.” The government had destroyed me; I would make
reprisal. I would give my hand to smuggling and spoil the Egyptian.
At once I sought Harris and over a glass of champagne--ever a favorite
wine with me--we struck agreement. As a finale we each put in fifteen
thousand dollars, and with the whole sum of thirty thousand dollars
Harris pushed forth for Europe while I remained behind. Harris visited
Lyons; and our complete investment was in a choicest sort of Lyons silk.
The rich fabrics were packed in a dozen trunks--not all alike, those
trunks, but differing, one from another, so as to prevent the notion as
they stood about the wharf that there was aught of relationship between
them or that one man stood owner of them all.
It is not needed to tell of my partner’s voyage of return. It was
without event and one may safely abandon it, leaving its relation to
Harris himself, if he be yet alive and should the spirit him so move.
It is enough for the present purpose that in due time the trunks holding
our precious silk-bolts, with Harris as their convoy, arrived safe in
New York.
I had been looking for the boat’s coming and was waiting on the wharf as
her lines and her stagings were run ashore.
Our partner, the Inspector, and who was to enjoy a per cent, of the
profits of the speculation, was named Lorns. He rapidly chalked “O. K.”
with his name affixed to the end of each several trunk and it thereupon
with the balance of inspected baggage was promptly piled upon the wharf.
There had been a demand for drays, I remember, and on this day when
our silks came in, I was able to procure but one. The ship did not dock
until late in the afternoon, and at eight o’clock of a dark, foggy April
evening, there still remained one of our trunks--the largest of all, it
was--on the wharf. The dray had departed with the second load for that
concealing loft in Reade Street which, during Harris’ absence, I had
taken to be used as the depot of those smuggling operations wherein we
might become engaged. I had made every move with caution; I had never
employed our real names not even with the drayman.
As I tell you, the dray was engaged about the second trip. This last
large silk-trunk was left behind perforce; pile it how one might there
had been no safe room for it on the already overloaded dray. The drayman
promised to return and have it safely in our loft that night.
For myself, I was from first to last lounging about the wharf,
overseeing the going away of our goods. Harris, so soon as I gave him
key and street-number, had posted to Reade Street to attend the silk’s
reception.
Waiting for the coming back of the conveying dray proved but a slow,
dull business, and I was impatiently, at the hour I’ve named, walking
up and down, casting an occasional glance at the big last trunk where it
stood on end, a bit drawn out and separated from the common mountain of
baggage wherewith the wharf was piled.
One of the general inspectors, a man I had never seen but whom I knew,
by virtue of his rank, to be superior to our chalk-wielding coparcener,
also paced the wharf and appeared to bear me company in a distant,
non-communicative way. This customs captain and myself, save for an
under inspector named Quin, had the dock to ourselves. The boat was
long in and most land folk had gotten through their concern with her
and wended homeward long before. There were, however, many passengers of
emigrant sort still held aboard the ship.
As I marched up and down, Lorns came ashore and pretended some business
with his superior officer. As he returned to the ship and what duties he
had still to perform there, he made a slight signal to both myself and
his fellow inspector, Quin, to follow him. I was well known to Lorns,
having had several talks with him, while Harris was abroad. Quin I had
never met; but it quickly appeared that he was a confidant of Lorns, and
while without money interest in our affairs was ready to bear helping
hand should the situation commence to pinch.
Quin and I went severally and withal carelessly aboard ship, and not at
all as though we were seeking Lorns. This was to darken the chief, whom
we both surmised to be the cause of Lorn’s signal.
Once aboard and gathered in a dark corner, Lorns began at once:
“Let me do the talking,” said Lorns with a nervous rapidity that at once
enlisted the ears of Quin and myself. “Don’t interrupt, but listen. The
chief suspects that last trunk. I can tell it by the way he acts. A bit
later, when I come ashore, he’ll ask to have it opened. Should he do so,
we’re lost; you and I.” This last was to me. Then to Quin: “Do you see
that long, bony Swiss, with the boots and porcelain pipe? He’s in an
ugly mood, doesn’t speak English, and within one minute after you return
to the wharf, he and I will be entangled in a rough and tumble riot.
I’ll attend to that. The row will be prodigious. The chief will be sent
for to settle the war, and when he leaves the wharf, Quin, don’t wait;
seize on that silk trunk and throw it into the river. There’s iron
enough clamped about the corners to sink it; besides, it’s packed so
tightly it’s as heavy as lead, and will go to the bottom like an anvil.
Then from the pile pull down some trunk similar to it in looks and stand
it in its place. It’ll go in the dark. Give the new trunk my mark, as
the chief has already read the name on the trunk. Go, Quin; I rely on
you.”
“You can trust me, my boy,” retorted Quin, cheerfully, and turning on
his heel, he was back on the wharf in a moment, and apparently busy
about the pile of baggage.
Suddenly there came a mighty uproar aboard ship. Lorns and the Swiss,
the latter already irate over some trouble he had experienced, were
rolling about the deck in a most violent scrimmage, the Swiss having
decidedly the worst of the trouble. The chief rushed up the plank; Lorns
and the descendant of Tell and Winkelried, were torn apart; and then a
double din of explanation ensued. After ten minutes, the chief was able
to straighten out the difficulty--whatever its pretended cause might be
I know not; for I held myself warily aloof, not a little alarmed by
what Lorns had communicated--and repaired again to his station upon the
wharf.
As the chief came down the plank, Quin, who had not been a moment behind
him in going aboard to discover the reasons of the riot, followed. Brief
as was that moment, however, during which Quin had lingered behind,
he had made the shift suggested by Lorns; the silk trunk was under the
river, a strange trunk stood in its stead.
As the chief returned, he walked straight to this suspected trunk and
tipped it down with his foot. Then to Quin:
“Ask Lorns to step _here_.”
Quin went questing Lorns; shortly Lorns and Quin came back together. The
chief turned in a brisk, sharp, official way to Lorns:
“Did you inspect this trunk?”
“I did,” said Lorns, looking at the chalk marks as if to make sure.
“Open it!”
No keys were procurable; the owners, Lorns said, had long since left the
docks. But Lorns suggested that he get hammer and cold-chisel from the
ship.
The trunk was opened and found free and innocent of aught contraband.
The chief wore a puzzled, dark look; he felt that he’d been cheated,
but he couldn’t say how. Therefore, being wise, the chief gulped, said
nothing, and as life is short and he had many things to do, soon after
left the docks and went his way.
“That was a squeak!” said Lorns when we were at last free of the
dangerous chief. “Quin, I thank you.”
“That’s all right,” retorted Quin, with a grin; “do as much for me some
time.”
That night, with the aid of a river pirate, our trunk, jettisoned by the
excellent Quin, was fished up; and being tight as a drum, its contents
had come to little harm with the baptism. At last, our dozen silk
trunks--holding a treasure of thirty thousand dollars and whereon we
looked to clear a heavy profit--were safe in the Reade Street loft; and
my hasty heart, which had been beating at double speed since that almost
fatal interference, slowed to normal.
One might now suppose our woes were at an end, all danger over, and
nothing to do but dispose of that shimmering cargo to best advantage.
Harris and I were of that spirit-lifting view; we began on the very next
day to feel about for customers.
Harris, whose former smuggling exploits had dealt solely with gems,
knew as little of silk as did I. Had either been expert he might have
foreseen a coming peril into whose arms we in our blindness all but
walked. No, our troubles were not yet done. We had escaped the engulfing
suck of Charybdis, only to be darted upon by those six grim mouths of
her sister monster, Scylla, over the way.
Well do I recall that morning. I had seen but two possible purchasers of
silks when Harris overtook me. His eye shone with alarm. Lorns had
run him down with the news--however he himself discovered it, I never
knew--that another danger yawned.
Harris hurried me to our Reade Street lair and gave particulars.
“It seems,” said Harris, quite out of breath with the speed we’d made
in hunting cover, “that Stewart is for America the sole agent of these
particular brands of silk which we’ve brought in. Some one to whom we’ve
offered them has notified the Stewart company. At this moment and as we
sit here, the detectives belonging to Stewart, and for all I may
guess, the whole Central Office as well, are on our track. They want to
discover who has these silks; and how they came in, since the customs
records show no such importations. And there’s a dark characteristic to
these silks. Each bolt has its peculiar, individual selvage. Each, with
a sample of its selvage, is registered at the home looms. Could anyone
get a snip of a selvage he could return with it to Lyons, learn from the
manufacturers’ book just when it was woven, when sold, and to whom. I
can tell you one thing,” observed Harris, as he concluded his story,
“we’re in a bad corner.”
How the cold drops spangled my brows! I began to wish with much heart
that I’d never met Harris, nor heard, that Trinity churchyard day, of
Cornbury and his smuggling methods of gathering gold.
There was one ray of hope; neither Harris nor I had disclosed our names,
nor the whereabouts or quantity of the silks; and as each had been
dealing with folk with whom he’d never before met, we were both as yet
mysteries unsolved.
Nor were we ever solved. Harris and I kept off the streets during
daylight hours for a full month. We were not utterly idle; we
unpleasantly employed ourselves in trimming away that telltale selvage.
Preferring safety to profit, we put forth no efforts to realize on our
speculations for almost a year. By that time the one day’s wonder of
“Who’s got Stewart’s silks?” had ceased to disturb the mercantile world
and the grand procession of dry goods interest passed on and over it.
At last we crept forth like felons--as, good sooth! we were--and
disposed of our mutilated silks to certain good folk whose forefathers
once ruled Palestine. These gentry liked bargains, and were in no wise
curious; they bought our wares without lifting an eyebrow of inquiry,
and from them constructed--though with that I had no concern--those long
“circulars,” so called, which were the feminine joy a third of a century
gone.
As to Harris and myself; what with delays, what with expenses, what with
figures reduced to dispose of our plunder, we got evenly out. We got
back our money; but for those fear-shaken hours of two separate perils,
we were never paid.
I smuggled no more. Still, I did not relinquish my pious purpose to
despoil that public treasury Egyptian quoted heretofore. Neither did I
give up the Customs as a rich field of illicit endeavor. But my methods
changed. I now decided that I, myself, would become an Inspector, like
unto the useful Lorns, and make my fortune from the opulent inside. I
procured the coveted appointment, for I could bring power to bear, and
later I’ll tell you of The Emperor’s Cigars.
*****
When I was in my room that night, making ready for bed, I could still
hear the soft, cold fingers of the snow upon the pane. What a storm was
that! Our landlord who had been boy and man and was now gray in that old
inn, declared how he had never witnessed the smothering fellow to it.
The following day, while still and bright and no snow to fall, showed a
temperature below zero. The white blockade still held us fast, and now
the desperate cold was come to be the ally of the snow. Departure was
never a question.
As we kicked the logs into a cheerful uproar of sparks, and drew that
evening about the great fireplace, it was the Old Cattleman to break
conversational ground.
“Do you-all know,” said he, “I shore feels that idle this evenin’ it’s
worse’n scand’lous--it’s reedic’lous.” Here he threw himself back in
his armchair and yawned. “Pardon these yere demonstrations of weariness,
gents,” he observed; “they ain’t aimed at you none. That’s the fact,
though; this amazin’ sensation of bein’ held a prisoner is beginnin’ to
gnaw at me a heap. Talk of ‘a painted ship upon a painted ocean,’
like that poem sharp wrote of! Why that vessel’s sedyoolously employed
compared to us!”
“You should recall,” remarked the Jolly Doctor, “how somewhere it is
said that whatever your hand finds to do, you should do it with all your
heart. Now, I would say the counsel applies to our present position.
Since we must needs be idle, let us be idle heartily and happily, and
get every good to lie hidden in what to me, at least, is a most pleasant
companionship.”
“I shore unites with you,” responded the Old Cattleman, “in them
script’ral exhortations to do things with all your heart. It was Wild
Bill Hickox’s way, too; an’ a Christian adherence to that commandment,
not only saves Bill’s life, but endows him with the record for
single-handed killin’s so far as we-all has accounts.”
“Is it a story?” asked the Red Nosed Gentleman. “Once in a while I
relish a good blood and thunder tale.”
“It’s this a-way,” said the Old Cattleman. “Bill’s hand is forced by the
Jake McCandlas gang. Bill has ’em to do; an’ rememberin’, doubtless,
the Bible lessons of his old mother back in Illinois, he shore does
’em with all his heart, as the good book says. This yere is the story
of ‘The Wiping Out of McCandlas.’”