The Apaches of New York

“This is how it is,” vouchsafed the explanatory Tony to Mrs. Vee and her purple fluttering doves. “Big Mike’s just after standin’ Low Foo’s wash-shop on its nut, an’ these monks are sizin’ up th’ wreck. When anything happens to a monk his tong makes good, see?”

Tony might not have said this had he recalled that Low Foo was a Four Brothers, and understood that no one not a Hip Sing Tong was in the crowd. Tony, however, recalled nothing, understood nothing; for he couldn’t tell one Chinaman from another.

“How interesting!” cooed Mrs. Vee, in response to Tony’s elucidation; and with that her flock of purple doves, in fluttering agreement, cooed, “How interesting!”

“Did youse lamp th’ ice on them dames?” asked Sop Henry, when the slumming Mrs. Vee and her suite were out of ear-shot.

Sop had an eye for diamonds.

“That bunch ain’t got a thing but money!” observed the Wop, his eyes glittering enviously. “I wisht I had half their cush.”

“Money ain’t th’ whole box of tricks.”

This deep declaration emanated from old Jimmy. Old Jimmy’s home was a rear room on Second Street near the Bowery, which overlooked a graveyard hidden in the heart of the block. There, when not restoring himself at Tony’s or Sirocco’s or Lyon’s, old Jimmy smoked a vile tobacco known as Sailors’ Choice, in a vile clay pipe as black as sin, and meditated. Having nothing to do but think, he evolved in time into a philosopher, and it became his habit to unload chunks of wisdom on whomsoever seemed to stand in need. Also, since he was warlike and carried a knife, and because anyone in hard luck could touch him for a dollar, he was listened to politely in what society he favored with his countenance.

“Money ain’t th’ whole box of tricks,” old Jimmy repeated, severely, wagging a grizzled head at the Wop, “an’ only you’re Irish an’ ignorant you wouldn’t have to be told so.”

“Jimmy, you’re nutty,” returned the Wop. “Never mind me bein’ nutty,” retorted old Jimmy, dogmatically. “I know all about th’ rich.” Then, in forgetfulness of his pension and the liberal source of it, he continued: “A rich man is so much like a fat hog that he’s seldom any good until he’s dead.”

Old Jimmy called for beer; wisdom is always dry. “Say?” observed the Dropper, airily, “do youse guys know that I’m thinkin’ I’ll just about cop off some dame with millions of dough, an’ marry her.”

“Would she have youse?” inquired Mollie Squint, with the flicker of a sneer.

“It’s easy money,” returned the Dropper; “all I has to do is put out me sign, see? Them rich frails would fall for me in a hully second.”

“You crooks can’t think of a thing but money,” snorted old Jimmy. “Marry a rich dame! A guy might as well get a job as valet or butler or footman somewhere an’ let it go at that. Do you mutts know what love is? Th’ one married chance of happiness is love. An’ to love, folks must be poor. Then they have to depend upon each other; and it’s only when people depend upon each other they love each other.”

“Jimmy,” quoth the Dropper, with mock sadness. “I can see your finish. You’ll land in Bloomingdale, playin’ wit’ a string of spools.”

“Did you ever,” demanded old Jimmy, disregarding the irreverent Dropper, “see some strapping young party, up against the skyline on an iron building, workin’ away wit’ one of them rivetin’ guns? Well, somewhere between th’ two rivers there’s a girl he’s married to, who’s doin’ a two-step ‘round a cook stove, fryin’ steak an’ onions for him, an’ keepin’ an eye out that their kids don’t do a high dive off th’ fire-escape. Them two people are th’ happiest in th’ world. Such boneheads as you can’t appreciate it, but they are. Give ‘em a million dollars an’ you’ll spoil it. They’d get a divorce; you’d put that household on th’ toboggan. If this Mister Vee, now, had been poor an’ drove a truck instead of bein’ rich an’ drivin’ a 6-horse coach, an’ if Mrs. Vee had been poor an’ done a catch-as-catch-can with th’ family washtub instead of havin’ money to burn an’ hirein’ a laundress, she’d never have bucked th’ divorce game, but lived happy ever after.”

“But, Jimmy,” interposed Tony, “I’ve seen poor folks scrap.”

“Sure,” assented Jimmy; “all married folks scrap – a little. But them’s only love spats, when they’re poor. Th’ wife begins ‘em. She thinks she’ll just about try hubby out, an’ see can he go some. Th’ only risk is him bein’ weak enough to let her win. She don’t want to win; victory would only embarrass her. What she’s after is a protector; an’ if hubby lets her put him on th’ floor for th’ count, she don’t know where she’s at. She’s dead sure she’s no good; an’ if he’s a quitter she’s left all in th’ air. Havin’ floored him, she thinks to herself, ‘This thing protect me? Why, I can lick him myself!’ After that, hubby might better keep close tabs on little Bright-eyes, or some mornin’ he’ll call the family roll an’ she won’t answer. Take a boy an’ a girl, both young, both square, both poor – so they’ll need each ether – an’, so he’s got her shaded a little should it come to th’ gloves, two bugs in a rug won’t have nothin’ on them.”

Old Jimmy up-ended his glass, as one who had settled grave matters, while the Dropper and the Wop shook contemplative heads.

“An’ yet,” said the Wop, after a pause, “goin’ back to them rich babies who was here, I still say I wisht I had their bundle.”

“It’s four for one,” returned old Jimmy, his philosophy again forging to the fore – “it’s four for one, Wop, you’d have a dead bad time. What street shows th’ most empty houses? Ain’t it Fift’ Ave-noo? Why be they empty? Because the ginks who lived in ‘em didn’t have a good time in ‘em. If they had they’d have stuck. A guy don’t go places, he leaves places. He don’t go to Europe, he leaves New York.”

Old Jimmy turned to Tony.

“Fill up th’ crockery. I’m talkin’ ‘way over th’ heads of these bums.”

“Ain’t he a wonder?” whispered Pretty Agnes to the Nailer.

“I should say as much,” responded the admiring Nailer. “He ought to be sellin’ gold bricks. He’s talked th’ Dropper an’ th’ Wop into a hard knot.”

The Dropper was not to be quelled, and insisted that Jimmy was conversing through his sou’wester.

“I don’t think so,” broke in Jew Yetta; “I strings wit’ Jimmy. Take a tumble to yourself, Dropper. If you was to marry one of them money dames, you’d have to go into high society. An’ then what? W’y, you’d look like a pig on a front porch.”

“Don’t youse bet on it,” declared the Dropper loftily. “There’s nothin’ in that high society stuff. A smart guy like me could learn his way t’rough in a week.”

“Could he?” said the Nailer, and his tones were tones of derision.

“That’s w’at I says!” replied the Dropper. Then, heatedly: “W’y, do you geeks think I’ve never been north of Fourteenth Street? Youse make me tired, Nailer. While you was up-th’-river, for toinin’ off that loft in Chambers Street, don’t I go to a shindy at th’ Demmycrat Club in honor of Sen’tor Depew? There was loidies there – th’ real thing, too. An’ wasn’t I another time at th’ Charlie Murphy dinner? Talk of high society! – if that ain’t high society, what is?”

Having squelched the Nailer, the Dropper proceeded more moderately.

“I remember th’ scare that’s t’run into me at the Depew racket. I’ve been put up ag’inst some hot propositions, but if ever I’m faded it’s then when, for th’ foist time, I lamps a full-blown dame in evenin’ dress. On th’ dead, I felt like yellin’ ‘Police!’”

“Phwat was it scared yez, Dropper?” asked the Wop.

“It ain’t that I’m so scared as rattled. There’s too much free-board to them evenin’ dresses.”

“An’ the Charlie Murphy banquet,” said Pretty Agnes, wistfully. “Didn’t yez get cold feet?”

“Naw, I don’t git cold feet. I admits I falls down, I don’t try to sidestep that; but it wasn’t my fault. Do it over again, an’ I’d go t’rough wit’ bells on.”

“How did youse fall down?”

“It’s be accident; I takes th’ wrong steer, that’s all. I makes it a point, knowin’ I’m none too wise, to plant meself when we pulls up to the feed opposite to a gilded old bunk, who looked like ready money. ‘Do as he does, Dropper’ I says to meself, ‘an’ you’re winner in a walk!’ So, when he plays a fork, I plays a fork; if he boards a chive, I boards a chive; from soup to birds I’m steerin’ be his wake. Then all of a sudden I cops a shock. We’ve just made some roast squabs look like five cents worth of lard in a paper bag, an’ slopped out a bunch of fizz to wash ‘em down, when what does that old Rube do but up an’ sink his hooks in a bowl of water. Honest, I like to ‘ve fell in a fit! There I’d been feelin’ as cunning as a pet fox, an’ me on a dead one from th’ jump!”

“Did any of them smart Alecks give youse th’ laugh?” asked the Nailer.

“Give me th’ laugh,” repeated the Dropper, disgustedly. “I’d have smashed whoever did in th’ eye.”

While beer and conversation were flowing in Number Twelve, a sophisticated eye would have noted divers outside matters which might or might not have had a meaning. On the heels of Big Mike’s laundry deeds of desolation and destruction at Low Foo’s, not a Chinaman was visible in Pell Street. It was the same when Mike came out of Tony’s and climbed the stairs to his room. Mike safely retired from the field, a handful of Four Brothers – all of them Lows and of the immediate clan of Low Foo – showed up, and took a slanteyed squint at what ruin had been wrought. They spoke not above a murmur, but as nearly as a white devil might gather a meaning, they were of the view that no monsoon could have more thoroughly scrap-heaped the belongings of Low Foo.

Other Chinamen began to gather, scores upon scores. These were Hip Sing Tongs, and they paid not the slightest heed to Low Foo’s laundry, or what was left of it. What Four Brothers were abroad did not mingle with the Hip Sing Tongs, although the two tribes lived in friendship. The Four Brothers quietly withdrew, each to his own den, and left the Hip Sing Tongs in possession of the street.

Being in possession, the Hip Sing Tongs did nothing beyond roost on the curb, or squat in doorways, or stand idly about. Now and then one smoked a cigarette.

About 11.20 o’clock, a Chinaman entered Pell Street from the Bowery. Every one of the Hip Sing Tongs looked at him; none of them spoke to him. Only, a place was made for him in the darkness of the darkest doorway. Had some brisk Central Office intelligence been there and consulted its watch, it might have occurred to such intelligence that had the newcomer arrived from Philadelphia over the B. & O. by latest train, he – assuming him to have taken the ferry with proper dispatch – would have come poking into Pell Street at precisely that hour.

Trinity struck midnight.

The bells sounded dim and far away. It was as though it were the ghost of some dead midnight being struck. At the sound, and as if he heard in it a signal, the mysterious Chinaman came out of the double darkness of the doorway in which he had been waiting, and crossed to the stairway that led up to the room of Mike. Not a whisper came from the waiting Hip Sing Tongs, who watched him with that blend of apathy and eagerness observable only in the Oriental. No one went with the mysterious Chinaman. Nor did the stairs creak – as with Big Mike – beneath his velvet shoes.

Five minutes passed.

The mysterious one emerged from Mike’s stairway as silently as he had entered it. He tossed a claw-like hand palm outward, toward the waiting, watching Hip Sing Tongs, and then went slippering towards the Bowery. Had that brisk Central Office intelligence been there to see, it might have reflected, recalling a time table, that by taking the Cortlandt Street ferry, the mysterious one would be in time for the 12.30 train to Philadelphia over the Pennsylvania.

Before the mysterious one had reached the Bowery, those scores of waiting, watching Hip Sing Tongs had vanished, and Pell Street was as empty as the promise of a politician.

“Now,” whispered Ching Lee to Sam Kum, who kept the chop suey shop, as they turned to go – “now he meet Ling Tchen, mebby so!”