XIX. A WINDFALL FROM "GENTLEMAN JOE"
I went to my rooms, purposing to go straight to bed, and get a good sleep.I did make a start toward undressing; then I realized that I should onlylie awake with my brain wearing me out, spinning crazy thoughts and schemeshour after hour--for my imagination rarely lets it do any effectivethinking after the lights are out and the limitations of material thingsare wiped away by the darkness. I put on a dressing-gown and seated myselfto smoke and to read.
When I was very young, new to New York, in with the Tenderloin crowd andup to all sorts of pranks, I once tried opium smoking. I don't think Iever heard of anything in those days without giving it a try. Usually, Ibelieve, opium makes the smoker ill the first time or two; but it had nosuch effect on me, nor did it fill my mind with fantastic visions. Onthe contrary, it made everything around me intensely real--that is, itenormously stimulated my dominant characteristic of accurate observation.I noticed the slightest details--such things as the slight difference inthe length of the arms of the Chinaman who kept the "joint," the number ofbuttons down the front of the waist of the girl in the bunk opposite mine,across the dingy, little, sweet-scented room. Nothing escaped me, and alsoI was conscious of each passing second, or, rather, fraction of a second.
As a rule, time and events, even when one is quietest, go with such a rushthat one notes almost nothing of what is passing. The opium seemed tocompel the kaleidoscope of life to turn more slowly; in fact, it sharpenedmy senses so that they unconsciously took impressions many times morequickly and easily and accurately. As I sat there that night after leavingAnita, forcing my mind to follow the printed lines, I found I was inexactly the state in which I had been during my one experiment with opium.It seemed to me that as many days as there had been hours must have elapsedsince I got the news of the raised Textile dividend. Days--yes, weeks, evenmonths, of thought and action seemed to have been compressed into those sixhours--for, as I sat there, it was not yet eleven o'clock.
And then I realized that this notion was not of the moment, but that I hadbeen as if under the influence of some powerful nerve stimulant since mybrain began to recover from the shock of that thunderbolt. Only, wherenerve stimulants often make the mind passive and disinclined to take partin the drama so vividly enacting before it, this opening of my reservoirsof reserve nervous energy had multiplied my power to act as well as mypower to observe. "I wonder how long it will last," thought I. And it mademe uneasy, this unnatural alertness, unaccompanied by any feverishness orsense of strain. "Is this the way madness begins?"
I dressed myself again and went out--went up to Joe Healey's gambling placein Forty-fourth Street. Most of the well-known gamblers up town, as well astheir "respectable" down town fellow members of the fraternity, were oldacquaintances of mine; Joe Healey was as close a friend as I had. He hadgreat fame far squareness--and, in a sense, deserved it. With his fellowgamblers he was straight as a string at all times--to be otherwise wouldhave meant that when he went broke he would stay broke, because none ofthe fraternity would "stake" him. But with his patrons--being regarded bythem as a pariah, he acted toward them like a pariah--a prudent pariah. Hefooled them with a frank show of gentlemanliness, of honesty to his ownhurt; under that cover he fleeced them well, but always judiciously.
That night, I recall, Joe's guests were several young fellows of thefashionable set, rich men's sons and their parasites, a few of the big downtown operators who hadn't yet got hipped on "respectability"--they playingpoker in a private room--and a couple of flush-faced, flush-pursed chapsfrom out of town, for whom one of Joe's men was dealing faro from whatlooked to my experienced and accurate eye like a "brace" box.
Joe, very elegant, too elegant in fact, in evening dress, was showing a newpiece of statuary to the oldest son of Melville, of the National IndustrialBank. Joe knew a little something about art--he was much like the artdealers who, as a matter of business, learn the difference between goodthings and bad, but in their hearts wonder and laugh at people willing topart with large sums of money for a little paint or marble or the like.
As soon as Joe thought he had sufficiently impressed young Melville, hedrifted him to a roulette table, left him there and joined me.
"Come to my office," said he. "I want to see you."
He led the way down the richly-carpeted marble stairway as far as thelanding at the turn. There, on a sort of mezzanine, he had a gorgeouslittle suite. The principal object in the sitting-room or office was a hugesafe. He closed and locked the outside door behind us.
"Take a seat," said he. "You'll like the cigars in the second box on mydesk--the long one." And he began turning the combination lock. "Youhaven't dropped in on us for the past three or four months," he went on.
"No," said I, getting a great deal of pleasure out of seeing again, andthus intimately, his round, ruddy face--like a yachtman's, not like adrinker's--and his shifty, laughing brown eyes. "The game down town hasgiven me enough excitement. I haven't had to continue it up town to keepmy hand in."
In fact, I had, as I have already said, been breaking off with my formerfriends because, while many of the most reputable and reliable financiersdown town go in for high play occasionally at the gambling houses, it isn'twise for the man trying to establish himself as a strictly legitimatefinancier. I had been playing as much as ever, but only in games in my ownrooms and at the rooms of other bankers, brokers and commercial leaders.The passion for high play is a craving that gnaws at a man all the time,and he must always be feeding it one way or another.
"I've noticed that you are getting too swell to patronize us fellows," saidhe, his shrewd smile showing that my polite excuse had not fooled him."Well, Matt, you're right--you always did have good sound sense and asteady eye for the main chance. I used to think the women'd ruin you, theywere so crazy about that handsome mug and figure of yours. But when I sawyou knew exactly when to let go, I knew nothing could stop you."
By this time he had the safe open, disclosing several compartments and asmall, inside safe. He worked away at the second combination lock, andpresently exposed the interior of the little safe. It was filled with agreat roll of bills. He pried this out, brought it over to the desk andbegan wrapping it up. "I want you to take this with you when you go," saidhe. "I've made several big killings lately, and I'm going to get you toinvest the proceeds."
"I can't take that big bundle along with me, Joe," said I. "Besides, itain't safe. Put it in the bank and send me a check."
"Not on your life," replied Healey with a laugh. "The suckers we trimmedgave checks, and I turned 'em into cash as soon as the banks opened. Iwasn't any too spry, either. Two of the damned sneaks consulted lawyersas soon as they sobered off, and tried to stop payment on their checks.They're threatening proceedings. You must take the dough away with you, andI don't want a receipt."
"Trimming suckers, eh?" said I, not able to decide what to do.
"Their fathers stole it from the public," he explained. "They're drunkenlittle snobs, not fit to have money. I'm doing a public service byrelieving them of it. If I'd 'a' got more, I'd feel that much more"--hevented his light, cool, sarcastic laugh--"more patriotic."
"I can't take it," said I, feeling that, in my present condition, to takeit would be very near to betraying the confidence of my old friend.
"They lost it in a straight game," he hastened to assure me. "I haven't hada 'brace' box or crooked wheel for four years." This with a sober face anda twinkle in his eye. "But even if I had helped chance to do the good workof teaching them to take care of their money, you'd not refuse me. Up townand down town, and all over the place, what's business, when you come tolook at it sensibly, but trading in stolen goods? Do you know a man whocould honestly earn more than ten or twenty thousand a year--good cleanmoney by good clean work?"
"Oh, for that matter, your money's as clean as anybody's," said I. "But,you know, I'm a speculator, Joe. I have my downs--and this happens to be astormy time for me. If I take your money, I mayn't be able to account for
it or even to pay dividends on it for--maybe a year or so."
"It's all right, old man. I'll never give it a thought till you remind meof it. Use it as you'd use your own. I've got to put it behind somebody'sluck--why not yours?"
He finished doing up the package, then he seated himself, and we bothlooked at it through the smoke of our cigars.
"It's just as easy to deal in big sums as in little, in large matters as insmall, isn't it, Joe," said I, "once one gets in the way of it?"
"Do you remember--away back there--the morning," he asked musingly--"thelast morning--you and I got up from the straw in the stables over at JeromePark--the stables they let us sleep in?"
"And went out in the dawn to roost on the rails and spy on the speed trialsof old Revell's horses?"
"Exactly," said Joe, and we looked at each other and laughed. "We inrags--gosh, how chilly it was that morning! Do you remember what we talkedabout?"
"No," said I, though I did.
"I was proposing to turn a crooked trick--and you wouldn't have it. Youpersuaded me to keep straight, Matt. I've never forgotten it. You kept mestraight--showed me what a damn fool a man was to load himself down with apetty larceny record. You made a man of me, Matt. And then those good looksof yours caught the eye of that bookmaker's girl, and he gave you a job atwriting sheet--and you worked me in with you."
So long ago it seemed, yet near and real, too, as I sat there, conscious ofevery sound and motion, even of the fantastic shapes taken by our upcurlingsmoke. How far I was from the "rail bird" of those happy-go-lucky years,when a meal meant quite as much to me as does a million now--how far fromall that, yet how near, too. For was I not still facing life with the samecareless courage, forgetting each yesterday in the eager excitement of eachnew day with its new deal? We went on in our reminiscences for a while;then, as Joe had a little work to do, I drifted out into the house, tooka bite of supper with young Melville, had a little go at the tiger, andtoward five in the clear June morning emerged into the broad day of thestreets, with the precious bundle under my arms and a five hundred-dollarbill in my waistcoat pocket.
"Give my win to me in a single bill," I said to the banker, "and blowyourself off with the change."
Joe walked down the street with me--for companionship and a little airbefore turning in, he said, but I imagine a desire to keep his eye on histreasure a while longer had something to do with his taking that earlymorning stroll. We passed several of those forlorn figures that hurrythrough the slowly-awakening streets to bed or to work. Finally, there cameby an old, old woman--a scrubwoman, I guess, on her way home from cleaningsome office building. Beside her was a thin little boy, hopping along on acrutch. I stopped them.
"Hold out your hand," said I to the boy, and he did. I laid the fivehundred-dollar bill in it. "Now, shut your fingers tight over that," saidI, "and don't open them till you get home. Then tell your mother to do whatshe likes with it." And we left them gaping after us, speechless beforethis fairy story come true.
"You must be looking hard for luck to-day," said Joe, who understood thistransaction where another might have thought it a showy and not very wisecharity. "They'll stop in at the church and pray for you, and burn acandle."
"I hope so," said I, "for God knows I need it."