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It is not an ugly baby as babies go. Not that I pretend to be a judge. As I paused by its battered perambulator, it held up a rose-leaf hand, as though inviting me to look; and I looked. The little claw possessed but three talons; the first two fingers had been shot away. When I asked how, Alma lowered her head sadly, saying nothing. It would have been foolish to ask the baby. It couldnt talk. Moreover, since the fingers were shot away before it was born, it could possess no clear memory as to details.
It is a healthy baby. Alma loves it dearly, and can be depended upon to give it every care. That is, she can be if she lives; and on that head her worn thinness alarms her friends, who wish she were fatter. Some say her thinness is the work of the bullet. Others believe that a sorrow is sapping her heart.
III. HOW PIOGGI WENT TO ELMIRA
The Bottler was round, inoffensive, well-dressed, affable. He was also generous, as the East Side employs the term. Any one could touch him for a quarter upon a plea of beef stew, and if plaintively a bed were mentioned, for as much as fifty cents. For the Bottler was a money-maker, and had Suffolk Street position as among its richest capitalists.
What bridge whist is to Fifth Avenue so is stuss to the East Side. No one save the dealer wins at stuss, and yet the device possesses an alluring feature. When the victim gets up from the table, the bank under the descriptive of viggresh returns him one-tenth of his losings. No one ever leaves a stuss game broke, and that final ray of sure sunshine forms indubitably the strong attraction. Stuss licks up as with a tongue of fire a round full fifth of all the East Side earns, and to viggresh should be given the black glory thereof.
The Bottler owned talents to make money. Morally careless, liking the easy way, with, over all, that bent for speculation which sets some folk to dealing in stocks and others to dealing cards, those moneymaking talents found expression in stuss. Not that the Bottler was so weak-minded as to buck the game. Wise, prudent, solvent, he went the other way about it, his theater of operations being 135 Suffolk. Also, expanding liberally, the Bottler endowed his victims, as stripped of their last dollar they shoved back their hopeless chairs, with not ten, but fifteen per cent, of what sums they had changed in. This rendered 135 Suffolk a most popular resort, and the foolish stood four deep about the Bottlers tables every night in the week.
The Bottler lacked utterly the war-heart, and was in no wise a fighter. He had the brawn, but not the soul, and this heart-sallowness would have threatened his standing save for those easy generosities. Gangland is not dull, and will overlook even a want of courage in one who, for bed and beef stews, freely places his purse at its disposal.
There are two great gangs on the East Side. These are the Five Points and the Monk Eastmans. There are smaller gangs, but each owes allegiance to either the one or the other of the two great gangs, and fights round its standard in event of general gang war.
There is danger in belonging to either of these gangs. But there is greater danger in not. I speak of folk of the Bottlers ways and walks. The Five Points and Eastmans are at feud with one another, and the fires of their warfare are never permitted to die out. Membership in one means that it will buckler you against the other while you live, and avenge you should you fall. Membership in neither means that you will be raided and rough-housed and robbed by both.
The Bottlers stuss house was like every other of its kind a Castle Dangerous. To the end that the peril of his days and nights be reduced to minimum, he united himself with the Five Points. True, he could not be counted upon as a shtocker or strong-arm; but he had money and would part with it, and gang war like all war demands treasure. Bonds must be given; fines paid; the Bottler would have his uses. Wherefore the Five Points opened their arms and their hearts to receive him.
The Eastmans had suffered a disorganizing setback when the chief, who gave the sept its name, went up the river for ten years. On the heels of that sorrowful retirement, it became a case of York and Lancaster; two claimants for the throne stood forth. These were Ritchie Fitzpatrick and Kid Twist, both valorous, both with reputations of having killed, both with clouds of followers at their backs.
Twist, in whom abode the rudiments of a savage diplomacy, proposed a conference. Fitzpatrick at that conference was shot to death, and Kid Dahl, a near friend of Twist, stood for the collar. Dahl was thus complacent because Fitzpatrick had not died by his hand.
The police, the gangs and the politicians are not without a sinister wisdom. When life has been taken, and to punish the slayer would be an inconvenience, some one who didnt do the killing submits to arrest. This covers the retreat of the guilty. Also, the public is appeased. Later, when the publics memory sleeps, the arrested one for lack of evidence is set at liberty.
When Fitzpatrick was killed, to clear the path to gang leadership before the aspiring feet of Twist, the police took Dahl, who all but volunteered for the sacrifice. Dahl went smilingly to jail, while the real murderer of Fitzpatrick attended that dead personages wake, and later appeared at the funeral. This last, however, by the nicer tastes of Gangland, was complained of as bordering upon vulgarity.
Fitzpatrick was buried with a lily in his hand, and Twist was hailed chief of the Eastmans. Dahl remained in the Tombs a reasonable number of weeks, and then resumed his position in society. It was but natural, and to the glory of stumbling human nature, that Dahl should dwell warmly in the grateful regard of Twist.
Twist, now chief of the Eastmans, cast about to establish Dahl. There was the Bottler, with his stuss Golconda in Suffolk Street. Were not his affiliations with the Five Points? Was he not therefore the enemy? The Bottler was an Egyptian, and Twist resolved to spoil him in the interest of Dahl.
Twist, with Dahl, waited upon the Bottler. Argument was short and to the point. Said Twist: Bottler, the Kid indicating the expectant Dahl is in wit your stuss graft from now on. Its to be an even break.
The news almost checked the beating of the Bottlers heart. Not that he was astonished. What the puissant Twist proposed was a commonest step in Gangland commerce Gangland, where the Scotch proverb of Take what you may; keep what you can! retains a pristine force. For all that, the Bottler felt dismay. The more since he had hoped that his hooking up with the Five Points would have kept him against such rapine.
Following the Twist fulmination, the Bottler stood wrapped in thought. The dangerous chief of the Eastmans lit a cigar and waited. The poor Bottlers cogitations ran off in this manner. Twist had killed six men. Also, he had spared no pains in carrying out those homicides, and could laugh at the law, which his prudence left bankrupt of evidence. Dahl, too, possessed a past as red as Twists. Both could be relied upon to kill. To refuse Dahl as a partner spelled death. To acquiesce called for half his profits. His friends of the Five Points, to be sure, could come at his call. That, however, would not save his game and might not save his life. Twists demand showed that he had resolved, so far as he, the Bottler, was concerned, to rule or ruin. The latter was easy. Any dozen of the Eastmans, picking some unguarded night, could fall upon his establishment, confiscate his bankroll, and pitch both him and his belongings into the street. The Five Points couldnt be forever at his threatened elbow. They would avenge him, certainly; but vengeance, however sweet, comes always over-late, and possesses besides no value in dollars and cents. Thus reasoned the Bottler, while Twist frowningly paused. The finish came when, with a sickly smile, the Bottler bowed to the inevitable and accepted Dahl.