As he climbed the stairway to his room he heard some one descending from above, and as they passed beneath the dim light of a flickering gas-jet he realized that the other stopped suddenly and turned back to look after him as Jimmy continued his ascent of the stairs; and then a low voice inquired:
“Say, bo, what you doin’ here?”
Jimmy turned toward the questioner.
“Oh!” he exclaimed as recognition of the other dawned slowly upon him. “It’s you, is it? My old and esteemed friend, the Lizard.”
“Sure, it’s me,” replied the Lizard. “But what you doin’ here? Looking for an assistant general manager?”
Jimmy grinned.
“Don’t rub it in,” he said, still smiling.
The other ascended toward him, his keen eyes appraising him from head to foot.
“You live here?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Jimmy; “do you?”
“Sure, I been livin’ here for the last six months.”
“That’s funny,” said Jimmy; “I have been here about two months myself.”
“What’s the matter with you?” asked the Lizard. “Didn’t you like the job as general manager?”
Jimmy flushed.
“Forget it,” he admonished.
“Where’s your room?” asked the Lizard.
“Up another flight,” said Jimmy. “Won’t you come up?”
“Sure,” said the Lizard, and together the two ascended the stairs and entered Jimmy’s room. Under the brighter light there the Lizard scrutinized his host.
“You been against it, bo, haven’t you?” he asked.
“I sure have,” said Jimmy.
“Gee,” said the other, “what a difference clothes make! You look like a regular bum.”
“Thanks,” said Jimmy.
“What you doin’?” asked the Lizard.
“Nothing.”
“Lose your job?”
“I quit it,” said Jimmy. “I’ve only worked a month since I’ve been here, and that for the munificent salary of ten dollars a week.”
“Do you want to make some coin?” asked the Lizard.
“I sure do,” said Jimmy. “I don’t know of anything I would rather have.”
“I’m pullin’ off something to-morrow night. I can use you,” and he eyed Jimmy shrewdly as he spoke.
“Cracking a box?” asked Jimmy, grinning.
“It might be something like that,” replied the Lizard; “but you won’t have nothin’ to do but stand where I put you and make a noise like a cat if you see anybody coming. It ought to be something good. I been working on it for three months. We’ll split something like fifty thousand thirty-seventy.”
“Is that the usual percentage?” asked Jimmy.
“It’s what I’m offerin’ you,” replied the lizard.
Thirty per cent of fifty thousand dollars! Jimmy jingled the few pieces of silver remaining in his pocket. Fifteen thousand dollars! And here he had been walking his legs off and starving in a vain attempt to earn a few paltry dollars honestly.
“There’s something wrong somewhere,” muttered Jimmy to himself.
“I’m taking it from an old crab who has more than he can use, and all of it he got by robbing people that didn’t have any to spare. He’s a big guy here. When anything big is doing the newspaper guys interview him and his name is in all the lists of subscriptions to charity — when they’re going to be published in the papers. I’ll bet he takes nine-tenths of his kale from women and children, and he’s an honored citizen. I ain’t no angel, but whatever I’ve taken didn’t cause nobody any sufferin’ — I’m a thief, bo, and I’m mighty proud of it when I think of what this other guy is.”
Thirty per cent of fifty thousand dollars! Jimmy was sitting with his legs crossed. He looked down at his ill-fitting, shabby trousers, and then turned up the sole of one shoe which was worn through almost to his sock. The Lizard watched him as a cat watches a mouse. He knew that the other was thinking hard, and that presently he would reach a decision, and through Jimmy’s mind marched a sordid and hateful procession of recent events — humiliation, rebuff, shame, poverty, hunger, and in the background the face of his father and the face of a girl whose name, even, he did not know.
Presently he looked up at the Lizard.
“Nothing doing, old top,” he said. “But don’t mistake the motives which prompt me to refuse your glittering offer. I am moved by no moral scruples, however humiliating such a confession should be. The way I feel now I would almost as lief go out and rob widows and orphans myself, but each of us, some time in our life, has to consider some one who would probably rather see us dead than disgraced. I don’t know whether you get me or not.”
“I get you,” replied the Lizard, “and while you may never wear diamonds, you’ll get more pleasure out of life than I ever will, provided you don’t starve to death too soon. You know, I had a hunch you would turn me down, and I’m glad you did. If you were going crooked some time I thought I’d like to have you with me. When it comes to men, I’m a pretty good picker. That’s the reason I have kept out of jail so long. I either pick a square one or I work alone.”
“Thanks,” said Jimmy, “but how do you know that after you pull this job I won’t tip off the police and claim the reward.”
The Lizard grinned his lip grin.
“There ain’t one chance in a million,” he said. “You’d starve to death before you’d do it. And now, what you want is a job. I can probably get you one if you ain’t too particular.”
“I’d do anything,” said Jimmy, “that I could do and still look a policeman in the face.”
“All right,” said the Lizard. “When I come back I’ll bring you a job of some sort. I may be back to-night, and I may not be back again for a month, and in the mean time you got to live.”
He drew a roll of bills from his pocket and commenced to count out several.
“Hold on!” cried Jimmy. “Once again, nothing doing.”
“Forget it,” admonished the Lizard. “I’m just payin’ back the twenty you loaned me.”
“But I didn’t loan it to you,” said Jimmy; “I gave it to you as a reward for finding my watch.”
The Lizard laughed and shoved the money across the table.
“Take it,” he said; “don’t be a damn fool. And now so-long! I may bring you home a job to-night, but if I don’t you’ve got enough to live on for a couple of weeks.”
After the Lizard had gone Jimmy sat looking at the twenty dollars for a long time.
“That fellow may be a thief,” he soliloquized, “but whatever he is he’s white. Just imagine, the only friend I’ve got in Chicago is a safe-blower.”
CHAPTER IX.
HAROLD SITS IN A GAME.
When Elizabeth Compton broached to her father the subject of a much-needed rest and a trip to the Orient, he laughed at her. “Why, girl,” he cried, “I was never better in my life! Where in the world did you get this silly idea?”
“Harold noticed it first,” she replied, “and called my attention to it; and now I can see that you really have been failing.”
“Failing!” ejaculated Compton, with a scoff. “Failing nothing! You’re a pair of young idiots. I’m good for twenty years more of hard work, but, as I told Harold, I would like to quit and travel, and I shall do so just as soon as I am convinced that he can take my place.”
“Couldn’t he do it now?” asked the girl.
“No, I am afraid not,” replied Compton. “It is too much to expect of him, but I believe that in another year he will be able to.”
And so Compton put an end to the suggestion that he travel for his health, and that night when Bince called she told him that she had been unable to persuade her father that he needed a rest.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that you don’t take it seriously enough yourself, and that you failed to impress upon him the real gravity of his condition. It is really necessary that he go — he must go.”
; The girl looked up quickly at the speaker, whose tones seemed unnecessarily vehement.
“I don’t quite understand,” she said, “why you should take the matter so to heart. Father is the best judge of his own condition, and, while he may need a rest, I cannot see that he is in any immediate danger.”
“Oh, well,” replied Bince irritably, “I just wanted him to get away for his own sake. Of course, it don’t mean anything to me.”
“What’s the matter with you tonight, anyway, Harold?” she asked a half an hour later. “You’re as cross and disagreeable as you can be.”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “There is nothing the matter with me at all.”
But his denial failed to convince her, and as, unusually early, a few minutes later he left, she realized that she had spent a most unpleasant evening.
Bince went directly to his club, where he found four other men who were evidently awaiting him.
“Want to sit in a little game to-night, Harold?” asked one of them.
“Oh, hell,” replied Bince, “you fellows have been sitting here all evening waiting for me. You know I want to. My luck’s got to change some time.”
“Sure thing it has,” agreed another of the men. “You certainly have been playing in rotten luck, but when it does change — oh, baby!”
As the five men entered one of the cardrooms several of the inevitable spectators drew away from the other games and approached their table, for it was a matter of club gossip that these five played for the largest stakes of any coterie among the habitues of the card-room.
It was two o’clock in the morning before Bince disgustedly threw his cards upon the table and rose. There was a nasty expression on his face and in his mind a thing which he did not dare voice — the final crystallization of a suspicion that he had long harbored, that his companions had been for months deliberately fleecing him. Tonight he had lost five thousand dollars, nor was there a man at the table who did not hold his I. O. U’s. for similar amounts.
“I’m through, absolutely through,” he said. “I’ll be damned if I ever touch another card.”
His companions only smiled wearily, for they knew that to-morrow night he would be back at the table.
“How much of old man Compton’s money did you get tonight?” asked one of the four after Bince had left the room.
“About two thousand dollars,” was the reply, “which added to what I already hold, puts Mr. Compton in my debt some seven or eight thousand dollars.”
Whereupon they all laughed.
“I suppose,” remarked anther, “that it’s a damn shame, but if we don’t get it some one else will.”
“Is he paying anything at all?” asked another.
“Oh, yes; he comes across with something now and then, but we’ll probably have to carry the bulk of it until after the wedding.”
“Well, I can’t carry it forever,” said the first speaker. “I’m not playing here for my health,” and, rising, he too left the room. Going directly to the buffet, he found Bince, as he was quite sure that he would.
“Look here, old man,” he said, “I hate to seem insistent, but, on the level, I’ve got to have some money.”
“I’ve told you two or three times,”’ replied Bince, “that I’d let you have it as soon as I could get it. I can’t get you any now.”
“If you haven’t got it, Mason Compton has,” retorted the creditor, “and if you don’t come across I’ll go to him and get it.”
Bince paled.
“You wouldn’t do that, Harry?” he almost whimpered. “For God’s sake, don’t do that, and I’ll try and see what I can do for you.”
“Well,” replied the other, “I don’t want to be nasty, but I need some money badly.”
“Give me a little longer,” begged Bince, “and I’ll see what I can do.”
Jimmy Torrance sat a long time in thought after the Lizard left. “God!” he muttered. “I wonder what dad would say if he knew that I had come to a point where I had even momentarily considered going into partnership with a safe-blower, and that for the next two weeks I shall be compelled to subsist upon the charity of a criminal?
“I’m sure glad that I have a college education. It has helped me materially to win to my present exalted standing in society. Oh, well I might be worse off, I suppose. At least I don’t have to worry about the income tax.
“It is now October, and since the first of the year I have earned forty dollars exactly. I have also received a bequest of twenty dollars, which of course is exempt. I venture to say that there is not another able-bodied adult male in the United States the making of whose income-tax schedule would be simpler than mine.”
With which philosophic trend of thought, and the knowledge that he could eat for at least two weeks longer, the erstwhile star amateur first baseman sought the doubtful comfort of his narrow, lumpy bed.
It was in the neighborhood of two o’clock the next morning that he was awakened by a gentle tapping upon the panels of his door.
“Who is it?” he asked. “What do you want?”
“It’s me bo,” came the whispered reply in the unmistakable tones of the Lizard.
Jimmy arose, lighted the gas, and opened the door.
“What’s the matter?” he whispered.
“Are the police on your trail?”
“No,” replied the Lizard, grinning. “I just dropped in to tell you that I grabbed a job for you.”
“Fine!” exclaimed Jimmy. “You’re a regular fellow all right.”
“But you might not like the job,” suggested the Lizard.
“As long as I can earn an honest dollar,” cried Jimmy, striking a dramatic pose, “I care not what it may be.”
The Lizard’s grin broadened.
“I ain’t so sure about that,” he said. “I know your kind. You’re a regular gent. There is some honest jobs that you would just as soon have as the smallpox, and maybe this is one of them.”
“What is it?” asked Jimmy. “Don’t keep me guessing any longer.”
“You know Feinheimer’s Cabaret.”
“The basement joint on Wells Street?” asked Jimmy. “Sure I know it.”
“Well, that’s where I got you a job,” said the Lizard.
“What doing?” asked Jimmy.
“Waiter,” was the reply.
“It isn’t any worse than standing behind a counter, selling stockings to women,” said Jimmy.
“It ain’t such a bad job,” admitted the Lizard, “if a guy ain’t too swelled up. Some of ’em make a pretty good thing out of it, what with their tips and short changing — Oh, there are lots of little ways to get yours at Feinheimer’s.”
“I see,” said Jimmy; “but don’t he pay any wages?”
“Oh, sure,” replied the Lizard; “you get the union scale.”
“When do I go to work?”
“Go around and see him to-morrow morning. He will put you right to work.”
And so the following evening the patrons of Feinheimer’s Cabaret saw a new face among the untidy servitors of the establishment — a new face and a new figure, both of which looked out of place in the atmosphere of the basement resort.
Feinheimer’s Cabaret held a unique place among the restaurants of the city. Its patrons were from all classes of society. At noon its many tables were largely filled by staid and respectable business men, but at night a certain element of the underworld claimed it as their own, and there was always a sprinkling of people of the stage, artists, literary men and politicians. It was, as a certain wit described it, a social goulash, for in addition to its regular habitues there were those few who came occasionally from the upper stratum of society in the belief that they were doing something devilish. As a matter of fact, slumming parties which began and ended at Feinheimer’s were of no uncommon occurrence, and as the place was more than usually orderly it was with the greatest safety that society made excursions into the underworld of crime and vice through its medium.
C
HAPTER X.
AT FEINHEIMER’S.
Feinheimer liked Jimmy’s appearance. He was big and strong, and the fact that Feinheimer always retained one or two powerful men upon his payroll accounted in a large measure for the orderliness of his place. Occasionally one might start something at Feinheimer’s, but no one was ever known to finish what he started.
And so Jimmy found himself waiting upon table at a place that was both reputable and disreputable, serving business men at noon and criminals and the women of the underworld at night. In the weeks that he was there he came to know many of the local celebrities in various walks of life, to know them at least by name. There was Steve Murray, the labor leader, whom rumor said was one of Feinheimer’s financial backers — a large man with a loud voice and the table manners of a Duroc-Jersey. Jimmy took an instinctive dislike to the man the first time that he saw him.
And then there was Little Eva, whose real name was Edith. She was a demure looking little girl, who came in every afternoon at four o’clock for her breakfast. She usually came to Jimmy’s table when it was vacant, and at four o’clock she always ate alone. Later in the evening she would come in again with a male escort, who was never twice the same.
“I wonder what’s the matter with me?” she said to Jimmy one day as he was serving her breakfast. “I’m getting awfully nervous.”
“That’s quite remarkable,” said Jimmy. “I should think any one who smoked as many cigarettes and drank as much whisky as you would have perfect nerves.”
The girl laughed, a rather soft and mellow laugh. “I suppose I do hit it up a little strong,” she said.
“Strong?” exclaimed Jimmy. “Why, if I drank half what you do I’d be in the Washingtonian Home in a week.”
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 735