Chapter II: Part 2

This so-called Queen, coming into Chinatown--by what route only she can tell--and creating a mild sensation among the Orientals who inhabit the houses on those narrow, twisting streets. The story was that a dose of knockout drops had proved the turning point in her life.

John Chinaman, you know, has a keen eye for the beautiful, not only in decorative art and choice silks, but in women.

There is his one weak point, the defective link in the chain, the one vulnerable spot in the armor of his stony reserve.

The lobbygows--the errand men of the Chinese--the whites, who execute commissions for them, and do all sorts of services, both legitimate and illegitimate, who will work in the dark as well as in the light, and whose heels can be hurried by extra compensation, saw and noted this Queen also, and in seeing, they, too, admired, but more or less hopelessly. The one spot which is quick in a woman’s composition is adulation. Let her be like ice, as cold and pure and reserved as her likeness carved out of the whitest Parian marble, or the hardest of flint-like granite, and admiration will make her as soft and supple as a Cleopatra.

She comes into her own and knows it.

She smiles and looks about for a likely head upon which to drop the wreath of her favors, and if she hesitates it is because the right head has not been bowed, or that her whim bids her hold off that she may only succumb after a struggle.

I am not putting up any defense for this Chinatown Queen. She was simply a woman with moods and humors, and pretty ways. Furthermore, which is essential in most cases, she was good to look at.

So many were the affairs that she had that there is no Solomon wise enough to tell how or when the first one began. All that is known is that she dressed in silks that were costly enough for a real queen, and which smelled of the spices and perfume of the Orient.

When I say costly, I mean from a money standard. They were more costly than that, so far as she was concerned personally, for in the end they cost her her life, and if she is not dead yet they certainly cost her happiness, which really amounts to the same thing.

For a while she lived furiously, with anything she wanted for the asking. Fine clothes, fine jewels, and money to spend is part of every woman’s life.

More than that, it is a keystone.

Besides, she was the most prominent woman in all the Quarter. For her that was fame and glory enough.

Had she been placed, by a fortunate move, somewhere else on the chess-board of life, her fame might have been more secure, but what difference does that make, so long as she was satisfied?

It wasn’t long before her real life began, when her steps, instead of being on the level or upward, traced their gradual way downward.

That was inevitable in that case, just as it is in other cases where constancy is an unknown virtue.

She passed from hand to hand like the chattel that she was. She didn’t even consider the proposition of the highest bidder, and start a hoard in some secret place which would have been a life raft to her in the turbulent days to come.

She lived on promises, and those are false things which fall to bits before adverse winds and threatening weather. Her spirits rose and fell in an inverse ratio to the rising and setting of the sun, and she took no heed of the days to come. The seed of thrift failed to find lodgment in her being.

And another thing, she never knew the real meaning of the word opportunity.

In her early and halcyon days before the opium and the night life had stamped its mark upon her face, there came, with a party of sight-seers to Chinatown one night, a man about town whose name stood for respectability, good family and wealth. She, as Queen, could not well be overlooked, and the guide took the party to her apartments on the first floor of a dingy tenement.

“What’s up here?” asked one of the party.

“Here is where de Queen of Chinatown lives,” responded the guide. “Dis is de gal wots got all de gang on de run, and as fer de Chinkys--why, dere ain’t one uv dem wot wouldn’t croak a guy fer her.”

They filed into the room and looked at the girl as they looked at the rest of the odd sights.

Let anybody rise above the human herd, even a short distance, or do anything that is in the slightest way unusual, and they are bound to find themselves in the center of the spot light.

“Youse kin buy a drink off her, if yer like, or if yer’ll cough up er bone apiece, she’ll show yer how to hit der pipe,” announced the guide.

They thought it was worth a dollar each to see a Queen smoking opium, and all cheerfully handed her the fee, with the exception of this one particular man, who pressed five times the amount into her hand.

Curious things happen in this world of ours, and here is one of them:

Two hours later, the same man, who had slipped away from his party, hunted up the same guide, and giving him a good-sized fee requested the honor of another visit to the Queen.

The moral tone of Chinatown is not so high that when the guide was dismissed he should feel at all offended. He was perfectly satisfied, and he said so a few minutes later as he was relating this story to some of his friends in the saloon on the corner.

From this point the Queen herself takes up the tale. She told it to her bosom friend, the Rummager, a week later, and the Rummager’s eyes bulged and her mouth opened as she heard it. More than once she was inclined to disbelieve it, and said so, but the facts were there and proven by the presence of certain articles which could be accounted for in no other way.

“He was one of the real ones,” remarked the Queen, “and I knew it as soon as I saw him. I have seen fellows stuck good and strong, but he was the limit. He was clean gone. When he came back the second time he began as all the others do, by asking me how I came to live in Chinatown. I told him to cut it out, and cut it quick, and he took my tip. He didn’t lose a minute telling me he liked me, either, and, say, he promised me everything you could think of, up and down, if I would cut the gang and go with him. He said I could have the swellest flat that money could buy, and a horse and carriage, if I liked. I thought he was kidding at first, but he soon put me wise that he was the goods. He chinned to me for about an hour, and then he told me to put on my glad rags and he would take me uptown to a feed. I was on in a minute, and nothing but a cab would do for him. We went up on Broadway, and the layout cost him $25, easy.

“We come down the line and butted into every joint that had a light out, and every place we hit was a bottle of wine. And every drink we took it was, ‘Well, will you leave that crowd?’

“On the level, once or twice he had me going, but when I thought of all the boys down here, and the good times we’re having I couldn’t do it, and I told him so. When I left him he was ossified for fair, and he gave me these things to remember him by, he said.”

Whereupon the Queen showed up a roll of bills, a scarf pin, a match box, and the Rummager believed.

She couldn’t afford to do otherwise very well, for the Queen was, as usual, doing all the buying of drinks, and the Rummager’s thirst has been compared to a barrel of sponges.

It was only the other day that I found myself wondering what had become of that pin and box. Where have they been since then and who has owned them? That they have fallen into many hands there can be no doubt, and the first to get them was the pawnbroker.

But after that!

From silks the Queen went to calico. That is a great chasm for any woman to cross, and from three rooms she came down to one. Notice how easily the human being can adjust itself to changes.

The nights of dissipation had begun to leave their mark, and her throne was tottering.

The plumpness of her figure began to disappear, and angles crept in to take the place of curves. Her eyes were less bright, and her enthusiasm had lost its edge.

But she didn’t realize this.

She thought she was still Queen and she was living on her past, just as many other real queens have, and for that she is to be forgiven, for it is a woman’s right to think herself the same as she was when she was at her best.

It is the life buoy to which she always clings, and when she dies her arms are found clasped about it with the grip of death.

And then the day came when this Queen, a wisp and shred of a woman, whose dreams had gone, and whose calico had turned to rags, went down the street of the Quarter one night never to return.

She had married a man of her class, and they went into a tenement together.

Her sun had set--her day was done.

One day the priest was sent for to shrive her. I hope there was consolation in his visit, because a dethroned queen needs pity sometimes.

A GIRL OF THE GOLDEN GATE

When you go to the theatre, sit in a comfortable seat, and look at the gay, laughing girls who are doing all sorts of stunts in the front row, you are evidently under the impression that their lives are simply one unending series of revels and that they live in luxurious ease. In your fancy you see them going to magnificent apartments to enjoy late dinners washed down by high-priced wine; you think, perhaps, that they dress just as you see them on the stage, and that all they have to do is ask for anything they happen to want and it is theirs.

Your imagination paints you a wonderful picture of love behind the scenes, but like children’s fairy tales, half is a dream.

You are simply bringing into existence a mental painting in very attractive colors, and if you could make it real it would be a very fine thing for the girl who makes up that she may look well from behind the footlights.

There are few short cuts to the stage and the roads are for the most part hard and tiresome. The woman who gets there, and by that I mean the one who finally lands with a reputation, usually has a past that would make interesting reading--if it could be published, which is out of the question.

To-day there is a woman in New York who is a star.

So far as real talent is concerned she ought to have been a star years ago, but there was some hitch and she failed to connect.

She’s all right now, however, and when she pulls down her fat bundle of bills every week she doesn’t think of the old days on the Pacific Coast when she was doing one turn an hour in the mining camps, and well content if she got enough at the end of the show to pay for her room and give her a balance on the side to keep up her wardrobe--stage wardrobe, I mean--for she didn’t seem to care much how she dressed when on the street, and so far as that was concerned, she was on the street very little, for reasons that are obvious.

She was a nice looking little girl in those days, full of ginger and all that sort of thing, and she had the kind of magnetism that made a good many men think they couldn’t live without her. She was bright and saucy, and happy-go-lucky, taking things as they came, singing her songs with an abandon and grace that went a long way toward filling up the house.

But it was when she danced that she was at her best. That half-wild Spanish Cachuca made those rough men rise to their feet and cheer her as if she was the most wonderful girl in the world, and when the boys were flush many a hundred dollars in gold went over the flickering footlights to her feet, so that she really and truly danced on gold. It was the Westerners’ way of paying homage to anyone they liked, and it is done to-day, but not to so great an extent.

You see, there was no limit on those fellows in the blue shirts and bearded faces, and what was a handful of gold more or less to them then or at any other time?

They were an open-handed lot, living only for the day, and to the devil with to-morrow, lavishing all they had upon anyone whom they liked.

As the money rolled in to her so it rolled out, easily and without apparent effort, and at the end of a year she had just what she started with--a couple of dresses, the most part of which was tinsel.

And that brings me right back into the heart of this story, the preliminary having been sufficiently long to give you a thorough introduction to this little lady--queen of the mining camps.

It isn’t likely you ever heard of a fellow who for some romantic reason or other called himself Palo Alto Bill. He was a tin horn gambler, good at short cards, willing to take a chance at any proposition that ever came over the hills, so long as he could figure in it financially, but he had no heart. It was all Bill from first to last, and he didn’t have enough generosity in his entire system to drop a bone to a hungry dog. You know the breed--they think they are all right, but they are so eaten up with selfishness, and egotism, and vanity, that they stride along with their elbows pushed out, as if they were going to shove everybody else off the earth.

He was handsome all right, with black hair--black as an Indian’s--a curling mustache, and a wonderfully taking way with a woman.

This was the combination that stacked itself up against the little singer with the suggestion that they travel in double harness for mutual benefit.

That was all there was to it.

He saw her, he liked her; why shouldn’t he have her? And if she had been married it would have been the same to him. He would in all probability have suggested an elopement on a pair of fast horses.

“How long have you been in the business, Sis?” was the way he started it.

He was smoking a cigarette at the time and he didn’t even take the trouble to look at her, but holding his head back, blew the rings of smoke, one after the other, toward the low ceiling.

“Oh, about a year, and I’ve been making good ever since I started.”

“That’s what you have. I suppose you’ve got a big bunch of coin by this time, eh?”

“If I have I wish someone would find it for me. There may be a lot of fun in the game, but there’s no money, that is, not yet.”

“Well, let me give you just one straight tip. What you want is a manager--someone to boom you. Suppose you and I double up, and then I’ll show you how to get the money, and hold it, too. Nothing cheap about me. You’re a good fellow and I’m a good fellow, and we can do well together. I’ll put you where you belong, for you ain’t getting half of what’s coming to you. How about it?”

Just remember that this was in the West, where a girl has a mighty hard time of it without a protector of some sort, and that there were a hundred tie-ups by mutual consent for one real swell matrimonial clinch, with a sky-pilot to sing his little song of “I now pronounce you man and wife.” Also bear in mind that she had known Bill about six months and that his style rather appealed to her, because he was artistic in a crude sort of a way, and besides, he wore his clothes with a certain amount of grace that was good for the female eye to look on.

So they tied up together and Bill began his life of ease and prosperity. The next week was announced as her grand farewell appearance, and she was the recipient every night of a testimonial of so substantial a character that, as she herself put it, her salary seemed like pennies for candy. In these many testimonials might have been recognized the fine Italian touch of Bill, who had a Hermann-like knack of waving his hands in the empty air and producing real money. And while she was busy picking up the nuggets and gold bucks which the enthusiastic miners flung at her, he was attending to his end of the contract by arranging a tour. He had a few schemes under his hat that would have brought him in all kinds of money if he had had a fair swing, but he was born with the soul of a grafter, and that is very much like a taint in the blood, in that it can never be effaced. It may disappear for a while, but it is always liable to turn up at the most unexpected time.

When the week was done the company started--the company in this case being a couple of miners, who were in hard luck and who went ahead of the show; Bill and the girl.

I saw her the other night in a famous eating place on Broadway putting away a chop and a small bottle, and I wondered then if she remembered San Bernardino that June morning when everything she had in the world was held in one small bag which Bill carried.

The plan of procedure was simple. She was to get a date in a town, Bill was to go around and boom her as the best that ever hit the Coast, and tell of the hit she made in ’Frisco. Then when she came on the stage to do her dance the two hobos were to start the cheering. Toward the finish of the act one of them was to walk down the aisle to the footlights and toss up a handful of gold coins, and then the other was to follow suit. That would start the crowd giving up; for after all, people are like sheep, they will always follow a leader.

It was a good stunt, and there wasn’t any chance for a failure.

It worked out just as Bill figured it would, and it kept him busy enough looking after the money end of the game.

It was the turn in the tide for her so far as her fortunes and popularity were concerned, and she simply created a furore wherever she appeared. In those days she wore a twenty-dollar gold piece around her neck. It was held by a string which ran through a hole she had bored herself with a great deal of labor. It was the first piece of money she had ever received over the footlights and she said it was her mascot, and declared she would always keep it. It might have been her mascot, but I’ll bet a hundred to one that she hasn’t it now.

Put a good looking girl on the stage, have her make a hit so that she is talked about, and she’ll attract more men than a leg show in Paris. There’s an irresistible fascination about the stage that makes even bald-headed old papas fall. It’s a hard thing to figure out, but it’s a fact, nevertheless.

In this particular case they flocked around her like sheep for a shelter when a storm is in the air, and the girl took to wearing good clothes, ordered from ’Frisco, and using to their full capacity the services of a maid.

And then there came upon the scene the other man. He had hit the Coast from Colorado, and his mine was turning out the yellow stuff so fast that he had more than he could do to spend it. He was busily engaged in the exciting pastime of buying everything he saw when he met the girl that Bill was leading along the golden road to wealth. There was nothing half-way about his methods, so he promptly went out and bought the biggest diamond he could find, put it in an envelope upon which he wrote in lead pencil:

“The best stone for the nicest girl; come and have a bottle of wine with me after the show.”

He didn’t need to sign his name to it, for the stage hand who received a ten-dollar gold piece as a tip for taking it to her pointed him out as he sat at one of the tables well up toward the stage.

“He seemed to be kind of stuck on you,” he remarked casually; “will I tell him you’ll see him?”

She put the ring on her finger and looked at it critically, holding it first this way and that so that the light would catch it. The inspection evidently pleased her, for she said:

“Sure; he’s entitled to it after this.”

That is how it came about that, still in her stage dress, she went directly from the stage to the table where Croesus sat and smiled on him, while the diamond flashed like a calcium.

One bottle broke the ice, two put them on a friendly footing, and three made them lifelong friends. They were on the fourth and their heads were close together. He was talking in a low tone, while she was listening intently and nodding her head in affirmation every moment or so when Bill happened along.

He didn’t like the looks of this and he showed it plainly. He touched her on the shoulder with an air of proprietorship and remarked curtly:

“Come on.”

“Who’s your friend?” asked the wine opener; “introduce me.”

“I’m the real one,” said Bill.

“Husband?” asked the other, laconically.

“Not yet,” she answered.

“Oh,” and his eyebrows were lifted a trifle. Then he turned to Bill. “Sit down and have a drink; I want to talk to you.”

Then the fifth bottle was brought on.

He held his brimming glass aloft.

“Wish me luck, old man, for I’m going to take this little girl away from you,” and his blue eyes looked into Bill’s black ones with a steady and disconcerting gaze.

“I guess we’ve got something to say about that,” said Bill, putting his glass down suddenly.

“Not much. You see, I’m going to give you a thousand dollars and that will be your meal ticket until you find a new prima donna.”

“You made a mistake,” said Bill, “you meant $5,000.”

“I agree with you; I did make a mistake; it’s $2,500, and you’d better grab it quick, because it’s easy money and it’s the limit, too.”

The girl was playing with the ring, turning it around her finger aimlessly, never once looking and saying no word. Bill drained his glass, put it down, and then looked at the stage.

“Do I get it now?” he asked abruptly.

“Yes, now.”

He held out his hand, palm upward, with a suggestive movement, and in just fifteen seconds it held an order on the Assay Office for the amount. It was as easy as going into a store and buying a blue flannel shirt. Thirty days later--a record for speed, by the way--the girl opened in San Francisco as the star in a farce comedy on which ten thousand dollars had been spent before the curtain went up. She had talent, but not enough to make good, and after a week’s losing run the play was shelved. She gained a lot of experience and had a suite of rooms at the best hotel in town, which was something for a girl who had previously been housed in an eight by ten. That was what gave her a running jump into the profession, so to speak. She landed on both feet now, but none of her friends would dare bring up the subject of the glorious West to her.

That were best forgotten.

WHEN FISTS WERE TRUMPS

There was no reason why they should have called the play “The Casino Girls” except that it might have sounded attractive to the out-of-town people, and the word Casino, in the mind of the average manager, is always good for the money. But it was a good show, nevertheless, with lots of nice girls in tights and spangles, and you could spend two hours there about as well as you could anywhere.

But this isn’t to be a story about a show in general, nor is it written with the object of handing a bouquet to the estimable gentleman who had the “Casino Girls” under his wing. He had troubles of his own, but he was paid for that. If some one would sit down beside me for an hour or so--that is, some one who knew--and tell me nice little stories about all of the girls--or shall I say ladies?--with that show, I am quite sure I would have enough material to last me for a good many weeks to come, and it wouldn’t be scandal, either. I should leave that for the religious papers and a few of the sanctimonious dailies.

But it happens that just now I have only one good card up my sleeve, so I’ll play that for all it is worth, and then wait for something else to leak out and find its way to the mahogany desk where I do stunts like this one.

You will have noticed if you have seen the show, one of the young women who is a bit more athletic than the others. She has a fist that can hand out a scientific punch and an arm to back it up. She wears tights with the rest of the crowd and doesn’t attract special attention until the olio is put on, and then she shines forth as a specialist. She punches the bag in a manner that is truly marvelous, and what she doesn’t do to that pear-shaped leather pendant couldn’t be done by anybody--man or woman.

The medals dancing on her chest as she uppercuts and swings would signify that she is an artiste of more than usual merit, and the self-assurance and confidence she displays during the brief time she is on show that she is quite sure of herself and that she knows the business from the make-up box to the bow at the finish.

Furthermore, in addition to her other accomplishments, she has been known to kick the crown of a hat held six feet from the floor, which, by the way, is no mean trick.

Now a few turns of the leaves of the calendar backward, a wiping out of recent years, and you are at the beginning of the story. Not in New York, but in Ohio--the finish is in the big city, as all good finishes are.

A good-looking, rugged girl was there; a normal girl whose only heritage was health, strength and ambition, which, by the way, in many cases, is better than money. She took in all the shows that came to town, and had about as good a time as any other girl could have under the circumstances. She didn’t get stage struck. She had no ambition to sing or dance before the public, nor did she give a rap about Romeo and Juliet. Nothing like that for her.

You see her time hadn’t come and she had not yet struck her gait.

The first intimation she had that she was stung with the theatrical bee when she saw a bag-punching act in which the man made many misses, but faked it through so that it looked like the real thing.

That was what she had been waiting for all that time and she never knew it. The next day she bought a bag, had a platform rigged up and started in to practice. She worked in a woodshed, I think it was, with no one to teach her, and she hammered and punched until she was about ready to drop from exhaustion, but she never gave up. She would travel anywhere to see a bag-punching act and get a few tips, and although there were not many in the business at that time, especially out in Ohio, the few she did land told her all they knew and that wasn’t half enough.

She had reached that stage when she was fairly good, but didn’t know it, when there blew into the town a 120-pound boxer of about the fourth class who could pound the leather just enough to get a salary that would pay his board and buy a few drinks, but the fact that he was a bag puncher was enough for her, so she made his acquaintance and hustled him around to her improvised gymnasium to show her what he knew. To her surprise there was nothing in his routine that she wasn’t familiar with, and when she went at the bag herself she did a few stunts that made him open his eyes in amazement.

“Who put you next to that?” he asked.

“No one; I learned it myself.”

“Ever do an act?” was the next question he shot at her.

He had a quick mind--anybody has who knocks around on the road for a few seasons--and he was already beginning to figure.

“No, but some day when I get good I am going to ask some kind manager to give me a chance.”

“You don’t have to wait any longer, Sis; you can come with the show right away and we’ll do an act together.”

Here was a meal ticket that would be good for many a hard winter when the other fellows were eating snowballs, and, if he could help it, it wasn’t going to get away from him.

And that is the beginning of the story.

It didn’t get away from him, for he married her as soon as he could find the money to pay a minister, and that didn’t take very long.

He fixed up an act which might have been better, but which was good enough to get work with reasonable regularity. There was only one thing to it and that was her bag punching, and if it hadn’t been for his hustling around and getting dates he would have been a rank case of excess baggage. In the meantime, he was teaching her how to box, and when the act grew stale they had a boxing finish that never failed to go big with the crowd.

All this time she was learning. She hunted up every bag puncher of note in the country and gathered in the tips, and when she wasn’t busy with anything else she was framing up something new for herself. All this tended to give her a muscular development that was worth having and that many an athlete would have been proud of.

Her reputation was on the increase and she began to be known. The first step had been made, and it became a comparatively easy thing to get booking in Europe. The skate she was tied to began to swell up a bit, and during the seven days they were on the ship bound for Liverpool he got it into his head that he was the real one and that she was a side issue.

“Don’t ever forget,” he said to her when they reached London, “that I am the real fellow. I dug you out of a woodshed and put you where you are now and if you try to get gay with me, I’ll send you back there, and I’ll get another one just as good as you are.”

He thought he was the real candy boy, and he started in to cut a wide swath. He chased every petticoat that came along, blew in their joint salary at the cafes, and the only time she saw him was when they were doing their act.

In Berlin she happened to walk in the cafe connected with the music hall at which they were working, and she saw him sitting at one of the tables trying to fill a 160-pound blonde with Rhine wine.

“Don’t you think it is about time to cut this out?” she asked.

“Didn’t I tell you to keep away from me and not butt in where you’re not wanted?” he said.

“Yes; but I think I have something to say. I’m not a wooden image, am I?”

“Who is this woman?” asked the blonde, languidly.

“I’m his wife, if you want to know,” was the retort, “and anyone would think you had no home by the way you hang around here.”

“Tell her to go away; she annoys me.”

That was enough for the girl. With one swift jerk the blonde was pulled to her feet, then a vicious right hook found its way to her jaw, and as she dropped to the floor the “meal ticket” walked away.

It was the first blow she had ever struck except in a friendly contest with the gloves, and it stirred her blood as nothing else had ever done.

It did another thing--it set her to thinking, and from that time on she began a course of good, hard training.

Something definite and tangible had become established in her mind and she was after it like a hound after a rabbit. She paid as little attention to him as if he had never existed, and he carried on his love affairs--very numerous ones they were, too--with a free hand. He became a hot proposition, and he blew like a drunken sailor on every girl who caught his fancy. She lived like an automaton, doing everything mechanically except the conditioning work she was engaged in. At every show they boxed together, and once in a while, when she would get a chance, she would whip in a hard one in order to lay bare his weak spots. One night she hit him in the stomach. It was a short, sharp, snappy punch, and she felt the shock of it up to her elbow.

He turned white under his grease paint and then wobbled back a couple of paces.

When they came together again he whispered savagely:

“Cut those out or I’ll hand you one the next time.”

“It was a slip,” she said. “I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s a good thing for you that you didn’t,” he answered, surlily.

From Berlin they went to the Casino, in Paris, and if the trick that was pulled off there had never happened I wouldn’t be writing this story.

Paris to him was like a bone to a hungry dog and he was a hot sport from the night they hit the town, while she was a joke because she wouldn’t mix with the bunch and play the game of love on her own hook.

But all the time she was getting ready for the stunt that was to give her revenge and freedom together.

At last it came.

When he stumbled into the dressing room one night he had the beginnings of a good-sized jag. He had been putting away his share of absinthe and he began to abuse her.

“You’re a dead one,” he said, “and I don’t know what I ever saw in you. Here I’ve put you on your feet and give you the chance of your life to make good, but you don’t connect. Get in with the crowd and be a live one before it’s too late, for you’re getting to be a shine.”

“What do you expect me to do when you are mixed up with a bunch of cheap soubrettes, and drunk half the time?”

“Why, do the same as I do, of course. There’s that guy that came in last night and wanted to meet you. He’s got all kinds of coin, and----”

“Shut up,” she cried, “what do you think I am?”

“Not much.”

She began working at her gloves viciously, pushing the padding away from the knuckles so as to leave the fist with as little covering as possible. You know the trick if you’ve ever seen boxers just before a contest. It isn’t considered the right thing to do, but when done properly makes a punch well landed about twice as effective. When she was through there wasn’t much hair in the centre of her gloves, and then they were ready to go on. They sang their opening song, juggled the Indian clubs, after which she went at the bag. That concluded, they were to go three rounds to a quick finish.

They were ready.

He went forward to the footlights to make the usual announcement.

“My partner and myself will now box three exhibition rounds,” etc., etc.

“Time.”

When a man has been sparring exhibition rounds very long he is apt to grow a trifle careless, and to take chances that he wouldn’t take under ordinary circumstances. It was so in this case, and at the first rush he got a stiff, straight left in the mouth that brought the blood oozing from between his lips.

“What the hell,” he began in amazement, but he didn’t finish, for she was on him in an instant and a short right went home to his ribs. He caught a look in her eyes that suddenly sobered him, and he began to stall and cover up. He retreated a few steps, and she said tauntingly:

“What’s the matter, are you afraid of me, you cur?”

He wavered for a moment and then she went after him again.

He swung his right with all his might and caught her on the ear. Somewhere from out of the audience there came a sibilant hiss which was taken up by a hundred at once. She needed that punch just about that time, and it spurred her on, even though it hurt for a moment. She bored in, and throwing down her guard drove a right and left to his stomach--his weak spot. There was the place, but she had forgotten it in the excitement.

He dropped heavily and awkwardly on his back, rolled over slowly and pulled himself to his feet. He came up with a realizing sense that he must protect himself against this woman who was taking an unfair advantage of him, and in his ears rang the shouts and applause of a delighted audience. He knew they were not for him, but he would fight, anyhow, and show them what he could do. They were to see that an American boxer was no slouch. He saw her standing there waiting, with a grim smile on her compressed lips and he made up his mind that he would knock that smile off. He straightened up and went at her like a bull. She didn’t back off as he thought she would, and when he pulled back his right he got a jolt on the jaw that turned him half way around. He went in again and she hit him in the stomach. When his head dropped his nose met an uppercut that made the blood spurt in a stream. The sight seemed to madden her and she went at him fiercely and vindictively. There was revenge behind every blow and she felt that she was evening up the insults and humiliation of a year. He was groggy and almost helpless and there was pandemonium in the audience. Some of the women had gone out, but those who had stayed had risen in their seats and were cheering on this American girl who was fighting like a man. She heard nothing and saw only the man she loathed and hated. She noted his puffed and bleeding face and knew she had him.

“Put up your hands,” she said sharply.

He obeyed mechanically and she walked over to him. He tried to cover up, but she feinted him into an opening, and then drove a straight right to his jaw and he flopped over in the wings crying:

“I quit, I quit; I didn’t think you’d do this.”

She didn’t even look at him as she went past to her dressing room.

Ten minutes later he came in with a trace of his former bluster.

“What are you trying to do, anyhow?” he began, but she shut him up.

“I’ll lick you again right here if you don’t keep your mouth closed. From now on until the end of this engagement _I’m_ running this act, and I’m going to collect the money for it, too, and any time I catch you doing anything I don’t like _I’m_ going to beat your head off. Any time you think I can’t do it start something. In just two weeks more you can pack your clothes and shift for yourself, for I’m done.”

That’s all.

She has been shifting for herself ever since, and is doing pretty well, thank you.

KID AND HIS TEN THOUSAND

Just another restaurant scene with waiters and guests and steaming dishes and wine.

It’s the same old thing, repeated many times a day, but it’s like a stage on which a thousand plays have appeared. The setting is always the same--it’s only the scene that changes.

I just want to call your attention to that red-cheeked boy at the table over by the window. I said boy, although from the standpoint of years he is really a man. But he lacks experience to bring him to a man’s real estate. Years, you know, don’t always count in this world, that is, not in all things. In this woman is excepted, because years count for everything with her.

This particular boy has just had his first experience, and that is the excuse for this story--if an excuse is needed. He has laid the foundation stone upon which he is going to build his life, and in the building he will use many stones of many colors, sizes and shapes.

You see him sitting there disconsolate, miserable and wretched. His home, as luxurious a one as anybody would want, is not more than a dozen blocks away, and he will wind up there in the course of the next forty-eight hours, for he is practically broke.

I call him The Boy With The Ten Thousand Dollar Bill.

Just a few years ago his father died. A few weeks later the family lawyer was in the drawing room reading the will of the deceased, and near the end of the document he came to a clause which stipulated:

“On his twenty-first birthday my son shall receive from the balance of moneys unexpended a bill of the denomination of $10,000 to do with as he shall see fit, and he shall not be asked to account for the expenditure of it to anyone in any way whatsoever.”

That was a curious item for even a curious will, but the estate was big and the founder of that fortune felt evidently that he could afford to experiment with a mere ten thousand, even after his death, that the lesson might be of benefit to the heir.

The object is obvious.

The boy became of age, and on that day he received the bank note which to him seemed like a fortune, so he felt that he owned the world.

A man can do a lot of good in New York with that amount of money, and a boy can do a lot of harm.

This boy knew in advance the good fortune that was coming to him, and in looking around he made up his mind that the first thing a man of his means should buy would be an automobile costing $4,000, so the day he got the money he bought the car, and he received in exchange a bundle of crisp five hundred bills.

He must have thought those bills represented the wealth of Croesus, or that they were magic, and no matter how many he might use, some mysterious agency would replace them.

At 11.30 o’clock that night the new automobile was backed up against the stage door of a Broadway playhouse, and half an hour later it was filled with as many girls as could possibly be crowded in.

In that startling way the boy with the big bill made his debut into the society of the line. He gave the girls a dinner that they are talking of yet, and before two hours had gone by they were calling him pet names and incidentally trying to get a line on the actual size of his bank roll. They worked individually, and each one could in fancy see herself installed in a fine house, mistress of unlimited means and the wife of an especially easy mark, made to order for a chorus girl.

You see he was so liberal that he deceived them, although, as a matter of fact, young ladies with their wide experience ought to have known better, and have figured out the limit of his possibilities.

These ten thousand dollars were left by the dead man to be a bait for the wolves, and he had arranged it so that the hand of his son should feed it to them bit by bit. There were other thousands behind these and they were to be protected by the knowledge of the fate of the ones which had gone before. It was willed that ten thousand dollars of experience might be bought with it, and the boy was doing his share of it very well. He left his home and took a nice little apartment so that he could have more liberty, which he needed just about that time. He lunched with a soubrette and dined with a singer. If he liked a show or fancied one of the girls in it, he engaged a box every night for the week. The crowd dubbed him The Little Millionaire, and he deserved the title, for he was certainly playing the star part, and he was always present at what are known as rackets where the chief source of amusement were girls who cut capers and danced to the music of male voices.

His automobile, which always carried a bunch of freight from which ribbons and feathers fluttered, denoting the sex of the wearers, of course, shot up and down and in and out in a most spectacular manner, and it, as much as anything else, helped to make him popular.

He must have known a bit about finance, for it looked to those who were watching his career as if he was spending about ten thousand a week, and so he got the reputation of doing--as sometimes happens in this world--that which was impossible.

But through it all he never showed his hand.

He was dining one night with an especially nice little girl of the stage to whom he had shown a lot of attention--which means in stage parlance that he had bought her presents worth accepting.

They had come to the third bottle of wine, and to her way of thinking, the time seemed about ripe for what she had in mind.

“A man who’s been in the business a long time was telling me the other night that I ought to have a show of my own,” she mused, as she sipped her wine.

She had made a careful and skilful cast and she waited.

“Why don’t you?” he asked presently.

That was quicker action than she had dared to expect.

“I ought to have done it two years ago when I had a friend that wanted to start me out on the road. Don’t you think I’m as good as Blanche Bates?”

“How was it you didn’t go?” he queried, ignoring her question.

“Well, you see, I didn’t like this party, and I wouldn’t accept favors from no one I didn’t like. It don’t cost much to put a show on if you know how, and there’s a lot of money in it if it’s a hit.”

“About how much?”

“Twelve or fifteen thousand dollars would do it up in great shape. I think a nice little comic opera would be good. The kind Lillian Russell has. All she makes good on is her looks and that’s not so much. I could take a few music lessons while the play was being fixed up and it wouldn’t be long before I could make them all sit up and look me over.”

There was a moment’s pause and then she aimed at the bull’s eye:

“What’s the matter with you backing it?”

“That’s what I was just thinking about,” was the answer. “I’ll look into it and if it’s all right I’ll see my broker and give you a chance to see what you can do as a star.”

He was talking like an old timer and he had her going in a minute. But that was only one of his jokes and for two weeks he kept it up. Then he told her of some enormous investments he had made which had tied him up temporarily, while she had to go around explaining to her friends that it was all off about what she had been telling them.

There was one proposition this gay young sport hadn’t figured on, for all going out and nothing coming in makes a quick and, as a rule, a spectacular finish. A fellow starts out like a three-time winner and comes under the wire with nothing but a bundle of junk, without even knowing his right name.

Two months of the three had gone by and the most remarkable part of the whole affair was that there was any money left. But toward the latter part of the game he had been growing wise, or he thought he was, at any rate. He stopped the five-dollar tips and he was cutting out a night here and there. He might have retired with honors if he hadn’t met Blanche.

Good-looking, slick, clever Blanche, the regret of whose life was that she hadn’t met him first and got it all in one solid chunk. He didn’t know it, but he was made for Blanche, and what was more to the point, she knew it. In fact, there were very few things she didn’t know.

His talk about his brokers didn’t switch her in the least. There had been a time in her life when she might have believed it, but that time had gone by. She had lived in a fool’s paradise just once and that was enough for her.

He actually wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t consider it for a moment, because she didn’t figure him out as a future proposition for more than a couple of thousand at the most.

“You’re all right, Harry,” she said once, “but we won’t have any marrying just now. What we will do is go shopping. I want to furnish a flat so I can really have a home of my own and you will be just as welcome there as if you owned it yourself, so come along and we’ll pick the things out. You have very nice taste in such matters, I know, and we can have a good time buying.”

Good speech that, and very nicely delivered, and he liked her well enough to find no flaw in it. But when the time really came for the buying there was something else she had to do, so she said:

“Don’t you bother your head about this; just give me the money; I know what I want; I have the list all made out. I’ll buy them and fix them up and when everything is ready I’ll have you come up and look at them and tell me what you think. I know my taste is not as good as yours, but I’ll do the best I can.”

Please bear in mind that he was only a boy--just twenty-one years old--then you will understand perhaps why it was he fell for so old a story.

At this point you’ve got it all figured out. In your opinion she took the coin and simply faded away.

Nothing of the kind.

He saw her once every twenty-four hours at least and she reported progress, and then one day he got a note telling him to come up and see the new place.