Chapter IV: Part 4

As she grew up, the public school gave her an education, and when she was old enough she got work in an office. She was the belle of the ward, and that old longshoreman father was very proud of her. But before that she had one little adventure that is really worth a story by itself, and it shows the kind of a girl she is. She had a little love affair with a sailor on one of Uncle Sam’s warships, and when he was ordered to Cuba she took it into her head to go along. It was arranged that she was to take the name and place of a fellow who was about to desert. She came near getting away with the trick, and as it was she lasted for ten days before she was found. Then, after a brief interview with the commanding officer, she was put ashore when harbor was reached, and enough money was given her to get back to New York.

It was a clean case of throwback to the army ancestor, and the resemblance was so great that she might have been his sister. She held her head high, as became that one strain of good blood, good enough to stiffen her pride, but not good enough to shape her morals, for the taint was there in its full strength.

The elderly business man who employed her began flirting with her mildly, and he wound up by falling desperately in love, and so hard was he hit that at the end of six months she was installed in a handsome apartment at which he was a constant visitor. He took the one step that always leads to another, so that by the time twelve months had been rolled off on the calendar he had made her home his home, much to the detriment of his own respected domicile.

So great was the fascination of those black eyes that this sedate old gentleman forgot he ever had a home other than the one she was in; a wife, or even children. She became so necessary to his existence that she became a part of his life.

She might have walked this primrose path to the end had he not died. If he had lived there would have been no need for this story.

When he took that long, last journey her income came to an abrupt end and she was cast on her own resources with not even her longshoreman daddy to stand by and encourage her.

All this, you understand, is not a matter of fancy. It is, for the most part, court and police records.

She took up with a young fellow of about her own age who had about as little prospects as she had, and with the rent paid for three months in advance and just enough ready money to keep them going that long, they cast care to the winds and proceeded to enjoy themselves. One night, when the funds were getting to a low ebb, she, while ransacking a desk for a mislaid letter, found a half-used check-book which had belonged to her elderly protector.

“I could sign his name better than he could himself,” she remarked, “and I’ve done it, too.”

“Do you think we could swing one of them now?” said the man, sitting up straight as the inspiration came to him.

“Why, that’s absurd; he’s dead.”

“I know he’s dead all right. But fill one out for $75 and I’ll see what I can do with it.”

It was an easy trick for her, and in a moment she had handed him the paper.

“If I lay this, little girl,” he remarked as he went out, “we’re on the sunny side of Easy street for the rest of our lives.”

That heritage of brain stood her in good stead while he was away, and before he had returned she evolved a scheme that was worthy of a better cause.

It was this:

She would send him out to rob a letter box; they would open the mail thus stolen and search it for checks. She would copy the signature, make note of the bank, get blank checks of that institution and then commit the forgery.

It was almost too easy and the keynote of its success lay in its simplicity.

Of course, the laying of the spurious paper required nerve, but of what use is a man if he hasn’t nerve? When he came back unsuccessful, she explained her scheme, and they at once proceeded to put it in operation. With wire, to which was fastened an adhesive mixture, he prepared for the robbery of the mail boxes while she awaited results.

It has been told time and again how it worked and they themselves have admitted that their income rarely fell below $100 a day when they cared to work.

But at the end of every ready-money proposition of that kind there is a trap. Sometimes the road is very long and the final tragedy is averted for a considerable period, but whether long or short it is bound to come sooner or later.

The girl had grown to be a pastmaster of the art of forging signatures and success in getting the money had made the man bold. He began to be less cautious and the finish came so sure and sudden that it almost stunned him.

He was cleverly harvested by the police, who at once set out to get more than enough evidence to convict, for they looked upon him as the most dangerous of criminals. A spotter was sent out with instructions to ingratiate himself with the girl and, if possible, get a line on just the kind of work that had been done, and their second interview was very interesting.

“You take Billy’s place for a while,” she said to him, “and we’ll get enough money to get him out.”

“How?” asked the man.

“How? Are you stupid? Billy didn’t do anything but lay the paper. I filled out the checks every time. Didn’t you know that? It’s all my scheme. Billy only helped me and did as I told him. But he’s too nice a fellow to go up the river for a thing like this.”

It seems strange that with all her astuteness she should have given her hand away to a comparative stranger, but you must bear in mind that her side partner and confederate had been snatched away from her and she felt the need of some one to whom she could talk and in whom she could confide.

There is where she made a mistake, but it happened that it wasn’t a fatal one.

Bear in mind that she gave her hand away and told all she knew, and in that telling there was enough to convict her half a dozen times over. But she was game to the last ditch.

“I’m very sorry,” remarked her supposed confederate to her one evening, “but I’ll have to arrest you. _I’m_ an officer, you know.”

“I always ought to be guided by my first impressions,” she retorted. “I had an idea you were wrong when I first met you and if I had stuck to that you would have known nothing.”

“That’s right; but as it is I’ll have to take you down to headquarters.”

He acted as if it was a job he didn’t relish very much, and if the truth were told he would have let her make a getaway of it if he had dared.

In the prison she was popular as soon as she stepped inside the gates, and there was no one who would believe that a girl with a face like that would be guilty of harming anyone, much less being a confirmed and expert forger.

So the trial was called.

She treated it as a joke, and was by far the most composed person in the room. Her partner, to his credit, swore that he was the one who had done all of the robbing of the mail boxes, and all of the forging of checks, and he even went so far as to imitate several signatures, but that was offset by the evidence of the detective.

It was an easy matter to convict him, and he stood facing a term in prison.

Her trial was merely a bit of comedy in which she played the star part, and when the last scene had dropped she was bowing her thanks to the judge, the jury, the lawyers and the spectators, and smiling all the while like a girl with a new doll on Christmas morning. The red was in her cheeks and there was a look of roguery in her black eyes, and she sailed out of the courtroom amid a perfect shower of congratulations.

And it was all for one strain of blood.

Father an Irish stevedore, mother a Slav peasant whom centuries of oppression had made apathetic, grandmother also a Slav, and grandfather a German noble. She had gone back one generation to get that criminal taint, and she may have gone back further than that to get the good strain that made the whole world smile with her when she smiled and turn enemies into friends.

FROM THE WOODS TO BROADWAY

Jane her name was--plain Jane--but she wasn’t plain by any means. She was far from that. She could smoke a cigarette, drink a bottle of wine, and wear a Paquin gown with grace, and in these three things a woman has a chance to show what she is and what she can do. For my part I would consider them a test, just the same as performing certain mathematical calculations, and showing a proficiency in geography are tests in civil service examinations. There is nothing that gives a woman so much poise and self-confidence as smoking a cigarette daintily. It gives her a chance to think, you see, and appear unconcerned, and it is an ambush behind which she may hide in time of trouble.

This particular Jane had all the vices and charms that a young woman who is known to the crowd by her first name ought to have, or might be supposed to have. Men who were introduced to her found themselves calling her Jane inside of the hour, and that was because of her genius, for there are a lot of women in this world whose baptismal name no man would ever dare to use, even though they had been acquainted for years.

There is just as much difference in women as there is in drinks. It isn’t necessary to go into details on that subject, for every good hard drinker knows the different sensations of the different brands the morning after.

Jane blew into the big-city with a West wind, a dress suit case, on one end of which were the initials of her right name, and the drummer of a wholesale lace house who had caught her eye and won her regard by giving her some of his samples.

Your attention is called to the fact that a drummer’s existence is a cinch, especially if he has samples that he can afford to give away.

This one had a mustache that curled at the ends, a bank roll that looked like a toy balloon into which a kid had stuck a pin--which was Jane’s fault--and a nerve which was a little bit harder than Harveyized steel. He used the nerve in his business, and besides, it came in handy so far as Jane was concerned because he had a wife in Harlem. He planted Jane in a furnished flat, where he paid the rent for two weeks. Then because he had a champagne taste and a beer purse, he went to a pal of his who was a stage manager on Broadway and got the lady a job carrying a spear and wearing pale pink tights in a spectacular show that was about to be produced.

He was sitting in her front room warming his shins at the steam heat when he broke the news to her, and this is the way he did it. You sports can take a tip from this so you can see how it is done, for no man can ever foretell when he will be called on to produce the same line of talk.

“Do you know,” he began, “that you are the best fellow in the world and that the more I see of you the more I like you?”

“Do you?” asked Jane, simply, for she was nothing more nor less than a country girl. “I am very glad of that, but you know the rent was due yesterday and it hasn’t been paid yet.”

“Now,” he went on, ignoring the touch, “I know you well enough to know that you would like to be independent and make your own way in the world. I want to see you where you will be in a position to support yourself, and so I have arranged with a man who is under obligations to me to give you a chance and put you in the chorus of the ‘Ice King.’ You’ll get $15 a week at the start and then you’ll be jumped to $18. After that it’s up to you whether or not you come to the front and get the real good money with the yellowbacks.”

“But I have never been on the stage,” she said.

“Don’t I know that, and haven’t I fixed it? You’ll be broken in all right and all you have to do is as you are told and you’ll get your money every Monday night.”

So it was that the girl from Peapack, N. J., became independent and self-supporting, and was able before long to send a hundred-dollar note to the folks at home, for whom she still had a deep regard. You see, it is only the girls who save their money who can do that sort of thing.

When the young fellows around town wanted to see a show, some one would suggest that they go up and see Jane, and although she hadn’t a line to speak nor a note to sing, they would line up in the front row as if she was a star. It didn’t take the manager of the show very long to find out that Jane could draw like a porous plaster and then he jumped her salary up to $25.

With that she went to a fashionable hair dresser and paid $200 to have her hair turned from chestnut blonde to a hue of a stick of pale molasses taffy, the kind you get for five cents a throw, which sticks in your teeth and plays the deuce with the filling.

Girls of Jane’s kind are like boxers, in that their prosperity is manifested outwardly without delay. The aspiring young knuckle-duster, as soon as he wins a prominent battle, will at once hie himself off and blow in a chunk of the purse on a silk hat, patent leather shoes, a frock coat and a cane. With the balance he will annex a diamond, then he immediately becomes the real thing.

A girl has no use for frock coats and canes, but she goes strong on hair, so her loose coin goes for a gallon of bleach strong enough to change the faith of a Hindoo fakir, and that is the strongest thing in the world, except, perhaps, an African after a hard day’s work in the slaughter house.

She had a flat on Central Park, South--that’s wrong, it was an apartment, because she paid over $1,000 a year for it, whereas flats only cost about $40 a month-and she entertained the bunch with cozy little wine dinners that would make a man leave his happy home in a minute.

She was still getting her $25 a week, you know.

Then she tore the drummer’s name out of her address book, for he was a back number who had shown a decided tendency to cold feet.

She described him to the butler, and said that if he ever put in an appearance he was to be dismissed with the single word:

“Skiddoo.”

“I don’t understand,” said the butler, whose previous job had been on Fifth avenue. “What does Skiddoo mean?”

“It doesn’t make any difference whether you understand or not, just you say it to him and he will know, and that’s enough.”

And all that night this cheese sandwich with the side whiskers kept repeating the word to himself so he wouldn’t forget it, and he wrote it down on his cuff. He also traced it out on a card that he stuck in behind the hat rack in the hall. In his heart and soul he thought it was some foreign word which meant that the lady wasn’t at home or didn’t care to be disturbed.

That’s the worst of being a butler instead of Chuck Connors.

The traveling man with the immaculate gall had reached the worrying stage because the girl was doing so well and he had been pushed off the track. If she had stuck to her little furnished flat and the cheap togs he would have gone on his way whistling a merry tune, just as all men do. But she was on the high wave and sipping the cream off the top, and he thought there ought to be an armchair waiting for him by the fireplace of her new ranch, which was very natural, for all men are cast in the same identical mould. They don’t care for what they have, and are always hunting for something that’s hard to get.

If you look like the goods you’ll have them all going, but as soon as you tell your hard luck story you’ll get the sandbag where it will do the most good.

One night, after the show, Jane and a bunch of the merry-merry with money to spend, or burn, or throw away, was in the front room playing dollar limit poker, when the drummer, with a choice collection of high balls stowed away under his vest, and in a fit condition to either fight or cry, came up in the elevator. He had overdrawn his salary and was prepared to buy wine, if necessary, and he was dressed like a man whose credit is good at the best clothing store in town.

He held his thumb against the electric button for a moment, and because the butler was busy with a sauterne cup, very choice, being of the Barton and Guestier vintage of ’84, the kind Smithy always orders when he wants to be real flossy, the maid turned the knob and came face to face with him.

He made his little spiel, shoved in and stood in the hall on one foot waiting for the glad hand and the happy cry that he felt sure was coming.

“What’s his name? Who is he? Why don’t you get his card?” he heard Jane say. Then the maid came back.

“Will you please give me your card?”

“That won’t be necessary,” he remarked airily. “Just tell her Harry is here and she will know.”

He heard the maid telling her little story and then Jane’s silver tones floated out to him.

“What, that lobster? How did he get in? He must have had a shoe horn, and I suppose it will take a load of dynamite to get him out.” Then something else and all the girls laughed.

He pulled himself together and walked to where the voice came from.

The heat of the room was beginning to affect the cargo he was carrying and he hit both sides of the wall about eight times before he got to the door. He pulled the curtains aside and looked in on the game.

“Just thought I’d call,” he said, grinning.

“Well, didn’t I always tell you that you had bad thoughts?” she asked.

“Thought you’d be glad to see me,” he went on.

“Still thinking?” she queried. “I’ll see that raise and raise you back ten more.”

“I wouldn’t mind taking a hand if you’ll play fair.” Just then the butler came in with the drinks.

“Henderson,” remarked Jane without even so much as looking up, “what was that word I taught you--do you remember it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, what was it?”

“Skid-doo, ma’am.”

“Very good. Now turn around and say it to that man.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He turned slowly and with great dignity to the drummer who was bracing himself up against the door, and commanded:

“Skid-doo, sir.”

“So _I’m_ to be fired, eh?”

“Say it again, James; it may be some minutes before it takes effect.”

“Skid-doo, sir.”

“Suppose I don’t go?”

There was no answer to that, but Jane hadn’t been in New York a whole year without being on to her job, and she was able to face any proposition that ever came over the hills.

“Get me a piece of rope, James.”

“Yes, ma’am,” and away he went, just a bit faster than usual, wondering, no doubt, what the eccentric and erratic mistress of his was going to do next. He got the rope all right and returned with it in short order, because this seemed to be a case where haste was necessary, even at the expense of dignity. She took it from him and walking over to the drummer, said, as she deftly passed it around him.

“You had me on a string once, Harry, and now I’m going to get you on a rope.”

“Stop your kidding and be nice, Jane,” he spoke up, trying to look upon the whole thing as a joke, but while he was expostulating she had knotted the rope around both his arms and signalled to the butler to help her. “I want him tied over there,” she said, pointing to the piano, and before he knew it he was seated on the floor with his back up against a slab of mahogany, being held by the servant while Jane was making knots like a sailor.

When the job was done the game was resumed and nobody in the room paid the slightest bit of attention to him. He threatened and begged and finally he swore, and then Jane poured a glass of ice water over his head to cool him off.

“I always thought you had a mean disposition,” she remarked, “and now I know it.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for me,” he shouted.

“No, nor you wouldn’t be there if it hadn’t been for me,” she retorted.

For three solid hours he was kept trussed up like a fowl ready for the oven, and at the end of that time the game came to an end.

“I’m going to bed now,” said Jane, “and in half an hour the butler will come in and untie you. He will help you to your feet and when he says skiddoo to you I hope you will understand what he means. Good night.”

For thirty minutes the clock ticked monotonously and the back of the man on the floor was beginning to ache horribly. At last the silvery chime announced the half hour and then Henderson stepped softly in.

One by one he untied the fastenings and it was a tough job in view of the fact that a woman had made them. After that he helped the visitor to his feet. He assisted him on with his coat, handed him his hat, and together they walked, without either saying a word, to the hall door. The butler swung it solemnly open, slowly waved his hand, bowed deeply from the hips and said:

“Skid-doo, sir.”

“Go to hell,” came back the answer, as Harry shot down the stairs.

“How did he take it?” asked Jane the next morning.

“He took it all right, ma’am, but he was very uncivil, ma’am.”

THE WHIMS OF CURVES

The fellows who buy wine and eat terrapin at their midnight lunches--I ought to say dinners--had found a new attraction, and for a brief while she was the idol of the hour. But the trouble with these idols is that they don’t last, and the finish as a rule is very disheartening, and in many cases pathetic.

Of course, every once in a while a wise one will come to the front who will do a little bookkeeping with herself, and when the smoke of battle will have cleared away she finds she has enough to tell everybody to go to blazes if she cares to be rude.

But that is the exception rather than the rule. Quick money, you know, is like a dream, in that it only lasts while you are asleep. You think you are in a mansion, and when the knock comes on the door you discover that you are in the same old hall bedroom, and realize that you have to get up just as you have been doing all your life, and work ten hours a day--or eight, as the case may be--in order to get enough money to pay what you owe.

The girl that all the bloods were buying dinners and flowers for came from the West not so very long ago, and she didn’t leave any of her good looks behind her, either. She hit the town with a dress suit case, a good complexion and a taking way with the boys, and that’s all the capital any skirt wearer needs in Gotham if she is only introduced to the right crowd of spenders and keeps away from the pikers who have their bank rolls lashed to the mast or bottled up so tight that when they do release a bill it smells like an Egyptian mummy which has been packed in a vault since the time of Pharaoh.

This lady hit the trail which led to the show houses. She had no idea that she was an Adelina Patti or a Sarah Bernhardt, but she knew she could carry a spear as good as any old-timer, and she was prepared to make good.

“Got a job for me?” she asked the first stage manager she happened to run across.

He looked her over and then remarked casually:

“I don’t think so, for all the star parts are given out for the season, but you might go over and see Frohman and ask him if you can’t understudy Maude Adams.”

“Don’t strain your voice on my account,” she said, by way of a come-back. “I’m looking for about $18 a week in the line-up, and when it comes to tights, I guess there ain’t any of them who has anything on me. You had me flagged for a Sis Hopkins, but you want to throw some sand on the track because you’re sliding. I don’t sit up at night reading Romeo and Juliet, and where I come from they think Shakespeare is a new kind of breakfast food. Can you get busy now?”

“I guess I’ll have to if I want to get rid of you.”

“Well, you’re learning, and that’s a good sign.”

So after he had looked her over again very carefully, he concluded she’d do for the chorus for a starter anyhow.

A stage manager who is used to hiring ladies whose talents lie in their legs has a system of his own in picking out good ones that don’t need padding, and he never makes a mistake any more than a red squirrel will stow away a bad nut for the winter. Face, neck, hands and arms tell the story and they never fail, and so he knew she could wear the usual size, and if anything stretch them a bit.

That was the beginning.

One night four young men about town sat in a theatre box watching the merry maidens tropping on and telling in song how happy they were that the Princess was going to be married to the poor but handsome gink whose father had a cobbler’s shop one block from the palace.

“Get onto the curves of the girl with the black hair,” said one, and in a minute there were four pairs of eyes looking at one pair of silk tights.

“Great,” said another, enthusiastically.

“Who is she?” asked a third. “I never saw her before.”

“Well, Ben certainly has an eye for beauty. I wonder where he gets them? Let’s see him and ask him to put us on, for she’s all right.”

Incidentally, Ben was the first name of the stage manager.

It isn’t necessary to go into details, for general results save a lot of time, but a couple of hours later four enthusiastic young fellows and a dimpled brunette sat at a round table in a sporty cafe, and when any of them wanted to address her they called her Curves.

“What are you trying to do?” she asked, when it was first sprung, “give me a nickname?”

“No,” was the answer, “simply a trademark.”

And they all understood.

So because of that she began her career with the world by the tail on a downhill pull.

Not to know Curves and have her call you by your first name when you met was to be the deadest kind of a dead one, and the witty stories she could tell over a quart of wine soon began to be circulated around town.

As is often the case, women were her enemies and men were her friends, and she slid along in a happy-go-lucky way, letting the morrow take care of itself.

There was no question but that her figure was the making of her, just as Jennie Joyce’s legs made her famous from one end of the country to the other when she was a reigning favorite at Koster & Bial’s old place on Twenty-third street two decades ago.

The photographer who secured some good poses of Curves in tights found himself busy printing them to supply the demand, and it was as easy to get her before a camera as it was to get a kid to a candy store. If she had received a dollar for every time she wrote across the bottom of one of her photographs “Sincerely yours, Curves,” she would have had a bank account that would have been broad, wide and deep. But she was simply a good fellow and she made no attempt to live by her wits. Like many another poor devil, she probably thought she would always be young, good-looking and popular. She didn’t know that those whom the public applauds to-day it kills to-morrow, and that it takes but a week in New York to make a favorite less than a memory.

But there was one incident in her career that stands out in relief from anything of the kind that anyone had ever done before, and it is worth telling. It was characteristic of her to do a thing of this sort, and she was the one woman in a hundred who could have got away with it.

A soulful-eyed, chocolate-skinned Brahmin priest had come to town to spread his faith, and because he talked in an exceedingly entertaining manner and told some curious and interesting stories he came to be a fad. It wasn’t that the people who went to see and hear him were interested in his religion, but it was because he was a novelty that he filled his lecture room every afternoon. Two men and Curves dropped in one afternoon at a time when this spreader of a new creed was telling about the money it would cost to do good in the world, and on that subject he was particularly eloquent.

“You Americans,” he said, “don’t know what it is to make a sacrifice; you don’t know what it is to deny yourselves any of the good things of life. Your men would not forego their cigars or wine even if the spiritual salvation of the world depended upon it, and your women would not permit themselves one particle of physical discomfort nor cheaper wearing apparel even though a hundred souls were the price. The whole world is selfish and wrapped up in itself, and religion is either a fad or a jest. The man with a million gives a few thousands and thinks he has done well, but he denies himself nothing. The woman with a check book doles out dimes and fancies herself a philanthropist, but will she make any sacrifice for the general good?”

“Here’s one who will.”

Two-thirds of the people in the room turned around and looked at Curves, and one of the fellows with her took her arm and whispered:

“What is the matter, are you dotty?”

The ox-like eyes of the religious enthusiast seemed to blaze up a bit.

“You will make a sacrifice?” he asked. “What can you give?”

“I’ll give myself,” she answered, and she stood up defiantly.

People who tell this story, as well as a few who were there, say that Curves had a most elegant tide on at the time and didn’t know what she was saying, but that doesn’t alter the story, because this is simply a recital of facts which can be verified by a whole lot of the fellows, and the sequel can be found on record among the marriages in the Bureau of Vital Statistics by anyone who is interested enough to look it up.

“It is very praiseworthy,” continued the priest, “but how do you propose to put your gift to a practical use? You say you will give yourself. Do you mean by that that you will devote your time to this work which I am trying to carry on?”

“Not that way so you can notice it, but I have a lot of men friends here and each one of them has asked me to marry him more than once. I like them all and as marriage is a lottery anyhow, they can bid for me, and you get the money.”

As she spoke she was climbing up on the table in the center of the room. “I am ready for the first offer and I don’t care who makes it, for I’m taking as many chances as anybody else.”

Now here was a situation that reads like a romance, and here was the one in a thousand to get away with it. The women were shocked, of course; the men were interested, and as for the priest he didn’t know whether to take it seriously or not, until finally what might have been an awkward situation was relieved by a man who said:

“Well, if she’s game enough to have herself auctioned off, I’m game enough to make a bid, so I’ll say $500, with the proviso that the cause of religion, which our revered friend represents, shall get half, the other half to go to the lady who shows such a praiseworthy spirit.”

Then three gaunt females over forty arose in the majesty of their outraged womanhood and stalked from the room, while a dozen others moved uneasily in their seats.

The Brahmin was still figuring.

“Am I worth no more than $500?” put in Curves.

“I’ll make it $750,” said one of the men who had accompanied her.

“You paid twice as much for a horse last week, Billy,” she retorted.

“I didn’t think of that. Let it go at $1,500, for there’s going to be competition.”

The priest’s hand was nervously fingering a silk handkerchief.

“Two thousand,” the first bidder’s voice came like a bullet from a gun, and Billy laughed nervously.

“Go ahead, Billy, it’s up to you again,” and Curves nodded at him encouragingly.

“She’s worth it, Bill,” whispered his friend. “Your Panhard cost you $11,000 and it takes $100 a week to keep it going. Curves can be very economical when she tries,” and he laughed at his joke.

“Twenty-five hundred,” bid Billy.

“Sold,” cried Curves, “although _I’m_ worth more.”

“Very extraordinary,” said the priest, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. “This could happen in no other country in the world.”

“Write him a check, Billy, for what you owe him,” said Curves, “and then we’ll go out and get married. And don’t you think it would be nice to have him to dinner with us?”

“Sure thing, and we’ll have the other fellow who bid along, too. By the way, who is he? I don’t ever remember to have seen him before. Do you know him?”

Now what a chance here for a climax, for a real whipping finish, as it were. It might be arranged so that the girl would say sadly:

“Yes, he holds the mortgage on the farm and has threatened to foreclose it if I don’t marry him. Oh, Billy, you must save me.”

Then Billy would pull out his check book, pay the villain off to the penny and the man would go tearing out of the door shouting:

“Foiled again, c-u-u-rses on you, but I’ll have revenge,” with the accent on revenge.

But no such thing happened, because you see Curves never had an interest in a farm, and it is very much to be doubted if she knew anything about a father or mother. The result was that she said:

“Oh, I suppose he’s some guy that’s been to the show and got stuck on my shape.”

The honeymoon lasted six months, which was enough for Billy, and he beat it to New Orleans, while his friends told Curves that they thought he had committed suicide.

CHEYENNE NELL; TRIMMER

The gambler in this story came from the West to get a little New York money. He had been getting it for years from the Sierra Nevadas to El Paso, and from Seattle as far east as Omaha, which he said was far enough for anybody who liked fresh air, but he had struck a run of bad luck and one of his pals told him that the best way to break it was to trim a New York sucker.

“They’re fly guys there all right,” remarked this same man, casually, “but the flyer they are the easier it is to trim them. I would sooner stack up against a stock broker that runs one of those bubble machines and can speak sixteen different languages than get into a game with a Kansas farmer any day. The farmer knows he ain’t in it and he’s got his eye out for a job every time; his coat is buttoned up so tight that he has contraction of the lungs and his heart doesn’t beat right, but the gink that knows it all thinks he’s so damned smart that he’s got everybody in the world in his corral, and those are the fellows you catch with their vests open.”

All homely philosophy, but as true as gospel and worth looking into.

So Big Ben--that was his name in the country where slouch hats are the real thing--pulled his freight one night and hit the Overland Flyer for Gotham. His name was Big Ben no longer, for the cards he carried in his vest pocket read:

BENJAMIN F. VAN BUREN, MINING ENGINEER.

He bought tickets for two at the station, and there is the heart of the story, as one of the tickets was for Cheyenne Nellie.

The lady in the case is worth a paragraph at the very least, for she had the reputation of being the best short-card dealer in Texas, and at a game of bank, whether playing the cards or handling the box, she was there with the goods and never asked any odds on account of her sex.

She had the long, slim hands of a card player, and if she hadn’t taken to the pasteboards she might have been a piano player and getting all kinds of money for hitting up the ivories at swell concerts. She was soft of voice and soft in manner, and all you had to do to make a lady out of her was to wrap her in a silk robe and she’d make the horses in the street turn around and look after her.

On one memorable occasion she went into the smoking car of a Denver train and calmly lighting a cigarette, smoked it without deigning to notice the men around her.

The trip was settled in a minute and in this way.

“It’s a long ride, Nell,” observed Ben, “to the place I’m going, and I’m afraid I’ll get lost or lonely, so if you’ll come along with me I’ll tog you out like a queen and give you the time of your life. Will you carry my brand for the trip?”

“How big is your bank roll?” she asked, with an eye to the practical side of the proposition.

“Twenty-seven hundred, and two thousand to draw on if I lose out.”

“That’s enough for a starter. What are you going to do--short-card ’em or bank ’em?”

“Anything and everything including stud, and if I get the big bundle we’ll hike for that place across the big pond where the real games are. What’s the name of it--I forget now. I had it written down somewhere, but I guess I’ve lost it. It begins with an M I think, and there was a fellow at the show the other night who had it in his song about how he broke the bank there.”

“Oh, you mean Monte Carlo.”

“Yes, that’s it. We’ll go there and I’ll put you up against the game, for you always were hell when it came to a no-limit play.”

One night stop-over in Chicago to see a show, and then, twenty-four hours later, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin F. Van Buren, of Portland, Oregon, registered at the Waldorf-Astoria.

“Kind of like a theatre, ain’t it?” remarked Ben, as they sat in the palm room after dinner. “Looks like Romeo and Juliet where the gal is on the gallery and the fellow with the skin-tight pants is asking her to come down and talk it over.”

Men who are supposed to know say that New York is the loneliest place in the world, that is, if you don’t know anyone, and that a desert island is a center of population compared to it if you are not in right. On the face of it that looks like a good argument, but it is going to be disproved right here. Go to a big and fashionable hotel and register, then sit around and be a bit conspicuous, look like ready money, and above all, easy money, and you’ll draw people like a Jack rose draws bees. They’ll find you out just as easily as the ferret gets to the timid rabbit--by going after you--and unless your heart is covered with callous spots and your pockets are fastened with safety pins, when you come to count up at night you’ll find you are short a bit of change. In this world, you know, things are not always what they seem, and the fellow who looks the wisest and talks the loudest isn’t the smartest any more than the man with the retreating forehead is the stupidest. The one with the cranium of a cocoanut may have spent all of his life developing the instinct of the hunter and the cunning of the fox, and that queer-shaped thing on top of his shoulders is the sign which he has hung out and which says as plainly as if the words were printed on his forehead: “Come on, boys, I’m easy; come and get my change.” I know all about this and speak from experience, for I used to sit in a poker game with a Dutchman who looked like a pinhead, and when the rest of us walked home he used to take a cab, because he had all the money, and his name was Schneider, too. What do you think of that?

So before a week had gone by, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin F. Van Buren were nodding and saying “How do you do?” and “Good morning” and “Good evening” to about twenty or thirty men who made the hotel their headquarters. Incidentally it was given out that Ben was on here to buy some machinery for one of his mines in Nevada and that he wouldn’t mind having a little fun with anything that came along so long as the stakes were not too big for a man of his modest disposition.

The tip went down the line in the usual channels and then one rainy night a man who said confidentially that he was a banker suggested that as there was nothing else to do Mr. Van Buren could, if he felt so disposed, walk around to his hotel where there were two or three other good fellows, and they might have a little game of draw.

“None of us want to go into big money, you know,” he said, apologetically, “for it’s simply a game among friends and it’s about as good a way to pass the time away as I know of. We don’t, as a rule, play with strangers, but I guess you’re all right, so come along.”

“Look out for a cold deck, Ben,” whispered Nell as he started; “play light and close to your skin at the go-off, and it won’t hurt to lose a little at the start.”

Wherever you go or whatever you do in this world, always take a woman’s tip--not the tip of every woman of course, but when you find one who delivers the goods at every jump out of the box and calls the turn on the case card nine times out of every ten, then be wise and attune your ears to her siren song, even though the notes seem to be a bit cracked at first and the cadenzas strike you as being skewed and off the key.

There were five in the game, counting Ben, and up against the wall, like a new kind of decoration, was a Senegambian, whose business it was to see that the gentlemen had cigars to smoke and wine to drink without limit. Between deals they talked about business, how stocks were selling, what chance there was for a flyer in Steel, and if Depew intended to resign from the Senate or not. The play was light and reckless and no one there seemed to care whether he won or lost.

“We play two or three times a week,” explained one to Ben, while the African was getting a fresh pack, “and I consider poker the greatest thing in the world to take a man’s mind off his business. Is there any stock in your mine for sale? I wouldn’t mind taking a block if it looked right. So this is your first visit here? Well, we’ll try and make it pleasant for you while you stay, but you must reciprocate if we ever hit your country. Will you show us some shooting?”

It went that way until Ben got to feeling a little easy in his play himself. But he couldn’t lose. Everything came his way, including jackpots, and when the silvery chimes of the clock on the mantel reminded them that it was one o’clock the play came to an end and the man from the West cashed in a matter of $72.

“It was only a friendly game, Nell,” he said, when he woke her up from a sound sleep half an hour later. “They are simply a lot of good fellows and I couldn’t help winning, but they want revenge to-morrow night and then I’ll get some real money.”

“Three thousand miles is a good long walk, Ben,” she said, “and that’s a little tune you want to keep humming to yourself all the time. The easy marks at cards all died during the time of the big wind and only the fly guys are left. You’re in a strange barn this trip, so don’t think that everything you see is hay.”

From playing three nights a week they got down to playing every night, and Ben always came back with a small winning, but he wasn’t getting the money he was after and it got on his nerves.

“It’s only chicken feed _I’m_ winning,” he complained to her one night, “and it just about pays expenses.”

“Well, just you keep your shirt on, for I’m in with some nice old dames who think they are the real ones at bridge, and I’m thinking of getting a little of that same kind of feed myself--the real killing will come later. You never want to be in a hurry about those things, you know, because if you hurry them it’s all off. Get those fellows to play up in the room some night so I can look them over and see their style.”

“I’m next to their play all right,” he said, “They’ll stand to lose so much and no more and there ain’t one of them who would bet a thousand that he was alive.”

“Invite them up, anyway. You’ve been drinking their booze and smoking their good cigars long enough. You ought to put up for them once in a while, and if they are all right you will have a few decent friends, anyhow.”

That’s how it happened that the play came off in No. 723.

It was the smallest kind of a small and inoffensive game, unmarked by any incident or episode until one of the men, looking his hand over with unusual care, remarked in the most casual manner possible:

“If I had the nerve I have a hand here that I would like to bet big on.”

“How big?” asked Ben, taking another look at the cards that had been dealt to him.

“I don’t know much about poker, but I think a thousand would be about right to start with.”

“Mine looks worth that much to me,” said Ben, with his face like a mask.

“I’m game; does a check go?”

Over in one corner of the room, with a novel before her, sat Nell. She was almost directly opposite Ben, and as he looked up he saw the upper lid of her left eye droop slowly, recover, and then droop again. He skinned his cards and looked them carefully over. The pips showed four kings and an ace, pat. It was worth big money in any four-handed game, and he knew it.

“Does a check go?” came the query again.

“No, I weaken; I thought I had a better hand. You’ve got me beat from the start.”

It might be made a long story from this point on, but there is not room here to tell in detail how half an hour later Nell rose from her comfortable seat in the armchair in the corner, and walking over to the table manifested a slight interest in the game, and after one or two more hands had been dealt, thought she would like to play if the gentlemen didn’t object, which they didn’t. How she played like any woman would be expected to play, losing angrily and winning sweetly, until on one of her deals, Ben found himself in possession of a hand which only needed the ace to make a royal flush. The limit was raised before the draw, then taken off altogether, and the money began to pile itself on the mahogany. Then they drew for cards, and when Ben looked things over he found in his one card draw the ace that made his hand good.

“Mine is worth $500,” remarked the player opposite him.

“I’ll kiss mine good-bye,” said Nell, as she dropped her pasteboards in the discard.

“Raise you $500,” put in Ben, looking at the first bettor.

“Five hundred more,” was the third man’s bid.

“It’s too hot for me,” was the comment of the fourth, as he pushed his cards away from him.

It was raised in jumps of $500 until there was about $11,000 up, and Ben had been boosting every raise as fast as it came to him.

Then the call was made and the show-down was worth going miles to see, for the battle at the finish had narrowed down to Ben and one other.

“Take a check for the next bet?” asked the other.

“No,” came the terse answer.

“Then I’ll have to call you. But I’ve got you beaten!”

For answer Ben spread out his invincibles.

For a moment the silence was painful.

“Are they good?” asked Ben.

“You know damned well they are,” came the answer.

Then Mr. Benjamin Van Buren, mining engineer, of Portland, Ore., gathered in the oof in the most leisurely manner possible.

“Now you can buy me that new hat you promised me, can’t you, Ben?” said Nellie.

“I sure can buy you a dozen hats now if you want them.”

Exactly thirty minutes later three men were lined up against the bar below.

“You can talk from here to the Coast, if you want to,” said one, “but I tell you the woman did the trick. Didn’t she deal the cards? I tell you she short-carded us. She’s a gold mine.”

TRAGEDY OF A DANCE

It was just a plain unpretentious flat in New York, the kind that is rented for about $40 a month. You know the style--four or five rooms and bath and a narrow little space which is dignified by the name of private hall, and which is supposed to be the real thing in living apartments. It was furnished in the way in which anyone would expect, and an auction sale wouldn’t net more than $50 for everything that was there.