LITMIR.BIZ

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made my catch – the biggest catch in the world. You won’t mind now Lou, will you? – I’m going to be married to Dan – to Dan! – he’s my Dan now – why, Lou!”

      Around the corner of the park strolled one of those new-crop, smooth-faced young policemen that are making the force more endurable – at least to the eye. He saw a woman with an expensive fur coat, and diamond-ringed hands crouching down against the iron fence of the park sobbing turbulently, while a slender, plainly-dressed working girl leaned close, trying to console her. But the Gibsonian[26] cop, being of the new order, passed on, pretending not to notice, for he was wise enough to know that these matters are beyond help so far as the power he represents is concerned, though he rap the pavement with his nightstick till the sound goes up to the furthermost stars.

      Vanity and Some Sables

      When “Kid” Brady was sent to the rope by Molly McKeever’s blue-black eyes he withdrew from the Stovepipe Gang. So much for the power of a colleen’s blanderin’ tongue and stubborn true-heartedness. If you are a man who read this, may such an influence be sent you before 2 o’clock to-morrow; if you are a woman, may your Pomeranian[27] greet you this morning with a cold nose – a sign of dog-health and your happiness.

      The Stovepipe Gang borrowed its name from a sub-district of the city called the “Stovepipe,” which is a narrow and natural extension of the familiar district known as “Hell’s Kitchen.” The “Stovepipe” strip of town runs along Eleventh and Twelfth avenues on the river, and bends a hard and sooty elbow around little, lost homeless DeWitt Clinton park. Consider that a stovepipe is an important factor in any kitchen and the situation is analyzed. The chefs in “Hell’s Kitchen” are many, and the “Stovepipe” gang, wears the cordon blue.

      The members of this unchartered but widely known brotherhood appeared to pass their time on street corners arrayed like the lilies of the conservatory and busy with nail files and penknives. Thus displayed as a guarantee of good faith, they carried on an innocuous conversation in a 200-word vocabulary, to the casual observer as innocent and immaterial as that heard in clubs seven blocks to the east.

      But off exhibition the “Stovepipes” were not mere street corner ornaments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious occupation was the separating of citizens from their coin and valuables. Preferably this was done by weird and singular tricks without noise or bloodshed; but whenever the citizen honored by their attentions refused to impoverish himself gracefully his objections came to be spread finally upon some police station blotter or hospital register.

      The police held the “Stovepipe” gang in perpetual suspicion and respect. As the nightingale’s liquid note is heard in the deepest shadows, so along the “Stovepipe’s” dark and narrow confines the whistle for reserves punctures the dull ear of night. Whenever there was smoke in the “Stovepipe” the tasselled men in blue knew there was fire in “Hell’s Kitchen.”

      “Kid” Brady promised Molly to be good. “Kid” was the vainest, the strongest, the wariest and the most successful plotter in the gang. Therefore, the boys were sorry to give him up.

      But they witnessed his fall to a virtuous life without protest. For, in the Kitchen it is considered neither unmanly nor improper for a guy to do as his girl advises.

      Black her eye for love’s sake, if you will; but it is all-to-the-good business to do a thing when she wants you to do it.

      “Turn off the hydrant,” said the Kid, one night when Molly, tearful, besought him to amend his ways. “I’m going to cut out the gang. You for mine, and the simple life on the side. I’ll tell you, Moll – I’ll get work; and in a year we’ll get married. I’ll do it for you. We’ll get a flat and a flute, and a sewing machine and a rubber plant and live as honest as we can.”

      “Oh, Kid,” sighed Molly, wiping the powder off his shoulder with her handkerchief, “I’d rather hear you say that than to own all of New York. And we can be happy on so little!”

      The Kid looked down at his speckless cuffs and shining patent leathers with a suspicion of melancholy.

      “It’ll hurt hardest in the rags department,” said he. “I’ve kind of always liked to rig out swell when I could. You know how I hate cheap things, Moll. This suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in the wearing apparel line has got to be just so, or it’s to the misfit parlors for it, for mine. If I work I won’t have so much coin to hand over to the little man with the big shears.”

      “Never mind, Kid. I’ll like you just as much in a blue jumper as I would in a red automobile.”

      Before the Kid had grown large enough to knock out his father he had been compelled to learn the plumber’s art. So now back to this honorable and useful profession he returned. But it was as an assistant that he engaged himself; and it is the master plumber and not the assistant, who wears diamonds as large as hailstones and looks contemptuously upon the marble colonnades of Senator Clark’s mansion.

      Eight months went by as smoothly and surely as though they had “elapsed” on a theater program. The Kid worked away at his pipes and solder with no symptoms of backsliding. The Stovepipe gang continued its piracy on the high avenues, cracked policemen’s heads, held up late travelers, invented new methods of peaceful plundering, copied Fifth avenue’s cut of clothes and neckwear fancies and comported itself according to its lawless bylaws. But the Kid stood firm and faithful to his Molly, even though the polish was gone from his fingernails and it took him 15 minutes to tie his purple silk ascot so that the worn places would not show.

      One evening he brought a mysterious bundle with him to Molly’s house.

      “Open that, Moll!” he said in his large, quiet way. “It’s for you.”

      Molly’s eager fingers tore off the wrappings. She shrieked aloud, and in rushed a sprinkling of little McKeevers, and Ma McKeever, dishwashy, but an undeniable relative of the late Mrs. Eve[28].

      Again Molly shrieked, and something dark and long and sinuous flew and enveloped her neck like an anaconda.

      “Russian sables,” said the Kid, pridefully, enjoying the sight of Molly’s round cheek against the clinging fur. “The real thing. They don’t grow anything in Russia too good for you, Moll.”

      Molly plunged her hands into the muff, overturned a row of the family infants and flew to the mirror. Hint for the beauty column. To make bright eyes, rosy checks and a bewitching smile: Recipe – one set Russian sables. Apply.

      When they were alone Molly became aware of a small cake of the ice of common sense floating down the full tide of her happiness.

      “You’re a bird, all right, Kid,” she admitted gratefully. “I never had any furs on before in my life. But ain’t Russian sables awful expensive? Seems to me I’ve heard they were.”

      “Have I ever chucked any bargain-sale stuff at you, Moll?” asked the Kid, with calm dignity. “Did you ever notice me leaning on the remnant counter or peering in the window of the five-and-ten? Call that scarf $250 and the muff $175 and you won’t make any mistake about the price of Russian sables. The swell goods for me. Say, they look fine on you, Moll.”

      Molly hugged the sables to her bosom in rapture. And then her smile went away little by little, and she looked the Kid straight in the eye sadly and steadily.

      He knew what every look of hers meant; and he laughed with a faint flush upon his face.

      “Cut it out,” he said, with affectionate roughness. “I told you I was done with that. I bought ’em and paid for ’em, all right, with my own money.”

      “Out of the money you worked for, Kid? Out of $75 a month?”

      “Sure. I been saving up.”

      “Let’s see – saved $425 in eight months, Kid?”

      “Ah, let up,” said the Kid, with some heat. “I had some money when I went to work. Do you think I’ve been holding ’em up

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