Born to be Hanged, But—/Chapter 4
IV
SO THE letter had been delivered, but, I said to myself, the party who received it had paid the wrong person. That was something for him to worry about, not for me.
Yet Edwin Ellis did not look like the sort of man who would make mistakes of the kind.
I tried to find out something about him, but he was a stranger in the city. He had stayed at the Palace, had registered his address as "city," and disappeared the day following his mistake.
I again tried to locate Mrs. Curwen, but she had not returned, had not been heard from.
There was one way I could probably find out something. I had thought of it many times. I had even written and destroyed one letter to Congressman Bryan, who had returned and was opening his campaign in the southern part of the State. I came near writing another, but decided that I might as well let the matter drop.
It was not really a decision so much as the fact that something else of a different nature happened which interfered with my affairs. Some days later I left San Francisco for a time—took a little trip toward Honolulu. In fact, I was so anxious to go that I went on a windjammer. I decided to travel along about midnight and passed the Golden Gate about dawn.
I had known ever since the little incident with Thrope that the police, in their vernacular, wanted to "get something on me." It is easy enough for the police to "get something" on anybody, but they had to get something definite and serious on me to make a case of it. For though Thrope was what is known as the "man higher up" in San Francisco at that time, I was a member in good standing of the gamblers who gave the police and the "men higher up" a large share of their graft.
It happened that "Spike" Delaney was what is known as the "boss" of the underworld; and Delaney was a hard-fisted, independent fellow who, though hand in glove with Thrope, yet stood on his own two feet and could not be worked over like putty to any purpose that did not appeal to him.
Delaney liked me; and Delaney—who was just about as square as a man of his position could be; which means little more than that he was square with the people he liked—would have thrown a wrench into the wheels of any ordinary frame-up designed to stow me in San Quentin.
I seldom played in tenderloin dives. There were two or three up-town "clubs," known on the q.t. to sporty rich men and their sons, and especially to tourists, where I sat in usually.
And I must pause here to say that I did not always or even frequently cheat. I gambled first because I liked it, only secondarily to make a modest living. There is no sport in sure-thing gambling; I mean there is no thrill, none of the thrilling impact of bluff and luck as one studies the inscrutable face across the table and wonders whether to call or raise, or do neither.
I must say here, too, though perhaps I shall not generally be believed, that I stacked and dealt from the bottom more times for the benefit of fellows who knew nothing about how their luck had changed than ever I did for myself.
Despite what many wise card players maintain, a deck can be stacked in the shuffle—if there are not more than three, or at the most four, players; but in a half-dozen riffles of the cards I can put a good hand at the bottom and deal it at will though the eyes of twenty men are on me. There is no way to tell when a good man is actually dealing from the bottom.
There is one way to tell when he actually is not: that is, if he holds the deck, as most people do—and professional gamblers never, unless under suspicion—with the forefinger of the left hand pressed against the front, and not the side—where the other three fingers are—of the deck.
It happened that Delaney one afternoon asked me to sit in at a certain table in the back of his saloon. Some friends of his had told him they were bringing on a "live one"; and as Delaney's best houseman was on a periodical drunk, I was requested to make sure that the fellow's fat pocketbook did not leave with him. Delaney had made a similar request two or three times before. It was pretty well known that when the houseman went on a bat I would take his place.
The table was put apart in a little private room. Two other men, strangers to me, but O.K.'d by Delaney, sat in the game; then a fellow, a regular Delaney come-on, brought in the "live one"—a Mr. Smith, the name evidently being taken as a convenience for a little fling at high life.
IT TOOK me just about three hands to discover that there were only two poker players at that table. Whoever had picked Mr. Smith for a sucker, a greenhorn, had made a monumental mistake. I knew it the minute I saw him pick up the deck. He tried to be awkward enough in the shuffle, but the position of his fingers as he dealt made me cautious about putting much faith in the three fair queens that came into my hand.
He played with that cool, steely quality that marks the real gambler and can not be assumed: it comes only after years of tense play, and to some men not even then.
I drew to the three queens, of course, although it cost a neat little sum, for everybody was staying. I was presented with two fives—flip, flip, just like that. Smith helped himself to three cards. It doesn't make any difference what the others drew.
A modest bet was made on my right. It was up to me to call, raise or quit. I carelessly tossed my hand away—and caught the expression in Smith's eyes as he saw me do it. I had wanted to see his face—not his hand.
But I saw the hand anyway. Smith threw it away—face up—and disclosed a pair of tens. He had palmed whatever else had been used to strengthen the hand, if indeed he had not relied on the fellow to his right who took the pot without being called. I saw Smith, however, dispose of the palmed cards.
I did not see the cards, for one never does when a skilful man has them, but he casually reached out and touched the discards, and when the hand was withdrawn there were three cards, one precisely on top of the other. Quite good—and incidentally, I made a note for my own future benefit of the fact that one should never deposit palmed cards in the discards without pretending to gather the cards up.
Nobody would, with their eyes open, ordinarily go to the trouble of trying to fleece a professional gambler. But here was a frame-up of some kind. Had these men learned that on the day before I had been given ten thousand dollars? Was Delaney in on the deal, or had he too been imposed on. Naturally the situation prodded my temper.
The climax was delayed for some time, but it came in an unexpected flash. I was dealing: both hands were engaged. Smith said—
"You're dealing from the bottom!"
And a muzzle of his gun appeared above the edge of the table.
As a matter of fact, I had not been dealing from the bottom. I was caught unprepared. There was nothing to do but sit motionless, hands across the table, holding the deck and a card that I had about to toss.
"You tin-horn," he said, "will you leave town by train or by hearse?"
I glanced right and left. The three other men at the table showed no surprize. They had known what was coming. I had been caught in a little frame-up. I guessed that Delaney knew of it and had insisted that I be given the chance to leave town.
There is a peculiar psychology in crooks: they knew I had not been cheating; they knew that I knew I had not been cheating; and yet they pretended to think I had so as to have an excuse to order me out of town.
I did not intend to go. I did not intend to promise to go. I let the deck slip quietly, at the same time raising my hands and sitting back in the chair—straightening up with hands raised, symbolic of surrender.
I had never advertized the fact that I wore a gun across my stomach, for half the efficacy of the device and position was in the fact that no one expected it to be there. But I couldn't possibly reach for it while covered. It would have been sheer idiocy.
I turned to the come-on who had introduced Smith into the game and said—
"Search me—so I can drop my hands and talk."
He looked inquiringly at Smith, and Smith nodded.
He removed the gun from my hip, ran his hand all around my trouser's band and tapped me right and left under the shoulders for a shoulder holster. I sat with stomach drawn in to do something to keep the gun from accidentally coming in contact with his fingers. He was satisfied.
I sat down, lowered my hands and tapped my fingers, moving them about with nervous gestures that I did not feel.
"Now just what is the proposition?" I asked.
"A train or hearse—and that goes."
His hand lay on the table, circling the handle of the revolver. A twist of the wrist and a pressure of the trigger was all that he need give. He had put the gun that had been taken from me into his own holster. It was a good gun.
Suddenly the table raised up, the round top like a great buckler cutting me off momentarily from Smith's eyes. But he fired anyway. The bullet splintered through the top of the table.
I had had to use both hands to tilt the table between us. I had had to have a tenth of a second of safety in which to reach under the breast of my coat for the gun. I don't care how subtle or quick a man is, he can't move quicker than the fellow with the drop can pull a trigger.
I was afraid to try to slip my hand up under the coat gradually, for suspicion might be aroused and another search made. And it would have been inviting death to have made an abrupt gesture. And though it took me longer to heave up that table, and the gesture was more conspicuous, yet it was safer.
Any one who doubts need only sit at a table and try the two movements. Smith was used to men reaching for a gun: he knew what that gesture meant, and the moment a hand flashed from sight he would have shot. But he was not used to tables rising. Both my hands were in sight, the fingers above the edge of the table—but the thumbs were not. He hesitated to see what was happening, then shot—too late.
When Delaney and some of the people in the saloon came on the bound, they found two men facing my gun with hands lifted.
The man called Smith lay crumpled and limp on the floor, face down—in a witch's mirror of blood. He was dead.
I WAS cornered. The room had no windows and but one door. It was a small room, a poker room, and the one door was filled. Delaney stood in it, a gun in either hand and behind him rank on rank of men—risking their lives for the chance to crane a neck over the shoulder of the fellow in front.
"Spike," I said, "you've trapped me. Shoot if you want to commit suicide."
He might have been able to kill me—but not before a bullet would have been on its way toward him.
He started to speak, but I cut him short. There was no time to lose. Quickly, sharply, I told him that if he did not want to commit suicide to turn around, face the crowd with leveled guns and clear a way for me, for I was going to follow him with a gun pressed against the small of his back. I let it be known that if anybody made a move at me, I would get him, Delaney, first.
Spike Delaney turned his back and filled the door, and he put a lot of feeling into the words that he spoke to the crowd.
But there would be three men behind my back the moment my face was turned. I knew they were armed—or at least I never found out that they were not. There was no time to search.
"Down on your knees and face that way," I said, indicating the wall.
They went down and grotesquely assumed an attitude of prayer. Perhaps they were praying, as cowards do.
Then I realized that after I took five steps out into the saloon I would have even more men behind me, some of whom would not be cowards.
"Step slow, Spike, and step carefully," I said and pressed my shoulders against his own.
One gun, which I had recovered from Smith, I poked against Delaney's side; with the other I kept the people through whom we passed, not covered exactly, but bluffed.
Spike was roaring right and left.
"Can't you see he'll kill me if you don't get out of the way—get, you!"
Spike was eloquent when aroused, but his words were not choice. People in that part of the town were used to obeying Spike Delaney; and, too, none of those around about appeared to be friends of Smith's—and it is only the police who go out of their way to fight with the victor of a duel. So we got through to the alley door safely enough.
"God, that was a clever stunt!" said Spike when we had cleared the crowd.
"Drop those guns. Face about." He did. "I never thought you would double-cross me," I said.
"I'd 'a' shot quick," he said. "You'd better go through. Keep up the bluff—tell me to beat it back toward the bar!"
It dawned on me that Spike Delaney did not know that he lured me into a trap by asking me to take the place of his house-man in that poker game, and I understood why with so much alacrity he had cleared the way through the crowd for me: he was gladly helping me make a getaway.
There was no time to parley so I sent him toward the bar and sprang through the alleyway door and was gone.
Let some one who knows explain why it is that a gambler always carries all the money that he has. I do not know. I only know that they all do it, and one of the things I was long in getting used to was a checking account.
My bank was my inside vest pocket. If I happened to be pretty well capitalized, I used both vest pockets and the hip. All the money that I had was on me; and when one is departing in a hurry that is the main thing—money.
I knew that I had to keep out of sight for a while. The three witnesses had been there ready to have sworn that Smith murdered me in self-defense; and they would as readily declare that I had shot him when he wasn't looking. Such evidence would have convicted a more innocent man than myself, a man with less powerful enmity directed at him from James Thrope.
Delaney's friendship was valuable, but he could not without trouble for himself have bucked a combination such as I was up against. Besides, his regard for me was one only of friendship; his relation with Thrope and the police and judges was one of business.
When I was younger even than at that time, I used to vow that I would never run, never be a fugitive. I swore to stand and see it through—"it" being anything that might happen. But I have run frequently, far and fast. I ran that night—figuratively, of course, for nothing would so readily have started pursuit as for me to have been seen flying along.
I WENT down to the water-front and poked about cautiously. I did not want to be seen, that is to be noticed particularly, for I knew Thrope would urge the police to "do their duty" when he heard of what had happened. But I was not without a few friends scattered through the water-front saloons.
I have friends everywhere—I have always had them every place. That does not mean I am such a person as people are eager to know and help, though outside of my own family very few people have been ashamed to have their names linked with mine; but I like friends, particularly I like the so-called outcasts, who are the best and most loyal friends.
And I try never to refuse any man a favor so long as he is not up to some sort of deviltry that even my slack code occasionally, but at such times rigidly, refuses to countenance. I was young in those days, and youth likes vivid phrases; so I told myself that all of us, gamblers, crooks of one kind and another, belonged to the Legion of the Damned—and should go to together.
I have recovered a little from such imaginative crudities; but in doing so I have lost something irrecoverable of the zest of life. This flickering of reminiscence is intended to throw a little light on the fact that the reason I hovered watchfully that night at the rear of the Ship Saloon was because the bartender then on watch—as I could see by peeping through the door—was one Sam Tyler.
Sam Tyler was a sailorman, who, recovering consciousness after a free-for-all in Delaney's saloon, found himself not only empty of pockets, but with a cracked head and broken thigh. And because Sam Tyler, who was a stranger to me, had provoked the fight, taken on all-comers, fought a good fight and gone down without a murmur to accept the savage punishment that befalls the vanquished in a bar-room brawl, he went to the hospital—into private room—and I paid the bill.
His sheepish explanation, made from lips barely visible amid a swathing of bandages had been that he always ended a jag with a fight. But his forecastle days were over the doctors said the thigh would always be stiff and likely to cause pain.
So he had settled down to the comparative quiet of night bartender at the Ship Saloon, where he could get all the sea-news and keep in touch with old friends; among whom, though I knew less of sailing than a farm hand, he included me.
Three men were at the bar drinking and talking. It took me some time to attract Sam's attention, but I was cautious because I did not want him to be embarrassed the next day when the police came asking after a man of my description, if witnesses should happen to be around to call him a liar in case he denied having seen me.
When Sam found out who it was and got a suspicion of why I was there, he set a bottle of whisky on the bar, told his customers to help themselves and keep tab—the last as a perfunctory concession to his duty—and came to the alley, standing in the half-closed door.
I told him that I thought I needed a little sea air.
He told me that the Eliza Jane had cleared the day before for Sydney; he could have put me on to her and no questions asked. The Northern Belle was due in ten days, and he and her skipper were old friends.
In my impatience, it seemed that he mentioned every ship that had ever been sent down the ways to a baptism of salt spray; it seemed that he knew all about her movements and the personnel of her crew, who her skipper was and his character, whether or not one could offer him money for a "safe" passage. Such a profusion of sea gossip was maddening—although I kept an attentive pose. I didn't understand what it meant. I did not realize that he was talking of his great passion, the sea and her ships—the strong passion of strong men: stronger than love of women, for sailors leave women in every port to sing the ho-heave-ho of the creaking capstan.
At last he thought of what a normal man would have thought of the first thing. Two of the three men in there drinking at the bar at that moment were off the Jessie Darling—the mate and second officer they were, and waiting then for the captain. The Jessie Darling left at dawn. She was short-handed.
I protested. I have an aversion to unnecessary manual labor; and I have found very little of it that ever appealed to me as necessary.
The Jessie Darling was a little schooner recently out of copra trade in the South Seas, more recently refitted and dressed, and—well, he gave the history of the Jessie Darling, but he was rather in ignorance as to her future. He didn't know who owned her. The mate did, but the mate had looked wise and said it was secret. Perhaps he did not know. Ships with secrets are fine for trouble, was the information Sam gave me with a sigh as if he had remembered a childhood sweetheart.
He swore abruptly, jerked off his white apron, flung it down and declared:
"I'm goin' with you! To with me spliced leg!"
My bump of caution is enormous. It always has been large. A hard blow over the head will raise a bump and I had got some buffetings that made caution prominent in my life. Sam was for rushing in with arms wide-flung and announcing that we had decided to throw in our fortunes with the Jessie Darling. However, he merely introduced me as a friend and took it for granted that I would soon come into the conversation.
They plainly had no wish to cultivate my acquaintance: a condition that I sensed at once and respected. Besides they were all a little drunk. Moreover, as they were waiting for the captain, I thought I might as well wait too and make my proposition directly to him.
They talked and drank. I leaned over the bar, sipping a glass filled from the proprietor's own private bottle—of tea—and let Sam talk while I listened to them. I was tempted into this because they so many times dropped their voices into furtive, loud whispers, and did so no doubt under the impression that they were concealing what they had to say from prying ears.
Caution and suspicion are two very important characteristics in my make-up. So when I chanced to hear the phrase " old hypocrite" used in a way that seemed to refer to the captain, and immediately followed by a prophecy that he would be "shown," I began to pay very close attention, indeed, to the two mates and the third party to whom they paid a certain deference.
I gathered a number of things; among which that the Jessie Darling was likely to steer another course than that intended by the owner—who was also to be shown a thing or two. Just what the nature of the revelation would be I could not surmise from what was said.
However, it seemed that the Jessie Darling was being much sought after for passenger purposes—the third man, called Tom by the mates, was also waiting to make terms for passage with the captain. The mates were the ordinary tough-fibered, big breasted men of the sea, neither of them, I judged, under thirty-five.
The captain came in. He was a tall saturnine fellow, with deep-set eyes and a prominent nose and huge fists. He was a sea-going man all right: grizzled, furrowed, and hard.
THE atmosphere was chilled the moment he came through the door. The look in his eyes did it, the look he fastened on the three men as he came up.
"Mr. Swanson," he said frigidly, "why aren't you on board?"
The mate replied that it was all right, that the owner himself was on board and had him to come ashore on an errand. With a drunken snicker he added—
"He's got his girl with him."
The captain was plainly infuriated, but he kept very quiet. Only his eyes told the story as he turned toward the bar and asked for a drink. Swanson asked him to drink with them, but the captain coldly declined.
"Mr. Thompson—fren' o' mine—doctor—for his health 'd like passage," said Mr. Swanson, laboring with an introduction and embarrassed by something more than whisky.
I remember having heard some place—my knowledge of the sea and its ways is vague—that the mate, though under the direction of the captain, is responsible only to the owner, and that a captain can not dismiss a mate as he can any other member of the crew. Obviously the captain dis- liked the mate, and I suppose some strong influence kept him from summarily ridding himself of Swanson. As it was the captain said briefly and with decision—
"No passengers."
That was not pleasing to me.
Sam Tyler began to talk. He rambled on: said he used to be a sailor and was tired of dust and noise. Why, it wouldn't take two cents for him to throw his apron off and go to sea again! The captain asked a few questions, a few quick nautical questions—but I did not listen further.
Behind my back I was hearing Swanson whisper:
"You come out between three an' four. I'll have somebody on the lookout an' stow you away. An' after we get two days out " The mate gave the captain a look that indicated the events two days later would be highly disadvantageous to the captain.
"I'll be there," said Thompson.
He left.
The captain was saying to Sam:
"If you want to go as a boy all right. If you are A.B. so much the better. I'll give you the rate soon as you make it."
They left, and left me talking with the proprietor, who grumbled and roared and drank something stronger than tea, because he had been awakened from sleep to come down and fill the place of the bartender who had gone a-rambling.
In saying good-by to Sam I managed to tell him that he would probably see me later, but for him to keep his eyes and ears open and his mouth shut.
I talked with the proprietor. I let him think that I was going across to Oakland and from there in an auto toward Los Angeles. I dropped this information calculatingly, as if with no intention of letting him divine what I had in mind.
Then I went to the pier from which I heard Thompson say he would leave at three o'clock.
I waited some time. A figure moved into the shadows, detached itself presently from the gloom, and Thompson looked into the muzzle of a gun, gasped and raised his hands with that suddenness which shows good judgment on the part of a victim.
Then I backed him into the shadows for a little talk.
Captain Whibley, I told him, was perhaps not such a fool as he appeared; and since Captain Whibley did not care to have him on the Jessie Darling it would perhaps be well to explain to me—to convince me why I should disobey the captain's wish in the matter and let him get on board.
I don't know why it is that men, always when in a position similar to that in which Thompson found himself, say the first thing—
"Who are you?"
I explained—briefly—that I had not taken the trouble of meeting him to give information, but to get it.
"That Swanson's give me the double-cross!"
"Don't be so quick to suspect Swanson," I told him. "You both made the mistake of not taking Captain Whibley into your confidence."
To make a short interview still shorter I may say I found out the day of mutiny and piracy and treasure-trove searching was not entirely vanished from the sea Thompson knew, or said he did—had maps anyway—where there was a pirate cache on one of the Ladrones. His idea was with the connivance of mates and crew to take the Jessie Darling and find the loot a hundred or so years old.
Hunting for gold on a desert island never appealed to me as an enticing pastime. I have gone on a treasure hunt or two, but I didn't intend to go on the Jessie Darling. It was one thing to be dodging the San Francisco police for a justifiable homicide it was quite another to be dodging the maritime police of all nations for mutiny and piracy.
There was no doubt about the proposed mutiny succeeding; two mates, and six of the ten members of the short-handed crew were already acquainted with the plot. I perhaps could have won the gratitude of Captain Whibley by acquainting him with the facts; but conspiring seamen are good liars, and I had nothing to prove my tale but a few pocket-worn charts which I removed from Thompson. Besides, attention would be attracted to my own identity before the Jessie Darling cleared the bay.
Once the police had their hands on me I would be in for a trial. From the lofty heights of his bossdom, Thrope would put on the pressure and if I escaped with a life sentence I would be lucky. Spike Delaney could do much. I did not know how much.
I did not know how much he would even be willing to try to do, for his business was so intertwined with the police graft and so subject to Thrope's approval that friendship would not be likely to count. I preferred to go to sea. Having got to sea, then I could meet the situations as they developed.
So, as often in complications of the kind, I bluffed. It was easy. Thompson thought Captain Whibley knew all about the conspiracy. The Jessie Darling was sailing before sunrise.
I took possession of the maps and told Thompson it was lucky for him that Captain Whibley was so anxious to sail that he did not stay even one day over to prefer charges against him. With that I let Thompson go on his way—never to be heard from again in my affairs—and I found a launch and was taken out to the ship.
The launch man did not want to put out his lights and shut off his engine as he approached the Jessie Darling, but a little money is very persuasive.
As we came alongside a low voice hailed us—
"Mr. Thompson."
"Righto," I answered.
I had a speech ready in case the lookout knew Thompson, but he didn't; that was obvious by the way he took it for granted that I was he.
"Where's Swanson?" I asked.
"Sleepin' it off. He an' the old man had words. Y'see, the owner's aboard—with his girl. Swanson'll see you in the mornin'."
The man led me down to a stuffy little hole. I found out afterward that it was the steward's room, but the Chinese steward slept in the galley with the Chinese cook. Two Chinamen can sleep in a match-box and have plenty of room left.
The man left me, saying he "guessed he'd turn in."
His back was scarcely turned before a low knock at the door set me tense. I had hoped for an hour or so respite anyway.
I opened the door, and Sam Tyler limped in grinning.
Tyler—again at sea—had been too happy to sleep, and besides he wanted to see if I made it on board. So he had sprawled under a boat to soak in the watery air and watch.
I made my story brief and complete. It was the truth, clear down to the shooting of Smith and the need to go on the trip. I had only told Sam before that there had been "trouble" and I needed rest.
He whistled softly and grinned.
"This is goin' to be good," was his comment.
"Who owns this schooner?" I asked.
He said that he did not know. He had asked, but none of the men seemed to know. He had heard, too, that the owner was on board with "his girl."
"His daughter?" I inquired.
"Don't know—maybe somebody else's daughter. Usually is on mystery ships. What're we goin' do?"
"Sleep," I told him.