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CHAPTER XXV – PROFIT AND LOSS; MAINLY THE LATTER

SINCE time began, no man, not even a king, has been better obeyed in his mandates, than was I while Chief of Tammany Hall. From high to low, from the leader of a district to the last mean straggler in the ranks, one and all, they pulled and hauled or ran and climbed like sailors in a gale, at the glance of my eye or the toss of my finger. More often than once, I have paused in wonder over this blind submission, and asked myself the reason. Particularly, since I laid down my chiefship, the query has come upon my tongue while I remembered old days, to consider how successes might have been more richly improved or defeats, in their disasters, at least partially avoided.

Nor could I give myself the answer. I had no close friendships among my men; none of them was my confidant beyond what came to be demanded of the business in our hands. On the contrary, there existed a gulf between me and those about me, and while I was civil – for I am not the man, and never was, of wordy violences – I can call myself nothing more.

If anything, I should say my people of politics feared me, and that a sort of sweating terror was the spur to send them flying when I gave an order. There was respect, too; and in some cases a kind of love like a dog’s love, and which is rather the homage paid by weakness to strength, or that sentiment offered of the vine to the oak that supports its clamberings.

Why my men should stand in awe of me, I cannot tell. Certainly, I was mindful of their rights; and, with the final admonitions of Big Kennedy in my ears, I avoided favoritisms and dealt out justice from an even hand. True, I could be stern when occasion invited, and was swift to destroy that one whose powers did not match his duty, or who for a bribe would betray, or for an ambition would oppose, my plan.

No; after Big Kennedy’s death, I could name you none save Morton whose advice I cared for, or towards whom I leaned in any thought of confidence. Some have said that this distance, which I maintained between me and my underlings, was the secret of my strength. It may have been; and if it were I take no credit, since I expressed nothing save a loneliness of disposition, and could not have borne myself otherwise had I made the attempt. Not that I regretted it. That dumb concession of themselves to me, by my folk of Tammany, would play no little part in pulling down a victory in the great conflict wherein we were about to engage.

Tammany Hall was never more sharply organized. I worked over the business like an artist over an etching. Discipline was brought to a pitch never before known. My district leaders were the pick of the covey, and every one, for force and talents of executive kind, fit to lead a brigade into battle. Under these were the captains of election precincts; and a rank below the latter came the block captains – one for each city block. Thus were made up those wheels within wheels which, taken together, completed the machine. They fitted one with the other, block captains with precinct captains, the latter with district leaders, and these last with myself; and all like the wheels and springs and ratchets and regulators of a clock; one sure, too, when wound and oiled and started, to strike the hours and announce the time of day in local politics with a nicety that owned no precedent.

There would be a quartette of tickets; I could see that fact of four corners in its approach, long months before the conventions. Besides the two regular parties, and the mugwump-independents – which tribe, like the poor, we have always with us – the laborites would try again. These had not come to the field in any force since that giant uprising when we beat them down with the reputable old gentleman. Nor did I fear them now. My trained senses told me, as with thumb on wrist I counted the public pulse, how those clans of labor were not so formidable by three-fourths as on that other day a decade and more before.

Of those three camps of politics set over against us, that one to be the strongest was the party of reform. This knowledge swelled my stock of courage, already mounting high. If it were no more than to rout the administration now worrying the withers of the town, why, then! the machine was safe to win.

There arose another sign. As the days ran on, rich and frequent, first from one big corporation and then another – and these do not give until they believe – the contributions of money came rolling along. They would buy our favor in advance of victory. These donations followed each other like billows upon a beach, and each larger than the one before, which showed how the wind of general confidence was rising in our favor. It was not, therefore, my view alone; but, by this light of money to our cause, I could see how the common opinion had begun to gather head that the machine was to take the town again.

This latter is often a decisive point, and one to give victory of itself. The average of intelligence and integrity in this city of New York is lower than any in the land. There are here, in proportion to a vote, more people whose sole principle is the bandwagon, than in any other town between the oceans. These “sliders,” who go hither and yon, and attach themselves to this standard or ally themselves with that one, as the eye of their fancy is caught and taught by some fluttering signal of the hour to pick the winning side, are enough of themselves to decide a contest. Wherefore, to promote this advertisement among creatures of chameleon politics, of an approaching triumph for the machine, and it being possible because of those contributed thousands coming so early into my chests, I began furnishing funds to my leaders and setting them to the work of their regions weeks before the nearest of our enemies had begun to think on his ticket.

There was another argument for putting out this money. The noses of my people had been withheld from the cribs of office for hungry months upon months. The money would arouse an appetite and give their teeth an edge. I looked for fine work, too, since the leanest wolves are ever foremost in the hunt.

Emphatically did I lay it upon my leaders that, man for man, they must count their districts. They must tell over each voter as a churchman tells his beads. They must give me a true story of the situation, and I promised grief to him who brought me mistaken word. I will say in their compliment that, by the reports of my leaders on the day before the poll, I counted the machine majority exact within four hundred votes; and that, I may tell you, with four tickets in the conflict, and a whole count which was measured by hundreds of thousands, is no light affair. I mention it to evidence the hair-line perfection to which the methods of the machine had been brought.

More than one leader reported within five votes of his majority, and none went fifty votes astray.

You think we overdid ourselves to the point ridiculous, in this breathless solicitude of preparation? Man! the wealth of twenty Ophirs hung upon the hazard. I was in no mood to lose, if skill and sleepless forethought, and every intrigue born of money, might serve to bring success.

Morton – that best of prophets! – believed in the star of the machine.

“This time,” said he, “I shall miss the agony of contributing to the other fellows, don’t y’ know. It will be quite a relief – really! I must say, old chap, that I like the mugwump less and less the more I see of him. He’s so deucedly respectable, for one thing! Gad! there are times when a mugwump carries respectability to a height absolutely incompatible with human existence. Besides, he is forever walking a crack and calling it a principle. I get tired of a chalkline morality. It’s all such deuced rot; it bores me to death; it does, really! One begins to appreciate the amiable, tolerant virtues of easy, old-shoe vice.”

Morton, worn with this long harangue, was moved to recruit his moody energies with the inevitable cigarette. He puffed recuperative puffs for a space, and then he began:

“What an angelic ass is this city of New York! Why! it doesn’t know as much as a horse! Any ignorant teamster of politics can harness it, and haul with it, and head it what way he will. I say, old chap, what are the round-number expenses of the town a year?”

“About one hundred and twenty-five millions.”

“One hundred and twenty-five millions – really! Do you happen to know the aggregate annual profits of those divers private companies that control and sell us our water, and lighting, and telephone, and telegraph, and traction services? – saying nothing of ferries, and paving, and all that? It’s over one hundred and fifty millions a year, don’t y’ know! More than enough to run the town without a splinter of tax – really! That’s why I exclaim in rapture over the public’s accommodating imbecility. Now, if a private individual were to manage his affairs so much like a howling idiot, his heirs would clap him in a padded cell, and serve the beggar right.”

“I think, however,” said I, “that you have been one to profit by those same idiocies of the town.”

“Millions, my boy, millions! And I’m going in for more, don’t y’ know. There are a half-dozen delicious things I have my eye on. Gad! I shall have my hand on them, the moment you take control.”

“I make you welcome in advance,” said I. “Give me but the town again, and you shall pick and choose.”

In season, I handed my slate of names to the nominating committee to be handed by them to the convention.

At the head, for the post of mayor, was written the name of that bold judge who, in the presence of my enemies and on a day when I was down, had given my Sicilian countenance. Such folk are the choice material of the machine. Their characters invite the public; while, for their courage, and that trick to be military and go with closed eyes to the execution of an order, the machine can rely upon them through black and white. My judge when mayor would accept my word for the last appointment and the last contract in his power, and think it duty.

And who shall say that he would err? It was the law of the machine; he was the man of the machine; for the public, which accepted him, he was the machine. It is the machine that offers for every office on the list; the ticket is but the manner or, if you please, the mask. Nor is this secret. Who shall complain then, or fasten him with charges, when my judge, made mayor, infers a public’s instruction to regard himself as the vizier of the machine? – its hand and voice for the town’s government?

It stood the day before the polls, and having advantage of the usual lull I was resting myself at home. Held fast by the hooks of politics, I for weeks had not seen young Van Flange, and had gotten only glimpses of Blossom. While lounging by my fire – for the day was raw, with a wind off the Sound that smelled of winter – young Van Flange drove to the door in a brougham.

That a brisk broker should visit his house at an hour when the floor of the Exchange was tossing with speculation, would be the thing not looked for; but I was too much in a fog of politics, and too ignorant of stocks besides, to make the observation. Indeed, I was glad to see the boy, greeting him with a trifle more warmth than common.

Now I thought he gave me his hand with a kind of shiver of reluctance. This made me consider. Plainly, he was not at ease as we sat together. Covering him with the tail of my eye, I could note how his face carried a look, at once timid and malignant.

I could not read the meaning, and remained silent a while with the mere riddle of it. Was he ill? The lean yellowness of his cheek, and the dark about the hollow eyes, were a hint that way, to which the broken stoop of the shoulders gave added currency.

Young Van Flange continued silent; not, however, in a way to promise sullenness, but as though his feelings were a gag to him. At last I thought, with a word of my own, to break the ice.

“How do you get on with your Blackberry?” said I.

It was not that I cared or had the business on the back of my mind; I was too much buried in my campaign for that; but Blackberry, with young Van Flange, was the one natural topic to propose.

As I gave him the name of it, he started with the sudden nervousness of a cat. I caught the hissing intake of his breath, as though a knife pierced him. What was wrong? I had not looked at the reported quotations, such things being as Greek to me. Had he lost those millions? I could have borne it if he had; the better, perhaps, since I was sure in my soul that within two days I would have the town in hand, and I did not think to find my old paths so overgrown but what I’d make shift to pick my way to a second fortune.

I was on the hinge of saying so, when he got possession of himself. Even at that he spoke lamely, and with a tongue that fumbled for words.

“Oh, Blackberry!” cried he. Then, after a gulping pause: “That twist will work through all right. It has gone a trifle slow, because, by incredible exertions, the road did pay its dividends. But it’s no more than a matter of weeks when it will come tumbling.”

This, in the beginning, was rambled off with stops and halts, but in the wind-up it went glibly enough.

What next I would have said, I cannot tell; nothing of moment, one may be sure, for my mind was running on other things than Blackberry up or down. It was at this point, however, when we were interrupted. A message arrived that asked my presence at headquarters.

As I was about to depart, Blossom came into the room.

I had no more than time for a hurried kiss, for the need set forth in the note pulled at me like horses.

“Bar accidents,” said I, as I stood in the door, “tomorrow night we’ll celebrate a victory.”

Within a block of my gate, I recalled how I had left certain papers I required lying on the table. I went back in some hustle of speed, for time was pinching as to that question of political detail which tugged for attention.

As I stepped into the hallway, I caught the tone of young Van Flange and did not like the pitch of it. Blossom and he were in the room to the left, and only a door between us.

In a strange bristle of temper, I stood still to hear. Would the scoundrel dare harshness with my girl? The very surmise turned me savage to the bone!

Young Van Flange was speaking of those two hundred thousand dollars in bonds with which, by word of Big Kennedy, I had endowed Blossom in a day of babyhood. When she could understand, I had laid it solemnly upon her never to part with them. Under any stress, they would insure her against want; they must never be given up. And Blossom had promised.

These bonds were in a steel casket of their own, and Blossom had the key. As I listened, young Van Flange was demanding they be given to him; Blossom was pleading with him, and quoting my commands. My girl was sobbing, too, for the villain urged the business roughly. I could not fit my ear to every word, since their tones for the most were dulled to a murmur by the door. In the end, with a lift of the voice, I heard him say:

“For what else should I marry you except money? Is one of my blood to link himself with the daughter of the town’s great thief, and call it love? The daughter of a murderer, too!” he exclaimed, and ripping out an oath. “A murderer, yes! You have the red proof about your throat! Because your father escaped hanging by the laws of men, heaven’s law is hanging you!”

As I threw wide the door, Blossom staggered and fell to the floor. I thought for the furious blink of the moment, that he had struck her. How much stronger is hate than love! My dominant impulse was to avenge Blossom rather than to save her. I stood in the door in a white flame of wrath that was like the utter anger of a tiger. I saw him bleach and shrink beneath his sallowness.

As I came towards him, he held up his hands after the way of a boxing school. That ferocious strength, like a gorilla’s, still abode with me. I brushed away his guard as one might put aside a trailing vine. In a flash I had him, hip and shoulder. My fingers sunk into the flesh like things of steel; he squeaked and struggled as does the rabbit when crunched up by the hound.

With a swing and a heave that would have torn out a tree by its roots, I lifted him from his feet. The next moment I hurled him from me. He crashed against the casing of the door; then he slipped to the floor as though struck by death itself.

Moved of the one blunt purpose of destruction, I made forward to seize him again. For a miracle of luck, I was withstood by one of the servants who rushed in.

“Think, master; think what you do!” he cried.

In a sort of whirl I looked about me. I could see how the old Galway nurse was bending over Blossom, crying on her for her “Heart’s dearie!” My poor girl was lying along the rug like some tempest-broken flower. The stout old wife caught her up and bore her off in her arms.

The picture of my girl’s white face set me ablaze again. I turned the very torch of rage!

“Be wise, master!” cried that one who had restrained me before. “Think of what you do!”

The man’s hand on my wrist, and the earnest voice of him, brought me to myself. A vast calm took me, as a storm in its double fury beats flat the surface of the sea. I turned my back and walked to the window.

“Have him away, then!” cried I. “Have him out of my sight, or I’ll tear him to rags and ribbons where he lies!”

CHAPTER XXVI – THE VICTOR AND THE SPOILS

FOR all the cry and call of politics, and folk to see me whom I would not see, that night, and throughout the following day – and even though the latter were one of election Fate to decide for the town’s mastery – I never stirred from Blossom’s side. She, poor child! was as one desolate, dazed with the blow that had been dealt her. She lay on her pillow, silent, and with the stricken face that told of the heart-blight fallen upon her.

Nor was I in much more enviable case, although gifted of a rougher strength to meet the shock. Indeed, I was taught by a despair that preyed upon me, how young Van Flange had grown to be the keystone of my arch of single hope, now fallen to the ground. Blossom’s happiness had been my happiness, and when her breast was pierced, my own brightness of life began to bleed away. Darkness took me in the folds of it as in a shroud; I would have found the grave kinder, but I must remain to be what prop and stay I might to Blossom.

While I sat by my girl’s bed, there was all the time a peril that kept plucking at my sleeve in a way of warning. My nature is of an inveterate kind that, once afire and set to angry burning, goes on and on in ever increasing flames like a creature of tow, and with me helpless to smother or so much as half subdue the conflagration. I was so aware of myself in that dangerous behalf that it would press upon me as a conviction, even while I held my girl’s hand and looked into her vacant eye, robbed of a last ray of any peace to come, that young Van Flange must never stray within my grasp. It would bring down his destruction; it would mean red hands for me and nothing short of murder. And, so, while I waited by Blossom’s side, and to blot out the black chance of it, I sent word for Inspector McCue.

The servants, on that day of awful misery, conveyed young Van Flange from the room. When he had been revived, and his injuries dressed – for his head bled from a gash made by the door, and his shoulder had been dislocated – he was carried from the house by the brougham that brought him, and which still waited at the gate. No one about me owned word of his whereabouts. It was required that he be found, not more for his sake than my own, and his destinies disposed of beyond my reach.

It was to this task I would set Inspector McCue. For once in a way, my call was for an honest officer. I would have Inspector McCue discover young Van Flange, and caution him out of town. I cared not where he went, so that he traveled beyond the touch of my fingers, already itching for the caitiff neck of him.

Nor did I think young Van Flange would resist the advice of Inspector McCue. He had reasons for flight other than those I would furnish. The very papers, shouted in the streets to tell how I had re-taken the town at the polls, told also of the failure of the brokerage house of Van Flange; and that young Van Flange, himself, was a defaulter and his arrest being sought by clients on a charge of embezzling the funds which had been intrusted to his charge. The man was a fugitive from justice; he lay within the menace of a prison; he would make no demur now when word and money were given him to take himself away.

When Inspector McCue arrived, I greeted him with face of granite. He should have no hint of my agony. I went bluntly to the core of the employ; to dwell upon the business would be nothing friendly to my taste.

“You know young Van Flange?” Inspector McCue gave a nod of assent.

“And you can locate him?”

“The proposition is so easy it’s a pushover.”

“Find him, then, and send him out of the town; and for a reason, should he ask one, you may say that I shall slay him should we meet.”

Inspector McCue looked at me curiously. He elevated his brow, but in the end he said nothing, whether of inquiry or remark. Without a reply he took himself away. My face, at the kindliest, was never one to speak of confidences or invite a question, and I may suppose the expression of it, as I dealt with Inspector McCue, to have been more than commonly repellent.

There abode another with whom I wanted word; that one was Morton; for hard by forty years he had not once failed me in a strait. I would ask him the story of those Blackberry stocks. A glance into my steel box had showed me the bottom as bare as winter boughs. The last scrap was gone; and no more than the house that covered us, and those two hundred thousand dollars in bonds that were Blossom’s, to be left of all our fortune.

My temper was not one to mourn for any loss of money; and yet in this instance I would have those steps that led to my destruction set forth to me. If it were the president of Blackberry Traction who had taken my money, I meditated reprisal. Not that I fell into any heat of hatred against him; he but did to me what Morton and I a few years further back had portioned out to him. For all that, I was coldly resolved to have my own again. I intended no stock shifts; I would not seek Wall Street for my revenge. I knew a sharper method and a surer. It might glisten less with elegance, but it would prove more secure. But first, I would have the word of Morton.

That glass of exquisite fashion and mold of proper form, albeit something grizzled, and like myself a trifle dimmed of time, tendered his congratulations upon my re-conquest of the town. I drew him straight to my affair of Blackberry.

“Really, old chap,” said Morton, the while plaintively disapproving of me through those eyeglasses, so official in his case, “really, old chap, you walked into a trap, and one a child should have seen. That Blackberry fellow had the market rigged, don’t y’ know. I could have saved you, but, my boy, I didn’t dare. You’ve such a beastly temper when anyone saves you. Besides, it isn’t good form to wander into the stock deals of a gentleman, and begin to tell him what he’s about; it isn’t, really.”

“But what did this Blackberry individual do?” I persisted.

“Why, he let you into a corner, don’t y’ know! He had been quietly buying Blackberry for months. He had the whole stock of the road in his safe; and you, in the most innocent way imaginable, sold thousands of shares. Now when you sell a stock, you must buy; you must, really! And there was no one from whom to buy save our sagacious friend. Gad! as the business stood, old chap, he might have had the coat off your back!” And Morton glared in horror over the disgrace of the situation.

While I took no more than a glimmer of Morton’s meaning, two things were made clear. The Blackberry president had stripped me of my millions; and he had laid a snare to get them.

“Was young Van Flange in the intrigue?”

“Not in the beginning, at least. There was no need, don’t y’ know. His hand was already into your money up to the elbow.”

“What do you intend by saying that young Van Flange was not in the affair in the beginning?”

“The fact is, old chap, one or two things occurred that led me to think that young Van Flange discovered the trap after he’d sold some eight or ten thousand shares. There was a halt, don’t y’ know, in his operations. Then later he went on and sold you into bankruptcy. I took it from young Van Flange’s manner that the Blackberry fellow might have had some secret hold upon him, and either threatened him, or promised him, or perhaps both, to get him to go forward with his sales; I did, really. Young Van Flange didn’t, in the last of it, conduct himself like a free moral or, I should say, immoral agent.”

“I can’t account for it,” said I, falling into thought; “I cannot see how young Van Flange could have been betrayed into the folly you describe.”

“Why then,” said Morton, a bit wearily, “I have but to say over what you’ve heard from me before. Young Van Flange was in no sort that man of gifts you held him to be; now really, he wasn’t, don’t y’ know! Anyone might have hoodwinked him. Besides, he didn’t keep up with the markets. While I think it beastly bad form to go talking against a chap when he’s absent, the truth is, the weak-faced beggar went much more to Barclay than to Wall Street. However, that is only hearsay; I didn’t follow young Van Flange to Barclay Street nor meet him across a faro layout by way of verification.”

Morton was right; and I was to hear a worse tale, and that from Inspector McCue.

“Would have been here before,” said Inspector McCue when he came to report, “but I wanted to see our party aboard ship, and outside Sandy Hook light, so that I might report the job cleaned up.”

Then clearing his throat, and stating everything in the present tense, after the police manner, Inspector McCue went on.

“When you ask me can I locate our party, I says to myself, ‘Sure thing!’ and I’ll put you on to why. Our party is a dope fiend; it’s a horse to a hen at that very time he can be turned up in some Chink joint.”

“Opium?” I asked in astonishment. I had never harbored the thought.

“Why, sure! That’s the reason he shows so sallow about the gills, and with eyes like holes burnt in a blanket. When he lets up on the bottle, he shifts to hop.”

“Go on,” said I.

“Now,” continued Inspector McCue, “I thought I knew the joint in which to find our party. One evenin’, three or four years ago, when the Reverend Bronson and I are lookin’ up those Barclay Street crooks, I see our party steerin’ into Mott Street. I goes after him, and comes upon him in a joint where he’s hittin’ the pipe. The munk who runs it has just brought him a layout, and is cookin’ the pill for him when I shoves in.

“Now when our party is in present trouble, I puts it to myself, that he’s sure to be goin’ against the pipe. It would be his idea of gettin’ cheerful, see! So I chases for the Mott Street hang-out, and there’s our party sure enough, laid out on a mat, and a roll of cotton batting under his head for a pillow. He’s in the skies, so my plan for a talk right then is all off. The air of the place is that thick with hop it would have turned the point of a knife, but I stays and plays my string out until he can listen and talk.

“When our party’s head is again on halfway straight, and he isn’t such a dizzy Willie, I puts it to him that he’d better do a skulk.

“‘You’re wanted,’ says I, ‘an’ as near as I make the size-up, you’ll take about five spaces if you’re brought to trial. You’d better chase; and by way of the Horn, at that. If you go cross-lots, you might get the collar on a hot wire from headquarters, and be taken off the train. Our party nearly throws a faint when I says ‘embezzlement.’ It’s the first tip he’d had, for I don’t think he’s been made wise to so much as a word since he leaves here. It put the scare into him for fair; he was ready to do anything I say.’

“‘Only,’ says he, ‘I don’t know what money I’ve got. And I’m too dippy to find out.’

“With that, I go through him. It’s in his trousers pocket I springs a plant – fifteen hundred dollars, about.

“‘Here’s dough enough and over,’ says I; and in six hours after, he’s aboard ship.

“She don’t get her lines off until this morning, though; but I stays by, for I’m out to see him safe beyond the Hook.”

“What more do you know of young Van Flange?” I asked. “Did you learn anything about his business habits?”

“From the time you start him with those offices in Broad Street, our party’s business habits are hop and faro bank. The offices are there; the clerks and the blackboards and the stock tickers and the tape baskets are there; but our party, more’n to butt in about three times a week and leave some crazy orders to sell Blackberry Traction, is never there. He’s either in Mott Street, and a Chink cookin’ hop for him; or he’s in Barclay Street with those Indians, and they handin’ him out every sort of brace from an ‘end-squeeze’ or a ‘balance-top,’ where they give him two cards at a clatter, to a ‘snake’ box, where they kindly lets him deal, but do him just the same. Our party lose over a half-million in that Barclay Street deadfall during the past Year.”

“I must, then,” said I, and I felt the irony of it, “have been indirectly contributing to the riches of our friend, the Chief of Police, since you once told me he was a principal owner of the Barclay Street place.”

Inspector McCue shrugged his shoulders professionally, and made no response. Then I questioned him as to the charge of embezzlement; for I had not owned the heart to read the story in the press.

“It’s that Blackberry push,” replied Inspector McCue, “and I don’t think it’s on the level at that. It looks like the Blackberry president – and, by the way, I’ve talked with the duffer, and took in all he would tell – made a play to get the drop on our party. And although the trick was put up, I think he landed it. He charges now that our party is a welcher, and gets away with a bunch of bonds – hocked ‘em or something like that – which this Blackberry guy gives him to stick in as margins on some deal. As I say, I think it’s a put-up job. That Blackberry duck – who is quite a flossy form of stock student and a long shot from a slouch – has some game up his sleeve. He wanted things rigged so’s he could put the clamps on our party, and make him do as he says, and pinch him whenever it gets to be a case of must. So he finally gets our party where he can’t holler. I makes a move to find out the inside story; but the Blackberry sport is a thought too swift, and he won’t fall to my game. I gives it to him dead that he braced our party, and asks him, Why? At that he hands me the frozen face, springs a chest, and says he’s insulted.