Alfred Henry Lewis

“ What bridge whist is to Fifth Avenue so is stuss to the East Side. No one save the dealer wins at stuss, and yet the device possesses an alluring feature. When the victim gets up from the table, the bank under the descriptive of viggresh returns him one-tenth of his losings. No one ever leaves a stuss game broke, and that final ray of sure sunshine forms indubitably the strong attraction. Stuss licks up as with a tongue of fire a round full fifth of all the East Side earns, and to viggresh should be given the black glory thereof.
The Bottler owned talents to make money. ”

“ Those about Flynn's, Nigger Mike's and the Chatham Club, to say naught of members of the Humpty Jackson gang, and others who in his latter days had been near if not dear to him, confessed that it went far in contradiction of any Spanish or Portuguese ancestry for Louie.
Louie was a mystery, and studied to be so. And to be a mystery is as difficult as being a hypocrite. One wrong word, one moment off your guard, and lo, a flood of light! The mystery vanishes, the hypocrisy is laid bare. You are no longer a riddle. ”

“ It would be twenty minutes before the Chinese dinner hour, when she was to join Tchin Len across the street, and she drew out pen and ink and paper that she might practice the white devils' way of writing; and all with the thought of some day sending a letter of love and gratitude to the mission matron with the Highland name.
So engrossed was little Bow Kum that she observed nothing of the soft opening of the door, or the dark savage face which peered through. The murderer crept upon her as noiselessly as a shadow. There was a hawk-'like swoop. ”

“ That accomplished, the Five Points' Danites were to drift up behind them, and at a signal from Pioggi, empty their pistols into their backs. Pioggi would fire a bullet into Twist; that was to be the signal. As Pioggi whispered his instructions, there shone a licking eagerness in the faces of those who listened. Nothing so exalts the gangster like blood in anticipation; nothing so pleases him as to shoot from behind.
Pioggi pitched upon one whose name and face were unknown to Twist and Louie. ”

“ Louie never made any place his hangout long. There was no element of loyalty in him, whether for man or for woman, and he went from friend to friend and gang to gang. He would stay nowhere, remain with no one, after his supremacy had been challenged. And such hardy natures as Biff Ellison, Jimmy Kelly, Big Mike Abrams, Chick Tricker and Jack Sirocco were bound to challenge it. They had a way, too, of putting the acid on an individual, and unless his fighting heart were purest gold they'd surely find it out. ”

“ It was the evening next after the one upon which Goldie Louie, following the example of the vanished McTaffe, had expressed club-wise his disapproval of Leoni's love for Casey. The Stag was a riot of life and light and laughter; music and conversation and drink prevailed. In the rear room—fenced off from the bar by swinging doors—was Goldie Louie, together with Fog-eye Howard, Brother Bill Orr and Sanky Dunn. There, too, Whitey Dutch was entertaining certain of the choicest among the Five Pointers. ”

“ About the time Slimmy began his lucid setting forth of Brutus, Cæsar and their political differences, Ellison and Razor, down at Nigger Mike's in Pell Street, were laying their heads together. A bottle of whiskey stood between them, for they required inspiration. There were forty people in the room, some dancing, some drinking, some talking. But no one came near Ellison and Razor, for their manner showed that they did not wish to be disturbed. As the Nailer observed, “They had a hen on,” and when gentlemen have a hen on they prefer being quiet. ”

“ Every dispenser of beer is by way of being a power in politics. Some soar higher, some with weaker wing—that is a question of genius. One sells beer and makes himself chief of Tammany Hall. Another rises on the tides of beer to a district leadership. Still others—and it is here that Ellison comes in—find their lower beery level as Tammany's shoulder-hitting aides. ”

“ By the time this was accomplished, Pioggi's recruits had put in an appearance. They did not descend upon Coney Island in a body, with savage uproar and loud cries. Much too military were they for that. Rather they seemed to ooze into position around Pioggi, and they could not have made less noise had they been so many ghosts.
The campaign was soon laid out. Louie and Twist still sat over their wine at Ding Dong's. Now and then they laughed, as though recalling the ignominious exit of Pioggi. Means must be employed to draw them into the street. ”

“ Of course, from the white devils' view-point the fate designed for little Bow Kum was as the sublimation of the immoral. But you must remember that morality is always a question of geography and sometimes a question of race. Climates, temperatures, also play their part.
Then, too, there is that element of support. In the tropics, where life is lazy, easy, and one may pick a dinner from every tree, man is polygamous. In the ice locked arctics, where one spears his dinner out of the cold, reluctant sea, and goes days and days without it, man is polyandrous, and one wife has many husbands. ”

“ It was even more of a waterhaul than had been the Savoy safe. The double disappointment turned Jackeen's mood to gall and it was while his humor was thus bilious that he one day walked into the Chatham Club.
There was a distinguished company gathered at the Chatham Club. Nannie Miller, Blinky the Lob-bygow, Dago Angelo, Roxie, Jimida, Johnny Rice, Stagger, Jimmy Foy, and St. Louis Bill—all were there. And these were but a handful of what high examples sat about the Chatham Club, and with calls for beer, and still more beer, kept Nigger Mike and his assistants on the joyful jump. ”

“ Should an officer show unexpectedly up, he must stand him off at the muzzle of his gatt, and if crowded, shoot and shoot to kill. He is to stand fast by his partners, busy with wedges, fuse and soup inside, and under no circumstances to desert them. Mike was that one of ten thousand, who had the nerve and could be relied upon to do and be these several iron things. Wherefore, he lived not without honor in the land, and never was there a fleet of yeggs or a mob of gons, but received him into its midst with joy and open hearts. ”

“ The rich were never called upon to explain their prosperity. The poor were forever being asked to give some legal reason for their poverty. Two men in a magistrate's court are fined ten dollars each. One pays, and walks free; the other doesn't, and goes to the Island. Spanish sees, and hears, and understands.
“Ah!” cries he, “that boob went to the Island not for what he did but for not having ten bones!”
And the lesson of that thunderous murmur—reaching from the Battery to Kingsbridge—of Get the Money! rushes upon him; and he makes up his mind to heed it. ”

“ The more since he had hoped that his hooking up with the Five Points would have kept him against such rapine.
Following the Twist fulmination, the Bottler stood wrapped in thought. The dangerous chief of the Eastmans lit a cigar and waited. The poor Bottler's cogitations ran off in this manner. Twist had killed six men. Also, he had spared no pains in carrying out those homicides, and could laugh at the law, which his prudence left bankrupt of evidence. Dahl, too, possessed a past as red as Twist's. Both could be relied upon to kill. To refuse Dahl as a partner spelled death. ”

“ Why should a Chinaman heed the white devils' laws? The white devils were the barbarous inferiors of the Chinese. The latter as a race had long ago arrived. For untold ages they had been dwelling upon the highest peaks of all possible human advancement. The white devils, centuries behind, were still blundering about among the foothills far below. It was an insult, between Chinaman and Chinaman, for Lee Tcin Kum and the wise men of the On Leon Tong to quote the white devils' laws, or assume to yield them respect. ”

“ The law might have taken notice of this killing, but some forethoughtful friend had had wit enough to tuck a gun beneath the dead Tchen's blouse, and thus it became at once and obviously a case of self-defence.
There was a loose screw in the killing of Ling Tchen. The loose screw dwelt not in the manner of that killing, which had been not only thorough but artistic. Indeed, cutting off Ling Tchen's head as a finale was nothing short of a stroke of genius. The loose screw was that Ling Tchen belonged to the Hip Sing Tong; and the Hip Sing Tongs lived in Pell Street, where Mike himself abode. ”

“ Dahl talked things over with Twist. There was but one way: the Bottler must die. Anything short 'of blood would unsettle popular respect for Twist, and without that his leadership of the Eastmans was a farce.
The Bottler's killing, however, must be managed with a decent care for the conventionalities. For either Twist or Dahl to walk in upon that offender and shoot him to death, while feasible, would be foolish. The coarse extravagance of such a piece of work would serve only to pile needless difficulties in the pathway of what politicians must come to the rescue. ”

“ It was whispered that Harry the Soldier and Dopey Benny remained three days in the Pell Street room of Big Mike Abrams before their get-away. They might have been at the bottom of the lower bay, for all the Central Office knew. Butch was buried, and the Darby Kid wept over his grave. After which she cheered up, and came back smiling. There is no good in grief. ”

“ The out-rush of gas drove them, choking and gasping, into the open air.
“Take it from me,” said the Dropper, as soon as he could get his breath, “they've croaked Mike.”
“But the window,” urged the Nailer; “mebbe Mike has the window open!”
“Not a chance!” retorted the Dropper. “No one has his window up while he hits th' pipe. They don't jibe, fresh air an' dope.”
The Dropper was right. Big Mike, stark and still and yellow, lay dead in his bed—the last place his friends would have anticipated—poisoned by gas.
“Better notify th' cops,” advised Jimmy, the practical. ”

“ He thought it would make for the moral uplift of Chinatown to explode so foolish a tale.
Yong Dok begged Raphael not to visit the haunted room where the blood of little Bow Kum spoke in dumb, dull crimson from the floor. It would set the ghosts to talking.
“Then come with me, and act as interpreter,” quoth Raphael, and he threw Yong Dok over his heavy shoulder and began to climb the stairs.
Yong Dok fainted, and lay as limp as a wet bath towel. Loui Fook said that Yong Dok would die if taken to the haunted room, so Raphael forbore and set him down. ”

“ Slimmy, having finished with Cæsar and the others, had just signed up to the waiter to go his merry rounds, when Ellison and Razor slipped in from the street. Their hands were on their guns, their eyes on Kelly.
Harrington saw it coming.
“Your gatt, Paul, your gatt!” he shouted.
The rule in Gangland is to let every man kill his own snakes. Harrington's conduct crowded hard upon the gross. It so disgusted Razor that, to show Harrington what he thought of it, he half turned and laced a bullet through his brain. ”

“ Gangland is interested only in dollars or war.
That contention of his friends did not restore Spanish in the general estimation. All must confess that at least he had missed Jigger. And Jigger without a rod! It crowded hard upon the unbelievable, and could be accounted for only upon the assumption that Spanish was rattled, which is worse than being scared. Mere fear might mean no more than an excess of prudence. To get rattled, everywhere and under all conditions, is the mean sure mark of weakness. ”

“ Hock your socks, it's Mike for me every time! I'd sooner he filled in wit' a mob of mine than th' best dip that ever pinched a poke.”
Big Mike had been a fixed star in the Gangland firmament for years. He knew he could slug, he knew he could stay; and he made the most of these virtues. When not working with Little Maxie, he took short trips into the country with an occasional select band of yeggs, out to crack a P. O. or a jug. At such times, Mike was the out-side man—ever a post of responsibility. The out-side man watches while the others blow the box. ”

“ Leoni—according to Detective Biddinger of that city's Central Office—was born in Chicago, upon a spot not distant from the banks of the classic Drainage Canal. She came to New York, and began attracting police attention about eight years ago. In those days, radiant as a star, face of innocent beauty, her affections were given to an eminent pickpocket known and dreaded as Crazy Barry, and it was the dance she led that bird-headed person's unsettled destinies which won her the nom de cour of Trouble Maker. ”

“ Nothing ever overtakes them that doesn't overtake a clam. They are interesting, can be interesting, to no one save themselves. To talk with one an hour is like being lost in the desert an hour. I prefer people into whose lives intrudes some element of adventure, and who, as they roll out of their blankets in the morning, cannot give you, word and minute, just what they will be saying and doing every hour in the coming twelve.
My Central Office friend, in telling of the baby's absent fingers, began by speaking of Johnny Spanish. Spanish has been sent to prison for no less than seven years. ”