THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE LUCKY NUMBER
 
 THE LUCKY NUMBER 
 
 BY 
 
 I. K. FRIEDMAN 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 WAY AND WILLIAMS 
 1896
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 BY WAY AND WILLIAMS 
 
 MDCCCXCVI
 
 PS 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s - 7 
 
 Rouge et Noir ... - 3 
 
 A Monger of Ballads 38 
 
 A Coat of One Color - - - 55 
 
 A Pair of Eyes - 70 
 
 The Magic Herb - - 87 
 
 The Return 103 
 
 The Flight of a Night-Hawk - 124 
 
 A Fair Exchange - 142 
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture - - - 181 
 
 907902
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s 
 
 "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." 
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 DEVEREUX is a Frenchman his 
 name has told you that at a glance ; 
 he is a Frenchman out of France, a fish out 
 of water, and the water is cleaner for the 
 absence of the fish. Anxious as France 
 is for an increased population she offered 
 every inducement in the world to Devereux, 
 and those of his compatriots who frequent 
 his saloon, to stay in America. They had 
 left their country to our country s detri 
 ment, true patriots they. 
 
 L Auberge, so Devereux named his place, 
 and The Lucky Number (a saloon one block 
 removed from L Auberge in distance, a mile 
 in caste) represent the two extreme points 
 on the crooked line of vice : L Auberge 
 7
 
 8 The Lucky Number 
 
 symbolizes the attractiveness of crime, The 
 Lucky Number its repulsiveness ; the one 
 tempts men to sin, the other punishes them 
 when they fall; a career of evil starts in a 
 place like Devereux s and ends in a place like 
 The Lucky Number; so much for the spirit 
 of these dives, just a word or two about the 
 letter. 
 
 At Devereux s you may look down on a 
 polished oak floor and up at a richly orna 
 mented ceiling; you may draw a cane-bot 
 tom chair, neatly varnished, up to a cherry- 
 stained table, sip your absinthe out of a 
 thin, shining glass, and see just how you 
 look as you do it in the beveled mirror which 
 covers the wall back of the mahogany bar. 
 If your taste run toward art, you may in 
 dulge it by admiring the copies in oil of 
 Bougereau s paintings lioni soit qui mal y 
 pense. 
 
 The Lucky Number is a crude study in 
 dirt, done in rough pine; in some places 
 this dirt is thicker than in others, and thus 
 the monotone is relieved, beyond this there 
 is no attempt made at the decorative. If
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s 9 
 
 you look down you will see sawdust and 
 dust ; if you look up, look out for your head. 
 
 The clientele at Devereux s is composed 
 of two distinct types; the one is best de 
 scribed by the French term sale-type, a term 
 I prefer to leave untranslated ; the other is 
 made up of " fine workers, " forgers, counter 
 feiters and thieves, who represent the intel 
 lect of vice, and draw the plans and lay the 
 plots for the muscle, the labor, of vice to 
 carry out. They have a way, all their own, 
 of covering and retracing their tracks, which 
 baffles and discourages the most persistent 
 of sleuths. Yet detection is easy as com 
 pared with arrest, for the rascals never seem 
 to get farther than the station steps ; there 
 they always pause, lift their hats in the most 
 approved Parisian style, bid the officers a 
 bon soir, and disappear. It is impossible 
 not to admire their manners. 
 
 Safe in jail, when the police get them 
 that far you may be sure they are safe, 
 then the work has but begun, for to con 
 vict them is quite another matter. They 
 play a game of wit, a game of which they
 
 io The Lucky Number 
 
 are past-masters, and one worth winning 
 only when they hold the bad cards. Let an 
 illustration serve. 
 
 A complicated plot, finished in every 
 detail, was laid for the murder of a miser; 
 this miser, moreover, was a Frenchman, 
 and lived in a hovel in the French quar 
 ter two things which made the job haz 
 ardous, nay, foolhardy ; because they would 
 certainly be suspected of the crime an 
 hour after its execution. To let suspicion 
 fall elsewhere and fall there naturally, not 
 to jerk it there here is where the fin 
 esse, the adroitness of the plot centered. 
 The combined astuteness of their depraved 
 minds, fitted by long training for such work, 
 was taxed to solve the difficult problem; 
 but the solution was as nice, as logical and 
 as perfect as a definition in calculus. One 
 fault only could be found, it was too nice ; let 
 the smallest cog slip by so much as a hair s 
 breadth, and the ponderous machine would 
 hurl them to death in the balance wheel. 
 
 This they knew, and their knowledge made 
 them shudder, and their shuddering made
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s n 
 
 them consider and reconsider; finally they 
 gave it up; but it was fascinating, and the 
 fascination was made more intense by the 
 condition of their purses. They had had a 
 hard winter, un hiver moral, to use the 
 expression of one of them. Blood was one 
 thing, money another, and they meant to 
 have that miser s money, codte que codte, 
 cost what it might. 
 
 But that one cog slipped it always does 
 somehow, and the result was not so disas 
 trous as expected ; they were too familiar with 
 machinery of that kind not to be prepared 
 for accidents. Its every movement had been 
 calculated to a fraction, and by a fraction 
 four of them escaped its iron jaws. The 
 fifth, as accomplished in mathematics as the 
 rest but slower in movement, was caught by 
 the foot and pulled out by the police. 
 
 The evidence of these four was needed to 
 convict the fifth, and the police and the 
 press started in hot pursuit; but the four 
 could not be found ; where they went was a 
 mystery, but mystery or no, they were gone 
 they had taken French leave, as it were.
 
 12 The Lucky Number 
 
 The state s attorney was on his metal, 
 for this was his first important case, and he 
 wanted to show the public of what stuff he 
 was made. He was ambitious, too, this 
 state s attorney; his eye had long been fixed 
 upon a seat on the Supreme bench, and if he 
 missed this chance he was likely to remain 
 standing where he now was. He let the 
 police go their way and the press go its way, 
 he pursued the even tenor of his own. 
 
 He took the tangled skein of facts and 
 clues in his prehensile hands, and unravelled 
 it carefully, bit by bit ; in the mass of this 
 untangled stuff he discovered one little thread 
 which repaid him for his hard labor and 
 staying awake o nights. By that thread he 
 gained this nugget of information ; a certain 
 Godier knew the whereabouts of the foxy 
 four (such was the euphonious title now be 
 stowed upon them), and kept his accom 
 plices informed of every important move 
 made by their arch-enemies. This was the 
 part Godier was to play by prearrangement 
 these great generals of crime calculated on 
 victory, but they made the necessary pre-
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s 13 
 
 parations for a possible defeat. Now the 
 thing was to catch this Godier and make 
 him speak. 
 
 He was located at Devereux s without 
 the least difficulty. The detective who cap 
 tured him said, "The job was as easy as 
 picking a penny from the street;" but to 
 make him speak, that was like lifting a 
 house from its foundation. 
 
 The man acted the deaf mute, and he acted 
 like one created for the part by nature. 
 After much trouble and casting about some 
 one was found who could speak French and 
 read the deaf and dumb alphabet, but that 
 some one could not understand Godier, who 
 spoke a digital patois. 
 
 They put him in the sweat-box and 
 turned the steam on at full force, but never 
 a word could they sweat out of him. Then 
 they tried to flatter him to speech by the 
 liberal application of a club, but his tongue 
 did not prove susceptible to flattery. He 
 gesticulated violently, he writhed and 
 turned with the agility of a contortionist, 
 but he would not speak; he ground his set
 
 14 The Lucky Number 
 
 teeth, he became blue in the face, he buried 
 his long finger nails in the flesh of his palms, 
 his throat seemed bursting in a convulsive 
 effort at speech, but not even a monosyl 
 lable did he utter. The expression on his 
 countenance, the pathetic appeal of his dumb 
 lips, the muscular contraction of his throat 
 made the pantomime appalling. If you 
 have ever seen a mute trying to call for 
 assistance when in danger, you can form 
 an idea of how Godier conducted himself 
 through the ordeal. 
 
 The state s attorney sickened at the cruel 
 performance and he ordered it to be stopped. 
 He began to question the possibility, not to 
 say probability, of a mere sham withstand 
 ing the fierce rays of such a powerful search 
 light without discovering his mask. Yet to 
 believe the rascal s dumbness other than a 
 feint was to acknowledge the hopelessness of 
 the case. That seat on the Supreme bench 
 seemed farther away than in the distant day 
 of his dreamy youth. With hands crossed be 
 hind his back, he paced up and down his office 
 restlessly, and urged his brain with whip
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s 15 
 
 and lash. In the throes of intellectuality 
 his thought gave birth to an idea ah, there 
 was an easier and less painful way of bring 
 ing this mute to speech ! 
 
 He released Godier, and sent for a detec 
 tive by the name of Gilchrist. Gilchrist, 
 a Canadian of French descent, had this in 
 his favor: he spoke French fluently, and he 
 was tenacious. "I am a tenacious bird, 
 I am," were the words constantly on his 
 lips. Tenacity was the one quality the 
 state s attorney pinned his faith to, and this 
 is why he sent for Gilchrist. Aside from 
 the undue development of this one trait, he 
 was an ordinary mortal endowed with but 
 little more than ordinary acumen; he was 
 not one of those superhuman detectives, 
 existing only in the minds of fictionists, who 
 start with a speck of dust and end with 
 the creation of a cosmos. 
 
 When released, Godier made straight for 
 L Auberge; at first blush this may seem 
 madness, but reflect a little and you will see 
 method. When he entered, Gilchrist, who 
 had preceded him, was reading Le Carica-
 
 1 6 The Lucky Number 
 
 ture with an apparently absorbing interest. 
 "There s the mute," the detective heard 
 some one behind him say in a low voice, and 
 this was the only comment passed on Go- 
 dier s sudden acquittal; it was evidently 
 taken as a matter of course. The detective 
 watched (well, do you know how detectives 
 watch? They watch as a cat watches a 
 mouse), but he never saw so much as a sur 
 reptitious glance pass between the mute and 
 his boon companions. The tongue-tied 
 wretch seated himself at the nearest table, 
 put his doubled fist to his mouth and 
 tossed back his head ; Devereux understood 
 what all this meant, for he placed a pint of 
 claret and a glass on the table, and the mute 
 nodded approval. 
 
 Gilchrist, like the state s attorney, was now 
 besieged by doubt ; he did not know at first 
 whether to believe the man a mute, or not to 
 believe it. A second afterwards he chided 
 himself for being such a credulous fool. Here 
 he was just launching himself on an expedi 
 tion for discovery, and doubting the exist 
 ence of the object of his quest. He needed
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s 17 
 
 no other spur than his own scolding to stir 
 him to action; he arose and planted himself 
 in front of his prey, leaned over and whis 
 pered in good French, "I have an important 
 message from the four." The mute looked 
 up with an expression of dumb amazement, 
 the others tried to hide their laughter in 
 their sleeves ; one of them, a fellow of some 
 wit, remarked, "He doesn t speak French, 
 sir." The detective tried hard not to ap 
 pear disconcerted, lounged around a while 
 and left. "Laugh at him, did they? he 
 would show them before long that the last 
 laugh is the merriest." 
 
 For the next two days he shadowed the 
 place without entering; he was waiting out 
 side for an inspiration, and when the inspira 
 tion came he was going inside, and that "jail 
 bird" should speak or he would pull his 
 tongue out by the roots. 
 
 Meanwhile, the state s attorney was suf 
 fering from nervous depression, brought on 
 by the fear that his crown would be one of 
 ridicule instead of glory. He summoned 
 Gilchrist and lectured him. Three whole
 
 1 8 The Lucky Number 
 
 days had passed, and he had not discovered 
 anything worthy of even reporting at head 
 quarters. How did he spend his time, sleep 
 ing? If he didn t wake up, and wake up 
 with a start, he would have him discharged 
 then and there. He gradually assumed a 
 pleasant tone, promising to use his influence 
 for the sleuth s promotion, if he but made 
 Godier speak. "For once," he finished, 
 with a quiet smile, "speech is golden, and 
 silence is silver; remember it." 
 
 Humiliated by the lecture, but animated 
 by the prize, Gilchrist walked out of the 
 office, meekly muttering, "I am a tenacious 
 bird, I am," which was his way of pray 
 ing for inspiration, for the quality of tenac 
 ity, he thought, must appeal to the Lord, 
 when all else failed. The inspiration came, 
 and it came, as inspirations will, at the most 
 unexpected time and in the most unexpected 
 manner, just when his heart grew sick from 
 hope deferred. 
 
 He fretted and fumed two more valuable 
 days away shadowing Devereux s, and he 
 was about as tired, disgusted and blue as it
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s 19 
 
 is possible for any mortal to be. This hang 
 ing around for an inspiration was a poor 
 business and, tenacious as he was, he had 
 had enough of it Gilchrist wanted more 
 substance and less shadow. 
 
 He walked home, donned a disguise, it 
 goes without saying that he was an adept 
 at disguises, and made for L Auberge. 
 He had met with such a thing as luck in 
 his career, and he trusted to meet it again 
 that night at Devereux s. 
 
 He was striding thither in the darkness, 
 when he bumped into a negro carrying a 
 mongrel musical instrument on his back. 
 The "tenacious bird" shoved him aside im 
 patiently and hurried on. 
 
 "By God, I have it!" he said, running 
 back far more quickly than he had moved 
 forward. 
 
 "See here, dingy, can you play this 
 tune?" Gilchrist whistled a few bars of 
 a well known air. 
 
 Deed I can, boss! I know de tune, but 
 not de name," said the negro, starting to 
 take the instrument from his back.
 
 2O The Lucky Number 
 
 "Never mind that; let s see if you can 
 whistle the tune." 
 
 He whistled it better than Gilchrist had 
 done. The detective pressed a silver dollar 
 in this wandering minstrel s hand; he could 
 be generous when occasion demanded. 
 
 "Do you know where Devereux s place 
 is?" 
 
 "Where all dem Frenchies is? down 
 there between " 
 
 Exactly, go there and play. Play any 
 thing you have a mind to play, but don t 
 start that tune until I come, and when I 
 come don t play it until I step on your foot. 
 You understand, not until I step on your 
 foot. One word more, you don t know me, 
 and you never saw me before." 
 
 He held another dollar to the light, "If 
 you do the right thing, this is yours; go 
 ahead, and I ll follow." 
 
 The negro s instrument has been called 
 mongrel because I know of no better adjec 
 tive to describe the contrivance. It was a 
 combination of everything that makes ac 
 cordant sound, and discordant, too, for that
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s 21 
 
 matter; cymbal and harp, trumpet and 
 mouth-organ, and drum and fife all were in 
 cluded. The simultaneous use of feet, 
 hands and mouth was required, and one 
 needed to be a born musician as well as a 
 born gymnast to play it. 
 
 The minstrel almost knocked Gilchrist s 
 best laid plans into a cocked hat by starting 
 his performance at L Auberge with "Die 
 Wacht Am Rhein;" luckily he saw his mis 
 take, made evident by hisses and groans, 
 and he substituted "Yankee Doodle," fol 
 lowed by Hail Columbia ; this the patrons 
 liked better and they applauded. 
 
 At this point Gilchrist stepped in he ap 
 peared excited and out of breath. Had 
 they heard the news? War had been de 
 clared in France! Guns had been fired! 
 Troops were mobilized ! The navy was on 
 the move! German soldiers had marched 
 into Madagascar! He had just seen the 
 announcement on a special bulletin in the 
 Tribune office. 
 
 They jumped from their seats and crowd 
 ed near him. He glanced around; Godier 
 was there with the rest ; so far so good.
 
 22 The Lucky Number 
 
 I must hasten," he said, "before dawn 
 every Frenchman in the city must know it." 
 Then came a torrent of wherefores and 
 whys and whens. 
 
 The detective knew that the characteristic 
 of the Gallic mind is to excite itself first and 
 to reason afterwards, and he answered accord 
 ingly, but his answers were consistent ; they 
 came as swiftly as their queries and more 
 swiftly, but thus far not a question from 
 Godier; did he smell a rat? 
 
 The news spread ; men, women and child 
 ren came rushing in from all directions ; the 
 place became so crowded that one could 
 hardly turn. Gilchrist never had known that 
 there were so many French out of France. 
 A throng gathered outside, and Devereux 
 shut the doors, begging them to make less 
 noise, saying, "The police will shut me up 
 for a public nuisance, if you keep on yelling. 
 
 Gilchrist started to go. "There was much 
 to be done, there were other places besides 
 this." They held him by the coat, "Just a 
 word, just one word more."
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s 23 
 
 "Well, he would remain long enough to 
 drink to France and to victory. He laid a 
 crisp bill on the bar. "A drink for every one 
 out of that; " who would be stingy on such 
 an occasion ? He filled the glasses and cried, 
 Vive la France ! Vive la France ! a bas les 
 Allemands!" They took up the cry in 
 unison"; you could have heard it blocks and 
 blocks away. This enthusiasm warmed 
 their blood and made them recklessly gener 
 ous; then the corks began to fly. It was a 
 banner day for Devereux nothing like war 
 for his business. The more they drank the 
 louder they yelled, and the louder they 
 yelled the more they drank. 
 
 And Godier? He was the one silent indi 
 vidual in the place, was Godier, but he un 
 derstood and heard Gilchrist could tell that 
 from his ears. 
 
 Now or never. The "tenacious bird" 
 touched the negro s foot and the Marseillaise 
 began with a vim ; the musician was playing 
 for a dollar, and he wanted to give a dollar s 
 worth. The angel Gabriel appearing there 
 in person and blowing the Marseillaise on
 
 24 The Lucky Number 
 
 his celestial trumpet could not have evoked 
 more wonder and surprise, so suddenly and 
 so unexpectedly did the music burst forth. 
 Gilchrist made the best of a rare oppor 
 tunity, and shouted rather than sang the 
 opening strophe of the battle hymn: 
 
 "Ye sons of freedom, wake to glory, 
 
 Hark! hark! what myriads bid you rise! 
 Your children, wives, and grandsires hoary, 
 Behold their tears, and hear their cries! " 
 
 The first was all he sang unaccompanied, 
 then the others took it up, and how they 
 took it up. They threw their arms around 
 each other and whirled about in patriotic 
 ecstasy; they sang and shouted and 
 screamed with all their might and all their 
 main. Chairs and tables were smashed be 
 yond the hope of repair, and Devereux did 
 not even cry halt; he urged them on by 
 his own example. When it came to the 
 chorus : 
 
 "To arms! to arms! ye brave ! 
 The avenging sword unsheathe; 
 March on ! march on 
 To victory or death ! 
 To victory or death !"
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s 25 
 
 he fired glass after glass on the floor from 
 behind the bar. Old Planard, "the lame 
 devil," who had lost a leg in the last 
 war and was proud of it, kept time with 
 his wooden stump; the dull thud of that 
 stump was the one sound discernible in the 
 uproar. 
 
 Exiles, castaways, most of them, they 
 were pouring all their woes, all their hatred, 
 all their regrets, all their homesickness, all 
 that was bad and all that was good in them, 
 into the stirring verses of the Marseillaise; 
 every word was a key which opened the shut 
 chambers of their hearts to long, long vistas 
 of a happier past. Women were sobbing 
 hysterically, and children were clinging to 
 their mothers in fright ; but the battle-hymn 
 went on and on, and gathered force as it 
 went. 
 
 The negro was carried away by the spirit 
 of the others, and he made that mongrel in 
 strument do the work of a band, and do it 
 well. The sweat rolled down his face, the 
 veins on the top of his bald head swelled 
 to a violet blue ; it seemed that his cheeks
 
 26 The Lucky Number 
 
 would crack from the blowing, and that his 
 eyes would fall from their sockets. 
 
 The Marseillaise had aroused their fathers 
 to deeds of heroism ; it was the song of the 
 Revolution, it was the song of France, it was 
 the battle-hymn of the Republic ; thousands 
 and thousands had died with those precious 
 words on their lips, and thousands and tens 
 of thousands had marched with everlasting 
 glory to the strains of that thrilling melody. 
 And they they would sing until their 
 hearts sank from exhaustion, and their 
 voices ceased forever. 
 
 What a pandemonium it was! But there 
 was all the sublimity of a storm, all the 
 grandeur which follows in the wake of light 
 ning and thunder, when the heavens open 
 and send their heavy artillery plunging down 
 the vast skies. 
 
 The Ausgelassenheit the abandon, how 
 it ravished, how it intoxicated, how it en 
 tranced ! No man could resist the magnetism, 
 the spell of such a divine madness. Godier, 
 the cautious, the crafty, the circumspect 
 Godier, was swept away by patriotic fervor,
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s 27 
 
 and when they reached the flaming appeal of 
 the lines: 
 
 "And lo! our fields and cities blaze, 
 And shall we basely view the ruin, 
 
 While lawless force, with guilty stride, 
 Spreads desolation far and wide, 
 
 With crime and blood its hands embuing. 
 To arms! to arms! ye brave!" 
 
 he joined in vociferously. 
 
 The detective knew not whether to laugh 
 at him or cry for him ; Gilchrist s French 
 blood had been heated to the boiling point 
 by the flames of this glowing fire of patriot 
 ism, and he was as thoroughly in earnest as 
 the rest. Only by fooling himself had he 
 fooled Godier; for the mute, suspecting a 
 trap from the very first, had turned the 
 strong damper of his will against the expand 
 ing heat of his emotions that threatened to 
 tear him open unless he gave them vent ; but 
 when he saw Gilchrist singing with an en 
 thusiasm too intense to be simulated, and 
 he was too shrewd an observer to be tricked 
 by a spurious article, his suspicions became 
 disarmed, and he threw the safety-valve 
 wide open and let the steam escape.
 
 28 The Lucky Number 
 
 His lusty voice and vigorous lungs, like 
 the arrival of fresh cohorts to fatigued 
 troops, stimulated his countrymen, who 
 were beginning to flag from sheer weariness, 
 to greater efforts than had yet been achieved. 
 The chandeliers shook, actually shook, and 
 the very walls vibrated from the onslaught 
 of the waves of sound. 
 
 The police, dressed in citizens clothes, 
 filed in one by one, but they were as little 
 heeded as the poor flies which went buzzing 
 about the room distractedly, and which had 
 been shocked out of their hibernation by the 
 clatter and din. 
 
 They were singing the chorus for the last 
 time, and they gathered all their remaining 
 force and vigor to make the words signifi 
 cant. They sang those verses as the rabble, 
 marching towards Versailles in the stormy 
 days of the revolution, must have sung 
 them. This last chorus, if I may so phrase 
 it, was a crescendo that progressed geomet 
 rically, a wave which gathered the multi 
 plied force of every other wave that preced 
 ed it, and towered above them all mountain
 
 Chauvinism at Devereux s 29 
 
 high. You would have thought they were 
 singing on the battle-fields amid the clash 
 ing of swords, the blowing of bugles, the 
 screaming of shells and the roaring of 
 cannon; nay, you would have heard the 
 exultant shout of a victorious army drown 
 ing the agonizing cries of the defeated, the 
 bleeding, the wounded and the dying. 
 
 Then they were silent, and the silence 
 was as expressive as the song you could 
 have heard the quivering of an aspen leaf. 
 
 Gilchrist grasped Godier by the shoulder. 
 Poor Godier! he felt his mistake intuitively. 
 The police pressed forward and pushed the 
 crowd back. 
 
 What a triumph for Gilchrist ! For him it 
 was the apotheosis of tenacity. He would 
 not have been a Frenchman had he not 
 ended the third act of this drama with an 
 epigram. "Gentlemen," said he, "the Mar 
 seillaise is the greatest general of France, 
 under its leadership I have captured the 
 enemy."
 
 Rouge et Noir 
 
 HE held his last dime tightly in his 
 closed fist, and elbowed his way to 
 the dealer s table through the ragged crowd 
 of vagabonds of all descriptions and occupa 
 tions (save honest ones), who jostled and 
 pushed to gain the coigns of vantage near 
 the wheel. The place filthy, bare, reeking 
 with the smell of cheap whisky and still 
 cheaper tobacco was in perfect keeping 
 with its patrons. The only things in the 
 room, either ornamental or useful, were the 
 gambling implements and the large kerosene 
 lamp suspended from the ceiling, which gave 
 forth a little, dim, flickering light and much 
 foul odor. 
 
 He bet on the red, held his breath and 
 
 shut his eyes, not daring to look ; that dime 
 
 symbolized a lodging for the night, and 
 
 outside the blizzard was playing the deuce 
 
 30
 
 Rouge et Noir 31 
 
 with thinly clad, overcoatless wretches like 
 himself. 
 
 The wheel stopped with a loud clack 
 red ! He had won the goddess of luck be 
 praised for that. He tucked this open 
 sesame to Black Tom s Cave of Comfort (a 
 basement lodging house, or better, a heap of 
 bunks in a basement) way down in the 
 pocket of what was once a vest, and bet 
 again. 
 
 It was for a supper this time. A full sup 
 per, from soup to coffee, can be had for 
 eight cents by those who know where to go, 
 and who are contented with the quality of 
 the soup, the coffee, and what comes between 
 the quantity is always satisfactory. No 
 food had crossed his lips all day, and the 
 issue between red and black made an empty 
 stomach palpitate with fear and excitement. 
 
 Red! and the supper was his, and he 
 smacked his lips with a pregustatory relish 
 that coffee. For once in his ill-starred life 
 luck was favoring him, and he meant to 
 seize the opportunity. He doubled his 
 stakes, the wheel stopped square at the red.
 
 32 The Lucky Number 
 
 He tripled his stakes; bed, lodging, sup 
 per, cigar, whiskey (luxuries unknown to 
 him for months) and all ! A whirl ! and the 
 wheel started again. He cursed himself 
 inwardly for being such a hazardous fool and 
 not knowing when to stop. If he had saved 
 only bed and supper, and had bet the rest ! 
 Thrice around sped the circle glowing with 
 color. It stopped, wavered a second be 
 tween the two, as if hesitating whether to 
 throw this dare-devil supperless into the 
 cold, or let him revel in luxury ; then the red 
 had it. Eyes from all parts of the room shot 
 envious glances at him eager, wolfish eyes, 
 aglow with want and hunger. Why couldn t 
 they have luck like that? 
 
 He grew reckless, the tide was flowing his 
 way, and on it he meant to ride to fortune; 
 he bet against all kinds of odds and still the 
 red, always the red. "He has charmed the 
 wheel," muttered some one. 
 
 The dealer had enough of this fool, fa 
 vored by fortune as all fools are, and he 
 cried halt. The lucky gamester, envied but 
 reviled by the unlucky, made his way to the
 
 Rouge et Noir 33 
 
 door, jingling the silver in his pocket, and 
 imagining all kinds of delightful tastes and 
 sensations. 
 
 All this was the empty dream of a poor 
 devil awakened from a restless sleep by the 
 gnawing pains of hunger. A second or two 
 passed before he could fully realize that it 
 was all a dream, and he even smacked his 
 lips once or twice like one who has eaten 
 heartily of substantial food so vividly had 
 he seen these things in his mind s eye. 
 
 He sat upright and tried to think. A 
 sudden bump on the head recalled him from 
 the mimic world of dreams to the real world 
 of facts and things. There he was ex 
 hausted from hunger, trying to sleep in one 
 of the upper bunks in The Cave of Comfort. 
 He lay flat on his back, pressed his hands 
 to his stomach and moaned. If that dream 
 were only true. He tried to sleep again, 
 but the heavy snoring of the drunken or 
 worn-out sleepers, who were piled around 
 him on all sides like so much lumber, kept 
 him awake. He was cold, too, and the 
 basement air chilled him to the bone, de-
 
 34 The Lucky Number 
 
 spite the heavy horse blanket, and the fact 
 that he had on every stitch of his clothing 
 the only way to keep clothes in such a place. 
 
 The little wood stove in the corner threw 
 out all smoke and no heat, the atmosphere 
 (used to it as he was) choked him, and he 
 started to cough, when an ominous growl 
 from the bunk below warned him to keep his 
 cough to himself. By way of distraction he 
 fastened his sight on the flame of the small 
 lamp, burning low, which stood at the door 
 way near the seat of Black Tom, the Cer 
 berus of this Hades. The longer he watched, 
 the brighter seemed the flame that circled 
 around the glass chimney like a red hoop of 
 living fire. Red again it was the finger of 
 fortune beckoning him on. 
 
 Like a man moved by divine impetus, he 
 left all consequences out of reckoning and 
 clambered down. Black Tom, sitting half 
 asleep on his stool near the door, grumbled 
 a little, lifted his lamp from the floor, and 
 let him out. The man of fortune pulled 
 himself up the basement steps and found 
 himself in the deserted streets.
 
 Rouge et Noir 35 
 
 He had been in the cold but a minute and 
 he was shaking from head to foot, his teeth 
 chattering, and every limb trembling as if 
 palsy-stricken. Thin veiling would have 
 been about as much protection as those 
 clothes of his, and then he had an empty 
 stomach and a system wasted by hunger 
 and exhaustion. 
 
 Too weak to move, he rested against a 
 lamp-post, wondering what crazy notion had 
 made him forsake a warm, comfortable bed 
 (all things go by comparison) for that bleak, 
 bitter cold street. Fortune, luck those 
 were things in which fools and capitalists 
 should believe. 
 
 A clock from the tower of the neighboring 
 depot struck ten clear, resonant strokes 
 through the frosty air; he had believed the 
 hour to be much later on account of the de 
 serted appearance of the street; but in 
 weather like this every rat that has a hole 
 crawls into it for shelter. Ten o clock well, 
 there might be hope yet. 
 
 Three jolly fellows, evidently the worse for 
 an evening of intense gayety, staggered past.
 
 36 The Lucky Number 
 
 The seeker of fortune tried to look more 
 wretched than he was (difficult task) and 
 begged for charity with a piteous tale. 
 There was a slight patter of silver on the 
 pavement, more welcome to the beggar s 
 ears than a symphony from heaven. It was 
 a dime ! A strip of red, shaped like an in 
 verted V, seemed to spurt from the sky to 
 the ground. 
 
 The coin acted like a draught of new wine 
 on his enervated system ; fed by the promise 
 of his dream he felt as if he had dined like a 
 king, and through his stiff cramped body a 
 current of fresh life began to run. 
 
 He moved cautiously but quickly down 
 the dark alley like one afraid of some lurk 
 ing danger, but yet familiar with his way. 
 The gambling den of his dream was the ob 
 ject of his search, and for it he made 
 straightway. Three short, quick raps, the 
 slipping of a heavy bolt, and the door 
 opened from within. The room, faces, 
 positions, lights and shadows, perspective 
 and all, seemed copied from the picture of 
 his dream.
 
 Rouge et Noir 37 
 
 He pressed forward with a certain swagger 
 of self-confidence and bet his dime on the 
 red ; not in the least disturbed by the deal 
 er s sarcastic smile at the insignificant stake. 
 
 A whirr! red and black coalesced and 
 separated, separated and coalesced so 
 quickly and so continually that no eye 
 could follow. The wheel slowed down, 
 oscillated a second or two, and then stopped. 
 "And the black has it," sang out the dealer 
 in a voice that plainly said "and I knew it." 
 The dreamer of beautiful dreams, with fists 
 firmly clenched, head bent down, and a curse 
 on his lips, slunk back into the bleak street, 
 his faith in dreams lost forever.
 
 A Monger of Ballads 
 
 "I can make chansons, ballades, lais, virelais, 
 roundels, and I am very fond of wine." 
 
 A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT. 
 
 AN emaciated body covered with filthy 
 rags; a repqlsive face pinched and 
 puckered by want and disease ; half-shut life 
 less eyes that peered cautiously from two 
 deep-sunken sockets ; a sensual red nose, that 
 seemed to droop rather than curve over an 
 unusually large mouth such was Charcoal, 
 the abstract and brief chronicle of the vice 
 of the slums. Hated by thieves and thugs 
 for the cowardice that made him a lackey 
 for the lowest vagabonds, he represented 
 something below zero on the social ther 
 mometer of the district. 
 
 Had you cast a single glance at him, as 
 he sat busily writing at a table in one corner 
 of The Lucky Number, you would have, 
 38
 
 A Monger of Ballads 39 
 
 understood why he was dubbed Charcoal by 
 the birds of his own black feather. 
 
 He was evidently absorbed in what he 
 was doing, so absorbed that he never 
 stopped to sip from the huge schooner of 
 beer that foamed temptingly at his elbow. 
 There was little to disturb him, for it was the 
 hour when honest people start to work ; the 
 slums were still wrapped in drunken sleep, 
 the saloon was empty, and the scribe toiled 
 on in comparative quiet and seclusion. 
 
 Finally he threw his stub of a pencil on 
 the floor, leaned far back in his chair, gave 
 a long yawn of satisfaction, and sipped his 
 beer, as a god, careless of mankind," re 
 clines on the hills and sips nectar. The 
 beer gone and the schooner turned upside 
 down to discover a single drop lurking in 
 the bottom, he took the greasy, brown paper 
 in his still greasier fingers and examined his 
 work with a critical cock of his crossed eyes. 
 He seemed satisfied for he smiled, if the 
 facial gymnastic that drew one lip up to 
 wards the nose and the other down towards 
 the chin, could be called a smile.
 
 40 The Lucky Number 
 
 "Something funny?" asked Mike the 
 bartender, who had been watching him 
 closely from behind the bar. Mike was the 
 only man in the district who ever spoke to 
 Charcoal without punctuating his remarks 
 with a kick or a curse; for Mike marvelled 
 how a man unacquainted with soap and 
 white shirts could master the occult science of 
 writing where ignorance is bliss. More 
 over, this same Michael had seen such writ 
 ing converted into money (a thing that 
 happens rarely, even in the slums), and the 
 pecuniary consideration in no wise lessened 
 his reverence. 
 
 "No-op," was the answer to the barten 
 der s query, "it s something serious." 
 
 "I likes em humorous; now that er un of 
 yourn, "Steve O Donnel s Wake," was a 
 corker;" then, as if to bear out his state 
 ment, he sang in a raucous voice, the chorus: 
 
 "There was fighters, there was biters 
 There was tough, old dynamiters 
 At Steve O Donnel s wake." 
 
 "Trash, miserable trash! "yelled the maker 
 of ballads. "I wrote it for the amusement
 
 A Monger of Ballads 41 
 
 of ignorant wretches, and I m ashamed of 
 myself; I never want to hear it again!" and 
 down came the clenched fist on the table. 
 
 Mike was so surprised at this unwonted 
 outburst that he passed no remark on the 
 schooner which fell on the floor, shattered 
 to pieces. 
 
 "I can beat it easily, I can write some 
 thing worthy of a man far better than I am. 
 Listen!" 
 
 He rose to his feet, his dead eyes spark 
 ling with the fire of life, his cheeks flushing 
 perceptibly, his hands trembling with excite 
 ment, as he stood with chest out and should 
 ers back, the position of one who respects 
 himself. The metamorphosis was complete; 
 inspiration turned him, for the nonce, into 
 something like a man. 
 
 "Can that be Charcoal?" thought Mike. 
 
 In a quivering, high-pitched voice he read 
 his song; a pathetic ditty, gracefully told. 
 It was the story of an old man who passed 
 up and down the little street of a village, day 
 in, day out, playing the same old tune on a 
 crazy fiddle. The children mocked him,
 
 42 The Lucky Number 
 
 older people called him crazy; but the old 
 man, never heeding them, played on, stub 
 bornly refusing to tell what the spirit that 
 moved him was. But one day their rude 
 treatment arousing his anger, he turned 
 suddenly and spoke: 
 
 "It s the tune that I played to my daughter, 
 
 It s the tune that my Nell loved best; 
 I play and I seem to see her, 
 My Nell in her grave at rest." 
 
 They never troubled him after that, and he 
 went his way unmolested: 
 
 "And never his tune has varied, 
 
 Not once in many a year. 
 It s the same old tune that he fiddles, 
 It s the same old tune that we hear." 
 
 You have seen a spring send water, pure 
 and undefiled, bubbling up through a mass 
 of decayed, slimy vegetation this tramp 
 and his song present an analogy. 
 
 "Good," spake Mike, when the reader sat 
 down mopping his brow with a rag which 
 did duty for a handkerchief; "good; have 
 one on me." And waiving the formality of 
 an acceptance, he filled a schooner to the 
 brim and placed it on the bar.
 
 A Monger of Ballads 43 
 
 The poet paid no attention to this gen 
 erosity, not established by precedent, and 
 sat lost in reverie, tapping the pine table 
 with his fingers to the tune of something 
 that beat in a corner of his brain. 
 
 "Does yer want me to bring it to yer on 
 a silver tray?" asked the mixer of drinks 
 sarcastically. 
 
 Charcoal crossed the floor covered with 
 sawdust, but to the surprise of Mike he 
 turned his back to the bar and sat himself at 
 the piano a crazy old tin-pan affair, much 
 the worse for long abuse and hard pounding. 
 
 "Has yer turned timperance?" This sec 
 ond grand effort at sarcasm remained, like 
 the first, unanswered and unheeded. The 
 mind of the balladmonger was soaring 
 above all things of the earth, earthy, into 
 the divine realms of music. With his fore 
 finger he picked out, one by one, the notes 
 of the tune he wanted for his song. The 
 inspiration was sudden and he wished to 
 impress the tune firmly on his mind, before 
 it was gone forever, past recall. The fact 
 that several keys gave no response when
 
 44 The Lucky Number 
 
 struck did not in the least discourage him ; 
 a note, whistled from his pointed lips, a 
 kind of natural piano, was substituted with 
 evident satisfaction to the musician. 
 
 "If he ain t crazy!" Mike suppressed the 
 conclusion in a hearty draught from the 
 schooner intended for Charcoal, and to him 
 he paid no further attention. 
 
 The man at the piano, with many shakes 
 of the head and unnumbered fresh starts, 
 kept pounding away diligently and con 
 tinuously; at length each separate note, 
 beginning with the first and ending with the 
 last, arranged itself in harmony with every 
 other, and the resultant melody seemed a 
 near enough outward reproduction of the 
 inner conception to content the artist. 
 Charcoal was a Jack of all trades, good at 
 two. He shut the piano with a bang, and 
 whistled the air over half a dozen times to 
 make sure that not a note had escaped his 
 memory. 
 
 "Where to?" Mike ceased in his per 
 functory cleaning for a minute and looked 
 up inquiringly at his guest about to depart.
 
 A Monger of Ballads 45 
 
 "Oh, I know a Dutchman down here who 
 can write notes, and with this rather am 
 biguous answer he slouched into the street. 
 
 "I spose them things comes natural-like 
 to some," said the bar-tender, explaining 
 to a patron the origin of the new tune he had 
 been whistling all day, "just like, well, 
 just like mixin drinks comes to others." 
 
 I stated en passant that Charcoal was a 
 Jack of all trades, differing from the other 
 versatile Jacks in that he was good at two. 
 Time was when he might have claimed a fair 
 mastery of a third ; in his better days (and 
 you have read too much of this story not 
 to guess that he must have seen better days) 
 he had trod the stage ; but whether he shone 
 as a high tragedian or a low comedian, the 
 records of the theatre do not say. Kid 
 Kelly, rude biographer of the slums who 
 takes pains to learn a man s history, when 
 he judges it to have been so black that the 
 subject of his biography, rather than suffer 
 its narration, would pay him hush money in 
 the shape of future service, is authority for 
 the statement that Charcoal drew a big au-
 
 46 The Lucky Number 
 
 dience and a fat salary until he fell in love 
 with a leading lady, fair as foul, who led him 
 down the way to Avernus, made easy by 
 the abuse of whiskey. As six out of every 
 ten men (to make a rough guess) not born 
 in the slums are sent there by whiskey or 
 women, I am warranted by mathematical 
 probability in accepting Kid s statements as 
 truth, after deducting a certain percentage 
 for exaggeration. Moreover, Charcoal al 
 ways disposed of his ballads to the profession 
 directly; that is, without the intervention 
 of a middleman, and on several occasions 
 he was known to have secured a slight loan 
 in advance on the promise of a song (he 
 was merchant enough to discount his notes), 
 and all this, I think, argues a remote 
 acquaintance, at least, with the profession. 
 Be this as it may, the afternoon of that 
 same day found Charcoal in the private office 
 of a variety theatre, well patronized by the 
 respectable middle classes. In the gaudily 
 furnished room he looked for all the world 
 like a picture of poverty done in oil, and 
 painted to adorn by contrast the parlors of
 
 A Monger of Ballads 47 
 
 the rich. The manager, a shrewd, bright, 
 dapper little fellow, read the ballad quickly, 
 and recognizing in it the element of popu 
 larity, made an offer of four dollars to the 
 author. The author timidly suggested that 
 it might be worth five ; a ticket for the next 
 Saturday night s performance was thrown 
 in as a kind of "split the difference," and 
 the bargain was concluded. 
 
 "Under what name do you wish it to 
 appear?" asked the purchaser. 
 
 "Name?" Charcoal snapped his fingers 
 melodramatically. "What did he care for a 
 name? his name was Charcoal; if he called 
 himself by any other, he would be called a 
 liar. It s money, money he wants," and he 
 jingled his four dollars most musically to his 
 own ears, at least, and left. 
 
 Between that afternoon and the next 
 Saturday the ballad I forgot to mention 
 that Charcoal entitled his effort, "The Same 
 Old Tune" became the rage; everybody 
 whistled it, from musician to merchant, and 
 from merchant to cab-driver. Those who 
 could not whistle hummed, and those who
 
 48 The Lucky Number 
 
 could neither hum nor whistle sang the air. 
 However, the ballad had not yet become 
 unpopular from over-popularity; and had 
 the author s name been appended the world 
 would have sung his praises as well as his 
 music, but since it appeared anonymously, 
 no one stopped to inquire the name of the 
 composer. 
 
 On the night of that memorable Saturday 
 of which I speak, Charcoal scaled the dizzy 
 heights of the paradiso, and waited patiently 
 amid the impatient gods for the rising of 
 the curtain. He wondered what these same 
 gods who edged away from him as though 
 he were a leprous mortal would have said, 
 had they known that he was the writer of 
 the song which had set the world astir. A 
 voice within him called loudly, "Announce 
 yourself! announce yourself! Get up and 
 say, I am the author of The Same Old 
 Tune; but he throttled the voice and sat 
 in silence, so depressed by the company of 
 his own gloomy thoughts that he could not 
 enter into the spirit necessary for the enjoy 
 ment of the performance.
 
 A Monger of Ballads 49 
 
 The sudden appearance of Mile, de 
 Moreau, such was her nom de programme, 
 called him with a rude shock from the 
 depths of his dungeons in Spain to the 
 higher world of realities. A look of pro 
 found surprise crossed his face; his lips 
 rounded as if to give vent to an "O;" he 
 shielded his eyes from the glare of the lights 
 with his hands, and craned his neck to see 
 better. 
 
 She sang his song in a clear, sweet sopra 
 no voice which brought out the pathos of 
 the story so well that the audience was 
 moved to the very depths and cheered itself 
 hoarse. Not Charcoal, however; he pre 
 served a stolid silence, and sat as if carved 
 of stone. Perhaps he had exhausted all 
 his emotion in writing the song, and hence 
 could not be moved by hearing it sung; 
 perhaps this may have been the prima don 
 na referred to by Kid Kelly, and he may 
 have been thinking of the strange pranks 
 destiny plays; perhaps, but why waste 
 more time in useless conjecture? 
 
 One thing is certain : this actress, painted,
 
 50 The Lucky Number 
 
 powdered, ornamented with a lavish display 
 of cheap jewelry; this thing of shreds and 
 patches seemed as beautiful to Charcoal as 
 did Beatrice, clad in saintly garb, surrounded 
 by choiring angels, and refulgent with celes 
 tial light, to the inspired vision of Dante. 
 
 And lo ! he, Charcoal, the miserable tramp, 
 the lackey for thieves and outcasts, had 
 poured out this finest thought and most 
 soulful melody, by means of which she 
 moved this large audience to tears and plau 
 dits and wild acclaim. 
 
 Lackey for tramps! if right were his, he 
 should be leader of men of thought and 
 fancy. Oh, the pity of it ! to be so much 
 above the life he was leading, and yet be 
 bound there by the iron chain of circum 
 stance. The bathos, the eternal unfitness 
 of things held him on the balance, trembling 
 between laughter and tears; lost opportuni 
 ties, wasted life, talents scattered to the four 
 winds, surged before him in dread visual 
 images that grasped him, as it were, by the 
 throat and left him breathless. 
 
 He yearned for the slums, he would fit
 
 A Monger of Ballads 51 
 
 more naturally into that horrible niche of 
 creation, he would be more in harmony with 
 the ensemble of his surroundings. He arose 
 to leave. 
 
 Once out however, he regretted his de 
 parture bitterly and longed to return. The 
 lights, the crowd, the music, the enthu 
 siasm, the bare stage itself, had exerted a 
 powerful fascination on his feverish imagina 
 tion. "Go back to the slums?" His higher 
 self, his alter ego was up in arms against the 
 proposition. 
 
 The passers-by cast pitying glances at 
 him as he moved along; such a miserable, 
 wretched, dejected, poverty-stricken mortal 
 did he seem. He had never heeded those 
 glances before, or rather they had become 
 so common that they made no impression 
 on his consciousness; now they aroused his 
 anger. He wanted admiration, not pity; 
 he had done great things; if they only knew, 
 he was the author of "The Same Old 
 Tune." A dark alley offered friendly con 
 cealment, and he turned thither with hurried 
 step.
 
 As he passed the stage door, for this blind 
 alley led to the stage door, the actors were 
 filing down the passage in groups of twos and 
 threes. A desire to see again the prima 
 donna, who had interpreted his song so feel 
 ingly, arrested his steps ; he hid against the 
 projecting wall and waited. 
 
 The stage mechanics came out in a body, 
 went their way, and left the alley to silence, 
 to him and the faint light that flickered 
 over the entrance. 
 
 The door opened again, and a woman trip 
 ped up a few stairs. There she was! Char 
 coal sprang forward only to stare a startled 
 coryphee in the face. The poor danseuse ran 
 down the alley at a pace that bade defiance 
 to all the conventional rules of her art. 
 Frightened, disappointed, but not discour 
 aged he pressed back again. She was long 
 in coming, but he did not mind that; for 
 the night might as well be passed here as 
 elsewhere. He began to fear lest she had 
 left before his advent, or slipped away 
 under his very nose into the darkness. This 
 fear crossed his mind, just as Mile, de
 
 A Monger of Ballads 53 
 
 Moreau and her escort passed the door-way 
 the escort was a contingency upon which 
 he had not reckoned. 
 
 Charcoal crouched down and debated with 
 himself whether he should speak or not; he 
 was so near that he could touch her with his 
 elbow, and yet he seemed to see her through 
 the halo of an interminable distance. "If 
 I could only speak to her for five minutes 
 face to face as that man was doing!" 
 
 They scolded a second or two because 
 the carriage was late, and then the conver 
 sation, evidently begun indoors, drifted to 
 the mystery attending the authorship of that 
 wonderful song. 
 
 "Yes, I should like to meet the man who 
 had sentiment and feeling enough to write 
 that song; I have an idea that the man who 
 wrote it is " The noise of clattering hoofs 
 drowned her last words, and Charcoal could 
 not hear them, hard as he tried. The car 
 riage stopped with a loud "whoa" from the 
 coachman. 
 
 He must speak now or never; the pangs 
 of authorship were upon him and he
 
 54 The Lucky Number 
 
 plunged forward, "Madame, I, Char Ben 
 Latham, I am the author of The Same 
 Old Tune. She shrieked and jumped into 
 the carriage. Was it the name or the sud 
 den appearance of such a character in such 
 a place, at such a time, that frightened 
 Mile, de Moreau? 
 
 The escort lifted his cane, then, seeing 
 the humor of the situation, and thinking the 
 joke too good to go unpaid, he flung the 
 vagabond a dime; and the carriage rolled 
 along. 
 
 Charcoal let the dime lie where it fell and 
 scornfully hurried away ; afterwards he slunk 
 back, poked in the mud, and clutched the 
 coin that he had spurned. 
 
 Fame has its rewards.
 
 A Coat of One Color 
 
 " Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" 
 Look & gift horse in the mouth. 
 
 No one ever learned how Whitey became 
 the owner of his silk hat and his long blue 
 coat, made a la Russe, sable lined and sable 
 trimmed; but the most stupid should have 
 known that he did not come by them hon 
 estly, for should he wear what were honestly 
 his, then the rascal s skin would have 
 shielded him but poorly from the heat of 
 summer and the winter s cold. 
 
 According to one of his accounts and 
 his accounts varied with his audience he 
 was the seventh son of a seventh son, and 
 born with a cowl on his face; and the coat 
 and hat, more particularly the coat, became 
 his by the sacred law of septogeniture. 
 
 He boasted that it was in his power to in 
 fluence the destinies of men for good or evil, 
 55
 
 56 The Lucky Number 
 
 as he chose, since the heritage endowed the 
 seventh son with the divine gift of working 
 miracles and gave him absolute control over 
 all the demons of the lower regions and all 
 the angels of the higher. 
 
 The seventh son (I go back a generation), 
 whoever the venerable gentleman may have 
 been, was certainly careful of his clothes; 
 for the coat showed not a sign of wear, and 
 the beaver was as polished as if it had just 
 left the hatter s block. 
 
 Whitey declared that with the clothes on 
 his will was omnipotent ; but with them off, 
 he was as impotent, as ordinarily mortal as 
 Hercules in the Centaur s deadly robe. You 
 may be sure that he was never caught nap 
 ping or awake without these precious gar 
 ments. All of his sacred person that he ex 
 posed to vulgar gaze, his cheeks, leprously 
 white from disease, and his hawk-like nose 
 and dreamy eyes, what occultist has not 
 dreamy eyes and a hawk-like nose? which 
 peeped forth from the loophole made by the 
 space between the collar of his coat and the 
 rim of his hat.
 
 A Coat of One Color 57 
 
 Among the crowd of superstitious crimi 
 nals at The Lucky Number there was but a 
 handful that was skeptical of his power to in 
 fluence the fates to apportion more weal and 
 less woe, or more woe and less weal, as the 
 case might be, in the destinies of their lives; 
 and these, save one, he gradually won to 
 belief by the use of verba sesquipedalia, by 
 sleight of hand tricks, and a few bold predic 
 tions that, as luck would have it, came to pass. 
 
 What is more convincing to the ignorant 
 and the superstitious than the esoteric clad in 
 high-sounding, empty phraseology? The 
 poor gudgeons nibbled at his bait without 
 suspicion, and when they had nibbled long 
 enough to be caught by the hook, he drew 
 them in remorselessly. 
 
 His success made the charlatan arrogant 
 to the degree of insolence ; he threatened to 
 visit them all with ills that made the plagues 
 of Pharaoh seem blessings by comparison ; 
 and when they were quaking with fear, he 
 seized the propitious moment and declared 
 himself the Czar of The Lucky Number. 
 His realm to be sure was not vast, but the
 
 58 The Lucky Number 
 
 very narrowness of its confines (there is no 
 disadvantage without some contingent ad 
 vantage) aided him in the establishment of 
 an unlimited monarchy and allowed him to 
 rule his subjects with a rod of iron. 
 
 Then the man of magic grew exorbitant 
 in his demands, as is natural for one who 
 has risen from tenement to throne with such 
 Mercurial rapidity, and he imposed even 
 upon the nobility the most menial of tasks. 
 His peasantry were taxed to the utmost that 
 he might have vodka in superabundance, by 
 the canfuls; and once, when the taxes had 
 yielded beyond precedent, he gave forth the 
 ukase that his shoes be blacked. 
 
 Human forbearance has limits beyond 
 which no one may venture to pass, but the 
 autocrat disregarded all boundary lines and 
 encroached on the interior. The ukase was 
 such a flagrant abuse of power that even 
 Charcoal, the most timid serf in the realm, 
 upon whom the whole weight of the imperial 
 edict fell, openly refused to obey its behest. 
 
 The nobility and muzhiks surreptitiously 
 countenanced the revolt of the serf, mur-
 
 A Coat of One Color 59 
 
 murs portentous of a terrible revolution 
 filled the air; the ruler felt his throne (a chair 
 minus its cane bottom) totter, and under his 
 breath he prayed, "God save the czar." 
 
 A great emergency surely, but with a ma 
 jesty equal to it he arose from his throne. 
 Crafty potentate that he was, in peace he 
 had prepared himself for war; while sitting 
 supinely on his throne he had been dreaming 
 of a great revolt, and mentally outlining a 
 course that should crush it at a single blow, 
 though it have as many heads as a hydra, 
 and each head be endowed with as many 
 lives as a cat. 
 
 He removed his crown and threw his im 
 perial mantle from off his shoulders. Think 
 of it, the mystical garments of his father, 
 the original seventh son, thrown angrily on 
 the floor by his seventh son ! 
 
 "Knave, take them and they are yours," 
 he exclaimed, "but if you so much as touch 
 the sacred hem of that garment with the tip 
 of a finger, you bring upon yourself the 
 anathema of the seventh son. The ana 
 thema of the seventh son, I warn you!"
 
 60 The Lucky Number 
 
 He spoke with a sublimity befitting a 
 monarch; Tom Keene, as Richelieu, never 
 shook altitudinous galleries with such a 
 thunder. 
 
 And Charcoal, you think, shrinking back 
 in fear, craved pardon, and let the crown 
 and mantle lie where they fell? Not much! 
 Charcoal was a poet, you remember, and 
 hence not to be browbeaten out of a sable 
 coat and a silk hat even by the anathemati 
 zation of one seven times removed from the 
 seventh son. Charcoal was " the one " who 
 had steadfastly remained a skeptic ; while not 
 having the physical courage to declare his 
 dissension openly, he had the mental cour 
 age to remain unconvinced by the rhodo- 
 montade of this hoax. Fearful that his 
 prize might be taken from him, he pulled 
 the hat over his ears, grasped the coat 
 tightly, and hastened out of doors. 
 
 And the Czar, you think, bemoaned his 
 lost finery, and repented his rash act? If so 
 you mistake again ; it was just what he had 
 expected ; it was just what he had planned. 
 Before the night came he would again
 
 A Coat of One Color 61 
 
 ascend his throne in triumph ; and this nihil 
 ist, this skeptic, who was ever a menace to 
 his reign, this Gringoire of the gutters, 
 would drag his lengthening chains Siberia- 
 ward and cast more than one longing, 
 lingering look behind. 
 
 "He will regret his foolhardiness; the 
 curse of the seventh son is on his shoulders. 
 The hat and coat will float back to me 
 through the realms of space, and this rebel 
 will beg me to release him from his dungeon 
 by my magic. But he will beg in vain, in 
 vain," and the wizard stalked out of the 
 place, majestic even in his rags. 
 
 Charcoal moved through the wind-swept 
 streets; and in the intense cold he revelled 
 in the sensation of feeling warm, a sensation 
 he had not experienced for years. Clothes 
 do not make the man, but he was only half 
 a man, and the clothes supplying the miss 
 ing half, made him one, for the nonce, with 
 out disputing the axiom. People turned 
 around to look at him with an air which 
 said, "Who is that aristocrat?" 
 
 To say that he walked along proud as a
 
 62 The Lucky Number 
 
 peacock, would phrase it by only a half; but 
 since nothing is known that walks prouder 
 than a peacock, his pride must be allowed to 
 go half unexpressed. 
 
 In one of the pockets he found a nickel, 
 the discovery made him jubilant; it might 
 be the coat of Fortunatas, as well as that of 
 the seventh son. He plunged in the same 
 pocket again and found nothing the coat 
 belonged to the seventh son only, curse it ! 
 Then he began a painstaking search, and all 
 he got for his pains was a letter, sealed care 
 fully and addressed in a neat hand. 
 
 Charcoal was about to open the envelope 
 and read the letter, when he reflected that 
 he might gain more by handing it to the 
 person addressed ; for, if the seal were 
 broken, he dared not deliver it ; and, in case 
 the contents proved worthless, he would de 
 fraud himself in two ways. Why gratify a 
 vulgar curiosity when an emolument was at 
 stake? He was a poet, a man of high 
 ideals, and the seal on a letter was a sacred 
 thing in his eyes. 
 
 The writer of sentimental ballads buttoned
 
 A Coat of One Color 63 
 
 his coat and hurried on; "Mr. Von Million, 
 President of the Tenth National Bank," 
 said he, repeating the address, "I wonder 
 if the gentleman is distantly related to 
 Whitey." He might be one of the other 
 six brothers, or one of the six brothers of 
 the seventh son, for, in a family of such 
 complicated relationship, one might easily 
 claim blood ties with anybody one chose. 
 
 "The letter may bring me in a fortune of 
 itself," he reflected; "what a gudgeon 
 Whitey is to think I would take a bluff like 
 that." 
 
 "What a gudgeon that balladmonger is 
 to have called my bluff," thought the 
 wizard, when shivering in the cold he saw 
 Charcoal replace the letter and make rapid 
 strides, as he surmised, towards the place to 
 which it was addressed. They both fostered 
 the same high opinion of each other s worth ; 
 which is easily understood, if one stops to 
 consider that both poet and magician work 
 in the same material, the immaterial. 
 
 Charcoal s dress admitted him into the 
 president s office without delay and the un-
 
 64 The Lucky Number 
 
 rolling of yards of red tape. "As this world 
 runs," he mused, "a man should always go 
 well dressed." 
 
 With a bow that would have won the ad 
 miration of a dancing master, Mr. Von Mil 
 lion, taking the letter, asked the bearer to 
 be seated. "The materialism of our day," 
 ran Charcoal s thoughts, "is enough to make 
 a good poet a bad pessimist ; more respect 
 is paid to a wearer of sables than to a writer 
 of sonnets." 
 
 The president s face changed color as he 
 read, he gasped for breath and nervously 
 crumpled the paper in his hand. "The 
 communication must be important," con 
 cluded the balladmonger; Charcoal had all 
 the sensitive intuition of a bard ; the note, 
 for it was a simple note and not a letter, 
 read : Unless you deliver the bearer 1 5 , ooo 
 dollars immediately, he will blow your 
 brains out." The communication was im 
 portant. 
 
 "I will be back with the money in a min 
 ute," said the terrified capitalist in a voice 
 that tried hard to betray no feeling of fear,
 
 A Coat of One Color 65 
 
 and he stepped towards the door on tip-toe, 
 as if he were afraid of the sound of his foot 
 fall. 
 
 "I wonder where the man lives to whom 
 I am to take the money. But what s the 
 difference? No matter where he lives, I can 
 deliver it in a minute; it s all one to me" 
 Charcoal showed a true poet s carelessness 
 in money affairs. 
 
 If he should hand him 5,000 dollars, if it 
 be that much, he would buy him a Sabine 
 farm, and in the center of it, on the sloping 
 bank of an artificial lake (a thing beautiful to 
 behold in the summertime, when the water 
 lilies were in full bloom, and the swans 
 went swimming between the small wooded 
 islands) he would build him, O sancta sim- 
 plicitas, a log cabin ; and therein would he 
 devote the rest of his days to the muses, and 
 to gazing out of the window on the waters 
 of his lake, shimmering in the moonlight, 
 for inspiration. 
 
 And if it were 10,000 dollars? With the 
 other five he would build a barn of brown 
 stone with pressed brick trimmings,and stock
 
 66 The Lucky Number 
 
 it with blooded Kentucky horses, and gor 
 geous turnouts, and colored footmen and 
 coachmen, who should be clad in top boots, 
 tight-fitting knee-breeches of white, coats 
 of flaming red, and black silk hats with 
 white bands and cockades of yellow. 
 
 When the weather was fine he might, by 
 way of diversion, drive to the city and stop 
 his coach and four at The Lucky Number 
 for refreshment. Would the hobos recog 
 nize their former frater in poverty in this 
 grand gentleman, who carelessly threw a 
 silver dollar on the bar for a schooner of 
 beer, and refused the change? He felt sure 
 that they would not. But if they did, there 
 would be such a sensation as one sees only 
 in a melodrama. 
 
 Charcoal slipped down in the upholstered 
 chair, and, stretching his feet out towards 
 the fire that burned cheerfully in the grate, 
 he added story after story to his castles in 
 Spain. How pleasant it is to build castles 
 when one has lived in a dungeon all one s 
 life. 
 
 Between the heat blazed out from the grate
 
 A Coat of One Color 67 
 
 and the warmth engendered by his sable, he 
 found himself uncomfortable, and absent- 
 mindedly, dreaming still of his castle (it had 
 assumed the proportions of a sky-scraper by 
 this time), he arose, removed his heavy 
 overcoat, and threw it across the back of the 
 chair. 
 
 The sight of his rags threw him from the 
 window of the top story of his castle of 
 dreams to terra firma of the actual and the 
 present ; he awoke with a start, and, blam 
 ing himself for his folly, he was about to 
 don the robe again when the president en 
 tered the room, holding in his hand a small 
 white canvas bag. He dropped the bag on 
 the table with a thud and remarked, "It s 
 all in fifty dollar gold pieces." 
 
 Charcoal jumped to grab it ; a policeman 
 entered from another door, and grabbed 
 Charcoal. "Whitey, the letter, and the 
 coat, damn them! I see his game," he 
 maundered. 
 
 In the twinkling of a star his fortune, base 
 less fabric, had vanished into nothingness; 
 but his dreams, substantial gift of the muses,
 
 68 The Lucky Number 
 
 still remained, and as long as they were his 
 he could be rich as a Croesus, in his mind. 
 
 One guardian of the peace had just assist 
 ed the poet into the patrol wagon, and an 
 other guardian of order, who carried in his 
 hands the hat and coat that had cost Char 
 coal his liberty, was about to mount its 
 steps when he felt two quick, sudden jerks. 
 He turned swiftly, but too slowly; the hat 
 and coat were gone. He caught a glimpse 
 of the thief disappearing in the crowd and 
 gave chase. "No use," said the officer re 
 turning to the wagon breathless and empty- 
 handed, "that fellow is made of rubber and 
 lightning." 
 
 The patrol had not yet passed the door of 
 The Lucky Number when the Czar entered ; 
 his white face was wreathed in a happy smile, 
 his beaver sat crown-like on his head, and 
 his person was arrayed in the glory of his 
 sable coat. 
 
 "Where s Charcoal?" they asked. 
 
 "Going over the road," he answered in 
 differently, "see, there he goes." 
 
 They ran to the window; they looked
 
 A Coat of One Color 69 
 
 at each other in amazement, as men who 
 have seen a great miracle performed and 
 who have not yet recovered from the effect. 
 
 "How did that happen?" one bolder than 
 the rest ventured to ask. 
 
 "As I told you it would happen," thun 
 dered the wizard; "he dared to touch the 
 sacred coat of the seventh son." 
 
 "After this," he said autocratically, "I 
 want my boots blacked every morning; you 
 may take turns." 
 
 They quarreled among themselves for the 
 honor of the first shine.
 
 A Pair of Eyes 
 
 THE Doctor, the Quill, and the Lark, 
 arm in arm, staggered out of the low 
 doorway of The Lucky Number, the vilest 
 saloon in the slums. A veritable triangle 
 of vice these three, held together by sym 
 pathetic lines of sin, debauchery and crime. 
 As they emerged from the doorway, their 
 sodden, leering countenances made more 
 grewsome by the thin, flickering, bluish 
 light puffed about them by the single gas 
 jet which hung overhead, they formed a 
 group as shockingly realistic as a painting 
 by Jean Beraud. 
 
 The Doctor, whom the cheap drink had 
 merely inflamed to madness, maintained his 
 equilibrium without difficulty on the out 
 side ; the Quill, who was just sober enough 
 to know where he was going, stumbled along 
 on the inside; and the Lark, who had more 
 70
 
 A Pair of Eyes 71 
 
 than he was able to carry, wisely choosing 
 the center, was supported by the other two. 
 
 Thus balanced, the trio reached their lodg 
 ing, a miserable bare hole on the top floor 
 of the poorest tenement in the whole 
 neighborhood. 
 
 The climbing of stairs was an obstacle on 
 which the Lark had not reckoned, but he 
 finally managed to overcome it with the as 
 sistance of the Quill s strong arm and the 
 Doctor s violent blows and loud curses. 
 
 The Doctor, fumbling around in the dark 
 ness, found and lit a candle. Few words 
 are needed to describe what the rays of 
 light from that candle fell upon, squalor, 
 dirt, and utter bareness tell all. The 
 Lark felt, by a kind of instinct, that he was 
 at home, and dropped on the floor in a stu 
 por. The Doctor seized the single stool for 
 himself, used his own leg for its missing 
 third, and sat there, resting his fat chin on* 
 his hand. The Quill was preparing to squat 
 on the floor, after the example set by the 
 Lark, when a vigorous kick from the Doc 
 tor s unoccupied member aroused him.
 
 72 The Lucky Number 
 
 "Wait a minute, you, I have something 
 to say. 
 
 These words seemed to carry all the 
 authority of superior brute force; for the 
 one commanded rubbed his eyes vigorously 
 and tried to sit upright. His first attempt 
 failed, but the threatening boot of the Doc 
 tor was too powerful a stimulus to make a 
 third necessary. 
 
 "Have you any money?" 
 
 The Quill looked up in a manner that 
 plainly interrogated the Doctor s sanity. 
 Money, could a man buy whiskey for two 
 such thirsty birds and keep his money too? 
 He had merely learned the art of forgery, 
 never that of magic. 
 
 "Stop your crazy tongue and search the 
 Lark." 
 
 The innermost recesses of the sleeper s 
 pockets did not reveal a sou to the Quill s 
 investigation. 
 
 "Bah!" snapped the commander, "his 
 songs are stale, they are as worn out as the 
 rags on his filthy body." This was a refer 
 ence to the sentimental ditties by which the
 
 A Pair of Eyes 73 
 
 once tuneful voice of the Lark had enticed 
 stray pennies from the fallen women of the 
 slums, who gave rather in the hope of col 
 lecting principal and interest from the Lord 
 than as a reward to the singer "who 
 giveth to the poor " 
 
 "And that damned pen of yours hasn t 
 turned in a penny for months! You coward, 
 you re afraid to forge again; I ve a mind to 
 pitch you out of the window." The Doc 
 tor arose in his drunken wrath, and the 
 Quill crept close to the wall in craven fear. 
 
 "Look here, this thing must stop; it s 
 gone on long enough, I m tired of hoaxing 
 fools with my magic cures just to support 
 two such lazy vagabonds in luxury. It s 
 time you were helping me, and one of you 
 is going to help me, you hear!" 
 
 The vender of magic cures sat lost in 
 meditation for a few seconds, and then burst 
 out in a torrent of vile oaths, the puddles 
 of the gutter pouring into a sewer. 
 
 "I have a new song for our Lark to sing, 
 and one that will catch pennies by the hand 
 ful : Mister, help a poor blind man ; he
 
 74 The Lucky Number 
 
 chuckled this last phrase in a falsetto voice, 
 and holding his hand out pleadingly, shut 
 his eyes to imitate a figure in a picture that 
 flashed over his brain, maddened to frenzy 
 by liquor. "There you, take this." 
 
 The erstwhile forger, held upright by the 
 sheer strength of fear, picked up the rusty 
 knife flung on the floor. 
 
 "Take that blanket and cut it in strips." 
 
 "For what?" 
 
 "For what, you drunken fool; since when 
 must I give you reasons? Do you want to 
 go on the streets and work?" 
 
 The forger shuddered at the prospect 
 "God forbid." 
 
 "Well, then do as I say." 
 
 His fingers moved as fast as an incipient 
 attack of delirium tremens would permit, 
 but not fast enough to suit his majesty. 
 "Will you work, you, or must I help?" he 
 shrieked. This proffer of assistance had the 
 desired effect, the menial s increased activ 
 ity made aid unnecessary. 
 
 "Now bind his hands and his feet tight, 
 tight as you can!"
 
 A Pair of Eyes 75 
 
 He bent over the sleeping singer of dit 
 ties and carried out the stern command, 
 wondering, but not daring to ask, what his 
 master intended to do. 
 
 The master satisfied himself that the task 
 was thoroughly done, and then bestowed a 
 kick upon his servant for reward ; he added 
 the finishing touch himself by stuffing a 
 filthy rag in the mouth of the unfortunate 
 drunkard. 
 
 A loathsome for boding made the Quill s 
 flesh creep; his teeth chattered, his nerves 
 quivered and twitched, and his legs seemed 
 to be giving way from beneath him. He 
 ventured a faint remonstrance. 
 
 The scampering of a rat threw a lump of 
 loose plaster on the floor, the candle splut 
 tering went out, and the frightened rat 
 squeaked. Through his rounded lips the 
 Doctor blew a long, deep-drawn "w-h-e-w. " 
 
 "Ghosts, ghosts!" gasped the delirious 
 Quill, crawling to the Doctor on his hands 
 and knees, and clinging to him for protec 
 tion; "ghosts, they want me, they are going 
 to choke me, they have their damned hands
 
 y6 The Lucky Number 
 
 on my throat! For God s sake, light the 
 candle and scare them away!" 
 
 This pitiful fright afforded the Doctor in 
 finite amusement, and he laughed fiendishly. 
 "Scare them away nothing, I ll call them 
 here by the dozens. W-hew, w-h-e-w, I ll 
 have them tear you to shreds unless you 
 mind me, and do what I say, and stop your 
 crazy chatter. W-h-e-w!" 
 
 Yes, I ll do anything, anything; I ll kill 
 myself if you want only hurry, hurry ; the 
 nasty things have their fingers on my 
 throat," he gurgled. 
 
 Too much fear was as bad as too little; 
 the man might faint dead away and become 
 useless. So thinking, the Doctor struck a 
 match to light the candle again. 
 
 In obedience to the order of his master, 
 the Quill heated a long thin wire until it 
 turned white in the flames of the candle. 
 
 "Now burn his eyes out," commanded 
 the monster. 
 
 The Quill darted to the door, and was out 
 before the Doctor could stop him. The re 
 volting fiendishness of the purpose shocked
 
 A Pair of Eyes 77 
 
 him into soberness; it acted like a sudden 
 plunge into freezing water. 
 
 The lion missed the jackal and cursed 
 him with a roar of angry oaths. "It s bet 
 ter after all," he muttered. "I can do the 
 job myself, and get everything that s in it; 
 besides, if I am found out, I can lay the 
 whole business on him." 
 
 Intense, unbearable pain aroused the Lark 
 from his drunken stupor, but his pain 
 gave way to terror when he discovered that 
 his hands and feet were bound tightly. 
 He lay still for a few minutes trying to 
 account for it all; finding himself unable to 
 do so, his distress increased, a sense of the 
 supernatural fell upon him, he reached out 
 to shake the Doctor. The Doctor awoke, 
 his teeth chattering with the cold; "What 
 do you want?" he growled; "do nt you 
 think it s hard enough for a restless man 
 to sleep in the cold, and with the rats 
 gnawing away, without being disturbed by 
 a maniac?" 
 
 "What has happened, why am I bound 
 like this? What does it mean?"
 
 78 The Lucky Number 
 
 "Ask the Quill, he knows and I do nt! 
 Let me sleep, you hear!" 
 
 The Lark began jerking around the room 
 on his knees in a pathetic search for the 
 Quill. 
 
 The Quill had gone, what did that 
 mean? Why had he sneaked away like a 
 door-mat* in the night? 
 
 "You will find out soon enough," said 
 the Doctor grimly, and fell asleep again. 
 
 The Lark s torture became excruciating; 
 it seemed to him that someone was boring 
 into his eyes with an auger of interminable 
 length, and that the laceration grew more un 
 endurable at every twist of the flesh-rending 
 tool. He moaned and groaned, but to him 
 the Doctor paid no heed. A weird, har 
 rowing apprehension, more insufferable be 
 cause less palpable than his cruciation, 
 mastered him now. He was like a whipped 
 child thrust into the darkness smart and 
 ache became as naught in comparison with 
 the dread of shrieking goblins, hideous 
 dwarfs and revengeful giants, with which 
 
 *A sneak thief.
 
 A Pair of Eyes 79 
 
 the frightened child s imagination peoples 
 the darkness. The Lark could stand it 
 no longer, and for the sake of companion 
 ship, for the mere soothing sensation of 
 hearing a human voice, he aroused the 
 Doctor. 
 
 By this time the room was suffused with 
 the light of early morn, just tinted by the 
 red gleam of the winter s sun, struggling 
 with the dissipated darkness. The Doctor 
 did not seem at all unwilling to rise, he 
 was even so good-natured that he whistled 
 an air while completing his toilet, which 
 consisted in rubbing his face with his hands 
 and shaking his clothes. 
 
 The Lark ventured on a question: 
 
 "What time is it?" 
 
 "Breakfast time, without the breakfast," 
 was the answer. 
 
 "But man, you re jesting; it s dark yet." 
 
 "Dark nothing, it s light as day. Do 
 you think it s going to stay dark forever? 
 Can t you tell time without a thimble* ?" 
 
 The Lark trembled from head to foot; 
 
 *A watch.
 
 8o The Lucky Number 
 
 what had happened dawned upon him in a 
 flash. Timidly he framed the words and 
 slowly, like one who wishes to be disputed in 
 what he affirms; "Am I " somehow the 
 last word would not out. 
 
 The Doctor was not so fearful. "Yes, 
 undoubtedly he had lost his sight ; too much 
 drink, and cheap drink at that, had done 
 the work." He had seen cases like it be 
 fore in his short, mundane existence. 
 
 It would have moved a hangman to tears 
 to have seen how the wretched sufferer stag 
 gered and collapsed under this fiendish blow. 
 
 The Doctor laughed. "What is the use 
 of carrying on so; what does sight profit 
 a man who has not the money necessary to 
 see things?" 
 
 The Lark evidently found no consolation 
 in the Doctor s philosophy; for he howled 
 and kicked the floor in impotent rage. 
 
 The Doctor dealt him a violent clout and 
 threatened to desert him if he did n t "cease 
 his music." 
 
 "What, would you leave me to starve to 
 death like a rat in a trap?" he asked.
 
 A Pair of Eyes 8 1 
 
 "Not so long as you behave yourself. 
 Come, it s time to go to work." 
 
 "Work, to work, what can I do?" 
 
 "Basket* and crutch it.f " 
 
 The blood shot to the Lark s head, his 
 skull felt as if cleaved by the blow of an 
 axe, and he fell on the floor in a swoon. 
 * * * * 
 
 The Doctor led the Lark homeward 
 against a chill penetrating north wind. They 
 were both numb with cold and trudged on 
 through the snow in silence, not wanting to 
 drain by speech the little vitality left them. 
 The Doctor, who had watched the blind 
 man closely from the shelter of a doorway, 
 was not quite so exhausted and spoke first. 
 
 "How much?" the question was laconic, 
 the answer was still more so "Nothing." 
 
 "Not a red?" 
 
 "Not a red!" 
 
 The tyrant raged, his anger carried him 
 beyond himself: had they not been in 
 the street well, it was good for him that 
 
 *Beg from house to house, 
 fBeg on the streets.
 
 82 The Lucky Number 
 
 they were where they could be seen and 
 heard! So, not a red, and how long was 
 this to continue? How long was he to sup 
 port a worthless, blind beggar in idleness? 
 It was the same yesterday ; and the day be 
 fore, not enough to buy them a decent meal. 
 Bah! he could do better alone! He was 
 playing out, he was getting stale. 
 
 The Lark never answered a word ; for one 
 reason, not knowing what to answer; for 
 another reason, not daring to answer any 
 thing. 
 
 The Doctor, foreign to his habit, repeated ; 
 "You are getting stale, you are played out! 
 I have a quarter left, enough to buy supper 
 and bed for one, and you can go to the 
 devil it is the devil that cares for the 
 blind anyway." 
 
 There was a crisp sound of hurrying feet 
 breaking through the frozen snow, and the 
 Lark stood alone. The last stunning blow 
 was struck so unexpectedly that a few min 
 utes passed before the wretched beggar re 
 covered from his dazed condition and realized 
 what had happened. But when he did. real-
 
 A Pair of Eyes 83 
 
 ize it, the cowardice, the revolting cruelty 
 of the desertion sickened him to the last 
 degree ; he was nauseated. If his tormentor 
 before leaving had only been considerate 
 enough to have ended his miserable exist 
 ence, the Lark would not have thought him 
 so heartless ; but to leave him quivering and 
 gasping like that, it destroyed even the 
 Lark s faith in human depravity. 
 
 Blind, freezing, starving, penniless, shel 
 terless, friendless, deserted there was but 
 one thing for him to do, to finish what the 
 Doctor had left undone. 
 
 Twice every day, once when departing 
 and once when returning to his lodgings, he 
 passed over the bridge; hence, naturally 
 enough, the river stood out prominently in 
 the foreground of his kaleidoscopic vision 
 of death and suicide. He trusted in his 
 sense of direction to lead him due west 
 along the half mile line that lay between 
 him and the river. His point of departure 
 was a corner formed by six streets intersect 
 ing one another, and without any hesitancy 
 he chose the one going due north the sixth
 
 84 The Lucky Number 
 
 sense has its illusions as well as the other 
 five. 
 
 He was sure that he had covered his half 
 mile twice, and he stopped, wondering why 
 he heard none of those peculiarly hollow and 
 jangled sounds which had always apprised 
 him of the proximity of the bridge. Pos 
 sibly he might have taken the wrong road, 
 he would wait until some passer-by came 
 along and find out to a certainty. But the 
 passer-by was long in coming, in fact, he 
 came not at all; and no wonder, for the 
 Lark had halted at the foot of an open plot 
 of ground that marked the end of the dark, 
 unfrequented short street. In a less ex 
 citable mood of mind, the absence of all 
 traffic would have indicated his mistake to 
 him before he had proceeded a quarter of 
 the distance. 
 
 The thermometer was falling rapidly, 
 and with it the temperature of his blood 
 was falling; if he stood still much long 
 er the cold might prove a bad substitute 
 for the water. The Lark preferred drown 
 ing to freezing. Possibly his anxiety to reach
 
 A Pair of Eyes 85 
 
 his destination had made him cover the road 
 far more quickly in imagination than he 
 could in actuality; so thinking he started 
 forward. His will was stronger than his 
 weak, starved, over-worked, fatigued body 
 (and that few minutes pause had brought 
 home to him how fatigued and over-worked 
 it was), and he fell headlong into the snow. 
 He tried to rise, but the inertia of his flesh 
 outweighed the power of his muscle. He 
 would rest a few seconds, gather his 
 strength and try again. 
 
 The wind settled to a dead calm and the 
 night air turned biting cold; I say biting 
 cold, for the Lark felt as if it had sharp, 
 savage teeth that tore into his flesh and 
 laid his bones bare. So stiff and numb did 
 his body grow that he found himself unable 
 to bend his leg or move his arm. The pain 
 he suffered on that terrible night when he 
 had lost his sight seemed trifling in compari 
 son with what he was now undergoing. 
 
 Gradually he lost all sensation ; one might 
 have stuck pins into him and they would not 
 have been felt. A stupor, an indescribable
 
 86 The Lucky Number 
 
 drowsiness, made him desire to sleep; he 
 knew the danger of such a sleep, and tried to 
 ward it off; but a sudden, thrilling, genial 
 warmth passed through him and made the 
 temptation irresistible : giving way to it, he 
 was soon at rest. 
 
 Towards morning the calm broke ; a stiff, 
 blustering wind veered from the south, and 
 the cold retreated slowly before a storm of 
 snow which sent flakes, long and curly as 
 the feathers of a moulting goose, whirling 
 to the ground. A shroud, soft and light as 
 eiderdown, was woven around the frozen 
 body of the Lark, but an envious gust 
 of wind seized and tore it to shreds. Only 
 one small square patch of the covering 
 escaped destruction, and strangely enough, 
 rude sarcasm of the elements! that 
 patch hid the Lark s mendicant sign: 
 
 "I am blind! Please help me! "
 
 The Magic Herb 
 
 "Albeit for profit and lucre all things are set to 
 sale." HOLINSHED. 
 
 The Doctor took his degree of M.D. in the 
 easiest way imaginable, he conferred it upon 
 himself; or rather he was graduated from 
 a college of which he was the founder, and 
 the faculty and committee on degrees. 
 
 The curriculum of the college, like the 
 Doctor, was original and unique ; you might 
 compare all the catalogues of all the col 
 leges in the world, and not find a course of 
 studies bearing the faintest resemblance to 
 the one his offered. The reason is not far to 
 seek, the Doctor s college had no curriculum. 
 
 His peculiar school of medicine could 
 easily claim two advantages over every 
 other school ; it required no laborious pre 
 paration for entrance, it insisted upon no 
 arduous application for graduation. I for- 
 87
 
 88 The Lucky Number 
 
 got a third advantage and the greatest ; it 
 made the study of materia medico, so easy 
 that a child could grasp all the intricacies 
 of that difficult subject in less than a week. 
 For, according to the Doctor s way of think 
 ing, there was but one healing property in 
 all nature, and that property was contained 
 in the resurrection plant. 
 
 To know this plant thoroughly was to 
 know everything worth the knowing in med 
 icine ; because this magic herb, as he termed 
 it, was a cure for all the ills that flesh is heir 
 to, nature s sweet restorer, a veritable 
 panacea, in short, it was medicine. How 
 simple does the complicated science of heal 
 ing become with the discovery of a panacea. 
 
 The Doctor boasted that he was the dis 
 coverer of the precious boon to suffering hu 
 manity, and he therefore deemed himself 
 entitled to an honorary degree. 
 
 As the name would signify, the resurrec 
 tion plant is in truth a miracle of nature; 
 it dies and comes to life again, or, to be 
 more exact, it never dies. When dried out, 
 when every particle of moisture has been
 
 The Magic Herb 89 
 
 consumed, its fronds shrivel and curl con 
 vulsively about the centre, forming a small 
 ball of a dead brown color; but only a few 
 minutes after the plant is watered the fronds 
 uncurl, spread out to the light, and become 
 beautiful in their coat of lustrous green. 
 
 The Doctor charged his patients ten cents 
 for a magic herb ; he charged them nothing 
 for his call. Compare the cures he effected 
 with the paltry honorarium he received, and 
 you must admit that the Doctor was a hu 
 manitarian ; he was a martyr as well, in as 
 much as he was a humanitarian against his 
 will. The discoverer of the panacea was 
 mercenary ; he longed for riches, but people 
 persisted in misunderstanding his motives, 
 and crowning him a philanthropist. The 
 world has ever misunderstood its greatest 
 characters. 
 
 To have philanthropy thrust upon you 
 in this fashion is exasperating, and the 
 Doctor chafed continually under the bur 
 den of his unsought glory. Every time that 
 he received his beggarly stipend (and every 
 time that he did n t receive it), he forgot his
 
 90 The Lucky Number 
 
 professional dignity and relieved his injured 
 feelings in curses that would have aroused 
 the envy of a trooper. 
 
 Once in his life, once only, and then at 
 the very outset of his career, did he receive 
 a fee in any way commensurate with what 
 he thought his worth; and he would have 
 abandoned the practice of medicine in dis 
 gust, but the hope, ever floating before his 
 eyes like a will-o -the-wisp, of gaining 
 another such emolument allured him so far 
 into the swamps of beggardom that he found 
 it impossible to extricate himself. This par 
 ticular fee played such an important part in 
 the Doctor s history; he planned and 
 schemed to gain it with such astuteness, 
 worthy of a better cause, that but thereby 
 hangs my tale. 
 
 There was a rumor current in the neigh 
 borhood that a certain Ann Garsch, a half 
 witted German seamstress, had by dint of 
 rigid economy and ceaseless industry laid 
 away a big pot of money for a rainy day. 
 
 When the rumor reached his ears, the 
 avaricious leech, fearful lest the pot might
 
 The Magic Herb 91 
 
 disappear before his appearance, lost not a 
 second in posting thither. A half-witted 
 woman, he figured, could be bled far easier 
 than one with a full measure of wit. Herein 
 his reckoning was at fault ; what Ann Garsch 
 lacked in wit she made up in parsimony. 
 She was rather monomaniac than half-witted, 
 and her monomania was saving. 
 
 "Miss," began the crafty physician, 
 "do n t you want to buy a magic herb?" 
 
 He started to enumerate its long list of 
 virtues, when she interrupted, "Does it cost 
 anything?" 
 
 "Only a dime," he said seductively, 
 "and" 
 
 "Then I don t want it; go long." 
 
 "Do you expect me to give em away?" 
 he snarled, "I m selling em now for half 
 what they cost me, and a quarter of what 
 they re worth." 
 
 "Yer a fool then, go long." 
 
 The door had scarcely slammed before the 
 Doctor forgot himself and his professional 
 dignity, "She may have a pot of money, 
 but I 11 bet the lid is soldered to the pot so
 
 92 The Lucky Number 
 
 tight that you can t get it off with a crow 
 bar. 
 
 However, he did not lose all courage; he 
 felt as sure that this toiling seamstress had 
 money as that a spinning spider makes a 
 web; nay, he was as sure that she had 
 money as that she had life, and why should 
 a physician of his ability give up hope be 
 fore life is extinct and money gone? 
 
 He allowed a whole month to elapse 
 before he called again, in order that she 
 might forget the unfavorable impression 
 made by his first visit; but in that period 
 the Doctor did not stand idly counting the 
 minutes as they glided away into the past. 
 From the assiduity with which he collected 
 facts and incidents relating to Ann Garsch s 
 life, you might have thought this humble 
 seamstress was a character of vital import 
 ance in present history, and that he wished 
 to write a biography which should be stand 
 ard for all generations to come. 
 
 From one source he learnt that the per 
 sistent efforts of the Salvation Army had 
 recently won her for a convert, and that she
 
 The Magic Herb 93 
 
 was now austerely religious, a characteristic 
 well worth the remembering, and he jotted 
 it down on his mental note book with a blue 
 pencil. From another source he learnt that 
 the seamstress s lover had deserted her 
 and their little child over a year ago, and 
 that she was waiting with yearning heart for 
 the day that should bring him back; these 
 data he wrote down in red ink. From a 
 third source he learnt that the Quill was the 
 woman s quondam lover; a fact so import 
 ant that it could be remembered without 
 any notation. 
 
 When the Doctor visited Ann Garsch for 
 the second time, he had formulated a differ 
 ent line of attack against the stronghold of 
 her purse. 
 
 "It is in my power to bring your lover 
 to you again," were his first words. 
 
 The coat she was basting slipped from 
 her hands and fell on the floor as she stared 
 at him with her large eyes, vacant as painted 
 eyes on a painted face. 
 
 "Do it, then, do it; in the name of heaven, 
 do," she pleaded, the corners of her weak,
 
 94 The Lucky Number 
 
 sensual mouth quivering with nervous ex 
 citement. "It will cost money," was his 
 brutal reply, "for I m poor and need 
 money." 
 
 Her eyes lit with an intelligent shrewd 
 ness. "How do you know that I have a 
 lover?" 
 
 "How do I know?" he exclaimed, "how 
 do I know a thousand things? How do I 
 know that your mother s name was Johanna 
 Melzer, that you were her third child? 
 How do I know that you were born in Ham 
 burg and came to this country when you 
 were ten, and that you will be twenty-eight 
 on the fourth of January? How do I 
 know the Quill is the father of that child," 
 he pointed scornfully to the old-fash 
 ioned German cradle in which her child 
 was sleeping peacefully. "How? because 
 my magic herb gives me the power to 
 read the secrets of the mind. Now do you 
 believe that I can bring your lover back?" 
 
 The clairvoyancy of this uncanny reader 
 of minds made her shudder; his divinations 
 struck with an accumulative horror, the first
 
 The Magic Herb 95 
 
 making her marvel, the last causing her flesh 
 to creep. She felt a desire to run away, to 
 crawl within herself, that she might escape 
 what must be the malign influence of his 
 hypnotic will. 
 
 "How much will it cost?" she asked 
 tremulously. 
 
 "One hundred dollars," he answered 
 boldly. The price was tentative, the sor 
 cerer was willing to take less, he would not 
 refuse more. 
 
 If a beggar stopping you on the street 
 should extend his hand piteously and ask 
 for one hundred dollars, you could not be 
 more surprised than she at the value the 
 Doctor placed on his services; to her a dol 
 lar did not represent ten dimes, it repre 
 sented ten coats, and ten coats represented 
 almost two days of agonizing labor. Her 
 table of money was not computed in cents 
 and dimes, but in thread and stitches. One 
 hundred dollars was Ann s fortune; for 
 three years she had been nibbling bit by bit 
 from her diurnal pittance of seventy cents 
 to accumulate the sum.
 
 96 The Lucky Number 
 
 What sacrifice, what self-abnegation, what 
 toil toil that bends the back, dims the 
 eye and wears the thumb to bone did this 
 one hundred dollars not symbolize? It was 
 a seignorage that body and soul demanded 
 from comfort, health and happiness for the 
 turning of flesh and blood into coin. 
 
 "Very well," answered the seamstress, 
 calmly, "I will give you fifty dollars now, 
 and the other fifty on the day when he 
 comes back to me and the child." 
 
 O Misery and Want, how can you love so 
 much! 
 
 "Fool," reflected he, "you might just as 
 well have gotten two hundred." Doubtless 
 had he been alone his professional dignity 
 would have been forgotten again. Straight 
 way he unrolled a brown plant from a mass 
 of rags and papers, and placed it carefully 
 on the floor; then he knelt and spread his 
 hands over it in silent benediction. 
 
 The benediction done, the Doctor, in a 
 low voice raised gradually to a higher and 
 higher key, began an incantation, metered, 
 monotoned ; and his body swayed back and
 
 The Magic Herb 97 
 
 forth in rhythmical unison with its measure. 
 There came a pause in his abracadabra, 
 Kneel down in prayer, he cried thrillingly, 
 and set his body oscillating slowly from 
 right to left as he modulated the sing-song 
 of his incantation to a subdued, faint tone. 
 
 His gibberish ran through the threnody 
 of her prayer like a motif through the or 
 chestration of a mournful overture. 
 
 To the ignorant, superstitious seamstress, 
 the Doctor s rigmarole appealed with all 
 the impelling force of the unknowable and 
 the sublime. Terrified, she tried to turn her 
 eyes from him, but he held them in control 
 as irresistibly as if they were attached to 
 his hands by wires. 
 
 At first perfunctory, her prayer as the 
 supernatural became natural through its very 
 continuation gradually became spontane 
 ous, and gushed forth from the depths of 
 her soul. Her voice, quavering with emotion, 
 became fainter and fainter, until it died 
 away in an inarticulate moan. Step by step 
 she scaled the dangerous heights of religious 
 ecstacy.
 
 98 The Lucky Number 
 
 The baby, awakened by the noise and 
 frightened by the strange face, began to cry 
 and scream. 
 
 "Enough," shrieked the Doctor, angered 
 at the interruption, dizzy from the motion, 
 and weary of the din. 
 
 She fell to the earth with a shock that 
 made every nerve in her body vibrate with 
 pain and drew a long, deep groan from her 
 lips. 
 
 "I will put this magic herb in this sau 
 cer," said the Doctor, taking a cracked 
 china saucer from a shelf above the stove, 
 "and set it out on the window ledge, so 
 that the spirit of the Lord may rest upon it 
 and bring its dead leaves to life again. And 
 when the magic herb turns green then will 
 your lover return, but not before then." 
 
 "Now to find the Quill and fix it up with 
 him," he muttered to himself as he passed 
 down the stairs, jingling the poor seam 
 stress s coin in his pockets. 
 
 Twice that night did the Doctor s dupe 
 arise to look at the magic herb to see if its 
 color had changed to green, and twice she
 
 The Magic Herb 99 
 
 returned to her bed disappointed and in 
 tears. 
 
 On the morrow she awoke with a thought 
 of the plant, she sprang to the window and 
 threw the shutters wide open ; but still the 
 same ball of dead brown met her anxious 
 gaze. 
 
 Little basting did she do that day; be 
 tween running to the window and talking to 
 the baby of the good fortune that was to 
 come, her time was spent. 
 
 Despite lightning, thunder and downpour 
 of rain, she slept soundly through the suc 
 ceeding night ; for she was exhausted from 
 loss of sleep and long-sustained excitement. 
 
 "It s green, it s green!" she cried joyful 
 ly, as with trembling hand she lifted the 
 plant from the window ledge the next morn 
 ing and kissed its green, shimmering fronds, 
 sparkling with new-born life. "I knew that 
 the good Lord would forgive my sin and 
 answer my prayer." 
 
 Ann Garsch abandoned herself to happi 
 ness on that eventful day, and, daring the 
 sweater s anger, entirely neglected her task;
 
 ioo The Lucky Number 
 
 in her eyes it would have been sacrilegious 
 to have threaded a needle. 
 
 She tidied her room, washed and dressed 
 the baby until he fairly shone from clean 
 liness ; then she adorned herself with her best 
 gown, and waited complacently for her 
 lover. 
 
 The child laughed and lifted his chubby 
 hands in a vain attempt to catch the sun 
 beams as they entered through the shutters 
 and fell in prismatic splendor on his cradle ; 
 and the mother, finding the laughter infec 
 tious, joined him with a merry peal, and 
 the baby redoubled its efforts on seeing her 
 unusual gayety. Taking him in her arms, 
 she began to dance around the room like a 
 madcap, smothering her precious charge 
 with kisses at every step. 
 
 The Quill entered at noon without prepar 
 ing her for his coming by so much as a 
 knock at the door; she fell into his arms, 
 unable to speak from mere happiness, giving 
 way to hysterical outbursts of tears and 
 laughter. 
 
 When she had recovered from her aphony,
 
 The Magic Herb 101 
 
 Ann blamed him in one breath for his base 
 ness in deserting her, and blessed him in 
 the next for the kindness of heart he dis 
 played in returning. 
 
 He stood grinning stupidly through it all, 
 receiving her commendation and blame alike 
 impassively, as if considering his reception 
 in the light of a joke. 
 
 The child was evidently not frightened 
 by the stranger s face, he seemed willing 
 enough to be taken when the mother held 
 him out to the Quill; for he stretched his 
 tiny arms fatherward, and looked his most 
 enticing. 
 
 "Damn the brat," he said, turning 
 away. The voice was so menacing that 
 "the brat" began to cry with all his little 
 might. 
 
 The Doctor, who was standing in the hall 
 way, overheard what was going on inside, 
 and thought if he wanted the remainder of 
 his bill he had better make collections be 
 fore the Quill succeeded in forcing his mis 
 tress to lament the advent of her lover. 
 
 She answered his knock, and gave him his
 
 IO2 The Lucky Number 
 
 due without a murmur, dropping a blessing 
 with every coin that she let fall into his 
 itching palm. 
 
 The lover winked knowingly and grimaced 
 over the seamstress s shoulder at the Doctor. 
 
 "Who was that man? Why did you give 
 him that money?" he asked when the door 
 had shut. 
 
 In response she told the story of the 
 wonderful plant and the miracle it had 
 wrought. 
 
 "You don t tell me," he whispered in 
 counterfeited awe; " I must have one of 
 em." 
 
 Before she could stop him, the Quill was 
 darting down the stairs and into the street, 
 fearful lest his confederate had outdistanced 
 him and made away with the "swag." 
 
 While Ann Garsch stood at the doorway 
 with flushed cheeks and beating heart, 
 waiting for her lover to return, the Doctor 
 and the Quill almost came to blows at The 
 Lucky Number over the division of the 
 spoils.
 
 The Return 
 
 A NGELO Pascella stepped into Rosaura 
 ** Pascella s wine room and seating him 
 self at one of his mother s tables, placed his 
 carpet bag on the floor and called for pranzo 
 con mezza bottliglia di vino, dinner with 
 wine. The card-playing, eating, drinking, 
 arguing Italians ceased their diversions long 
 enough to take a look at the new comer. 
 
 He was a swarthy, healthy, prosperous 
 looking fellow whose twenty-five years 
 perched carelessly on his shoulders, as if 
 perfectly willing to make room for a twenty- 
 sixth. There was nothing in his looks, 
 dress or manner that entitled him to a sec 
 ond glance, and no suspicion of vexing mys 
 tery arose in the minds of Rosaura s pat 
 rons to spoil the flavor of the sphagetti 
 importati, or to interrupt the flow of wine 
 and words and cards. 
 
 103
 
 IO4 The Lucky Number 
 
 Madre Pascella, whose small shrewd eyes 
 were boring through the stranger s carpet- 
 sack to inventory the contents thereof, see 
 ing a prospective patron in the stranger, 
 hastened to wait on him herself, after 
 soundly scolding the servant for not paying 
 better attention to the wants of her custom 
 ers, this rather to impress the stranger than 
 to reprove the servant. 
 
 Angelo, on his part, marvelled much at 
 the little change that had taken place in his 
 mother s appearance in the thirteen long 
 years of his absence from home. She had 
 grown somewhat stouter, the masculine 
 growth on her upper lip was darker and 
 thicker (those who spoke behind her back 
 called it un mostacchio), her hair had lost its 
 raven-like blackness, her face was a little 
 more wrinkled, and that was all. Rosaura 
 Pascella came of a stock that withers and 
 dries, rather than dies. 
 
 The place, unlike its owner, was much 
 the worse for wear; tKe plaster on the ceil 
 ing and walls was ready at any minute to 
 fall on the floor, and seemed to beg for the
 
 The Return 105 
 
 support of props to prevent a tumble so dis 
 astrous. The floor had sagged under the 
 heavy weight of the refrigerator and the 
 clumsy pine bar; and both bar and refriger 
 ator had arrived at that point of decrepi 
 tude where painting and repairing are too 
 expensive to be practicable. The benches, 
 tables and chairs some minus an arm, 
 some minus a leg, and some minus both 
 were the same ones around which Antonio 
 had romped and played when a boy. 
 
 "Evidently the madre has not prospered 
 since I left home; everything is going to 
 rack and ruin," he reflected on looking 
 around. Then, thinking of his own material 
 success, "I shall put things to rights in less 
 than no time." 
 
 When the mother placed the pranzo on 
 the table, her son found it difficult to keep 
 from throwing his arms around her, kissing 
 her and crying, "Mia carissima." But he 
 held the reward of a more brilliant and sud 
 den surprise before his eyes, and restrained 
 himself. 
 
 He did not know whether to feel sad or
 
 io6 The Lucky Number 
 
 glad because she did not recognize him after 
 an absence of only thirteen years. He knew 
 her, forsooth ! He gladdened himself with 
 the reflection that he had outhandsomed her 
 recollection, and ate on in silence, his eyes 
 fixed on his plate. Ah! but the dish of 
 spaghetti was fine, a motherly welcome in 
 itself; and he smacked his lips and smiled 
 contentedly. She was standing behind him 
 with her arms folded, waiting for a chance 
 to speak; she saw the smile and broke in 
 abruptly, "How do you like it?" 
 
 "Fine," he answered, "just like my 
 mother used to make," and he looked her 
 straight in the eyes. 
 
 She bowed acknowledgment like one 
 used to being complimented, and for whom 
 one compliment is of as little value as 
 another. 
 
 "I see," said she, pointing to the bag, 
 "that you are from a distance." 
 
 "Yes, from New Orleans, " the words 
 slipped from his lips inadvertently and he 
 wished that he could recall them. 
 
 "Ehi! New Orleans!" The mere men-
 
 The Return 107 
 
 tioning of the name changed her from an 
 inquisitive questioner into a most voluble 
 informer. She had a son there in the fruit 
 business with her brother. A fine lad, he 
 was, too! He had left home when a boy of 
 twelve and had been gone thirteen years. 
 It was her only child ; how she yearned to 
 see him again, her boy! He might know 
 him, his name was Angelo Pascella? 
 
 Angelo shook his head. 
 
 "No?" she thought every Italian in New 
 Orleans must know her boy. He had pros 
 pered, he was rich, he was influential. He 
 had promised over and over again in his 
 letters to come home and spend a few days 
 with his old mother, but the years had gone 
 by and still he did not come. Ah! if he 
 only knew the pleasure his return would 
 bring her, but young men were forgetful 
 and 
 
 Someone at the farther end of the room 
 called for a bottle of wine, and her chatter 
 was interrupted. 
 
 Angelo looked through the room wistfully 
 to see if he could not discover some old
 
 io8 The Lucky Number 
 
 friends of his boyhood days. They were all 
 gone, the old familiar faces, or, at least, none 
 of them was there. A feeling of the transi- 
 toriness of things, of separation from the 
 life of which he had once been a component 
 part, touched him with a vague sense of 
 loneliness. His coming home had made 
 him home-sick, and he yearned to grasp his 
 sack and start for New Orleans again. Then 
 he blamed himself for not revealing his 
 identity a word from him and presto! all 
 would change; his mother s arm would 
 entwine lovingly about his neck, and his old 
 friends would come crowding on the scene 
 as if raised by magic. He would do it, 
 surprise or no; but the sudden announce 
 ment ought to be surprise enough. 
 
 A diminutive, round-shouldered, bow- 
 legged Italian entered the room and arrested 
 Angelo s attention. He had seen a face like 
 that somewhere, but he could not associate 
 it with any particular place or time. But 
 the legs? There was only one pair of legs in 
 the world that bowed like those; surely 
 enough, it must be little Pietro del Re,
 
 The Return 109 
 
 the tailor. Many an hour had he passed 
 in the little tailor s basement shop, an ever 
 welcome guest, listening to stories and 
 descriptions of Italy and its wars. 
 
 He caught Pietro s eye and beckoned to 
 him. Would he have a glass of wine?" 
 In a few minutes they were talking of the 
 golden memories of the days gone by. 
 Angelo felt his way carefully, and when 
 the opportune moment came he discovered 
 his identity. Pietro gave his head a jerk 
 which made the rings in his ears dance. 
 "What!" he exclaimed, "you do n t say, 
 you !" 
 
 The sentence was never finished save in 
 the mind of the speaker, for Angelo clapped 
 his hands over the mouth of the surprised 
 tailor. "Hush!" whispered he, "I want to 
 surprise her, and you will spoil it all." 
 This mysterious action did not escape the 
 attention of the madre, who was watching 
 them from behind the bar. 
 
 "And you mean to say that she don t 
 know you?" he jerked his thumb over his 
 shoulder to designate the "she,"
 
 no The Lucky Number 
 
 Angelo shook his head, "No, but I think 
 I will tell her later, when the others are 
 gone and we are left alone." 
 
 Pietro proposed a better scheme. An- 
 gelo s was not half dramatic enough to suit 
 the imaginative tailor s conception of what a 
 theatrical surprise should be. Angelo must 
 go directly to bed; and he, Pietro, would 
 immediately betake himself home. In the 
 morning he would arise early and gather all 
 the old friends, Cassaretto, Barretti, Salvino, 
 De Stefano, and a host of others whom 
 Angelo had known since his boyhood and 
 about whom he had just been questioning 
 Pietro. They would all assemble at the 
 Osteria dell Gallo (the Inn of the Cock), 
 and apprise the madre who her guest really 
 was. Then she would rush upstairs, enter her 
 son s room and have him wake in her arms; 
 and when mother and son came down stairs 
 the crowd would give them a rousing wel 
 come. 
 
 "Come vi place?" he asked. 
 
 Angelo rolled a cigarette, lit it, and 
 thought awhile. "Molto moltissimo," he
 
 The Return in 
 
 answered, blowing the cloud of thin smoke 
 away. 
 
 The tailor shook hands, and arose for an 
 immediate transaction of his part of the bar 
 gain. 
 
 At the doorway Rosaura stopped him 
 "Who is the man, why did he put his hand 
 over your mouth to prevent you from speak 
 ing?" 
 
 An imaginative mind is of service in more 
 ways than one ; Pietro manufactured a very 
 plausible lie on the spur of the moment. 
 "He is a rich man, a very rich man, his 
 pockets are lined with gold. When he told 
 me how much he had, What! so much as 
 that! I was about to cry, and up goes his 
 hand over my mouth. You see, Madre 
 Pascello, he knows me to be an honest man ; 
 of the others he is not so sure. Good 
 night." 
 
 Rosaura was still reflecting on how much 
 truth there might be in the tailor s lie 
 when Angelo approached and asked to be 
 shown to his room. Here was an opportun 
 ity to make this stranger show the material
 
 112 The Lucky Number 
 
 with which his pockets were lined, and to 
 prove him a Croesus, or Pietro del Re a liar. 
 
 "The rules of the house are to pay in 
 advance, "she said authoritatively, her hands 
 on her hips. 
 
 The stranger smiled quietly, drew a fat 
 roll of bills from the inside pocket of his 
 vest and paid the amount demanded in a 
 way that said, "And I wouldn t care if it 
 were a little higher. 
 
 The sight of it made her eyes ache and 
 the palms of her hands itch. There was 
 more than enough in that one roll to pay 
 her year s rent, and in the morning Carlo 
 Neppi, the landlord, would be around clam 
 oring for his money ; and Neppi was terrible 
 when the rent was not ready, all counted out 
 in dimes and quarters and dollar bills he 
 would throw her into the streets, and give 
 her a shrug of his shoulders for sympathy. 
 
 She lit a kerosene lamp, and opened the 
 door that shut the saloon from the winding 
 stairway which led to the lodging-house 
 above. As they were moving down the 
 narrow hall-way towards the room desig-
 
 The Return 113 
 
 nated for Angelo, he gave way to a sudden 
 impulse, caught her round her ample waist 
 and kissed her. "Go away, fool!" she cried, 
 shoving him vigorously against the wall. 
 She entered the room, put the lamp on the 
 washstand, and made her exit without even 
 wishing him good night. 
 
 It was the room he had occupied when a 
 boy; the wash-stand, the bed, the stool, all 
 looked as if they had been waiting for him, 
 and a Murillo Madonna, a cheap, dust-mel 
 lowed lithograph, beamed a welcome home 
 from her place on the wall. There was little 
 enough in that bare room about which old 
 memories could cluster; but they clung all 
 the more closely to the small space available, 
 like vines that put forth their creepers to 
 mass their foliage about a single nail in an 
 old wall. 
 
 Just below his window, which looked on 
 the street, the signboard (a cock with the 
 inscription "Osteria dell Gallo") was creak 
 ing loudly as it swayed back and forth in 
 the wind. Angelo regulated the creaking 
 to the refrain, "wel-come home, wel-come
 
 ii4 The Lucky Number 
 
 home," and his imagination made the inani 
 mate cock crow the words softly. The 
 refrain soon lulled him to sleep. 
 
 Downstairs Rosaura was bubbling over 
 with impatience; it seemed to her that 
 midnight, the hour for closing, would never 
 come, and that the loiterers would never go. 
 
 "It is past twelve; come, pay; it is very 
 late, I must close or disobey the ordinance," 
 she said to Enrico Grassi, who was telling 
 her for the tenth time how Paolo Cherino 
 had cheated him out of the last game of 
 morra, and how Paolo, and not he, should 
 pay for the last drinks. 
 
 "In a minute, just a minute, and I have 
 done, repeated the excited Enrico. When 
 a man has only a half thumb and bends it 
 half-way, it would take the devil himself to 
 tell whether it was up or down. Four, 
 says I ! Three, says Paolo, you pay. Now 
 Madre, I leave it to you if " 
 
 "I care not whether it was up or down, 
 Paolo has gone and you must pay!" cried 
 the bored and impatient hostess. 
 
 "Well," said Enrico, with a shrewd smile,
 
 The Return 115 
 
 "you are like the rest of them, you are in 
 the conspiracy to cheat me. Charge it!" 
 and out he went with a slam of the door. 
 
 "It was worth the price of two glasses of 
 wine to be rid of the fellow," she reflected 
 philosophically, as she locked the door and 
 turned the lamps out. 
 
 She moved up the stairs as carefully as 
 if each inch of the way were connected by 
 wire with bells, and the slightest jar would 
 start the bells ringing and awaken some 
 restless sleeper. 
 
 When in her room she removed her shoes 
 and walked cautiously, on tip-toe, to the 
 door that divided Angelo s room from her 
 own, and pressed her ear against it. She 
 heard the sleeper s deep and regular breath 
 ing, significant of one who has a light heart 
 and an easy conscience for bed fellows. 
 "He sleeps too soundly," she thought, 
 "for a man with so much money." 
 
 She drew the bolt quietly, bent her knee 
 against the panel of the door, waited a sec 
 ond in breathless suspense; then pressed 
 forward quickly and turned the knob; the
 
 n6 The Lucky Number 
 
 door opened as noiselessly as if the hinges 
 had been oiled. 
 
 His bed was just opposite the door, and 
 she could see every line of his youthful face 
 by the light cast from the lamp that she had 
 left burning low on a chair in the center of 
 her own room. 
 
 She advanced to his bedside slowly, 
 slowly; the distance was but a few feet; to 
 her it seemed as many miles. He had 
 his vest buttoned over his woolen night 
 gown; it was the object of her search, and 
 she noticed it before anything else. She 
 bent over him so closely that she could 
 feel the moisture of his breath on her hot 
 cheek. 
 
 As Rosaura stood thus, holding her sti 
 letto in her right hand, and firmly and gent 
 ly unbuttoning his vest with her left hand, 
 it seemed to her that she had seen the man 
 before. So forcibly did the idea strike her 
 that she paused in the very heat and excite 
 ment of the action to scan the sleeper s fea 
 tures more closely. 
 
 He turned on his side as if troubled by
 
 The Return 117 
 
 her searching stare and buried his face in 
 the pillow. 
 
 She raised her stiletto, ready to strike if 
 he awoke. His breathing continued regular 
 and rounded as the ticking of an oscillating 
 pendulum. 
 
 Then with one quick movement of the 
 stiletto she ripped his vest down the back, 
 and the heavier half of the garment, the half 
 with the purse, she removed by a single 
 tug. 
 
 In an over-anxiety to secure her treasure 
 without awakening him, she let the stiletto 
 slip and it pricked him in the back. He 
 awoke with a start. Fearful lest he cry 
 aloud, she grasped him by the throat with 
 her long, knotty, masculine fingers, and the 
 battle began for supremacy between mother 
 and son. 
 
 The son was the stronger, but the mother 
 had all the advantages of position, forewarn 
 ing and forearming. He used his strong 
 arms for levers and tried to raise his body 
 to a sitting posture. Her grasp tightened, 
 and he felt the life-breath being choked out
 
 n8 The Lucky Number 
 
 of him as she forced him on his back. He 
 swung his left arm out in a half circle and 
 struck her a staggering blow on the temple ; 
 she reeled, stretched out her long arm and 
 caught the bed-post to save herself from 
 falling. 
 
 Angelo sprang to his feet, and was on 
 the floor in almost the time it took Ros- 
 aura s arm to reach out and grasp for sup 
 port. He recognized his assailant and stood 
 terror-stricken, dumb-founded, paralyzed, 
 " Madre mia, madre mia!" he gasped plain 
 tively, beseechingly. The stiletto was 
 drawn back, flashed, and leaped straight to 
 his heart. 
 
 She crept on her hands and knees to the 
 hall door, opened it and listened. The living 
 were as silent as the murdered; the dead 
 and the sleeping could tell no tales. 
 
 Pietro s sleep was by no means as sound 
 as that of Angelo s. He tossed about rest 
 lessly the whole night, laying his plan of at 
 tack for the great surprise on the morrow; 
 for Pietro was a simple soul who made the 
 most of one of those rare opportunities
 
 The Return 119 
 
 that gave him half a chance to appear of 
 importance in the community. 
 
 He had made his plans a score of times, 
 and changed them just as often ; he would 
 go for Antonio Salvino first and have him 
 summon Gustavo de Stefano, and Gustavo 
 and Antonio could summon those who lived 
 south of the Osteria; whilst he, himself, 
 could gather those who lived in another 
 direction. No, he would go first to Gae- 
 tano Negrini s, that would save time, for 
 although Gaetano lived a little farther away, 
 he was much the younger man and could 
 move much the quicker. To have them 
 assemble there together at seven o clock to 
 the minute, that was a task which would 
 require skillful manceuvering ! Rather than 
 be one minute late, Pietro preferred being 
 three hours ahead of time, and the dawn 
 had preceded him only by a few minutes 
 when he made his way towards Negrini s 
 domicile. 
 
 As he passed the Osteria he was surprised 
 beyond measure to see Rosaura assisting 
 two burly, desperate appearing Italians
 
 I2O The Lucky Number 
 
 (entire strangers to Pietro) to shove a long 
 pine box on a rickety express- wagon. 
 
 "Something always goes wrong," he 
 growled, "I wonder what business she has 
 to nose about at this hour! Something to 
 do with Angelo, I ll wager. She always finds 
 out everything, the Madre." 
 
 "A distinguished looking visitor we had 
 last night," he began tentatively. 
 
 She was so surprised to see him there that 
 she almost let her end of the box fall. 
 
 "Oh, it s you, is it, Pietro? And what 
 are you doing around at this time of day?" 
 She shouted some unnecessary directions to 
 the assistants to hide her discomposure. 
 
 "I was about to ask the same question 
 of you," answered Pietro guardedly. 
 
 "That s my affair," she retorted sharply. 
 
 The timid tailor stood abashed and for 
 want of something better to relieve his em 
 barrassment, he repeated abstractedly, "A 
 distinguished looking visitor we had last 
 night." 
 
 She flushed perceptibly and relaxed her
 
 The Return 121 
 
 hold on the box. Take care!" cried one 
 of the men. 
 
 "What visitor?" She shifted her position 
 so that her back was turned to the interro 
 gator. 
 
 "Why, the young man, the good looking 
 chap with the carpet-bag." 
 
 "Oh, he how should I know who he 
 was? He went away last night." Her dark 
 face flushed again and she felt the blood 
 beat at her temples; she blest her good 
 sense for having turned her back to his face. 
 
 At last the box was on the wagon, and 
 the two desperados jumped on the seat and 
 drove rapidly towards the south. 
 
 "Gone away! A nice trick to serve me! 
 All my pains for nothing. I wonder if she 
 tells the truth?" he muttered. 
 
 Rosaura stood on the edge of the curb 
 watching the wagon until it passed from 
 sight, then she turned towards the house. 
 Pietro stood thinking what tactics he would 
 employ to gain the truth. 
 
 "You there yet?" she said, turning 
 around, I thought you had gone long ago.
 
 122 The Lucky Number 
 
 "I I am not sure whether I under 
 stand," answered Pietro, apologetically. 
 "Did you say he went away?" 
 
 "Of course I said so. Have you grown 
 deaf; do you want me to repeat it a dozen 
 times?" She was again the master of her 
 expression, or rather of her inexpression. 
 
 "Did he tell you where he was going? 
 Did he leave his name ? Did he tell you when 
 he would return?" 
 
 "Why should he tell me such things, what 
 am I to him? I gave him his lodging and 
 he paid me; there our business ended." 
 
 "But, Madre Pascella, I know who he 
 was; I ll give you ten guesses, and if you 
 guess right, I will treat to a bottle of your 
 best, when he returns; and if you don t 
 guess the treat is yours. Come, now," said 
 Pietro in one breath anxious to surprise 
 Rosaura and have a part of his glory at least, 
 since the full measure had been denied him. 
 
 The blood left her dark cheeks and she 
 blanched visibly. Had he suspected some 
 thing? Was he trying to bulldoze her into 
 a confession and hush-money? She would
 
 The Return 123 
 
 show him with what kind of a man he was 
 dealing. 
 
 Guess, guess! Do you think I have 
 nothing better to do than to stand here on 
 the sidewalk and waste my precious time 
 guessing with an old fool when I have 
 breakfast to get for twenty?" She pushed 
 him to one side and started towards the 
 door. 
 
 The awed tailor (it takes nine tailors to 
 make a man, the world over), fearing lest 
 some one else, waiting inside with the sur 
 prise all ready, might cheat him out of his 
 hard-earned reward, and seeing his dream, 
 of glory fade into nothingness, hastened to 
 say: "Madre Pascella, it was your son An- 
 gelo, he told me so last night in the wine 
 room. That s why he put his hand over my 
 mouth. Angelo, you! I was about to cry. 
 Hush, you fool, says he, and up goes his 
 hand over my mouth. Yes, it was Angelo, 
 and I alone am in the secret; in me 
 alone 
 
 "Dio del Cielo!" cried Rosaura, and fell 
 swooning to the ground.
 
 The Flight of a Night-hawk 
 
 "She loves flowers and she s unmarried. What luck!" 
 
 BALZAC. 
 
 T)IDGY" Donnavan pitched his night- 
 hawk just around the corner from 
 The Lucky Number, threw a heavy blanket 
 over the flanks of his shivering horse, and, 
 rubbing his nostrils caressingly, said ; "It s 
 freezin cold, Major, an hard pullin , but 
 there 11 be heavy graft for us to-night, or I ll 
 be disappinted." 
 
 Pidgy short for Pigeon, shorter still 
 for Pigeon-toed, his night-hawk, and 
 Major, were well known in the neighborhood, 
 for they had helped more than one thief 
 elude the police, and had played their parts 
 (they were often cast for the chief r6les in 
 the play) in more than one daring robbery. 
 
 I said "they," because the play could no 
 more go on without Major and the night- 
 hawk than it could without Pidgy himself. 
 124
 
 The Flight of a Night-hawk 125 
 
 They were the three legs of a tripod, remove 
 one, and crash! the whole comes tumbling to 
 the ground. Two of the legs of this tripod 
 must certainly have been born for each 
 other; the third I know was made to suit the 
 other two. Pidgy and Major were born to 
 illustrate the proverb that appearances are 
 deceitful, a proverb which ever needs new 
 illustrations, and to prove it the night-hawk 
 was manufactured. Pidgy expressed the 
 quality of stupidity envisaged ; Major that 
 of slowness; and the night-hawk that of 
 clumsiness; but the rickety, ramschackle 
 night-hawk could roll over the ground noise 
 lessly and swiftly as a rubber ball down an 
 inclined plane; Major s long bony body 
 could fly along like a hare before the 
 hounds; Pidgy, cunning, alert, shrewd, 
 could change the expression of stupidity on 
 his face as easily as the glove on his hand. 
 
 However, on this night they had no in 
 tention of violating the law ; they were there 
 for an entirely different purpose; their in 
 tention was to catch a thief, and not to assist 
 one to escape.
 
 126 The Lucky Number 
 
 Right in the doorway of The Lucky 
 Number stood the man wanted by them and 
 the police; Pidgy had seen him there but a 
 few minutes ago, and he had good reason to 
 believe that he was still there. 
 
 The police had offered a reward of eight 
 hundred dollars for his arrest and convic 
 tion, and Pidgy was anxious to catch "the 
 bird," not so much for the reward, although 
 that was by no means to be despised, as for 
 the pleasure of seeing "the bird" confined 
 behind the bars of an iron cage from which 
 there was no escape. 
 
 Three hours had not passed since the 
 captain of the station had told him that Joe 
 Coombs, alias "the Gold Brick, " was wanted 
 by the police, and wanted so badly that 
 they would cheerfully pay the sum of eight 
 hundred dollars for his capture. The cap 
 tain knew if any man could find him it was 
 Pidgy, and, furthermore, he knew that there 
 were reasons other than the reward which 
 would act like a spur in the chase. 
 
 "I dunno," said Pidgy to the captain, 
 as he opened his broad mouth on the bias,
 
 The Flight of a Night-hawk 1 27 
 
 and grinned stupidly, and peered rather than 
 looked at him with his small, dull grey eyes, 
 "I dunno," but Pidgy did know. 
 
 No sooner did he leave the captain than 
 he began to search for Kate, the flower girl. 
 To find Kate when looking for Joe is as good 
 as finding one end of a rope when you want 
 the other; it is only a question of time be 
 fore you have both. Kate and Joe were 
 ardent and inseparable lovers, and Pidgy, 
 loving Kate with an ardor and fervor equal 
 to Joe s, hated Joe as intensely as he loved 
 Kate. 
 
 Pidgy s vitals were being consumed by a 
 fire of jealousy, for he could never under 
 stand why Kate should prefer "a gun"* 
 and "prowler" to a cab driver of his ac 
 knowledged ability ; and the harder he tried 
 to solve the problem the more difficult did 
 it seem, and the more vexed and angry did 
 Pidgy become. It s them large puppy- 
 dog eyes of hisn," he would conclude after 
 giving the problem up in confusion. "I d 
 like to jerk em out of his nut, I would." 
 *Daring thief.
 
 128 The Lucky Number 
 
 Joe had every advantage over him in all 
 the qualities of appearance and manner that 
 go towards making a man attractive to a 
 woman; but Pidgy had the advantage of 
 quantity, of mere brute bulk and force, and 
 he would have used it more than once with 
 telling effect had not Kate interfered. 
 
 In the charm of her presence and against 
 her coqiietry and tact, Pidgy s strength 
 counted as naught; she could move him as 
 easily as she could twirl her flower-tray 
 around her little finger. Once she coaxed 
 money from him for the purpose, candidly 
 avowed, of paying Joe s fine; nor did she 
 have to coax so very hard either simply a 
 demure little kiss, a slight pressure of his 
 hand, and Pidgy drew out his leather bag 
 and handed her the money. But when 
 Kate and the money were gone, he cursed 
 himself for a born fool, and kicked the 
 walls of his stable in a fit of jealousy and 
 rage; and then he calmed himself by 
 reflecting that she would have hoodwinked 
 Joe out of money for a like purpose in 
 his behalf. Then he threw himself into a
 
 The Flight of a Night-hawk 129 
 
 towering rage again by reflecting that she 
 could n t and she would n t. 
 
 Even a cab driver may hitch his wagon, if 
 not his cab, to a star and long for the unat 
 tainable, and the more Kate neglected 
 Pidgy and showed favor to Joe, by so much 
 the more did Pidgy long for Kate. More 
 over, he laid great stress on the priority of his 
 acquaintanceship, and trusted that it would 
 count for much in his favor when the battle 
 was finally decided. Pidgy had known 
 Kate from the first days of her teens, and 
 had watched with fearful heart this tender 
 blossom on the tree of life, exposed as it 
 was to such rough winds and weather, ex 
 pand slowly and wonderfully into well- 
 rounded completeness. Long before Joe 
 had ever known or seen her, Pidgy had ren 
 dered the girl many a small service, and 
 some large ones, too, for the matter of that ; 
 and on this account Kate could never bring 
 herself to sever the delicate cords of senti 
 ment and friendship and love that held 
 them together. 
 
 So Pidgy loved on with a hope at which
 
 ijo The Lucky Number 
 
 hope itself mocked, purely, courageously; 
 and the purity and courageousness of his love 
 were worthy of a cavalier in the days of 
 chivalry, for in love and in death the two 
 powers by which God asserts man s equality 
 are not all men equal? 
 
 Because Kate could love a thief like Joe 
 you may have a poor opinion of her. You 
 have already, no doubt, preconceived that 
 she was all a woman ought not to be ; such 
 a preconception, if tranquillizing to the pro 
 prieties, is shocking to the truth, and it 
 must, therefore, be challenged. 
 
 Kate was reared in an atmosphere of 
 crime and sin, she had seen their terrible 
 results, and she had been warned time and 
 time again by the victims to pay no heed 
 to their wiles and blandishments. She 
 passed through the foul atmosphere un 
 tainted and unstained. An object lesson is 
 worth all the text lessons in the world, and 
 Kate had learned that virtue was its own 
 reward ; and the use of her eyes, without the 
 slightest aid from her reason, forced her to 
 the conclusion.
 
 The Flight of a Night-hawk 131 
 
 For eight years and over she had contri 
 buted an unequal share towards the support 
 of a worthless family by peddling flowers. 
 With her little tray of assorted roses and 
 carnations, she had passed day in, day out, 
 over disreputable thresholds and from saloon 
 to saloon ; and the end of her twentieth year 
 found her as pure and blameless in the sight 
 of God as she was at the beginning of her 
 twelfth. 
 
 In the swamps of Florida there grows the 
 tulip orchid "a learned man could give it 
 a clumsy name" of the most exquisite 
 pink shade and the most delicate shape; 
 and this flower hangs pendant upon its stem, 
 and dreams, like Heine s palm, of purer 
 worlds, as it sways to and fro in that pesti 
 lential, miasmatic air. In Kate human na 
 ture had produced such an anomaly. 
 
 While Pidgy was driving along leisurely 
 towards Kate s home after leaving the cap 
 tain, he caught sight of Joe in the doorway 
 of The Lucky Number. Pidgy was not 
 surprised to see him, he half expected it; for 
 Joe and Kate usually met there, and from
 
 132 The Lucky Number 
 
 the logic of experience he deduced the con 
 clusion that they had appointed that partic 
 ular spot to meet each other on this night. 
 The police could easily have been warned 
 and Joe captured then and there, but 
 Pidgy had two good reasons for not inform 
 ing on him ; first, the police would probably 
 claim the whole reward for themselves; and 
 second, he would cheat himself out of the 
 vengeance for which he thirsted. He wanted 
 "the Gold Brick" to know and he hoped 
 the knowledge would torture him to death 
 slowly, that it was Pidgy Donnavan s power 
 and skillful manoeuvering that had landed 
 him behind the bars. 
 
 When Pidgy pitched his cab on the corner 
 near The Lucky Number, he had resolved 
 upon an audacious adventure; and in 
 the dense darkness he waited impatiently for 
 things to reach the point that would admit 
 of his assistance in their development. 
 
 Meanwhile "the Gold Brick" was grow 
 ing anxious and restless, and he found it 
 difficult to remain at the tryst; for not long 
 before he had heard from a friend, who was
 
 The Flight of a Night-hawk 133 
 
 on the inside and had "a pull," that he was 
 wanted at the station, and wanted eight 
 hundred dollars worth. 
 
 He thought that the world was unjust, 
 and that the police, who ran it, would turn 
 paradise into a botch ; because he had not 
 been at all concerned in the daring and suc 
 cessful robbery for which they were holding 
 him responsible, and in fact no one was 
 more surprised than he to hear the story 
 of its execution. 
 
 But that was neither here nor there ; he 
 was wanted and if the police found him, it 
 was an easy matter " to fix" their scales , and 
 find him wanting. 
 
 There was but one thing to do ; to leave 
 town, and leave quickly. His train started 
 at nine and he was ready to go, ticket 
 and baggage were in his pocket; but he 
 dared not go without saying good-bye to 
 Kate. 
 
 Unfortunately, he had made the appoint 
 ment with her on the night before, and to 
 leave so suddenly and without any explana 
 tion might offend her egregiously, and
 
 134 The Lucky Number 
 
 smooth the way, heretofore stony and rough 
 enough, for the entrance of his persistent 
 and ubiquitous rival. 
 
 She had promised to be there at half past 
 eight, and it was now twenty minutes to 
 nine, and she was nowhere in sight. 
 
 The cold was growing sharper and 
 more penetrating with every minute, and 
 Joe s patience waned as the cold waxed. 
 The snow, that had fallen steadily during 
 the day, was being swirled into wave-shaped 
 drifts and piles; so the street had the ap 
 pearance of a great heaving ocean of clear 
 white ; and, as if to perfect the resemblance, 
 this same wind-sprite was gathering huge 
 handfuls of the snow, grinding it into pow 
 der and blowing it about like so much ocean- 
 spray. 
 
 Joe jumped up and down, first on one 
 foot, then on the other, and threw his arms 
 vigorously across his chest to keep the slug 
 gish current of his blood from stagnation, 
 and his patience, slowly sinking, from death. 
 He gazed anxiously, nervously, down the 
 long vista of the street, and still no Kate.
 
 The Flight of a Night-hawk 135 
 
 The chances of catching his train were re 
 duced by another five minutes, when he, 
 reflecting that there was a slight possibility 
 of reaching the station in time by the aid of 
 a cab, saw the tall robust figure of Kate, 
 clad in a long black coat, hurriedly making 
 its way up the street. The flickering light 
 of the street-lamps made her form stand out 
 in silhouette-like relief against the back 
 ground of dazzling white. 
 
 He raised the collar of his ulster and, 
 holding the ends of it over his face, hastened 
 forward. They met where one end of the 
 short dark alley that bisects the block 
 loses its identity in the main street. 
 
 "Ther ain t no time left for billin and 
 cooin around, Kate," remarked Joe, after 
 blurting out what had happened. 
 
 "Cab, sir," bawled Pidgy, through his 
 thick heavy scarf, as he drove towards them 
 leisurely. 
 
 "Yes, hold on!" called Joe. He drew 
 Kate to him, kissed her passionately, and 
 jumped into Pidgy s night-hawk. 
 
 "Good-bye! Good luck!" called Kate.
 
 136 The Lucky Number 
 
 "I love you, I love you, I will always love 
 you!" 
 
 "Make my train and there s a V for 
 you;" Joe slammed the door and the cab 
 started. 
 
 To Pidgy, Kate s adieu sounded like the 
 falling melancholy notes of a funeral march 
 for the dead love that had lived and yearned 
 in his heart but a minute ago. He clenched 
 his teeth firmly, swung his craft northwards, 
 and started on at full speed. The bird had 
 hopped right into the trap, and had taken 
 the precaution of locking itself in; if the 
 bird "ducked" it would be the fault of the 
 trap, and not of the sportsman. 
 
 The jail was on the way to the railway 
 station, and just a few blocks to the east; 
 he had only to stop his cab there, throw the 
 door open, grab his bird by the throat, call 
 to the police, claim his reward, and laugh 
 right in the bird s face. When the bird was 
 in the "stir"* and the eight hundred dollars 
 in his pockets, he could start a livery, marry 
 Kate, and thus see the two great ambitions 
 
 *Penitentiary.
 
 The Flight of a Night-hawk 137 
 
 of his life accomplished, the one great am 
 bition, I might say, for the one was but the 
 complement of the other. 
 
 The depressing music of the funeral 
 march that her adieu had awakened in his 
 heart died away before the stirring, inspirit 
 ing notes of a march of triumph. 
 
 "Go it, Major, go it!" and Pidgy s whip 
 came down on his back with a crash. A 
 whip was seldom if ever used on Major, for 
 it was seldom needed ; but when the lash 
 snapped Major knew that the occasion was 
 extraordinary, and he struck his best pace. 
 The cab sped over the ground as if Major 
 were laboring under the delusion that he was 
 attached to a sulky and trotting on a race 
 track. 
 
 Several times he thought that he heard 
 the sound of carriage wheels breaking 
 through the crisp snow close behind him ; he 
 turned on his box to peer through the dark 
 ness. He could discover nothing, but he 
 still heard the sound, and his fancy coined 
 the superstition that he was running a race 
 with a phantom cab whose wraith of a
 
 138 The Lucky Number 
 
 driver was trying to upset him, and seize 
 his prize. 
 
 Pidgy intended that no driver real or 
 imaginary should catch up to him, and he 
 made his horse speed through the snow as 
 the poor beast never sped through it before. 
 
 Major was crossing a corner at break-neck 
 speed, when Pidgy jerked him back on his 
 haunches with a suddenness that almost 
 rolled the night-hawk into the snow. 
 "W-h-o-a, Major, w-h-o-a!" he called 
 hoarsely. 
 
 In heaven s name, what manner of cab 
 was that whose horse had passed through 
 his night-hawk with the speed of the wind, 
 and, like the wind, left no rack or ruin be 
 hind? And what manner of person was 
 that seated within, and looking for all the 
 world like Kate? 
 
 "Ye re got em again, man, and without 
 drink," Pidgy whispered to himself, wiping 
 the cold sweat from his brow. If a cab run 
 through yer cab, it ud bust it clean; and 
 if it did run through yer cab and not bust 
 it, it wan t no cab, no nothing. And as fer
 
 The Flight of a Night-hawk 139 
 
 Kate bein in that cab, how could Kate be 
 in the cab, if it wan t no cab?" Thus did 
 Pidgy argue his fancy out of the illusion of 
 a phantom cab. 
 
 Now, four blocks more to the right, and 
 they would be at the jail. He turned down 
 the dark side street, his hand trembling so 
 violently that he could scarcely keep a tight 
 rein. 
 
 Another block and he could pull his cab 
 up in front of the broad, stone stairs of the 
 "boobyhatch;" already he could descry 
 through the darkness its somber gray walls. 
 
 Pidgy gave an involuntary shudder; he 
 had been behind those walls himself, and 
 knowing how gray and blank and desolate 
 they were, he preferred the darkness and 
 the cold of the outer world a thousand times. 
 
 A phantasmagorial hand was trying to 
 jerk the lines from his grasp and pull Major 
 back on his reckless course; and right in 
 front of him, so near that its lips almost 
 touched his own, was a face, ghostly white, 
 whiter than the snow that glistened on the 
 roof of the jail the hand and the face were
 
 140 The Lucky Number 
 
 Kate s. The lips of that face opened and 
 moaned beseechingly, "For God s sake 
 do n t take him there, anywhere but there! 
 I ll kill myself if you do! I love him; I love 
 him; I will always love him!" 
 
 That it was a figment of the imagination 
 Pidgy knew then, just as well as he knows 
 it to-day; but for a moment the illusion was 
 real and vivid and horrible enough. He 
 knew, too, that the voice which came from 
 those lips was only the voice of his own 
 conscience, but it was sepulchral and terrify 
 ing for all of that. 
 
 "No, by God, I ll not!" he muttered. 
 " The girl loves him and I loves the girl, let 
 the girl have him ! Damn his puppy-dog 
 eyes anyway!" He swung his cab on past 
 the jail, and veering in another direction, 
 made for the station. 
 
 Whether it was from the battle of conflict 
 ing emotions or the intense excitement, or 
 the excessive jolting and rocking, the fact is 
 Pidgy grew dizzy ; and it seemed to him that 
 his cab stood still and the ground glided 
 and slipped from under Major s hoofs.
 
 The Flight of a Night-hawk 141 
 
 Joe was wondering why the man turned 
 corners so often, but it was too dark to tell 
 where they were going and he thought the 
 cabby must surely know. 
 
 It was just three minutes to nine when 
 the poor, wind-broken, foam-covered animal 
 stopped in front of the depot. Joe flung 
 down the fare, and darted for his train. 
 
 "And neither of em ell never know it, 
 Major," muttered Pidgy, as he gulped down 
 a big lump in his throat and ploughed home 
 ward through the pitiless darkness of the 
 night.
 
 A Fair Exchange 
 
 "What entered into thee 
 That was, is and shall be." 
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 AN OLD HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 air of wealth and luxury that hov- 
 -1- ered about the nurse and the baby she 
 carried would have told you at a glance that 
 they did not belong in the tenement district 
 through which they were passing. The ex 
 pensive linen of the baby, and the nurse s 
 long gray cloak and Alsatian cap, with its 
 fluttering blue ribbons, stood out as boldly 
 in relief from the squalor of that poverty- 
 stricken district as a box of flaring red gera 
 niums from the soot blackness of a tene 
 ment window frame. 
 
 Nevertheless, the girl carried the baby into 
 one of those tumble-down residences of the 
 poor, and up the winding flight of greasy, 
 142
 
 A Fair Exchange 143 
 
 worn stairs. When she had left the last 
 stairs of the fourth flight behind, she walked 
 down the narrow hall, and knocked at the 
 first door at her left. 
 
 An unkempt woman, bent, flat-chested 
 and thin-featured, opened the door. 
 
 "Oh, it s you, Mag, is it? Come in." 
 
 On the carpetless floor of the room that 
 the girl entered three babies were playing 
 and crying; or, to be more explicit, two 
 were crying, and one was playing. 
 
 "How s the kids, ma?" asked Mag. 
 
 Ma shrugged her stoop shoulders, and 
 pointed with her hand to the articles in 
 question in a way that said, "They re there, 
 see fer yourself; what does yer care any 
 way." 
 
 The hands and shoulders were in the 
 right, for the daughter thought the mere 
 question displayed sufficient interest in the 
 younger members of the family, and she 
 paid no further attention to them. 
 
 The atmosphere was stifling, choking. 
 The June sun poured its molten heat 
 through the broken glass panes of the low
 
 144 The Lucky Number 
 
 windows with a remorseless, savage energy ; 
 the squat ceiling and the paperless walls, 
 from which the plaster was dropping in large 
 squares and oblongs, seemed to vie with 
 each other in their greed to catch every sun 
 ray that entered. From the next room, 
 kitchen, laundry, and living apartment, all 
 in one, there came floating in a swarm of 
 oppressive odors, strongly suggestive of the 
 frying pan. 
 
 "What brings yer here again, Mag?" 
 asked the mother after they had sat through 
 a minute s embarrassing silence. 
 
 "I m going to run out to the grocery- 
 man s picnic for the rest of the afternoon, 
 and I thought as you d mind the kid for 
 me." 
 
 Without waiting for a reply the girl doffed 
 her gown and cap, and laid them on the 
 trundle bed carefully. Then, in a manner 
 that showed she had done the same thing 
 before, she divested her charge of its fine 
 linen, and dressed it in a garment of cheap, 
 coarse material, brought with her for the 
 purpose. As she undressed him for it was
 
 A Fair Exchange 145 
 
 a boy the delightful fragrance of violet 
 perfume was perceptible for the second or 
 two before it was suffocated in a struggle 
 for survival. 
 
 The unrobing and robing done, she placed 
 the baby on the floor to amuse himself as 
 best he could, which was not very well, for 
 the child of luxury rebelled against the 
 plebeian surroundings, and he sent up an 
 agonizing howl every time the proletarian 
 children touched the hem of his skirts. 
 
 The mother grumbled about extra work, 
 an ungrateful daughter, and the brats of the 
 rich. 
 
 "Here, take this," and Mag handed her 
 a silver dollar; having expected it, she was 
 prepared to overcome the grumbling. 
 
 "It s all I could save this week." 
 
 "She comes handy," said the woman 
 rolling the dollar in a rag of a handkerchief, 
 and slipping it back into her rag of a gown. 
 "The old man s been out of work all week, 
 and ain t brought home a red. You re a 
 good gurl, Mag, I allus said it! Ain t you 
 got another roller fer yer ma?"
 
 146 The Lucky Number 
 
 "How s the old man," asked the girl 
 evasively. 
 
 "Find and ask him," replied the mother, 
 "he s rolling around drunk somewhere s; 
 ain t seen im fer two days." 
 
 "Now, Harvey R. Garwood, Jr., you be 
 good while I m gone or" and Mag shook 
 her fist at the child from the doorway as 
 a parting admonition, and left for the pic 
 nic. The child yelled and screamed with 
 all the power of his little lungs, for he was 
 finding his strange companions and abiding 
 place more and more loathsome; and when 
 his nurse disappeared he felt like a ship- 
 captain who sees his mutinous crew sail out 
 on the open seas, far away from the deserted 
 island where the wretches have left him to 
 die. 
 
 At five o clock Mag returned to the tene 
 ment, her cheeks deeply flushed, and her 
 breath smelling of whiskey. She laughed 
 hilariously as she gave her mother an inco 
 herent, but highly-colored account of the 
 picnic; and the mother laughed just as hilar 
 iously, and the comments with which she
 
 A Fair Exchange 147 
 
 interspersed Mag s narrative were just as 
 incoherent as the narrative itself. She had 
 spent her dollar at The Lucky Number for 
 the same good cheer that Mag had found 
 at the picnic. 
 
 The girl hastened to prepare her charge 
 for the return homeward. "Hold on, Mag, 
 hold on," hiccoughed the mother. "I got 
 a scheme for both en us; bin thinkin on it 
 all afternoon. Why can t us let our kid be 
 brung up among the swell uns, eh? What s 
 wrong with my kid doddin round in silk 
 and livin swell, I wants ter know? What s 
 the difference twixt my kid and their kid?" 
 
 She shrieked with laughter, and then 
 cried her eyes red with maudlin tears; when 
 the tears ceased and the laughter subsided, 
 she explained her scheme: she fancied that 
 there was a strong resemblance between her 
 youngest son and her daughter s charge. 
 Why not change them? Why not let her boy 
 grow up rich and well tended, and the rich 
 boy wear rags? When he grew to a man s 
 estate he would reward them richly for the 
 clever ruse they had played for his benefit.
 
 148 The Lucky Number 
 
 This, in brief, was the plan that the whis 
 key had inspired in her heated imagination, 
 and which she proceeded to give in detail 
 and with much circumlocution and many bit 
 ter invectives against the rich, who were 
 cheating them at every turn and crook of 
 the long road of life. 
 
 Mag was just drunk enough to consent 
 to such a wild undertaking; the whiskey in 
 her case, as in her mother s, had exagger 
 ated the faint resemblance of the children 
 into a positive likeness, and she swore the 
 one might easily be made to do service for 
 the other. 
 
 So the pauper went to the palace, and the 
 prince remained in the slums. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 ENVIRONMENT A PROBABILITY. 
 
 At the rear of The Lucky Number, under 
 a hollow made by the framework of the out 
 side stairway, is a heap of old rags collected 
 by "The Kid," and used by him for a 
 "doss."* 
 
 *Bed.
 
 A Fair Exchange 149 
 
 What the origin of "The Kid" was no 
 one knew, he did not even know himself; 
 he had slept there as far back as the oldest 
 patron of the place could remember, and 
 beyond that there was nothing known of 
 him; but who cared one way or the other? 
 
 "The Kid s" antics were amusing, and 
 he was in no one s way ; in fact, he proved 
 a positive attraction to the place, and he 
 was allowed to remain there unmolested. 
 It afforded the hobos infinite amusement to 
 see the little fellow drain a can of beer, 
 smoke a pipe of strong tobacco, sing vile 
 songs, and tell still viler stories. Had a 
 full-fledged hobo told the same stories or 
 sang the same songs, they would have 
 fallen flat, but done by "The Kid" they 
 had a zest and drollery which provoked 
 delirious laughter and rounds of applause. 
 "He s knowin , dat smooth ;* he s wise 
 as a jocker , 1 ]- they would say as they 
 winked slyly and poked one another in the 
 ribs. 
 
 *Young thief. 
 
 fOld thief, one with whiskers.
 
 150 The Lucky Number 
 
 The lore of things forbidden was as an 
 open book to him, for he had the most able 
 teachers in the world, and he was a particu 
 larly brilliant pupil ; often the masters quar 
 reled among themselves for the honor of 
 having taught him in this or that branch in 
 which he excelled. 
 
 Such surroundings and such influences had 
 moulded his exterior just as ductile metal 
 is shaped by the rigid form of the mould 
 into which it is poured. He could not have 
 been over ten years of age, but his growth 
 had been so stunted by the beer and the 
 tobacco that he was no taller than the average 
 healthy boy of eight. His thin chest, and 
 thinner body, his hollow cheeks and sallow 
 complexion sallow to the point of green 
 ness bespoke a poorly nourished and mor 
 bid condition of the tissues. 
 
 Had he stuck his head through a canvas 
 and exposed his face only to view, it would 
 have puzzled you to have guessed his age. 
 The lines of his face were hard and set, its 
 expression was that of an habitual criminal 
 grown old in vice, and yet the features were
 
 A Fair Exchange 151 
 
 those of a mere boy in the formative period 
 of life. But the crux of the difficult puzzle 
 was the eyes; he had the most serene, inno 
 cent brown eyes it was ever your pleasure 
 to look into, and with those innocent eyes he 
 could look you straight in the face and tell 
 lies by the score. 
 
 One day, while going on an errand for 
 Mike, the bartender, he lost his way, an 
 unusual thing for him to do ; and while wan 
 dering about he stumbled into the most im 
 posing residence street of the city. "The 
 Kid" had never been there before; indeed 
 it was one of his first trips beyond the 
 limits of the slums. He had no more occa 
 sion for going into this residence district of 
 the wealthy than a child of a millionaire has 
 for going into the slums. 
 
 "Gawd!" he exclaimed, "but this is dead 
 swell," and he sat on a brown stone coping 
 to take it in slowly. 
 
 "Hi, you there, get off that fence!" 
 yelled a man from the yard, "I just cleaned 
 it!" 
 
 "The Kid" put his right hand to his
 
 152 The Lucky Number 
 
 nose and jumped; the action was so comical 
 that the man laughed aloud. His laughter 
 aroused the urchin s anger, "I d like ter 
 have him alone by De Lucky Number," he 
 muttered. 
 
 A boy with long golden curls, and dressed 
 d la Fauntleroy was riding down the street 
 on a velocipede. 
 
 "Hello!" cried the boy. 
 
 "Howdy!" answered "The Kid." 
 
 "My name is Harvey R. Garwood, Jr.; 
 what s yours?" 
 
 He was about to answer that he was 
 called "The Kid," but it sounded like noth 
 ing in comparison with the long, aristocratic 
 roll of Harvey R. Garwood, Jr., so he 
 checked himself and said simply, "I ain t 
 got none!" 
 
 "That s funny," laughed the other; "my 
 mamma says everybody has a name. 
 
 "Well, yer ma don t know it all. I 
 knows lots of folks what ain t got no 
 names." And he spat straight for an elm 
 tree, some eight or ten feet off, and hit it 
 squarely.
 
 A Fair Exchange 153 
 
 "That s great," shouted Lord Fauntle- 
 roy, "do it again." 
 
 The Arab spat again with equal precision. 
 
 "Now let me try it," and the Lord tried 
 until the roof of his mouth became dry 
 and parched. 
 
 "Say, but yer green/ said "The Kid," 
 with a look of infinite disparagement. 
 
 Anxious to show his other accomplish 
 ments he played drunk and rolled and stag 
 gered about on the grass like an old intoxi 
 cant ; Harvey laughed until the tears rolled 
 down his cheeks. 
 
 "Maybe you d like to ride on my veloci 
 pede? I can ride it all over. Do you know 
 how to ride?" 
 
 "Fer sure I do," he had never been on 
 one in his life, but there was nothing "The 
 Kid" was afraid to try, and he rode away as 
 if he had come into the world on a wheel. 
 He liked the exercise so well that his first 
 intention was to run away with the veloci 
 pede, but he wanted to hear "de swell guy" 
 praise his cleverness, so he turned around
 
 154 The Lucky Number 
 
 and rode back, trusting to luck to make 
 away with it afterwards. 
 
 He found "de swell guy" in a flood of 
 tears, crying as though his heart would 
 break. 
 
 "What is yer spilling bout, I did n t hurt 
 de ding? 
 
 "I lost my new knife with the pearl 
 handle and four blades. I 1-o-s-t it!" he 
 boohooed. 
 
 "The Kid" grinned, " Here it be," and 
 he handed the knife to him with an air made 
 up of amusement and superiority. 
 
 "Where did you find it? I looked all 
 over for it," and his face changed from 
 grave to gay with child-like rapidity. 
 
 " I dlipped it from yer prat-kick."* 
 
 "Where did you find it? I did n t under 
 stand where you said?" 
 
 "Say, but yer green. I means I took 
 her from yer back pocket," answered the 
 rogue blandly. 
 
 *Britch is used to designate the front-pocket; gerve, 
 vest-pocket; insider, inside coat-pocket; fob, small 
 side coat-pocket; smoker, any pocket in which a 
 pocket-book (skin) happens to be.
 
 A Fair Exchange 155 
 
 "From my pocket?" 
 
 "Yop!" 
 
 "But I didn t feel you take it," and his 
 eyes opened wide as saucers. 
 
 "Say, but yer easy. Dat s de game; 
 course yer didn t feel it!" 
 
 "If you show me the trick, I ll let you 
 ride my wheel again." 
 
 "Naw, yer kin never learn it, it takes too 
 long ter ketch onto de spiel." 
 
 He put the knife way down in the depths 
 of his velvet trousers, and held his hand 
 over it to make sure that the magician 
 shouldn t conjure the recovered treasure 
 away again. 
 
 The magician started to sing "Dad Doo- 
 ley s Daughter," and Garwood, Jr. liked 
 the ditty so well that he begged him to 
 continue, remarking, "That s awfully funny; 
 I wish I could learn it." 
 
 "I 11 learn yer, it goes like dis," and he 
 hummed: 
 
 " Dad Dooley had a daughter 
 What was hot in love wid me, 
 Till a sailor laddy caught her, 
 And dey runned across de sea.
 
 156 The Lucky Number 
 
 " O Dad Dooley s puttee daughter, 
 Oh, yer broke me heart yer did, 
 When yer skipped across de water 
 Wid de jolly sailor kid." 
 
 The prince proved a poor scholar; he for 
 got the first line as soon as he had learned 
 the second, and the pauper gave his pupil up 
 in disgust. 
 
 "I learned dat song de fust crack; I m 
 smarter en you." 
 
 "No you ain t! I go to school, and I m 
 in the third reader, and I m the best reader 
 in the class. 
 
 "I do n t care ef yer in de leventh reader, 
 I m smarter en you." 
 
 "No you re not." 
 
 "Yes I be." 
 
 How long the dispute might have contin 
 ued in this strain there is no telling, had not 
 the aristocrat missing his knife, started to cry. 
 The Arab returned it without comment, but 
 with an air that was deliciously droll. 
 
 "I 11 whip you if you take my knife 
 again," and the lace ruffles were rolled back 
 from the wrist.
 
 A Fair Exchange 157 
 
 "Come, what s de use ef scrappin , life s 
 too short;" this was a favorite quotation 
 used at The Lucky Number before and 
 after a fight as a kind of sedative, which 
 "The Kid" had swallowed without knowing 
 its nature. A feeling of love and com 
 panionship for the little stranger who 
 had treated him kindly stirred the lad to the 
 depths of his being, and he put his arms 
 around the stranger s neck affectionately. 
 
 He pushed him away, "Your hand s all 
 dirt, and you ll dirty my waist, and I put it 
 on clean this morning." 
 
 "Dat s nuffin, de dirt ell come off. Look 
 at me," and it dawned upon his quick intel 
 ligence that a great, yawning abyss lay 
 between him and the young aristocrat. 
 
 The prince was just as quick to note the 
 change of expression on the other s face. 
 "Do n t feel bad, I ve got some old ones in 
 the linen closet and I 11 give them to you;" 
 after a pause, "you must be very poor, and 
 my mamma says I must be good to the poor. 
 My papa s rich, and he owns a large factory 
 with big chimneys; it s lots of fun to watch
 
 158 The Lucky Number 
 
 the smoke. He buys me everything, my 
 papa. 
 
 Now "The Kid" understood the real 
 significance of the words rich and poor; 
 now, too, he caught a glimmering, vague as 
 it was, of the meaning of the wild harangues 
 delivered at The Lucky Number in which 
 u i the grinding rich were anathematized and 
 the suffering poor canonized. 
 
 He was busy uniting the scattered sixes 
 and sevens of his brain into thirteens when 
 the boy interrupted, "I m hungry, I m 
 going into the house to get something to 
 eat, come ahead. Does your mamma allow 
 you to eat between meals?" 
 
 The pauper stood lost in amazement. 
 He was going to explain that, in the first 
 place, he was glad to pick up a crumb at 
 any time, between, or at the ends; and, in 
 the second place, that he had no mamma to 
 regulate the time when he might stoop to 
 gather the crumbs; but, not wishing the 
 other s superiority to shine forth too glar 
 ingly, he answered indifferently, "Some 
 times she do, and sometimes she do n t."
 
 A Fair Exchange 159 
 
 They met no menial at the palace gate 
 to challenge the entrance of the stranger, 
 and the two made their way undisturbed and 
 without difficulty into the banquet hall of 
 the king. 
 
 The pauper was bewildered ; he had never 
 dreamt that anything so marvelous or en 
 chanting as that banquet hall existed any 
 where in the world. Had he read Grimm 
 or the Arabian Nights, he might in some 
 measure have been prepared for sights so 
 wonderful, but he had never heard of fairy 
 wands, or Aladdin lamps or invisible and 
 omnipotent genii ; and, therefore, not know 
 ing how to account for such dazzling splen 
 dor, he stood astounded, with mouth agape. 
 He was as busy differentiating his impres 
 sions as a child when the first rays of a dawn 
 ing intelligence open its eyes to a world of 
 variegated color and multiple form. 
 
 "Gawd!" he murmured under his breath, 
 "she s way ahead of de train, and way past 
 de whistle. What slum fer a crib-cracker!"* 
 
 On the sideboard was a large chocolate 
 *What booty for a safe or lock breaker.
 
 160 The Lucky Number 
 
 cake which Master Garwood reached by the 
 aid of a chair; he cut a large slice for him 
 self, stepped down, and very generously 
 invited the guest to take his turn. 
 
 The guest first nibbled at the cake to 
 make sure it contained no poison, then 
 smacking his lips he made haste to cut two 
 slices, one of which he slipped into his 
 pocket. 
 
 This last action shocked the good breed 
 ing of the prince. "My mamma says that 
 ain t polite, to take two pieces." 
 
 The guest was not at all embarrassed, he 
 was used to being caught in predicaments 
 like that, and he coolly inquired what 
 "perlite" might mean? 
 
 "It means well, it means that you 
 mus n t take two pieces when company s 
 here, or when they ain t." 
 
 "I guess yer mudder never eat no free 
 lunch," ventured the Arab, his mouth so 
 full of cake that he could scarcely speak. 
 
 "What s that?" 
 
 "Free lunch? Dat s grub what s thrung 
 in wid de drinks."
 
 A Fair Exchange 161 
 
 The son thought his mother had never 
 eaten of such food. 
 
 In the corner of the room on a mahogany 
 table was a Chinese ivory carving, one of 
 the first things that attracted the visitor s 
 attention. 
 
 "What s dat Ching-Chang good fer?" he 
 asked, pointing to the ivory. 
 
 "Oh, that? That s an ornament; you 
 push its head, and it goes on shaking by 
 itself so." 
 
 The guest had never seen anything that 
 struck his fancy more forcibly, and when the 
 host was looking elsewhere he slipped it 
 under his coat. But somehow he felt uncom 
 fortable, he was taking unfair advantage 
 of some one who had treated him kindly, 
 and recognizing for the first time in his life 
 that there was a line of demarcation between 
 meum and tuum, he waited his opportunity 
 and put the carving back. It had scarcely 
 touched the table before the boy s mother 
 made her appearance. 
 
 "Harvey, what are you doing with that 
 cake? You know that you should n t touch
 
 1 62 The Lucky Number 
 
 it. I ve been looking all over the house for 
 you, where have you been? Goodness me! 
 Where did that child come from? Why did 
 you bring him into the house? I shall never 
 let you go out of the house again without 
 the nurse." 
 
 "The Kid" pressed close to the wall, 
 wishing with all his heart and soul that he 
 could press clean through it into the street. 
 
 "He s a fine boy," said Harvey in honest 
 surprise, "he can take things out of your 
 pocket, and you can t see him do it; and he 
 can sing funny songs and play drunk and 
 spit way across the room. 
 
 The queen paid no attention to the appeal 
 of the little prince for his playmate, the 
 pauper: "If you don t go at once, little 
 boy, I must send you away." 
 
 "Please, mum," he interposed, "I did n t 
 mean no harm ; the kid tole me as you was 
 good to de poor, and he tole me ter come 
 in wid him. But you need n t fly de peeler, 
 I 11 wing." 
 
 "How glad I am that my dear child 
 isn t a little vagabond like that," thought
 
 A Fair Exchange 163 
 
 the mother, a few seconds after the boy had 
 gone. 
 
 "Just de same," reflected "The Kid," 
 on his way homeward, "I wish dat I had 
 swiped de Ching-Chang wid de swingin 
 nut." 
 
 PART III. 
 
 HEREDITY A POSSIBILITY. 
 
 "There s a boy in the reception room, that 
 wants to see you. He says he has a very 
 important message. Shall I admit him?" 
 
 "A boy with an important message for 
 me, you say? Who is the boy, Mr. Run 
 nels?" 
 
 From the slow, grave manner in which he 
 spoke these few unimportant words you 
 would have known that Mr. Garwood, Sr., 
 a stern, yet withal benevolent appearing 
 man of middle age, was precise and method 
 ical in everything he did, whether the mat 
 ter in hand involved pennies or thousands. 
 
 "I have n t the least idea, sir," answered 
 the secretary, "but he looks like a very 
 poor boy,"
 
 164 The Lucky Number 
 
 "I can t see him; I am very much pressed 
 for time;" and he turned to read the corre 
 spondence that lay in neat, square piles on 
 his desk. 
 
 "You might find out what he wants," he 
 said as Mr. Runnels left the room. 
 
 "The boy will not go away, Mr. Gar- 
 wood, nor will he tell me what he wants. 
 He says the message is a matter of life and 
 death, and he will deliver it only to you," 
 said the secretary on returning. 
 
 "A matter of life and death," and the 
 head of the great house of Garwood & Co. 
 repeated the words in his characteristic, 
 weighty manner. "Well, I presume it might 
 be wise to see this important messenger 
 from the fates." His curiosity was aroused, 
 and he had calculated while speaking to Run 
 nels that he could spare three minutes. 
 
 The door opened again, and a small boy, 
 hat in hand, stepped across the Turkish rugs, 
 and up to the millionaire s desk, as if he had 
 crossed Turkish rugs every day of his life to 
 interview millionaires in their private offices. 
 
 Mr. Garwood, toying with his whiskers,
 
 A Fair Exchange 165 
 
 eyed the boy from head to foot through his 
 glasses. A few glances told him that the 
 boy was fourteen or fifteen years of age, 
 that he was poor to the extreme of 
 want, and that he was a neat boy; for his 
 clothes, worn as they were, looked as if ex 
 cessive brushing and cleaning had worn the 
 patches into them. He was an honest boy, 
 for he looked one straight in the face with 
 his large brown eyes, and did not flinch; 
 he was an intelligent boy, too, for those 
 eyes were mirrors of eagerness and vivacity. 
 
 The subject of this inspection interrupted 
 any further conclusions with, "Are you Mr. 
 Garwood ? 
 
 He nodded affirmatively, saying, "So you 
 are the boy who has an important message 
 for me, a message of life or death, I be 
 lieve? 
 
 "Yes," answered the lad, "so I has. I 
 needs a job and I knows yer kin give me 
 one." His voice and manner of speaking 
 were so like Garwood Sr. s that the latter 
 might have imagined that he was being 
 mocked. Had he not been prepossessed
 
 1 66 The Lucky Number 
 
 in the boy s favor and amused by his man 
 ner, he would have ended the interview 
 then and there. 
 
 "So that is your message of life and 
 death, is it?" Mr. Garwood inquired, his 
 stern features relaxing into a good-natured 
 smile. 
 
 "It is fer me, sir, I kin tell yer; it s work 
 er starve with me." 
 
 "H m, and what can you do, if I should 
 offer you work?" 
 
 "Everything," was the ready response. 
 
 The plutocrat crossed his hands behind 
 his head and lolled back in his revolving 
 chair; he was going to allow himself a little 
 recreation at the boy s expense. 
 
 "It has been my experience that those 
 who boldly claim they can do everything, 
 in reality can do nothing." 
 
 "I spoke too quick, sir. I mean ter say, 
 I m willin fer to do anything." 
 
 "You should never speak too quickly, 
 boy." 
 
 "Thank you, sir." 
 
 At the boy s "I thank you," the pluto-
 
 A Fair Exchange 167 
 
 crat s eye-glasses almost jumped away with 
 a jerk from the silk cord to which they were 
 attached. He thought he detected a ring of 
 sarcasm in the voice, but the speaker s face 
 remained grave as a deacon s. 
 
 "Well, and what value do you place upon 
 your indispensable services?" 
 
 "My in-dis-pen-sa-ble services ought ter 
 be worth four dollars a week," piped the 
 urchin. 
 
 "Four dollars? When I started to work 
 here at your age, they paid me but three, 
 if I remember correctly. 
 
 "P rhaps yer wasn t worth no more," 
 observed the applicant very quietly, as if 
 quite sure of the truth of his remark. 
 
 The merchant s brows contracted into a 
 scowl, then he burst out laughing and 
 laughed until his sides ached. The boy 
 laughed, too; he saw the humor of the situ 
 ation and enjoyed it keenly. The former 
 checked himself suddenly. "I have no more 
 time to spend now. Return at three o clock; 
 I shall have more leisure then, and we shall 
 see what can be done for you."
 
 1 68 The Lucky Number 
 
 At three o clock to the minute the boy 
 put in his appearance. 
 
 I am glad you re so punctual, "remarked 
 Mr. Garwood, "I ve been expecting you." 
 
 The vision of this naive, cheerful waif, 
 had the same invigorating effect on the 
 overworked man of millions that a cool 
 breeze wafted from the lake has upon the 
 burning streets of the city. 
 
 "Yer know," began the boy, "I think 
 yer an awful nice sort of a man." 
 
 "And what has given you that opinion 
 of me?" Mr. Garwood was prepared for 
 anything now. 
 
 "Well, Mrs. Steen tole me that a man 
 what laughs right out from his inside that 
 a way till his shoulders shake is allus honest, 
 good-natered en kind-hearted, en what Mrs. 
 Steen says yer kin bank on every time." 
 
 "Mrs. Steen, and who may that good 
 lady be?" 
 
 "She s the good woman what brung me 
 up and saved my soul." 
 
 "Did n t you have a mother to do that 
 for you?"
 
 A Fair Exchange 169 
 
 "Ef I had a mudder, she turned me out 
 ter shift fer myself fore I had a chance ter 
 know how handsome she was." 
 
 "You must have had a very hard struggle 
 of it, my lad." This last was said sympa 
 thetically in a manner calculated to draw 
 the boy out. He found himself more and 
 more interested in this urchin who spoke to 
 him with the nonchalance of a superior. 
 
 "Yer bet, I had a hard time of it. I most 
 starved en froze ter death. Dern, if I know 
 how I stood it long enuf fer Mike ter find 
 me. There must be iron in me some eres, " 
 he paused to reflect. Then, thinking that 
 he was going to embark on a long story, he 
 invited himself to be seated in the chair 
 that stood in the corner at the right of the 
 merchant s desk. 
 
 "I wish my boy had a little of this 
 urchin s iron in his constitution, and less soft 
 lead," thought Mr. Garwood, Sr. 
 
 "As I was saying," he went on with per 
 fect equanimity, "I had tough times till I 
 struck Mike, Mike s the bartender of The 
 Lucky Number. Ever heard of The Lucky
 
 170 The Lucky Number 
 
 Number? No? It s a joint where the hobos 
 hangs out, and the toughs. Tough, gee 
 whiz! those fellers is tough. They tried 
 to make me tough es they was, en they come 
 near doin it. They learned me ter swear, 
 en smoke, en steal; none of em learned me 
 no good, I kin tell yer. 
 
 "Mike took a shine ter me; he liked me 
 cause I was smart en could swear back, en 
 sass quicker en he could. He let me sleep 
 there and onct in a while, just enuf to keep me 
 livin , he fed me on free lunch. He liked 
 me there, cause I amoosed the hobos by 
 singin , drinkin , en play in all around 
 tough kid. I was tough, too, but I ain t 
 proud of it now, dough I was den. 
 
 "En I went on gettin tougher en 
 tougher till I runned into Mudder Steen; 
 Mudder Steen is the woman what keeps the 
 dressmakin shop four blocks this side of The 
 Lucky Number. I runned an errand fer her, 
 after her girl went out ter take a dress, and 
 could n t find the place of the woman what 
 ordered it. I found it all right. After 
 that she let me run all over the city fer her;
 
 A Fair Exchange 171 
 
 then she let me sleep in her shop, en give 
 me my meals fer runnin errands en keepin 
 the place clean. 
 
 She was a Dutch woman, Mudder 
 Steen, en stuck on goin ter church; she 
 made me go long ter church with her on 
 Sundays, en go ter Sunday school. I 
 did n t like it much at first en runned away, 
 but she scared the life out of me tellin 
 about hell fire, en burnin . She used ter 
 cry cause I was so bad, en pray fer me, en 
 tell me how it hurt her ter see me that 
 a way. It hurt me, too, ter see the old 
 woman cryin en carryin on, en I made 
 up my mind all ef a sudden, en I quit bein 
 tough en bad from that day on. She used 
 ter read ter me nights, en she learned me 
 ter read, en write, en spell, en rithmetic. 
 She knowed a heap, Mudder Steen did, 
 even if her talk was Dutchy. One Christ 
 mas, cause I learned ter read so fast, she 
 give me two books, Robinson Crusoe and 
 Rabian Nights. I liked Rabian Nights 
 best ; specially bout the nigger that brought 
 Aladdin the lamp and popped out of the
 
 172 The Lucky Number 
 
 ground whenever he rubbed it. It s a great 
 story, yer ought ter read it." 
 
 "I ve read it," said the plutocrat seri 
 ously. 
 
 "And Friday and the " 
 
 "I m afraid you will have to draw your 
 story of your life to a close, for I shall " 
 
 "By the way," the boy with a history in 
 terrupted excitedly, "how s your son, Har 
 vey R. Garwood, Jr. ? I meant ter ask en I 
 forgot." 
 
 "How in the wide world did you ever 
 make the acquaintance of my son!" ejacu 
 lated Garwood Sr. 
 
 "When I was only a kid, six years ago, I 
 was going en errand fer Mike, en I lost my 
 way, en I met him. We played together a 
 long time, en talked, en he told me his pa 
 was rich, en had a big factory, with large 
 chimneys. He took me in his house, too, 
 en we was havin a good time till the old 
 woman chased me out." 
 
 "I have a dim recollection that my wife 
 told me something of the kind some years 
 ago."
 
 A Fair Exchange 173 
 
 "I thought you d remember if you heard 
 it. Mudder Steen, when I tole her about 
 it, used ter laugh, en she made me remem 
 ber all about it, en keep tellin her often 
 so as not ter ferget. Ef ever anything 
 happens ter me, she says, you go ter see 
 that Mr. Garwood en tell him jest what yer 
 tellin me, en he 11 laugh en give yer the 
 job. Mudder Steen died last week, en 
 the shop s gone, so I come." 
 
 "And you shall have the job, too, my 
 lad, even if I prove your good Mother 
 Steen wrong by not laughing. I shall have 
 to get along with two office boys instead 
 of one, I suppose." 
 
 "I don t want ter be no office boy, put 
 me in the factory, I want ter learn a trade. 
 
 "I like your spirit, and in the factory you 
 shall go, if the works have to be turned up 
 side down to put you there." 
 
 When William Steen, for such was his 
 name now, stepped down the long hallway 
 leading to the factory, he said to the foreman 
 who was leading him thither, "I m going 
 ter have yer job in ten years, watch out,"
 
 174 The Lucky Number 
 
 The foreman patted him on the head and 
 laughed, but the very boldness of the re 
 mark captured his heart, and he resolved on 
 the spot to do all in his power to advance 
 the lad, even if he endangered his own po 
 sition. And when he related this remark 
 of the prentice to the factory hands they 
 laughed still louder, if that were possible, but 
 they admired the boy none the less for the 
 courage he displayed in "sassin the boss." 
 
 For a long time the remark passed current 
 in the factory as a joke, and when they 
 twitted him about it good-naturedly, as 
 often happened, Will compressed his lips 
 tightly and answered only, "You ll see." 
 And they did see. 
 
 "Watch out," the men would say to the 
 foreman as the prentice passed on from 
 stage to stage, from casting to turning, and 
 from turning to fitting and burnishing, with 
 a rapidity that astonished everybody. 
 "Watch out, or the kid, afore you know it, 
 will push you out." 
 
 Garwood Sr., who was watching the ad 
 vance of his prottgt with an interest akin to
 
 A Fair Exchange 175 
 
 pride, never had cause to regret the day that 
 he had given Will Steen a start in life. "I 
 shall be satisfied," he said to his wife when 
 Harvey left home for college, "if our son, 
 with every advantage in his favor, succeeds 
 as well at college as this Arab, whom I took 
 from the streets, is succeeding in my fac 
 tory." 
 
 The clink-clank of innumerable hammers 
 on the anvils, the whistling of lathes, the 
 whirl of great wheels, the activity and move 
 ment of the factory all was music to Will s 
 ear. His fondest dream anticipated the day 
 when his command should send every man, 
 like a soldier well drilled, to his post, and 
 make the minutest part of the complicated 
 machinery pulsate with the joy that comes 
 from doing, creating. 
 
 In his heart was implanted a yearning for 
 power, an eagerness to lead, to be at the 
 head, and the higher he advanced in the 
 factory the greater did this desire become. 
 Instinctively, he felt that power comes from 
 knowledge; and when the day s work was 
 done he went to night-school, that he might
 
 ij6 The Lucky Number 
 
 gain the knowledge, which, by-and-by, he 
 hoped, was to transform itself into power. 
 His advance there was equally remarkable; 
 he mastered books as readily as he made 
 the iron, hot from the forge, take what 
 shape he willed. 
 
 He was born to rule, and gifted as he was 
 with foresight, policy and ability, he made 
 things serve as a spring-board to bound him 
 upward. 
 
 Before the expiration of ten years the 
 foreman left for a more advantageous posi 
 tion, and Will Steen stepped into the place ; 
 his prophecy had been verified. He wasted 
 no time resting on his oars ; higher up the 
 stream there were stations waiting for brain 
 and executive ability, and it tantalized him 
 to see the waters rush on while his boat 
 stood still. 
 
 Clad in his overalls, he walked into the 
 president s office one morning. "Mr. Gar- 
 wood," said he, "I think that I can be of 
 more service to you in the office than in the 
 factory. Why not put me there to figure on 
 your contracts?"
 
 A Fair Exchange 177 
 
 The president was somewhat skeptical, 
 but he consented to give him a trial. Will 
 Steen never asked for more than a trial; it 
 was the start that always gave him the race. 
 
 The same persistent, tireless energy that 
 he had put forth in factory and school 
 won him the most responsible position in 
 the office. He was fast nearing the end of 
 the stream ; he could catch the glimmer of 
 the waters at the source, and he tugged at 
 his oars with a violence which strained his 
 muscles, that he might reach the goal before 
 the current could carry him an inch down 
 ward. 
 
 In another five years he was Garwood 
 Sr. s right hand man with a small interest in 
 the house of Garwood & Co. "I expected 
 it," was all he said when the plutocrat called 
 him to occupy a desk in his private office. 
 
 More than once did the millionaire repeat 
 the wish that his own son might have some 
 of Will Steen s iron in his flabby constitu 
 tion, for Harvey R. Garwood Jr. s vacilla 
 ting will and idle life made the father despair 
 for his future.
 
 178 The Lucky Number 
 
 At nineteen he was expelled from his 
 freshman year for drunkenness, gambling, 
 and a neglect of his studies. 
 
 H is parents were inconsolable. While their 
 son s ability had never led them to believe 
 that his career would be brilliant, they had 
 hoped that his life might be at least honor 
 able and free from all taint of dissipation. 
 As a matter of course, there were the 
 the tears of a penitent prodigal, the forgive 
 ness of a trusting, confident mother, and of 
 a firmer and more unrelenting father. 
 
 For a time his repentance seemed sincere, 
 and when he started to work at his father s 
 office he gave every promise of retrieving 
 his lost reputation ; but the promise proved 
 a lie, for there followed a second period of 
 reckless dissipation and evil associates. A 
 second time the mother pleaded, the son 
 promised, and the father forgave. 
 
 His third defection was more serious; 
 Garwood Jr., for the purpose of meeting a 
 debt contracted over the gambling table, 
 forged Garwood Sr. s name to a note. This 
 time the mother pleaded and the son prom-
 
 A Fair Exchange 179 
 
 ised in vain, the father remained inexorable ; 
 he disowned his son and forbade that Har 
 vey s name ever be mentioned in his pres 
 ence. 
 
 Thus every time that Will Steen climbed 
 up a round on the ladder of life, Harvey 
 R. Garwood, Jr. slipped down two. 
 
 The erect tall frame of Garwood Sr. was 
 slowly bending under the heavy burden of 
 old age; his vitality was fast slipping from 
 between his fingers, and he found Will s 
 assistance and advice more and more neces 
 sary. A magnetic force the irresistible 
 force that draws like to like drew Will to 
 him closer and closer. The time came when 
 he called Will and said, "You have been a 
 son to me in all but name; you have taken 
 a son s place in my office, come, take it in 
 my home. My wife sent you away from 
 there years ago as a vagabond ; in her 
 name, as well as in mine, I ask you to re 
 turn as my son." 
 
 Not long after this epoch in his career 
 Will entered the office with a face that 
 clearly betokened a heavy heart. The older
 
 180 The Lucky Number 
 
 man with his quickness of perception noticed 
 it instantly. 
 
 "Something has gone wrong, my boy, 
 speak out. Is it something concerning Har 
 vey? I am always expecting it. Have no 
 secret from me; his past conduct has pre 
 pared me for the worst. 
 
 "I must say it sometime," replied Will, 
 "and the sooner I say it, the sooner the 
 thing is done; if I do n t break the news to 
 you now, some one else will do it later and 
 more abruptly. It is something terrible." 
 
 The old man nodded, looking the quintes 
 sence of will and self-control as he sat up 
 right in his chair, holding its arms with his 
 firm powerful hands. 
 
 "I read in this afternoon s paper that 
 your son Harvey was shot last night at The 
 Lucky Number! "
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE PICTURE IS PAINTED. 
 
 IT was long past midnight when the idea 
 that he had left his safe unlocked 
 popped into the restless mind of Solomon 
 Pivansky. Suspicions just as groundless had 
 already wasted two of sleep s priceless 
 hours, and being loathe to leave his warm 
 bed he tried to argue this one to the same 
 death that he had argued its fellows. But 
 finding himself unable to effect a compromise 
 between sleep and the idea, he arose grum- 
 blingly and made his way down the stairs 
 which connected the sleeping apartment with 
 the pawn-shop. 
 
 You can imagine his astonishment at find 
 ing the lamp burning at full height in the 
 rear room of the pawn-shop ; but you cannot 
 181
 
 1 82 The Lucky Number 
 
 imagine his astonishment at finding his son 
 Aaron leisurely giving the finishing touches 
 to a large canvas stretched across an artist s 
 easel. Astonishment is not the word ; Solo 
 mon was dumbfounded, so dumbfounded 
 that his vocabulary, giving his tongue the 
 slip, left him without the means of express 
 ing his surprise in a full half-dozen of those 
 racy epithets in which Yiddish abounds. 
 The sight of all this artist s paraphernalia 
 formed an instantaneous association in 
 Solomon s mind with the figure of the pen 
 niless artist Brosseau, who had been obliged 
 to pawn "the stuff" in order to eke out 
 another day s miserable existence. Solo 
 mon did not intend that his son s soul 
 should thrive at the expense of his body, 
 and he gave the easel a kick that sent the 
 canvas on the floor with a bang, and his 
 hand struck out simultaneously for Aaron s 
 face. The blow never reached home, how 
 ever, for the boy caught his father s out 
 stretched hand by the wrist and held it 
 firmly. This was the first time in his life 
 that any of the Pivanskys had dared to dis-
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 183 
 
 pute his parental authority, and Solomon s 
 blood rose to the boiling point. 
 
 His face was mean enough ordinarily, 
 literally, as well as figuratively, without a 
 redeeming feature, a harsh, hard, cunning, 
 repulsive face, a face that made it useless 
 for the owner to deny sordidness and ava 
 rice and tyranny, a face that bore the 
 marks and showed the results of thirty years 
 of Russian persecution, and a face that 
 bespoke a sullen waiting for the hour 
 of vengeance. Mean enough ordinarily, 
 I said, but you should have seen it then, 
 when anger accentuated its brutal inhuman 
 ity. 
 
 A wrench, and he freed his arm from 
 Aaron s grasp. " I 11 show you," he mut 
 tered, "before the night s over who s master 
 here. So this is the way you waste my 
 oil and my time, is it? I never can get 
 any work out of you. No wonder you 
 fall asleep over your work, and leave the 
 stock and the books to keep themselves. 
 I 11 show you ! Is it for this that I let 
 you go two years to school, and waste
 
 184 The Lucky Number 
 
 my hard-earned money, you good-for-noth- 
 ing!" 
 
 At every word of the diatribe Solomon s 
 face grew darker, that part at least, which 
 was not covered by his black, frowzy beard. 
 Aaron knew what to expect and he waited 
 calmly, standing squarely in front of his can 
 vas that had fallen back-foremost, resolved 
 whatever befell him to protect it from in 
 jury. 
 
 Pivansky, the elder, foresaw his intention. 
 "I ll smash that thing to pieces when I get 
 through with you." 
 
 "No, you ll not," retorted Aaron, assum 
 ing an offensive position. 
 
 Had Solomon seen a lamb changed to a 
 lion before his eyes, the miracle would not 
 have astounded him so much as this sudden 
 change from fearful obedience to defiant 
 disobedience on the part of his Aaron, usu 
 ally as meek as Moses, and he stood dum- 
 founded again. 
 
 War had been declared, and Aaron meant 
 to push things to an issue, then and there. 
 I have spent a year on that picture ; I have
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 185 
 
 toiled nights on it after the day s hard labor, 
 while you and other men slept ; if you ruin 
 it you might as well kill me and be done 
 with it ; for I can never gather the courage 
 to attempt a work like that again, and I 
 would rather die than waste my life in this 
 nasty pawn-shop. I m sick of it, and I m 
 above it." 
 
 "Above it, are you?" shouted Solomon 
 "above it? Well, I ll bring your stiff neck 
 down to it, quick enough." 
 
 It would have gone hard with the young 
 artist had not Mrs. Pivansky (a short, fat 
 woman, with nothing to distinguish her 
 from the other thousand and one women of 
 the Ghetto) made her appearance at this 
 juncture of affairs and delayed the unequal 
 combat. She had been awakened by the 
 noise, and, astonished not to find her hus 
 band at her side, had rushed down stairs to 
 find out the cause of the disturbance. 
 
 "A nice son you ve raised," said her hus 
 band, turning towards her; "he s a gonef* ; 
 he stole this stuff from the shop, and he s 
 *A thief.
 
 1 86 The Lucky Number 
 
 stealing my time to paint his trashy 
 pictures." 
 
 She stood in open-mouthed stupidity, 
 trying to make head and tail out of this 
 unexpected jumble. 
 
 "If he paid attention to the business he 
 might amount to something. Let him buy 
 something with his pictures. He thundered 
 this last observation at his wife, as if she 
 were to blame for her son s lack of commer 
 cial astuteness. 
 
 "Yes," she answered stupidly, "let him 
 buy something with his pictures." 
 
 Aaron knew the weakness of his parents, 
 and with true Jewish perspicacity he bent 
 the trend of the argument to his own advan 
 tage. "Buy something with that picture! 
 I can sell it for more than your pawn-shop 
 is worth. It will make me rich and famous 
 it s a work of art. An artist with years of 
 training and every opportunity of study 
 would be proud to have painted it." His 
 tone was at once persuasive and conciliatory. 
 It will make us rich, that picture, he spoke 
 as one who speaks from one s soul-belief. 

 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 187 
 
 Money ! The word acted like the touch 
 of a talisman, it made the whole affair ap 
 pear different in Solomon s eyes; he 
 had never thought of the possibility of con 
 verting paint to gold. He reflected for 
 a second or two, trying to calculate what the 
 picture might be worth. "Let s see the 
 thing," he snapped. 
 
 Proudly Aaron lifted the picture from the 
 floor, and held it up to the light. For over 
 a year he had yearned for an opportunity 
 to show his father what he had done, but 
 he had always been restrained by the fear 
 that his effort would displease him, and that 
 his displeasure would assume some such vio 
 lent semblance as it had worn on this night. 
 
 Wonderful and strange difference between 
 the father and son. I might contrast their 
 characters and their appearances for pages 
 and pages, and then have left untouched 
 those finer shades and subtler shadows which 
 are not seen at the first, nor yet at the sec 
 ond or third glance. 
 
 Aaron had the countenance of a man 
 who aspires; a soulful, yearning face, one
 
 1 88 The Lucky Number 
 
 that would willingly gaze forever on the 
 stars above, but which circumstance forces 
 to look on the earth below. The long bat 
 tle fought between pawn-shop and art- 
 studio for the possession of Aaron s soul 
 had moulded every line of its contour; and 
 the dumb appeal of the heart, which help 
 lessly watched the superior brutal force of 
 the pawn-shop strive to dominate the spirit 
 ual force of the art-studio, had somehow 
 found expression in the beseeching glances 
 of two dark eyes, made pathetic by the 
 constant reflection of such intense heart- 
 suffering. The battle was still waging per 
 sistently, and needed but the force of shift 
 ing circumstances to throw its balance of 
 power one way or the other and decide the 
 victory. 
 
 Solomon s mortification at his son s per 
 formance rapidly gave way to an emotion 
 of pleasure at the first glance at the picture, 
 and mauger his best efforts to appear indif 
 ferent, he could not hide his interest and 
 admiration. And his wife Rachel, usually 
 impassive and indifferent, the impassiveness
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 189 
 
 and indifference of sheer stupidity, burst 
 forth into exclamations of surprise and won 
 der as she looked from the artist to the 
 picture, and from the picture to the artist, 
 as if trying to unfathom the mystery of 
 their correlation. 
 
 Aaron s anger at his father s harshness 
 was carried away by an overwhelming tidal 
 wave of the pride and joy of first success; 
 and after the fashion of all tyros in art, he 
 was arguing that since his picture had made 
 an impression on the flinty heart of the 
 father, and the obtuse sensibilities of the 
 mother, it could not fail to impress the 
 world at large, and bring him in one bound 
 to fame and fortune. 
 
 Small wonder that the boy s masterpiece 
 interested those two, since he had taken 
 their most familiar religious rite, surrounded 
 it with the unfamiliar, and by the magic 
 of his art made visible an inherent sublimity 
 and pathos they had never known it to pos 
 sess. The familiar interested ; the unfamil 
 iar, child of the painter s fancy, won their 
 admiration and awakened their awe.
 
 190 The Lucky Number 
 
 The picture represented the observance 
 of Yom Kippur on the battlefield of Metz 
 by the Jewish section of the German army. 
 The center of the canvas was occupied by 
 a chasan,* who loomed forth in majestic pro 
 portions as he rested on the altar and lifted 
 his voice in the sacred song of the Kol 
 Niedre; but to his shoulders clung not 
 the harsh covering of the uniform of 
 war, but the soft folds of the talith, emblem 
 of religious worship. Behind the altar 
 (evidently a temporary affair, constructed 
 in haste), mountain and forest and valley 
 stretched away in the interminable sweep 
 of perspective. The darkness of the falling 
 night was broken by the light that came 
 from the candles burning at the chasan s 
 side, and from the flame of the "eternal 
 lamp" which hung suspended over his head. 
 The coigns of vantage were held by huge 
 burnished cannon, stationed there to guard 
 the worshippers from a sudden attack of 
 the enemy. In the foreground were assem 
 bled curious groups of German soldiery, who 
 *A chanter.
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 191 
 
 looked on these mystic exercises with an air 
 of commingled pity and contempt. 
 
 I must leave the reader s imagination to 
 fill in the bare outline given, with the dread 
 instruments and imagery of war, the sublim 
 ity and pomp of religious ceremony, and the 
 calmness of exterior nature breathing peace 
 and good will to man. Touching epitome 
 of the sad history of Israel s weary sojourn 
 among the nations, this picture of Aaron 
 Pivansky s; with what infinite pathos did 
 he bespeak the fateful separation of his 
 people from the peoples of the earth, with 
 them always, but of them, alas, how rarely. 
 
 In the flotsam and jetsam of the pawn-shop 
 the boy had found a history of the Franco- 
 Prussian war, and in that history (read with 
 avidity, one may be sure) he found a few 
 lines touching upon the incident just de 
 scribed, and, Dore-like, he had taken those 
 few lines and made them teem with the pas 
 sing fancies and conceptions and visions of 
 his dreams. 
 
 His perspectives were by no means true, 
 his color values often false, and his drawing
 
 192 The Lucky Number 
 
 lacked the certainty that comes of much 
 practice; but in spite of these major defects 
 and numerous minor ones, it was a creation 
 of which a boy of twenty might well be 
 proud. All he knew of the technique of his 
 art had been taught him by one Brosseau, an 
 habitue of L Auberge, who painted that he 
 might drink, and drank that he might paint ; 
 so one knew not whether to blame his art 
 for keeping him a drunkard, or liquor for 
 keeping him an artist. When he could not 
 sell his pictures to a saloon he pledged them 
 at a pawn-shop ; he had a local reputation 
 at least, this Brosseau saloonkeepers and 
 pawnbrokers knew he was an artist. 
 
 Aaron heard of him, cultivated his 
 acquaintance, and spent every minute that 
 he could steal from the shop in Brosseau s 
 company. Brosseau taught him all he knew, 
 because he loved the boy for the good that 
 was in him, and for the yearning and the 
 aspiration that had once been his own ; and 
 with Aaron he left the gutters to enter again 
 the divine temple of art. 
 
 Besides Brosseau he found one other
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 193 
 
 source of instruction, the Art Gallery; here 
 he spent the longed-for, prayed-for Saturday 
 afternoons when the pawn-shop was closed, 
 and when to Aaron it seemed that art and 
 leisure, twin sisters with arms ever in 
 tertwined, swayed the universe, and did 
 not deny the inspiration of their presence 
 even to the somber narrow streets of the 
 Ghetto. 
 
 His work was done mostly in the small 
 hours of the night, long after the family had 
 retired, and when he himself was worn out 
 by the tedium of his daily task. Often did 
 he toil until the breaking of dawn warned 
 him of the coming of the day, then he hid 
 his canvas carefully, and crawled to bed for 
 a few hours of restless slumber, dream-dis 
 turbed. Surely, surely in hours like these 
 when, despite his heroic will, he fell asleep 
 over his work, the angel of beautiful dreams, 
 who visited Fra Angelico, Raphael and 
 Luca della Robbia, could not resist the 
 temptation to whisper the secret of the mys 
 tery of things in this boy s ear, and to en 
 twine about his brow an invisible wreath,
 
 194 The Lucky Number 
 
 woven of inspiration, and fame, and prom 
 ise, and the message of God. 
 
 Solomon looked up from the picture with 
 a yawn. "You painted the Omed* too 
 high," was his only comment. "Go to bed, 
 you," he said, turning towards his wife and 
 son. Rachel followed the instructions with 
 out argument or expostulation, as was her 
 wont. 
 
 "What are you going to do with the pic 
 ture?" queried Aaron. 
 
 "Nothing," snarled Solomon. " Go to 
 bed. " 
 
 In the morning he found his masterpiece 
 in the show window, where space for it had 
 been cleared, and already, early as the hour 
 was, a group of curious people had been 
 attracted by the work, and were lavishing 
 praise upon it that knew neither measure 
 nor bound. 
 
 "Even if my father says nothing," 
 thought Aaron, "he is proud of me, and he 
 wants people to know that he has a son who 
 can do a work like that." And he went 
 
 *The Altar.
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 195 
 
 about his distasteful tasks as if his heart were 
 in them, that he might show the father his 
 kindness did not go unheeded and unappre 
 ciated. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE PICTURE IS SOLD. 
 
 No one in the Ghetto save Becky Cohen 
 suspected that Solomon Pivansky s son nour 
 ished any thought that rose above the debit 
 and credit line of his father s ledger; but 
 she was as Aaron s left hand, knowing 
 whatever his right hand did. Becky s 
 mother kept the combination book-shop and 
 bakery, which gave the girl a two-fold oppor 
 tunity often lacking, alas! of caring for 
 mind and body equally, so one never went 
 hungry that the other might fatten. 
 
 Becky had devoured all the books in her 
 mother s shop, some fifty and odd, with 
 even a greater eagerness than she devoured 
 the "kickfack,"* and she showed her par 
 tiality for the books by devouring them over 
 *Cakes.
 
 196 The Lucky Number 
 
 and over again. They were all romances of 
 high life, seen through the wrong end of an 
 opera-glass, and made to seem very high 
 indeed; so high, that Becky s eyes were 
 strained from constantly looking upward, 
 and she found herself unable to look down 
 to where life had placed her. 
 
 While her hands were busy waiting on cus 
 tomers, her mind was wandering afar, holding 
 imaginary conversations with dukes and 
 duchesses. 
 
 She, like Aaron, had been gifted with 
 imagination, but unfortunately it had been 
 twisted in the wrong direction, and was pro 
 ductive of nothing better than empty and 
 idle dreams; while his, mastered by a firm 
 will and a healthy ambition, was creative 
 and powerful. 
 
 Becky, thus nourished on romance and 
 pastry, grew rapidly to her teens, and be 
 came a healthy and comely maid to look 
 upon, a little too stout, perhaps, but comely 
 for all of that, with features regularly cast 
 in a Jewish mould, with black hair, and 
 sloe-black eyes that under two heavy long
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 197 
 
 lashes danced merrily, and a complexion 
 this is the finishing stroke of the photograph 
 that was by contrast strikingly fair and 
 ruddy, and made two rows of perfect teeth 
 show to rare advantage whenever she opened 
 her pretty mouth to laugh, which, you may 
 be sure, was very often. 
 
 It was their very longing in common for 
 higher things, this ambition to be something 
 above what they were, that drew Becky and 
 Aaron together and made them fast friends. 
 Often, weary and sick of battling against 
 such odds, he might have given up the 
 struggle had not her words of consolation 
 and encouragement intervened and armed 
 him with new resolution. 
 
 She went to the Art Gallery with him, 
 and always managed to bring their visits to 
 an end in front of one of Millet s pictures. 
 "See," she would say, "what this man 
 did, and you, yourself, have often told me he 
 had fewer advantages than you, and far 
 more to contend against." Then Aaron 
 would answer nothing, but would compress 
 his lips tightly and resolve in his heart to
 
 198 The Lucky Number 
 
 become a great painter like Millet, and 
 never to give up trying until death. 
 
 Had it not been for Becky, the young 
 aspirant would have left his home and taken 
 desperate chances against starvation for the 
 love of his art, but she pointed out the folly 
 of such a course, and forced him to bide his 
 time impatiently. Her one hope for a posi 
 tion in the greater world was Aaron, and 
 she did not propose to allow that hope to 
 commit involuntary suicide. In the odd 
 mixture of qualities that went to make up 
 Becky, one large grain of common sense 
 had luckily found its way, and given taste 
 and flavor to the whole. 
 
 When he told her of his last great inspira 
 tion, and how he feared that he had neither 
 the skill nor the training necessary to work 
 out so sublime a subject, and save it from 
 being ridiculous ; she, seeing at a glance, the 
 vast possibilities it contained, urged him on, 
 now by a word of encouragement, now by a 
 word of praise, and, when all these failed, 
 by whole sentences of scorn. The work 
 once fairly under way, she kept his ambition
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 199 
 
 at fever heat, and never allowed him to lag 
 or grow despondent. If the artist feared 
 the work was not progressing fast enough, 
 she proved to him that it was progressing 
 too fast ; and if he feared that the work was 
 progressing too fast, she proved with equal 
 facility that it did not progress fast enough. 
 
 She was one of the first to spy the picture 
 in the window; and, after finding out from 
 the artist how this came about, she silently 
 took her place in the increasing crowd, and 
 llistened eagerly to all comments ; and when 
 ever anything of importance was said, she 
 stored the words away in her memory that 
 she might have the pleasure of repeating 
 them to Aaron verbatim. 
 
 The next evening as Aaron was slowly 
 returning homeward after the execution of 
 an errand in the neighborhood, his hands 
 thrust in his pockets, his head knocking 
 against the stars, and a Jewish melody on 
 his lips, he heard Becky calling, and he 
 stayed his steps to await her coming. 
 
 She was pale, breathless, visibly per 
 turbed and anxious; he saw at a glance
 
 2oo The Lucky Number 
 
 that something had gone wrong, and he felt 
 intuitively that it concerned his picture. 
 
 "Becky, what s the matter?" he asked. 
 
 "O Aaron, your picture" the words 
 seemed to stick in her throat as if of too 
 dire portent to be spoken at once. 
 
 Come, out with it ; I know it s something 
 bad; I m ready to hear it." 
 
 She covered her face with her hands, 
 afraid to look at him, as if she had been 
 responsible for the misfortune. "Your 
 father sold it," she cried out, rather than 
 spoke. 
 
 "I 11 get it back, mark that," he called, 
 darting down the street. As he ran past 
 the shop he glanced at the window in the 
 hopeless hope of finding his picture still 
 there. 
 
 Solomon stood behind the counter busily 
 assorting an oblong tray of rings. On see 
 ing him, he looked up and said in an unusu 
 ally good-natured way, "I sold your picture 
 for you." 
 
 The words and manner of saying them 
 quite disarmed Aaron, and he stood unable
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 201 
 
 to hurl one of the thousand invectives that 
 shot barbed and pointed to his lips. In 
 the short run from Becky to the shop, his 
 nimble wit, distancing his feet, had precon 
 ceived his father s line of defense, and had 
 laid in accordance therewith a plan of coun 
 ter-attack; but the enemy used unwonted 
 tactics, and he found his preparations mere 
 impedimenta. 
 
 "Sold it, sold it for me; you talk as if 
 you really believed that you had done me 
 a favor," shrieked Aaron, his face white 
 with rage, and his small thin body quivering 
 with excitement. 
 
 "There are fools and fools," remarked 
 Solomon with a sententious shrug of the 
 shoulders. "Can you get twenty dollars 
 for mashofes* like that every day?" 
 
 "Twenty dollars!" Such paltry pay for 
 a deed so base, so despicable. His heart 
 clung to his ribs to keep from sinking; his 
 breast heaved and fell as though it would 
 burst asunder; and the tears trickled down 
 his throat, rather than swept to his eyes; 
 Trash.
 
 202 The Lucky Number 
 
 some seconds passed before he could trust 
 himself to speak. 
 
 "Twenty dollars! Do you mean to say 
 you were fool enough to sell it for twenty 
 miserable dollars? Were you out of your 
 mind when you sold it? Who bought it, 
 who? Speak quick, there may be time to 
 get it back. I ll buy it back again for 
 eighty." 
 
 He grasped the door knob, ready to start 
 on hearing the name of the purchaser. The 
 picture once recovered, he meant that his 
 father should hear more from him concern 
 ing this night s transaction, but now time was 
 precious, too precious to waste in futile quar 
 rel and recrimination. 
 
 Solomon s self assurance left him, and he 
 was thoroughly crestfallen; for once in his 
 life he feared that he had driven a bad bar 
 gain. The boy was right, he was a fool, he 
 should have held out longer; without 
 further solicitation he described the purcha 
 ser to the best of his ability, but who he 
 was and where he lived, Solomon did not 
 know.
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 203 
 
 "I 11 come back when I find my picture 
 and not until then; if I don t find it, 
 you 11 never see me here again," and with 
 these words firmly and resolutely spoken, 
 Aaron slammed the door and was gone. 
 
 "When he s hungry enough he 11 
 come back, and that won t be long," said 
 Solomon to his wife an hour later, as he 
 related to her what had happened. 
 
 But all that night she sat up waiting for 
 the sound of his knock at the door, and 
 many another weary night did she sit wait 
 ing and longing with a " Bornch Habo"* on 
 her lips. But he did not come to end the 
 agonizing tedium of her vigils, or to give 
 the only reward she asked in return for her 
 love, her sacrifice, and forbearance the 
 sound of his knock at the door. 
 *Blessed be he who cometh.
 
 204 The Lucky Number 
 
 PART III. 
 
 THE PICTURE IS FOUND. 
 
 Aaron brought all the wit, all the wisdom 
 and all the energy that were his into active 
 play in the search for his picture; but the 
 play was one of pure chance, skill counted 
 for naught. So the weeks sped on and left 
 him without even as much as a clue to its 
 whereabouts. 
 
 The opportunity to express himself in his 
 art had been his all-in-all, subtract it from 
 the sum of things that made his world and 
 the result was a zero. Now that it seemed 
 farther off and more unattainable than ever, 
 he grew despondent, misanthropic, his 
 strength of character proving his weakness 
 and dragging him downward with the same 
 force by which it had guided his flight up 
 ward. 
 
 On one gloomy, rainy day, it chanced 
 that Aaron, more atrabilious than the 
 weather, found himself in the neighborhood 
 of the Art Gallery, and deluded with the idea
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 205 
 
 that it was for the sake of the shelter, and 
 not to gratify the desire of seeing again the 
 paintings of his beloved masters (he affected 
 to believe that his love for all that con 
 cerned his craft had turned into aversion), 
 he went thither. 
 
 Near the entrance on the main floor, was a 
 large placard announcing the fact that the 
 pictures competing for the S scholarship" 
 were hung in the ante-room to the left of 
 the stairway. This S scholarship, "offered 
 annually by a multi-millionaire, entitled the 
 winner to a two-year residence for study at 
 Paris. Aaron knew of this prize; but he had 
 made the resolve to wait another year or 
 two, and then go to Paris. 
 
 In the anger and rabid jealousy of his 
 mood, a mood that was fast centering and 
 fashioning itself into a temperament, he 
 resolved "to cut" the ante-room, and deny 
 it the honor of his presence. What interest 
 was there for him in this battle of the pic 
 tures, since he was denied the right to wield 
 a brush? He passed the room some three or 
 four times, and then condescended to enter
 
 206 The Lucky Number 
 
 that he might pass an adverse criticism which 
 was to include the whole collection in one 
 prejudiced sweep. The first canvas his eye 
 happened to fall upon, the one occupying 
 the most conspicuous place in the exhibi 
 tion, was his own. 
 
 Have you ever seen the reflection of your 
 image in a glass at the end of a long corri 
 dor, and been bewildered for an instant by 
 the strong resemblance the approaching, 
 and shall I say august, personage bears to 
 yourself? A second, and the illusion is 
 broken, and you stand blandly smiling at 
 the mistake. In the infinitesimal division 
 of a minute that separated the discernment 
 from the absolute recognition of his picture, 
 Aaron experienced a similar sensation. The 
 idea struck him forcibly that he had seen 
 that subject, or one much like it, on canvas 
 before; then it dawned upon him, like a 
 flash, that the picture was his. 
 
 He wasted no time in threading the laby 
 rinth through which it must have passed be 
 fore reaching this destination, but forthwith 
 he sought the director of the Institute, and
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 207 
 
 poured into his ears the story of the picture 
 and all his woes. 
 
 He was so perturbed and excited that he 
 wandered in his narrative, spoke inconse 
 quentially, repeated the same facts in a 
 slightly different way, and appeared to con 
 tradict himself; his age, too, gainsaid the 
 probability of his boasted accomplishments, 
 and the director failed to be convinced. 
 
 "Even if wrong had been done you," he 
 said, "it would be beyond my power to 
 right it. However, you might see the 
 president of the Institute, and he wrote the 
 name and address for him. 
 
 To speak in contumelious phrase the scorn 
 and hatred he felt for the man, was Aaron s 
 first impulse; but he restrained himself, not 
 wishing to snatch away the last straw from 
 his drowning hope. 
 
 When he finally found the president, that 
 dignitary treated his story with greater in 
 credulity than the director, and suggested 
 that he might see another official. 
 
 Thus after being sent from pillar to post, 
 and from post to pillar, Aaron returned to
 
 2o8 The Lucky Number 
 
 the Art Gallery, sore of foot and heavy of 
 heart, desperate, and willing to set sail with 
 any wind, to risk his craft on any sea. 
 
 Since they had denied him justice, he 
 would administer it with his own hands. 
 He thrust his opened jack-knife into his 
 pocket, walked up the stairs, sought the 
 room where his work hung, and squarely in 
 front of it he took his stand. 
 
 Woe to the dastardly sycophant of the 
 brush if he found him there! He desired 
 that the thief should be present, and should 
 discover himself by some action or word 
 regarding this chef d 1 oeuvre and then ! But, 
 fortunately for Aaron, this time, his desire 
 was frustrated ; scores of people commented 
 on the achievement, had this to say in 
 blame, and this to say in praise, and then 
 passed on to exercise their critical faculties 
 on some other canvas. 
 
 Not a word was said that could warrant 
 Aaron s suspicion, crouching in the air, as 
 it were, and eager to spring, in fastening 
 on the speaker. If the thief were there, he
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 209 
 
 sedulously avoided the locality where his 
 putative chef d ceuvre hung. 
 
 The oddity of the subject, the boldness 
 and vividness of treatment drew the crowd 
 to Aaron s creation, and it was crowned the 
 popular favorite. From the "wonderfuls, 
 grands, masterlys" that streamed steadily 
 from these gushing fonts of art criticism, he 
 concluded that his picture was easily in the 
 lead, and could not fail to win the prize; 
 nor did he need the vox populi to make him 
 believe the choice the vox Dei. By his own 
 independent judgment he arrived at this 
 modest conclusion, and, immodest as his 
 conclusion may have been, it certainly 
 rested upon firmer ground than a quicksand 
 of conceit. 
 
 The praise he found too unctuous ; instead 
 of appeasing his anger it made him fairly 
 quiver in vexation of spirit. So somebody 
 else was to go to Paris on the ticket that his 
 brain had won ; somebody else to gain an 
 education by the work of his hand ! And 
 must he sit quietly with arms folded and
 
 2io The Lucky Number 
 
 submit to robbery and injury without even 
 lifting his voice in protest? He would see. 
 
 Towards noon the room emptied; the 
 crowd drifting away, one by one, left Aaron 
 alone with his anger. He stepped into the 
 hall ; it was likewise deserted ; up the broad 
 marble-stairs no one was ascending. He 
 glided back to his masterpiece; and lifted his 
 knife, ready to deface it beyond recognition. 
 Every muscle and nerve of his body con 
 tracted so tensely and pulled inward and 
 downward with such force that he felt dizzy 
 as one suffering from a vertigo, and he 
 almost lost his balance. 
 
 "How can I?" he thought, and feeling 
 like a mother who has lifted a weapon to 
 slaughter her babe, he let the knife fall at 
 his side. Breathing heavily, his heart beat 
 ing against his ribs with ponderous, trip 
 hammer strokes, he half shut his eyes, and 
 plunged the blade into the heart of the 
 praying chasan. He had breathed such life 
 and vitality into this central figure, he had 
 drawn its every line with such sympathy and 
 feeling, he had watched it take form with
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 211 
 
 such reverence and love, that for him it was 
 no mere semblance, but something vital and 
 breathing; small wonder, hence, that he 
 heard a mournful groan when the steel pierced 
 the chasan s heart ; small wonder, hence, that 
 he heard a murmur of horror arising from 
 the worshippers at this sacrilegious deed ! 
 
 When the canvas was slashed into shreds, 
 he stood aghast at what he had done, and 
 then, biting his lip to suppress the sob that 
 was rending his bosom, he hastened down 
 the stairs and into the street. 
 
 *** 
 
 While Aaron had been employing every 
 faculty in the search for his picture, Becky 
 was equally preoccupied in her search for 
 Aaron. Moreover, she used his methods, 
 looking in the likely places first, in the un 
 likely ones next, and then starting all over 
 again. 
 
 Time and time again she had gone to the 
 Art Gallery expecting to find him there; 
 but she had always returned a link nearer 
 the end of the chain of expectation to which 
 she was clinging so tenaciously.
 
 212 The Lucky Number 
 
 She did not grow gloomy or despondent, 
 however (gloom and despondency never 
 take root in a soil so unfavorable), for deep 
 down in her heart was the faith, strong as 
 conviction, that somehow, somewhere, 
 Aaron and she would meet again, that they 
 must meet. It always happened that way 
 in the novels, and her romance was of the stuff 
 from which novels are spun, such novels, of 
 course, as she read; and if it didn t end 
 that way in this specific case, she intended 
 thereafter to read up to the last chapter only, 
 and then stop, "for the rest is lies." 
 
 Every day found her at Mrs. Pivansky s 
 with a beam of sunshine to brighten the 
 darkness of the poor woman s life. What 
 if the rays were fictitious ; what if she did 
 have to concoct little stories about having 
 seen Aaron here or there, or that he was 
 sure to find his picture on the morrow, 
 "blessed to-morrow," and that he would 
 surely be home the day after; what matters 
 it whether such faery beams were factitious, 
 as long as they brought light and cheer to a 
 breaking heart?
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 213 
 
 She had always closed her mother s shop 
 at nine o clock, but now she kept it open a 
 full hour longer, fondly cherishing the faith, 
 dying one minute, resuscitated the next, that 
 before the end of another sixty seconds she 
 might hear the low whistle, three-noted, that 
 had always signalled the hour of their tryst. 
 
 More than once, in passing her shop, had 
 Aaron caught a glimpse of Becky as she sat 
 on a low stool behind the counter, reading 
 her novels. And more than once did he 
 have to struggle vigorously against the 
 temptation to call her, that he might gain 
 the comfort and cheer she alone could give, 
 and for which he yearned ; but the tempta 
 tion was always mastered by an empty pride 
 and haughtiness of mood that forbade him 
 to see her until his picture be found. 
 
 Just as Becky closed her shop on the 
 night of that same day on which Aaron had 
 destroyed his treasure paramount, she heard 
 his familiar whistle. "It s Aaron, it must be 
 Aaron!" she cried, running to open the 
 door. 
 
 She had often coined a speech, tender and
 
 214 The Lucky Number 
 
 soulful, to say to him whenever favoring 
 fortune should bring them together; now 
 she found herself face to face with him, 
 unable to voice even a commonplace. 
 
 She extended her hand and he, clasping 
 it, remained silent ; both felt as if the sands 
 of an hour glass were running over their 
 palms. What thoughts and sentiments 
 arose from the darkness of a brain confused, 
 and came to life at the clasp of those hands ! 
 
 Aaron was the first to. break that voluble 
 silence. "I came to bid you good-bye, 
 Becky; I am going away, perhaps forever," 
 he said falteringly. "Brosseau has some 
 decorating work to do out of town, and he 
 is going to take me with him ; we go to 
 night." 
 
 Going away to-night and you come to 
 tell me of it only now? Your neglect has 
 been shameful, Aaron ; more than that, you 
 have been cruel, for you must have known 
 how I suffered from your absence ; and you 
 knew, too, what change a word from you 
 would have made in my life. 
 
 Over the boy s face, wan and peaked as
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 215 
 
 an invalid s, there passed an expression so 
 tristful, so pathetic in its appeal for sym 
 pathy that Becky felt the sharpness of the 
 rebuke turn inward, like a thrust from a 
 two-edged sword, and cut her to the quick ; 
 and seeing with womanly intuition how 
 much her hero must have suffered since she 
 had met him last, her heart went out to 
 him in his suffering. 
 
 "Becky," he said, "you blame me too 
 severely, more than I deserve. I ve longed 
 to see you, I fairly ached to speak to you 
 again. More than once I started to come 
 here to let you know how I was getting 
 along, but things went so badly with me 
 that I could n t, I was ashamed to come. 
 It may have been false pride, it may have 
 been foolishness ; call it what you like, but I 
 could n t overcome it." 
 
 Then with a fire and fervor that would 
 have melted slag, much more a tender heart 
 like Becky s, he told her how the quest for 
 his picture had ended. 
 
 "And now," he concluded, I must go 
 at once, I can t delay; I have good reason
 
 216 The Lucky Number 
 
 for thinking that the police are hunting for 
 me, and if they catch me they will surely 
 send me to jail. And what wrong have I 
 done? The picture was mine, I painted it, 
 and if I destroyed it, I wronged myself and 
 no one else." 
 
 Of his dreams, his striving and endeavors 
 this was the end ; for having attempted to 
 reach the ideal, he was condemned to skulk 
 in gutters like an outlaw. Icarius-like, 
 he had tried to reach the heavens, but the 
 rough storms of circumstance had crippled 
 his rare Daedalian wings, too weak for 
 flight so high, and he fluttered moaning, 
 helpless to the ground. 
 
 When he had finished Becky tried to give 
 utterance to the sorrow and disappointment 
 she felt, but her feeling was too surcharged 
 with emotion to permit of translation into 
 words; and born down by the weight of it, 
 she fell weeping and sobbing into his arms. 
 
 "Do you understand why I must go? 
 Do you forgive me for going ?" he asked, 
 holding her tenderly. 
 
 "It s not for you, Aaron, to ask forgive-
 
 Aaron Pivansky s Picture 217 
 
 ness, but for me," answered Becky, con 
 tritely, regaining her self-possession, "and 
 you may be assured that the others who 
 have wronged you will ask it, too, before 
 long. Do n t go away, Aaron ; stay here and 
 fight for your rights to the bitter end ; your 
 very staying here is a proof of your inno 
 cence. If you go away, you know what they 
 will say; you know how they will sneer." 
 
 "I have made up my mind to go, and 
 nothing can change my decision. I hate 
 this place ; every step I take reminds me of 
 my failure. And if the worst comes to the 
 worst, and they take me and send me to 
 jail, what then? I would rather die than 
 stand the disgrace of it. No, I must go." 
 
 Then, smiling through her tears, Becky 
 answered in those noble words that time, 
 unwilling to let die, caught and turned into 
 everlasting pearls as they fell from the lips 
 of Ruth: "Whither thou goest, I will go, 
 and where thou diest, will I die, and there 
 will I be buried : the Lord do so to me, and 
 more also, if aught but death part me and 
 thee."
 
 PRINTED AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS 
 
 BY R. R. DONNELLEY AND SONS CO 
 
 MDCCCXCVI
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
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