5, 126
words
The
Man Higher Up
Across our two dishes of spaghetti, in a corner of Provenzano's
restaurant, Jeff Peters was explaining to me the three kinds of
graft.
Every winter Jeff comes to New York to eat spaghetti, to watch
the shipping in East River from the depths of his chinchilla
overcoat, and to lay in a
supply of Chicago‑made clothing at one of the Fulton Street
stores. During the other three seasons he may be found
further west—his range is from Spokane to Tampa. In his profession he
takes a pride which he supports and defends with a serious and unique
philosophy of ethics. His profession is no new one. He is an incorporated,
uncapitalized, unlimited asylum for the reception of the rest less and
unwise dollars of his fellow men.
In the wilderness of stone in which Jeff seeks his annual lonely holiday
he is glad to palaver of his many adventures, as a boy will whistle after
sundown in a wood. Wherefore, I mark on my calendar the time of his
coming, and open a question of privilege at Provenzano's concerning the
little wine-stained table in the corner between the rakish rubber plant
and the framed palazzio delta on the wall.
"There
are two kinds of grafts," said Jeff, "that ought to be wiped out
by law. I mean Wall Street speculation, and burglary."
"Nearly everybody will agree with you as to one of them,"
said I, with a laugh.
"Well, burglary ought to be wiped out, too," said Jeff; and I
wondered whether the laugh had been redundant.
"About three months ago," said Jeff, "it was my privilege
to become familiar with a sample of each of the aforesaid branches of
illegitimate art. I was sine qua
rata with a member of the housebreakers' union and one of the John D.
Napoleons of finance at the same time."
"Interesting combination," said 1,
with a yawn. "Did I tell
you I bagged a duck and a ground squirrel at one shot last week over in
the Ramapos?" I knew well how to draw Jeff's stories.
"Let
me tell you first about these barnacles that clog the wheels of society by
poisoning the springs of rectitude with their upas-like eyes, " said
Jeff, with the pure gleam of the muckraker in his own.
"As
I said, three months ago I got into bad company. There are two times in a
man's life when he does this—when he's dead broke, and when he's rich.
"Now and then the most legitimate business runs out of luck. It was
out in Arkansas I made the wrong turn at a cross-road, and drives into
this town of Peavine by mistake. It seems I had already assaulted and
disfigured Peavine the spring of the year before. I had sold $600 worth of
young fruit trees there - plums, cherries, peaches and pears.
.
The Peaviners were keeping an eye on the country road and hoping
I might pass that way again. I drove down Main Street as far as the
Crystal Palace drug-store before I realized I had committed ambush upon
myself and my white horse Bill
"The Peaviners took me by surprise and Bill by the bridle and
began a conversation that wasn't entirely disassociated with the sub ject
of fruit trees. A committee of 'em
ran some trace-chains through the armholes of my vest and escorted me
through their gardens and orchards.
"Their fruit trees hadn't lived up to their labels. Most of
'em had turned out to be persimmons and dogwoods, with a grove or two of
blackjacks and poplars. The only one that showed any signs of
bearing anything was a fine young cottonwood that had put forth a hornet's
nest and half of an old corset-cover.
"The Peaviners protracted our fruitless stroll to the edge of
town. They took my watch and money on account; and they kept Bill and the
wagon as hostages. They said the first time one of them dogwood trees
put forth an Amsden's June peach I might come back and get my things. Then
they took off the trace-chains and jerked their thumbs in the direction of
the Rocky Mountains; and I struck a Lewis and Clark lope for the swollen
rivers and impenetrable forests.
"When I regained intellectualness I found myself walking into
an I unidentified town on the A., T.
& S. F. railroad. The Peaviners hadn't
left anything in my pockets except a plug of chewing—they wasn't after
my life—and that saved it. I bit off a chunk and sits down on a pile of
ties by the track to recogitate my sensations of thought and
perspicacity.
"And then along comes a fast freight which slows up a little
at the town; and off it drops a black bundle that rolls for twenty yards
in a cloud of dust and then gets up and begins to spit soft coal and
interjections. I see it is a young man broad across the face,
dressed more for Pullmans than freights, and with a cheerful kind of smile
in spite of it all that made Phoebe Snow's job look like a chimneysweep's.
" 'Fall off?' says I.
"
'Nunk,' says he. 'Got off. Arrived
at my destination. What town is
this?'
"Haven't looked it up on the map yet,' says I. 'I got in about five
minutes before you did. How does it strike you?'
" 'Hard,' says he, twisting one of his arms around. 'I believe that
shoulder—no, it's all right.'
He stoops over to brush the dust off his clothes, when out of his pocket
drops a fine, nine-inch burglar's steel jimmy. He picks it up and looks at
me sharp, and then grins and holds out his hand.
‘Brother,' says he, 'greetings.
Didn't I see you in Southern Missouri last summer selling colored sand
at half-a-dollar a teaspoonful to put into lamps to keep the oil from
exploding?'
" 'Oil,' says I,
'never explodes. It's the gas that forms that explodes.' But I shakes
hands with him, anyway.
"
'My name's Bill Bassett,' says he to me, 'and if you'll call it
professional pride instead of conceit, I'll inform you that you have the
pleasure of meeting the best burglar that ever set a gumshoe on ground
drained by the Mississippi River.'
"Well, me and this Bill Bassett sits on the ties and exchanges brags
as artists in kindred lines will do. It seems he didn't have a cent,
either, and we went into close caucus. He explained why an able burglar
sometimes had to travel on freights by telling me that a servant girl had
played him false in Little Rock, and he was making a quick get-away.
" 'It's part of my business,' says Bill Bassett, 'to play up to the
ruffles when I want to make a riffle as Raffles. 'Tis loves that makes the
bit go 'round. Show me a house with a swag in it and a pretty
parlor- maid, and you
might as well call the silver melted down and sold, and me spilling
truffles and that Chateau stuff on the napkin under my chin, while the
police are calling it an inside job just because the old lady's nephew
teaches a Bible class. I first make an impression on the girl,' says Bill,
'and when she lets me inside I make an impression on the locks.
But
this one in Little Rock done me,' says he. 'She
saw me taking a trolley ride with another girl, and when I came 'round on
the night she was to leave the door open for me it was fast. And I had
keys made for the doors upstairs. But, no sir. She had sure cut off my
locks. She was a Delilah,' says Bill Bassett.
"It
seems that Bill tried to break in anyhow with his jimmy, but the girl
emitted a succession of bravura noises like the top-riders of a tally-ho,
and Bill had to take all the hurdles between there and the depot. As he
had no baggage they tried hard to check his departure, but he made a train
that was just pulling out.
" 'Well,' says Bill Bassett, when we had exchanged memoirs
of our dead lives, 'I could
eat. This town don't look like it was kept under a Yale lock. Suppose we
commit some mild atrocity that will bring in temporary expense money. I
don't suppose you've brought along any hair tonic or rolled gold watch-chains,
or similar law defying swindles that you could sell on the plaza to the
pikers of the paretic populace, have you?'
" 'No,' says 1, 'I left an elegant line of Patagonian diamond
earrings and rainy-day sunbursts in my valise at Peavine. But they're to
stay there till some of them black-gum trees begin to glut the market with
yellow clings and Japanese plums. I reckon we can't count on them unless
we take Luther Burbank in for a partner.'
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" 'Very well,' says Bassett,
'we'll do the best we can. Maybe after dark I'll borrow a hairpin from
some lady, and open the Farmers and Drovers Marine Bank with it’ ”
While we were talking, up pulls a passenger train to the depot near
by. A person in a high hat gets off on the wrong side of the train and
comes tripping down the track towards us. He was a little, fat
man with a big nose and rat's eyes, but dressed expensive, and carrying a
hand-satchel careful, as if it had eggs or railroad bonds in it. He passes
by us and keeps on down the track, not appearing to notice the town.
" 'Come on,' “says Bill Bassett to me, starting after him.
" 'Where?' I asks.
" 'Lordy!' says Bill, 'had you forgot you was in the desert? Didn't
you see Colonel Manna drop down right before your eyes? Don't you hear the
rustling of General Raven's wings? I'm surprised at you, Elijah.' “
"We
overtook the stranger in the edge of some woods, and as it was after sun-down
and in a quiet place, nobody saw us stop him. Bill takes the silk hat off
the man's head and brushes it with his sleeve and puts it back.
" 'What does this mean, sir?' says the man.
"
'When I wore one of these,' says Bill, 'and felt embarrassed, I always
done that. Not having one now I had to use yours. I hardly know how to
begin, sir, in explaining our business with you, but I guess we'll try
your pockets first.'
"Bill Bassett felt in all of them, and looked
disgusted.".
" 'Not even a watch,' he says. 'Ain't you ashamed of yourself, you
whited sculpture? Going about dressed like a head-waiter, and financed
like a Count. You haven't even got carfare. What did you do with your
transfer?'"
"The man speaks up and says he has no assets or valuables of any
sort. But Bassett takes his hand-satchel and opens it. Out comes some
collars and socks and a half page of a newspaper clipped out. Bill reads
the clipping careful, and holds out his hand to the held-up party.
" 'Brother,' says he, 'greetings! Accept the apologies of friends. I
am Bill Bassett, the burglar. Mr. Peters, you must make the acquaintance
of Mr. Alfred E. Ricks. “ ‘ Shake hands. Mr. Peters,' “ says Bill.
“’He stands about halfway between me and you, Mr. Ricks, in the line
of havoc and corruption. He always gives something for the money he
gets’ ”. I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Ricks—you and Mr. Peters.
'This is the first time I
ever attended a full gathering of the National Synod of Sharks -
housebreaking, swindling, and financiering all represented. Please examine
Mr. Ricks' credentials, Mr. Peters.'
"The piece of newspaper that Bill
Bassett handed me had a good picture of this Ricks on it. It was a Chicago
paper, and it had obloquies of Ricks in every paragraph. By reading it
over I harvested the
intelligence that said alleged Ricks had laid off all that portion
of the State of Florida that lies under water into town lots and sold 'em
to alleged innocent investors from his magnificently furnished offices in
Chicago. After he had taken in a hundred thousand or so dollars, one of
these fussy purchasers that are always making trouble (I've had ‘em
actually try gold watches I've sold 'em with acid) took a cheap excursion
down to the land where it is always just before supper to look at his lot
and see if it didn't need a new paling or two on the fence, and
market a few lemons in time for the Christmas present trade. He hires a
surveyor to find his lot for him. They run the line out and find the
flourishing town of Paradise Hollow,
so advertised, to be, about 40 rods and 16 poles S., 27° E. of the middle
of Lake Okeechobee.
This man's lot was under thirty-six feet of water, and, besides,
had been preempted so long by the alligators and gars that
his title looked fishy.
"Naturally, the man goes back to Chicago and makes it as hot
for Alfred E. Ricks as the morning after a prediction of snow by the
weather bureau. Ricks denied
the allegation, but he couldn't deny the alligators. One morning the
papers came out with a column about it, and Ricks came out by the fire-escape.
It seems the alleged authorities had beat him to the safe-deposit box
where he kept his winnings, and Ricks has to westward ho! with only
feetwear and a dozen 15-1/2" English pokes in his shopping bag.
He happened to have some mileage left in his book, and that took
him as far as the town in the wilderness where he was spilled out on me
and Bill Bassett as Elijah had been,
with not a raven in sight for any of us.
"Then this Alfred E. Ricks lets out a squeak that he is hungry, too,
and denies the hypothesis that he is good for the value, let alone the
price, of a meal. And so, there was the three of us, representing, if we
had a mind to draw syllogisms and parabolas, labor and trade and capital.
Now, when trade has no capital there isn't a dicker to be made.
And when capital has no money there's a stagnation in steak and
onions. That put it up to the man with the jimmy.
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" 'Brother bushrangers,' says Bill Bassett, 'never yet, in trouble,
did I desert a pal. Hard by, in yon wood, I seem to see unfurnished
lodgings. Let us go there and wait till dark.'
"There was an old, deserted cabin in the grove, and we three took
possession of it. After dark Bill Bassett tells us to wait, and goes out
for half an hour. He comes back with an armful of bread and spare ribs and
pies.
"
'Panhandled 'em at a farmhouse on Washita Avenue,' says he.
” 'Eat, drink, and be leery.' ” ,
"The full moon was coming up bright, so we sat on the floor of the
cabin and ate in the light of it. And this Bill Bassett begins to rag.
" 'Sometimes,' says he, with his mouth full of country
produce, ” 'I lose all patience with you people that think you are
higher up in the profession
than I am. Now, what could either of you have done
in the present emergency to set us on our feet again? Could you
do it, Ricksy?'
" 'I must confess, Mr. Bassett,' says Ricks, speaking nearly
inaudible out of a slice of pie, 'that at this immediate juncture I could
not, perhaps, promote an enterprise to relieve the situation. Large
operations, such as I direct, naturally require careful preparation in
advance. I—‘
" 'I know, Ricksy,' breaks in Bill Bassett. 'You needn't
finish. You need $500 to make
the first payment on a blond typewriter, and four roomsful of quartered
oak furniture. And you need $500 more for advertising contracts. And you
need two weeks' time for the fish to begin to bite. Your line of relief
would be about as useful in an emergency as advocating municipal ownership
to cure a man suffocated by eighty-cent gas. And your graft ain't much
swifter, Brother Peters,' he winds up.
" 'Oh,' says 1, 'I haven't seen you turn anything into gold with your
wand yet, Mr. Good Fairy. 'Most anybody could rub the magic ring for a
little leftover victuals.'
"
'That was only getting the pumpkin ready,' says Bassett, braggy and
cheerful. 'The coach and six'll drive up to the door before you know it,
Miss Cinderella. Maybe you've got some
scheme under your
sleeve-holders that will give us a start.'
" 'Son,' says 1, 'I'm fifteen years older than you are, and young enough yet to
take out an endowment policy. I've been broke before.
We can see the lights of that town not half a mile away. I learned
under Montague Silver, the greatest street man that ever spoke from a
wagon. There are hundreds of men walking those streets this moment with
grease spots on their clothes. Give me a gasoline lamp, a dry-goods box,
and a two-dollar bar of white castile soap, cut into little…. '
" 'Where's your two dollars?' snickered Bill Bassett into my discourse.
There was no use arguing with that burglar.
'No,' he goes on; 'you're both babes-in-the-wood. Finance has closed the
mahogany desk, and trade has put the shutters up. Both of you look to
labor to start the wheels going. All right. You admit it. Tonight I'll
show you what Bill Bassett can do.'
"Bassett tells me and Ricks not to leave the cabin till he
comes back, even if it's daylight, and then he starts off toward town,
whistling gayly.
"This Alfred E. Ricks pulls off his shoes and his coat, lays a
silk handkerchief over his hat, and lays down on the floor." 'I think
I will endeavor to secure a little slumber,' he squeaks. 'The day has been
fatiguing. Good-night, my dear Mr. Peters.'
" 'My regards to Morpheus,' says I. 'I think I'll sit up a
while.'
"About two o'clock, as near as I could guess by my watch
in Peavine, home comes our
laboring man and kicks up Ricks, and calls
us to the streak of bright moonlight shining in the cabin door.
Then he spreads out five packages of one thousand dollars each on the
floor, and begins to cackle over the nest-egg like a hen.
" 'I'll tell you a few things about that town,' says he. 'It's
named Rocky Springs, and they're building a Masonic temple, and it looks
like the Democratic candidate for mayor is going to get soaked by a
Populist, and Judge Tucker's wife, who has been down with pleurisy, is
some better. I had a talk on these lilliputian thesises before I could get
a siphon in the fountain of knowledge that I was after. And there's a bank
there called the Lumberman's Fidelity and Plowman's Savings Institution.
It closed for business yesterday with $23,000 cash on hand.
“ ‘It will open this morning with $18,000—all silver—that's
the reason didn't bring more.
There you are, trade and capital. Now, will you be bad?'
" 'My young friend,' says Alfred E. Ricks, holding up his
hands, 'have you robbed this bank? Dear me, dear me!' "'You couldn't
call it that,' says Bassett. '"Robbing" sounds harsh. All I had to do was
to find out what street it was on. That town is so quiet that I could
stand on the corner and hear the tumblersclicking in that safe
lock—"right to 45, left twice to 80; right once to 60; left to
15"—as plain as the Yale captain giving orders in the football
dialect. Now, boys,' says Bassett, 'this is an early rising town.
They tell me the citizens are all up and stirring before daylight. I asked
what for, and they said because breakfast was ready at that time.
And what of merry Robin Hood? It must be Yoicks! and away with the
tinkers' chorus. I'll stake you. How much do you want?
Speak up. Capital.'
"
'My dear young friend,' says this ground squirrel of
a Ricks, standing on his hind legs and juggling nuts in his paws,
'I have friends in Denver who would assist me. If I had a hundred
dollars…’ ”
"Bassett unpins a package of the currency and throws five
twenties to Ricks.
" 'Trade, how much?' he says to me.
" 'Put your money up, Labor,' says 1. 'I never yet drew upon
honest toil for its hard-earned pittance. The dollars I get are surplus
ones that are burning the pockets of damfools and greenhorns. When I stand
on a street corner and sell a solid gold diamond ring to a yap for $3.00,
I make just $2.60. And I know he's going to give it to a girl in return
for all the benefits accruing from a $125.00 ring. His profits are
$122.00. Which of us is the biggest fakir?'
" 'And when you sell a poor woman a pinch of sand for fifty
cents to keep her lamp from exploding,' says Bassett, 'what do you figure
her gross earnings to be, with sand at forty cents a ton?'
" 'Listen,' says I. 'I instruct her to keep her lamp clean and
well filled. If she does that
it can't burst. And with the sand in it she knows it can't and she don't
worry. It's kind of Industrial Christian Science. She pays fifty cents,
and gets both Rockefeller and Mrs. Eddy on the job. It ain't everybody
that can let the gold-dust twins do their work.'
"Alfred E. Ricks all but licks the dust off of Bill Bassett's shoes.
" 'My dear young friend,' says he, 'I will never forget your
generosity. Heaven will reward you. But let me implore you to turn from
your ways of violence and crime.'
" 'Mousie,' says Bill, 'the hole in the wainscoting for yours. Your
dogmas and inculcations sound to me like the last words of a bicycle pump.
What has your high moral, elevator-service system of pillage brought you
to? Penuriousness and want. Even Brother Peters, who insists upon
contaminating the art of robbery with theories of commerce and trade,
admitted he was on the lift. Both of you live by the gilded rule. Brother
Peters,' says Bill, 'you'd better choose a slice of this embalmed
currency. You're welcome.'
"I
told Bill Bassett once more to put this money in his pocket. I never had
the respect for burglary that some people have. I always gave something
for the money I took, even if it was only some little trifle of a souvenir
to remind 'em not to get caught again.
"And then Alfred E. Ricks grovels at Bill's feet again, and bids us
adieu. He says he will have a team at a farmhouse, and drive to the
station below, and take the train for Denver. It salubrified the
atmosphere when that lamentable boll-worm took his departure. He was a
disgrace to every non-industrial profession in the country. With all his
big schemes and fine offices he had wound up unable even to get an honest
meal except by the kindness of a strange and maybe unscrupulous burglar. I
was glad to see him go, though I felt a little sorry for him, now that he
was ruined forever. What could such a
man do without a big capital to work with? Why, Alfred E. Ricks, as
we left him, was as helpless as a turtle on its back. He couldn't have
worked a scheme to beat a little girl out of a penny slate-pencil.
"When me and Bill Bassett was left alone I did a little sleight-o-mind
turn in my head with a trade secret at the end of it. Thinks I, I'll show
this Mr. Burglar Man the difference between business andlabor. He had hurt
some of my professional self-adulation by casting
his Persians upon commerce and trade.
" 'I won't take any of your money as a gift, Mr. Bassett,'
says I to him, 'but if you'll
pay my expenses as a travelling companion until
we get out of the danger zone of the immoral deficit you have
caused
in this town's finances tonight I'll be obliged.'
"Bill
Bassett agreed to that, and we hiked westward as soon as we could catch a
safe train.
"When we got to a town in Arizona called Los Perros I suggested that
we once more try our luck on terra-cotta. That was the home of Montague
Silver, my old instructor, now retired from business. I knew Monty would
stake me to web money if I could show him a fly buzzing 'round in the
locality. Bill Bassett said all towns looked alike to him as he worked
mainly in the dark. So we got off the train in Los Perros, a fine little
town in the silver region.
"I had an elegant little sure thing in the way of a commercial sling
shot that I intended to hit Bassett behind the ear with. I wasn't going to
take his money while he was asleep, but I was going to leave him with a
lottery ticket that would represent in experience to him $4,755—I think
that was the amount he had when we got off the train. But the first time I
hinted to him about an investment, he turns on me and disencumbers himself
of the following terms and expressions.
"
'Brother Peters,' says he, 'it ain't a bad idea to go into an enterprise
of some kind, as you suggest. I think I will. But if I do it will be such
a cold proposition that nobody but Robert E. Peary and Charlie Fairbanks
will be able to sit on the board of directors.'
" 'I thought you might want to turn your money over,'
says I".
" 'I do,' says he, 'frequently. I can't sleep on one side all
night. I'll tell you, Brother Peters,' says he, 'I'm going to start a
poker room. I don't seem to care for the humdrum in swindling, such as
peddling egg-beaters
and working off breakfast food on Barnum and Bailey for sawdust to strew
in their circus rings. But the gambling business,' says he, 'from the
profitable side of the table is a good compromise between
swiping silver spoons and selling penwipers at a Waldorf-Astoria charity
bazaar.'
" 'Then,' says I, 'Mr. Bassett, you don't care to talk over my little
business proposition?"
"
'Why,' says he, 'do you know, you can't get a Pasteur institute to start
up within fifty miles of where I live. I bite so seldom.'
"So, Bassett rents a room over a saloon and looks around for some
furniture and chromes. The same night I went to Monty Silver's house, and
he let me have $200 on my prospects. Then I went to the only store in Los
Perros that sold playing cards and bought every deck in the house. The
next morning when the store opened I was there bringing all the cards back
with me. I said that my partner that was going to back me in the scam had
changed his mind; and I wanted to sell the cards back again. The
storekeeper took 'em at half price.
"Yes, I was
seventy-five dollars loser up
to that time. But while I had the cards that night I marked every one in
every deck. That was labor. And then trade and commerce had their innings,
and the bread I had cast upon the waters began to come back in the form of
cottage pudding with wine sauce.
"Of course I was among the first to buy chips at Bill Bassett's game.
He had bought the only cards there was to be had in town; and I knew the
back of every one of them better than I know the back of my head when the
barber shows me my haircut in the two mirrors.
"When
the game closed I had the five thousand and a few odd dollars, and all
Bill Bassett had was the wanderlust and a black cat he
had bought for a mascot.
Bill shook hands with me when I left.
" 'Brother Peters,' says he,
'I have no business
being in business. I was preordained to labor. When a No. 1 burglar
tries to make a James
out of his jimmy he perpetrates an improfundity. You have a well-oiled and
efficacious system of luck at cards,' says he. 'Peace go with you.' And I
never afterward sees Bill Bassett again."
"Well, Jeff, " said I, when the Autolycan adventurer seemed to
have divulged the gist of his tale, "I hope you took care of the
money. That would be a respecta—that is a considerable working capital
if you should choose some day to settle down to some sort of-regular
business. "
"Me?" said Jeff, virtuously. "You can bet I've taken care
of that five thousand." He tapped his coat over the region of
his chest exultantly.
"Gold mining stock," he explained, "every cent of it.
Shares par value one dollar. Bound to go up 500 per cent within a year.
Non-assessable. The Blue Gopher Mine. Just discovered a month ago.
Better get in yourself if you've any spare dollars on hand."
"Sometimes," said 1, "these mines are not "
"Oh, this one's solid as an old goose," said Jeff. "Fifty
thousand dollars' worth of ore in sight, and 10 per cent monthly earnings
guaranteed. "
He drew a long envelope from his pocket and cast it on the table.
"Always carry it with me," said he. "So the burglar can't
corrupt or the capitalist break in and water it."
I looked at the beautifully engraved certificate of stock.
”In Colorado, I see,” said I. “And,
by the way, Jeff, what was the name of the little man who went to Denver
– the one you and Bill met at the station?"
“Alfred E. Ricks,” said Jeff, “was the toad’s
designation.”
“I see,” said I. “The president of this mining company signs himself
A. L.
Fredericks. I was
wondering…………….”
“Let
me see that stock,” said Jeff quickly,
almost snatching it from me.
To mitigate, even though slightly, the embarrassment
I summoned the waiter and ordered another bottle of the Barbera.
I thought it was the least I could do.
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