The Four Million
in blue to her partner and started back to find Maggie. Dempsey
intercepted him in the middle of the floor.
Some fine instinct that Rome must have bequeathed to us caused nearly
every one to turn and look at them—there was a subtle feeling that two
gladiators had met in the arena. Two or three Give and Takes with tight
coat sleeves drew nearer.
“One moment, Mr. O’Sullivan,” said Dempsey. “I hope you’re enjoying
yourself. Where did you say you live?”
The two gladiators were well matched. Dempsey had, perhaps, ten pounds
of weight to give away. The O’Sullivan had breadth with quickness.
Dempsey had a glacial eye, a dominating slit of a mouth, an
indestructible jaw, a complexion like a belle’s and the coolness of a
champion. The visitor showed more fire in his contempt and less control
over his conspicuous sneer. They were enemies by the law written when
the rocks were molten. They were each too splendid, too mighty, too
incomparable to divide pre-eminence. One only must survive.
“I live on Grand,” said O’Sullivan, insolently; “and no trouble to find
me at home. Where do you live?”
Dempsey ignored the question.
“You say your name’s O’Sullivan,” he went on. “Well, ‘Big Mike’ says he
never saw you before.”
“Lots of things he never saw,” said the favourite of the hop.
“As a rule,” went on Dempsey, huskily sweet, “O’Sullivans in this
district know one another. You escorted one of our lady members here,
and we want a chance to make good. If you’ve got a family tree let’s
see a few historical O’Sullivan buds come out on it. Or do you want us
to dig it out of you by the roots?”
“Suppose you mind your own business,” suggested O’Sullivan, blandly.
Dempsey’s eye brightened. He held up an inspired forefinger as though a
brilliant idea had struck him.
“I’ve got it now,” he said cordially. “It was just a little mistake.
You ain’t no O’Sullivan. You are a ring-tailed monkey. Excuse us for
not recognising you at first.”
O’Sullivan’s eye flashed. He made a quick movement, but Andy Geoghan
was ready and caught his arm.
Dempsey nodded at Andy and William McMahan, the secretary of the club,
and walked rapidly toward a door at the rear of the hall. Two other
members of the Give and Take Association swiftly joined the little
group. Terry O’Sullivan was now in the hands of the Board of Rules and
Social Referees. They spoke to him briefly and softly, and conducted
him out through the same door at the rear.
This movement on the part of the Clover Leaf members requires a word of
elucidation. Back of the association hall was a smaller room rented by
the club. In this room personal difficulties that arose on the ballroom
floor were settled, man to man, with the weapons of nature, under the
supervision of the board. No lady could say that she had witnessed a
fight at a Clover Leaf hop in several years. Its gentlemen members
guaranteed that.
So easily and smoothly had Dempsey and the board done their preliminary
work that many in the hall had not noticed the checking of the
fascinating O’Sullivan’s social triumph. Among these was Maggie. She
looked about for her escort.
“Smoke up!” said Rose Cassidy. “Wasn’t you on? Demps Donovan picked a
scrap with your Lizzie-boy, and they’ve waltzed out to the slaughter
room with him. How’s my hair look done up this way, Mag?”
Maggie laid a hand on the bosom of her cheesecloth waist.
“Gone to fight with Dempsey!” she said, breathlessly. “They’ve got to
be stopped. Dempsey Donovan can’t fight him. Why, he’ll—he’ll kill
him!”
“Ah, what do you care?” said Rosa. “Don’t some of ’em fight every hop?”
But Maggie was off, darting her zig-zag way through the maze of
dancers. She burst through the rear door into the dark hall and then
threw her solid shoulder against the door of the room of single combat.
It gave way, and in the instant that she entered her eye caught the
scene—the Board standing about with open watches; Dempsey Donovan in
his shirt sleeves dancing, light-footed, with the wary grace of the
modern pugilist, within easy reach of his adversary; Terry O’Sullivan
standing with arms folded and a murderous look in his dark eyes. And
without slacking the speed of her entrance she leaped forward with a
scream—leaped in time to catch and hang upon the arm of O’Sullivan that
was suddenly uplifted, and to whisk from it the long, bright stiletto
that he had drawn from his bosom.
The knife fell and rang upon the floor. Cold steel drawn in the rooms
of the Give and Take Association! Such a thing had never happened
before. Every one stood motionless for a minute. Andy Geoghan kicked
the stiletto with the toe of his shoe curiously, like an antiquarian
who has come upon some ancient weapon unknown to his learning.
And then O’Sullivan hissed something unintelligible between his teeth.
Dempsey and the board exchanged looks. And then Dempsey looked at
O’Sullivan without anger, as one looks at a stray dog, and nodded his
head in the direction of the door.
“The back stairs, Giuseppi,” he said, briefly. “Somebody’ll pitch your
hat down after you.”
Maggie walked up to Dempsey Donovan. There was a brilliant spot of red
in her cheeks, down which slow tears were running. But she looked him
bravely in the eye.
“I knew it, Dempsey,” she said, as her eyes grew dull even in their
tears. “I knew he was a Guinea. His name’s Tony Spinelli. I hurried in
when they told me you and him was scrappin’. Them Guineas always
carries knives. But you don’t understand, Dempsey. I never had a fellow
in my life. I got tired of comin’ with Anna and Jimmy every night, so I
fixed it with him to call himself O’Sullivan, and brought him along. I
knew there’d be nothin’ doin’ for him if he came as a Dago. I guess
I’ll resign from the club now.”
Dempsey turned to Andy Geoghan.
“Chuck that cheese slicer out of the window,” he said, “and tell ’em
inside that Mr. O’Sullivan has had a telephone message to go down to
Tammany Hall.”
And then he turned back to Maggie.
“Say, Mag,” he said, “I’ll see you home. And how about next Saturday
night? Will you come to the hop with me if I call around for you?”
It was remarkable how quickly Maggie’s eyes could change from dull to a
shining brown.
“With you, Dempsey?” she stammered. “Say—will a duck swim?”
MAN ABOUT TOWN
There were two or three things that I wanted to know. I do not care
about a mystery. So I began to inquire.
It took me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suit cases.
And then I began to ask why a mattress is made in two pieces. This
serious query was at first received with suspicion because it sounded
like a conundrum. I was at last assured that its double form of
construction was designed to make lighter the burden of woman, who
makes up beds. I was so foolish as to persist, begging to know why,
then, they were not made in two equal pieces; whereupon I was shunned.
The third draught that I craved from the fount of knowledge was
enlightenment concerning the character known as A Man About Town. He
was more vague in my mind than a type should be. We must have a
concrete idea of anything, even if it be an imaginary idea, before we
can comprehend it. Now, I have a mental picture of John Doe that is as
clear as a steel engraving. His eyes are weak blue; he wears a brown
vest and a shiny black serge coat. He stands always in the sunshine
chewing something; and he keeps half-shutting his pocket knife and
opening it again with his thumb. And, if the Man Higher Up is ever
found, take my assurance for it, he will be a large, pale man with blue
wristlets showing under his cuffs, and he will be sitting to have his
shoes polished within sound of a bowling alley, and there will be
somewhere about him turquoises.
But the canvas of my imagination, when it came to limning the Man About
Town, was blank. I fancied that he had a detachable sneer (like the
smile of the Cheshire cat) and attached cuffs; and that was all.
Whereupon I asked a newspaper reporter about him.
“Why,” said he, “a ‘Man About Town’ is something between a ‘rounder’ and a
‘clubman.’ He isn’t exactly—well, he fits in between Mrs. Fish’s
receptions and private boxing bouts. He doesn’t—well, he doesn’t belong
either to the Lotos Club or to the Jerry McGeogheghan Galvanised Iron
Workers’ Apprentices’ Left Hook Chowder Association. I don’t exactly
know how to describe him to you. You’ll see him everywhere there’s
anything doing. Yes, I suppose he’s a type. Dress clothes every
evening; knows the ropes; calls every policeman and waiter in town by
their first names. No; he never travels with the hydrogen derivatives.
You generally see him alone or with another man.”
My friend the reporter left me, and I wandered further afield. By this
time the 3126 electric lights on the Rialto were alight. People passed,
but they held me not. Paphian eyes rayed upon me, and left me
unscathed. Diners, heimgangers, shop-girls, confidence men,
panhandlers, actors, highwaymen, millionaires and outlanders hurried,
skipped, strolled, sneaked, swaggered and scurried by me; but I took no
note of them. I knew them all; I had read their hearts; they had
served. I wanted my Man About Town. He was a type, and to drop him
would be an error—a typograph—but no! let us continue.
Let us continue with a moral digression. To see a family reading the
Sunday paper gratifies. The sections have been separated. Papa is
earnestly scanning the page that pictures the young lady exercising
before an open window, and bending—but there, there! Mamma is
interested in trying to guess the missing letters in the word N_w Yo_k.
The oldest girls are eagerly perusing the financial reports, for a
certain young man remarked last Sunday night that he had taken a flyer
in Q., X. & Z. Willie, the eighteen-year-old son, who attends the New
York public school, is absorbed in the weekly article describing how to
make over an old skirt, for he hopes to take a prize in sewing on
graduation day.
Grandma is holding to the comic supplement with a two-hours’ grip; and
little Tottie, the baby, is rocking along the best she can with the
real estate transfers. This view is intended to be reassuring, for it
is desirable that a few lines of this story be skipped. For it
introduces strong drink.
I went into a café to—and while it was being mixed I asked the man who
grabs up your hot Scotch spoon as soon as you lay it down what he
understood by the term, epithet, description, designation,
characterisation or appellation, viz.: a “Man About Town.”
“Why,” said he, carefully, “it means a fly guy that’s wise to the
all-night push—see? It’s a hot sport that you can’t bump to the rail
anywhere between the Flatirons—see? I guess that’s about what it
means.”
I thanked him and departed.
On the sidewalk a Salvation lassie shook her contribution receptacle
gently against my waistcoat pocket.
“Would you mind telling me,” I asked her, “if you ever meet with the
character commonly denominated as ‘A Man About Town’ during your daily
wanderings?”
“I think I know whom you mean,” she answered, with a gentle smile. “We
see them in the same places night after night. They are the devil’s
body guard, and if the soldiers of any army are as faithful as they
are, their commanders are well served. We go among them, diverting a
few pennies from their wickedness to the Lord’s service.”
She shook the box again and I dropped a dime into it.
In front of a glittering hotel a friend of mine, a critic, was climbing
from a cab. He seemed at leisure; and I put my question to him. He
answered me conscientiously, as I was sure he would.
“There is a type of ‘Man About Town’ in New York,” he answered. “The
term is quite familiar to me, but I don’t think I was ever called upon