On the night of Friday, October 13, 1882, Simeon Lightner and Benjamin Stallworth found themselves on West Street. Duncan Phair did not think himself sufficiently recovered from the attack of the two women to venture out at night into the Black Triangle.
West Street, at ten o’clock, was always awash with drunken sailors whose ships had docked only that day or the day before. The grog and gambling shops along this avenue had all been given names designed to entice seamen: The Sea Shanty, The Southern Cross Emporium, The Sailor’s Succour, and the like. Most of the buildings were so meager and poor that the sign painters were put to the extremity of their craft to emblazon the entire name across the front.
Just across from where Charlton merged into West Street was a grimy little gambling hall and saloon called the Jolly Tar’s Tavern. It was about twenty feet broad, a single story, with no real door, but only a dirty red curtain thrown across a rude opening cut in the clapboard walls. Two women, probably as repulsive in paint as they would have been without it, stood and beckoned sailors in, with promises of cheap plentiful liquor, cheap buxom girls, and tables of faro and pinochle and sancho pedro where no one ever lost.
Other places along the ill-lighted route being little more attractive, the two repellent shills managed to bring in a number of men, desperate for conviviality, who were just in from the sea. For no reason other than that they had not been there before, Simeon and Benjamin pulled their hats down low over their eyes and allowed themselves to be herded through the red curtain.
The entire low-ceilinged room was the color of saffron—the gaslight shining murkily through the palpable tobacco smoke. Just within the door was a large rickety piano, painted yellow, with a yellow-faced man who played with great dexterity but without expression or interest, and between every two songs, sipped at an empty glass that was kept at his side. There was a short bar to the right, presided over by an enormously fat woman wearing a bright blue dress and quantities of gold jewelry. She wore an expression which said: “When I’m sent to hell, the devil will contrive no greater punishment than to keep me behind such a bar in such a place as this. . . .” To the left were a dozen or so long tables, crowded with sailors of a dozen nationalities, all of whose varied clothing was alike stained with liquor and dirt. They growled and sang and yelled insults at one another and swore eternal friendship and made improper suggestions to the waiter-girls. These half-dozen young women, of singular coarseness, wore indecently short skirts, spangled tights, and boots with bells dangling around the high heels. In the back, several tables were set up for gambling: the promised games, plus euchre, seven-up, and sixty-fives as well.
Simeon and Benjamin, though certainly out of place in a saloon entirely given over to the entertainment of seafaring men, purchased from the sullen barkeep schooners of the best beer and took places close to a circle of Dutch sailors who, soberer than the rest of the room, were therefore probably plotting some mischief. With practiced eyes, Simeon and Benjamin observed everything. The reporter had long given over the habit of making immediate notes, for the appearance of tablets and pencils in such places was not looked on with favor.
After a little, when they had finished their beers and ordered more, Benjamin wandered to the back of the room, and for several minutes observed the games in progress there. Merely in the interests of investigation, he placed several small bets and was gratified that he did not lose all his money at once. Simeon had remained behind, and engaged one of the waiter-girls in conversation.
Neither Benjamin, intent upon his game, nor Simeon enthralled by the prevaricated narrative of the waiter-girl into whose hand he dropped a quarter dollar every few minutes, was aware of the entrance into The Jolly Tar’s Tavern of Pet Margery Porter. She wore a red jersey and a blue and white polka-dot skirt and showed herself altogether a better quality female than this place was used to entertaining.
Nevertheless, it appeared that she was acquainted with the barkeep, to whom she nodded friendlily, and from whom she accepted a glass of neat whiskey out of a bottle that had never served a sailor. Pet Margery then made a small tour of the place, airily putting off the vociferous advances of the men at the tables. When she came close to Simeon Lightner, she quickly averted her face and scanned the back of the shop.
Her eyes fell upon Benjamin. She glanced quickly around once more, then turned again to the front of the shop. “I’ll be back,” she whispered to the barkeep, and stepped outside.
She glanced sharply up and down West Street. Ella, who had been dawdling near the door in rags, scurried over and begged a coin. Pet Margery drew a nickel from her reticule, handed it to the child, and whispered: “The dopey one and the red-haired one are inside, handsome one ain’t with ’em. Run and tell Lena. Tell her I know what to do!” The child scampered off down West Street.
Pet Margery pushed inside the red curtain once more and sauntered past the bar to the back of the shop.
Benjamin Stallworth sat on the rough bench before the faro table, a rough affair itself with a much-stained green baize cover, and the playing board decipherable only by those already familiar with its configuration. Benjamin was.
Beside him sprawled a sailor, very drunk, whose sole motive for sitting there was apparently to lose all his money as quickly as possible so that he might return to the safety of his ship. His companion was a shrewd Yankee, not long a sailor, who kept a stack of silver coins in a dried eelskin and extracted them one by one to place upon the board. His goal was to make as much money as possible, but he only lost.
Benjamin had just lost twenty dollars when Pet Margery, in a sweet voice, begged room on the bench beside him. He glanced up at her, recognized her immediately for a prostitute, and nervously gave place. In the past six months, Benjamin had seen and heard much of which he had been previously ignorant, and he was often content to declare that he had really seen and done quite everything that there was to see and be done in New York; but the fact was that the noisy breath of one of these women upon his cheek still raised a copious perspiration on the inside of his collar.
“Here,” she said, handing Benjamin a five-dollar gold piece, and accompanying the action with a confiding smile, “place it on the jack to win.” The next round was about to be dealt.
Benjamin, blushing, did so.
“That’s kind of you,” she said. “What’s your bet then, sweetheart?”
“Trey to win, deuce to lose,” stammered Benjamin and placed his bet of ten dollars accordingly.
The other two men at the table scattered their coins across the board, one with as much care as the other carelessness.
“I win,” said the young woman, and drew her arm within Benjamin’s, “and I’ll buy you a sherry cobbler, but if you win you have to buy me one. How’s that?”
“Oh!” cried Benjamin, and glanced toward Simeon Lightner. But he was still occupied with the waiter-girl and Benjamin saw no reason not to imitate the reporter’s gallantry. “We needn’t wait. Order one for both of us now. . . .”
The young woman laughed gaily and nodded one of the waiter-girls over. She gave the order, just as the banker began to deal off his deck of cards.
With intense interest, Benjamin watched the cards turned up, first on the one hand and then on the other. The young woman regarded them hardly at all, though she watched the banker with considerable attention. Once or twice he lowered his eyes in a deliberate fashion in what was possibly the equivalent of a wink.
The sherry cobblers were brought and consumed, and both Benjamin and the young woman lost their bets. The shrewd Yankee sailor alone won, gathered his money, and ambled satisfied out of the saloon.
The drunken sailor took all his remaining cash and placed it atop the ace to win, while Benjamin and the young woman were more sparing in their wagers. All three lost, just as two more sherry cobblers were delivered to the table by the jangling waiter-girl.
“Oh!” said Benjamin with great reluctance, “I suppose I’m about done for tonight,” and he smiled wanly at
the young woman at his side. He rose, and attempted to disengage her arm from his.
But she rose with him and pulled him over to the side, pointedly out of the hearing of the croupier. “It’s terrible!” she cried. “That’s a crooked table!”
“No!” exclaimed Benjamin, “I’ve seen crooked tables! I know crooked tables. I watched him closely—”
“And I watched closer!” cried the young woman. They stood in close conference beneath one of the yellow gas lamps, and turned their faces toward the dark wainscoted corner. “He cheated! Dealt off the bottom of the deck. And I touched one of the cards: marked with pinpricks!”
“Oh!” cried Benjamin with great disappointment.
“You was good to me,” purred the young woman, “so I want to give you some advice—”
“Yes?” said Benjamin wonderingly.
“Don’t come back in this place. Won’t get your money back, won’t do no good to make your accusations known. Your money’s lost like you had throwed it off the top of the East River bridge.”
“Yes,” said Benjamin ruefully. “It’s not likely I’ll be back here soon.”
“You like the cards, don’t you though?”
Benjamin laughed. “Yes, I suppose that I do a little.” The tête-à-tête with this young woman, who was quite pretty, was pleasing to Benjamin. Any other prostitute by this time would have urged him back to her furnished room on Chatham Street and then gone huffy away when he declined—but this young woman had said nothing about that at all.
“Well,” she said, “I know of a place where the tables are straight, least one of the tables is straight. . . .”
“Around here?”
The young woman nodded.
“Where is it?” demanded Benjamin.
“Nearby, I’ll take you there. . . .”
“I’m here with my friend. May I bring him too?”
“No! You come alone. . . .”
“Alone?” said Benjamin, on his guard once more.
“I like you,” said the young woman, “just the kind of fellow I’d take up a suburban residence with in New Jersey.”
Benjamin laughed. “I’m not so good-looking, you know. I know I’m not so good-looking . . .”
“Well,” said the young woman, “I seen all kinds and I been with all kinds, and you find a man who’s perfectly paralyzing in the face, and you go up and make love to him and he knocks you in the middle of next week. . . .”
“Well, I don’t strike ladies, I can assure you.”
“No,” said the young woman, “I could tell. What’s your name?”
“Benjamin. Benjamin”—he paused—“Ticknor,” giving the name of a prominent lawyer and Democrat.
“Well, Benjamin Ticknor, you meet me tomorrow night at the corner of King Street and MacDougal—you know where that is, don’t you?—and I’ll take you where there’s a straight table. There’s probably no more than two in the entire city, but I know of one.”
“How do you know it’s straight?”
“My pa runs it! And if he don’t always run it straight, least he runs it straight for me and my friends. . . .”
Benjamin laughed. “All right then, I’ll come.”
“Fine! Remember: King Street and MacDougal. Ten o’clock. And it’s a secret, you know. Scrape up what you can, grub around in all your pockets ’cause you’re sure to win!”
“I’ll be there,” said Benjamin. “What’s your name?”
“Margery,” replied the young woman, “but everybody calls me ‘Pet.’ ”
“Well, Pet, I’ll see what I can do about raising a little money. I’ve spent the last year looking for a good table, and if you can show me one I’ll be beholden to you.”
Pet Margery laughed, shook Benjamin’s hand as if she meant to pump another promise out of him, and tripped laughing out of the saloon.
“Well,” said Simeon Lightner when Benjamin had rejoined him, “you made a conquest, I think. What’d you have to pay for such a smile and laugh as that?”
“Oh,” shrugged Benjamin, with ill-concealed pride, “it was nothing. It was just that we both lost at the table. We both lost a couple of dollars, that’s all. . . .”
Just outside the red curtain of The Jolly Tar’s Tavern, Ella, in rags, sat hunched and apparently sleeping against the clapboards. However, as soon as Pet Margery appeared she jumped up and ran around the corner of the building. Pet Margery followed.
In the darkness of that alley stood a woman in a stiff black dress, with a short black bonnet drawn close down over her face.
“Meeting him tomorrow evening,” said Pet Margery, and grinned. ‘Ten o’clock, corner King and MacDougal, Lena can watch from her window. Then to my father’s. Everything’ll be set up.”
Louisa Shanks gestured impatiently, and the little girl interpreted: “Why not here? Why not now?”
“Because,” said Pet Margery, “he’s with a friend. And the place is full of sailors—can’t count on sailors. Tomorrow’ll give us time to have everything set up, time to prepare—and he’ll be alone.”
Chapter 33
On Saturday morning, October 14, Marian Phair left the house on Gramercy Park in the company of her two children Edwin and Edith and turned northward toward Madison Square. On Saturday mornings as pleasant as this Marian liked to dress the children in clothes even finer than those they wore on Sunday morning and parade them through the neighborhood. Other proud mothers did the same, and chancing to meet such another, Marian always had the ready excuse that Edwin and Edith were being taken “to visit their cousin.” True to her word, Marian stopped at Twenty-fifth Street, fetching out Helen, and proceeded to ambulate Madison Square, nodding to all the gentlewomen who passed, and staring in the shop windows.
However, it was not entirely as a matter of fashion that Marian was taking the children out today. Only the day before, as she was on her way to Gramercy Park, the children’s nurse—who had been with Marian for three years, since Edith was born—had had both legs broken by a newsgirl. This grubby child of about ten years, apparently taken with sudden insanity, had run after and attacked the nurse with a length of iron pipe. The child had immediately fled down Fourth Avenue and was lost to pursuit, but her apprehension would scarcely have solaced Marian for the loss of Edwin and Edith’s nurse.
As soon as she was informed that the unfortunate victim would not be able to work for at least two months (and possibly would always be lame), Marian Phair telegraphed to the Tribune to insert an advertisement for a nursemaid, but she could not expect any applicants to appear before Monday. One of cook’s nieces could be got in as a temporary substitute, but Marian was reluctant to leave her children long in the charge of an uneducated Irish girl. Marian was vexed, and today only the fine weather and the splendid appearance of Edwin and Edith had reconciled her to cheerfulness.
Madison Square was bright and bustling at noon on Saturday, for nursemaids were often given that afternoon off and mothers took the opportunity to meet one another in the fashionable air of this part of the city. Helen always wore her best when she accompanied her aunt to the square, for she knew she would be upbraided if she did not.
Staked to propriety with the admonitions that they should neither soil themselves nor speak to other children who were not at least as well dressed as themselves, Edwin and Edith were allowed to roam among the flower beds and shady groves of the cool square. Helen and Marian commandeered a bench on the northern edge of the square, facing away from the sun. Marian raised her blue parasol and Helen folded her hands in her lap in unconscious imitation of her father.
“Helen,” said her aunt, “I think that after Monday we will hold no more regular meetings of the committee.”
Helen glanced away, and touched a gloved finger to her lips. “Oh,” she said, trying to betray a surprise she did not feel, “why not, Marian?”
“I’ve done much thinking, and I’ve come to the conclusion that charity ought to be individually performed. A committee such as ours w
ill necessarily appear formidable and cold to the impoverished objects of our charity, who might respond more warmly to succor that was personally applied.”
“I’ve always thought so,” said Helen softly.
“Well, in this instance, I suppose that you were right. I will speak to the ladies on Monday—no program has been announced anyway—and suggest that they continue their charitable endeavors on their own. I shall of course thank them for their work, which has been efficacious in its way of course, but explain that we must now move on to other fields.”
“What if the ladies do not wish to disband?” asked Helen.
“That is their right,” said Marian, offended even at the thought. “Of course they may want to continue, but I must explain to them that my house will no longer be available to them as a place of gathering—and I can hardly see another of the ladies taking on the expenses that are attendant upon such responsibility. And of course I would have to insist that the name of the committee be changed, which was formed under my directorship and my aegis. It could not continue in its present form without me—surely they would understand that, Helen.”
“I don’t believe that they will misunderstand you, Marian. I only hope that the ladies will see fit to continue with their charities, once the committee is disbanded. In any case,” said Helen, “I shall certainly go on.”
Marian turned surprised to her niece. “You? What will you do, Helen?”
“I only meant . . . I only meant that I hope that I can continue to be of some small service to the inhabitants of the Blighted Triangle. I’ve come to prefer thinking of it as the ‘Blighted’ rather than the ‘Black’ Triangle, you know.”
“By all means,” said Marian complacently, “only be certain that you don’t go near the place yourself. It is far too near as it is. Your father says that a Roman candle ignited in the Black Triangle would explode over our house. It’s a fearful thought!”
Gilded Needles Page 24
