The Investigations of Avram Davidson

by Avram Davidson

  The dead man was sprawled in a chair at the table, head backwards and upwards. A bottle had been spilled recently—the sharp odor of “brandy” (as the raw, white whiskey was called) filled the room and the liquor itself was still damp; but of the bottle there was no trace. Gift horses were seldom looked long in the mouth at the Old Brewery. The dead man’s face was bruised, and blood welled from his nose and from a cut over one eye, an eye which stared in fierce amazement at the shadowy ceiling.

  In his ribs on the left side a knife had been driven. It was still there.

  They examined the floor carefully, but nothing was there except blood and dirt. In one corner was a foul-looking bed whose greasy rags yielded nothing. A cracked water-jug. An empty ditty-bag. And that was all.

  As Hays ended his scrutiny of the room he saw that young Breakstone was intently looking at the dead man’s face. The Constable caught his eye, and nodded. “I’ve seen him before, sir. He came into my father’s place a few times, on and off, when his ships were in port, to sell his adventures. But I can’t put my mind on his name or his ships! Maybe they will come to me, by and by.”

  “Any big adventures?”

  Breakstone shook his head. “I don’t think so. A chest of tea. A few sacks of coffee or wool. A barrel of sugar or molasses. That sort of thing. Once, I think, he had a bale of cotton—that was the biggest.”

  “Ah, well. Let me hold the lanterns while you get a grip on him. I’ll go ahead and light your way. Mind your—” He stopped and bent over just as they passed through the door. Something was on the floor. He picked it up, stuffed it in his pocket, and straightened. “Mind your step. Careful, now.”

  Slowly and gingerly they made their way down the corridor, down the stairs, and out to the street. And all the while, moved by invisible hands, doors closed as they approached and opened after they passed; and all the while there was a murmuring, a muttering, a whispering, a hissing from the fetid darkness, and the scrabbling of rats in the walls.

  * * *

  OF COURSE HAYS found out nothing when, the body having been carted away, he returned to question the inhabitants—particularly those in rooms adjoining the one in which the dead man was found. No one had seen any thing, heard any thing; no one knew any thing, or suspected any thing. By the time he had finished, his head was reeling from the foul air, and the street seemed deliciously cool and fresh in comparison.

  As Hays and his men left the Five-Points they heard the unexpected quiet broken by what seemed like a howl from hundreds of throats—a howl of defiance, execration, an utterly evil triumph.

  Breakstone half-turned, but his superior’s hand kept him steady. “The water-front is no sabbath-school,” Breakstone said. “But it was never like that. At least you have the clean winds from the harbor, and the people give you a smile and a laugh and mostly folks try to keep themselves a bit decent in some ways, anyway. But those in the Old Brewery now—what makes them like that?”

  They walked on in silence. Then Hays said, “I don’t know, Mr. Breakstone. There’s a whole green continent before them, wide-open under the sweet air of Heaven. But they choose to dwell in the dark and the mire. Why are they like that? As well ask the mole and the mudfish, I suppose.”

  * * *

  IT WAS PAST mid-night when he reached home. And next day there was no time for speculation on social philosophy. The baggage-gang had extended their depredations; and complaints of thefts poured in from the docks around Jay-street, where Hudson-River boats put in, and from the Battery, whence the ferries plied to Jersey, Staten-Island, Brooklyn, and from the great packet-ships in the Upper Harbor. From mere sneak-thieves the ring had advanced to a pretense of being regular baggage-porters and hotel-runners. A genuine rustic, parted from his old cow-hide trunk, was apt to set up an immediate clamor—in which case there was a chance, though a slim one, of its recovery. But a visitor from a small town, with just enough polish to desire not to be known for what he was, would delay out of embarrassment; in which case there was usually no hope for his luggage.

  The problems of taking men from elsewhere to patrol the docks, of uncovering information about who was “fencing” (and where), in addition to routine duties of a sort which could neither be postponed nor delegated, kept Hays from seeing Constable Breakstone until late in the afternoon.

  * * *

  “TRY AS I would,” the young man said, “I couldn’t remember that sailor’s name. So I looked up old Poppie Vanderclooster, who used to help Father in the shop at one time, and took him along to the dead-house. And he knew the face at once. Henry Roberts. They called him Roaring Roberts; he had a big, booming voice. I’ve asked around, and it seems he’d turned to the bad of late years. Some of the adventures he sold weren’t his to sell. He had a lot of money not so long ago, and was throwing it around like a drunken sailor—which, of course, is just what he was. I guess he must have spent it all, or else what would he have been doing in that hole of the Old Brewery?”

  The two of them were on their way back to the dead-house. Hays gave an exclamation, and began patting his pockets. “Ah, here it is,” he said. “I found it just outside the door of the room, last night, there in the Five-Points. What do you make of it? Not the sort of thing generally worn in the Old Brewery, is it?”

  “A gentleman’s glove? No—and not the sort of thing Roaring Roberts would’ve worn, generally, either. Though he might, when he was spending all that money, have bought himself a pair.”

  “Just so. Well, we’ll see.”

  White-haired old Whitby, the dead-house keeper, surveyed them reproachfully through red-rimmed eyes as they came over to Roberts’s body. “You’re late,” he said. “The inquisition’s been over for hours. We’re about set to coffin him. Coroner’s jury reached the verdict that Deceased had come to his death through haemorrhage caused by forcible entry of a knife, length of the blade four and one-half inches, between the fourth and fifth ribs, thus occasioning the severance of veins and arteries—”

  “All right, Whit, we know that—hold up your left hand, Constable.” The glove slipped on easily enough; if anything, it was a size too large. “It might be his,” said Hays reflectively. “Then again, it might not have anything to do with the matter. I did find it outside the room.”

  As he slipped the glove off, something fell to the floor. Old Whitby bent down and picked it up.

  “Flax? Wool?” he asked, rolling the fibre between his fingers.

  “Give it here, Whit,” Hays said shortly. At the door he stopped, handed the glove to Breakstone. “Check all the haberdashers,” he said. “See what you can find.”

  * * *

  ALDERMAN NICHOLAS TER Williger had his counting-house in the same building as his ware-house. Once, when business was smaller and Ter Williger (not yet an alderman) younger, he and his family had lived up stairs. But that old Knickerbocker fashion was going out of style nowadays. Besides, his children—and some of his grand-children—had their own establishments, and Mrs. Ter Williger was dead.

  The clerks looked at Hays from their high stools with unabashed astonishment, but his cold grey eyes stared them back to their ledgers. He stalked through the counting-house to the office in the back where, as expected, he found the proprietor.

  “Hello, Jacob,” said Ter Williger. “It’s been too long. I meant to stop and say a few words the other morning, but you seemed preoccupied with deep thoughts. Mrs. Hays is well, I trust?”

  “Quite well.”

  “Capital. Convey my respects. And now. I have a piece of nice, clean Saugerties ice here and I was about to compound a sherry-cobbler. I shall compound two.”

  “‘Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake, and for thine often infirmities,’ eh, Nick?”

  The old gentleman cut lemons, broke off pieces of sugar-loaf. “Exactly. You may worship Scotch Presbyterian instead of Dutch Reformed, but you’re a fellow-Calvinist and know that ‘Man born of woman is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upwards,’ and hence predestined to a mu
ltitude of ‘often infirmities,’ for some of which—my long years have taught me—sherry-cobbler is a sovereign remedy.” He nodded, pounded ice.

  The drink was cool and gratifying. It was quiet in the office, with its dark walls, from which engravings of President and Lady Washington looked down with stern benignancy. After a long moment Nicholas Ter Williger sighed. “I know you and your Caledonian conscience too well, Jacob,” he said, “to believe it would allow you to pay a purely social call in the daytime. What aspect of rogue-catching brings you to the office of a respectable, if almost super-annuated, cotton-broker?”

  “Cotton brings me here,” said Hays. He produced two tiny paper packets, unfolded them, pushed them across the desk. At once Ter Williger’s hooded eyes grew sharp. “Nankeen,” he said instantly. Then he took up the pieces, pulled the fibres, compared them. “Same crop, too, I’d say. Good quality Nankeen.… Where does it grow? Well, China, originally. Nankeen or Nanking, that’s a city over there. But we grow it here in our own South nowadays, more than enough for own uses. ‘Slave cotton,’ they call it, too, sometimes.”

  Hays considered. Then, “What do you mean, ‘slave cotton’? Isn’t most cotton grown by slaves?”

  Ter Williger nodded. “Yes, but—well, here’s how it works, Jacob. Some of the plantations allow their people to grow a little cotton on their own, after quitting time in the big fields, and when this cotton is sold the people get to keep the money. They use it, oh, say, to buy some relish to add to their victuals—salt-fish, maybe, as a change from pork and corn-meal—or perhaps a piece of bright cloth for a shirt or a dress. Maybe some trumpery jewelry. Well, just to keep temptation out of their way, because, being property himself, the slave doesn’t have much sense of property—here, let me show you.”

  From the shelf behind him Ter Williger took some sample lengths of fibre. “This is what we call Sea-Island. And this is Uplands. See how much different they are in color from Nankeen? How much lighter, whiter? No slave would be foolish enough to steal some of his master’s cotton and try and mix it with his own yellow Nankeen. I don’t deal in it myself. Jenkins does, but he’s not here now.”

  Something stirred in Hays’s mind. “I had a card not so long ago—large quantity of cotton stolen from Georgia, somewheres.”

  Ter Williger nodded rapidly. “Yes, I know about that. But that was Sea-Island, not Nankeen. Planter named Remington was holding back quite some bales, hoping for a rise in the market. St. Simon’s-Island. Cotton was already baled and in a shed by the wharf. Came morning they found the Negro watchman dead and the bales gone. Sea-Island, you know, fetches top price. Not Nankeen, though.” He took up his glass, but it was empty, and he set it down again, regretfully.

  Hays rose. “Then Nankeen doesn’t grow in any one particular locality?”

  The older man pursed his mouth. Then he said, “I tell you what. Why not ask Jenkins? He’d be able to give you better answers.… Who’s he? Well, not exactly a partner. An associate. We have an understanding, and he uses my premises, too. An up-and-coming young man. Pushes a bit more than I care to. When you get old—matter of fact, Jacob, why don’t you come along with me and talk to him? I’m going to his boarding-house now. A dicty place near Greenwich-Village.”

  Ter Williger reached for his hat, chuckled. “Matter of fact, I live there myself. Jeremiah Gale keeps it, with his wife. She orders the help around and he plays whist with the guests. A well-spread table, and a brightly-furnished house. Just the thing for old moss-backs like me—and for young couples like the Jenkinses. House property is high, and so are house-rents and servants’ wages. Time enough for them to set up for themselves when they have a few children.”

  In a few minutes they were sitting in a cab and old Ter Williger rambled on about the fashion for boarding-house living, the prices of butcher’s meat, game, fish, wine, clothing; and how much cheaper every thing had been twenty, thirty-five, and fifty years ago.

  “Nicholas, I need more men,” Hays said presently. “I can’t even keep up with crime with my present force, let alone keep ahead of it. I need more men, and the Board of Aldermen has got to give me the money to pay for them.”

  The City had cooled off as late afternoon faded into early evening. The cab rolled along between rows of neat brick houses, freshly-painted red, with trim white lines drawn to simulate mortar. Green-clad tree branches arched over the street. There was not a pig in sight. It was quite a change from the hustle of the Broad-way, or the squalor of the Five-Points.

  Nicholas Ter Williger sighed. “What can I do, Jacob? I’m just an old Federalist who’s hung on past his time, and they all know it down at City Hall. I shall not run again, and they all know that, too. It’s a Tammany-man you should be talking to about this. Am I right?”

  He tipped his hat to a passing lady, and Hays followed suit. “Yes,” the High Constable agreed, “but if I talk to a Tammany-man about needing more men, he’ll smile like a bucketful of chips, say he agrees with me completely, and knows just the men. Two of them will be his nephews, three of them will be his cousins, and the rest of them will be broken-down oyster-men or some thing of that sort, unfit for any sort of work, but all from his ward, and all deserving Democrats. Damnation, Nick, I like to hire my own men! I—oh, are we here now? Just so.”

  Jeremiah Gale’s establishment for paying guests was undistinguishable, with its scrubbed-white stoop and its bright green shutters, from any of the other houses in the row. A neatly-dressed Irish maid opened the door to them. Her manner was staid and respectful, but there was a look in her eye which convinced Hays that she would not always be content to take gentlemen’s hats, to say, “Yes, sir,” and “Yes, ma’am,” to haul firewood, coal, and hot water up three and four flights of stairs, and to toil fourteen hours a day for the $5 a month which was the most she could hope for. Servants did not stay servants long—at least, not in New-York.

  The house of Jeremiah Gale was richly, almost sumptuously furnished. Silken draperies, satin-upholstered furniture, mahogany, rosewood, marble, and gilt were everywhere. Jeremiah Gale himself came forward to greet them, a short and rosy gentleman of full habit, in claret-colored coat, pepper-and-salt trousers, and white silk stockings contrasting with the black sheen of his highly-polished shoes. There was a hum of conversation from inside, in which female voices predominated, and some one was playing on the pianoforte.

  “Mr. Alderman Ter Williger!” One might have thought it had been last year instead of this morning that they had parted. “I trust I see you well, and not overly fatigued from the duties of the day?” A genteel bow, and then another genteel bow. “Mr. High Constable Hays! Delighted to meet you again!” (To the best of Hays’s recollection they had never met before.) “How very happy I am that Mr. Alderman Ter Williger has honored us by bringing you to dinner. You will do us the pleasure of taking dinner, sir? My cook has dressed a pair of turkey-hens with bread-sauce—”

  But Hays pleaded his wife’s discomfiture, were he to spoil the edge of his appetite for her supper by partaking of Mr. Gale’s cook’s pair of turkey-hens; and Mr. Gale was obliged to smile ruefully, and express a hope amounting to certainty that the High Constable would honor them on another occasion. Then he led them into the parlor.

  The pianoforte had ceased, but the lady seated at it was talking busily to another, who had evidently been turning the music for her. She raked the new-comers with a swift glance, but kept on talking.

  “Ah, mais non, mais non!” she exclaimed. “Two months in England and two weeks in France? Incroyable! Au contraire—that is to say, on the contrary; you must revise your plans and spend two months in France and only two weeks in England. Do you not agree with me, Mr. Jenkins?”

  “Perfectly, my dear.”

  “If, indeed, it is absolutely necessary to visit England at all! The land of our fathers it may be, call it the Old Home, but—oh, my dear, so cold, so coarse! That fat old king and his ugly wife! And so unwelcoming to Americans, are they not, Mr. Jenkins?”
r />   “Alas, my dear, we found it so.”

  “Mais, ooh, la belle France! There you have civilization—fashion—ton. We will give you the names of dear friends we visited, Mr. James Jenkins and I, two years ago—people of the finest quality, the most exquisite manners, the epitome of elegance, mais oui; and here I see dear Alderman Ter Williger with a distinguished-looking guest. Who can it be?”

  And at this point the lady (presumably Mrs. Jenkins) arose from the pianoforte and took what Hays was absolutely certain was her first breath since she had begun speaking.

  Mrs. Jenkins was as expensively dressed as it was morally possible for a lady to be, and quite handsome, too. Mr. James Jenkins was a large-framed man with a red, smooth-shaven, and smiling face. Mrs. Van Dam (the unwise, would-be spender of two months in England) was thin and sallow. Mr. Van Dam—a whale-oil commission-merchant—was thinner and sallower. Miss Cadwallader was a boney lady of a certain age and of over-poweringly aristocratic family. Mr. O’Donovan made it known at once that he was from Northern Ireland and a Protestant as well. Mr. Blessington was superintendent of an assurance agency and evidently had nothing to say when away from the premises of that essential if unromantic business. And Mrs. Bladen was a widow-woman with a lap-dog and two fat, unmarried daughters.

  Such, with the addition of Alderman Ter Williger, were Mr. Jeremiah Gale’s paying guests.

  In the small sitting-room to which Mr. Gale showed them, Mr. Jenkins listened with the greatest good-nature to Hays’s questions. “Nankeen grows over a wide area,” he said, “and while there are people who’ll insist—particularly down South—that they can tell from what location a given staple comes, even from which plantation or field, I must regard a claim to such close knowledge as rather—well, pretentious.… Have I been in the South? Frequently.”

  The Alderman, who had been listening with some small signs of impatience for the dinner-bell, said now, “Mr. Jenkins made a trip South not long ago to buy Nankeen.” The High Constable asked where it had been stored in New-York, and Jenkins said it had not been stored there at all, but had been trans-shipped immediately.