Part 10

"Haven't I just? I had my own little flat--to myself, too--once upon a time, and I kept my eyes about me. There was the Dago woman that owned a fruit-stand on my corner. She lived in an alley off Houston Street, and had a sixteen-year-old daughter who worked twelve hours a day rolling cigarettes.--Chuck me another, there's a good girlie. Thanks, awfully.--That girl hated her work--can you blame her?--met a man that told her she wouldn't have to work any more, and good-by."

"She went with him?"

"Parsed out of sight completely, my dear. Mother nearly crazy. Went to the police. Police added the girlie's name to their three columns of other missing girls for that year, and said they couldn't guess where she was. An uncle tried to go on an inspection-tour of his own, and had spent about all the family cash when he got to a flat on West Fortieth Street and had its girls in for the usual drinks. He saw his niece, but the bouncer knocked him down, and when he woke up in the arey, the happy family had moved."

"And that was all?"

"That was all till, some two years later, the girl sent for her mother to come to Bellevue to see her die. As soon as she was used up, they'd turned her out without one of the pennies she had earned for them.--Narsty, eh?"

There was a brief pause.

"I guess," said Violet, "there ain't much chance for you unless you're good."

"My dear," answered the Englishwoman, "if you're good, you haven't a chance at all. It's just a question of whether you have or haven't enough to live on. The best guardian of a man's virtue is the worst enemy of a woman's--and that's an empty pocketbook, my dear."

But Violet was in no mind for generalizations.

"It's a business, then, ain't it?" she asked.

"A regular business," nodded Evelyn,--"fifty cents up--and now that they've smashed the lotteries, policy, and the races, it's more of a business than ever. There are hundreds of young chaps all over the country who make their living by selling girls to places like this--and worse than this; and there are more who make better livings by making one, or two, or even three girls walk the street for them. Just now, in New York, the street's the main thing."

"An' people like Miss Rose----?"

"They buy the girls and pay a percentage on their work, my dear, till the debt's cleared. Sometimes they give their girls nothing but brass checks for every job, but whether we get brass checks or real cash, it's all the same: board and lodging and clothes are so high that we never get out of debt to the madam. Trust her for that!"

She had a thorough knowledge of her subject, and she ran on as if her only interest in it were economic. She talked of Denver, with its two-room houses in which the front seemed one large window where the sole inmate displayed her wares; of Chicago with the curtained doors through which was thrust only a hand to receive the varying price of admission, even a quarter of a dollar occasionally sufficing; of the same city's infamous club maintained by politicians for their own debauches. She told of the proprietresses making a specialty of "sending out" for girls that worked at other and ill-paid tasks by day; of women conducting flats on a partnership basis; of those who rented, for high prices, houses that would otherwise be tenantless because of poor conditions or the opening of some street that must soon be cut through the premises. She said that young girls unsoiled would sometimes fetch their owners fifty dollars for their initial destruction, but that, as a rule, the sums were relatively small.

"And Miss Rose has to pay the police," asked Violet; "don't she?"

"She does just, little innocent. And the police have to pay the officers above them, and the officers above them have to pay the ward-bosses above _them_--and there you are. It's all the worse since the bosses can't make any money from gambling-houses, and it's all the worse since the business got organized and meant votes for the gang at every election.--Oh," Evelyn broke off--"I tell you it's the same in every city the world over, my dear, and you and I haven't even the comfort of being exceptions."

"Don't people know about it?"

"People don't want to know about it. People don't want to feel badly. People say that it isn't true, and that, if it is true, it isn't fit to mention."

"Did you ever go to a dance-hall?"

Forgetting her recent attitude of democracy, Evelyn raised her pointed chin.

"I should say not," she answered. "Only a year ago I had that apartment of my very own. An Africander took me out of the chorus at the 'Gaiety' over home,--and a good job, too--and, when he died and I came here, one of the best doctors in this town took care of me. He said he was going to marry me," she ended with a short laugh, "but when his old wife died, he forgot that, and forgot me, and married a society girl young enough to be his grandchild. Of course he died himself after a few months, but that didn't help me, my dear: I had to strike out, and now, from the best places I've come down as far as this."

Violet was still too young to feel keenly for another while herself in suffering, a fact that must have presented itself to Evelyn, because she turned from her own story with an easy shrug.

"After all," she pursued, "the thing's at least better run now that it has become a men's business. There are no jobs left at the top except the running of the houses: the men get the girls, the rents, and most of the profits."

"Fritzie said they got lots of immigrants."

"Well, rather. Most of the Dago ditch-diggers go home every winter, and any one of them will bring a girl back with him as his wife if you'll pay him a little over the price of the passage money. That's one way, but there are a jolly lot more, not to mention the make-believe employment agencies that catch the girls by regiments. The women are packed over here in the steerage like cattle, my dear, and ticketed like low-class freight. All they own goes into a small handbag and once they get here, they're herded ten in a room till the agency-runners call for them. Around Houston Street you can see streets full of those nifty little agencies: they ship the girls all over the States."

"I never thought such things could happen."

"Of course you didn't. Nobody does, my dear--and that's one reason they do happen. Not that the immigrants are unduly favored. All over the East Side you can see families of the Chosen People going into real mourning for cadet-caught girlies, just as if the poor things were really dead. The other races suffer quite as much, too, though the Yankees are less likely to get into the cheaper joints."

"That's where they give them the brass checks?" asked Violet.

"Yes. The man buys the checks downstairs, on a commutation schedule, just the w'y we used to buy our drink checks in a beer garden. The girls never see real money--except when they make a touch, and then it's not any use--because they cash in their checks to the madam, and she counts them against what her young l'idies owe her. Even at that"--Evelyn nearly sat upright in her animation--"even at that, they do s'y the men try to jew you down as badly as they do here. I've always noticed that the honestest man that ever lived will try to cheat a girl. But you'll learn it all in time, girlie. I'm only sorry that you'll never see the better plices."

Violet missed the innuendo, but she asked:

"Then there are better and worse?"

Evelyn laughed.

"Right-oh!" she said. "The horrid truth is, my dear, that we and Rose are hopelessly middle-class. I wish you could see the better, and as for the worse, wait till you live in a plice where there are sliding panels in the wall, and men are robbed every night."

If there had been any sympathy in the Englishwoman's tone, Violet might have appealed to her for whatever of real assistance she could give, but Evelyn's scarcely interrupted monologue soon made it clear that she had no help to offer.

"It's all rotten," she continued,--"all rotten because it has to be. Do you fancy that, if Rose wasn't sure of us, she wouldn't have her ear at that keyhole now? She can call in Angel half the time, and one cop or another's never far around the corner. Three weeks ago Phil Beekman, one of her best customers, tried to balance a lamp on his nose and broke it, and Riley was there to arrest him for disorderly conduct before the boy could get to his wallet. He had to pay twenty-five dollars--half went to Riley--for that fifteen-dollar lamp that Rose had insured for eighteen. We're all that w'y; we all have to be spies on the rest. I am, you soon will be, and that little Wanda--well, of course, Rose makes too much fuss over her."

"What do you mean?" asked Violet.

But Evelyn only shook her towsled yellow head.

"I mean, my dear," she said, "that there are some things, you know, that even I don't fancy discussing."

"She was an immigrant, wasn't she?"

"Oh, yes," Evelyn acquiesced, with a yawn. Already her restless heart was tiring of the conversation and her insistent thirst was crying for more alcohol. "Wanda came over here to be a housemaid. She landed in Philadelphia and went directly to an employment agency, like a good girlie. They took her money for their commission in getting her a job, and then they sold her right over here to a sailors' joint."

"For housework?"

"Housework? My dear, you overact your part. There's no housework done in those plices; but Wanda's won her w'y up in the world. Here she is at Rose's, if you please, though by what sort of housework I shan't tell you."

"I wish----"

"Not another word, my dear. Talking is a dry game. After all, drinking is the king of indoor sports. Come on down and rig a bit of fizz."

But Violet did not join in this predatory expedition. She forgot the plight of the new captive whose cries she had heard; she forgot even the details of Evelyn's just-related case; she remembered only so much of the general situation, now made clear to her, as bore upon her own position, and she came at last to a pitch of crafty courage that was far more promising of success than any of the hysterical determinations that she had previously experienced. Open revolt was futile; she would employ methods more circuitous, and would use whatever weapons were at hand.

It was, as Evelyn had said, a house of spies and eavesdroppers, and, at the next opportunity--which occurred that night--Violet sought again her secret place of vantage on the back stairs, and listened again to her jailer in conversation with the Italian. Her time, as it chanced, was brief, but she heard enough to know that Wesley Dyker was the subject of the conference, and that betrayal of some sort was its intent.

"Nothin' much," Rose was saying, in apparent answer to some question asked before the spy had taken up her breathless post in the darkened stairway. "I'll get more out of him later on."

"Yas," replied Angel, "but how mooch?"

"He said he thought he'd pull it off, all right, but wasn't sure of O'Malley. Said he'd got a bunch of kind words from up top, but was scared for fear O'Malley would knife him. He's a pretty wise guy for all he's a swell, and he's lookin' out for the double-cross from your crowd."

"He ast you to helpa keepa lookout?"

"Sure he did. Said if O'Malley's man put up a bluff at runnin' independent, I was to tip him off when O'Malley began registering votes here."

"That isa good. More?"

"Some. Said he wanted me to keep my ears wide for any news. Wanted me to pump you."

"He deed?" The voice grew threatening. "Say, now, you tella me why he knaw you knawa me?"

"I guess he has as good ears as most people."

"But how he knawa me an' you----"

"He don't know that, Angel. Keep your hair on. He don't know nothin' about it. If he did, do you think he'd stand for it, an' cough up all these here straight tips to me?"

"Na-aw," the Italian drawlingly admitted, in slow mollification. "Naw, maybe he woulda not."

"He certainly wouldn't. He don't know nothin' about it. What he's afraid of is that somebody might think _he_ stood in too good here."

"He say that?"

"Yep."

"Alla right. Now, you tella him when he comes again, O'Malley means----"

The voice dropped to so low a whisper that Violet could hear no more, and, before it was raised, the doorbell had sounded and she had heard Celeste, upstairs, calling her. She tiptoed back to the upper hallway.

"Cassie say you' New York Central frien' ees askin' for you," volunteered the French girl as they met.

"All right," answered Violet. "I'll be right down. I was trying to swipe a bottle. And say, Celeste, how does that Wesley Dyker come to have such a pull with Miss Rose?"

"Oh-h! You don' know? That Wes' Dyk' 'e mabby be a magistrate nex' 'lection. 'E's one gran' man now for bail an' lawyer when trouble come.--'Es's frien's with so many politicians, too. But Meess Rose, she know 'e will be some more eef 'e be 'lected magistrate."

"Oh, I see. But doesn't she keep standing in, on the quiet, with the other people who want the place, too?"

Celeste nodded a cheerful agreement.

"But of a certainty," she said. "Meess Rose, she know 'er beezness. Whoever get that 'lection, Meess Rose, she will 'ave been 'ees frien'."

Violet asked no more. She had learned enough to put into her hands the best weapon just then available.

XII

ON STRIKE

Katie Flanagan arrived at the Lennox department-store every morning at a quarter to eight o'clock. She passed through the employés' dark entrance, a unit in a horde of other workers, and registered the instant of her arrival on a time-machine that could in no wise be suborned to perjury. She hung up her wraps in a subterranean cloak-room, and, hurrying to the counter to which she was assigned, first helped in "laying out the stock," and then stood behind her wares, exhibiting, cajoling, selling, until an hour before noon. At that time she was permitted to run away for exactly forty-five minutes for the glass of milk and two pieces of bread and jam that composed her luncheon. This repast disposed of, she returned to the counter and remained behind it, standing like a war-worn watcher on the ramparts of a beleaguered city, till the store closed at six, when there remained to her at least fifteen minutes more of work before her sales-book was balanced and the wares covered up for the night. There were times indeed when she did not leave the store until seven o'clock, but those times were caused rather by customers than by the management of the store, which could prevent new shoppers from entering the doors after six, but could hardly turn out those already inside.

The automatic time-machine and a score of more annoying, and equally automatic, human beings, kept watch upon all that she did. The former, in addition to the floor-walker in her section of the store, recorded her every going and coming, the latter reported every movement not prescribed by the regulations of the establishment; and the result upon Katie and her fellow-workers was much the result observable upon condemned assassins under the unwinking surveillance of the Death Watch.

If Katie was late, she was fined ten cents for each offense. She was reprimanded if her portion of the counter was disordered after a mauling by careless customers. She was fined for all mistakes she made in the matter of prices and the additions on her sales-book; and she was fined if, having asked the floor-walker for three or five minutes to leave the floor in order to tidy her hair and hands, in constant need of attention through the rapidity of her work and the handling of her dyed wares, she exceeded her time limit by so much as a few seconds.

There were no seats behind the counters, and Katie, whatever her physical condition, remained on her feet all day long unless she could arrange for relief by a fellow-worker during that worker's luncheon time. There was no place for rest save a damp, ill-lighted "Recreation Room" in the basement, furnished with a piano that nobody had time to play, magazines that nobody had time to read, and wicker chairs in which nobody had time to sit. All that one might do was to serve the whims and accept the scoldings of women customers who knew too ill, or too well, what they wanted to buy; keep a tight rein upon one's indignation at strolling men who did not intend to buy anything that the shop advertised; be servilely smiling under the innuendoes of the high-collared floor-walkers, in order to escape their wrath; maintain a sharp outlook for the "spotters," or paid spies of the establishment; thwart, if possible, those pretending purchasers who were scouts sent from other stores, and watch for shop-lifters on the one hand and the firm's detectives on the other.

"It ain't a cinch, by no means"--thus ran the departing Cora Costigan's advice to her successor--"but it ain't nothin' now to what it will be in the holidays. I'd rather be dead than work in the toy-department in December--I wonder if the kids guess how we that sells 'em hates the sight of their playthings--and I'd rather be dead _an'_ damned than work in the accounting-department. A girl friend of mine worked there last year,--only it was over to Malcare's store--an' didn't get through her Christmas Eve work till two on Christmas morning, an' she lived over on Staten Island. She overslept on the twenty-sixth, an' they docked her a half-week's pay.

"An' don't never," concluded Cora, "don't never let 'em transfer you to the exchange department. The people that exchange things all belong in the psychopathic ward at Bellevue--them that don't belong in Sing Sing. Half the goods they bring back have been used for days, an' when the store ties a tag on a sent-on-approval opera cloak, the women wriggle the tag inside, an' wear it to the theater with a scarf draped over the string. Thank God, I'm goin' to be married!"

In these conditions Katie found many imperative duties, but none quite so immediately imperative as the repression of Mr. Porter. She had not made her first sale at the main women's hosiery counter on the first floor, to which she had been assigned on her arrival--pretty girls always being favored with first-floor positions--when that tall, gray-whiskered gentleman, his duties in his underground office not at this hour holding him, majestically approached her.

"Good-morning, Miss Flanagan," he said, with a beneficent smile, as he placed his white hand upon her quailing shoulder.

Katie became very busy with the stock that was new to her.

"Good-morning, Mr. Porter," she answered.--"Say, Miss Isaacs, how much do these lisle ones sell at?"

"I thought," said Mr. Porter, fixing her with his apparently emotionless gaze, "that I would just come over and see if you were well taken care of."

"None better, Mr. Porter." Katie smiled sweetly as she said it, and still more sweetly as she significantly added: "Them's always taken good care of as are used to takin' good care of themselves."

Mr. Porter blinked, but his expression, or lack of expression, did not alter.

"No doubt," he responded, as he reluctantly made ready to go away; "but I shall be glad to be of help at any time I can."

"Thank you, Mr. Porter."

"And I shall drop around now and then to see that all goes well."

"Thank you, Mr. Porter."

"Because I was always interested in Miss Costigan--very much interested, and she was very pleasant to me--and I am naturally very much interested in her successor, too."

"Thank you, Mr. Porter."

"And, by the way, Miss Flanagan," he added as his Parthian shaft, "I trust you won't worry over that little loan, you know; there's no hurry in the world about repayment."

Katie met his vacant glance with the innocent eyes of a grateful child.

"That's kind you are, Mr. Porter," she answered, "and since you say it, I shan't worry, sir."

But for all that, she did not by any means dismiss the man from her thoughts. Her true schooling had been received from the textbook of life, and she had readily observed in Porter's demeanor the tokens that announced the beginning of a chase. To one class of hunters there is no closed season, and Katie knew that this class considered her and her kind fair game.

There had been occasions when she had debated seriously, sometimes with herself and sometimes with a companion, whether it was worth while to continue the flight, whether from three to six years of captivity, of toil that must end in death, but that was at least assured of food, were not to be preferred to the continuance of a precarious dodging through the industrial forest with the possibility of starvation lurking behind every bush. But this question she had always, thus far, answered in the negative, at first because of her inherent disinclination to confess defeat in any struggle that engaged her, and at last because of Hermann Hoffmann.

To Katie's cheerful cynicism that blind optimist was an object of unfailing tenderness. She knew how he had been left, when his father's heart was broken after a long battle against an oppressive landlord system, with a gentle mother whom he worshiped and who thus became entirely dependent upon him; how he had sold the few remaining family belongings, escaped the threat of a compulsory military service that would have left Frau Hoffmann in destitution, and come, lured by the glittering promises of one of the immigration agents of a steamship company, to the land where he had been told there existed equality of opportunity for all men. And he had told Katie, in his convincingly simple English, how, a shred at a time, the fabric of his ideal had been torn away; how bitterly he had toiled only to keep his foothold; how the little mother had fallen beneath the stress, and yet how, to the last, he still retained his high hope, and still dreamed of a genuine democracy in a country where the men that worked would eventually become the owners of the wealth that their hands created.

She was thinking of this when, that night, she returned to her tenement and found waiting at her door her neighbor Carrie Berkowicz, the shirt-waist worker, who had told her of the chance of a position at the Lennox shop.

"Hello," said Katie. "Lookin' for me?"

"Yes."

"Come on in."

Katie led the way and lit the lamp, which threw a kindly light over the neat, bare room, with its stiff wooden chairs, its oilcloth-covered table, and the lithograph of Our Lady of the Rosary tacked against the room door. A gas-stove, a cot, a bureau, and a screened-off sink completed the furnishings.