Midnight 0104 September 9 1922
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Untold Secrets of the Ku Klux Klan Why | Enjoy Being Mayor by John F Hylan What Emma Goldman told Me About Love Have you sent in your prize Midnight Adventure? Ste page 2
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Your Greatest Midnight Thrill! Tell us about it. UNDREDS of “thrills” are reaching the Thrill Editor’s Desk these days. for one of the eighiteen prizes listed below. these big prizes we're going to do it if it takes us until long, long after many midnights. Better send yours in now. Don't wait. Entries postmarked after that date will not have a chance in the world. In the next issue of MIDNIGHT we're going to publish some of the first batch. Maybe yours will be among the number. Remember—confine yourself to-300 words or less. And act now. Don’t let someone elst snatch the prizes right out from under your nose. $250.00 for the best adventure. $100.00 for the next best adventure. $ 50.00 for the third best adventure. This competition is open to every- one, except em- ployees of MID- NIGHT and their families. In the event of a tie for any of the prizes, each tying contestant will re- ceive the full amount of the prize tied for. Literary excel- lence will not be a factor. Only the merit of the ad- venture from the standpoint of its being thrilling is all that counts. The prize win- ning adventures will all be pub- lished in MID- NIGHT, and those we publish which You may win one of Almost every one is eligible It’s going to be hard work to select the most thrilling, but Remember the contest is over at midnight on October 14th. $25.00 for the fourth best adventure. $10.00 for the fifth best adventure. And prizes of $5.00 cach Jor the 13 next best adventures. Volume I MID NIG HT Number 4 The Girl on the Cover - Della Vanna of the Greenwich Village Follies CONFESSIONS Untold Secrets of the Ku Klux Klan - - - - - - - - = - My Night at a Jungle Party The Life Story of Veronica ADVENTURE The Monster MYSTERY Charged With His Own Murder Thurston Articles The Morning After Why I Enjoy Being Mayor of New York How Wicked is Greenwich Village Night Life in Old Boston What Happens When a Pretty Girl Stays at a Rooming House - - 12 Her Last Thrill Cheaters’ Paradise What Emma Goldman Told Me About Love Who Has the Prettiest Shoulders - Pictorial Feature - - - Our Midnight Passengers Are You a Piker Published weekly by the MIDNIGHT RUS CIBHING COMP. -INC., 119 West 40th Street, New York, N. Y., aree North Michigan Boulevard, onicaao: Th. Les E. Zoty. Secre' plication made as ‘second-class August an 19a ot RaPeoT erpoatotice at New Taek: N. Y., under the ohot of 3, 1879 “Subs tion, $5.00 8 year. In’ Cansda—single copy, 15 cents. do not win prizes, will be paid for at our regular rates for stories. You may send in as many stories as you like, providing each covers a dif- ferent adventure. The contest be- gins at once and will close on Octo- ber 14th, 1922. The winners will be an- nounced in the No- vember 11th issue of MIDNIGHT. Address your stories, or any questions about the contest, to thie il ROLE EDITOR, MID- NIGHT, 119 West 40th Street, New York City.
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“Page Threw | SEPTEMBER | “mM (T. Ninth ; Ce es eg ae : 13-19 W408 Street * Newyork City” | NUMBER 4 | The Morning After by “Bernarr Macfadden as IASTES differ somewhat”’ said the man when he kissed the cow. me Perhaps it is fortunate that we are not all alike. If we all had the cow taste there might not be enough cows to go around. The man who enjoys a night out may be entitled to his kind of pleasure. “Getting Soused” may be one way of finding thrills. But to get the real joy out of life, one’s feelings must be free from the doped mentality that comes from the influence of alcohol. It makes one incapable of keen enjoyment. The mind stimulated by alcohol ultimately becomes sodden. The senses are blurred, deadened. The stupor that comes with being ‘‘dead drunk’’ is supposed to represent the acme of happiness to some people. Reasoning from the same viewpoint, death itself-should be heavenly. But the morning after—the drunk. You look into the mirror. Your eyes are dull and glassy. Your head is heavy. Your tongue is parched. You feel like hell itself. And you realize what a d fool you have made of yourself. You will never do it again—of course not. Until the next opportunity. There is nothing in it—nothing but d foolishness. Dissipation that comes before the morning after is a dreadful waste of opportunities, health, happiness even life. There may be a certain delight in the midst of the reveries that are enjoyed on such occasions, but it is short-lived. And you pay—pay—pay. We hear so much about women paying. The men pay just as dearly for their dissipations. The stomach is often turned into a veritable garbage can. Every inconceivable concoction of indigestible, food, and poison laden drinks are dumped into it. The night before may be all right. At least it often looks so. But the morning after tells the tale that should furnish a drastic and much needed lesson to every man and woman who is turning night into day—wasting life’s substance in pleasure which is transient and devitalizing. A few “mornings after” should be a sufficient warning for every man or woman who has the mental balance to give some consideration to the future.
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“Pege Four Untold Secrets of Told now for the first oy A midnight meeting of the Ku Klux Klan, showing the Flaming Cross of the Order appeared public press. sketch was made account. That evening the front pai awa newspaper contained little else than William J. of Kdatamen in the community. Simmons himself Klan: had planted the Fiery Cross, a newspaper assigned a reporter to get a This is the first time N A little town in Texas, where the Ku Klux that a diagram of the I Klavern has ever The reporter knew he faced a tough job but he went in the to it and in a few days laid on the editor’s desk a list of the local Ku Klux membership. list Of several hundred names, submitting con- The fidential pest of its genuineness. It seems the reporter had done a bit of Kluxin' on his own se of the this roster No hot cakes ever turned out in that town sold with such rapidity or were devoured with such zest as the front page of that paper. Housewives who rarely looked at newspapers bought, read, and carefully preserved in the top bureau drawer copies of the sheet. And, when husbands began to appear for supper, jt is said on most excellent authority, things were made so uniformly warm that a special meeting of the Klan was called to devise ways and means of conciliating the ladies, who, it seemed, could not understand why their spouses should have taken an oath never to reveal their Klanishness, even to their wives. For that is what the paper said they had done, and the paper was telling the truth. And a paragrapher on the newspaper next day suggested that the enemies of the Ku Klux would find no more certain way of smashing the Klan than ascertaining the Klan membership in each community and then writing to each ienenents wife that her husband had taken an oath to keep a secret from her, addin that if he had taken such an oath once he woul have other secrets from her later. Secret societies there are spent in this land of fraternal spirit, but the Invisitle Empire of the Emperor in Atlanta wins the self-inking toothbrush for its measures to keep the alien world darkly ignorant of its activities. And if we were asked to put our finger on the key to the large mem- bership obtained by the Ku Klux Kleagles we should select the mystery and secrecy with which every doing of the Emperor and his subject Klansmen is invested. A 100 per cent meeting of a Klan is not held in a hall, like the meetings of the ordinary secret societies jn American communities. Klans seldom have halls in which to meet. No, its members assemble in a Klavern. It is true that the Klavern sometimes comprises three rooms in a building, but more frequently it is a field or clearing in the forest or on the mountain ten or fifteen miles from the nearest town. Now, so far as we personally are concerned we do not believe the Imperial Wizard or the Kludds or Klexters or Titans of Furies will punish us for giving the world a bit of the color of the Klavern and sketching the Klonversation which ensues when Klansmen assemble in KlonkJave to greet the Cyclops and pursue the teachings of the Kloran. For we are an “‘alien’’ and therefore claim exemption from the para- graphs in the highly secret Kloran which say: “. , . I therefore, by virtue of the authority vested is me do DECREE and OFFICIALLY PROCLAIM as ‘ollows: “The Kloran is ‘the book’ of the Invisible Empire and is therefore a sacred book with our citizens, and its contents MUST be rigidly safeguarded and its teachings honest] respected. “The book or any part of it MUST not be kept or carrie. where any person of the ‘alien’ world may chance to become acquainted with its sacred contents assuch . . . “IN WARNING: A penalty sufficient will be speedily enforced for disregarding this decree in the profanation of the Kloran.” All of which is signed by His Majesty, the Imperial Wizard, William Joseph Simmons. Herewith reproduced you will observe a diagram of the
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“Page Five the Ku Klux Klan Eime by one who knows them / Klavern and of the circuitous journey of candidates for Klanishness to the sacred altar where they swear on bended knee to follow the Imperial Wizard whither he would lead them. Inspect it with care. It tells its own story better than our words. The diagrarh is the product of the hand of Wizard Simmons, as is also the Kloran. In the Kloran is laid out “the works’ of the Invisible Empire, and to the unnaturalized aliens among us it should prove interesting. “Just prior to the opening of the Klonklave”’, it says, ‘‘the Klaliff will-procure the mounted flag and stand it at and in Front of his Station; the Klokard will procure the altar flag and the un- sheathed sword and place same on his station with flag folded compactly; the Kludd will procure the vessel contaihing the dedication fluid and the Bible and put same on his station; and the Night-Hawk will procure the Fiery Cross and stand it at and in front of the station of the E. C. (Exalted Ec adheh “The Way of the Klavern’’ set out in the Kloran is known to Klansmen wherever Klansmen meet. And this is the way of the Klavern: “ZOU will approach the outer door of the inner den and give thereon one rap and strike the O., the Klextet will answer with the same. He then will open the wicket and you will ‘Gaslw.’ He will say, ‘Who are you?’ You will give him your name as Klansman ...., giving the name, number and realm of your,klan. He will say: ‘Advance and give the countersign.’ You will advance and whisper the countersign through the wicket. If you haven’t the countersign you will so inform the Klexter and produce your receipt, or otherwise satisfy him that you are no imposter. If you are qualified to enter he will open the door and say to you—‘Pass.’ “You will pass into the inner den and say: ‘Klexter, what of the night?’ If there be can- didates to be initiated or already present, he will say, ‘Strangers are near; bé prudent!’ On hearing this you will completely enrobe before entering the klavern. But if there be no candidates, and no initiatory work to be done, he wil say, ‘All are known.’ Hearing this you will not robe but enter as you are. . * * *. * “You will then approach the inner door and give thereon * * * * you will then strike the F. C.; at this the Klarogo will open the wicket and say: ‘Who is it, and what is your business?’ You will answer: ‘Iam Klansman ...... ; I seek entrance to the klavern to meet with my fellows.” If neces- sary he will demand your receipt or ascertain of the Kligrapp if you are entitled to enter; if so, he will then open the wicket and say, ‘Password.’ If same is correct, he will open the door and say, ‘Pass, Klansman.’ “You will pass clear of the door, stop, stand erect and ‘Gtsog’ and hold same until someone answers it; then pass on to the sacred altar, face the station of the E. C., then face the mounted flag atid ‘Gtnh’; then face the E. C. and ‘Gtsotf-c’; then raise ‘Tsos’ if you ate not enrobed; if you are robed you will remove your helmet instead of rais- ing Tsos; then ‘Gtsok-c,’ which will be answered by the Exalted Cyclops with ‘Tsor’; you then will take your seat. If you are robed and the others have their helmets on disguised, you will not remove our helmet, but will take your seat without disclos- ing your identity. If the Exalted Cyclops is engaged you will give ‘Tsok-c’ to the Klaliff. “To retire from the klavern while same is in session, you will advance to the sacred altar, face the Exalted Cyclops and lower ‘Tsos,’ or put on your helmet; then ‘Gtsok-c’; if he answers you with ‘Tsog,’ you may retire. If the Exalted Cyclops does not answer you, you must raise ‘Tsos’ and return to your seat. On going out of the klavern you must remove and conceal your robe and helmet in the inner den of the klavern. “During the deliberations of the klonklave, if you wish to talk to the assembly, make a motion, or even second a motion, you must arise to your feet, then address the Hagltel Cyclops by saying: ‘Your Excellency,’ and touching your forehead with the ends of the fingers of your right hand. “If he recognizes you, turn the palm of your right hand toward him and drop your hand, then you may speak. He will recognize yu by looking at you and saying ‘Klansman.’ If he does not recognize you readily, then drop your hand and resumé your seat, and later try again. No man will be in order unless he gets the recognition of the Exalted Cyclops by addressing him thusly. “One rap of the gavel calls for—‘Silence,’ and ‘attention,’ whether you stand or sit.’” . And none of the above is more- mysterious than the Klonversation engaged in by Klansmen to determine if each other are genuine. It begins with the word “Ayak,”’ which means “are you a Klansman?” to which a genuine citizen of the Empire responds ‘‘Akia,” or “A Klansman I am.” “Capowe’’ is the next word and it means ‘“‘Count- ersign and password or written evidence.” To which a Klansman would reply ‘“‘White Suprem- acy”; ‘“Kotop” is next meaning ‘Knights of the Open Palm’; and then there is “Itsub,” or “In the Sacred Unfailing Bond.” The Ku Klux Klan has no monopoly on fantastic secrt in this country, but its picturesque and sometimes embattled history have given it a place all its own among the secret orders of America. And this writer does not mean by this that the Klan is guilty of every raid, shooting, tarring or feather- ing laid at the Klavern portal. Just why Klansmen ever started “regulating” persons whom they sus- ted of wrong-doing is not quite clear. But the Klan’s own spokesmen have described it as a “great detective bureau,” reporting in secret Klavern klonklave at regular intervals on the state of the county or community, trying the absentee defendants and either absolving or convicting them of the charges made. Inasmuch as Klansmen themselves have testified under oath in courts of law to trials of this kind the truth that such trials have been held; and inasmuch as Klansmen them- selves have also testified to participation in regulat- ing parties there can be but little doubt that Klans here and there have ridden out into the night to punish men they believed guilty of offences. All of which leads to the picture of a Klan body on one of its secret missions. White-hooded, helmeted Knights assemble in automobiles or on horseback at the midnight hour, far out from the centre of population. Not even their wives or children are permitted, in the Klans- men’s oath, to know whert he is or what he is about. The outriding Klansmen are generally numerous. In the raid on the home of a winemaker at Ingle- wood, near Los Angeles, the Klan party numbered one hundred men, one of whom, a constable, was shot and killed. It is a matter of some pride with the Ku Klux that the Klan promoters have devised several tricks by which none but Klansmen, unless it is a public affair they are staging, can know of the Klan assemblage. They seem to appear from no- where and when the program is concluded, to com- pletely evaporate. Even at daylight funerals is this true. A band of Klansmen will make its appearance at the funeral of a fellow Klansman, strew the grave with flowers and be out of sight in less than the time it takes to tell it. And the Klan is proud that mourners and others have never known who the Klansmen were. This writer saw from a distance a late night Konklave in a remote fair grounds outside Atlanta at which the hooded guards were scattered for half a mile on all sides. For that night, at least, the Klan simply took possession of a considerable community. One young man, an assistant supervisor of the fair grounds, whose home was a half mile on the other side of the Kinklave, was driving that way. He was halted, conducted to a Cyclops or a Kludd-it may have been Titan or a Fury—and informed that, if he were telling the truth as to his place of residence No, my child, thie ie not a buy-a-boo and his brother. This ie the picture of two officials of the Ku Klux Klan greeting each other in one of their weird ceremonies all would go well with him; that it would be other- wise if he were telling anything but the truth. And to make certain two Klansmen were sent with him with instructions to see him safely in bed. They went with him to his home and up to his bedroom, where they remained while he disrobed and got in bed. They turned out all the lights and warned him not to leave the bedroom that night. He obeyed. There were approximately two thousand white-robed and hooded Klansmen at that Kion- klave. On the outside of the meeting-place there was no conversation, except when the young man (Continued on page 27)
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Why | Enjoy Being ® Mayor of New Yor by JohnF Hylan Written exclusively for Midnight days than any other large city in the United States. This happy climatic condition is reflected in the cheerfulness and good nature of New York’s inhabitants. From the most depressing difficulties they always emerge smiling. This is illustrated by a very recent incident. ls ‘HE City of New York is said to enjoy more sunny The privately operated transit lines serving the Borough of Brooklyn broke down during the evening rush hours. Thousands, promptly and without grumbling, walked the bridges and thousands of others gratefully availed them- selves of the bus and other transportation facilities which the city administration provided in the emergency. All accepted the situation with good grace, and the buoyancy of the spirit of New York again triumphed. It is more than an honor and a privilege to be the Mayor of a community of such good-natured citizens—it is a positive pleasure. : Then, too, there is so much that is.interesting and agree- able about the City of New York. The very skyline of Man- hattan, catching the first glimpse of the immigrant, is often an allurement of such witchery as to prevent new arrivals from seeking their fortunes elsewhere. Situated between islands, rivers and seas, its waterfront receiving the rich argosies of every land, its streets alive with the busy hum and orderly movement of ceaseless traffic, its towering cathedrals of business and finance, its countless shops and stores with tempting arrays of varied merchandise, its well-appointed hotels, its incomparable parks and places of amusement and recreation, and its loyal guardians of life and property are among the many striking features which contribute to New York’s pre-eminence as the wonder city of the world. They are a source of never- ending pride to native New Yorkers as well as the occasioner of the instant admiration of every visitor. They are among the things which make the City’s Chief Executive feel proud of his official position and very humble at the thought of the responsibilities which that position entails, It should be a very simple matter to say a good word about a city such as New York, particularly when it is only necessary to tell the truth. Yet there are those who never cease. to speak evil of it. They resent an orderly administration of the municipal govern- ment, and are disturbed if the people are permitted to lead free, comfortable and happy lives. They indulge in malicious and unwarranted criticism of officials whom they cannot debase to their own ends. These self-appointed critics are found for the most part among the little selfish cliques that are forever trying to get something for nothing. These in- dividuals and interests either want easy money gained from vice, gambling and underworld connections, or they want to steal public property. When frustrated they call upon their soulless hirelings on the kept press to defame the city, hoping thereby to drive from office the public officials who have refused to be their subservient tools. Fortunately, the average New Yorker knows the motive for these denouncements by disappointed elements. Hence, all such attacks are promptly discounted. It is only people at a distance who are misled for a time by the false reports about conditions in this city that have been circulated throughout the country. A visit to the City of New York soon dispels such wrong impressions. It is also possible that at times an anti-administration newspaper will tell the truth. The ‘‘New York Times” in its Sunday Magazine sections of recent date admitted that the streets of New York were as safe as any visitor's own Main Street and that if one were to keep his illusions about the supposed terrors of New York he had better stay at home. This is very funny, coming from the “Times.” It is one of the most amusing things I have encountered since taking up the duties of the Mayor. The day-to-day tasks confronting the Mayor of this city are almost inconceivable in their complexity and number. They not alone keep one’s interest and enthusiasm keenly alive, but present innumerable opportunities for rendering genuine public service in the interest of all the people. It is true that they involve plenty of hard work. But this is a burden which helps to keep one young, at least in spirit. Hence, I must confess that I do enjoy being the Mayor of the City of New York.
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ight ata ungle Part arid periodical about wild parties and orgies of various sorts attributed exclusively to film folk, that my sense of justice begins to be outraged. Doubtless there are many undesirable creatures in the screen world, and doubtless also, everything they do which gives a chance for publicity, either good or bad, is quickly recorded in print. But they are not the only offenders—far from it. How theat- rical people live, work, and amuse themselves makes live reading at the breakfast table, but how about Mr. Banker, Mr. Lawyer, Mr. Merchant, Mr. Doctor, and their wives, and sons, and daughters. We seldom hear about them. It is my private opinion, formed from observation, that the same proportion of undesirables exists among these, as among the condemned film folk, the chief difference being, so far as I can discern, that the screen people don’t care about what people say or think of them, while the others shield with a fury almost maniacal both their prurient exploits and their hypocritical lives. And because they are able to do this, the world thinks they are better. Are they. Are they even as good. They pretend to be something they are not, and which one of them is fit to cast stones. I have worked in many different parts of the country at various trades and occupations, and I have seen with my own eyes things every righteous American, who has the welfare of this great republic at heart should know. I haye been fortunate in securing permission from the editor ofp MIDNIGHT to set forth in unvarnished terms certain shocking but nevertheless true experiences of my own. I am twenty-five and good looking. My skin is fair and smooth, my form supple. My eyes are deep green and fringed with heavy black lashes. A mop of lustrous brown hair crowns my head which I carry quite high. I’ve been told that I am stylish too, and that I possess in addition, a robust charm peculiarly characteristic of Salt Lake girls, for that is my home. There I was born and raised; there I fan work at twelve dollars a week, in the adver- tising section of a big daily. I have always had aspirations. I feel the beauty of my own good health, and Adam Hale who is very friendly with the owner of our paper, always goes vut of his way, coming in by a side door and crossing the toyer to my counter before taking the elevator | HAVE of late read so much both in press The first of a series of stories being the experiences of a woman who worked for a living. The anonymous author of this feature knows whereof she speaks. She has actually par- ticipated in the experiences she mentions, and to many her point will be well taken. This is by no means attempted as a vindication or as a condemna- tion of any class in business or society. It is merely the exper- iences of one girl and the reader will of course draw his or her own conclusions. Few things that have been written on this subject will so grip and so thrill as this young girl’s narrative and its astounding conclusion. upstairs, that he may pause a moment and remind me of my good looks. On the morning this story begins he stopped longer than usual. The other girls watched him as he leaned forward intently, and slowly put his big bronzed hand on Ey arm. I tried to withdraw but he gripped me tightly. “Big stuff,” twitted my companions when he finally left. I reddened. “You'll be getting a bid next. swel !”’ That evening when the clock in the court-house tower struck six, I left my seat hastily, rushed for He's a regular my hat, punched the time-clock, and hurried into - the street. As I turned to the left I came to an alley, and proceeded to cross it. I was stopped by Adam who stepped forward from the shadows, and seizing my arm, walked on with me. “We're going to take a ride before we go to dinner.” He spoke with assurance, I looked up with surprise: “Ride? Dinner?” We had turned into Second West. There near the corner stood an elaborate sport roadster— am's. “Get in girl,” and he fairly pushed me into the car, then drove off in haste. “You think that’s all I’m good for, don’t you?” came in annoyed tones in response to my amuse- ment. Then a long silence ensued. We had reached the highest point in the road. He stopped and parked the car to one side. We got out and crossed the high-way to take in the view. Evening shadows were sliding down the sides of the Wasatch and drifting patches of mist were coming up from the Great Salt Lake and settling down over the green valley at our feet. The peaceful beauty of the evening seemed to stir Adam. He folded his strong arms across his broad chest and stared into the distance. Suddenly he turned and looked at me with one of those overpowering sort of looks that betrays the mighty beast. I moved to return to the car. “Not yet,’ he shouted, grabbing me by the wrist and holding me in place. ‘You're as clammy as “Page Seven. 5) a jellyfish! aren’t you human?” and he seized me in his arms and lifting me up, hastened down the road with me as fast as he could go. In the distance was a weather-beaten, deserted shack just fifty feet or so off the roadway. I felt instinctively he was headed for there. I struggled to be free, but the more I twisted the tighter he gripped me. As we drew close to the shanty, and were just about to leave the highway, a big Packard car came down over the brow of the hill at high speed. As it dashed by, a woman and two children looked back at us through a cloud of dust. “Damn my luck!” mumbled Adam dropping me in haste, then seizing my hand he turned about and began running up the hill again toward his roadster, dragging me behind him. “No chance for a romantic cuss in this bloomin’ Lica he growled shoving me into the seat hur- tiedly and ieoring down beside me, a worried look on his face. “Perhaps nobody saw us kid. They were going awfully fast weren't they. And it’s hard to figure out a face through that kind of dust. Anyway here’ « where Adam hits the high spots, we'll go it seventy’ miles and strike the edge of town before they can even wind around and come back on us; there’s no turning place for five miles ahead of them,” and he threw the clutch out and off we shot. After a painful silence during which he devoted his entire attention to Keeping the car on the road at seventy an hour, he sai paces “T’ll drop you as soon as we strike a street car, and then steer for the club. We'll have a nice little diriner some other day, eh, darling?” I was disturbed but I refrained from asking any questions, and didn’t mind the seventy miles rate of speeding, nor the street car ride back to town by myself though it struck me as being all very funny, and hardly the way of a gentleman, for at the time I did not know much about Adam Hale. I had never heard about his family, of a wife and two children. That his wife was rather pretty, and had married him, well, just to be married and have someone to support her. She was the daughter of a prominent lawyer who nursed the ambition of peonni governor of the state. Long before Adam ha married Muriel Hedges, old Hedges, her father, had used his political influence and civic pull to divert the development of the city in the direction of the Hale Department Store, which was owned and managed by Adam’s father. As a natural result of this interest on his part, Hale and his son Adam had been more than eager to assist Hedges in the furtherance of his political aspirations. (Continued on page 23)
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“Page Eight CHow Wicked is Below—One of the dark, eerie streets that give the visitor to Greenwich Village « thrill at midnight By Richard Hoyt HAVE been asked, probably hundreds of times, how wicked I consider Greenwich Village to be. Because I am one of the oldest inhabitants of the much-discussed neighborhood, persons in all walks of life fire the question at me. This by no means implies that I am an ancient graybeard, born and raised in what was formerly known as the “Ninth Ward” of Manhattan. Far from it. Iam not yet middle-aged. But I am an original citizen of the strange world of make-believe—of art and aspiration, frivolity and madcap morals—which the average inquirer has in mind when he speaks of Green- wich Village. It is barely nine years old, this new “Latin Quarter” of America, and I have lived in the heart of it since it was founded in the autumn of 1913, I am happy there.: Nothing would induce me to live in any other section of.New York. Yet I am aware that, from the old-fashioned point of view, it is open to criticism. I_ pro to tell the readers of MIDNIGHT -the truth, as I see it, regarding. my home town. But first, let me explain.to what a phenomenal extent the matter is of public interest. To thousands of young people all over the United States, New York means nothing: more nor less than— Greenwich Village. Every aspirant to fame as a writer or artist has undoubt- edly made up his mind to move to “The Village” just as soon as he has saved enough money to cover his railroad fare and the first month’s rent of a garret. Many would-be actors are sure it would be more agreeable to live there than in the old theatrical neighbor- hood of Times Square. Innumerable persons whose tastes are unconventional, but who have no idea of practising any of the arts, are passionately eager to join the arm, of studio-dwellers and tea-room habitues in the well-adver- tised Bohemia of the New World. And practically everyone, from Maine to California, hopes at least to wander as a tourist some day through the quaint old streets branching out from Washington Square. Strange, is it not, that the mushroom growth of a single generation should become little short of a national obsession? Scarcely strange, however, when one Below—A famouse Greenwich Village alley in winter when most of the students and denizens of the quarter are behind shuttered windows sipping their forbidden Chianti remembers that both its friends’ and its enemies have made it out to be so alluringly ‘wicked! Human nature is such that we enjoy a spice of lawlessness with our or- mance. The word has been passed around that the Village is dengercns for the unsophisticated; that every- thing there is free, from verse to kisses; that a girl or boy falling under its influence will never again be contented with the simple joys of life. Admitting that Greenwich Village is wicked, how wicked is it? And how dangerous? Nearly everyone has read ‘‘Scenes de la Vie de Boheme,” on which the opera, ‘‘La Boheme,” was founded. In that book, He: Murger fixed for the generations that fol- lowed him the romantic conception of life in the students’ quarter of a great capital. urger wrote about Paris as By the Founder of the Greenwich Village idea. he knew it in the late Thirties and Forties of the last century. He threw a veil of charming illusion over his world. His artists, poets and musicians were all unmoral and shiftless, yet noble-hearted; the girls that bore them company were naughty, but nice. The conventions were smashed because they were intended to apply to ordinary people, and not to budding geniuses The sowing of wild oats was elevated into a virtue. This view of things could not fail to appeal to oungsters who had broken away from family ties. hough the Latin Qurter of Paris is inclined now- adays to laugh at Murger as a sentimentalist, it has’nt got very far away from the kind of bohemianisin he reached. And Greenwich Village is as close a copy of aris as it is possible to get in a city with New York's Augie =aan background. he one point overlooked by the adolescent dreamers of both New York and Paris, in their effort to create an ideal world of artistic freedom and freedom in art, has been the danger of commercialization on the part of selfish interlopers. There is money for the showman in any way of life that can be played up as being shocking. - It is very easy to hoax the public with manufactured “sights."’ Still easier is it to dazzle the recruit to Village life and encourage him to become a_ mere loafer in dancehalls and tea-rooms which flourish at his expense. In my opinion, fifty per cent of the people one sees in Greenwich Village are rubbernecks or idlers. About thirty per cent are romantic youngsters, who like the life and have found a way of supporting themselves in non-artistic pursuits. Ten per cent, maybe, are serious practitioners of one or other of the arts. The remaining ten per cent may be classed as vicious—conductors of dives, dealers in dope, pan- ders, gunmen and what not. In a quarter thus populated, the current of exist- ence athens madly. There is much surface glitter, much hysterical posing and, inevitably, a certain amount of evil under the surface. For the real undergraduate in art or letters, the good in Greenwich Village outweighs the bad. He gets an immediate contact with broad-minded persons, which was denied to him in the old days. Then, a student arriving in New York had no choice but to take a room in some commonplace rooming-house. Months might pass before he encountered a single individual engaged in the work he expected to do. . Oyr new downtown bohemia serves as a sort of clear- ing-house of talent. It is an excellent place for the strong, though a mighty dangerous one for the weak. The former type is benefitted by a residence of two or three years theres he or she may be trusted to move away later on and settle down to the strenuous labor of building a career. If the weak succumb, that is the price that society must expect to pay for increased sophistication. The story of the founding of Greenwich Village has never before been accurately told. It is as follows: The Liberal Club, since famous as the patron of some of the wildest masquerade dances ever held in New York, was being run ‘in 1931 as ‘a rather dull debating association. Its ‘interests were mainly political. The Reverend Percy Stickney Grant, of the Church of the Ascension, was president. The club rooms were located on East Nineteenth Street. A number of the members, led by Ernest Holcombe, Leigh I. Holdredge, W. A. Roberts and Berkeley Tobey came to the conclusion that the club needed to have new life put into it. They started a revolt which ended with the resignation of the board o directors. Ernest Holcombe was thereupon élected president. It was decided to move the club to some part of town where it could become a bohemian center. Washing- ton Square was favored ‘simply because it was-quaint and old-fashioned, but any other quiet neighborhood would have been acceptable. The four men named above were authorized to look for a suitable house. About this time, Paula Holladay, better known as “Polly,” came to see the new directors of the Liberal Club. She stated that she was going to start a restaur-
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SP Nine ant, and for the sake of the mutual advantages to be had from co-operation was willing to place it in At right—Famous Be- hoetti’s at the midnight Greenwich Village? any building chosen by the club. he house, 133 Macdougal Street, where Green- wich Village was born, was discovered by Berkeley Tobey. Liberal Club rented the first floor, and furnished the rooms for social purposes, includ- ing dancing. A hardwood parquet wa3 put down, anda cae bought on the installment pan. Miss Holladay opened her restaurant onan exceed- ingly modest scale in the basement. At that time, there was not a single tea-room, dance hall or novelty shop in that section of town. The only restaurants were a few Italian table d’hotes, a chop cea place and a bakery or two on Sixth Avenue. ere were studios on Washington Square South and on West Tenth Street, but these belonged to an earlier day and were occupied by old painters. The re-modeliag of houses into two- room studio apartments had not comnznced. The population, especially in Greenwich Village proper which is west of Sixth Avenue and south of Four- teenth Street, was strictly middle-class and old New York. Most families owned their own homes and had lived in the same spot for generations. Against this background a Latin Quarter de- velopéd overnight. Polly Holladay’s restaurant had more to do with it at first than the Liberal Club. Prominent writers, artists and musicians flocked to the quaint basement. Then, the younger folks began to come. They sat around every nizht until after midnight, aeoking beer (real beer in those days), smoking cigarettes and talking about their ambitions. From time to time, some group would interrupt the ta.k and go upstairs and dance, It was a flurry in bohemianism, whith no one thought would go much farther. But soon the space at Polly’s became hopelessly overcrowded. ‘ompeting restaurants were opened. Polly her- self moved to Washington Place, to Fourth Street and finally to Sheridan Square. The Liberal Club launched its famous Pagan Rout balls at Webster Hall, and Greenwich Village took more or less pesmsiene form. Its outstanding features are late hours and jazz, a thick pall of tobacco smoke, tea served openly and moonshine sold behind closed doors, free-and-easy flirtation and absolutely un- limited dancing. To-day, scores of establishments flourish in imitation of the pioneers. I find sixty-two listed in “The Quill,” a Village magazine published by Bobby Edwards, of ukelele fame. And there are many others. The “Main Street” of Greenwich Village has been described as beginning at Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue, running west to Sixth then down Christo- her Street to Fourth Street, east along Fourth to e acdougal Street and dowr Macdougal to Third treet. The more celebrated resorts are undoubtedly to- be found along this route. Let me name some of them: “The Pirate’s Den,” a cellar dance hall, which employs pullers in to stand on the sidewalk in comic opera costumes of the kind supposed to have been worn by Captain Kidd and his merry crew. The prices charged are remarkably high when one considers the squalor of the surroundings. “Romany Marie's,’ a queer, dark eating place, with bizarre trappings, which successfully achieves the atmosphere of many a resort of the kind in Montmarte. The ‘oprietress calls herself a Rumanian gvnsy. She serves good Oriental coffee. * The “Greenwich Village Inn,” a pretentious restaurant, competently managed, where up-town prices are charged. The final home of ‘‘Polly’s,” though Polly herself has been forced out and is running a small dining room at 36 Perry Street. “The Jolly Friars,” an elaborate restaurant and dance hall, employing a well-known jazz band. It runs through the block from Fourth Street to Sixth Avenue. “The Red Head,” a new place, with atmosphere to burn. It reminds me of certain resorts on the Bowery of long ago, sufficiently veneered with 1922 bohemianism to get by. “The Pepper Pot,” a restaurant conducted by a rlour. It is here that Greenwich Village meets and dines. Below—Thie is sup- posed to be a picturesque spot in the village. This may renind the visitor of a side street back home—but it is in the heart of New York and the property on which this old house is situated is probably worth one hundredthousanddollare retired motion picture actor, named ‘Doc’ Sher- lock. On the back of his menu, Doc blurbs the business by remarking that The Pepper Pot “gets into your heart, and you will never be quite able to lose the magic of it all the days of your life. Oft will you think of it when far away—of it and of the Village. The home of romance. A sort of make- believe land which will never learn to be modern and prosaic.” “The Bamboo Forest,” a restaurant managed by Chinese students from Columbia. The “T. N. T.” Under this incendiary name is disguised all that remains of the Liberal Club, while the historic basement of 133 Macdougal Street has been absorbed into a huge Italian restaurant called ‘The Golden Eagle. In front of the resorts of Greenwich Village hundreds of taxicabs and private automobiles stand parked “every night. Thousands of visitors from up-town flock there in search of thrills, and are not disappointed. Other tourists prowl through the streets, halting to peer into the gaudily decked 4 1 4 al. nae windows of curio shops and now and then plucking up the cour: to enter a tea-room. How wic! is this hysterical life, after all. between romance and fraud, evil or otherwise, I am convinced that it is about fifty-fifty. I have no statistics, and I am by no means a severe critic of evil. But I do know that Greenwich Village is a per from which the weak should keep away, lor their own good. Do You Believe in Mind Reading? In next week’s MIDNIGHT, Hope Eden, most famous of all living mindreaders re- lates some of her most thrill- ing experiences. Among other things she gives an amusing list of the questions women ask her. Some of them are amusing, some are wistful—but all of them — and all that Miss Eden has to say will give you a particular insight into the business of reading the hu- man mind. “The Amazing Questions You Women Ask Me’’ is the title of the feature. In next week’s MIDNIGHT,
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“Page Ten. The Monster THE “Red” MacKenzie. . CAST Wilton Lackaye, who never did a more lished and sinister impersonation— ‘not even in Svenglia. McKay Morris, whose fall into'uncon- sciousness in the sec- ond act, was one of the big thrills. It was a wonder he didn’t break his neck. Frank McCormack, Upon whom all the humor fell. Some- times he was funny; sometimes he only tried to be funny. Margarite Risser, who speaks her lines just like a nice French girl would, or at least should speak them. When the curtain rises on the first act of “The Monster’ at the 39th Street Theatre, a panorama of rain and wind- swept night road is revealed down which the headlights of an automobile creep through the driving wind and rain. Suddenly there is a crash, followed by an explosion. The automobile has gone over a culvert and a bap rte thrills has begun. en the darkness softens again, the interior of a house is disclosed—a strange and weird apartment, in which strange and weird things immediately begin to happen. At first it is rather difficult to make out everything. A man, plainly very much frightened, is prowling around in the dark—green lights appear and disappear mysteriously in the gloom—and a door is forced back, against the protesting hand of the man in the dark. A furious knocking sounds at the outer door— all the more clamorous and demanding because of a brief lull in the rattle and swish of the storm. The prowler in the room conceals himself behind a sofa, shuddering with fear as he beholds the giant figure of a negro spring noiselessly S they used to say in the dime novels, he is a dark and stormy night. Dr. Ziska (Wilton Lack- aye) looks at Julie (Mar- guerite Risser) as if he was going to carve her up. This is Julie after she steps down. from the operating table. It was a@ narrow escape, com- rades. from a coffin. like box at at the other end of the room. The negro opens the door—but vanishes through a _ wall panel before he can be seen. A man with a girl in his‘arms rushes in, the door falling shut, as if closed by invisible hands. Before another five minutes have passed, the man and the girl he has rescued from the wrecked automobile, together with ourselves in the audience, discover that this is in- deed a house of mystery. The man is named Bruce. The girl is Julie Carter, a French emigrant, whose automobile was wrecked apparently without cause. and the two were prev- iously acquainted in Paris. When they meet the other occupant of the room— the man who has been prowling around in the dark—they receive some disquieting information. He explains that he is a tramp who has sought shclter from the storm in this house. But now he wishes that he had stayed outside. “Why ?” ask Julie and Bruce in concert. “You'll see,” replies the tramp, ‘Red’’ MacKenzie. “You just wait and you will see.” They do see! : Somewhere in the very bowels of the house a bell sounds ponderously, clangingly. It is followed im- mediately by a long and piercing wail—like a moan drawn with torture from a damned soul. A specter glides noisclessly and with sinister stealth down the staircase. An upper cupboard door is thrown open and the neckless head of the giant African appears and disappears. Then Bruce makes a singular discovery. Over the edge of a chair they discern a round bald head. It is the head of a mis-shapen dwarf, without any face at all. “Someone is cither asleep—or dead,” remarks Bruce and is about to try to awaken the quiet figure when a very fury of sounds and ugly noises shriek through the house. The door at the top of the staircase opens and through it emerges a plume of purple smoke.. Behind it comes a gentleman in a dressing gown, smoking a cigar- ette from a long cigarette holder. “Who are you?” demands Bruce, voicing the appre- hensive question of the three. “IT am your host,” replies the gentleman. ‘‘For the present—call me Ziska. Doctor Ziska if you please!” _ Dr. Ziska is even more portentous, more terrible than the extra-ordinary house over which he exercises so peculiar a sovereignty. His manner is suave, gracious, even blandiloquent—yet it seems (Continued on page 2”)
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“Page Gleven Night Li know Boston from stem to stern, from the narrow, crooked streets of her South End where the gangsters and thieves and all the rest of the underworld vermin congregate, to the broad, sweeping and picturesque highways of the fashionable Back Bay and Commonwealth Avenue sections I will say that I lived there for a number of years. Ten to be exact. Father sent me to Harvard to study law some fifteen or twenty years ago and of course all, or nearly all, college men hit the primrose path oc- casionally and when they hit it most of the natives know that they are in town. The college boy filled with ‘‘hooch” is about as noisy as a red skin filled with fire water. Father and.mother had an idea that a lawyer was the last word in a career. No other calling in life compared with Y the way of an introduction and also for the purpose of convincing you that I The yard at Harvard, where college men keep out of trouble if they only stay there. that ot the lawyer, so off to Harvard I must go whether I liked it or not. It was the height of their ambition that I become a noted barrister and while I disappointed them I didn’t get very far away from the atmosph- phere of Blackstone. I may have missed the legal atmosphere by less than a city block. I was always close to it. Sometimes on the edge of it and sometimes in the middle of it right up to my neck, for instead of becoming a noted law yer I became a noted bank burglar. As a college man I had entree to all the smart social sets. As a bank burglar I had entree to the under- world of Boston. It is my opinion, and I believe that it is also yours, that these connections enable me to say that I am peculiarly well fitted to talk about the night life of the city that Paul Revere and the Battle of Bunker Hill put on the map! I have lived there when the old historical burg was wide open, when the sky was the limit and when one could buy a bottle of Mumms for a five spot or a bottle of perfectly good The Pilgrim’s Monument at Plymouth. some of the carryings-on of their descendants they would turn over in their liquor for a dollar. In those days you could have just as much fun in Boston as you ¢ould in New York if you knew where to go. I have always heard the town referred to as “cultured and conservative Boston,” and I have frequently said to myself “Why this cultured and conservative stuff? Where do they get that idea? Who was the guy that conferred that monicker upon the city? Who was the press agent that gave it circulation?” I could never understand why everybody spoke of Boston as being ‘‘cultured and conservative.” I never found any more culture in Boston than I have found in Frisco or Chicago or Tombstone, Arizona. I have heard thousands of Bostonians say ‘aint them grand” and “I have went.” I have seen thousands of them use the knife instead of the fork, yoddle the coffee with the spoon in the cup and then promenade along the commons with a tooth pick in the mouth. “Cultured Boston?” graves. Maybe they have turned over. Who knows? If our Pilgrim Fathers could see fe in Old Boston No, indeed, Boston is not conservative. It is just as democratic and just as sporty and just as full of life as any other city in the United States. She was all this before prohibition and she is still all of this today. She has produced some of the greatest statesmen that ever lived and she has also produced some of the greatest bank burglars that ever lived and some of the greatest bandits that ever halted a train or a stage coach. ‘Why it hasn’t been so very long ago that one of her “tin horn gamblers” was the guiding spirit and the chief plotter in the White Sox baseball scandal. Only recently her entire police force went out on a strike. Only recently one of her District Attorneys and one of her prominent lawyers were disbarred for separating a bunch of “innocents’’ from their “dough.” Boston is as wild as Maricopa Junction, Arizona where the indians make the squaws do all the work, The old North Church in Boston, in the shadow of which many a wild party is pulled off. It was in the tower of this church that the lamp was lighted for Paul Revere. Now that I've got that off my chest let’s take a look at the night life of the city. As one who knows, I can tell you that the night life of Boston is infinitely more spec- tacular than the night life of New York. The only difference between the New Yorker and the Bostonian is that the former comes out in the open with his flask and says ‘‘To Hell with everybody;’’ the latter goes back into the fashionable dens of the Back Bay district and carries on his orgies behind the portiers. The reformers haven’t succeeded in reform- ing Boston any more than they have suc- ceeded in reforming New York. There is still a thrill in the night life of Boston, more so in fact than there was five or ten or fifteen years ago when I first entered Harvard. I have seen things in the whirl of Bean- town in the early hours that reminded me of* Fargo and Butte and El Paso when “Black Bart” and “High Card Mike” and “Frisco Any used to ride horseback right into the gambling houses, shoot the lights out and then ride out again with all the dough. When I was in Boston three or four months (Continued on page 30)
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“Page Jwelve What Happens When a Pretty Girl Stays ina Rooming Hous NC thii| 4 \l" is ww lives on Riverside Drive, takes a milk rub before retiring, and goes to sleep with the fizz of champagne jazzing her off.to dream- land—haven’t yet got our number. If I should say that a. Follies girl, far from being a working girl de luxe, is a homeless alley cat in comparison to her type-hitting sisters, you'd probably label me a candidate for Bloomingdale. But here it is: a beautiful young girl—plus clothes, plus the theatrical profession—has hardly a pillow to lay her Dutch clip. Nobody wants her. Every lesaiede from the ross to South Ferry looks on a “chorus girl’ with disgust, contempt—and sus- icion. Let me say right now that getting yourself nded in the Ziegfeld Follies isn’t half the job as poring yourself landed in a respectable rooming- jouse in New York if you appear to be able to ize a Bronx cocktail from a fruit lemonade. But first let me tell you a little about myself. Tam what you might call a ‘‘proudly-reared New England girl.” ness knows how many God- fearing grandmothers and stern, virtuous maiden aunts made me into the perfect New England bloom that I am. (It sounds as if I were putting it on rather thick, doesn’t it, but the editor of Midnight Magazine has kindly allowed me that convenient cloak of anoymity under which a ‘writer’ can tack to her family tree a few extra fruit-bearing grafts. But this much is authentic: Quoting the words of a Broadway manager, I have a voice “‘like a soaring lark at nightfall or like a bobolink at dawn, and am as sweet and cute as a peach.” Well, I came to New York, as does any young thing who has a pretty face or figure, or any other talent to market—and camped my trunk at that very estimable institution, the Young Womens Christian Association. Now far be it from me to epee disparingly of the Y. W.; despite the fact that I considered it a prim, stodgy old place, it Tis: folk who think every Follies girl | Rooms | To LET | — \ 4 by aT) 2 wee tneye | | | A case recently came to the public wherein a young girl claimed that it was almost impossible to get a room ina New York furnished rooming house. This young lady her- self experienced the incidents she tells about, and we think you will agree with her or you must at least concede that she has presented her case in an altogether new light and one that will bear analyzing by thoughtful people. remains that the Y’s registration clerk ee into practically the only female who didn’t refuse me a pass-key use I was an “‘actress.” I stayed there two weeks. I left, not because I was chilled out, but because the ‘institutional air” and the late- slips got my nerve. Can you imagine—you had to sign up if you expected to stay out later than 12:30 P. M! This for one in .my profession was like a minister breaking the Volstead act every night in the week. However, I came to regard the y. W. as manna in heaven in contrast to other places I came to know. I decided that I would keep dark any allusions to * a Mr. Ziegfeld’s Midnight Roof or the fact I was in the habit of accepting 36-karat diamond wrist- watches from bald-headed millionaires! But the dramatic irony of the thing, as Euripides or some old-timer put it, was that my status wasn’t rated at the place I applied. It was a leasant looking brown-stone dwelling up around 125th Street, whose exact location would better have been in the secret files of the police record. The white marcelled wave of the landlady and her impressive English accent should have been warning enough. She looked at me over her high-bridged nose and wearily waved me to a ahive- enconed maid who at that moment appeared. Fact is, there was a little ? +i ¥ second-floor rear which happened to be vacant and which I might have at a low price, as a concession. As I look back, the gods themselves must have impelled me to send for just my new dog-skin grip— and not my trunk, If I had been foolhardy and arrived that night fully manned, well . . . HEN I look back at that night in my rooming- Y house career, sometimes wonder that my hair didn’t turn that same beautiful whiteness of the mistress of the house. It's rather difficult to know where to begin at the recital of the night's events, but perhaps 10 P. M. was the hour when I felt a strange uneasiness creep over me. Nothing more definite than a chill sensa- tion in my spine when I heard a light, bubbling laugh and a man’s hoarse rejoinder filter up from the floor below. I listened attentively. ter a minute or two I heard a short, muffled sound—like a cork popping. More tinkling laughter. Before another hour had passed, I was pacing my room like a caged cat. Sleep was impossible, but I slipped out my pink silk kimona from my grip, flung myself on the bed and shut my eyes tight. Gradually the house filled with noise—from across the hall came a giggling shriek, sounds of men’s laughter, and strange rustlings. Once a man stumbled up the stairs—I could almost smell his liquor-laden breath—and let himself into the room next to mine. At that I sat up in bed, scenting trouble. __ By this time I gritted my teeth and swore that if there was going to be a mix-up, I was ready for it. Now please don’t laugh—I hauled a chair in front of the door, seated myself with a bang, and scowled at the doorknob. I just sat there waiting for that knob to turn—which it did. Of course, you know by this time what kind of a “house” I had wandered into. Much later I figured out that the landlady, upon sighting my ide sae baby-doll face and up-to-the-minute wardrobe, reckoned I was natur- ally the kind looking for a room with “privileges,” Though I appreciated her rare thoughtfulness, 1 neyer went back to thank her for it! (Continued on page 23)
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“Page Thirteen. H TN | | I gyatemn@ nH WH i ir A | tthe lta | te (itt Here’s a gruesome, midnight tale worthy of medieval Italy—the Italy of the Renaissance. That it takes place today, in our own time, takes nothing away from the thrill it imparts in the unfolding.of its grim details; the shock of its startling denouement. It is written by Howard R. Marsh, a new author to Midnight’s readers. ast Thrill 7 i i | / We want strong, gripping, thrilling stories like this for ‘Midnight.”’ If you have such a story, send it to us, and if we can use it we will be very happy to send you a check R. LABADIE entered his apartment very ater . He left his overcoat and medicine case in the hall and softly opened the door in the library. With the noiseless tread he had learned in the sickroom, he stepped across the threshhold. “Hello there!’’ His greeting sounded casual enough. “Oh!” There was a suden flurry on the chintz-covered couch in front of the fireplace. “Oh . . . . Why, hello. You're back early.” “Yes. Unexpectedly early." Dr. Labadie smiled grimly as he noted how swiftly his wife's fingers smoothed her bright hair; he smiled again as another figure rose from the couch and came towards him, hand extended. “Glad to see you, Doctor.” “Really?” Dr. Labadie’s polite exclamation was tinged with sarcasm. He ignored the extended hand and crossed over to stand before the fireplace, his hands gripped behind his back. For a silent moment the three people in the room stared at each other as though gauging the strength for battle. Eleanor Labadie, twenty-four or five, blue-eyed, ineffectual. Dr. Labadie, whose shadowed eyes emphasized the leonine quality of his shaggy, gray-black head and massive shoulders. Young Phillip Van Coptra, whose black hair rose in a smooth, oily pompadour from ‘his sharp-featured, small-souled face—a vain lad of twenty. These were the three. Dr. Labadie spoke. “I talked with Kuhlman today,” he said conversationally. ‘He's gaara of The Palace, you know. He discussed the popular movies. id thing. He says that the triangle stuff, old and honored, has played out completely on the screen. The people are sick of it. They want something more original than the two-man-and-a-woman proposition. Yes, the old triangle is ni “Really. How interesting.” “Yes. Isn't it? Which brings me to the point. Eleanor, this affair of yours is played out, too . 3 No, don't lie about it. I’m not blind. Besides, Van Coptra, being young and enthusiastic has boasted at the Club, I understand. Quite a conquest, eh, Van Coptra? Winning the young wife of an old doctor who is away from home most of the time? But come! I mustn't be dramatic about it. It’s youth calling for youth, I suppose; all that rot. But just, the same this little triangle breaks ip right now.” “But Doctor: vt “No, no denials. Useless, you know. Might hurt Eleanor’s feelings, too. I’ve been thinking this thing over. Here’s the old passe triangle situation. One side must be eliminated, isn’t it so? All right. But how to eliminate? I don't care to stage the self-sacrificing act. Van Coptra, you could retire from the figure, but that wouldnt satisfy me; I'd be afraid you’d come back some time after the game. Besides, you have earned a little punishment. Eleanor, you arc, the apex of the triangle; to eliminate you would satisfy neither Van Coptra nor myself. This is the solution that comes to my mind— either Van Coptra or myself must be forcibly eliminated. How? Why by death, of course. That’s the usual way—one must die. . . . . Ha! Vari Coptra, that’s an ugly word isn't it? Die . ... . Much uglier at twenty than at forty, perhaps. That gives me the odds; I’m not afraid to die, and you, of course are. Still, the fairest way I see is—a duel.” “‘S—duel?"’ Van Coptra moistened his lips with his tongue. “Yes, a duel; a duel to death. It’s possible; it’s easy. Duels are as old as the triangle itself. It is, it always has been, the best way out, As the offended party—what a rare justice that is! I have the old time right to kill you; still more just is that you have an equal chance tokillme. Shalll proceed ..... Nothingtosay? . .. . Well, I’ve studied duels lately; they’re devilishly interesting, particularly the recent one. The two divers who fought to death beneath the Chesapeake, the two Frenchmen who killed each other from balloons, (Continued on page 27)
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ee steer, The Cheaters Paradise HE “Cheaters’ Paradise!’ Sweet strains of music, soft lights, deep carpets, skillfully arranged mirrors, @ slowly revolving, miniature circular dance floor—with all ‘round a suggestion, in decoration, of white, lotos, and green leaf and silver gilt statuse of human form divine—all contribute to an atmos- phere at once beguiling, stimulating and esoteric to the last degree. : A suave head waiter greets you at the door and a simpering Gre>k youth snatches your hat and oat from you as he hands you a bit of cardboard that will help you buy back your raiment later. The male patrons of this so-called paradise range all the way from the callow clerk, furtively counting his meager change in the dim light of a half dark- ened corner, to the old buck with one foot in the grave—but in whose shriveled breast the love light still flickers above an altar buried in ashes. They call it the ‘Cheaters’ Paradise.” And so it is. For most of the men you see there are married— though not to their perfumed companions and many of the women have left a pot of soup simmer- ing on the back of the stove, a baby in care of an obliging neighbor, or a husband “op the road” or bending over a desk in lower Broaway. Personally, as I sat there, one afternoon, facing one of these dear creatures who are far more charm- ing than charitable, I wondered; I wondered what on earth there was in human nature so base as to make a man risk everything he really loves for an hour in the company of a woman unfit, mentally and morally, to breathe in the same air as his own wife. Or even to be mentioned in writing with her in the same sentence. Even at that moment, listening, or pretending to listen, to the idle chatter of this woman, I could picture to myself just what my wife was doing. It was one o’clock, and doubtless the partner of my joys and sorrows (or rather, my joys and her sorrows) was giving eur baby its bottle, the while preparing lunch for our boy who was, at about that time, coming home from school. What was I—the husband of a gracious, beautiful, faithful wife—the father of two lovely children—a business man—honored and respected—what was I doing there—at that moment—(and why?) with a girl, or woman, whose personality was void, whose intellect was beneath that of a ten year old child— and whose conversation was neither interesting nor beguiling. But—let us start at the beginning. Let the drama unfold itself—incident by incident—act by act—to the final curtain—and what that “‘final , curtain” concealed from the grim gods of life and death—we shall see—presently. * * * * * N the ninth day of June, nineteen hundred and seven, I was married to the only daughter of a Brooklyn attorney—a man who had made an aver- age success in life and was satisfied with it. He had no very great ambitions and consequently no very high ideals. He had, with the help of his wife, who was, naturally, more imaginative than himself, brought up past girlhood, a daughter. She was the girl I married, fifteen years ago, and whom I prom- ised to “‘love, honor and keep only unto me as long as we both should live.” e shall soon see how that promise was kept. : At the time I had a clerkship in a well-known importing house. I was making ‘‘good money” for a young man of three and twenty—and I was in line for a promotion which soon came. My em- ployers were fond of me, and I gave them, in turn, the best that was in me. Candor, unfettered by modesty, compels me to admit that I was on the way toward a substantial success with my firm. Helen Morrow's parents, while loath to give up their nineteen-year-old daughter, were happy in the thought that in changing her name to Howard, she was at least committing herself to a career destined The Confessions of an Erring Husband for her from birth. Yes, Helen had been “‘raised”’ according to the best traditions of the average American family. Life, as I knew it, had passed her by. And God knows, I knew little enough of life at three and twenty! I, too, had received the training afforded the average American household to the average boy. But as little as I knew of life, Helen knew less, and so, after the modest ceremony in her parents’ home on a quiet street in the famous ‘“‘cit of churches,” after her mother’s tears, her father’s fervent handclasp, followed by the plaudits and congratulations of a score of friends, we started on our honeymoon, two guileless, hopeful babes in the woods. We soon discovered that we were virtually strangers to each other! During courtship each had carefully concealed certain unamiable traits of disposition and character that, when revealed, meant more or less long periods of depression pending readjustments, One form SE araGsenient (if you wish to call it so) that I preferred above every other was card-playing. Truth to tell, I loved to gamble, and as a single man I indulged myself freely in this form of recreation— often most profitably from a material standpoint at least. I was one of these men of whom it is said “they never lose.’’ When I married, I made a solemn oath, to my- self, to give up this practice of which Helen of course knew nothing, but a day came when I was coaxed into “just a little game’’—and my first ‘night out” ended at five o’clock in the morning in one bachelor friends’ home. I was a twenty-five dollar winner— a large sum for any of the fellows to win or lose in one of our modest games. So I wasn’t so contrite as I might have been when I used the latch-key of our little nest that morning as dawn was breaking. My wife met me at the door of our room, and her figure barred my éntrance. She had been crying— I expected that—and she was inarticulate with rage a Thad expected that too. i, I laughed immoderately and thrusting my win- nings in her hand, I eed: “Now, dearie, you can get that new dress you wanted.” (Continued on page 23)
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“Page Fifteen. What Emma Goldman Told Me About Love The Fourth of a Series of Stories that Never Before Saw Print By A Cub Reporter - HAT’S that you say. Sarah Bernhardt says what.’ Emma Goldman, the famous anarchist leader now grieving her heart out in exile, was staring at me with angry and distended eyes. Her shoulders were hunched and her fingers were interlacing and separating nervously. “I told you,” I repeated, “that Madame Bern- hardt defined love as a single note of music, which has been cut in two, and the two half notes of which are yearning to come together again. What I am anxious to hear is what you think about it. How do you define love?” “Sarah Bernhardt is three kinds of damn fool,’ she snapped, squinting at me even more angrily than before. ‘‘I can tell you that, anyhow—before I tell you what love really is.” We were sitting face to face—this strange, mysterious leader of men and women and myself— in her room at a famous hotel. I had been sent there to interview her. In a previous episode of these little adventures I have described my, midnight interview with Bernhardt one snowy, magical Christmas eve. At that time I asked Madame Bernhardt to define love for me. When I met Emma Goldman I asked her the same question— principally because she was reputed to be an advocate of the freest kind of free love. “Then suppose that you do tell me what real love really is.”” I pleaded. She flung out her arms in a furious and eloquent geature. “One note of music, cut in half!’ she cried vehemently. ‘“‘Isn’t that just like the stupid, silly sentimental slop that people talk about these days. It makes me sick. One note of music, indeed!’’ “Well, then, what is it.” I persisted. “Love is the whole scale, the whole damn key- board!’ she cried, rising and walking up and down the room in energetic protest. “It’s the whole piano, the whole orchestra, the whole brass band! The stupid conventions of society are reflected in what that woman said to you, young man. How can any sane human being imagine for one instant that all of the depths of such a profound passion can be plumbed and understood through one human personality. This clinging to one mate, this sanctity of marriage vows, this taboo on the sex question, this insistence on one man and one woman remaining absolutely true to each other, is the cheapest kind of hypocrisy; a profession that is never practiced, a huge mountain of lies, lies, lies. Damn the liars!” S* stopped, a curious, hunched and angry little figure in front of me, her arms folded as if de- manding to hear what I would say in reply. “How do you think love should be practiced, then.” I inquired. ‘Do you think that such a force should be unbridled and ungoverned.” “Listen to the little fool!’’ she japed at me. ‘‘He talks of bridling love, of governing love. Idiot! Don’t you know that love bridles human _ hearts, that it governs the human will, that it is all wise, and all powerful, and that it is all the God that ever was, is, or ever will be. Oh, you make me tired!” “That is what Madame Bernhardt also said to me,’’ I interjected meekly. ‘She said that love was God and God was love. “Don’t talk to me in such silly, sissy, old maid platitudes,” she complained. “I talk plainly and I mean just what I say. Is that what you mean.” It is the simplest thing in the world. The idea that we can love only one person in the world is utterly preposterous. We can love everyone that attracts us. And if I love somebody and that somebody loves me, it doesn’t matter how many wives he has or how many husbands I have, we can do just as we two please, and care nothing for what anybody has to say. It’s our business, and it has the only blessing necessary upon it—and that is love!” “Do you practice what you preach?” I asked, blushing. She made a remark in Yiddish which I did not understand, and which I fancied was a jest at my expense, and then she said: “What are you getting red for, you little fool? Of course I practice what I preach. promiscuous. I am not But I am free. My love is free!"”” “Quite so,” I agreed. I reflected a few moments, and then put to her a final question: “Do you then regard love as merely a physical impulse? Is there nothing spiritual or holy in it, above the plane of the flesh?”’ She grinned at me mockingly. “You come to my lectures and you'll find out,” she promised. ‘‘You need to be educated in anarchy. Do you know that anarchy will one day sweep, not only this country but the whole world? It will begin in Russia. Then you shall see what we make of love!” I thanked her and departed. I attended her lecture, and upon one occasion heard her counsel an audience of East Side Jewish girls, all under twenty, to live a life of free love and tell their moral pre- ceptors to go to hell. I was astonished at the lady’s intellectual bril- liance, dazzled by her oratory, and moved by her vehemance. But I found myself wishing her in Russia. And now that she is not here, I hope they keep her somewhere else forever. I prefer Sarah Bernhardt’s definition to the one given me by Emma Goldman—any day in the week
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age Sixteen— ‘Who Has the Most Beautift yy R “= OU often he. Madeline Starhill dra D. Schwarz Photo lutely no co-opera Hence, shoulde come in for consi We show you, o shoulders that Broadway sit up We think they a But which, in prettiest ? Truth to tell, we the whole matter you, the readers of And then you blame instead of young ladies take choice. We live and wo way to take a p this question. So please. You Bernice Ackerman Ira D. Schwarz Photo Evelyn Law lve D. Schwarz Photo ¥ ‘ Olive Birmingham Iva D. Schwarz Photo
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?P age Seventeen. | Shoulders on Broadway ? ar it said that ‘‘sne ricked shoulder,” t the young lady ficient in those lich require abso- ‘ion from the feet. rs have recently derable publicity. n this page, a few, ave made blasé nd take notice. re all beautiful. ur opinion, is the ’re going to leave of selection up to MIDNIGHT. will shoulder the us if any of the exception to your k too near Broad- artisan stand on settle it for us, Helen MacDonald lra D. Schwarz Photo Gaby Fleury Photo by White Frances Howden Tre D. Schwarz Photo
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Page Gighteen_ Our Midnight Fassengers pair of lovers go riding on aFifthAvenue Bus, the one thing needful to bring the occasion up to the ancient definition is the addition of an “‘s.” Shakespeare had a large and tolerant understanding of people; and he knew more about lovers, probably, than any man who has ever lived. I have no doubt, therefore, that if that august shade still haunts the glimpses of the moon, one of its favorite recreations is to flit from one to the other of that long line of ponderous vehicles that go zooming up and down the Avenue and the Drive of a summer’s night, to share that precious back seat on top, and to listen there to the story, which, in life, he could tell better than any other man. Why the Fifth Avenue Coach Company insists on spelling the word with a single ‘‘s,” when its whole implication is so clearly double, I don’t know. Perhaps it is merely a concession to the conven- tionalities. John Ritchie, President of the Company, and presumably a proper and responsible person like other presidents of companies, alleges, with an irresponsible and demoralizing wink, that there is no reason whatever for an extra “‘s’”; that the word in question hasn’t a thing to do with kisses, conju- ations, or conjunctions, and that it is simply short or “Omnibus.” But does that let him out? Not a bit of it. “Omnes,” as everybody knows who has any Latin, means “all”; and “bus” continues to mean just what it did when Shakespeare spelled it with a double “‘s.””. Why, even the unemotional dictionary admits that, though most persons spell it “bus,” anybody may add the extra ‘“‘s’” and be perfectly correct in so doing. It is an alternative spelling, and free for all. Life isn’t half bad when you come to consider it philosophically. As a matter of fact, the Fifth Avenue Coach Company does look at it just that way, as grouches have found when they have written in letters demanding that spooning, courting, and all public manifestations of affection be prohibited on the busses as deleterious to public morals. The view of the Company and of its conductors and drivers is that if you are merely an ordinary, prosaic person who rides to get somewhere, you aunty pay your ten cents, take your seat, and sit quiet till you reach CCORDING to Shakespeare, to ‘‘buss’’ is to ae implication being that when a the haven where you would be. They’ll tolerate you. And if you are that kind, you spell it “bus.” But if you are so fortunate as to be in love, if you are a pair of angels who desire no other bliss than to abide forever in the heaven of each other’s com- pany, then you climb the winding staircase to the upper regions, take the precious rear seat on the right, and pay your twenty-cents-for-two to a conductor whose eye emits a friendly twinkle; and then you spell it “buss.” And if the Fifth Avenue Coach Company has anything to say about it, nobody is poing to interfere with you while you do it. ‘Let the darlings spell it their own way,” says the Fifth Avenue Coach Company. Shocked and proper persons write continually to the Coach Company, demanding indignantly why such ‘disgusting and revolting’ conduct is per- mitted. Spooners, they point out, get arrested in the parks for kissing; w y should they not get arrested for bussing on the busses? To which the Coach Company can but reply that it hasn't a thing to do with this business of arresting them in the parks, but that it does have something to do with not arresting them in any way whatever on the busses; and that it wants them to keep right on, behaving with propriety, of course, however much they may flout conventionality; an may they finally get married and live happily ever after, and bring the babies when they ride the busses in the years to come. This, avers the Coach Company, is good business. It means more fares. Rs may be questioned whether a courtship ever took place in New York without the lovers at one time or another taking refuge on the safe, broad, competent, grandmotherly back of a Fifth Avenue Bus, there to make love in the sight of all the world and yet far from the maddening crowd. The great advantage of making love to a girl on top of a bus, while all New York looks up at you and grins in that tolerant and sympathetic fashion which is peculiar to New York, is, first, that you are adequately chaperoned and couldn’t do anything wrong even if you wanted to; second, that the two of you are entirely alone, alone with the stars; a aradoxical combination which is quite necessary ‘or the best kind of love-making. All the world can see you, but it can’t hear you; all the world can recognize you as a pair of lovers—which is well; but it can’t recognize you as John Smith and Jessie poner, which would be emba rassing. What’s every- ody’s business is nobody’s business. Some of these lovers observe not only the pro- prieties but the conventionalities as well. That he should even put his arm about her in a public place may be against their code and their traditions. But aside from this element of restraint not present in the manners of the more naive couple that sits in front of them, there is no difference. In ninety- eight per cent of these “cases” the love-making is clean, loyal, and sincere; and if, as Charles Reade crisply put it in the “The Cloister and the Hearth,” they are “‘seeing babies in each other’s eyes,” why shouldn’t they? What is it all about, anyway? In the meantime, whatever their code and tradi- tions, they talk—and they talk— and they talk; words, it may be, or tender nothings. The youth in front steals a kiss now and then when words are not enough; and the less daring youth behind, watching him, wonders with beating heart whether he may not perhaps venture the same thing when he bids Her good-night at the doorway of the lodging house where she lives, and where there is no parlor in which she may receive him. Perhaps she would not be very: angry if he did it now. Perhaps—he does it now; and the wraith of Shake- speare, hovering near, sighs and wishes for a pen and paper. * Already they have had two round trips, for a round sum of forty cents; and now they are on a third, from Washington Square to Grant’s Tomb and back, forgetting the world and by the world forgot, rolling along under the open sky with the moon and the What a Writer Learned About Spooning on the Buses stars above them, and the endless lane of lights before and behind. And, hark, from a window come down the strains of the “Barcarolle”: “Beauteous night, O night of love, Smile thou on our aachaxtment: Radiant night, with stars above, O beauteous night of love! Fleeting time doth ne’er return But bears on wings our dreaming, Far away where we may yearn, For time doth ne’er return. Sweet zephyrs aglow, Shed on us thy caresses—” Better than the theater, better than the movies, better than the hazardous solitude of the park, better surely than the refuge of some private rooms however irreproachable the motives with which they might obtain it. And so, from their lonely vantage point, clad as it were in an invisible cloak and with seven-league boots, they sit and talk, and open up their hearts, and together explore the treasury of youth. Like ghosts the buildings flit by them one by one; like the shadows of a dream in moonlight silver sweet come and go those practical people of the world who are not lovers, and who must be going somewhere forsooth. He tells her why he thinks himself in line for promotion, and for a salary that two can live on. They discuss that divine and solemn nnon- sense, from behind which the Love God peeps and winks, known as the Two-Can-Live-Cheaper-Than- One Theory. Or maybe they haven’t got to that yet, and it is enough for them both that he has obeyed that impulse, and that she has not too strongl resented it, and that now it’s his move. O, mirabile dictu. And round about this Miracle of the Begetting of Life course little men of little soul that may buy and sell! Down upon the mighty Street of Life they are looking as from a spiritual height; from just such an abode among the eternal verities does Trinity Spire look down on Wall Street; they are a point of reference, a symbol of the fundamental sanities of life, a brazen serpent in the wilderness on which men and women who have forgotten the days of their youth may look and be revived. Yes—even the shocked letter writers call it brazen, HOSE who chase treasures of the dust, where moth and rust corrupt and thieves do steal, the busses carry because transportation is their business. But those who bear with teen the gifts of youth and love, these the busses carry because such is their pleasure. Transports are better than transportation, and the only fly in the ointment is that it is necessary to take their fares. Every two-decked bus is like the three-decker of which Kipling wrote, bound for the Islands of the Blest. Watch the fleet coming down the Drive, watch them in the dusk, “argosies of magic sails Pilots of the purple twilight, Dropping down with costly bales.” The old three-decker has gone, said Kipling— thinking of the three-volume novel of our grand- fathers, “and we'll lift no more again : Our purple painted headlands and the lordly keeps of Spain.” But Kipling had not seen this two-decker, twelve foot in the sheer, barging its safe and ponderous way to that very destination. The conductors and drivers of the busses come to know many of these lovers well. Some are not in the least addicted to open love-making, but the are an open book to him who has eyes wherewit! to see. Here, for instance, are two who go to and from their daily work on the bus top, rain or shine, winter or summer. Two precious hours a day they have together by that means if it chance they live well up town; and the daily journey which begins (Continued on page 27)
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“Page WVineteen ou a Piker ? OST of us are making anywhere from $40 to $100 a week. What we want to know is how we can saunter casually into the dining room of the Ritz, or the Plaza or Sherry’s, acting as though we came there every night—when the whole place is geared up for fellows making from $1,000 to $100,000 a week. It’s something of a trick. And the one lad you won't fool is the headwater. The moment he sees you entering the door he'll know within a dime what is your weekly wage or earnings; can come within three of locating your trade or profession; can tell whether or not you are a good husband and fat er—and most particularly, can tell all about your disposition. ; This is to be something of a psychological study of the piker. What and why is he? The headwaiter is the proper authority to begin such a discussion By Edgar T. Stone with, for he’s the expert sifter of pikers from—ah! there's precisely the diffculty-—if we knew just what is the opposite of piker we should know more ac- curately what the piker himself is. But the eyes of the headwaiter, and his associates, the waiters on the floor, and his more distant col- leagues the chauffeurs, and his still more distant and despised colleagues the porters, the piker is first, a man who hates to spend money, and second, a generic term for all poor men, who haven’t money to spend, particularly if these poor men try to hang around among those who have money and are willing to spend it. But there is even more in this contemptuous term which all visitors to Broadway and its fringes are so anxious to avoid. It comes uncomfortably near to being like that old-fashioned term, ‘“greenhorn,”’ with which imigrants to America who have resided here two or three years love to taunt the man or woman who arrived last week. It’s the party who isn’t quite familiar with the territory in which he finds himself—or at least hasn’t learned that cosmopolitan trick of acting as though he had been where he is a thousand times. I love New York, though there are many things about it that I hate. And one of the things I hate is the attitude of the average New Yorker, particularly, of the class of attendants and public servants we are talking about, of of despising the man or woman who doesn’t know all about the big town. And the worst of it is chat these same dignitaries don’t know themselves. J've worn out whole truckloads of shoe leather and wasted measureless time by following the directions of train guards, trolley men, and even policemen, particularly in the Bronx and Brooklyn, by asking them the shortest way to a locality, when they not only did not know it but worse still did not know enough to confess that they did not know. But just now we're not trying to interview a judge in Brooklyn or a doctor in the Bronx, but are enter- ing the dining room of the Ritz with a very special ifort to convince the head waiter by our carriage and deportment that we have been there hundreds of times before and that he ought to be ashamed of himself for not recognizing us. How shall we do it? In the first place don’t do it. You can’t fool him—so don’t try. Stick to the facts. The facts are that you are human, and so is he. The further facts are that he is a gentleman, and that if you are he will know it, and if you are not— God help you! The human touch is the safest guide. There is never the slightest excuse for being afraid of any- body—an enemy soldier with his bayonet, a burglar in your room, the boss at his big desk—the head- waiter, with his imperturbable smile—or even your wife. The coward loses the battle before it is begun. If you are a coward don’t venture into Sherry’s. Even if you do make $10,000 a week the head- waiter will know that you are afraid of him if you are. But if you make only $30 a week and decide one week to blow your whole week's wages with your sweetheart at a dinner at Sherry’s the headwaiter will be good to you if you walk in like a human being and look at him as one human looks at another, fearless, perfectly willing that he shall know that the work of six hard days are about to be tossed away above the snowy linen on the tables. I remember a comical experience of my own when I was tempted, almost to the point of yielding, to break down that mythical wall which always separ- ates the diner from the attendant, the eater from the waiter in places that are, even to a slight extent, exclusive. I had gone to an early season convention at. Long Beach. I was excessively hard up at the time and every quarter counted. The delegates, visitors and correspondents dined at the big hotel where the prices of everything were multiplied by ten before any reckoning was begun. I sauntered along the board walk in search of an eating place nearer m schedule. Most of the establishments were still closed, but at last I found one opened which looked like a place which might on occasion serve one who did not happen to be a millionaire. But appearances had deceived. I would have been quite content that day with a lunch at the Automat—but—even trying the piker’s favorite trick of eating the begin- ning and end of a lunch and leaving out the middle, the check ran up to more than two dollars. Soup, 50 or 60 cents; pie, 50 or 60 more; chocolate 50 or 60 more, and whatever else it was bringing the total up past the $2.00 mark. I was the only diner in the room. There were a half-dozen waiters, and m man was a friendly fellow, and I longed for his spoken sympathy, as I was sure I had his silent sympathy. He knew it all, as well as if I had told him. He knew I had tried to run away from high rices and was dismayed at having run into them. e knew I was trying to dodge the high-priced essentials, and had been tricked into taking non- essentials which were doing my pocketbook equal damage and my stomach less service. I could feel his heart beat in sympathy for me as he stood, silent and respectful, just behind my chair. He was a poor man and I was a poor man, both working hard for our living. We were both thinking the same thoughts—‘‘It’s hell to be poor,” and I should have been brave enough and human enough to chuckle with him about it all. CONTRARIWISE I had just the opposite sort of “~ experience the other Sunday. My wife’s little sister from the country had come.in to see us, and we took her out to dine—with our baby—at a fine old- fashioned hotel on Park Avenue. e sat out on the balcony, pints in the open, the baby delighted with the splashing fountain and all of us soothed by the sweet beauty of the palms and ferns, the flowers and the rippling water. We were a bit disappointed, as we had hoped to hear a noted band that had been recently engaged to play in the garden every after- noon. The headwater was a handsome, slight young chap, alert and attentive. I asked him about the band, and he said the engagement had been dis- continued. Then we fell to chatting. He told me all about the band, and their disappointment that the venture had not proved successful. He was thinking about the men, who had hoped to make a bit of money, and had failed. He liked our baby, and with his own hands, brought him a high chair. Later he rolled up a napkin into the shape of a skill- fully compacted doll, marking eyes, nose and mouth with his pencil, and brought it over to the youngster. Wealthier and costlier garbed patrons were all about. But he seemed to like us. I had happened to let him see that I was human. I suppose that’s the secret. A man-about-town said to me yesterday: “A headwaiter is the best diplomat in the world He knows whom to flatter and whom to be high- handed with; he knows when to be incorruptible, and when to stoop to bribery and corruption. The headwaiter of a really exclusive eating place in New York knows more scandal than any father confessor. He enjoys the sensation of being on speaking terms with the wealthiest and most inthiential props in the world. But after all, he’s human, and if you hold your neck up and act human also you’ll get what you need.” Now as to some practical questions—Shall you tip the headwater? Most peeps don’t—that is peonle who dine at a certain place only infrequently. ut if you go to the place more or less regularly the headwaiter expects something. For instance I have a friend who lunches every day at Delmonico's.
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Page “Twenty PY /OMIGHT He gives the headwaiter five dollars every week, his own waiter a dollar every day. But if you care to breeze in any evening to a place = have never visited before you need not tip the eadwaiter. He will find you a table, see that a waiter is assigned to you, and it is quite sufficient if you settle with your waiter at the end of the meal. Of course, if it’s the case of a week or a two-week stay, such as at a summer resort, or on a six or ten- day business trip, it is good diplomacy to prove your good intentions to the headwater at the beginning of your stay, or menage to convince him that he will well taken care of when you leave. Of course a tip to the headwaiter will sometimes let you into a crowded dining room in which all the seats have been reserved in advance. There are a few places in New York where this is quite likely to he the case. If you bluster up and act peevish you and your lady friend will stay out on the sidewalk. The henawaltet doesn't care so much about your tip, but he cares a lot about his authority and dignity. And if you will combine, in just the proper propor- tions, a fundamental humanness, with the right amount of self respect and deference, and then season the whole mixture with a five dollar bill or a ten dollar bill, he will manage to get an extra table set for you and your company. Again ae friend, the Man-about-town, said to me: y “T usually manage to get in, even if the tables are all taken. I don’t exactly know why. I’m not rich, and I seldom tip a head-waiter. But I just walk up’—he has a singularly clear and kindly eye, this young chap—‘“and say can’t you manage to let my friends and me come in? And he usually manages it. And if I feel that it has been especially difficult for him to do so, I show my gratitude with a five or ten dollar bill.” It’s hard to say just what the attitude of head- waiter and his helpers is to the ostentatious spender, the man so anxious to prove he is not a piker that he spends money out of all proportion to the require- ments of the occasion. Inwardly they all despise him. But the proprietor is glad to get his money, and unless his manners are so offensive that he will drive away the exclusive set whose patronage is most desired, they must be attentive to him and take what he wants to spend. The boastful spender is only another kind of a piker, a man essentially cheap. He may get a coarse sort of satisfaction out of forcing himself by his money into places designed for the socially elect and truly cultured, but no sound-minded person will envy him this satisfaction. Well, here we are at last, seated at table. We have peer the gauntlet of the hat check boy or girl— ere’s the case of purest robbery on Broadway, particularly detestable because the wistful-eyed boy or white shouldered girl who takes your hats and wraps never sees any of the money you pay after the evening’s end. But you simply have to sur- render. There’s no reason in the world why you shouldn't carry your hat and wraps into the dining room, except that it isn’t done, and we are talking about places where what is done counts. Though perhaps after all it is a part of the effort to make every public eating place seem as nearly as sible like a home, or private eating place. At ome, or in your guests house, you leave your wraps in hall or dressing room. So when you dine with Mr. Sherry you do the same thing. The headwaiter has your number from the way you walk across the room and take you seat. Your own waiter has your number from the way you take hold of the bill of fare and begin to select your dishes and drinks. A friend was reminding me the other day that the sort of diner who most delights the soul of a real waiter is he to whom dining is somewhat of an art, almost a sacrament. To such a diner the rightness or wrongness of every act, motion and decision is a serious matter. Nothing but perfection will do. Error is sacrilege. This diner never looks at the price-list. Even if he be poor, he will have saved up enough so that when he has reached this shrine he will not need to think of the price. He is not a glutton. It is not Bacchus or Pan that he worships. He may be a good Episcopalian, or a good Catholic— but he believes that the Deity made good victuals and good drink to be consumed with reverent gratitude, with artistic setting and accompaniment of scene and rhythm. But here you sit, not that kind of a worshipper, not rich, and of course, not a piker. How shall you act, and what shall you order? Why, act like a human being who wants something to eat, and order what you want, and what you can pay for without too much discomfort. Get your guests’s orders at first, letting them, if they will, make the first sugges- cme or, if they hesitate, making suggestions for them. Make your guests feel at home, and you will feel at home yourself. Make evident that your purpose is neither to spend money or to save it—but just to eat, drink and be merry with your friends— Now good digestion wait on appetite, And health on both. When the waiter brings you your check, study it, but don’t study it too closely. Don’t attempt to add it up, unless you are a lightning calculator. But if there is a glaring and palpable error call his attention quietly to it. You are not a piker to do this. You are a piker to be afraid to do it. As to the tip—don’t hesitate and paw over your change so that he will read your mind as follows: “T wish I didn’t have to give him anything. But I’ve got to, so here goes. f must give him enough so he won't think I’m a piker.” Fortunately, since prohibition has arrived, it is not likely that the coins and bills on his tray will swim around in a green and silver flood so you might have difficulty in recognizing them and not be inte sure how much you were leaving. The old rule was ten per cent of the bil This is rather out of date, though it can be borne in mind as a beginning of reckoning. And it depends on the amount of real attention and care the waiter has given. You and he both know that the tipping system is abominable. But you also know that custom demands it, and so just to avoid being queer, or appearing cheap, you pay your tribute to custom, and, incidentally, assure a fellow human being that you do feel grateful to him for having helped you and your friends to a pleasant hour and a good meal. If the bill is five dollars, give him one; if it is ten, give him one dollar and a half or two dollars. If it is fifteen dollars, give him three dollars or possibly even five. If it is twenty dollars or more give him any amount that pops into your head. it isn’t so much after all the amount you give, as the air with which you give it. If you hesitate and calculate—you are a piker, no matter what you give in the end; if you give it with a condescending, arrogant manner—you are a piker, no matter what the amount; if you are awkward and embarrassed— ‘ou are a piker, no matter how long you have lived in New York. And so it goes. Humanness and self-confidence does it; and a real regard for the other fellow, and an appreciation of what he has done for you. If the waiter—or the Pullman porter—is arrogant to you, however, and neglects to be careful and helpful in his service you can best show him that you are not a piker b refusing to tip him altogether, or to make the gift as small as his attention. Not conscience but custom, makes cowards of us all. It is the man who is sure of himself, who is able to adjust himself quickly to any new set of surround- ings and do easily what the rest are doing who is recognized as the good-fellow, and he will come as near to equalling the generosity of the others as his pocketbook will allow. Of course everyone knows that it is not the metropolitan folks alone who have the éasy habit and manners of the elect. There is an interstate circle of well-behaved persons, many known to one another, many unknown, but all bent on being courteous and on doing the thing that is expected of the cultured. hese standards are rapidly changing. Social structures are being overturned here, as well as in Europe. And that man in evening dress dining opposite you in the Plaza dining room may be the president of a labor union. That's an interesting thing, too. Attend, for instance, the great annual convention of the American Federation of Labor— and you. will find much the same habit, manners, modes of speech in the convention hotel dining room and corridors that you find on Broadway, or Fifth Avene, or at Palm Beach. ts A man’s a man, for a’ that. And—would it need not be said!—there are men in all ranks and all callings who can never be anythin: but pikers. Give them one thousand, two thousand, ten thousand dollars a week; let them travel from Iceland to the Cape of Good Hope; let them mingle with princes, potentates, scholars and billionaires— they will be pi ers still. Always thrusting themselves forward a bit too energetically, aay ailing to do ane the thing that others look for. y? I ion’t know. Ask God; he made them. I didn’t, I’m going to venture one further bit of advice. The habit of adjusting oneself quickly to a new environment is one that in the normal person can be cultivated, and even mastered. The child going for a visit to Uncle John’s is a bit nervous just because Uncle: John’s is not home. But he makes ood at Uncle John’s, and when he goes to Aunt Sarah’s he much less nervous. Soon he doesn’t care which relative it is, or whether it is any relative at all that he visits. He just feels at home because he knows what to do. It’s just so in all your travels and social ex- periences. You can cultivate the habit of knowing what to do. And you find that one place is pretty much like another, and that one person—governor, college president, bank president, labor leader, bishop, editor or farmer, headwaiter or boot black— is pretty much like another. You've eaten at the Claypool in Indianapolis, and the Statler in Buffalo. ell, Statler runs the biggest hotels in New York also, and if you felt at home with him in Buffalo you will in New York. And if you are at ease in the Pennsylvania, or the Waldorl, or the Astor, you will be at the Ritz, the Plaza, or Sherry’s or even in the ultra exclusive places such as Pierre’s or L’Avignon. And if you And if you want to take a look-in at the Mont- Marte—if Charlie hasn't every table signed up—or the Moulin Rouge, and observe the cabaret and take a hand—or a foot—in the dancing, just go and help yourself. Everyone else there is just as human as you; no more, no less. Eat what you please, do what you please, spend what you can afford—and when you leave, may the headwaiter and the hat- girl say: ‘There goes a gentleman.” I was going to put somewhere in this story the information that came to my knowledge only esterday—that the word TIP comes from the old nglish custom in the houses of the gentry of having a box in the hall to receive fees for the servants, on which were. the letters “T. I. P.”, standing for “To Insure Promptness.” And I'm inclined to wind up this more or less interesting discussion with two more or less relevant stories. The first is perhaps the best illustration extant of a thorough-going piker. It is about a penniless traveller down south who came to the bank of a river, desiring to cross. The negro ferryman de- manded the customary toll—three cents. “T ain’t got three cents,’ complained the stranger. “Well,” from the ferryman, encouragingly, “Cain’t you go and borrow three cents.’”” “No, {couldn't borrow no three cents. “Well—hustle along to some place and earn three cents.” “No (in complete dejection) I couldn't earn three cents.” “Now look here, stranger, it seems to me that if a feller ain’t got three cents, and can’t earn three cents, and can’t borrow three cents—it don’t make much difference which side of the river he’s on.” I suppose the reason I thought of that yarh was that if you haven’t enough to pay the price you've no business going where the prices are high. And if you go there you shouldn't kick because they are high, for you knew it inadvance, And if you do go— just pay the price, and act as though you enjoyed it. {t's the refusal to pay the price, or acting as though it hurt you to do so that brands you a piker. The other story is of a man who acted like a iker but was as far from being one as possible. ft appears in that book of the late Hopkinson Smith, “The Wood Fire in Room Number 3,” a collection of short stories told in his inimitibly graceful style. A group of friends, close, life-long friénds, are dining in the apartment of one member of the group. All prosperous men, except one, and he greatly beloved of all the rest. The dinner is ing hilatiously, when one of the men discovers that his diamond pin is missing. Half laughing, one of the guests suggests (Continued on page 23)
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MIONIGHT N_ hour later Clarence returned to the office of the Second Avenue Praying Band and the presence of his fuming father, Bunch. “Well?” demanded Bunch hoarsely. “It’s absolutely all off,’’ whined Clarence. just won’t get married to me, that’s all.” “Hell, she won't!” “Hell, she will!’ retorted Clarence with a sur- prising independence born of great weariness. “‘I tell you I exhausted every argument. I stuck to her. She’s fallen hard for the man in jail. I believe she suspects something. She’s pate to hire a lawyer for him. That’s what she is!”’ “Yes, red curse you, that’s what I expected and I suppose you let her do it!”’ “1 did not!’ snapped the offended Clarence. ““‘I told her I knew a wonderful lawyer, but he would not be home until later this afternoon and I thought that you”’— “Never mind what you thought! enough!” - Evidently Bunch was chafing for action and now he decided on the instant what he would do. They hurried out and secured a cab and Bunch gave an address on West Thirty-fourth Street. Complete silence lay between them until they stopped in the jam in Forth-Second Street and Fifth Avenue wait- ing for the jealous-eyed green light in the traffic tower to turn to crimson and then to golden, welcom- ing orange. There was an expression on Bunch’s face at that moment at once crafty and cruel. “I’ve got to act hard!” he said more to himself than to Clarence. ‘‘We've got to spring the big trick tonight! This complicates things! I can see now that she won’t marry you until she’s sure that Middleton is dead! Well, thank God, I hadn't overlooked that! I had prepared for it, but I didn't expect to use it so soon! Well, she shall know before midnight!” “You mean you're going to kill Middleton!” gasped Clarence. “Shut up!” Bunch reflected a moment longer, the cunning brighter. He had it he was developing a “She I’ve heard look in his little eyes growin idea it was plain to see an plan_ rapidly. “Tonight I must fix it so the old Lansing skirt will invite Anne Winter to the house. Then I can have matters in my own hands! _ I must get them two women together! Then—ha! ha!—she'll find out!”’ Thereupon Bunch became very quiet preferring to gloat in silence until the cab drew up before one of a row of drabbish brown-fronted rooming-houses on Thirty-fourth Street not far from the North River. A blowsy flap-slippered woman, scrawny of face and with an unwashed infant nursing at her breast, answered his ring and eyed him with pro- found disgust. “You ain’t gonna git no money from us today!’’ she ape roeh without ceremony. ‘“‘You can go squeal your head off to the police about Huggles if ary want to, and be damned to you! Me and the ids is got to eat!’’ She would have said more to the unperturbed Bunch, but a collarless man in a pink shirt, brightly checked trousers and holding a bottle of hair tonic i i. hand appeared beside her and pushed her ack. “No use, Bunch!” he declared. ‘We're broke! You can’t collect none of your damn blackmail from me today! There ain’t no money in the house! My wife’s been out of work all week!” “T haven't come to collect," purred Bunch per- suasively, ‘‘nor have I come to remind you that if I informed the police what I know about you you would spend a vacation in Sing Sing! I have some work for you to right away!” “I'm sick. I don’t want no work,” retorted A thrilling mystery story by Fulton Qursler in which a changed appearance and per- sonality baffles the greatest New York detectives. Well worth reading and studying, NN was Archie's boyhood sweetheart. They had been brought up together. As children they were playing one day on the edge of a steep cliff. Accidentally Archie pushed Ann over and her hip was shattered. She became an invalid for life—but Archie loved her and would have married her except that when Ann sound it was due to Archie's bounty that she was taking a course in Bryn Mawr, she suddenly went down into the East Side to do settlement work, where she became lost to him. In the meantime Archie's Jortunes grew apace, and without loving her, he became engaged to Miriam Blanton, daughter of Hiram Blanton, the piano king. Seeking a way out of his engagement with Miriam, knowing that he loved Ann, Archie accidently ran across the fact that every third member of his family as far back as the geological records went, was insane. He was next in line. Just as he was about to go to Miriam to tell her the sad facts, a messenger brought a note from some- one on the East Side who sat cently involved in a conspiracy to get Archie's fortune and to contract marriage with a villain. Before Archie could reach the messenger, the man was gone, so he determined to watt until ayter he had called on Miriam and broken his engagement, to locate Ann and to save her trom the clutches of the conspirators. ‘E enters Hiram Blanton's home and announces to the piano manufacturer that he cannot marry Miriam, and is promptly thrown out of the house. He cannot understand this treatment, nor does he understand it until he reaches home and looking in a mirror he discovers that he has an absolutely changed personality—that where he wore a short beard, the beard was gone. That his eyes, his hair were a different color—in fact, that he bore no resemblance w er to the Archie Middleton who started out a few hours before. Brooding on this discovery, he is confronted by Bunch, his butler, with a revolver, who orders him to put his hands up, and even his aunt, Mrs. Lansing, who appears in the room, does not know him. Detectives are sent for and no one will believe that he is Archie Middleton, especially after the mur- dered body of Archie Middleton is discovered in the house and he, Archie himself, is charged with his own murder! He is immediately taken to the station house where of course no one believes him, and it is at this point that Ann, on the street with Clarence Burton, the villain she is about to marry, sees a newspaper headline reading ‘Archie Middleton Murdered.” It is then that she knows that she loves Archie and she calls at the police station to see what she can do jor ‘‘the crazy man" who is being held there and who claims that he is Archie Middleton. Ann, while not believing the man who claims he is Middlton, nevertheless promises .to remain unwed until the mystery is solved. It now appears that the whole plot has been engineered by Bunch; Archie's butler, and that Clarence is Bunch’s son. Bunch upbratds Clarence for his stupidity in letting Ann see the headline in the paper, and as Clarence leaves his wrathful father he sees a limping figure just ahead of him on the street. that Ann was inno-. Huggles uneasily. Plainly he didn’t relish the kind of work that Bunch might wish him to do. : But Bunch was propitiating and stern at the same time and under his oily suggestions Mrs. Huggles with her odorous and unbathed infant, was pushe below stairs and Bunch and Clarence were ushered into the parlor, There the door was shut and Bunch got omy down to the business of his con- spiracy. In definite precise terms he explained what he wanted. He minced no words in stating his opinion of Huggles. Huggles was a shyster lawyer, a crook, who ought to be behind the bars, but it happened that Bunch needed a shyster lawyer. A man was in prison under the suspicion of a serious charge. A young lady was anxious to secure him legal defense. She might get a good lawyer. It was important to Bunch that she Me a bad lawyer. Therefore, he had called on uggles. In careful whispers he explained a sur- prising plan of action which he had considered while riding down in the taxi-cab. Having repeated this over and over again until Huggles fully understood what was required of him, he conclusion with these words: “Charge her a stiff fee! Take all her savings and keep them! I don’t want a penny rake-off, though by rights I should get half! All I want you to do is to.go to see this man in jail and stage this thing that I have told you about lee tonight. After that you won't be needed. But first you.must see Anne Winter. Make her think you are working like hell for him! Is it all clear?” Huggles considered it very clear. He knew just how to get to the District Attorney's office and get in touch with the prisoner, but how was_he to meet the girl? Now Bunch turned his glance on his son. At him he pg uinted a mephitic glance. “You take Mr. Huggles to her now!’ he com- manded. “Let her spill her story to Huggles and you advise her to leave it allto him! Then, Huggles, you get busy and stage the affair for nine o'clock tonight! Where is.she now?” Clarence explained that he knew Anne had gone to see Mrs. Lansing and he volunteered to take Huggles to the Middleton house at once. The three then left the house together, Huggles and Clarence going toward the subway, Bunch turning his over- loaded feet into strange quarters. Directly across town he hurried, displaying a fat man’s audacity in treading his way thenigh crowded sidewalks and streets until he had passed the Flatiron Building, crossed the Square and invaded the outposts of the far east side. It was getting on toward noon and Bunch was hungry, but heroicall: he kept to his pilgrimage. It was only a short walk to Lexington Avenue—to the heart of what is known to informed New Yorkers as “Little Armenia.” Among the motley throng of these sons and daughters of Togarmah with their garishly decorated blocks from which floated out chants and runes and from shops with names preposteropsly long on green sign-boards upon the door, past queer restaurants and odd little churches with golden crosses, Bunch bullied his way until he came to the corner of a crooked little street. Down this he turned quickly. He came to a row of shambling ancient houses and stgpped in front of the third one. Without pausing to knock, he entered, passing through a thickly smelling room and mounted:a flight of stairs. Here, again, he opened the door without knocking and walked in. It was a surprising room to find in a house like that—in a squalid dingy house set in a squalid dingy street in Little Armenia. For the room was neat and clean; the bedroom of an impoverished gentle- man. Though plainly, it was yet pleasingly fur- nished with several ehecn book-cases bulging with treasured volumes in many languages. n the center was a table and beside this sat an old man ”
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“Page Twenty Two : pouring over a book. A hat and coat near by seemed to witness that the old man had but recently come in from the street. He was a gentle-looking old man with mild eyes and a most kindly expression. But now as he looked up startled at the interruption and beheld Bunch towering pugnaciously in front of him, he showed traces of undeniable fear. “Good afternoon,’ he quavered with placating politeness. ‘‘Won’t you sit down?” “No, I won’t sit down! Who the hell wants to sit down. in an infernal hole like this?” growled Bunch. “Shut up that book and listen to me!” The old man resignedly put the volume back on the table. “I've come here to talk business with you,” declared Bunch, “and I want you to listen with both your big ears!’’ “T haven’t any money to give you today,” said the old man with feeble earnestness. “You never have and never will, but I don’t want money now! You ought to pay me twice as much for keeping my mouth shut about you! Don’t you forget I can send you to the electric chair any time I want to and maybe I'll do it yet, if you don’t do what I tell you to do!” “Anything, anything,” promised the intimidated old gentleman. Bunch frowned and looked ugly as he went to the door and jerked it open. Satisfied that no one was listening, he came back and bent over the old man’s chair. “That job we spoke of—it’s got to be done right away!” he growled. ‘‘And it’s got to be done clean!” “It’s ready,” quavered the old man. “‘It’s in there’’—pointing toward a closet-—‘'What are you going to do with it?” With his bony hand crooked around his ear he hearkened while Bunch stated bluntly and coldly in exact terms a hideous and unspeakable project. “My God! That’s an abomination that stinks to heaven!” cried the old man sinking back helplessly in his chair. His plucking fingers worked against the frayed pattern of his coat. He looked entreat- ingly at Bunch. “Don’t do it,” he begged. Bunch bent over and whispered certain wholly precise instructions. “Tt must all be over by tonight at midnight,” he concluded implacably. “I must have it within an hour!” The struggle in the old man’s face had ended. He dropped his mild eyes weakly before the glower of the threatening Bunch. “Tt will be done,”’ he promised. “God help me, it will be done!”’ Bunch grinned at him derisively, then shook his fist. “My dear Ishmael Langrave,” he began, and the old man uttered a piercing cry. “Hush! Hush!” ie pleaded, holding out trembling prayerful hands. ‘Don’t speak that name aloud.” Again Bunch grinned. “Then keep your promise!’’ he grated and waddled out of the room. An unctious gentleman, fat and full of oil and humor was Bunch—always ready for a laugh when he liked the world. He liked it now for he was snatching victory from defeat and as he stood on the sunny sidewalk, he rubbed his moist and puffy hands together and chuckled and grinned and laughed. * * * * * 4 Bate visit of Lawyer Huggles to the strange prisoner of Lieutenant Monohan turned a despairing man into an optimist. Archie believed that his troubles would soon be over as a result of that visit of Huggles. At last he was to be given an opportunity to fight for himself and he was thanking Anne for this opportunity. _ Not since he had parted from her in the station- house cell had he seen her again. But since that time many things had happened, the most peapos tant of which was the visit of the lawyer behind whose coming he discerned Anne's gentle and ministering hand. Personally the lawyer didn’t make much of a hit with Archie. He didn’t like him. But Huggles conferred an inestimable benefit on the prisoner. He finally and conclusively convinced Archie that there was something else wrong with him beside insanity. He told him frankly that he believed him to be what he said he was, For that, Archie would thank him forever and as he had no money and was still wearing the suit of evening clothes in which he was arrested, he was glad enough to tolerate At- torney Huggles. Attorney Huggles had come to him with a singu- larly brilliant suggestion for solving the mystery. Of course, Archie had no means of knowing that the suggestion didn’t emanate from Huggles, but from Bunch. Huggles was immediately ready to believe that the prisoner was Archie Middleton, although he admitted he was unable to explain how he happened to be wearing a face so unlike the one he had for- merly exhibited. For that great mystery, Huggles had no theory whatever. But he had a practical plan in mind and that plan was the lever that moved Archie's mind to the conviction that he was not demented after all—and to search around for some other sensible solution to his difficulty. Huggles’ plan was one of delightful simplicity. Setting aside the physical disparity, he insisted that if Archie Middleton and his client were the same man, that his client should know everything that Archie Middleton knew, He should be able to pass any kind of test that Archie could pass. In this, Archie joyfully concurred. Hu zoe therefore, proposed that the police take his client to the Mid- dleton home and there subject him to a severe examination. He refused to tell Archie what the nature of that examination would be because the police would have to apply their own tests. But if Archie passed them well they would have something to work on. That was Huggles’ way of putting it and when Archie heard it and beheld with what ready enthu- siasm the lawyer proposed it, he came instantly to the conclusion that the lawyer must be a real person and not simply a creation of his imagination. It was the first tangible thing he had got hold of since his arrest the night before. Already he had come to the suspicion that his life in the cells was too real to bea dream. This settled it. The lawyer had departed promising to make all the arrange- ments for the test. All this had happened about two o'clock Thurs- day afternoon. uggles had assured Archie the test would take place immediately. Archie’s antici- pations were aroused to the highest pitch; he him- self could think of a hundred difficult tests by which he could demonstrate his complete familiarity with the most private and intimate details of his own home. The whole project had so stimulated him that he bore without excitement the scrutiny of Hiram Blanton and his daughter when he was led before them and identified. That interview occurred right after the lawyer’s visit and the piano magnate posi- tively identified the prisoner as the man who had invaded his apartment just before he entered the Middleton home. While he was waiting and hoping for Huggles to return with more definite news of the plan they were arranging, Archie had another extraordinary visitor. This visitor came to his cell door and was admitted respectfully by the tier guard. As he came through the door, the stranger revealed himself immediately as a most preposterous-looking individual. He was a very tall, bony old gentleman wearing a long double-tailed and badly worn brown coat, an erect and storm-beaten collar and a withered black tie. On his head was an old-fashioned hat and beneath it his hair hung in uncertain drapery like a disar- ranged scarf around his jutting skull. His nose curved, sharply downward as if peering intently at a tuft of embattled black hairs on his chin. On the extreme end of his nose was a wart-like protuberance that seemed in imminent danger of tumbling into the vegetation below. The whip saw of time had cut deep rimples in his white and bony cheeks and placed a dark kerf between his birdlike eyes. More than anything else he resembled a belligerent lammergeifer on the warpath. But that was an idealistic impression. On second glance his ap- pearance more than remotely suggested the popular conception of the common people, a resemblance that was aggravated by his doubly reinforced baggy-kneed pants and his bow-windowed umbrella tied with a cotton string. “Good morning, my dear Middleton,” he boomed like a sunrise gun. His voice had a resounding, reverberating magniloquence that was altogether without ceremony. “Tm going to write a book about you.”’ “Thanks,” said Archie. “Oh, but I am!” cried the stranger as if he wanted every man in the Tombs to hear him, ‘You are to be the subject of a world-shaking work of science. You are the conclusive evidence I have sought for science. You area living witness of the transmigra- tion of the soul.” “Thanks,” said Archie again. “No trouble at all,’’ clanged the old man taking an energetic turn back and forth in the cell. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. I am Professor Virgil McLoud—a name that some day will ring like a clarion down ‘the corridors of science. Of all the men alive today I alone really understand and sympathize with you in your unhappy situation. You think you are cra ou think the whole world is crazy. My dear Middleton, let me tell you a secret-—the world is not crazy and you are not crazy." “Thanks,” said Archie once more. He didn’t know quite else what to say. “You are a very unfortunate man, my dear Middleton,” bonged Professor McLoud. ‘You are in a terrible predicament. You are as sane as I am, but by all the laws of common sense you ought to be dead.” “Dead?” “Dead,” knelled the professor solemnly. you are not! You are alive!’’ “Thanks,” said Archie. The proleace reached out a_ particularly long skinny hand and closed a set of particularly cold clammy fingers around Archie’s wrist. He leaned forward until his meniscus shaped nose threatened to slide down into Archie’s mouth. “You are alive, but you are alive in another man’s body,” he whispered hoarsely. ‘‘You had a fight and the other man killed your body, but he. could not kill your spirit, your personality! That was indomitable! It drove your murderer's spirit out of his body and you climbed in. You are in the body of the man that slew your body! Look out you don’t get into the electric chair! That’s all there is v¢ it, my dear Middleton—that’s all there is to it!” “Oh!” ejaculated Archie. “I see. That's all there is to it.” “But Ge professor was not to be quelled by sarcasm. His booming voice’ echoed up and down the outer corridor like peals of thunder as he told Archie that he stood ready to come to his defense to testify to the scientific truth of transmigration before any twelve men in a jury box’ and when Archie had given him renewed thanks, he wandered closely to him and grabbed his wrist once more. His voice sank to a husky whisper. “T’ll tell them that,"’ he said earnestly, ‘‘and if they don’t believe that—lI'll tell them the truth!” “Tam your friend,” replied the old man seriously. “T understand. I have penetrated the veil. You can call on me whenever you need a friend,”’ “And where can I find aes asked Archie, awed by a definite impression of hidden power and know!- edge about the strange old man. “T live everywhere—and nowhere,” he replied his voice oratund with importance. ‘I am a psychic. Half of the time I don’t know myself where I am, but every evening from seven to eight I stroll in Gramercy Park, to which I have the key. Remem- ber that if you ever need me, Middleton, God bless you!” . Archie bade him a cordial farewell, watching him whimsically as he shambled down the hallway dragging his umbrella behind him and booming bombastic greetings to the other prisoners as he sed. “No,” reflected Archie aloud. ‘I’m not crazy. I have just seen a crazy man and now I know the difference.”’ Yet the professor's mad idea of transmigration persisted. Archie had read of such things. The suggestion would not readily leave his mind. He was convinced that the old man knew more than’ he had said, that perhaps he had some definite informa- tion regarding the mystery which he was afraid to reveal. Underneath his bombast there was some- thing benevolent and sure. At five o’clock that afternoon Archie was still thinking about it when he was summoned to the front office. (Continued on page 28)
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oem ne a a age wen ae Are You a Piker? (Continued from page 20) that every man present consent to be searched. To the consternation of the group the poor man refuses to submit to the test. The party breaks up in confusion; the poor man accepts his disgrace and drops out of sight. Years after the real secret of the lost pin is discovered. It had fallen unnoticed into some unthought-of, unbelievable hiding-place. His friend goes to him—old, sad, disappointed—and he makes his real confession, He had an invalid sister, who could never take any part in social affairs. She never knew the pleasure of dining out; never knew the taste of dainty and costly things. So—when the squab was served, he shrinkingly slipped the bird bit into his napkin and put it into oe tail pocket of his evening coat to take home to er. The Cheater’s Paradise (Continued from page 14) Experienced married men do not do that sort of thing, I learned later. “Where did this money come from?”' she shouted, hurling it in my face. - “I—I won it,” I replied, picking up the banknotes. “Won it!”’ she cried. “How? Where?” “At Fred’s,” I replied. ‘We had a little game of cards—and—and—I won!” “Gambling!"" The amount of scorn she managed to get into that single word would have done credit to an Elenora Duse. ‘I will not live with a cheap gambler!”’ she cried, and without more ado, while I was hia on a way out of the argument, she started dressing—at five-thirty in the morning. “‘Now—now, dearie,” I attempted to kiss her, but she repulsed me. ‘‘There wasn’t any harm in it. Just a few fellows. Maybe | stayed longer than I should have—and I don’t blame you for being worried.” “CH, you don’t blame me,” she retorted. ‘‘So kind of you. I thought you might.’’ And she continued dressing, t Row, rather than putting, on one garment after another. I was stupefied—unable to comprehend the magni- tude of her mighty wrath, barely able to under- stand or appreciate her attitude toward what I considered a “quiet little game” with no one the worse for it. Of course, that difference was soon patched up— promises were asked and given, though never kept— and life went on, with similar differences and rea‘\- justments, here and there. My wife gradually learned that I was selfish, obstinate Saal pleasure-loving. I soon learned that she was jealous, narrow-minded and penurious. Our problem then, never stated but always eerie was how we might continue to love each other and live together, along the lines of least resistance. I doubt if my wife ever thought of finding any happiness outside her friends’ and her own tones circle. On my part, I doubt if there was ever a moment in my married life when I did not at least dream of some ideal or intimate relation outside our domestic circle. “What can a man want?” my wife often said on the rare occasions when she sensed this restlessness in me. “I ama good wife—a good mother—I keep your home in order—prepare the food you like— make a comfortable home for you. What else can a woman do?” What else indeed ? There was, and is, no answer. The first five years of our married life passed thus, almost without incident other than might be ex- pected and welcomed in any well conducted Ameri- can household. R Children came, my business career prospered mod- estly, my wife and family were happy. And what more again the same question, could any man ask? As a boy and as a youth before marriage, I had never been a woman's man, Very few of the obstin- ate sex had ever entered my life. None, except my wife, had influenced it. But how, five years after marriage, I discovered a strong tendency on my part to regard, if not with longing, at least with tolerance, incidents of marital unfaithfulness that came to my attention in the daily papers, and in the lives of a few of my intimate associates. One of the men in our office, a man named Taney, was notoriously and shamelessly unfaithful to his wife. He made a jest of it—boasted about his prowess with women—related spi details of various escapades and was, for all of that, generally liked by his fellow-workers, If anyone in that office had a word of sympathy for Mrs. Taney, it was never spoken in my presence, though I sometimes felt a thread of it run through me as Taney proceeded with some especially shame- less narrative that brought a gale of laughter from his small, but interested, audience. Frankly, I envied the man. I thought here must be some peculiar quality about him attractive to women, ae knew, in my own heart and soul, that if such a trait ever developed in me, I would do the same as he did. As time went on, as Taney prospered and other instances of this same looseness of regard for the marriage tie were apparent, I began to chafe more and more under the restraints that were daily rendering my home life intolerable. And so, as you learned at the beginning of this narrative, there came a time when the writer found himself in this “‘Cheater’s Paradise.” Memory goeth hardly back far enough to recount the steps that led to the evil door—but one may say, without contradiction, that after the first step, the others were easy. 4 But after years of dodging, lying and sneaking— cheating those who deserve the best love one has to give them—the writer can tell the world that it does not pay. . At first there is the pleasure of eating forbidden fruit; there is a sort of comaradio with ‘‘men of the world;” there is a thrill in defying convention. But the pleasure soon palls. . First go one’s faith in women; next one’s faith in one’s fellow man; then disappear all the tender, beautiful, ennobling thoyghts engendered by ro- mance and sentiment. At last the flesh-pots grow stale and unpalatable. The meal is ended, the lights are dim, the laughing guests are gone and you are left with a grinning skull for company. It does not pay to be an erring husband. What Happens When a Pretty Girl Stays in a Rooming House (Continued from page 12) Meanwhile, my eye was riveted on that doorknob. “Le’me in—le’me c’m in—can’ shu open the do, came biceonghes thpush the keyhole. “No!” I hissed back. He began rattling at the knob and thudded his bulk against the door. ‘‘Aw, g'wan, hav’ er hart, little one.” 4 r I decided that the time had arrived for action. Even though it must have been well toward mid- night, I flung on my clothes, carefully barracading the door with several chairs the while. Then I confronted that maudlin doorknob once more. Like lightning, I switched the key in the lock, flung open the door, gave my drunken friend a push that sent him sprawling, and made for the stairs. You may believe I went down three steps at a time. Arriving at the entrance—it was locked! Desper- ately panting, I remained poised there, wondering what was to be done next. As obviously it would have been the height of fally to rouse the house, the alternative was just one: Wait until my friend above dozed off into drunken slumber, then creep back to my room again to wait for the dawn. — But why describe my emotions when back in my room once more? My “friend’’ snored at peace with the world in the next room, while I waited for the morning sun to gild the spires and house-tops of this strange New York. Dawn came, as it always must—then broad daylight and the cheerful morning sounds of milk wagons. Soon a whiff of frying bacon permeated from somewhere, and so natural and wholesome was the smell that I was inclined to believe that my adventures of the night was some ‘‘welsh-rarebit dream.’’ Needless to say, I found my way to the street, grip in hand, past the startled maid who was washing the steps, before the seven o'clock whistle blew. Perhaps my next venture in room-hunting, though not so gruelling, was the strangest of all. It was another innoxious brown-stone front. Here, the lady who greeted me was as different from my former adversary as daylight from dark. Slim, graciously close on to forty, her hair rippled back from her forehead in wonderful silky high- lights. If her palm clung to mine a little more warmly than was necessary, I failed to notice it a the time. Her cordiality touched and overwhelmed me. Indeed, I must send for my trunk right away; certainly I could move in to-night—you won’t mind, dear, being in a room with five others? Just a little while until the other rooms are made over, you know. Before I quite realized what was happening, my trunk was summoned, installed, and reposing with an air of permanance in the room ‘‘with five other beds.” To be sure, it was rather disagreeable crammed that way right in the midst of perfect strangers. Clothes hanging from every available hook, a great medley of trunks, hairbrushes and cluttered bureaus—and chattering girls. But how good it was to be settled at last, though a few an- noying inconveniences spelled the preliminaries. I quickly made the acquaintance of my five other roommates—all nice, wholesome girls, they ap- peared. No, reader, don’t hold your breath. I had not wandered into another ‘‘house of ill fame.”” Every one of those girls was as well brought up, as carefully reared as anyone. Their one crime was that they were ‘‘too good-looking to be living alone in New York.” -You see, I had wandered into the lair of a lady philanthropist—as had my five other room- mates, and the other girls in the house. Our land- lady called herself a rescuer of fallen girls, taking to her philanthropic heart only those who looked as if at one time or other they had submitted to the pit- falls of “the great and wicked city.” And as this was practically the only house to be found where unusually beautiful girls were welcome—the ir mates had all stayed. - Permit me to recite an interesting little incider. at night, my roommates and I were grouped around one of the small cots, either stretched out in kimonas or perched on cushions manicuring nails, A hot discussion was afoot as to the moral status of our landlady—whether she was acting from pure kindness of heart, or through a low, mor- bid desire to know the ways of the ‘fallen.’ We agreed that her ideas on the ‘unprotected girl’ were the worst that could possibly be imagined, and that she gloated over having forty or more of those ‘‘awful creatures” at close range under one roof for private inspection. Then we compared notes and I found that my experiences of last night had been shared to a degree by all the rest. “Oh, you'll get used to it,’”’ cut in a little blonde, with large brilliant blue eyes. ‘‘If they see that you dress well, and once get the hang that you are con- nected with the theatre—it’s all over.” And how her eyes flashed. ‘They think you want to bring men up in your room, and such rot!” She had such an engaging way of tossing her head, and spoke the words with such simple fervor, that we shouted with laughter. It was at this point—when the six of us were brimming with gay, innocent fun—that our land- lady entered. “Young ladies, young ladies,"’ and she drew her- self up to all her slim, aristocratic height. ‘‘I can’t —I can’t have you laughing like prostitutes. Kindly close the windows or they will hear you across the way.” We were dumb. A falling of a pin could be heard in the room when our visitor finally departed, softly closing the door behind her. Prostitutes—why, that was a word to be whispered, a word not in one’s vocabu- lary, surely never to be spoken openly. And we were called that. It was not to be borne! The next day, sick at heart, I began the rounds again. But I found I wasn’t wanted—anywhere. The general attitude was simply this: ‘You stupid little thing, I know you aren’t respectable and -you can't be very smart, either. If I had your looks I would be having a maid and a limousine on River- side Drive!” Allright, said I to myself, if you think I should be leading a pink poodle round by a chain and smooth- ing down the six gray hairs on a shiny bald head, here goes! Me for moleskin-wraps and a tid little hundred thousand tucked away in Texas Oil. Only I didn’t. For I snuggled up, not in a ‘de luxe’’ duplex on West End Avenue, but back in the good old Y. W.— boon to homeless, houseless stage beauties. My Night at a Jungle Party? (Continued from page 7) The primaries were still several months removed, yet there was no judging the temper of the people, and Hedges’ opponent, one Hobart Goldtree, was not going to take a chance at that. Goldtree was the owner of the newspaper that I worked for but (Contin on page 26)
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Four The Life Story of Veronica Another charming pose of Veronica whose life story reads like a page of romance. She dances nightly be- fore New York’s smartest cabaret hounds. | bgt child of the east side, was born with a love sor dancing, music and beautiful clothes. Her parents, solid and respectable folk, tried to crush this spirit in her, but only made her more rebellious. Unknown to them she learned to dance marvellously well. When she was fourteen and a halt years old she eloped with a man she had met in an office where she was em- ployed and was married. While the police o the United States were looking jor her she was spending her honeymoon in an Albany hotel. On her return to New York she accidentally discovered that her “husband” was a married man with a child. She returned to her parents, but a little later on answered an advertisement for a girl who could dance. She secured a tri with a man who was staging a wire walking act for vaudeville and speedily learned to become an expert tight rope walker. One of the other girls, Ruby Winter, had a friend, a wealthy man who spent a reat deal of time in the rehearsal rooms and who became attracted to Veronica. Meanwhile, Veronica's eyes had lingered on a handsome young aerialist ed too bashful to return her gaze. One day while she was waiting in a retired corner of the re er and in the struggle that followed, Eddie Fields, the the wealthy Ps: of iced tried to kiss young acro i came to ‘eronica’s assistance by smashing rsal rooms, Graham, raham in the jaw. Graham fell, striking his head against a piano leg and Ruby rushing up to him cried, “ You have killed hijm." However Graham was only stun: and departed threatening vengeance on Eddie Fields. ater Veronica is given the stellar position in the act, displacing Ruby, who in a fit of jealous rage tries to throw her off the high wire. A daring swing by Eddie Fields rescues Veronica just in t nick of time. Ruby is thereupon dismiss from the act which so interrupts the program that the act is made over, secures an engagement as a cabaret attraction on Broadway. Here Veronica jor the first time learns the life of the cabaret girl. In the meantime Eddie Fields tells her that he loves her and they are planning to be married. Although realizing that she is not playing Jair, Veronica finds it impossible to tell about her childhood marriage. Just on the eve of their wedding he receives proofs of this early affair from the hand of Ruby, who ts still determined to have revenge. It is the night that the United States declares war on Germany. Eddie's farewell note just before she is to begin her tight wire performance. Veronica receives Heartbroken at Eddie's decision to go overseas with a detachment of Canadian troops, she rushes out into the cabaret and clambers onto the wire. her balance and is falling, falling—— blue, green and_ yellow lights, a trembling sea of distorted faces and a sickening sense of falling swiftly through space. Then came a splitting, deadening crash. Everything seemed to detonate around my head and I sank into a black and soundless oblivion. I have often read in stories where people were knocked unconscious and then declared that they could not tell how long they had lain insensible. It happens that«I can tell almost exactly how long a time passed before I regained my consciousness. When I opened my eyes I was in a strange place—a [&: conscious only of a whirling of There she is overcome. She finds it impossible to regain room clean and white, with a kindly faced middle- aged woman, dressed in white, standing beside me. She leaned over and smiled and said: “You are all right, my dear; just lie quietly and you will be all right.” I closed my eyes and lay there thinking, or rather trying to think. My thoughts were foggy. It seemed a long time before I remembered what had happened. My last recollection was of eway- ing dizzily on the wire and then pitching violently to the side toward the floor. For a moment this sufficed. I must be in a hospital, I reflected. Then like Queen of New Yorks Moulin Rouge a searing flame I remembered Eddie, my lover, who had gone to war. Again I opened my eyes and I saw a bearded man with large eye-glasses, whispering to the nurse. His eyes were on my face and when he saw that I was looking at him he came over and touched my hand gently. “How long have I been here, doctor?” I asked him. I was not sure whether it was the same night on which I fell, or the next morning. He smiled at me, showing his fine white teeth and said, ‘‘You have been here just two weeks today.”’ Two weeks! My surprise quickly faded into a more terrible feeling. Two weeks! Eddie was in France! The ie in my heart was more than I could bear and swooned again. My convalesence was very slow and sometimes very painful,—partly, I suppose, use of the sadness that made life seem hardly worth while reclaiming. I had no longer any wish to live and sometimes I lay there wondering if a butterfly with broken wings could ever wish to fly again. Gradually, as my strength returned, they told me what had happened to me. Even in falling I had instinctively contorted myself into the position which Big John had taught me as one of the safest tricks of the aerialist, a sort of hunched position which protects the bones.. But this had not failed to save me altogether. : I had two broken ribs, scars and bruises all over my legs and arms and a nasty contusion at the base of the skull. It was this last injury which had made the surgeons despair of my life and they regarded my return to consciousness. as nothing short of a miracle. I shall never forget the afternoon that Big John came to see me. Outwardly blustering, boisterous and fierce, he was at heart as tender as a child. Tears were in his eyes as he looked at me lying there on my cot. It was Big John who had sent me to the hospital and secured for me the attention of two of the greatest surgeons in the world. He blamed him- self for the accident, although he had not the slightest cause to doso. Every morning he had sent me roses and three times a day he had called or telephoned to find out how I was getting on. I do not know what became of Eddie’s letter. Perhaps Big John found it and destroyed it. At least he seemed to understand for he sat there and told me that I must find my happiness in my work; that there was a bright future for me and that some day I would be famous. “Praise be to God,” he said. ‘‘Your arms are all right and your legs are all right and your face is all right. And now that the doctor says your head will be all right and your ribs will be all right, why it seéms to me,” he paused and wiped the pira- tion from his brow, ‘‘that you should be all right.” I could have told him that my heart was not all right, but I could not find the power to tell him how pay I was suffering. I did tell him, however, that I would never go back on the wire again. ._ That resolution had come to me as I lay hour after hour, day after day, thinking it all over. I sickened, merely to think of climbing the ladder and danving out upon that slender pathway through the air. Somehow it seemed to associate itself in my mind with my love for Eddie. When I was his promised wife; when our love was so glowing and so com lete, I felt as I were, in truth, living in the air. y heart was so light that I didn’t need the solid earth beneath my feet. I
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“Page Twenty Five But after Eddie was could swing, like a butterfly. I fell back to the gone, my power too was gone. earth never, never to fly again. Alter a few weeks they let me sit up and in a wheel chair I was taken out on a wide, warm veranda where the bracing winter sunshine brought back a bit of glow to my pallid cheeks. My heart still felt as dead as a stone. The nurses and the doctors and Big John and some of the girls from the cabaret who brought me flowers and dainties, made me love them all, but could not make me love life any the more. Even when they told me that regular patrons of the cabaret were asking for me and when they showed me the accounts in the newspaper with my pictures I could only smile dully and wonder about Eddie. N my ears was the constant boom and crash of the big guns. I could close my eyes and picture the rain falling across the trenches and the whistling shells, the loud explosions and the cries of the wounded and dying. Was Eddie among them? I had a conviction that Eddie loved me so well and his disappointment in me was so deep and so tragic that ie would risk his life joyously in search of forgetfulness. This conviction mounted to such a certainty that I brooded constantly over his safety. This naturally retarded my recovery and kept me from wishing to get well. I remember the one thing that gave me hope. A young interne, who had taken quite a fancy to me, gained my confidence to such an extent that when he asked me one day what it was that made me worry, I admitted that I was troubled about the safety of a man I knew who was serving in France. “How long has he been over there?” he asked. saya about a month,” I replied. “Why,” he said, ‘‘you haven't any cause to worry yet. They have to train a man before they let him go out to fight and it takes months to do that. You can rest assured that your friend is in some training camp miles and miles back of the lines and that nothing is going to happen to him for a long time yet, if it ever does.” ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. “Tam absolutely, absolutely,” he replied. This relieved me so considerably that I began to summon courage to get well. My appetite improved and I began to walk around the corridors feeling still a little weak, but getting stronger every day. One morning the doctor came in and_ said, “Veronica, in a few days you will be able to leave this old hospital and in about two weeks time you can be dancing again, By the way,” he added, “here is a letter that came for you this morning.”’ I grabbed it quickly, looking for a foreign stamp. I was always hoping that Eddie might forgive me and write me a letter. But this bore no stamp at all. The writing was unfamiliar. It had been left at the hospital office. My curiosity was aroused as I tore open the envelope and found there was no message inside beyond a newspaper clipping which read as follows: BROADWAY ACROBAT WOUNDED IN ACTION Paris, France. Word reached here to- day that Edward Fields, a daring trapeze performer whose exhibitions in a Broadway cabaret gained him considerable renown during the last few years, was badly hurt during a sortie into the German lines. Fields is attached to a division of Canadian troops which left the Dominion only a few weeks ago but was sent to the front line trenches immediately to fill a bad gap. Fields was found unconscious on No Man’s Land 36 hours after the engagement and was carried back under a heavy Ger- man fire by two heroic friends. He is now in a hospital behind the lines and the surgeons do not believe he will recover. Scribbled on the bottom of this clipping were these words: “Please accept my deepest sympathy—Ruby.” That was Habye way of turning the dagger around in my heart after plunging it up to the hilt * * * * * My nature is one of contradictions. People have always told me that I always do the unex- pected thing. If I should laugh, I cry and when I one , [am quite likely to laugh. en read the story that Eddie was dying from his wounds, I neither innctied nor cried. At first I was numb and dazed. I sat there, the clipping (Continued on page 29) Your Greatest Mystery Solved Howard Thurston will answer questions asked by ‘‘Midnight’s’’ readers on all phases of spiritism, occultism, etc. He also defines one mysti- fying trick each week. Questions will be answered in these columns. attempt. Seating himself before a table, the entertainer asks that others in the company cal] out the names of famous figures in his- tory, either ancient or modern. We will suppose that the names given are Caesar Roosevelt, Noah, Queen Elizabeth and Ser- yeant York. On the table in front of him the conjuror has a small pad and_ pencil As each name is called, he writes it down on a sheet of the pad, folds it carefully and drops it in a borrowed hat. When all the names desired have been called, a spectator is asked to mix up the papers eaietilive and then draw out one. The performer places this against his head for a moment, then asks the spectator to hold it. All the remaining papers are then placed on a saucer and burned. The magician moves his index finger among the ashes, declaring that in them he will read the name written on the paper retained. And he does so. In magic, the most effective tricks are the simplest. This is one of the most effective The secret lies in the fact that after the first name is called, the performer does not write any other. For instance, in the list given above, Caesar is the only name he would have written on all the papers. Cotise- quently, Caesar is bound to be on the paper selected. Requirements—saucer and burning paper. HIS bewildering effect can be mastered by the magical beginner at the first There, one Pith J Caugk reveal ae I am receiving many interesting communications from the readers of MIDNIGHT. They are being answered, personally, by mail and I trust satisfactorily to those who have asked me. various questions pertaining to magic, the occult, spiritism, etc. But I must ask you not to request me to reveal such illusions as “Sawing a Woman in Half,” about which many of my correspondents are curious. Such tricks are an important part of a magician’s stock in trade; many times they are patented. When they are explained, they no longer have the appeal necessary to attract audiences, and, after all, the professional magician lives by the public he attracts. Palmistry is quite another matter. Many people believe that the lines on the palm reveal character. There is no secret about palmistry that I may not reveal. The same thing is true of astrology. While I do not believe that one can read one’s future in the hand or in the stars, it may well be that they offer a key to character that no other method offers. So I shall be glad to answer any and all questions pertaining to these, as well as to explain or reveal the simpler tricks and illusions that the amateur may employ to the entertainment of his friends. And, in the same way, I shall be happy to place at the disposal of the readers of MIDNIGHT all that I have learned about spiritism, and to analyze, so far as possible, their experiences in this field. You may address all communications to me personally, and they shall have my prompt atten- tion. Unless you so specify, I shall take it for granted that I may answer you through the columns of MIDNIGHT. Otherwise, please enclose a stamp for reply. I take great pleasure in telling you readers of MIDNIGHT that arrangements are being com- pleted for me to talk on the radio once a month, casting the horoscope for that month. These talks will be given from the broadcasting station nearest the city in which I am playing. The broadcasting stations of the Westinghouse Company are in Newark, N. J., Springfield, Mass., East Pittsburgh, Pa., and Chicago, III. HOWARD THURSTON Mystery Editor MIDNIGHT 119 West 40th Street New York City
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“Page “Fwenty Six . POM/DNIGHT My Night at a Jungle Party? (Continued from page 23) in my year’s service there I had never laid eyes on him. Goldtree was depending on his editor for political success at the polls. He had talked it over with him and told him to clear the decks for action and not to bother him with the details of procedure. So the editor hit on a scheme. It was simple enough. The es was to collect evidence, if there was any, which might involve Hedges, Goldtree’s opponent, or even some member of his family, and with this evidence, under threat of exposure, relegate said opponent to innocuous desuetude. DAM HALE was Goldtree’s friend—nay, he /Awas more than that—they were confederates in iniquity. But the editor knew nothing of that. To him Adam Hale was Hedge’s son-in-law. He had heard rumors about young Adam, and once or twice he had seen Adam leaning over the counter talking to me, so the editor called me in and, concealing his real purpose, pictured to me in glowing terms the great service I could render fellow working girls. He worked on my CeAadets appealed to my business judgment, showing me how I could draw a double check. One from him, and another from the outside—another employer. “For instance” he said, “Suppose you worked in Hale’s store, you would soon know many of the girls, know how they live, how they dress so well, how they enjoy themselves,’ and here he gave me the high sign. “T want the dope—the honest to God dope?” he said, encouraging me with a fatherly stroke on the shoulder. ‘Go get it for me. I don’t care how— and not a word to anyone, you hear.” Hanging over the advertising counter didn’t hold much promise. I was ambitious, I was intelli- gent, and I had merely started there because I wanted to wedge into the newspaper business somehow. Here was a chance to get out of the rut. A chance to please the editor. I considered it destiny. I would be a fool not to seize the oppor- tunity. I was to be sort of a detective. That in itself was a beginning. It might lead to something big, one never could tell. By the following morning I had decided to tackle the new job. Substituting the smartest looking dress 1 owned for the simple blue serge I usually wore to work, I started out, brave in spirit and determined to see it through no matter what happened. I walked down East Temple Street in a solemn mood. I had a presentment I was undertaking something more than I had bargained for. Just ahead of me loomed the glistening white facade of the Utah Hotel. “What a beautiful building,’ I mused, stopping a moment to enjoy the stately proportions of its outlines. “The men who helped build that structure surely were good men!”’ At the corner of East Temple and Main streets, I crossed in front of Bringham Young's statue. I never pass that spot without looking up at the massive bronze form on its granite pedestal. The very boldness of the figure’s contour bespeaks self- assurance. There old Bringham stands through tain and shine, snow and sleet, challenging the whole world. I like his challenge. It is a challenge to do things. A challenge to make one’s own desert bloom as he made a vast barren land yield the wherewith to sustain a travel-sore people: So this morning I looked up at him, and then I ac- celerated my step. A few blocks brougitt me to the doorway of the Hale Department Store. In the vestibule stood a man who looked like he might be the boss of the place, but wasn’t. “Pardon sir,” meditation, ‘I wish to go to work. apply?” The man looked me up and down “Any experience as saleslady?”’ I shook my head in the negative. “Sorry, we couldn’t offer you anything; we only use experienced help,” and he bowed and moved away. I turned and walked out onto the sidewalk again. Then I stopped suddenly. “This will never do,”’ I grumbled to myself. ‘It will be the same everywhere. I’ve an idea,” and I marched right back into the store again and past the man who had turned me down, entered the elevator and went to the hat department on the second floor. A short, plump, red-headed, genial- I said, interrupting his morning Where do | faced man was playing with a pencil, tapping it on a showcase near the elevator shaft. accosted him; not as I had the other party in the vestibule below, but in a very feminine strain. I fabricated a paint tale of woe and disaster, and ged so’hard or a chance to show my EXPERIENCE and ability, he took pity on me and put me to work on the spot. I sold hats. Rich ladies came to buy them. Sometimes their husbands accompanied them. One afternoon an expensively gowned matron entered the department, trailing listlessly behind her was a gentleman. I judged from his indifference toward her that he was her husband. She wished to pur- chase a hat, and had tagged him along to confirm her own taste. 1 showed her a large assortment of headgear, and did my best to please her but she was hard to suit. She was an extremely plain woman, and cranky. All the smart new shapes of the season looked like the very dickens on her head. The husband registered his disgust in sundry side glances at me. I didn’t miss any of them. As I turned away to get another hat I paused long enough behind the show case to extract a tiny note- book and pencil from my blouse and make the following entry: “Experience No. 1.—Rich old fool picks up sales- girl. Looks like a rotter. Good material. His wife a love-hungry looking cat. Sept. 16th.” Then I returned to my customer with a glorious creation in my hand. It was by far the costliest hat in the place. Black plush with a huge spray of aradise. I first put it on my own head to display its beauty. It was strikingly becoming to me. had tried it on before and knew just how to carry it. The man barely contained his admiration. Then I removed the hat, and tried it on his wife. The difference was painful. “Utterly unsuited,” shouted the husband, sud- denly getting up and walking toward the further end of the department. My customer continued to view herself in the mirror from different angles. She wanted the hat. The husband called me over, and as though indicating a bonnet that had caught his fancy in a show case nearby, he spoke under his breath: “How much is the paradise hat ?”” “Eighty-five dollars, sir,’ and I looked him right in the eye. “Put it aside, I'll be back later.” “Thank you, name please?’ He hesitated, then chewing up his words like a plug of tobacco: “Make it Garrison.” “Yes sir, A You'll call?” He nodded and I returned to the lady and removed the hat from her head very gently. “Come on," commanded the husband to his wife, approaching her as though in great haste to get out. “There are other places.” Meekly the woman followed her legal mate, and I watched them go, somewhat puzzled. “Wonder who they really are,’’ I mused to myself as I secreted the paradise hat in a big grey carton and set it aside. The man came back to find me two hours later. He had a big roll of bills in his fist and handed it to me without any explanation. I began counting over the money, but he stopped me. “(XUT that,” he said brusquely, “It’s all there, and then some. The hat is for you. You look like a queen in it. You were meant to look that way always, don’t you understand?” and he winked his eye. Yes I did understand, indeed I did. The next entry in my notebook read: “Will you walk into my parlour said the spider to the tly? It is the prettiest little parlor that ever vou did spy. I’m one hat to the good, and much flattery. I'm not sure of the guy’s name. He said it was Garrison. Wish his wife would return to the store and I would find out. If it weren't for my boss, the editor, it would be Garrison's finish. He seems to me to be taking big chances, on getting his pay just the same. But the conceit of men is unbelievable. Oct. 6th.” _ As my feigned interest in Garrison increased, his infatuation for me grew by leaps and bounds. Eve: noon hour he could steal away from his usual lunc at the club with his business associates, found him in my company, usually in some hidden luncheon spot. Just being near me seemed to intoxicate him. He tried to affect me by becoming quite confi- dential, even pong so far as to explain my influence over his conduct in his own home. He explained that he had become less grouchy since meeting me, especially at breakfast, less exacting at dinner, was petting generous toward his wife, something which ad never occurred to him before; had praised his servants and smiled on the gardner and chauffeur. He insisted that even in his business he could see a great transformation coming about. “Things are picking up, girlie. I feel happy, buoyant, expectant, and everybody says rit be the next governor.” I began wondering what some of the other girls in the store had to live through. Carefully I ques- tioned this one and that, but they were very secre- tive. Their jobs depended on silence. The manage- ment had proclaimed to its patrons that their employees were all high-class women, which implied moral, according to fixed standards, so that any discretions on the part of any of the workers were to be kept under cover, at least during service hours. But let a group of young women get together at lunch time and all the salacious tit-bits of the town could be learned from them. And these choice morsels of gossip became amplified and embellished according to the vividness of the particular narrator's imagination. And so it was, that in the course of time, I learned that there was a certain clique of “favorites” among the employees at Hale’s; young women who were “good lookers,’’ who dressed better, were more independent, more insolent to customers, less efficient than the rest, but who were able to hold down their jobs through pull with the “big guns.’ And in connection with the stories involving these favored few, the term Adam Hale was a by-word. ] HAD quite forgotten about him, but the mention of his name brought back memories. I had not seen him since the automobile incident, and he had not yet discovered that I was at work in his father’s store. Adam was in the real estate business. Huge signs all over town proclaimed it. He principally looked after his father’s investment. Still he had some of his own. The girls said he owned the building across the street from the store and drew a nats income from it, in addition to a peck of un. The three lower floors contain offices, the fourth and top floor was cut up into a series of suites furnished as bedchambers, and all capable of being thrown into one vaste apartment. This was supposed to be the living ea of the bachelor members of the wealthy Hale family. But the bachelors were all “‘benedicts,” the girls amusingly informed me, and it was a swell place for parties. It was shortly after this that Adam Hale stum- bled onto me. I say stumbled—it was nothing of the kind, Garrison was with him, and pointed me out from afar. Adam then came over alone and greeted me effusively and forthwith asked me to join a group of his friends at a Jungle Party that evening. The gossip I had heard flashed across my mind, and I accepted. It was nine o'clock. The elevator had stopped running. A group of smartly dressed young women muffling their high spirits climbed eagerly four flights of stairs. I was among them. At the top landing stood Adam Hale in a dein robe of white, soft goods which resembled a toga such as the Romans wore. Over his head was a hood, and over his face a thin mask of the same material as the robe. Only two twinkling black eyes gave life to the ghost-like form. “So glad to see you,”’ rang in hearty joyous tones as the girls all flocked about him, babbling and laughing, and he made an effort to embrace the whole lot with one sweep of his arms, then led them in. The apartment was dimly lighted when we first entered and gave every appearance of a tangle of
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CY ONIGHT Page Twenty Seven. vegetation. The main room opened into a long narrow hallway off from which there were a series of smaller rooms furnished as bedchambers, and in one of them wherea Phillippino servant was on hand, refreshments were spread out. The male guests had arrived ahead of the girls, and were seated on the cushions in the main room, about six in all eae like their host, with their faces shielded. me of them had been drinking. Nobody was introduced. It seemed hardly necessary. The girls didn’t expect it. They had come for fun and excite- ment—the rest meant nothing to them. Like a bunch of gulls sweeping over the lake and settling down on a Pe field, these women at once took possession of the place. One made a dive for the piano, the rest sang. One of them somewhat dainter than the others, who had once been in a po ballet, started a hula. Soon clothes were in er way. She calmly removed them piece by piece. She got plenty of applause during the process. Meanwhile there were rounds of drinks—ve many rounds. Voices grew harsh from too muc shouting. Men grew weary from too much looking. Preliminary decency began to he discarded, and as an incentive to stimulate jaded emotions, various absurd stunts were resorted to. Then two of the girls disappeared into an adjoin- ing room and returned in nature's dress with stove- pipe hats on their heads. Everybody laughed, even h: who had managed to touch not a drop and had long before shrunk into a corner where I wasn't missed by the intoxicated guests. Two or three times I had felt like dashing out of the place, but having. seen so much I decided to see it through, so I stayed. INALLY all had left—all save the lone figure in white who had been watching me, and myself, standing concealed behind the portieres. Noise- lessly now the white figure grabbed the curtain and me in it, I struggled. The entire curtain and fixture came down on top of us. I screamed. The man let go, disentangled himself and me too, Then he ripped off his mask. “You! Mr. Garrison,” I exclaimed staring at him dumbfounded. ‘‘You here?” “Yes, and with you, sweetheart,” came the reply in a furry voice. ‘Come in the room with me now,” he added as if he were ordering a pound of spuds. I kept my head. Gently I pushed him on ahead of me, then turned suddenly like a flash and dashed from the apartment. It was three in the morning, cold, damp and dark when I struck the sidewalk below. How good the night air felt. Never before had I realized how foul and oppressive are the madnesses of mankind. I turned from the building as quickly as possible, and upa side street. After that I did not care where I went, so long as I kept going. J felt like walking away from every human being. So this was what the girls at Hale's called fun; those who partook and others who would have loved to be invited. And the men also, they thought it was fun. Feigned pavagons of society, civic leaders, envied of the masses, honored by their equals—I now knew them all, and piecing together the information Garrison had on previous occasions volunteered about his crowd, I also had their record. Sad specimens of modern America, spreading .their foulness like a devil-fish his inky liquid. Polluting all about them and escaping the censors only to throw mud at others no worse than they. With this line of.thought I tried to purge my own mind of the sights I had seen. Suddenly I felt for my hat. I had left it behind. That was nothing, one does not need a hat to be happy, and I was happy to be on the street safe and unharmed, alone with God, and I was not sorry for anything that I had seen, for now I was able to “deliver the goods”’ to my editor. Later about eleven the same day, I walked into the editor's office and threw a small bundle of notes on his desk. He was out. I waited. I was very tired. I dropped my head over my arm which rested on the editor’s desk and heaved a deep sleepy sigh. Presently the editor returned. He sped me first. “Ah, here she is,”” he exclaimed in a cheerful voice, and I rose to greet him respectfully. Then he reached for the bundle of notes on his desk and began fingering them. A shadow fell through the doorway from behind me. The editor looked up. “Oh, good morning, sir,’ and he Ginmediatals pushed back his chair to offer it to the advancing figure. I turned very slowly to see who it was. “Meet this little lady, Mr. Goldtree. She's brought in enough material to put you in the governor's chair.” There in front of me stood Garrison, suddenly rooted to the spot as though turned to stone. [ staggered back. Instantly it occured to me what the editor had said. I turned, snatched the bundle of notes from his hand like a tigresss and flew out of the room. The very last entry I made in my notebook was a private memorandum: “A jungle is a wild place unfit for civilized people. But in this civilized world of ours we have jungles too, They are frequented by the most uninterest- ing creatures in the world—the most insane, the most unhealthy in mind and body. Their mode of amusement is pathetic rather than dangerous— childish rather than criminal, and no balanced adult can enjoy their company. “The fact that there are many, many jungles in many, many places where men and women are gathered together, does not alter the premises, and it os fair to pick on one and let all the others sail 'y. Hedges for governor carried the state three to one, and Hobart Goldtree with all his chattel including his wife, has gone abroad to live. Adam Hale has transformed the old jungle place into a free clinic for the poor and afflicted. What a farce! Ku Klux Klan (Continued from page 5) was challenged, and his challengers were armed. Guards, posted in the attitude of Billikens, sur- rounded the place. It did seem that something momentous impended. But next day the Atlanta papers carried a column of a speech delivered to the Klansmen by Mrs. Elizabeth Tyler, who has been the big brains behind the organization of the Empire. At present, according to reports from Atlanta and elsewhere, the Ku Klux Klan is in a bad way. Differences among its leading promoters threaten to break its back. Many of them are leaving or being dismissed. Its doctrines opposed to Catho- lics, Jews and Negroes, are still preached, but from personal knowledge this writer feels none of these prejudices are seriously entertained by any of the effective promoters of the order. Their interest has been almost exclusively concerned with spread- ing the organization. And it does not seem that these prejudices are really responsible for the great spree of the Ku Klux Empire in certain parts of the country. It would really appear that what. a great many Americans wil! pay money for is to enjoy being in on the dark secrets of an Invisible Kingdom. Her Last Thrill (Continued from page 13) the American and the Frenchman who used base- balls, the French officers who fought to death with billiard balls—fascinating, are they not? Come! Speak up! This shouldn't be a monologue.” “Yes, yes,—of course. But Doctor, suppose one of us killed the other, then wouldn’t the killer be imprisoned as a murderer? Besides, there's abso- lutely no reason Y ‘ Dr. Labadie interrupted. ‘That’s the obvious objection—that the winner would lose. But my profession gives me opportunity to overcome that objection. We might seal two rooms; leave one pure and impregnate the other with deadly germs, and draw lots which room we should occupy. Still, that might not be fatal. The easiest and best way, I think, is to use poison pills Why, Eleanor, don’t scream! What's so terrible about poison, pills? I'll make them small and painless one will be enough. Here’s the modus operandi— I'll make two pills alike in appearance; one will be deadly, the other harmless. The poison will be absolute but slow-acting. The one who draws the poison pill will die in two or three days and no one will know why he died. There will be no suspicions aroused. Just one point eliminated from the tri- angle . . . . Stillnowords? Well, let’s proceed!” He crossed the room, carefully locked the door into the hall and put the key in his pocket. ‘‘Please wait quietly until I fixthe pills. It'll take just a minute.” He crossed the room again and entered his labora- tory, leaving the door open behind him. Eleanor and young Van Coptra watched him at work, as- cinated, horror-stricken. When Dr. Labadie came from the laboratory he held in the palm of his hand two small white pills. “Here we are. Now Van Coptra, you may have your choice; I'll take the other. Thus one of us will be quickly and quietly eliminated.” “Doctor! Doctor! This is horrible!” Van Coprat oe hoarsely, as though his vocal chords were rugged. ‘‘There’s no reason in it. Eleanor and I are innocent of anything worse than a flirtation. Good God, man, let me out of here and I'll never come near her again.” “Perhaps. Still, I must be sure. Here! Your choice! If you don’t care to take one of the pills I swear that I'll kill you before you leave this room— Be sensible! You've got an even chance this way. Take it. It’s the best way out, the only way!” “No! No, it’s not! There’s this way! The best way!’’ Eleanor Labadie swiftly caught both pills from her husband’s hand, raised them to her mouth, swallowed them. She gasped, reeled, collapsed. “God, Doctor!” Van Coptra backed away, his hands to his face; then he swallowed noisily and squared himself before Dr. Labadie. “Hurry! Do something! An emetic, something! Don't let her go like that.” Dr. Labadie smiled. ‘'Too late, Van Coptra. You'll remember that I specified a sure poison. No power on this earth can save Mrs. Labadie from the effects of those pills now.”” “No! Do something! Don’t let her die like that!"" “Nothing. Or maybe you know of something? Listen, Van Coptra! This thing worked out just as I expected. Didn’t you notice that I held the pills so that she could easily grasp them? I know her better than you do, Van Coptra; she’s excitable, hysterical. Those pills fascinated her; she had a great idea of atoning for her sins—or at least of saving one of us from death. That's often the woman's idea in the triangle situation. Do, you go to the movies often?” “How can you talk like that when you’ve poisoned your wife?” “Because I was prepared for it, I tell you. It is just what I ho A casei happen. Of the three points in; the infernal triangle she was the one the World could best lose. I’m a doctor and of some value to society; you may do something worth while when you settle down; she had nothing to offer— except her life.’’ There was silence, during which Dr. Labadie leaned over his wife’s figure, smoothed her hair back from her forehead. He straightened, still smiling. “Here’s the key to the door, Van Coptra. You may go now. This thing is settled. Of course you dare not talk of it; it would ruin you and bring scan- dal upon the name of a dying woman.” Van Coptra extended a shaking hand for the key. at the door he stopped. ‘Doctor, I dare talk of it! I will talk of it! You’re a murderer! You know it! You're a beast! And Eleanor . . . She was innocent. She didn’t give in to my advances! I’m not sure I wished her to; she let me kiss her, admire her, visit her. That was all. And now—” He choked. ‘Yes, 1 will talk! I'll tell the whole World what you have done! And I'll begin with the sheriff!” Dr. Labadie started towards him, but the door slammed and there was the sound of running steps on the stairs. ‘pas doctor shrugged his shoulders, then returned to lift up his wife. ‘Eleanor, oh Eleanor! What a brutal lesson | gave you! But it is balm to know that you are faithful after all. And now you always will be . Such a lesson! For young Van Coptra, too. I never really doubted you Eleanor, but you were playing with fire and I had to know that you weren't singed . . . . Those pills! Nothing but ordinary salt—both of them PS As soon as you come out of this faint you'll forgive me ; I love you, dear; I had to protect you. Now I'msure . . Here! Some water!’ He leaned over to touch his wife’s lips; he started back as though a snake had struck at him from her breast. His hand fumbled towards her heart; he raised her eyelids with shaking fingers. Dr. Labadie staggered across the room; he fell across the shine covered couch. ‘Great God! ae She’s dead of fright!” Midnight Passengers (Continued from page 18) from a mere sense of congeniality and friendship grows, under the observant and appraising eye of the conductor visibly into’ something rich and strange; and in those moments of leisure, peace, and security, a Flower buds and blossoms. Lovers who ride the busses have a Union of their own. Among. themselves they speak a wordless language; they know each other mysteriously, as
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Page Fwenty Sight if they had among them a secret countersign. If you question this, watch that rear top seat on the tight. It is built for three. Couples choose it by preference because they are free from the observa- tion and the smiles, and sometimes the frowns, of their fellow passengers. If it be occupied by those who have best right to it, it is all too wide; but presently come two more, and nowhere on that bus top do they find two vacant seats together. Nothing is said; the occupants of the coveted rear seat siniply move over and invite the newcomers with their eyes. Lots of room for four; and what’s a little crowding! In the days of livery stables, who demanded the light buggy with the narrow seat? But that was in the country, wasn’t it? In those days one could have Dobbin and that narrow-seated buggy for a dollar the evening; and if one couldn’t afford the dollar, why there was the porch covered with honeysuckle vine, or the hammock that swung between the two old apple trees. It is different now. In place of the hammock under the trees, and the trickets and the locusts singing, and the old owl in che elm uttering his note, and the frogs down in the meadow croaking in all keys from base to treble, a hard bench in a park with a suspicious and Com- stockian policeman in the offing. In place of the refuge of the front porch, the musty and unlovely shabbiness of a boarding-house parlor, or else no parlor at all—nothing but a room all too private or a street all too public. But yet the city has one refuge, sought by thousands of lovers with profound and thankful relief; and if Mrs. Grundy choose to frown, or to imply that all is not as it should be, let her show cause or shut up. Last Spring the Fifth Avenue Coach Company dedicated Bus No. 805. The feature of 805 was its glass-inclosed upper deck, put there, as the Con pany expressed it, to keep ely winds off war . hearts. The newspapers treated the idea with light-hearted persiflage, and promptly dubbed the new institution the ‘‘Petter’s Paradise’’—all of which was very well in its way, though the matter was one which palght readily have been discussed in some sociological journal, No. 805 is a talented bus. It has atmosphere. This is proved by an entirely unpremeditated inci- dent that developed in the course of a certain tirp. For one thing, there was a young lady sitting in a seat all by herself; and for another thing, there was a reporter who was looking for names and facts, but for nothing more. “It is not clear,” said the New York Herald the next day, “show she happened to be alone in that seat; but she was, and one of the more timid of the reporters slid in beside her. A motion picture camera man, who had been imbued by Raymond McCabe, publicity man for the bus company, with an underlying motif for enclosures on bus tops, appeared directly in front of the blone and the timid reporter and set up his tripod. No false feelings of delicacy hampered the camera man. “Come on,’ he called out. ‘Let’s get a little action. Put your arms around the young lady and kiss her. That’s a good guy. Mush up a little.’ “The crank was already clicking and the lady explained afterward that there seemed to be only one thing for a girl to do, and she did it. Hurrying hundreds paused on the sidewalk in front of the Public Library to watch in astonishment and then to cheer. The traffic blockade lasted for less than a minute, but the cheering went on much longer. And then she rearranged her hair and straightened her hat and the diffident reporter beside her blinked rapidly as he thought of the coming releases of the news reel in the These from Bangor, Maine, to California. But even at that it was worth it.” Since the reporter who wrote that account hap- pened to be the suy to whom it all hae ie: e ought to know. might have added that one element of his embarassment was the fact that he was a married man. But surely no reasonable wife would+~however, let’s not go into that. Whatever may be said of that particular case of purely sym- bolic spooning, there can be no doubt that most of the real cases on 805. will involve one lady only. In the light of these many words of appraisement, then, consider Sadie and her beau. e big green bus has reached Washington Square at last, and is about to load up for another trip. The whole top has emptied, save for a few scattered passengers who have taken the seats they want, and are pre- paring to stay. “Mister, Mister—don’t ring it; don’t ring it!” Thus urgently accosted, the conductor removed his finger from the vicinity of the proche, § button and turns him toward the winding steps that lead to the upper deck. Two shapely ankles first; and then, as his interested glance seeks the owner, an eager face in a frame of bobbed hair looking down pleadingly. And over her shoulder the anxious and callow countenance of male Youth. ““Mister—can’t he go and get me an ice-cream cone?” The conductor glances at his watch. “Yes, if he’ll hurry up.” She draws to one side, the anxious Youth makes a flying leap to the curb, and by the time he reaches the ice-cream stand the ice-cream man, prepared always for the demands of such as he, has the goods ready. Back again in a jiffy, he nods his thanks to the conductor, and springs up the winding stairs. From the bright-eyed maid, a long drawn ‘‘O-hh” of delight. And then suddenly come their voices in argument. His voice, first: “Let’s change seats.” Then hers: “Change nothing—the lady sits on the outside; watcha want to change for?”— “Aw yes, let’s change. This arm’s sore.” The conductor grins reflectively and pushes the button; and again the big bus starts rolling toward Elysium, laden with that ineffable freight. Charged With His Own Murder (Continued trom page 22) Dips Lieutenant Monohan placed him in charge of two square-jawed, blue-eyed, red-faced unimaginative policemen. One was named Hicks and the other was named Slover. They were to be his guardians on his singular return home. The entire thing was done with great consideration. They didn’t handcuff him, but placed him in a closed automobile. Archie wondered what had become of his lawyer; Huggles was not in view. Hicks and Slover had no desire for conversation which suited Archie perfectly. His brain was too exhaustive for conversation. He took a deep breath and rejoiced. They were giving him a chance for his liberty! They were doing it because Anne had made them do it! The world was a good place to live in after all. The fresh air had stirred his blood like wine. The sight of the dear old streets looked good to him. Hungrily he watched the crowds. He glowed with renewed consciousness that he was a part of the world around him no matter how strange his circumstances. He had no forebodings, nothing but a conviction that eventually all his affairs must again right themselves. It was dusk when the car purred to the curb in front of Archie Middleton’s home. The prisoner thrilled at the sight of the familiar brazen door. This was a rich man’s home and a rich man’s front door, but Archie had plain human emotions now as he looked at it—just the same emotions that come to the wanderer who turns down an old pebbled path and sees again a cottage grown with roses. This marble-fronted mansion was Archie’s home. He loved it now. It was a symbol of all that meant his old life which had been so violently and mys- teriously interrupted. It was the birth-place of his old personality in its old banished body. As he got out of the machine the door opened and a fat man came out nervously twiddling his thumbs over his paunch. He was Bunch and he looked apprehensively at Archie. “Hello there, Bunch,” called Archie buoyantly. “I'm home again!” Bunch didn’t reply. He seemed exceedingly nervous, like a man who had staked his all on a huge play. He backed slowly into the house as Archie, between Hicks and Slover, mounted the steps and entered. n every house where one family has lived very long there is a home-like odor. hat its source may be is an enigma, but everywhere it exists; in hovels and in Leper It clings to a dwelling as a man’s soul holds to his body, not to be lost until the timbers-are pulled down. Often those living within its walls cannot detect it, though strangers will, but when one of the family returns home after an absence the first greeting at the door is that old familiar smell of home. It is not a product of cooking or of varnish. It is psychic. A mist gathered in Archie's eyes as he entered that hallway, the dear familiar smell of home filled him with fragrant memories for he was under his own roof-tree again where his dead mother had walked and where once, long ago, Anne had danced. This was home! “Cofme on!” ordered Hicks with a tug at his arm. It was the first word either of his guards had spoken. “Wait,” said Archie. It was dark in the hall- way. The early autumn dusk was at hand. “I will turn on the lights.”’ ‘ puickly he stepped to the wall and without look- ing at what he was doing his sure fingers found-a button behind an uphung edge of rapery and pressed it. Bracket lamps glowed softly illuminat- ing the wide hallway. ith gleeful satisfaction Archie noticed the quick look exchanged between Hicks and Slover. “Now, gentlemen,” he added, ‘‘where shall we go? I am ready for anything you suggest!” “Library!” grunted Hicks, who assumed the leadership over his silent assistant. “We know what we want to do! Library!” “Library,” agreed Archie. “No, Bunch, you needn’t lead the way—I will show the gentlemen, if you please.’’ By the stairway Archie led them down the corridor to the left and to the mahogany door of the room in which he had been arrested. they made him go in ahead of them as if afraid he would try to escape. But running away was the futthest thing from Archie’s thoughts. He was too confident of proving himself by any tests they set him to do. Bunch came in after they closed the door solemnly: and stood ready to witness whatever might happen. Outwardly his manner was calm, but an acute ob- server might have noticed the etratic twiddling of his thumbs. They seemed to be missing on one or two cylinders. Archie stood in the center of the rooth while Hicks and Slover conferred. They were working out their plan of campaign in gutterals and sibilants not unlike a graphaphone with an enemic motor. While they were thus engaged, Archie walked over to his own humidor and extracted a cigar, which he lighted eee holy satisfaction. It was his first smoke in ays. At length the conference ended. Hicks and Slover had decided how they would try out the prisoner. It was Hicks who spoke. ; “Name three books in that there bookcase over there!’ he demanded belligerently. Archie smiled at the childishness of the test. It was absurdedly easy. His eyes gleamed wickedly. “‘The Bhagavad-Gita’ in the Yogi Romachaka- tara edition; Rowe’s translation of ‘The Maga- barata’; and ‘The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius’ ,”’ he rattled off almost in one breath. Hicks looked at Slover. Slover refused to look at Hicks at all. Rina Hicks stalked over toward the bookcase; bent down and ran his finger in a zig-zag smear over the glass. “Damned if it ain’t!"’ he exclaimed. Slover!”’ Slover had been waiting for an inspiration and now it had come. With a resentful glance at Archie he went over to the bookcase and selectéd a small volume bound in red limp leather tooled in gold. He opened the cover and looked inside. Then he reached in his pocket and produced a set of steel- rimmed spectacles which he adjusted on his nose. Having read what was written on the fly-leaf, he closed the book with a distinct air of conquest. | “What’s written on the inside of this book?” he asked. Meanwhile carefully holding the entire volume behind him. Archie smiled oddly at the question and his fingers tapped nervously against the table-top. “The book is Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses’,”’ he declared. ‘‘On the fly-leaf in a childish but beautiful hand is inscribed, “To my best friend, Archie Middleton; from his best friend, Anne Winter. Christmas, 1898.” The effect of his reply on his two examinets was rodigious. Slover slowly withdrew the book from hind him, removing with difficulty his startled owlish eyes from Archie’s face. Hicks stood by curiously as his colleague thumbed back the cover clumsily. And there, as Archie had repeated it, they beheld it written, a child’s inscription of a lorig ago Christmas. “How the hell did he do that?” blurted Hicks. Archie was puffing enthusiastically on his cigar. He didn’t want to make matters worse by laughing, but he found their astonishment amusing. e wondered what possible test would satisfy them— and he soon found out! It was Hicks who propounded it. “Now, we'll come to the real test,” he said heavily. “We know something about Archie Middleton that most peuple don’t know. We know that near the time that prohibition went into effect, he bought a lot of liquor. At that time it was believed that it would be wae the law to have liquor on a pre- mises, so Middleton had a secret closet built ghee room to hide his private stock. He kept its loca- tion a secret. Not even his aunt knew where it was. Not even his servants. Did you know, you?” He was addressing the last question to Bunch and Buhch “Your turn,
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shook his head and answered with a solemn and truthful ‘No.'| Meanwhile Hicks continued. “If you show us that hidden closet the might investigate your story that you are Middleton.” Archié could not repress a chuckle. “You're on!’’ he whooped. “I built the closet! I should be able to find it!” “Can you do it in the dark?” asked the cautious Slover. “In the dark it shall be!’ agreed Archie. And Bunch pushed a button plunging the library into darkness. There they stood those four men so oddly assorted, in a deep gloom of shadow that was relieved only by a splash of early moonlight speckled with the shadows of tree-boughs falling across one side of the room. “You see where the moonlight falls?” said Archie. “There’s where I hid my moonshine. It’s there. Just watch me!’’ He stepped briskly across the intervening space and stooped so that the moonlight shone green across his face. “There is a plug of wood,” he said, his voice calm and assured. “‘It is set in the edge of this panel and apparently it is a part of the decoration. But it is only sham. We can remove it—you see. I have taken it out. It leaves an opening large enough to insert one’s finger—thus—and push down an inner lever. You will see the result.” He was about to press down against the board when a rap sounded at the door. Bunch opened it and stood aside as Anne Winter came in. Her face revealed by the light that entered from the hall was aglow with eager interest. As the door closed behind her, she paused, her luminous eyes looking at the man she had last seen behind the bars. Archie smiled at her. “Anne,” he said, “before I leave this room you shall know that I am I.” There was a moment of oppressive silence. In Anne's suppressed excitement Archie fancied he detected a fever of hope and as he looked at her two other figures came in the room and stood beside her. One was hisaunt. The other was a man whose face he could not make out. “Go on!" ordered Hicks. ‘‘What are you stopping for?” Archie didn't reply. Instead he pressed the button. They heard a slow rolling grind of pulleys and wheels and the panel swung jerkily outward. An entire section of the wall had opened up disclos- ing a deep black cavern. “There, gentlemen,” said Archie triumphantly. “T have shown you my best secret—my wine cellar. I shall ask you to accept my hospitality.” He stepped forward to draw out a bottle and convince them, but he never did that. There was something dark and strange and still, something foreign, something huddled lying close to the entrance of this secret closet. Archie darted nearer and peered in. “My God!” he cried, ‘It’s a body!’’ Bunch had rushed forward at his cry, but Archie thrust him impatiently aside. He reached in and caught the body at the shoulders, dragged it out and stretched it on the floor. And there it sprawled in an awkward twisted attitude with one hand out- flung in a last rigid gesture of appeal. In the silence of horror that overwhelmed them all before the presence of that moonlit cadava, Archie knelt eniycnuy turned it over. And then he staggered back and up, his own hands groping the air in Gay horror! or the green moonlight then revealed a frightful thing! Touching with grotesque certainty the glazed wide-open eyes, the short-cropped Van Dyke beard, the elf-lock and the scar! The impossible had happened! Archie Middle- ton’s dead body lay at his feet! (To be continued) lice ‘chie The Monster (Continued from page 10) seems to contain an unspoken threat against their ay lives. is first explanation deals with the quiet gentle- man whose bald head alone shows above the back of the chair. “‘What you see there is only a shell,’ he explains. “The body is present—but the soul is absent. This man suffers from an incurable and sometimes very painful malady. When his sufferings become too acute, he comesto me. I mesmerize him, send forth his soul into space and relieve him of unnecessary suffering.” Having thus disposed of the dozing. bald-head, Dr. Ziska begins questioning his guests. ‘Red’ he accepts, apparently as one of them; of Bruce he is covertly suspicious—but the utterance of Julie’s name produces upon him an uncanny effect. He is completely upset when by further questions, he completes her identification. “T knew your father,” he says solemnly—then abruptly dismisses the subject of personalities. He tells them the house is infested with spirits. Smiling charmingly, he adds: | “The night is full of wandering spirits and no one but myself will give them welcome. I allow them to come here and be welcome. 1 wish ae would go —they might resent your presence ani I would not be responsible for your safety.’ Between the storm and the spooks, the wayfarers decide to stay in the house and the close of the first act finds the three of them mounting the haunted staircase, escorting Julie to the room Dr. Ziska has assigned to her. The second act, of course, opens in this singular bedroom where the appalling manifestations which began downstairs reach a frightful apogee. he face of the black giant peers strangely from a mirror; the bed in which Julie tries to sleep closes like a trap and the girl is rescued just in time; a canvas bag plainly intended for corpses is found hanging in a closet, windows and doors lock them- selves inexplicably against escape and finally drugged fumes given off by the blazing logs on tis hearth stupefy Julie and Bruce and they fall unconscious. “Red” MacKenzie is left alone ‘in the room. He places the limp form of Julie on one couch, and Bruce on another—and they vanish before his eyes, sinking through the couches Tike impalpable shadows. “Red” glares around him wildly; then falls into a pretended faint. A moment later the dwarf steals in dragging behind him the white canvas bag. Be- lieving that ‘‘Red” is knocked out, the dwarf approaches without fear—only to find himself staring into the muzzle of ‘‘Red’s” revolver. On this situation, the second curtain descends. The full rush of horror does not come until the third and final scene—laid in the laboratory of Dr. Ziska, pleasantly situated in the cellar. Here, the Doctor, arrayed in the white linen of a surgeon, impatiently and gloatingly awaits his evil triumph. t is a horrid thing he has planned. The giant negro comés down the steps with the limp form of Bruce thrown across his shoulders. He is strapped into an electric chair and by a slight shock is then revived. The monstrous Ziska then explains the situation. While Bruce writhes’in agony and anguish, tor- tured by electric shocks and by threats, the physi- cian wheels out a whitely enamelled operating table, on which is strapped the draped form of Julie. She is the daughter of his old enemy, Ziska explains—the man who struck him down from the heights of his power and fame. He goes into de- tails. Formerly Ziska, under another name, was a famous Parisian surgeon. Julie’s father was his best friend. But Ziska went a step further than Dr. Carter would go him. He wished to practice vivisection on living conscious human_ beings. Ziska was banished from Paris, after his friend had denounced him as a murderous madman! It is this accusation which drives Ziska frantic. Thrice during the evening, when casually called crazy by his guests, he flies into howling, foaming rages. And now, at last, fate by a singular coincidence, es delivered the daughter of his destroyer into his and. His cold-blooded idea is to arouse Julie into con- sciousness, and then vivisect her, arm by arm, leg by leg, vital part by vital part, in the presence of the man who loves her. With cruel and fiendish malice, he speaks his pur- pose, bending over his shrieking victim with candent eyes, and twitching cheeks and quivering lips and itching fingers, yearning for the knife. The situation has reached an hysterical pitch of suspense when out of the shadows creeps silently the dwarf. He is obeying the behest ole “Red” who still covers him with a revolver. With monkeyish agility, he releases the straps that bind Bruce to the electric chair. In the very instant that Dr. Ziska is about to plunge the knife into Julie's breast, Bruce springs upon him The struggle is mercilessly swift. Before Ziska knows quite what has happened he himself is a prisoner in the chair of death. At that instant, the giant negro is heard rushing to the rescue. The lights are put out and the wayfarers wait in Ug dato negro rushes in and seeking for lights touches the wrong switch, The deadly current rockets through Ziska’s body and destroys him! = The curtain falls on Julie in the loving arms of ruce. The Life Story of Veronica (Continued from page 25) lying crunched in my hands, as I were suddenly transformed into a statue. Perhaps it was an hour before this statue came to life and then it was a different Veronica. The soul of the butterfly was changed. Not completely changed indeed, because always I shall crave motion and color and music and lights and applause. But now I knew for the first time the power of resolve, The new determination that I came to alone on the hospital veranda had something in it of the dignity and solemnity of an oath. Ruby Winter, who had pursued me with vindic- tive malice, had in reality done me a great service. For now I was resolved to get well; to get out of the Bosnia and by some means, though I could think of none, by hook or by crook, I would get across the ocean. I would reach France. I would find that hospital. I would touch my boy’s hand before he died. I am not a Christian Scientist. Indeed religion has played almost no part in my life, but I am absolutely assured that there is truth in the theory that mind has dominion over matter. This change of mental attitude produced astonish- ing results. I became the wonder of the hospital within twenty-four hours. My weakness was gone. My lassitude had vanished. was no longer inert and uninterested. Now I was tense, eager, alert. My only object was to get out of the hospital. My one great desire was to find some way in which I cout get across. The next afternoon Big John came to see me. At first he was delighted at the change which he instantly discerned in me. My eyes were bright and glittering. My voice was crisp and alive. He clapped his big red hands together and declared I was a well girl at last. And then all his rejoicing was clouded when for the first time I told him all my story and asked him to help me to get overseas. He looked at me speculatively for a moment and he said, “You know, Veronica, you and I have a contract. You know that you are valuable to me. The patrons of the cabaret are waiting for you. You are the most popular irl in the Broadway cabarets. Our place is waiting for you to come back in order to make a lot of money and now you not on'y ask me to release you, but you want nie to help you get away.” ‘ “Yes,” | said, ‘that is just what I want you to do. And, oh, Big John if you will help me in this I promise you that you will never regret it for I will come back and work with you and for you harder and better than I have ever worked before, and if all the managers on Broadway offered me ten times as much as you could afford to pay me, I would still stick to you if you will stick by me now." He scratched his head and coughed uneasily. “Do you mean all that,” he wanted to know. “Every word,” I assured him. ‘I will put it in writing.’ : “No, no,” he protested heartily, ‘I will see what can be done.” He bent over and patted my hands and impulsively I kissed him full on the lips. He flushed scarlet, and very much embarrassed hurried out of my room forgetting to say good-bye. HEN Big John makes up his mind to do a thing, he is the kind of man to doit. He always sees things through. In those troubled days when the transportation facilities were taxed to the limit of their inatlequate capacity, it was exceedingly difficult for almost any individual without influence to secure passage. This was especially true of thos: not engaged in war duties. I had told Big John that I was willing to spend all of my savings just to get over there and trust to luck to support myself when I got there. But it was not a question of money. One had to have a reason and my reason, so big, so vital to me, was of course of no consequence to the officials. Big John found this out very quickly. He tried to get me in the Red Cross, but t had no skill as a nurse. Then he tried various other organizations. All without success. I think he worked constantly on the project for more than a week. He never: gave up hope. Every afternoon at four o’clock he would come to see me, pat my hand and say: “Don’t worry, little girl, I am going to get you over.”
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“Page Thirty POM OMIOHT And, God bless him, he did! A very famous actress, whose name would in- stantly be recognized if I should mention it, and whom I shall call Miss Thorn, was organizing a little gang of entertainers and Big John went to see her. e showed her my pictures and he told her my story and that afternoon she came to see me— . that kindly, gracious, sweet-faced, dear woman, who is now one of the most treasured of all my friends. Into her ear I poured all my story, and she understood as only a woman can. That afternoon I signed a contract with this actress and two weeks later I stood beside her on the deck of a ship whose sides were painted in grotesque bands, circles and angles in weird colors as camouflage against the submarine. But I had no fear of submarines! I knew perfectly well that we would reach the other side safely, because something in my mind was telling me every moment of the day that Eddie and I would meet and make it all up—and soon. In fact, when we reached the danger zone, the lights of the ship were put out and we were not even allowed to smoke a harmless cigarette, some of my old deviltry came back to me. I liked the spice of danger. When we were plowing our way through waters supposed to be infested with submarines and bombs and the men on the ship assured us that at any moment we might have to take to the boats, I startled all my friends on board by taking a bath. If the ship had been sunk I would have been in an embarrassing predica- ment in trying to get to the life boats. But never in my life hve I known fear, and I got a real thrill out of the situation, HEN we were only a day’s journey from France, I encountered one of the biggest jolts of my young life in the main cabin of the ship. I had heard rumors that there was a very wealthy American on board who was going abroad on a special mission for the government and who had been seasick since we passed Sandy Hook. He was quite a joke among the rest of the passengers and daily bulletins of his condition were passed around the table. But finally the wealthy gentle- man decided to recover from his mal de mer and take a stroll. It happened that I was passing his door as he emerged and we stood there looking at each other in the deepest astonishment. It was Ruby Winter's gentleman friend, Graham. A gloating kind of satisfaction seemed to glitter in his bloodshot eyes and a sinister smile distorted his thick and sensual lips. “Good morning, my dear,’’ he growled. I gave him a look that I thought would have permanently discouraged him and walked off. But nothing could discourage Graham. I heard since that in the business world his pertinacity, his bull dog perseverence, his refusal to be beaten was his outstanding characteristic and had gained him a fortune. So far as I have been able to find out, it was the only good thing in his character, although I am inclined to believe that there is no such thing in the world as a villain out and out; we all have good traits and bad, but this Graham was the meanest white man I ever knew. Fortunately he didn't find out that I was on board until the journey was almost over, but after that he didn't waste any time. Of course none of the other girls had any reason to dislike him and they rather catered to him. I have never been one to talk about my troubles and so I told no one of my former experience with the man and thus the rest of the company, including my good friend and leader of the troupe, were surprised that I remained aloof while they clustered around Graham and enjoyed his company. (To be continued) Night Life in Old Boston (Continued from page 11) ago I saw more riot and action in one night than I have seen along the old Broadway trail in a dozen and I kriow Broadway like a book. Strangely enough a murder started the reform wave in Boston just as the murder of Herman Rosenthal started the reform wave in New York. The Boston murder was the killing of Detective Tom Norton by ‘(Omaha Paddy” the train robber. “Paddy” was one of the wildest devils that ever drew the breath of life. He would go a hundred miles out of his way to avoid a fight but when he was cornered he was a human rattlesnake and oh, how he did hate a. ‘‘copper.” I was in the Boylston Cafe the night that he killed - Norton. He saw the detective coming down the stairs with the two policemen. Knowing that they were coming for him he drew his gun and began to shoot the lights out. One by one the big bulbs burst! The patrons were terrified. Men shouted. Women screamed and fainted. Over the floor they wrestled knocking tables and dishes helter skelter. Then an agonized groan and Norton dropped to the ground a corpse! ‘‘Paddy’’ had torn a hole in his stomach through which you could have shoved our arm. His murderous looking Colt forty-five iad done the job! [= those days the Boylston Cafe was the rendez- vous for thieves from all over the world and it was the first of the old night life cafes of Boston to be closed up. One by one the reformers put the “dives” out of business. Like the reformers of New York they drove the painted ladies off the streets and into the safes while the police of Boston and all the rest of the Puritans used to boast ‘There isn’t a house of ill fame in the city." And there wasn’t, I can vouch for that, BUT, the hinkey dink, second class hotels and the assignation houses and the private dining rooms in the cafes were doing a land office business. D I have been in the Chinatown of Boston when I had to get under cover to dodge the bullets of the Hip Sing Tongs and the On Leon Tongs. The Chinatown of Boston has always had its opium joints just as New York has always had them. Her underworld and her night life has always been a topnotcher.. There is more color to the night life of Boston today then ever before in its history. I found the Hell raising, midnight followers of Gambrinus right in the midst of the fashionable Back Bay section where the prohibition rum hounds haven't a chance in the world of getting in. To get into this exclusive saturnalian atmosphere you have to be introduced and let me say right here that there was a limit to the introductions. The man who introduced me is an old friend of ten years’ standing, a friend, incidentally, who would be serving a term today in the Massachusetts State Prison for embezzlement if I hadn’t happened along and saved him. This friend was the President of a small town bank a few miles out of Boston when I first met him through one of the painted ladies of Boston’s underworld. He had been “hitting the ball,” playing the races and doing a lot of other things with the depositors’ money that a perfectly decent, honest to goodness, bank president shouldn't do. He woke up one morning short about seventy five thousand dollars. There was just one way “out"’ for him, just one way by which he could dodge the garb of the convict and that was an “‘arranged” robbery of his bank. I was an accommodating young cracksman in those days so I went out to the little burg and blew up the vault and the big time lock safe. Friend said that he lost sixty thousand dollars when as a matter of fact all he lost was the ten thousand that he left in the vault for me. The books of course had been conveniently burned by the burglars in the explosion so friend was saved from exposure and a term in the “stir.” Today he is a power in the financial world of Boston and uite naturally he thinks I am one of the finest little fellows that ever lived. How could he think otherwise! The night that he took me out to “‘see the night life of Boston” our first stop was a certain hotel on Huntington Avenue. When we entered the lobby I said to him: “Why this place looks like a morgue.” “Come on,” he replied as we moved over to the elevator and thence to an elaborately furnished suite of seven massive rooms on the fifth floor. Before we were admitted to the suite I heard the clinkle of glasses, laughter, music and song and then when we stepped inside I saw men and women in evening attire, some of them “‘pie-eyed”’ and all jabbering like a bunch of kids at a lawn party. Champagne was flowing like water in the Charles River. The waiters were passing it out just like one would pass out peanuts to the elephants at a circus and the price was twelve dollars a quart. In one of the rooms there was a roulette wheel, a crap game and a Faro bank table. Some ten or fifteen men and women were gathered about the tables and the wheel making all kinds of bets from a hundred to a thousand. “Huh,’’ I mused, ‘Old Broadway hasn’t got anything on this!” But what I saw was not to be compared with what I saw later in the suburbs and where only the better class of Bostonians are admitted. Amadeo’s was the last word in night life clubs. I have been all over the world and I have yet to find anything that even approximated it. It must have cost a fortune to fit the place up for it was the chastest and the finest temple of drink imaginable. The grill was all done in red and gold and looked like a palace room of the rococo period. Here and there on the walls were numerous works of art, genuine, by some of the old Masters. There wasa landscape by Corot and one by Diaz, two or three Remingtons, a Whistler, a figure by Beaugeraeu while off in the other rooms there werfe rich looking rugs and tapestries galore. Amadeo was a blond north Italian full of sunlight and absurd poetry forever getting on his feet after the second bottle, striking an operatic attitude and singing Trovatore or Barbieri, singing with exultant and inextinguishable’ youth. it Prohibition is bay siccerk for such places as Amadeo’s then hail to Prohibition say I. His place was unique and the gathering was unique. Here are a few of the people that 1 met there that night: First of all there was a well known American League Base Ball Magnate, a popular Broadway actor who has had many wives, several actresses of note, a Judge, three or four of Boston's biggest business men, several Back Bay and Com- monwealth Avenue Society men and women, a high Department of Justice official and last, and much to my chagrin, a high executive of the Beantown Bureau of Criminal Investigation who proceeded to whisper into the ears of the guests all he knew concerning my history as a Bank burglar and by doing so he started the fire works. I tore into like an enraged lion, in an instant the place was in an uproar, the ladies screamed and then fainted, “hooch" was displaced by smelling salts; the party was on the bum in jig-time so my friend and I left. Around three in the morning we pulled up in front of ‘‘Helen's.” Helen was an ex-show girl with some imagination and no little amount of business ability who saw a fortune in catering to the thirst of the young and old bloods of the Back Bay district. So when her ‘‘John" volunteered to start her in business she threw aside the tights and the grease paint to play the midnight hostess to the smart set of Boston. Helen did very well in the new career until one of her brainless female friends from the ‘‘Follies’’ called on her one morning and pipcerded to stage a battle with the white haired oy that was furnishing her with all her jewels and cave man and threw the boisterous lady from the “Follies” down the stairs. Like most of the giggling dolls of the footlights nothing would soothe her injured feelings and her injured body but a big bank roll and when the “John” didn’t come across she started to do some talking. She talked so much that the news finall got to the press of Boston and then to the Prohibi- tion sleuths with the result that ‘‘Helen’s’’ was closed up. Possibly you recall reading about this in New York papers some five or six weeks ago. money. The ‘meal ticket’’ iaedaely became a Ys HE folks that say that Boston is dead after midnight and that a drink can't be had for love or money are not of the chosen tribe. In the par- lance of the underworld that are ‘‘not in the know.” Of course you will find it hard to get a drink in the cafes along Washington Street if you are not “in the know,” but if you can find a friend who will say that you are “a right guy’’ why you can get enough “‘hooch” to float a battleship. If you listen to the Pilgrims and the Puritans of Boston they will tell you that the town is ‘‘clean,”” that all the old joints are closed up, that there are less crooks, less booze and less ‘‘sporting girls’’ in the city than there is in any other in the United States. But let me tell you there is just as much to be seen around the Bay City as any other city in this great American country. She has her gambling houses, her opium dens, her cocaine parlors and over in the West End there are three or four places that cater to the Captains of the New England murder trust, to pickpockets, to house-burglars, to boot- leggers and to every type of cAMinAT that plunders and kills. I know what I'm talking about. These reformers who are running around the country shouting that the cities are clean have done more to foster crime and perpetuate vice of every sort than any other class of people in the world. There are more young girls and more young men stepping out on the path that leads to Hell today than ever before in the history of the world and the closing of the saloon is the thing that is responsible for it. Now I say this as a man who has observed conditions in the tenderloins of the big cities. I say this as a man who knows the underworld up one side and down the other. I have never seen so many young people around the opium joints and the cocaine parlors as I have seen since prohibition came to be and the night life of all the big cities is unspeakably more rotten than ever before. “Cultured and conservative Boston” is no excep- tion to the rule. Her underworld is more propserous than ever and her night life is more spectacular.
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PM/OMOHT “Page Thirty One ‘‘There stands the father of my child!” And then the “father’’ asked the court’s indulgence while “the” proved that he was a lady. A true, personal narrative. In next week’s MIDNIGHT. Watch your thoughts. They can be read. In next week’s MIDNIGHT, Hope Eden, world’s most famous mind-reader tells about some of the questions you women ask. How Andrew Carnegie saved me from a thrashing. Another in the “stories that never before saw print” written by a cub newspaper reporter. In next week’s MIDNIGHT. Is your husband married ? In next week’s MIDNIGHT you may learn, at last, whether married men really do make the best husbands. The girl who paid $15,000 for a man! A short-story that will grip you untill long after the other folks are in bed. In next week’s MIDNIGHT. Now you see it and now you don’t! Are you watching Thurston’s department in MIDNIGHT. He shows you how to perform simple, mystifying tricks. Get wise to them! Who has the most beautiful arms in America? The King of Spain says American women haven't got beau- tiful arms. We claim that’s a lot of bull. For particulars see next week’s MIDNIGHT. How naughty can some girls be and still be nice ? Not to read this in next week’s MIDNIGHT is simply to be out of the swim. There are other big features, too, in next week’s issue of the newest magazine of them all Midnight
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