Part 18 (2/2)
”But,” said he, ”I have got this other one.” He was as picturesque as a wolf ”Why arrest her, either?” said the reluctant witness.
”For soliciting those two men.”
”But she didn't solicit those two men.”
”Say,” said the officer, turning, ”do you know this woman?”
The chorus girl had it in mind to lie then for the purpose of saving this woman easily and simply from the palpable wrong she seemed to be about to experience. ”Yes; I know her”-”I have seen her two or three times”-”Yes; I have met her before”-But the reluctant witness said at once that he knew nothing whatever of the girl.
”Well,” said the officer, ”she's a common prost.i.tute.”
There was a short silence then, but the reluctant witness presently said: ”Are you arresting her as a common prost.i.tute? She has been perfectly respectable since she has been with us. She hasn't done anything wrong since she has been in our company.”
”I am arresting her for soliciting those two men,” answered the officer, ”and if you people don't want to get pinched, too, you had better not be seen with her.”
Then began a parade to the station house-the officer and his prisoner ahead and two simpletons following.
At the station house the officer said to the sergeant behind the desk that he had seen the woman come from the resort on Broadway alone, and on the way to the corner of Thirty-first street solicit two men, and that immediately afterward she had met a man and a woman-meaning the chorus girl and the reluctant witness-on the said corner, and was in conversation with them when he arrested her. He did not mention to the sergeant at this time the arrest and release of the chorus girl.
At the conclusion of the officer's story the sergeant said, shortly: ”Take her back.” This did not mean to take the woman back to the corner of Thirty-first street and Broadway. It meant to take her back to the cells, and she was accordingly led away.
The chorus girl had undoubtedly intended to be an intrepid champion; she had avowedly come to the station house for that purpose, but her entire time had been devoted to sobbing in the wildest form of hysteria. The reluctant witness was obliged to devote his entire time to an attempt to keep her from making an uproar of some kind. This paroxysm of terror, of indignation, and the extreme mental anguish caused by her unconventional and strange situation, was so violent that the reluctant witness could not take time from her to give any testimony to the sergeant.
After the woman was sent to the cell the reluctant witness reflected a moment in silence; then he said: ”Well, we might as well go.”
On the way out of Thirtieth street the chorus girl continued to sob. ”If you don't go to court and speak for that girl you are no man!” she cried. The arrested woman had, by the way, screamed out a request to appear in her behalf before the Magistrate.
”By George! I cannot,” said the reluctant witness. ”I can't afford to do that sort of thing. I-I-”
After he had left this girl safely, he continued to reflect: ”Now this arrest I firmly believe to be wrong. This girl may be a courtesan, for anything that I know at all to the contrary. The sergeant at the station house seemed to know her as well as he knew the Madison square tower. She is then, in all probability, a courtesan. She is arrested, however, for soliciting those two men. If I have ever had a conviction in my life, I am convinced that she did not solicit those two men. Now, if these affairs occur from time to time, they must be witnessed occasionally by men of character. Do these reputable citizens interfere ? No, they go home and thank G.o.d that they can still attend piously to their own affairs. Suppose I were a clerk and I interfered in this sort of a case. When it became known to my employers they would say to me: 'We are sorry, but we cannot have men in our employ who stay out until 2:30 in the morning in the company of chorus girls.'
”Suppose, for instance, I had a wife and seven children in Harlem. As soon as my wife read the papers she would say: 'Ha! You told me you had a business engagement! Half-past two in the morning with questionable company!'
”Suppose, for instance, I were engaged to the beautiful Countess of Kalamazoo. If she were to hear it, she could write: 'All is over between us. My future husband cannot rescue prost.i.tutes at 2:30 in the morning.'
”These, then, must be three small general ill.u.s.trations of why men of character say nothing if they happen to witness some possible affair of this sort, and perhaps these ill.u.s.trations could be multiplied to infinity. I possess nothing so tangible as a clerks.h.i.+p, as a wife and seven children in Harlem, as an engagement to the beautiful Countess of Kalamazoo; but all that I value may be chanced in this affair. Shall I take this risk for the benefit of a girl of the streets?
”But this girl, be she prost.i.tute or whatever, was at this time manifestly in my escort, and-Heaven save the blasphemous philosophy-a wrong done to a prost.i.tute must be as purely a wrong as a wrong done to a queen,” said the reluctant witness-this blockhead.
”Moreover, I believe that this officer has dishonored his obligation as a public servant. Have I a duty as a citizen, or do citizens have duty, as a citizen, or do citizens have no duties? Is it a mere myth that there was at one time a man who possessed a consciousness of civic responsibility, or has it become a distinction of our munic.i.p.al civilization that men of this character shall be licensed to depredate in such a manner upon those who are completely at their mercy?”
He returned to the sergeant at the police station, and, after asking if he could send anything to the girl to make her more comfortable for the night, he told the sergeant the story of the arrest, as he knew it.
”Well,” said the sergeant, ”that may be all true. I don't defend the officer. I do not say that he was right, or that he was wrong, but it seems to me that I have seen you somewhere before and know you vaguely as a man of good repute; so why interfere in this thing? As for this girl, I know her to be a common prost.i.tute. That's why I sent her back.”
”But she was not arrested as a common prost.i.tute. She was arrested for soliciting two men, and I know that she didn't solicit the two men.”
”Well,” said the sergeant, ”that, too, may all be true, but I give you the plain advice of a man who has been behind this desk for years, and knows how these things go, and I advise you simply to stay home. If you monkey with this case, you are pretty sure to come out with mud all over you.”
”I suppose so,” said the reluctant witness. ”I haven't a doubt of it. But don't see how I can, in honesty, stay away from court in the morning.”
”Well, do it anyhow,” said the sergeant.
”But I don't see how I can do it.”
The sergeant was bored. ”Oh, I tell you, the girl is nothing but a common prost.i.tute,” he said, wearily.
The reluctant witness on reaching his room set the alarm clock for the proper hour.
In the court at 8:30 he met a reporter acquaintance. ”Go home,” said the reporter, when he had heard the story. ”Go home; your own partic.i.p.ation in the affair doesn't look very respectable. Go home.”
”But it is a wrong,” said the reluctant witness.
”Oh, it is only a temporary wrong,” said the reporter. The definition of a temporary wrong did not appear at that time to the reluctant witness, but the reporter was too much in earnest to consider terms. ”Go home,” said he.
Thus-if the girl was wronged-it is to be seen that all circ.u.mstances, all forces, all opinions, all men were combined to militate against her. Apparently the united wisdom of the world declared that no man should do anything but throw his sense of justice to the winds in an affair of this description. ”Let a man have a conscience for the daytime,” said wisdom. ”Let him have a conscience for the daytime, but it is idiocy for a man to have a conscience at 2:30 in the morning, in the case of an arrested prost.i.tute.”
IN THE TENDERLOIN.
A DUEL BETWEEN AN ALARM CLOCK AND A SUICIDAL PURPOSE.
EVERYBODY KNOWS ALL ABOUT the Tenderloin district of New York.
There is no man that has the slightest claim to citizens.h.i.+p that does not know all there is to know concerning the Tenderloin. It is wonderful-this amount of truth which the world's clergy and police forces have collected concerning the Tenderloin. My friends from the stars obtain all this information, if possible, and then go into this wilderness and apply it. Upon observing you, certain spirits of the jungle will term you a wise guy, but there is no gentle humor in the Tenderloin, so you need not fear that this remark is anything but a tribute to your knowledge.
Once upon a time there was fought in the Tenderloin a duel between an Alarm Clock and a Suicidal Purpose. That such a duel was fought is a matter of no consequence, but it may be worth a telling, because it may be the single Tenderloin incident about which every man in the world has not exhaustive information.
It seems that Swift Doyer and his girl quarreled. Swift was jealous in the strange and devious way of his kind, and at midnight, his voice burdened with admonition, grief and deadly menace, roared through the little flat and conveyed news of the strife up the air-shaft and down the air-shaft.
”Lied to me, didn't you?” he cried. ”Told me a lie and thought I wouldn't get unto you. Lied to me! There's where I get crazy. If you hadn't lied to me in one thing, and I hadn't collared you flat in it, I might believe all the rest, but now-how do I know you ever tell the truth? How do I know I ain't always getting a game? Hey? How do I know?”
To the indifferent people whose windows opened on the air-shaft there came the sound of a girl's low sobbing, while into it at times burst wildly the hoa.r.s.e bitterness and rage of the man's tone. A grim thing is a Tenderloin air-shaft.
Swift arose and paused his harangue for a moment while he lit a cigarette. He puffed at it vehemently and scowled, black as a storm-G.o.d, in the direction of the sobbing.
”Come! Get up out of that,” he said, with ferocity ”Get up and look at me and let me see you lie!”
There was a flurry of white in the darkness, which was no more definite to the man than the ice-floes which your reeling s.h.i.+p pa.s.ses in the night. Then, when the gas glared out suddenly, the girl stood before him. She was a wondrous white figure in her vestal-like robe. She resembled the priestess in paintings of long-gone Mediterranean religions. Her hair fell wildly on her shoulder. She threw out her arms and cried to Swift in a woe that seemed almost as real as the woe of good people.
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