The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York

As I was about to depart, Blossom came into the room.

I had no more than time for a hurried kiss, for the need set forth in the note pulled at me like horses.

“Bar accidents,” said I, as I stood in the door, “tomorrow night we’ll celebrate a victory.”

Within a block of my gate, I recalled how I had left certain papers I required lying on the table. I went back in some hustle of speed, for time was pinching as to that question of political detail which tugged for attention.

As I stepped into the hallway, I caught the tone of young Van Flange and did not like the pitch of it. Blossom and he were in the room to the left, and only a door between us.

In a strange bristle of temper, I stood still to hear. Would the scoundrel dare harshness with my girl? The very surmise turned me savage to the bone!

Young Van Flange was speaking of those two hundred thousand dollars in bonds with which, by word of Big Kennedy, I had endowed Blossom in a day of babyhood. When she could understand, I had laid it solemnly upon her never to part with them. Under any stress, they would insure her against want; they must never be given up. And Blossom had promised.

These bonds were in a steel casket of their own, and Blossom had the key. As I listened, young Van Flange was demanding they be given to him; Blossom was pleading with him, and quoting my commands. My girl was sobbing, too, for the villain urged the business roughly. I could not fit my ear to every word, since their tones for the most were dulled to a murmur by the door. In the end, with a lift of the voice, I heard him say:

“For what else should I marry you except money? Is one of my blood to link himself with the daughter of the town’s great thief, and call it love? The daughter of a murderer, too!” he exclaimed, and ripping out an oath. “A murderer, yes! You have the red proof about your throat! Because your father escaped hanging by the laws of men, heaven’s law is hanging you!”

As I threw wide the door, Blossom staggered and fell to the floor. I thought for the furious blink of the moment, that he had struck her. How much stronger is hate than love! My dominant impulse was to avenge Blossom rather than to save her. I stood in the door in a white flame of wrath that was like the utter anger of a tiger. I saw him bleach and shrink beneath his sallowness.

As I came towards him, he held up his hands after the way of a boxing school. That ferocious strength, like a gorilla’s, still abode with me. I brushed away his guard as one might put aside a trailing vine. In a flash I had him, hip and shoulder. My fingers sunk into the flesh like things of steel; he squeaked and struggled as does the rabbit when crunched up by the hound.

With a swing and a heave that would have torn out a tree by its roots, I lifted him from his feet. The next moment I hurled him from me. He crashed against the casing of the door; then he slipped to the floor as though struck by death itself.

Moved of the one blunt purpose of destruction, I made forward to seize him again. For a miracle of luck, I was withstood by one of the servants who rushed in.

“Think, master; think what you do!” he cried.

In a sort of whirl I looked about me. I could see how the old Galway nurse was bending over Blossom, crying on her for her “Heart’s dearie!” My poor girl was lying along the rug like some tempest-broken flower. The stout old wife caught her up and bore her off in her arms.

The picture of my girl’s white face set me ablaze again. I turned the very torch of rage!

“Be wise, master!” cried that one who had restrained me before. “Think of what you do!”

The man’s hand on my wrist, and the earnest voice of him, brought me to myself. A vast calm took me, as a storm in its double fury beats flat the surface of the sea. I turned my back and walked to the window.

“Have him away, then!” cried I. “Have him out of my sight, or I’ll tear him to rags and ribbons where he lies!”

CHAPTER XXVI – THE VICTOR AND THE SPOILS

FOR all the cry and call of politics, and folk to see me whom I would not see, that night, and throughout the following day – and even though the latter were one of election Fate to decide for the town’s mastery – I never stirred from Blossom’s side. She, poor child! was as one desolate, dazed with the blow that had been dealt her. She lay on her pillow, silent, and with the stricken face that told of the heart-blight fallen upon her.

Nor was I in much more enviable case, although gifted of a rougher strength to meet the shock. Indeed, I was taught by a despair that preyed upon me, how young Van Flange had grown to be the keystone of my arch of single hope, now fallen to the ground. Blossom’s happiness had been my happiness, and when her breast was pierced, my own brightness of life began to bleed away. Darkness took me in the folds of it as in a shroud; I would have found the grave kinder, but I must remain to be what prop and stay I might to Blossom.

While I sat by my girl’s bed, there was all the time a peril that kept plucking at my sleeve in a way of warning. My nature is of an inveterate kind that, once afire and set to angry burning, goes on and on in ever increasing flames like a creature of tow, and with me helpless to smother or so much as half subdue the conflagration. I was so aware of myself in that dangerous behalf that it would press upon me as a conviction, even while I held my girl’s hand and looked into her vacant eye, robbed of a last ray of any peace to come, that young Van Flange must never stray within my grasp. It would bring down his destruction; it would mean red hands for me and nothing short of murder. And, so, while I waited by Blossom’s side, and to blot out the black chance of it, I sent word for Inspector McCue.

The servants, on that day of awful misery, conveyed young Van Flange from the room. When he had been revived, and his injuries dressed – for his head bled from a gash made by the door, and his shoulder had been dislocated – he was carried from the house by the brougham that brought him, and which still waited at the gate. No one about me owned word of his whereabouts. It was required that he be found, not more for his sake than my own, and his destinies disposed of beyond my reach.

It was to this task I would set Inspector McCue. For once in a way, my call was for an honest officer. I would have Inspector McCue discover young Van Flange, and caution him out of town. I cared not where he went, so that he traveled beyond the touch of my fingers, already itching for the caitiff neck of him.

Nor did I think young Van Flange would resist the advice of Inspector McCue. He had reasons for flight other than those I would furnish. The very papers, shouted in the streets to tell how I had re-taken the town at the polls, told also of the failure of the brokerage house of Van Flange; and that young Van Flange, himself, was a defaulter and his arrest being sought by clients on a charge of embezzling the funds which had been intrusted to his charge. The man was a fugitive from justice; he lay within the menace of a prison; he would make no demur now when word and money were given him to take himself away.

When Inspector McCue arrived, I greeted him with face of granite. He should have no hint of my agony. I went bluntly to the core of the employ; to dwell upon the business would be nothing friendly to my taste.

“You know young Van Flange?” Inspector McCue gave a nod of assent.

“And you can locate him?”

“The proposition is so easy it’s a pushover.”

“Find him, then, and send him out of the town; and for a reason, should he ask one, you may say that I shall slay him should we meet.”

Inspector McCue looked at me curiously. He elevated his brow, but in the end he said nothing, whether of inquiry or remark. Without a reply he took himself away. My face, at the kindliest, was never one to speak of confidences or invite a question, and I may suppose the expression of it, as I dealt with Inspector McCue, to have been more than commonly repellent.

There abode another with whom I wanted word; that one was Morton; for hard by forty years he had not once failed me in a strait. I would ask him the story of those Blackberry stocks. A glance into my steel box had showed me the bottom as bare as winter boughs. The last scrap was gone; and no more than the house that covered us, and those two hundred thousand dollars in bonds that were Blossom’s, to be left of all our fortune.

My temper was not one to mourn for any loss of money; and yet in this instance I would have those steps that led to my destruction set forth to me. If it were the president of Blackberry Traction who had taken my money, I meditated reprisal. Not that I fell into any heat of hatred against him; he but did to me what Morton and I a few years further back had portioned out to him. For all that, I was coldly resolved to have my own again. I intended no stock shifts; I would not seek Wall Street for my revenge. I knew a sharper method and a surer. It might glisten less with elegance, but it would prove more secure. But first, I would have the word of Morton.

That glass of exquisite fashion and mold of proper form, albeit something grizzled, and like myself a trifle dimmed of time, tendered his congratulations upon my re-conquest of the town. I drew him straight to my affair of Blackberry.

“Really, old chap,” said Morton, the while plaintively disapproving of me through those eyeglasses, so official in his case, “really, old chap, you walked into a trap, and one a child should have seen. That Blackberry fellow had the market rigged, don’t y’ know. I could have saved you, but, my boy, I didn’t dare. You’ve such a beastly temper when anyone saves you. Besides, it isn’t good form to wander into the stock deals of a gentleman, and begin to tell him what he’s about; it isn’t, really.”

“But what did this Blackberry individual do?” I persisted.

“Why, he let you into a corner, don’t y’ know! He had been quietly buying Blackberry for months. He had the whole stock of the road in his safe; and you, in the most innocent way imaginable, sold thousands of shares. Now when you sell a stock, you must buy; you must, really! And there was no one from whom to buy save our sagacious friend. Gad! as the business stood, old chap, he might have had the coat off your back!” And Morton glared in horror over the disgrace of the situation.

While I took no more than a glimmer of Morton’s meaning, two things were made clear. The Blackberry president had stripped me of my millions; and he had laid a snare to get them.

“Was young Van Flange in the intrigue?”

“Not in the beginning, at least. There was no need, don’t y’ know. His hand was already into your money up to the elbow.”

“What do you intend by saying that young Van Flange was not in the affair in the beginning?”

“The fact is, old chap, one or two things occurred that led me to think that young Van Flange discovered the trap after he’d sold some eight or ten thousand shares. There was a halt, don’t y’ know, in his operations. Then later he went on and sold you into bankruptcy. I took it from young Van Flange’s manner that the Blackberry fellow might have had some secret hold upon him, and either threatened him, or promised him, or perhaps both, to get him to go forward with his sales; I did, really. Young Van Flange didn’t, in the last of it, conduct himself like a free moral or, I should say, immoral agent.”

“I can’t account for it,” said I, falling into thought; “I cannot see how young Van Flange could have been betrayed into the folly you describe.”

“Why then,” said Morton, a bit wearily, “I have but to say over what you’ve heard from me before. Young Van Flange was in no sort that man of gifts you held him to be; now really, he wasn’t, don’t y’ know! Anyone might have hoodwinked him. Besides, he didn’t keep up with the markets. While I think it beastly bad form to go talking against a chap when he’s absent, the truth is, the weak-faced beggar went much more to Barclay than to Wall Street. However, that is only hearsay; I didn’t follow young Van Flange to Barclay Street nor meet him across a faro layout by way of verification.”

Morton was right; and I was to hear a worse tale, and that from Inspector McCue.

“Would have been here before,” said Inspector McCue when he came to report, “but I wanted to see our party aboard ship, and outside Sandy Hook light, so that I might report the job cleaned up.”

Then clearing his throat, and stating everything in the present tense, after the police manner, Inspector McCue went on.

“When you ask me can I locate our party, I says to myself, ‘Sure thing!’ and I’ll put you on to why. Our party is a dope fiend; it’s a horse to a hen at that very time he can be turned up in some Chink joint.”

“Opium?” I asked in astonishment. I had never harbored the thought.

“Why, sure! That’s the reason he shows so sallow about the gills, and with eyes like holes burnt in a blanket. When he lets up on the bottle, he shifts to hop.”

“Go on,” said I.

“Now,” continued Inspector McCue, “I thought I knew the joint in which to find our party. One evenin’, three or four years ago, when the Reverend Bronson and I are lookin’ up those Barclay Street crooks, I see our party steerin’ into Mott Street. I goes after him, and comes upon him in a joint where he’s hittin’ the pipe. The munk who runs it has just brought him a layout, and is cookin’ the pill for him when I shoves in.

“Now when our party is in present trouble, I puts it to myself, that he’s sure to be goin’ against the pipe. It would be his idea of gettin’ cheerful, see! So I chases for the Mott Street hang-out, and there’s our party sure enough, laid out on a mat, and a roll of cotton batting under his head for a pillow. He’s in the skies, so my plan for a talk right then is all off. The air of the place is that thick with hop it would have turned the point of a knife, but I stays and plays my string out until he can listen and talk.

“When our party’s head is again on halfway straight, and he isn’t such a dizzy Willie, I puts it to him that he’d better do a skulk.

“‘You’re wanted,’ says I, ‘an’ as near as I make the size-up, you’ll take about five spaces if you’re brought to trial. You’d better chase; and by way of the Horn, at that. If you go cross-lots, you might get the collar on a hot wire from headquarters, and be taken off the train. Our party nearly throws a faint when I says ‘embezzlement.’ It’s the first tip he’d had, for I don’t think he’s been made wise to so much as a word since he leaves here. It put the scare into him for fair; he was ready to do anything I say.’

“‘Only,’ says he, ‘I don’t know what money I’ve got. And I’m too dippy to find out.’

“With that, I go through him. It’s in his trousers pocket I springs a plant – fifteen hundred dollars, about.

“‘Here’s dough enough and over,’ says I; and in six hours after, he’s aboard ship.

“She don’t get her lines off until this morning, though; but I stays by, for I’m out to see him safe beyond the Hook.”

“What more do you know of young Van Flange?” I asked. “Did you learn anything about his business habits?”

“From the time you start him with those offices in Broad Street, our party’s business habits are hop and faro bank. The offices are there; the clerks and the blackboards and the stock tickers and the tape baskets are there; but our party, more’n to butt in about three times a week and leave some crazy orders to sell Blackberry Traction, is never there. He’s either in Mott Street, and a Chink cookin’ hop for him; or he’s in Barclay Street with those Indians, and they handin’ him out every sort of brace from an ‘end-squeeze’ or a ‘balance-top,’ where they give him two cards at a clatter, to a ‘snake’ box, where they kindly lets him deal, but do him just the same. Our party lose over a half-million in that Barclay Street deadfall during the past Year.”

“I must, then,” said I, and I felt the irony of it, “have been indirectly contributing to the riches of our friend, the Chief of Police, since you once told me he was a principal owner of the Barclay Street place.”

Inspector McCue shrugged his shoulders professionally, and made no response. Then I questioned him as to the charge of embezzlement; for I had not owned the heart to read the story in the press.

“It’s that Blackberry push,” replied Inspector McCue, “and I don’t think it’s on the level at that. It looks like the Blackberry president – and, by the way, I’ve talked with the duffer, and took in all he would tell – made a play to get the drop on our party. And although the trick was put up, I think he landed it. He charges now that our party is a welcher, and gets away with a bunch of bonds – hocked ‘em or something like that – which this Blackberry guy gives him to stick in as margins on some deal. As I say, I think it’s a put-up job. That Blackberry duck – who is quite a flossy form of stock student and a long shot from a slouch – has some game up his sleeve. He wanted things rigged so’s he could put the clamps on our party, and make him do as he says, and pinch him whenever it gets to be a case of must. So he finally gets our party where he can’t holler. I makes a move to find out the inside story; but the Blackberry sport is a thought too swift, and he won’t fall to my game. I gives it to him dead that he braced our party, and asks him, Why? At that he hands me the frozen face, springs a chest, and says he’s insulted.

“But the end of it is this: Our party is now headed for Frisco. When he comes ashore, the cops out there will pick him up and keep a tab on him; we can always touch the wire for his story down to date. Whenever you say the word, I can get a line on him.”

“Bring me no tales of him!” I cried. “I would free myself of every memory of the scoundrel!”

That, then, was the story – a story of gambling and opium! It was these that must account for the sallow face, stooped shoulders, hollow eyes, and nights away from home. And the man of Blackberry, from whom Morton and I took millions, had found in the situation his opportunity. He laid his plans and had those millions back. Also, it was I, as it had been others, to now suffer by Barclay Street.

“And now,” observed Inspector McCue, his hand on the door, but turning with a look at once inquisitive and wistful – the latter, like the anxious manner of a good dog who asks word to go upon his hunting – “and now, I suppose, you’ll be willin’ to let me pull that outfit in Barclay Street. I’ve got ‘em dead to rights!” The last hopefully.

“If it be a question,” said I, “of where a man shall lose His money, for my own part, I have no preference as to whether he is robbed in Barclay Street or robbed in Wall. We shall let the Barclay Street den alone, if you please. The organization has its alliances. These alliances cannot be disturbed without weakening the organization. I would not make the order when it was prayed for by the mother of young Van Flange, and she died with the prayer on her lips. I shall not make it now when it is I who am the sufferer. It must be Tammany before all; on no slighter terms can Tammany be preserved.”

Inspector McCue made no return to this, and went his way in silence. It was a change, however, from that other hour when I had been with him as cold and secret as a vault. He felt the flattery of my present confidence, and it colored him with complacency as he took his leave.

Roundly, it would be two months after the election before Tammany took charge of the town. The eight weeks to intervene I put in over that list of officers to be named by me through the mayor and the various chiefs of the departments. These places – and they were by no means a stinted letter, being well-nigh thirty thousand – must be apportioned among the districts, each leader having his just share.

While I wrought at these details of patronage, setting a man’s name to a place, and all with fine nicety of discrimination to prevent jealousies and a thought that this or that one of my wardogs had been wronged, a plan was perfecting itself in my mind. The thought of Blossom was ever uppermost. What should I do to save the remainder of her life in peace? If she were not to be wholly happy, still I would buckler her as far as lay with me against the more aggressive darts of grief. There is such a word as placid, and, though one be fated to dwell with lasting sorrow, one would prefer it as the mark of one’s condition to others of tumultuous violence. There lies a choice, and one will make it, even among torments. How could I conquer serenity for Blossom? – how should I go about it to invest what further years were hers with the restful blessings of peace? That was now the problem of my life, and at last I thought it solved.

My decision was made to deal with the town throughout the next regime as with a gold mine. I would work it night and day, sparing neither conscience nor sleep; I would have from it what utmost bulk of treasure I might during the coming administration of the town’s affairs. The game lay in my palm; I would think on myself and nothing but myself; justice and right were to be cast aside; the sufferings of others should be no more to me than mine had been to them. I would squeeze the situation like a sponge, and for its last drop. Then laying down my guiding staff as Chief, I would carry Blossom, and those riches I had heaped together, to regions, far away and new, where only the arch of gentle skies should bend above her days! She should have tranquillity! she should find rest! That was my plan, my hope; I kept it buried in my breast, breathed of it to no man, not even the kindly Morton, and set myself with all of that ferocious industry which was so much the badge of my nature to its carrying forth. Four years; and then, with the gold of a Monte Cristo, I would take Blossom and go seeking that repose which I believed must surely wait for us somewhere beneath the sun!

While I was engaged about those preliminaries demanded of me if the machine were to begin its four-years’ reign on even terms of comfort, Morton was often at my shoulder with a point or a suggestion. I was glad to have him with me; for his advice in a fog of difficulty such as mine, was what chart and lighthouse are to mariners.

One afternoon while Morton and I were trying to hit upon some man of education to take second place and supplement the ignorance of one whom the equities of politics appointed to be the head of a rich but difficult department, the Reverend Bronson came in.

We three – the Reverend Bronson, Morton, and myself – were older now than on days we could remember, and each showed the sere and yellow of his years. But we liked each other well; and, although in no sort similar in either purpose or bent, I think time had made us nearer friends than might have chanced with many who were more alike.

On this occasion, while I engaged myself with lists of names and lists of offices, weighing out the spoils, Morton and the Reverend Bronson debated the last campaign, and what in its conclusion it offered for the future.

“I shall try to be the optimist,” said the Reverend Bronson at last, tossing up a brave manner. “Since the dying administration was not so good as I hoped for, I trust the one to be born will not be so bad as I fear. And, as I gather light by experience, I begin to blame officials less and the public more. I suspect how a whole people may play the hypocrite as much as any single man; nor am I sure that, for all its clamors, a New York public really desires those white conditions of purity over which it protests so much.”

“Really!” returned Morton, who had furnished ear of double interest to the Reverend Bronson’s words, “it is an error, don’t y’ know, to give any people a rule they don’t desire. A government should always match a public. What do you suppose would become of them if one were to suddenly organize a negro tribe of darkest Africa into a republic? Why, under such loose rule as ours, the poor savage beggars would gnaw each other like dogs – they would, really! It would be as depressing a solecism as a Scotchman among the stained glasses, the frescoes, and the Madonnas of a Spanish cathedral; or a Don worshiping within the four bare walls and roof of a Highland kirk. Whatever New York may pretend, it will always be found in possession of that sort of government, whether for virtue or for vice, whereof it secretly approves.” And Morton surveyed the good dominie through that historic eyeglass as though pleased with what he’d said.