it may be that you—whoever you are or wherever you are—don’t know what it means to go “down the line.” but in new york—in order that we may start right—“the line” means that part of broadway where at night the lights burn brightest, and where the mob—swell and otherwise—move back and forth like the ebb and flow of the tide—hunting, hunting, ever on the hunt.
from twenty-third street to forty-second, and back again, and you have gone down the line. sometimes it costs you nothing for this innocent little amusement; this feast of the eyes; and then again it is liable to cost you a great deal.
it all depends upon who you are, and what you are and how easy you are.
and there you are.
i once knew a man, and this is pat while i am on this subject, who came to new york from buffalo. he was only going to remain for a day or so, and then he was going to hike himself back to his home by the big lake.
he had sold out his business, and when he landed in new york he had a bank roll of twenty-one thousand dollars.
it was enough to make any ordinary man round shouldered, but he was a husky guy who was used to
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the long green, and it didn’t bother him any more than if it had been beef-and-bean money.
he put up at a big swell hotel, and during the evening, when time hung a bit heavy on his hands, he got it into his head that he would take a walk down the line, and then turn in among the feathers.
with a perfecto between his teeth, he got as far as thirty-eighth street, where he met his finish.
when he arrived at his hotel at ten o’clock the next morning he asked the proprietor to loan him twenty dollars to get home.
no explanations go with this, because he was sport enough never to tell how it happened. it doesn’t even point a moral, for there are no morals on the line.
going down the street, like a yacht under full sail, is a woman whom it cost not a cent less than $750 to put in commission. in the male vernacular she is what might be termed a peach, and there is no need to translate that for you, for the simple reason that you are familiar enough with the different kinds of fruit to know what that means.
because of her figure and the fact that she was a good fellow she was an attraction at the beach.
she has a history, of course. they all have, to a certain extent, but this is somewhat out of the ordinary.
in her day—and her day wasn’t so many years ago—she was a noted beauty, and she had one of the most charming apartments in new york. it was frequented by what might be termed the high-class sporting crowd—lawyers with national reputations, actors whose names were in big type on the billboards, business men who posed as the bulwarks of the commercial world,
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and politicians who waxed sleek and fat at the public cribs. they played poker there and were entertained royally by her. she gave the choicest of dinners and served the best of wines, and she was a perfect hostess. her rooms were more like a club than anything else, and she was never annoyed by any love-making on the part of her guests, for a very good, substantial and simple reason—the man who paid the shot and who figured as the real one in that charmed and exclusive circle was none other than a high official of new york.
his hospitality, dispensed through her, was almost boundless, and there are those who say that there was method in that gathering, and that many a serious public question was discussed within the confines of those gorgeously upholstered rooms.
give a man the proper seat at the right kind of a table, beside a woman who is beautiful, charming and magnetic, serve him with a perfect dinner, with good wine selected by a connoisseur, then after the dessert provide him with a cigar which cannot be bought in the open market, and it is almost a sure thing that, if you have any proposition to make, your battle is half won. what an ideal spot for lawyers, politicians and capitalists to discuss things that it wouldn’t do to have the public know.
and as the months rolled by this woman came to be known by the majority of prominent men of new york.
now you can get a good look at her as she stops to glance in that window.
not to have been her guest was to have missed a lot in life, and when you lost to her in a little poker game
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you were almost sorry your losses were not heavier.
she had more diamond rings than she could wear at any one time, and she had the best wardrobe in town. no matter what she saw and wanted it was hers. she scarcely needed to ask for it—she just wished, and it came as though she had been blessed with some fairy godmother who waved a magic wand, and brought things on the wind.
so there’s the picture, painted in the most ordinary colors, and there’s the woman, who grew to think the world was made for her to play with and do with as she liked.
when she was at the height of her career, this lawyer-political friend of hers—this champion and provider—really and truly fell in love. he was well past middle age, but that made no difference. after many years of waiting—years which were punctuated with numerous affairs which he thought spelled love—he found the girl at last in the daughter of a man whose position left him nothing to wish for. she was a society girl and charming enough for any man.
before he fully realized what he was doing he had proposed marriage to her and had been accepted without giving that other one a thought.
when he understood that he had to break with her, he knew that he had the job of his life in front of him, but he was game enough to go at it without a moment’s hesitancy, and so one night, after the crowd had gone and the last poker chip cashed in, he told her the story.
“i am going to marry and settle down,” he said. “my position demands it, and i cannot go on living this way forever. i feel that i have a political future,
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and i must protect myself. if i ever came up again for any prominent office, as i expect to in the near future, my relations with you would mean the worst kind of defeat for me. i want to be fair with you, and i am willing to settle any claim you may have on me for anything within reason.”
his story took a long while in the telling, and through it all she never moved nor spoke.
when he had quite finished she stretched and yawned.
“is that all you have to say?” she asked.
“yes,” he answered, “that is all, except that i hope we will part friends, and that if ever i can do anything for you, i——”
“now whatever you do,” she spoke up sharply, “don’t get tiresome nor sentimental. you’re a good fellow, and always have been—so you think. i have come into your life and have answered your purpose. i have entertained your friends and made it pleasant for you and them. i suppose you think i did it simply because i was provided for and had everything i wanted—that i was a sort of a high-class servant who was satisfied with her wages. if i had been wise i would have anticipated this and been prepared for it. i would have had enough money in the bank to have been independent to a certain extent. i am like a poker chip—you bought me, played with me, and now you are ready to cash me in because you have finished with me. you are a good fellow—with the men—but you are very tiresome and that reminds me that i am tired and wish you would run along. go home now, and dream of the nice girl you are going to marry.”
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he stood looking at her like a man under the influence of a drug. he did not know what to say. he had expected a scene of some kind, and he was disappointed. his vanity was touched. why, here was a woman for whom he had done everything in the world, and whom he thought loved him, and she was parting from him without a tear or even so much as a word of expostulation. that didn’t suit him at all. he wanted her to throw her arms about his neck and beg him not to go. of course, he would have gone just the same, but he didn’t want to think that she would let him go so easily.
the pride and vanity of man is a peculiar thing, and there are not ten men in a thousand who understand women, even though they think they do. this man, clever, handsome and brilliant, was of the majority who do not know, and he had nothing to say to the woman who had entertained him and with whom he had spent many pleasant hours.
he looked at her for a moment and then he went out as though he had been whipped from the door.
she turned the key in the lock and then gave way to her real feelings by crying as only a heart-broken woman can.
he had incriminated himself with her to such an extent that he dreaded her. she had been too calm to suit him, and he feared trouble to come. he had no definite idea as to what form it might take, but he wanted to avoid it.
so he went direct to one of his most astute legal friends—the same one, who, by the way, told me the whole story in a burst of half-drunken confidence—and they sat up half the night figuring on how to head
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her off in case she attempted to do anything that would reflect on his “spotless” character. how careful the man is of his name as a rule, and how despicably he can treat a woman when it suits either his mood or convenience.
that midnight conference finally resolved itself into definite shape by the counsellor saying:
“i’ll take $10,000 to her and get everything she has of yours and her signature under a statement that will leave you free and clear.”
and so it was agreed.
lawyers do not act very quickly unless their own interests are at stake. speed was required here and the action was fast enough for anyone. the next day, at noon, the lawyer, who knew her well enough to call her by her first name, called upon her, and as he was ushered into the handsome apartment he involuntarily put his hand to his breast pocket, which contained ten new, crisp one thousand dollar bills—the price of her silence, from his standpoint.
it is interesting to be able to note that the interview was short, sharp, sweet and to the point. he made his eloquent speech of how his friend, who had always loved her devotedly, was forced by something which she could not understand to break from her and marry a woman whose position in society was assured. he was prepared to pay her an amount of money—quite a liberal one, in fact—so that she should want for nothing. all he desired was a certain package of letters and a statement that she had only known his friend in the most casual way.
“how much are you going to pay me?” she asked.
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“ten thousand dollars, and here it is,” he said, producing the bills.
“i will do what he wants,” was all she said, and in ten minutes the job was done.
then he laid the money on the table.
“what is your fee?” she spoke very softly.
“my fee?” he repeated, as if he did not quite catch her meaning.
“yes, your fee. how much are you charging this friend of yours for what you are doing for him?”
“i am doing it through friendship. there is no such thing as fee in a case like this.”
“you have earned this money, and i do not want it,” she went on. “i am not a blackmailer nor can my promise of immunity be bought. i, too, understand what the word friendship means, and i am not so degraded nor lost but that i can take advantage of it. it is such men as you and he that make such women as i am. good-day.”
he was in the hall with the money in his hand before he quite realized how it all happened.
between you and me, my friends, i would sooner have her conscience than the conscience of the very fine gentleman whose public career has since been marked by repeated triumphs.
