literature“Real Life”, by Lewis Shiner
It’s dinner time, but I can’t get my wife’s attention. She’s killing Ants. Not little black ones out in the garden, but six-foot high Ants with space ships and photon torpedoes. So I pop a cup of alphabet soup in the micro and sit down with the evening paper. Here’s President Quayle on the front page, shaking hands with John F. Kennedy.
What?
Dinner’s ready. I pour it into a bowl and the letters spin queasily. They’re forming words. The words say, EAT ULTRAVIOLET DEATH, TERRAN SCUM.
Days like this, you wonder what the hell ever happened to reality. My wife has her answer. For her it’s a glove studded with wires and sensors and a helmet with built-in goggles and headphones. For the Associated Press it’s digitized wire photos that they can change with a stroke of the light-pen. But that still doesn’t explain what’s going on in my soup.
Life here in the nineties is weird and getting weirder. Me, I like to seek solace in literature. Back in the eighties I used to be into William S. Burroughs. Wasn’t everybody? I mean, the guy was practically a pop star, with everybody from the Soft Machine to Steely Dan to Thin White Rope ripping their names off from his books. It was hip to be paranoid, random, ironic, perverse. To be literate and still get to toy with all that slightly tacky genre stuff–private eyes, heavy-metal addict aliens, pornographic sex. Not just hip, it was downright postmodern.
Burroughs’ vision started losing it when Bush went to war on drugs. It was no longer cool to enjoy being stoned or even to talk about it–especially if you wanted to keep your job. Reality was turning into serious business, government business, multinational business. Do not try this at home.
Then technology got away from the guys with pocket protectors and suddenly there was Computer Aided Design and digital audio and hand-held video-games. Reality changed. In fact reality was getting harder to pin down every day.
If the eighties were William S. Burroughs, then the nineties are Philip K. Dick.
You remember Phil Dick. He’s the guy they took Blade Runner and Total Recall from. Now all of sudden everybody is asking the same questions that Dick started asking back in the fifties, and kept on asking right up until he died. How do you tell robots from human beings? How do you know that’s really your memory, and not some construct that’s been planted in your head? Are we fighting a real war, or are we being manipulated by politicians and corporations to keep spending money–money that is itself just electromagnetic data?
Only Dick was no William S. Burroughs-style rock star. He was overweight and dipped snuff and cruised mental wards for dates. Where Burroughs was a literary darling, Dick was stuck in the SF trash/pulp ghetto and never got out. He mixed up high and low culture, like Burroughs did, everything from Heraclitus to pulp sf to the Holy Bible, but for Dick there was no irony involved. If there was such a thing as the “information virus” that Burroughs talked about, Dick believed it was benign. He wanted answers for the weird shit in his life and he didn’t care where he got them.
Now everybody’s life is a little like that. There’s information everywhere and “high” and “low” doesn’t mean much anymore. The science fiction stuff from Dick’s books is now physically out there. And there’s more weird shit than most of us can handle. Those moments when the whole facade starts to break down and the word “reality” no longer means anything at all. Like that nasty moment when the helmet comes off and the “virtual” reality just goes away.
Okay, okay, we all know what reality really is. Reality is smog alerts, crowded freeways, famine in Africa, AIDS and drug wars and the homeless. Ozone holes and global warming and disappearing rain forests. But who wants to live in a world like that? When we can have infinite mental playgrounds that range from the geometries of Tron to the virgin planets and blazing space of Star Wars? After all, if we didn’t believe in the power of illusion, why would we have elected Reagan and Bush and now Quayle?
In books like Time Out Of Joint and The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, Phil Dick told us, over and over, that Things Are Not What They Seem. He said that the measure of humanity is kindness–caritas–not the ability to look good on TV. He said that no matter how much you believe you’re in sunny Southern California, sooner or later you’re going to wake up to a lipstick scrawl on the bathroom mirror that says we’re all wasting away in an underground hovel on Mars.
It’s the same feeling you get when your air-conditioned, cellular-phone and CD-stereo equipped town car breaks down and you have to climb out into the heat of the ghetto. There’s another world out there, and it’s just dying to meet you face to face.
It’s the feeling you get when the power goes out in the middle of the Cosby Show. When that wino wanders into your restaurant and ruins your New American Cuisine. When a computer virus takes you down right in the middle of your spreadsheet. When you’ve been talking to a salesman on the telephone for two minutes before you realize it’s a computerized recording, or, here in the nineties, a full-fledged expert system that can bother a thousand people at once.
And in the time in between, when life seems to glide happily along, you may find yourself asking more and more questions. Is it live, or is it maybe Memorex after all? Is that Schwarzenegger blowing up pretend villains or is that news footage from El Salvador? Is Coke, in fact, the Real Thing?
And what is that in my soup?
The text above was retrieved from Shiner’s own website, where it was published under a creative commons license. Below you can read Robert Crumb’s comic book about Philip K. Dick from archive.org.
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short storyby John Llewelyn Rhys (1911-1940)
WHEN the Old Man came into the ante-room the young officers began to rise in their chairs, but he waved them back with an impatient gesture. It was warm and comfortable in there and the tenor of idle chatter continued. One could hear the crackle of a newspaper page and the sound of bidding from the four who were playing a Chinese game in the corner, their minds apparently intent on the little walls of white blocks on the table before them. ‘ Beneath the Wing-Commander’s arm were a number of files. On the outside of the files was a map. Robert recognised its shape and his heart kicked inside him. And now every pilot in the squadron was watching the senior officer, . watching him without movement of head, watching him while seeming to read, watching’ him while crying ‘Three Characters.’ The Old Man nodded, first at one, then another, and finally at Robert. Silently they rose to their feet, leaving their circles of friends, their reading, their Chinese game, and filed into ‘the neighboring room. The Wing-Commander stood by the grand piano waiting for them to gather about him. 1 IE looked suddenly older, Robert thoughts Now his hair, shone with grey, new lines emphasised the hardness of his features. But his voice was unchanged, harsh, imperious. ‘Gentlemen, the show’s tomorrow.’ He paused and looked ‘slowly at the circle of pilots. . . ‘The target, you know. Here’s the latest from Intelligence and a few other little details I want you to know.’ ? Robert heard his instructions and memorised them, with an ease born of practice, but the words seemed meaningless rattling like hail on the roof of his mind.
‘Any questions?’
But they were all old hands, and no naive youngsters among them wanted to make themselves heard. ‘Well … good luck! I know you’ll put up a good show.’ His voice was suddenly shy. ‘I wish they’d let me come with you.’ They went back to the ante-room, went on talking, reading, playing the Chinese game. Robert sat down by a friend.
‘If anything,’ Robert’s voice was quiet as be flipped the pages of a magazine, ‘if anything were . .] . to slip up . .; . tomorrow, would you attend to the odd detail?’
‘Of course, old boy.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tough show?’
‘Tough enough.’ It was almost day as Robert walked over to Flights with the Squadron Leader, and cold, with the half light lying dead on the roofs of the camouflaged hangars and the wind sock napping drearily on its pole.
Mechanics were beginning to start up the motors which clattered protestingly to life, back-firing and shuddering on their bearers.
‘Looks like a good day, sir?’
The leader of the raid looked up, then kicked his heel into the turf.
‘Yes; hope this frost holds off. I hope to hunt next week.’
When Robert got to his machine only the starboard engine had been started. Impatiently he watched -the efforts of the crews. If only they’d get that engine running, he thought, if only they’d get it running. He, went up to the fitter, ‘You haven’t over-doped?’ ‘
No, Sir. She’ll go now.’ Still she refused to start. He climbed up the ladder into the cock.
‘Got your throttle setting right?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the corporal, ‘she’ll start in a minute.’ The second pilot was inside, busy at the navigator’s table. ‘All set?’ Robert asked.
‘Bombs, petrol, and everything hunkey-dorey, sir,’ the sergeant answered.
If only they’d start that engine, he thought. If only they’d get it going and we could take off. At last the motor roared to life, and be climbed into his seat, ran up the engines, pulled up the ladder and waved away the chocks. As he waited on the aerodrome, his airscrews throwing long flickering shadows, he kicked the heavy rudder violently from side to side. Where were the others? Where were the others? They would be late off the ground and there would be a row. Then he glanced at his watch, and found to his surprise that it was five minutes to his zero hour. And now the other machines were taxiing towards him, huge, heavily laden monoplanes, grim against the dawn, moving fast over the close cut turf, beating down dean thick lines through the white frost. He glanced down at the controls, felt the various cocks, checked the cylinder head temperatures, the hydraulic and brake pressures. Then, when all was ready, he pushed open the throttles, the noise increasing till it filled the long, narrow compartment, beating mercilessly upon his ears, drowning the screams of the hydraulic gear. She was heavy with full petrol and a belly full of bombs, but as he felt her becoming airborne he brought the wheel gently back and she bumped up into the air. From time to tune Robert switched on his microphone and spoke to each gunner in his turret. They were alert and cheerful, and behind him the second pilot worked at his check navigation. Sometimes they saw fishing boats whose crews waved frantically, and minesweepers busy in their deadly task, and once a convoy with destroyers like sheep dogs on its flanks. The weather was fine, with high lumps of cumulus, and they began to climb. In a little while the second pilot came forward and held up eight fingers, Robert nodded. Eight minutes. He felt cold inside, his teeth were shattering, he wished they were in the thick or It, and grinned at his companion. The target came into view, a smudge on the horizon. The leader began to give his orders over the radio, and they started a big circle so as to attack from out of the sun. As they came up the sky filled with anti-aircraft fire. The second pilot had switched on his microphone and Robert could hear him jeering at the enemy gunners, for the shooting was poor, though some of the bursts were un comfortably close. They came over the target and released their bombs. Robert watched the sky unceasingly for enemy fighters, wondering if any aircraft were lurking in its glare waiting for the anti-aircraft to cease before diving to the attack. The second pilot was busy with the camera recording the hits far below, whistling as he worked. A burst of Archies off the port wing tip made the machine rock violently. Soon they were out of range of the ground guns, and Robert saw one of the other machines break formation ‘and rock its wings. He spoke to the gunners. ‘Keep your eyes skinned. There’s a fighter about somewhere.’ Then he saw it, a lone enemy machine, a single seater fighter with square wing tips. It came up quite slowly, lazily, lying on to the tail of one of the bombers. It was so simple a manoeuvre that it might have been a pupil on his circuit at a flying training school. As it turned off, short jabs of black smoke jerked themselves from the back cockpit to the bomber. The fighter turned slowly on to its side. First smoke, then flames poured from its engine, splashing down the fuselage. In the bright sunshine, against the blue sea, the machine fell slowly, twisting, turning, diving.
‘Here they come!’ said the second pilot; and Robert saw that the sky seemed to be filled with fighters. They broke up and began to attack. Robert watched two circling him from the front. As they turned the flank his rear-gunner switched on his microphone and Robert could hear him swearing. Tracer from the enemy streamed overhead, curved in a graceful trajectory, and dropped out of sight. Then the gunner was silent Robert heard the rattle of his guns and his voice, jubilant ‘Got him, sir.’
‘Good. Keep you eyes skinned. Be patient,’ Robert said. Now a twin-engined aircraft came up on the beam, accompanied by one of the smaller fighters, which attacked from the rear. A burst of fire shattered the roof over the second pilot’s head. The front gunner coolly brought his guns to bear. The twin was an ugly brute, the first Robert had seen with extended stabilisers on the tail. He was frightened now. His mouth dry, his hands wet inside the silk lining of his gloves. Attack after attack came up, filled the air with tracer, turned lazily away. The middle gunner brought down another fighter before he was hit in the leg. Robert sent the second – pilot back- in his place. One burst of machine-gun fire shattered half the instrument panel, sent a shower of broken glass over his knees. Darkness filled his eyes, but in his mind he could still see the face of the enemy gunner, red and foolishly grim, as he fired from the rear cockpit of the fighter. The wheel went limp in his hands, the strain of months of war, the nag of responsibility, lifted from his consciousness… Then his vision cleared, and he – pulled the aircraft level. To his surprise the fighters had vanished, and at his side was the Squadron Leader’s machine, which he thought he had seen go down. He began to sing, thumping his hands on the wheel. They were separated from the others and flew in tight formation, the Squadron Leader turning his head from time to time and grinning and doing a thumbs up. They lost height till they were just above the sea, their patterned shadows sliding effortlessly over mile after mile of water desolation. On crossing the coast their senior officer altered course for base. They flew at a few hundred feet over the sleepy countryside, their shadows now vaulting hedge and haystack. As he looked, first to the north at the black rich earth of the fens, marshalled by dykes, then south to the loveliness of Suffolk, each feature of the country fitted into its place in his mind, each town he knew, each stretch of river. How familiar, he thought. How well I know it all. Truly, England is my village. Soon the little lake, shaped like an elephant’s trunk, appeared and they dived low over the hangars, then broke away, dropped their wheels, and came to land. There were no other machines about and the camp seemed strangely deserted. A little later they walked into the mess. It was warm and comfort able in there and the words and phrases of the many conversations jumbled themselves into a haze of sound. At the table by the fire there was an empty chair at the Chinese game. When Robert saw the other players he stopped in his stride. There was Nails, who got his on the first show, and Dick, who went down in flames, and Thistle, his second pilot and Badger, who was lost in the North Sea in December. ‘Come on’ Badger said. ‘We’re waiting for you.’ ‘But I thought …’ Robert said. ‘I thought …’ A VOICE from a distance interrupted him. A woman’s voice. There were no women in the room. Then the room and the men in it were gone. Robert was lying in a bed,, in a long, dim chamber With other beds up and down its length. The face of the woman whose voice he had heard was looking at him. . It was an *frg»foh face, plain and pleasant, framed severely in a familiar headdress. ‘What was it you thought?’ the nurse was saying to him. ‘You’re all right, you know. Home in England. The second pilot brought you in.’ Robert stirred fretfully in the bed, but the pain made him lie still again. The nurse put a hand to his bandaged head to quiet him. He closed his eyes and thought of the room he had left just a moment ago. He tried to will himself back into it, to be with Badger and the others. It bad seemed so hospitable’ there, so farm, so safe, so full of friends, so free of pain. He couldn’t reach it. Almost . . . Almost . . . Not quite. He couldn’t What h~d happened to him — that he had been there with them, the brave, admired dead, and come away and couldn’t get back to them again? In pain and bewilderment be thought: ‘I wish I knew— I— wish— I knew
From The Mail (Adelaide) 22 February 1941
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literature / short storyThe vast Amazon Valley, traversed by the largest river in South America, is covered from end to end by forests of spectacular beauty, and is without equal anywhere. However, these jungles have a terrible reputation due to the extraordinary abundance of reptiles hidden beneath those endless canopies of greenery.
The most colossal boas can be found there, either lurking below or suspended from the branches of the trees. They wait for unfortunate animals or people to pass by, then drop to coil around their prey. The thinnest and smallest snakes, only the length of a quill pen, are also found here, and these are perhaps even more deadly due to the potency of their poison.
Woe to any careless man venturing into these magnificent forests without a large knife or a good machete! He will not leave this place alive, and either die in the terrible coils of the boas or perish from the venom of coral snakes, for which there is no antidote.
Some years ago, a great unease spread among those who worked at the San Felipe plantation, which belonged to a Brazilian who had amassed a fortune cultivating coffee.
Slaves who had ventured into the nearby forest for kindling spoke with terror of a serpent without equal in length or size.
When the owner of the plantation, Don Manuel Herrera, was told about this, he feared that his laborers, mostly Black slaves, would flee for their lives. So he summoned loggers to help him verify the tales – the stories seemed too fantastic even to Don Manuel Herrera.
Don Manuel had seen large snakes himself several times, and had even killed quite a few of them. He had also heard indigenous stories of an immense monster called “giloia,” native to the swamps and the marshes, and which was sometimes observed in certain caves along the banks of the Amazon.
The four loggers and their overseer, who was also happened to be the farm manager, returned from the jungle and reported to the owner. The poor souls were still trembling with fear.
“Tell me, Como,” he said to the oldest one. “Did you find any serpents?”
“A huge, horrible snake, sir,” the terrified slave replied. “I’ve never seen one like it, and I don’t think there is in all of the Amazon.”
““We were cutting a dead tree when the ground rumbled… a long crack appeared…. a bad demon rose from hell. It was strange…inexplicable………we ran to a clearing.
“Then we saw the monster. The ground had split! Plants were broken. The gigantic snake rose from that crack, master. Twenty-five meters long… thicker than you and me.”
“You saw this with your own eyes?”
“Yes, sir,” the four of them replied in unison.
“Are you sure it wasn’t a python?”
“No, sir. No python.” Como replied.
“What did it look like?”
“It was dark as a demon….with the skin of a dragon”
The planter turned to his overseer, a local man who was also well traveled.
“Do you think serpents so enormous can exist?” he asked.
“It could be a ‘giloia,’ sir,” the overseer replied. “A rare reptile whose existence was doubted for a long time, but it does live in certain Amazon forests.”
“How dangerous is this creature?”
“They say it can tear a man limb from limb.”
“I don’t believe in the existence of such prehistoric monsters at all,” the planter said. “However, I intend to seek out this reptile, determine its species and kill it.”
“Don’t expose yourself to such danger, sir.”
“Would you be afraid to accompany me?”
“I will follow my master anywhere,” the overseer replied. “If you are heading into danger, it’s my duty to accompany you.”
“Then we’ll go and look for this legendary “giloia,'” the planter said with a determined voice. “If it exists at all. Gather my weapons and prepare my dogs.”
Less than half an hour later Don Manuel Herrera left his house, followed by his overseer and four his enormous mastiffs, dogs used to chase off jaguars and cougars and for hunting runaway slaves.
They were fierce and hardened canines, each wearing an iron collar covered with sharp spikes to prevent them from being strangled by wild beasts.
The four slaves had proceeded in advance, and were waiting at the edge of the forest.
It was noon. The sun – now at its highest – scorched the backs of the poor laborers across the fields, and the valley seemed locked in an ominous silence. The birds, drowsy from the intense heat, no longer chirped. Even the parrots, those eternal chatterboxes, remained quiet, hidden beneath the enormous leaves of the jupati palms.
Don Manuel and the overseer hurried across the open fields. The heat in the Amazon valleys, especially between eleven in the morning until four in the afternoon, is extremely dangerous. Only indigenous tribes or Blacks may defy the mid-day sun with impunity, and work without woven head ware.
Fortunately, the protective roof of the forest was nearby.
It was more than a forest; it was an endless expanse of virgin wilderness, extending from the deserted banks of the Amazon – for leagues and leagues.
Plants of all species and sizes grew side by side wrapped in vines. Many of them were highly valuable. In such fertile regions, a person could find the necessities of life without farming or even work.
In the depths of the forest, there were trees that produce excellent milk not much different from what a cow might provide. A cut in a tree trunk would make the tasty liquid drip in abundance.
Other trees produce a kind of bread, or rather, certain fruits as large as a child’s head. These are filled with pulp that is sliced and toasted on charcoal, and which they say taste almost like artichoke.
And still others that produce excellent wax for the making of candles, and filaments for weaving very sturdy clothing, as well as delicious fruits like bananas, pineapples, and more.
When the planter and the overseer reached the first trees, they found the four Blacks crouched behind the trunk of a coconut palm, their faces pale.
“Master,” Como said, “do not make us meet the devil again. The ‘giloia will eat our soul.”
“I don’t know what to do with your help,” the planter replied. “Have you seen the serpent again?”
“No, sir.”
“Where did you see the crack?”
“The gates of hell lie 500 paces yonder, master!”
“Let’s go, overseer,” Herrera said. “And you cowards, may return to the plantation!”
He released the four mastiffs, loaded his rifle, and ventured into the forest.
“Always keep an eye on the treetops, master,” the overseer said. “Boas often hide among the leaves and drop from above as soon as they spot prey.”
“I’ll be cautious,” the planter replied.
The dogs began to show signs of unease. They stopped frequently, sniffing the air and the ground, and growled while looking at their owner.
They seemed frightened, yet they were fearless animals, that never shied away even from the fiercest jaguars, which are the tigers of America.
Five hundred paces into the forest, they found the huge fissure. The ground, which appeared to be made of dry mud, had been lifted along a vast stretch, and the force exerted by the monster had been such that it had overturned several plants.
“It was under here that the reptile was hiding,” said the planter, astonished that a serpent could develop such strength.
“You can still see scales and bits of skin scattered among the debris,” sighed the overseer.
“Do you really think it’s one of those infamous ‘giloias’?”
“They say that these monstrous reptiles, during the dry season, immerse themselves in swamps where they fall into a deep slumber or hide in caves, only to emerge two or three months later.”
“In which direction do you think the monster twisted?”
“It must have headed toward the river to seek refuge in caves. There are many of them in these parts, you know.”
“Let’s rely on the dogs,” the planter said. “I believe they are already on the right track.”
The four mastiffs, after sniffing along the entire crevice, had moved up to the opposite side, trotting among the dry leaves covering the forest floor. They had picked up the scent of the enormous reptile and were determening a direction.
Don Herrera and the overseer loaded their rifles and set off after the dogs, looking under the thick bushes and among the branches, although they were convinced that a creature of that size couldn’t climb those trees without breaking them.
They had discovered a passage among the plants, like an immense furrow, which must have been created by the monstrous reptile.
Many young plants had been flattened, and numerous shrubs were completely broken.
It now dawned on the planter that the indigenous legends of the ‘giloia,’ might be true, after all. The evidence was simply too strong.
They had been walking for half an hour, trailing the dogs, when barks and agitated growls were heard.
They were now near the river. The distant roars of the immense Amazon could already be heard, its waters smashing against protruding rocks.
“Master,” said the overseer with a pale and solemn face, “we must be near the serpent’s refuge.”
“Are there caves here?” the planter asked.
“Yes, there’s a huge one that no one has ever dared to explore, and it’s believed to lead into the heart of a mountain.”
“We’ll cut some resinous branches and go visit it.”
As they were about to move on, they heard screams from the river, shrill female cries:
“Jaco! Jaco!” with an indescribable tone of terror.
The howling dogs lead the planter and the overseer toward the river. At this point, the amazon streamed between tall and rocky banks, pierced by deep holes that might lead to the mysterious caves.
After passing the cliffs, the planter stopped, and overcome by a paralyzing fear, he was for a moment unable to lift his rifle.
An enormous serpent, over twenty-five meters long, all dark, with its body covered in very thick scales still encrusted with mud in their joints, emerged from one of those black crevices, sliding down the steep bank.
At the bottom, in a wooden canoe, a young woman from the tribes, desperately clasped her baby, shouting in desperation and despair:
“Jaco! Jaco!”
It was probably her husband’s name.
The terrifying reptile had spotted her and was descending with its mouth wide open, flicking its forked tongue and hissing.
Paralyzed by fear, the woman -who belonged to a local tribe – was unable to push her canoe from the banks. She embraced her precious child in desperation, as if this would save it.
When she saw the two of them, her arms stretched towards them, holding up her baby. Her voice – almost choking with terror – screamed:
“Help, white man!”
Two gunshots rang out, one after the other. But it was too late.
The enormous reptile had snatched the woman and the child, and with incredible speed, it had slid into its black hole, vanishing from sight.
For a moment, they still heard the cries of the poor woman, then there was a profound silence.
Even the dogs no longer barked.
“She’s lost!” the planter exclaimed, throwing his arms in the air. “We arrived too late.”
At that moment, an tribesman armed with an axe hastily descended the riverbank.
“My wife! My son! The ‘giloia!'” he shouted, stopping in front of the planter.
“Accursed snake! I knew it had to be here. I must avenge my wife and my son, or I can no longer be a chief for my tribe.”
After the outburst, he composed himself with a sudden self-control unique to Red men.
Whether they belong to the warlike tribes of North America or to the indolent and wild ones of South America, emotions will never disfigure their faces long. Once the initial surprise or anger has passed, they vanish behind a mask of indifference – as if nothing had happened.
This came as no surprise to the planter, who had had frequent dealings with the indigenous tribes.
“What will you do now that the ‘giloia’ has destroyed your family?” he asked.
“I will avenge my wife and my son,” Jaco replied, his jet-black eyes sparkled and gleamed fiercely.
“Have you ever killed a ‘giloia’?”
“No, those snakes are rare. But I heard that my friend, the chief of the Ottomachi, found one near a cave last year and killed it. Why shouldn’t I, Jaco, neither a weakling nor a coward, be able to do the same?”
“The monster won’t be taken by surprise,” said the overseer. “It knows we’re here, it will be on guard. After devouring its prey, it will prepare for a fight.”
“At night, snakes sleep,” said the tribesman “Behold the shadow of evening!”
“Do you know that cave?” Don Herrera asked.
“I’ve visited it several times to find the green stones that we use as amulets against enemy arrows.”
“If you help us kill that monster, I’ll give you a rifle.”
That was all it took to win over a tribesman. Besides, the man wanted to avenge his wife and son, not because he was grieved by the loss of his companion and heir, as tribesmen are not overly attached to their families, but because of that primal instinct that dominates primitive peoples.
“I will kill the ‘giloia,” he said calmly. “Wait for me here.”
He climbed up the bank, and half an hour later, he returned with a bundle of resinous branches, which were to serve as torches, and his blowgun, a kind of wooden tube, slightly wider at the base and narrower toward the top, which they use to launch their arrows with tips dipped in the highly poisonous curare.
By blowing forcefully into it, they can send their darts a distance of up to fifty meters and are so skilled that they don’t miss even the smallest birds.
“When the white man is ready,” he said after distributing the branches.
The sun was about to disappear behind the thickets, and night was descending rapidly.
The birds were fleeing, and giant bats, ominous vampires that feed on blood, flapped over treetops. They feed on any man or animal that falls asleep in the forests or on the riverbanks.
The planter, the overseer, the tribesman, and the dogs climbed the bank and stopped in front of the crevice where the colossal reptile was last seen.
Fearing that it might be nearby, they first lit resinous branch and stretched it into the opening, shaking it in all directions.
Hearing no noise or hissing, the three men cautiously entered the cave, their rifles and blowgun ready.
“It must have fled into the cave,” said the tribesman. “There’s a hall of stone…the ‘giloia’ will feel safe… And a lake without bottom..they love water.”
“This tribesman has courage,” the planter said to the overseer.
“I must admit, master, that I have an uneasy feeling about this.”
“We have the dogs in front of us, and they’ll warn us of danger.”
The mastiffs preceded the hunters, but they didn’t seem too eager to discover the terrible cave boa.
From time to time, they stopped and turned their heads toward their master, as if to ask if it wouldn’t be better to give up the expedition, which didn’t seem to be to their liking.
The cavern widened enormously. Huge rooms adorned with magnificent stalactites followed one another, with lateral cavities that it was impossible to know where they led. The monster could be lurking in any one of these.
The tribesman, appearing confident, never hesitated. He continued to advance under the dark vaults, holding the resinous branch high, its reddish flame sometimes flickering, as if strong air currents were entering from invisible cracks.
They had already crossed four caves when Jaco stopped, bending toward the ground and showing something that wavered in his hand.
“Do you see the ‘giloia’?” the planter asked.
The tribesman stood up, extending his hand.
“My wife’s hair,” he said in a hoarse voice. “The ‘giloia’ spat them out.”
Then he added with a certain satisfaction:
“They are black and long and will make a good impression on my war shield.”
“These tribesmen,” said the planter, disgusted. “They have not an ounce of heart!”
Jaco hung the hair, still smeared with blood and saliva, from his belt and resumed the march. He had abandoned his blowgun and was now wielding the war ax, a much better and safer weapon for facing such a reptile.
They crossed four more caves, each one longer than the previous. Then they entered a gallery and arrived on the banks of a large, almost circular, blackwater pond.
They were about to go around it when a gust of wind, coming from a lateral gallery, suddenly extinguished their torches, leaving them in utter darkness.
“Light the torches! Light the torches! the terrified planter yelled to the tribesman.
They heard Jaco rummaging in the bag hanging from his belt, then he exclaimed:
“I no longer have the flint!”
“Overseer, you do it!” Don Herrera whispered, as if afraid to draw the attention of the lurking boa.
“I’m not a smoker, master,” was the reply. “I never carry one with me.”
At that moment, they heard the dogs growling, and then the black waters of the pond began to roar and gurgle.
“Let’s flee!” the planter cried. “The ‘giloia’ is breaking the surface”
They rushed toward the gallery they had crossed shortly before, fumbling in the profound darkness. A few seconds later, they bumped into a wall, and all fell together.
“Where are we?” Herrera asked.
“We must have lost our way and entered a side gallery,” the tribesman said.
“Listen!” the overseer exclaimed, shivering.
From the depths of the cave, near the pond, they heard shrill hissing and furious barking.
“My dogs are attacking the reptile,” Herrera said.
“They’re lost,” the tribesman said.
The barking had turned into lamenting cries that lasted for a few moments, and then silence once again enveloped the cave.
“The serpent has killed my dogs!” the planter exclaimed, making an angry gesture.
“We’ll avenge them too,” the tribesman replied.
“You know what, let’s just get the hell out of here,” Herrera said, losing all confidence in the tribesman.
“We’ll find the exit,” Jaco said. “Stay close to me, or better yet, hold onto my belt.”
He detached from the wall and pushed forward, trying not to veer to the right or left, eventually finding a passage.
“We must be in one of the seven caves,” he said then. “Keep following me.”
He walked at a very fast pace. He, too, wanted to get out as soon as possible, afraid that the terrifying serpent might strike at them at any moment.
Suddenly, he stopped, leaning against a wall.
“Halt!” he said.
“Have we lost our way again?” the planter asked.
“Listen.”
A rustling noise sounded nearby, the slither and rattle of the ‘giloia’s’ large scales, and it was approaching at some speed.
“Could the boa be heading for the exit?” Herrera whispered.
“Yes,” the tribesman replied. “Hold your breath and don’t move! If it senses our presence, it will come at us.”
They pressed up against the wall, their rifles and blowgun ready, fearing an attack at any moment.
The rustling drew nearer. But then there was a sudden silence. They thought had been discovered, but then the sounds resumed as it moved farther and farther from them.
“It has passed us,” the tribesman said. “Now we attack!”
“Perhaps we should let it go?” the overseer suggested.
“No,” Jaco replied. “We’ll wait until it is halfway out of the crevice, and then off its tail.”
They tiptoed after the rustles, until, finally, the mouth of the cave appeared before them – illuminated by the moon.
“The ‘giloia’ is about to leave,” Jaco said, holding the ax. “Wait until the head and half of its body is out!”
The attack from the dogs had disturbed it, it no longer felt safe and now it searched for another hiding place.
The enormous body slid into the crevice, almost blocking it entirely.
It was caught in a trap, unable to turn in its defense.
“Attack!” the tribesman yelled, his eyes had already adjusted to the darkness.
He leaped with the ax raised and began to strike the serpent’s tail vigorously, while the planter and the overseer, with their rifles unloaded, grabbed the cutlasses, which were no less sharp than the tribesman’s ax.
As the serpent felt pain it its tails, it hissed angrily and writhed, trying in vain to back up and confront its attackers.
The narrow opening held it in a lock.
Now, the two planters and the tribes stuck at it repeatedly, breaking its vertebrae and scales.
The serpent, mad with pain, then tried to escape. With one final effort, it withdrew the end of its body and slid down the slope into the river below, and vanished in the water.
“It’s gone!” the planter exclaimed with regret. “I wanted to preserve its skin.”
“It will be my gift to you,” the tribesman said.
His wife’s canoe still floated by the banks, and he stepped into it and paddled off.
Two days later, Jaco returned to the fazenda, followed by six tribesman carrying the skin of the enormous reptile.
He had found the monster on an islet, where it had gone to die.
The skin measured twenty-four meters and had a circumference of seventy centimeters.
Today that fearsome cave boa makes a fine display in the lounge of the San Felipe plantation, and naturalists flock to admire it.
translated by Michael Henrik Wynn
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literature / travelWhen Somalis appear in western media it is often as victims or perpetrators. “It is to be expected. They come from a country in anarchy”, we’re told. Yet, even among the ruins of Somalia, books are being read and written, and problems are being discussed in fictional form. Ali Jimale Ahmed is a professor of comparative African literature, and he draws a nuanced picture of the cultural life of his native country.
Historyradio.org: Somalia has long been considered a failed state, but are there still significant authors who write about daily life in the country?
Professor Ahmed: By all accounts Somalia is a failed state–governmental structures and the ideologies that sustained them have collapsed. But that does not mean that a semblance of pseudo-state organizations are absent. The international community–the U.N., the EU, the AU, and a host of other organizations are in the country to shore up the internationally recognized government.
That said, when we speak about Somali writing and writers, it is much better to differentiate between two forms of discourses, namely, discourses of the state and discourses of the nation. Seen from that perspective, there are significant authors who write about daily life–the trials and tribulations, as well as the accomplishments of people trying to eke out a living under difficult circumstances–in all parts of Somalia. These writers publish articles and books inside the country. One need only read the many books published in the “country.”
Historyradio.org: What sort of education do the normal citizen of Somalia get these days?
Professor Ahmed: Education is one of the sectors severally impacted by the collapse of the state. There is no uniform or harmonized curriculum. The various state entities do not have a coherent educational policy in place. Private institutions and civil society groups run the educational sector. Depending on their affiliation or from where they get their financial or moral/intellectual support from these institutions replicate the kind of curriculum found in Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan, and the UK, and so on.
That said, graduates from those schools and universities are found to be well prepared to undertake undergraduate and graduate studies in European and North American universities. Some such students are now studying at Princeton, for example.
Historyradio.org: Like many African countries Somalia has a proud and ancient history, to what extent do Somali today writers revive this tradition of stories in their work?
Professor Ahmed: This is one of the reasons that Somali society has still a viable and resilient culture. Since the collapse of the state, there has been a concerted effort on the part of intellectuals to publish on Somali history and literature. There are Somali websites like Hoyga Suugaanta and Laashin that specialize in literature, and Somali presses, such as Scansom, Laashin and Iftiinka Aqoonta in Sweden, Looh press in England, Redsea-online publishing Group in Italy/UK/Somaliland, that publish the findings and collections of both aspiring and established authors.
Literature, in all its forms, is held in high esteem. Indeed, the etymology of suugaan, Somali word for literature, means the sap or fluid of certain plants like the geesariyood. These plants are evergreen, and are associated with life and the sustaining of life under precarious situations or conditions. When all else is gone as a result of a drought, for example, the sap from this plant will sustain a modicum of existence, of life. Thus for the Somali, literature is sustenance that nourishes both the body and mind.
Historyradio.org: When we hear news from Somalia, they often involve Al Shabab and Islamic extremism. What sort of attitude do the major Somali writers take to religion?
Professor Ahmed: With the exception of Nuruddin Farah, whose novels have internationalized the Somali case, other major writers rarely discuss religious issues in their fiction. In Maps and Secrets, for example, Farah is at times critical of what he perceives to be excesses and transgressions by those who claim to be religious. In his Past Imperfect Trilogy (2004-2011), In Links, the narrative limns the contours of the post-Siad Barre Somalia–warlords, U.s. intervention, the successes of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), and the eventual arrival on the scene by the better equipped Ethiopian soldiers that denied the ICU what seemed to be a total victory against the warlords. In Crossbones, farah’s narrative reveals a misreading of Somali pirates who were perceived to be Al Shabab members or surrogates.
Historyradio.org: The diaspora is central to the Somali experience, and thus also the racism and prejudices that its citizens face abroad. Are there novels in the Somali language which tell the story of refugees?
A recent novel that touches on this topic is Ismaaciil C. Ubax’s Gaax (“Deferment or Postponement”), . It is a novel that describes or trails the lives of three main characters who, even though they live in different climes and times, share certain uncanny characteristics.
Equally important are books written for Somali children who are born in the Diaspora. Musa M. Isse’s bilingual tales written in Somali and Swedish help kids born in the Diaspora to develop strong identities. Isse is also the Editor-in-Chief of the first Somali Children’s Magazine in the Europe.
The subject of racism is discussed in Igiaba Scego’s Italian-language short stories, and Yasmeen Mohamed’s novel Nomad Diaries, written in English. The topic is also taken up in the novels of two seasoned and award-winning novelists in the Diaspora: Nadifa Mohamed who writes in English and Abdourahman Waberi who writes in French.
Historyradio.org: Somali is a non-european language. Do writers leave their native tongue in favor of English, French or some other European language? To what extent is the Somali language under threat?
Professor Ahmed: Somali writers who write in European languages are small compared to those who write in Somali. I do not perceive any threat per se. Rather, the absence of a strong state to nurture and promote the language is perhaps more of a threat to the flourishing of Somali language.
Historyradio.org: Are there big differences between the literary schools of Europe and Somali literature? Is there a Somali modernist school, for instance? Will the intellectual thoughts of urban Europe even make sense in a Somali context?
Professor Ahmed: We live in a globalizing/globalized world. The kind of Somalis who could read novels in Somali are, more often than not, the ones who are able to traverse borders. The hundreds of thousands of Somalis who live in Europe travel constantly between Somalia and Europe. That said, we must distinguish between modernization (the process) and modernity (the consciousness).
Historyradio.org: Some parts of Somalia have experienced peace for some time. What sort of literature have been produced in these areas?
Professor Ahmed: There are several writers who have written books on their experiences (or those of others) as refugees. But a great deal of literature is coming out of the parts of Somalia that have experienced peace. One need only catalog the plethora of novels published in the country and exhibited at the Hargeysa International Book Fair in Somaliland. The last few years have witnessed the growth of Book Fairs in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and Garoowe in Puntland.
Historyradio.org: We hear a lot about “the great American novel”. Is there such a thing as “the great Somali novel”? Is there a book or a novel that all Somalis love?
Professor Ahmed: The novel has not been fully domesticated in Somalia. Of course, the novel genre is such that it is in its protean form; it has yet to crystallize and assume a definite form. That said, two novels would contend or vie for the distinction. Maxamed Daahir Afrax’s (Mohamed Dahir Afrah) Maana Faay (1981;1993) ushers in a new form of storytelling, as it exhibits ingenious and conscious ways of using language to reflect the quotidian life of its characters. With Maana Faay the novel genre in the Somali language comes of age, both in terms of content and structure.
The other novel is Yuusuf Axmed Ibraahin-Hawd’s Aanadii Negeeye, a riveting story that recounts the gory details of murder and revenge. The narrative unfolds as the eponymous protagonist, Negeeye, whose father was murdered shortly after Negeeye’s birth, remembers his mother’s account of the brutal killing of his father. Negeeye, then, plots to avenge his father’s death.
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creative writing / literatureWhen you think of writing most people imagine a solitary philosopher, an ivory tower, or something of the kind. However, there are some, who for commercial and practical reasons, create stories in a group. These are the showrunners, the men and women who build the stories behind our TV series with detached and sometimes cynical eye. I have talked with one such man, Arne Berggren, whose resume in Norwegian and Scandinavian TV drama is too long to mention here.
Historyradio.org: I thought writing was a solitary job? I thought it depended on the genius of individual minds? Why am I wrong?
Berggren:
“For for most writers their job is a solitary one. Those who write fiction, for instance, are almost loners, I guess. How many of them that are geniuses, I cannot say, but there is definitely something dysfunctional about many of them. Something that perhaps makes them less suited for teamwork, that is my belief. Many writers consciously try to remedy some personal flaw through writing, or try to discover things about themselves. Often people like that have strong egos and like to follow their own train of thought and impulses, rather than conforming.
But many writers also find that it is liberating working with others. No matter how smart or brilliant you may feel, they see that more minds can achieve more together than on their own. If you want to write for TV, the process is so centered on deadlines that it becomes an industry or a craft. Volumes of pages need to be produced in a short period of time. Some get a little kick out of the fact that they share this responsibility rather than taking on the burdens themselves. In a group you can produce TV scripts fast , and I suppose that is why the whole idea of so-called Writers’ Rooms emerged. TV is an industry, and that implies process and teamwork.”
Historyradio.org: How exactly does the writing process work, do you sit around a table and brainstorm? When is the actual writing done?
Berggren:
“All Writers’ Rooms are different, and there isn’t an extensive tradition for this kind of work in Europe. When you write comedy, however, it is quite common to sit in groups and brainstorm. But in drama too we see more and more of this kind of work. In our company, Shuuto, we have a joint session in the preliminary stages, in which we test vague ideas. It is important that we move beyond brainstorming at this point, and when there’s a pitch, something that resembles a dramatic premise, we try to work our way to potentially interesting characters, look at the longer storylines and so on. What, for instance, are the worst things to which our characters may be exposed?
Eventually we get round to the actual writing of the scripts. On those occasions we are generally four writers in a full-day session, once a week. We delegate, and the script producer decides on shorter meetings, if they are needed. So the actual writing process is still solitary, but the script producer or the showrunner are never far off. There might be daily deadlines for scripts that are reviewed and then rewritten. It is a very organic process, but the workload may be heavy. We like to take our time in the preliminary stages, but then we produce scripts for one episode a week.”
Historyradio.org: There have been many story factories in literary history. Some say Shakespeare might have run such a factory. Dumas is another example. Still, both Shakespeare and Dumas got top billing. Isn’t there sometimes a clash of egos?
Berggren:
“Where there are writers, there is always a clash of egos. But you won’t last long in the TV-business if you create a lot of conflict wherever you go. As manager I have learnt to compromise, I think. I am looking for writers and a staff that are productive, with an ability to work things through. This creates positive vibes, I think.
I must admit that I haven’t always been a role-model in this regard myself. But one learns by making mistakes, and I try my best to help others. Some of the most famous American showrunners have been strong egos. Even so, they have created environments in which others could flourish. There aren’t any showrunner academies in Scandinavia, so it is a trial by error process. You need to search out people with a certain set of qualities, and create a relaxed work environment with as few egos as possible.
The writers need to understand that this is not about them, but about getting the job done. Their job is simply to assist the showrunner or the script producer, to make his or her life easier. So they are free to return to their “ivory tower” as long as they deliver on time.”
Historyradio.org: So how should the public think about you? Are you a company executive, a writer, a brand? What?
Berggren:
“I am slightly schizophrenic, I guess, split between being a writer and an executive producer. I still write books and theater, but as a TV-guy I am first and foremost a producer. If there is a brand, it must be Shuuto, our company. We don’t really concern ourselves with core values and strategies of communication. In fact, we have a hard time defining what we do, except for the fact that we produce script-based content in a slightly different way than the larger production companies and book publishers.”
Historyradio.org: What does it take to make it as a writer in TV, do you think?
Berggren:
“You need to write, write and write. And in between read and watch tv. Sometimes I must admit I am a little shocked by young writers who want to get into television, and who produce nothing. You cannot wait for a break. In fact, it’s all about actual writing experience. Even if it is difficult to write something without seeing the final product, this exactly what you need to do. Write in all genres, and get as much feedback as possible, if only from your mother or someone you know. And you need to watch a lot of TV, in all genres, several hours a day. You need to analyse how the the skilled minds think. Sometimes you can learn even more by watching half-decent drama. You see what’s wrong, notice the way they think, and when it doesn’t suit your palate you imagine what you might have done if you had written the story yourself.”
Historyradio.org: Norway is a small country, yet recently our TV series, actors and directors have made it in Hollywood. Are there international opportunities for script writers?
Berggren:
“Yes, I think this might happen soon. Already a select few have been offered seats in writing rooms in LA. Some might get a job, and it’s much harder than you imagine. You need to be proficient in English, and this is where many Norwegians tend to over-estimate our own skills. I think you can get an entry into the US market if you become a co-producer on remakes of Norwegian TV-series, or work on developing new series for the international market. Or you could move to LA or England, get your education there, network, become a part of the scene, as much as you’re able. We have had foreigners with Norwegian as a second language in our writers’ rooms here in Norway, and I can tell you this wasn’t easy. No matter how great they think their language skills are.”
Historyradio.org: Let’s say I were a 20 year old who desperately wanted to write something for TV or film. What would be my best option for achieving my goals?
Berggren:
“I would be very patient. Try to get a foot in the door anywhere on set. Be a runner. Make coffee, sweep the floors. Staple the scripts and so on. I would have done it for free, even if our unions might object. Once you have access, relations are built, gradually trust is gained. If you’re the sort of fellow who listens to criticism, thrives on it, more responsibility will eventually come your way.
But in terms of cognition, you need to remember that the 20 year old brain is, in fact, not fully mature. That doesn’t happen until you reach 25, I think. What you believe the world to be as a 20 year old might be false. A 20 year old is impatient, and wants to been seen and recognized. They think things revolve round them. I have seen plenty of 20-year-olds who were presented with great opportunities, but who were swiftly disappointed, told everyone to go to h.. and moved on to what I assume were greener pastures.
I guess, I once was a little like that myself. I have missed out on opportunities myself, you see. But “patience”, “networks”, “relations” and “trust” are the keywords. Most people are hired by someone they already know. And of course networking among people your own age is crucial. Someone that you know is sure to make it, and they will be searching for people their own age to join them. It is , in my view, almost impossible to predict who makes it. But their shared characteristics are gaining work experience, building relations and networks. So if you know “a mingler”, latch on.”
Historyradio.org: As the head of a writing group, you must have seen many mistakes, and many who lacked the skills. What are the most common mistakes of the rookie writer?
Berggren:……..
“They’re impatient. Afraid of criticism. You think that your way of thinking is the only one. Some lack humility. Some are lazy. Some are thin-skinned. Some jealous. Some believe themselves to be smart and that they deserve to be discovered. This is fact typical of 9 out 10 writers that we encounter. Great ego, inflated view of their own skills.”
Historyradio.org: I am going to ask you a difficult question that concerns most writers and artists at one time or another. How should one deal with rejection?
Berggren:
“This might sound like BS coming from some one with one foot in the grave, but embrace your rejections. The people I truly admire have one thing in common. They have been rejected more than most. You’re fired. You’re humiliated. And every time you learn something that makes you a better writer and better person. Rejection is the scariest thing I know. It hurts like hell, it hits us right in the gut. Still, it is the key to progress.
If you manage to put on a brave smile and move on. Rejections are not about You. The person rejecting you might be looking for something completely different. Often you will be offered new jobs from the very same person who once rejected you. As an employer I am looking for someone who is able handle themselves professionally. Patience. Humility. This can only be achieved by coming to terms with rejection. I know it sounds like crap, but this is something I know to be true. I have experienced plenty of rejections myself.”
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historyWhen Mohammad died in 632, most of the Arabian peninsula had converted to his new religion. Soon a rapid expansion of the faith across most of North Africa followed, untill a caliphate was established. During the Middle Ages, Islam became the sworn enemy of Christian Europe. Even so, it is through Islamic custodianship that much of the legacy of classical Antiquity survived. The animosity between cultures seems to have reached a new peak in the wake of the war on terror following 9/11. Today, there is hardly a more controversial historical figure than the prophet Muhammad, the man who, in 610 A.D., at the age of 40, sought refuge in a mountain cave and was visited by the angel Gabriel. We talked with a well-known moderate, British proponent of interfaith dialogues, Methodist and historian, Martin Forward. We asked him to introduce Muhammad to those of us unfamiliar with his life.
Historyradio.org: You have studied Muhammad and written a short biography of the man, what attracted you to this subject?
Muhammad has had a very bad press in the west as a false prophet, an epileptic, a cardinal who went bad and founded another religion out of spite, and a host of other bad things. These criticisms arose in part out of people dissing what they fear. Islam was a threat to Europe’s Christian identity for over 1,000 years: as late as 1683, Ottoman Turks laid siege to the gates of Vienna. But they also arose out of a genuine puzzlement: why, Christians thought, did Muslims need another religious founder after Jesus? Why could they not accept him and his religion?
So I found him a fascinating figure and wanted to see what I thought of him. Writing it out helped that process!
Historyradio.org: In the West, we often compare Muhammad to Jesus, but how fair is that comparison?
Muslims compare Jesus with Muhammad. For Muslims, Jesus is a prophet, Messiah and son of Mary (but not of God). Christians, as I have said, often regard Muhammad as a fraud, though there is no obligation, in their religion, to have a point of view about Muhammad at all, since he post-dates it. Understandably, Muslims are often disappointed that Christians can’t find fine things to say about Muhammad when they themselves hold Jesus in high regard. Equally understandable, Christians are disappointed that Muslims high regard for Jesus misses (from their perspective) the important point about him and his role in salvation.
Historyradio.org: Do all Muslims have the same view of Muhammad? Are there differences within sects or traditions?
There are different views but they’ve been submerged by the dominant one. An early view, that of the Mutazilites, didn’t see him as a passive recipient of an inerrant scripture but gave him a much more positive role in its manufacture. There views were quickly abandoned as innovative, though they re-emerge in the writings of Muslim modernists in Egypt and India (e.g. Syed Ameer Ali’s “The Spirit of Islam”) Shiahs tend to emphasize Muhammad as a charismatic leader whose descendants may inherit some of that spiritual power, whereas Sunnis are more cautious about this. But the vast majority have the view that he is the last and greatest prophet, after whom there will be no more prophets.
Historyradio.org: What sources do we have about his life, and how reliable are these sources?
The Qur’an and the hadith (traditions). Muslims and until recently, western scholars of Islam, have taken a conservative view of these and see them as closely linked to the historical life of the prophet and as reliable guides to it. But radical recent western historians now often regard the Qur’an as a work that wasn’t fixed and finalized until many years after Muhammad’s death. Muslims don’t accept this, but the evidence is quite compelling that, e.g., some of the Qur’an is post-Muhammad. (John Wansbrough and Patricia Crone are famous exponents of this view).
Historyradio.org: What sort of a man was he? Was he an educated man?
Many Muslims believe him to have been illiterate and this has the advantage of highlighting the miracle of the Qur’an and its divine provenance. Since he was a member of a distinguished clan, and the husband of a wealthy businesswoman, Khadijah, it’s likely that he was able to read and write (though, as I say, many Muslims don’t believe so,) and to do basic math.
Historyradio.org: We often hear that Muhammad was a military man, and that as such he cannot be worthy of being praised. How should we deal with this issue? How do Muslims deal with it?
Islam was the most successful religion of all, in its infancy. Within a few years, it had destroyed the Persian Empire, and vastly reduced the territories of the Byzantine Empire. Within a century Muslims controlled much of the Middle East and North Africa, and had entered Europe as conquerors through the Iberian peninsula. Islam’s success was based on military power. This isn’t a problem for Muslims, God being on the side of the righteous, though it conflicts with views of Jesus as the prince of peace. To Christians, Muhammad seems to be a violent sort of prophet. To many Muslims, Jesus seems to have been an unsuccessful one, dying before he could implement his vision in any concrete ways.
Historyradio.org: Describe for us the sort of tribal culture he was born into?
He was born into a distinguished clan, the Quraysh. Clan life was originally desert based and gave its members an identity and a loyalty. You could, e.g., raid another clan but not your own. Mecca, the town where he was born, was on the silk route. Many scholars suggest that greedy capitalism was beginning to subvert tribal values at the time of Muhammad, and see this as the background to the Qur’an’s condemnation of those who oppress the poor and needy.
Historyradio.org: How did Muhammad regard women?
This is a minefield. He had many wives, and had them veiled out of respect, though he didn’t require other women to be veiled. He limited wives to four, for others, and some Muslims claim polygamy was a concession to circumstances, to protect and look after widows of the Muslims who died fighting against pagan Meccans. One of his wives, Ayesha, was very young, and his marriage to her nowadays would be regarded as pedophilia. But it wasn’t a problem then, if you compare it with practices in Greek and other cultures.
Historyradio.org: There is the very difficult topic of Muhammad’s relationship with the Jews. How should we today interpret his military actions against Jews?
Muhammad saw them as thorns in his side, preventing him from implementing his vision; fifth-columnists, if you like. He acted as leaders of his day did, removing them in a ruthless fashion. But he wasn’t a modern anti-Semite, regarding Jews as intrinsically sub-human. In the Middle Ages, Jews often did pretty well under Muslim rule, as opposed to Christian rule.
Historyradio.org: Why is it so important for some Muslims that we don’t show artistic representations of Muhammad.
Like Jews, (but unlike Christians) Muslims believe that God is incomparably beyond our power to depict him artistically or in any other way. Muhammad is the messenger of God. and so should be afforded the same courtesy.
Historyradio.org: What do the sources say about his appearance? Do we know anything about what he actually looked like?
I summarize his appearance in my book. There I write: “He was of average height or a little taller. He was strongly built. His complexion was fair. He had a hooked nose, and black eyes flecked with brown. He had a good head of hair, and was bearded. He had a large mouth, which occasionally broke into a warm smile. His was a mobile body: he turned his whole self to look at somebody, spoke rapidly and to the point, and was often in a rush.”
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short story«Sieg, Heil!» the nervous man said upon entering the main auditorium in 1938, his hard polished shoes echoed against the marble tiles. Short of breath, he placed his leather briefcase on the mahogany podium, and eyed his audience with anxious suspicion. There was rustling of paper, distant coughing. The apparatus for showing slides was prepared in the wings by a secretary in formal attire. Some of the employees seemed curious at least, while others had shown up as a matter of duty. And yawned. No doubt there were those in the small crowd for whom the word “duty” had special significance.At one wall a long crimson flag with a swastika, on the others the long history of the company, portraits of past industrialists that had built something from scratch, and hammered out the might of the German nation from steel.Finally, a small cortege of black suits entered the room, headed by the manager, a formal man by any standards, a man who appreciated efficiency, and man who knew he had proven his worth, and risen to senior rank.He eyed the speaker with a certain skepticism, but with acute interest.«My dear employees», he began upon entering the stage. «I have arrived to introduce our speaker tonight, a man of extraordinary courage and dedication who has traveled far and wide as a representative of our Fatherland, and been a unique witness. I will make no further comment, but let him recount his own story. The stage is yours, Herr Rabe. We are honored by your visit»The tall and nervous John Rabe then entered the podium.«As you all know, I have come from China recently, and in particular from a great city known as Nanjing. It is of the events that I witnessed there that I now wish to speak.”“Where is this city?” shouted a man from the back. The manager turned in anger in his seat, but fell silent when he saw the face of the man in the audience, and sighed.“That is a very good question. The city is centrally placed in China and have been historically of considerable significance for the Chinese, which is why I – as a representative of Der Fuhrer- was placed there. And it was in the service of our Fuhrer and as his envoy that I was able to witness the atrocities that I am about to reveal to you, the ruthless murder of thousands of old men, women and babies by the Japanese army. It is true that we in Germany are of a higher race than other nations, but we must also act in accordance with this, which is what I tried to do.”“But these people were of the mongol race, were they not?” persisted the voice.Herr Rabe stopped, the light over his head was bright, it hit his face in such a way that he was unable to make out the contours of the shadow in the audience, the annoying back seat heckler. But he did not need to see the face, he knew by the authority of the voice that personal animosity would get him nowhere. He had to fall back on his powers of persuasion. At that moment, he was taken back to that recent battlefield, and to the face of an elderly grand mother. She had run past him carrying a small child as he stood on the lawn. Artillery thundered in the distance, the glimmer of explosions colored the horizon. And then the shrill cries of the assaulting Japanese. For some reason he stood watching her escape. Just as she was about to melt into the fog, a shadow had stepped out of nowhere, a sharp blade was raised, and moments later both the old woman and the child lay dead on the grass one hundred meters from him.“Herr Rabe! Please continue”, a voice said. He shook his head, and found himself once again in the great hall wiping sweat off his forehead.“Yes, I am sorry. I will do as you say. I arrived I the city of Nanjing, and took up my position at our German station, and in that position, by the grace and might invested in me by Der Fuhrer, I witnessed the most horrific scenes that any man, even those who lived through our Kaiser’s great efforts, would ever have imagined. But I will say no more. I will let you see for yourself. Lower the lights, please.”There was total silence as the room submerged in darkness, the only sound that was heard was Herr Rabe’s nervous fiddling with the slide machine. Finally, it was working, Herr Rabe corrected his brown tie in order to breathe more freely, and the first slide appeared. It was a harmless photo of his place of work, then followed by scenic views of the city.Herr Rabe then began to lecture on the history of the region, upon his journey and upon the great assistance provided by his staff. He praised their efforts, he praised their patriotism, and the great dignity with which they had faced hardships. But then he stopped, fell silent for a moment. His face was the only one visible in the room, hard light hit it from the side, making his worried wrinkles stand out while the rest of the room brooded like a uniform shadow in curious anticipation.Then a new slide was loaded with a click resembling that of an automatic riffle: dead bodies on a road. There were coughs in the room. Herr Rabe said nothing, then loaded the next slide with military efficiency, close-ups of dead pregnant women. Then the next, children. The sight of the photos had brought back that surprising courage he had once displayed. Again he was back where it had all started. Slide after slide was loaded, it was all there: the torture, the corpses, the rapes, the blood-soaked cadavers, the screams and gazes he was unable to forget. There was something manic and automatic in the way that he loaded each slide, slowly and rhythmically as if to convince himself.Then he sighed. It was done. They had seen what he had seen, and his mission was complete.He asked for the lights, but had to shade his eyes as the audience re-emerged blackness. He now examined them one by one, searching for responses.There was a young man on the front row who was on the verge of tears, but he stared to the floor. Herr Rabe did not want to embarrass him. There was a balled fat man in a white suit with a very worried look, but Herr Rabe was unable to tell what caused that worry. Then he saw the face of the industrialist, the manager himself, thin and neat and composed. A poker face, it was impossible to say what such men were thinking.At first this annoyed Rabe a little, but then he thought about what sort of job the manager had. It was not possible for all men to wear their hearts on a sleeve. A manager was a political pawn, as well as a benefactor for workers in times of need. It was a pity that society produced his kind, but the world was what the world was.«I now wish to tell you about various actions that I took in the name of our great Fuhrer to prevent these horrific events, and how I was partly successful. I can tell you that…«But what did these mongols do to merit such punishment? You haven’t told us what they have done?»«What do you mean? Done? These are women and children?»«Some of the most cruelest people in history have been women, Herr Rabe?»Herr Rabe moved closer to the edge of the stage, spying into the audience. There again was that same voice, penetrating and authoritative. It was clear what he was. But Herr Rabe had influence, he would not be harassed by nobodies. If some upstart of a policeman thought he could be crueler than a Japanese samurai, he was sadly mistaken.«Are you sure you are not a socialist, Herr Rabe?» said the voice.Herr Rabe now stepped off the stage, and moved up the aisle passing many young and nervous clerks.Then he saw the man, tall, neat, well dressed, a mouth twisted in cynicism and a penetrating and intelligent stare.«Are you a true German?» asked Herr Rabe. «Can nothing make an impression upon your soul»«Soul? You are a sentimental dreamer, Herr Rabe. You must come with me, please».He saw the man approaching with determined steps.«Look here, I am a representative of Der Fuhrer. I am not just a nobody. You cannot treat me this way,” he continued.Before the man reached him two men who had been seated at the edges had grabbed his arms and were leading him towards the exit.Herr Rabe struggled, and broke free. Then he straightened his suit.«I will not stand for this!» he shouted. «I simply will not stand for it».But then, as he turned, he glimpsed the massive cynic just behind him, and something hit his head with such a force that he blacked out.When he woke, Herr Rabe was in the back of a moving van, and he heard city traffic. The man was treating his forehead with some cloth.«You need not worry, Herr Rabe. You are important and the party is grateful for your service. But your information is not wanted. I had no choice but to put an end to your performance»«Performance? Did you not see? Are you not a patriot?»«I am a liberated national from the Sudetenland, Herr Rabe. I was thrown in prison for that, I have no need to prove my patriotism, even to man such as yourself.»«And my slides?«What policemen, businessmen and politicians think is their own affair»The man then leaned back against the side of the van, lit a cigarette and sighed. He didn’t even look at Herr Rabe as the van stopped and Herr Rabe was directed toward the interrogation room.«Here our ways separate Herr Rabe,» the man said as they stopped by a gray door.«May I have your name, I wish to report you.»«My name is Schindler…Oscar Schindler. You may report me, if you wish.»And then the man turned and quietly walked towards the exit.
by Michael Henrik Wynn
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history / literatureIn the 1980s, a new academic discipline became popular in western academia: Postcolonial Studies. New theories emerged from the former colonies around the world about how they would deal with their shared past. Postcolonial Studies emerged from an attempt to give a voice to writers and thinkers that had been marginalized. Suddenly the original ideas of the colonial diaspora and the African universities became visible. As it turned out, even in places as far afield as Papua New Guinea intellectuals had something to say. This new branch of studies became immensly influential, and the first textbook on the subject was called The Empire Writes Back (1989). We contacted one of the authors of that work, professor Bill Ashcroft, and asked him a few questions about what postcolonial studies is and how he and his co-authors came to write this first book.
Historyradio.org: You have worked with postcolonial theory all your career, how and when did you become interested in the subject?
Professor Ashcroft: My interest in postcolonial studies originates in the field of Commonwealth literature, which began with the establishment of the Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies (ACLALS) in the 1960s. By the 1970s new terms were emerging such as “New Literatures” and by the late 1970s I became increasingly dissatisfied with the untheoretical and New Critical approach of Commonwealth literature. In 1978 I edited and issue of New Literature Review (later New Literatures Review) on postcolonial literature. By the 1980s the term postcolonial had taken over from other descriptions of the field and my focus at this time was on the transformations of language particularly in African literatures.
Historyradio.org: You published the first textbook on postcolonial theory in 1989. Why did it take so long before postcolonial studies appeared as an academic discipline in the West?
Professor Ashcroft: During the period after WWII when colonies were gaining independence ‘post-colonial’ meant post-independence. The emergence of Commonwealth literary studies dominated the field of English literature in the 1960s until the term ‘postcolonial’ began to gain strength in the 1970s. The Empire Writes Back was written to bring together the textual attentiveness of Commonwealth literature and sophisticated approaches to contemporary theory that could evolve a way of reading the continuing cultural engagements of colonial societies. In fact the conversations in which the book began occurred in the early 1980s.
Historyradio.org: Where did you meet your co-authors for The Empire Writes Back?
Professor Ashcroft: We had had known each other in the late 1970s but the project took shape when we met at an AULLA (Australian Universities Language and Literature) conference in 1980.
Historyradio.org: You must have done a careful selection of thinkers to reference. Which ones would you say were the most important ones for you?
Professor Ashcroft: Our aim was to highlight thinkers from the colonized societies as much aspossible. Of course Colonial Discourse theorists such as Bhabha, Spivak and Said were prominent in the landscape at that time but contrary to popular belief they were not a major influence on the book. Said’s Orientalism was a well known analysis of Europe’s representation of its others but none of these theorists had a prominent place in our work at that time. This is surprising to most people since I later wrote a book on Edward Said with Pal Ahluwalia, but at that time he featured very little in the book. Our aim was to distil the theoretical insights from postcolonial writers themselves.
Historyradio.org: Postcolonial Studies became quite popular in the nineties. Has it lead to any improvements for the cultural life in the former colonies?
Professor Ashcroft: I was struck by the statement by a Dalit woman at a conference in 2006 that The Empire Writes Back “gave us a voice.” Any ‘improvement’ in colonized cultures is represented in this statement through the voice that colonized people were able to use. However a greater and more important improvement has been made by postcolonial writers themselves, who appropriated English, the language of the coloniser, and used it represent their own culture and society to the world. To choose a language is to choose an audience and choosing English ensured a world audience.
Historyradio.org: Isn’t there a point in history when the colonial period becomes irrelevant, when too much time has passed for it to be used as an excuse?
Professor Ashcroft: This question is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the postcolonial. The idea of a chronological stage ‘after colonialism’ was the way the term was used in the 1960s, after the surge of independence. But from the publication of The Empire Writes Back the situation changed radically. ‘Postcolonial’ refers to neither a chronology nor ontology but a way of reading. It is a way of reading the cultural resistances and transformations of colonised and formerly colonised cultural producers. Sometimes this was anti-colonial but more often it was transformative as transformation proved to be the most powerful and productive form of resistance. Postcolonialism has continually transformed itself to provide strategies with which to analyse global power. We live after colonialism but never without it.
Historyradio.org: There is a local scholar here in Norway, Dag Herbjørnsrud, who recently wrote a book in which he argued for the establishment of a new global Canon. Is this in line with what you were trying to do in the 90s?
Professor Ashcroft: I don’t think so. Postcolonial studies have always been suspicious of canons, which arise when those with cultural power determine what is best. Postcolonial studies rejected the idea of a canon of ‘great works’ because these invariably marginalized the non-European writers. If we dispense with the idea of a canon, however, then certainly the significance of writers around the world needs to be recognised.
Historyradio.org: There has been some debate here in Norway about epistemology, and alternative ways of acquiring knowledge. This may seem harmless in literary studies and philosophy, but it would seem to contradict much of what has been achieved in the natural sciences. In what way was postcolonial theory, as it appeared in the 90s, relevant for the hard sciences?
Professor Ashcroft: In our next edition of The Postcolonial Studies Reader we are including a section on Postcolonial Science. Postcolonial theory is relevant for the hard sciences because it proposes that indigenous and non western ways of knowing the world, and particularly ways of knowing and caring for the natural world, are of equal importance. As the climate crisis approaches the need to consider alternative ways of knowing the world is increasing.
Historyradio.org: You have read many postcolonial novels in your long career as a literary scholar. Which one would you say was most influential for postcolonial studies? And why?
Professor Ashcroft: This question smacks a little of canonical thinking, but one book that stands out is Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children written in 1980. This is because it deconstructs so many forms of imperial discourse – the discourse of nationalism, the discourse of history itself within which nations come into being; the discourse of language; those of race and ethnicity and their embedding in language. All these offer a picture of the range of Rushdie’s radical dismantling of the myths of identity that surrounded that fateful midnight when India became a nation, taking over the architecture of the colonial state. What Rushdie is dismantling is not so much the idea of nation as the wider ranging tyranny of borders within which such concepts come into being. The book reminds us of the many ways in which societies unthinkingly take on the model of western society.
Historyradio.org: Sometimes when you read literary text from around the world, there are great surprises. Is there a literary culture today that you feel is neglected, that is just waiting to be discovered and recognized?
Professor Ashcroft: At this stage of my career there are few surprises. I don’t know of a culture that’s being neglected, especially since publication, and particularly publication in a world language is a form of recognition. There are many books that could be better recognised by critics. I will mention just one: Agaat by the South African writer Marlene van Nierkerk.
Historyradio.org: You have traveled the world as an academic. What sort of issues are universities in Africa and elsewhere concerned with today?
Professor Ashcroft: Universities in Africa face the same issue as those around the world, only to a greater degree: the marginalization of the humanities and the struggle for funding.
Corrections: the introduction to this interview has been edited due to some technical problems during publication.
Further reading:
Ashcroft B;Griffiths G;Tiffin H, 2013, Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts (3rd ed), 3, Routledge Press, London
Dag Herbjørnsrud, “Beyond decolonizing: global intellectual history and reconstruction of a comparative method” in Global Intellecural History
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short storyAn anonymous translation of the story “Le Hanneton” by J.-H. Rosny. The original was published in La Revue De Paris Et De Saint-Petersbourg, and this translation appeared in The Omaha Daily Bee, 30. September 1888.
burst of shrill laughter rang through the court-yard. A girl’s face looked from the barred window of a cell.
It was beautiful face – set in a glory of golden hair- the parted lips were like the petals of a young rose! But the laughter was the wild, terrible laughter of the mad.
“I have it?’ she screamed, exultantly.
“What?” asked the keeper.
The keeper was made of gross material. He had a loose skin, full of large, dirty pores like an old sponge – a thick, brutal nose, pierced by narrow nostrils and a wide mouth – red-lipped and cruel.
His eyes were small, hard, brilliant and singularly opaque. They looked like little bits of blue china. The girl’s eyes were blue also, but with the tender blue of turquoise, yet full of clear, liquid, changing lights like the sapphire. She was pale, delicate, exquisite! A beautiful casket bereft of its precious treasure – the mind.
“What?” asked the keeper.
“The May Bug!”
Tho keeper grinned and winked his blue china eyes. He had heard before of this May Bug – a chimerical insect which troubled him little. He was not a bad man – taking him altogether – a trifle over-fond of turning the cold shower on the poor wretches intrusted to his tender care – not averse to using a stout leather strap in the interest and welfare of the more refractory – and he often exercised a little judicious economy at their expense, in setting before his family the bread intended for his patients. Not a nerve lodged amidst the bone and brawn of his gigantic body! The most frantic struggles of the maniacs filled him with amusement.
The most furious ravings brought a smile to his great lips. Oh! He was very good-natured!
He approached the window. “”Where is it?” he asked, curiously and idly.
“It is here! here!’’ cried the girl, full of excitement. And she pointed to a hole in the wall of her cell.
A hole in the wall!
The excellent keeper was annoyed.
He frowned blackly. He entered the cell and struck the woman on the face.
“See that thou makest no more holes in the wall!” he said roughly.
She trembled violently. Her eyes darted strange lights but she said nothing. She did not even cry out, although the blow was a cruel one. She only watched, with jealous, angry eyes, as the keeper thrust three fingers into the hole. There was no insect there. He stood ruminating a moment, after the manner of beasts. Presently he began slowly to scratch his head. The woman made a sudden movement toward him.
“Give it to me!” she cried imperatively. “It is mine! I will have it!
You shall not put it in your head! Give it to me! Give it to me!”
“Hush, fool’ he said, and he raised his hand threateningly. She cowered away from him and crouching in the corner of the cell, began to cry bitterly, wiping her eyes, now and then on a strand of the long yellow hair that lay on her shoulders. As the keeper opened the door to go out a ray of sun light fell on his rough hair which curled thickly over his temples. The girl bounded suddenly after hin like a tiger.
“Is it there!” she shrieked, shrilly.
“Ah! the pretty thing! Do not crush it!” for the man raised his hand involuntarily to the spot she indicated with her outstretched fingers; then, recollecting himself, he turned on her fiercely, and advancing deliberately, as she retreated from him, until he had driven her again to her corner, he stood a moment quelling her with the cold power of his eyes. It was an instant’s silent struggle! The force of reason prevailed. She sank shuddering – conquered – -in the angle of the smooth stone wall.
“Good!” he said, gruffly. “And no more of holes in the wall, Dost thou hear? I shall look tomorrow and see if the hole grows larger in the night. Tomorrow – aye! and again the next day and the next!” He thrust his ugly face down to hers. She shivered and shrank nearer the wall. “”Good!” he said again. His tone was fatherly. It was pleasant to him to see his power.
Ah! they feared him -these poor, helpless, hopeless, miserable creatures.
He left the cell, turning his face toward her as he closed the door. At last, trembling ray from the setting sun died on the matted hair above his left temple. A tremor shook the delicate body huddled in the corner. More than two hours passed, and still the girl crouched there. Her little white fingers worked nervously. Her eyes were never still. Her brow was drawn in deep, painful lines, as though the poor disordered brain beneath made some great physical effort to form thought. And so the darkness fell.
With morning came the keeper.
“Is there a hole in the wall?” He laughed maliciously. “Then we can have no bread to day,” and the excellent man passed on well satisfied. Had ho not inflicted punishment when punishment was due? And, moreover, his family lived on the bread which cost him nothing.
June passed and July – long summer days when the sun lay in the court-yard and there was always a warm corner in cell No. 80, where the beautiful insane girl was kept. The keeper liked to go there and lounge in the afternoons. She was afraid of him, and he found her terror diverting. It pleased him to see her standing with downcast eyes sending out those strange gleams from under the deep-fringed lids – with heaving breast from which the breath labored heavily – with trembling fingers locked so tightly together that the little nails grew white with the cruel pressure. It was a tribute to his power. A more observant person might have seen something here to suspect – might have analyzed this fear and found in it a trace of danger – might have declared this attitude to be that of a person detected – or in fear of detection in wrong-doing.
But the keeper, good man, was not one to analyze. He examined all the cells daily. It may be that his examination was sometimes clumsy. But why should he suspect this child? Or suspecting, why should he fear her? A slender, white-faced cowering thing who could only pick a hole in the wall to hunt for an imaginary May Bug! A poor, weak imbecile creature who shook at the sound of his voice! The keeper would have called your analyst a fool for his pains!
There were times when the girl did not shrink from him, but, instead, greeted him with her charming, childish smile. Then, were he in a good humor, he would talk with her. Truly a strange duet, this, between the man without intellect and the woman without reason. An interesting study of chiaroscuro, where the ideal subtlety of the maniac stood out intensely against the brutish, unimaginative stolidity of the keeper. Often his rough voice, like the bellowing of a bull, frightened her, but she listened to him with her adorable smile, and only when he turned his eyes away did that strange expression leap into her, the greedy, jealous light burn in the eyes which, stealthily, she raised to the ragged clumps of hair which lay upon his temples. Once he surprised the glance. He laughed loudly, derisively. He had not altogether forgotten the May Bug.
“Aha!” he laughed, “dost seek thy treasure? Oh! Oh! the fool! the idiot!
the lunatic! Oh! I have it! Here” tapping his forehead suggestively, and blinking his blue, china eyes, “here: I keep it safely!”
The girl made a sudden, uncontrollable movement as if she would spring upon him, and the strange look deepened in her eyes – the look of passionate desire now mingled with rage and hatred of the man who kept from her what she coveted. The keeper was enchanted at the success of his pleasantry.
Still laughing, he rose, stretched his leg comfortably, and lounged over to the window. Outside the court lay flooded in the sunlight, a gray fowl minced across the flagging, pecking at the tufts of grass which forced themselves between the stones of the walk. The flowers in the square garden-plot in the center of the court gave up their sweetness languidly to the caress of tho warm air. The keeper gazed stolidly through the crating. His hard little eyes rested unblinkingly on a great metal ball on which the dazzling sunlight sported bravely.
Softly she came – softly, lightly! With cheeks aflame with the strength of her desire! With gleaming sapphire eyes!
With quivering nostrils and parted lips through which the breath fluttered tremulously! Softly she came, with her lithe young body swaying, and her little, trembling hands before her! In an instant her dainty fingers had twisted themselves in the man’s rough hair, jerked the great head backwards, and began a furious scratching in the grizzled mop over the left temple. The keeper flung himself around with an imprecation and sent the woman spinning against the wall.
“Insolence!” he roared, rushing upon her. “Dost thou dare, indeed” In the name of Reason – of which thou knowst naught – take this – and this!”’ He struck her a crushing blow with his clenched fist. She smothered a cry and crouched, still with dangerous look in her eyes – crouched as if to spring at his great brutal throat.
“Have a care!” he muttered, threateningly, rushing upon her again. Slowly her expression changed. The corners of her pretty mouth trembled. She put out one fist faintly. Then with more assurance, and moving gently forward, she looked up, shyly, into his scowling face as one who would implore forgiveness. It was the keeper. How ready she was to confess his power!
How eager to sue his pardon! He was mollified.
“There!” said he, “no more of thy stupid tricks, fool!” And he went away.
The summer waned. No. 80 seemed dull and sober. She slept little, grew weak and thin, and, from out the pallor of her face, her great blue eyes shone unnaturally. She was silent for long hours at a time. She no longer talked of the lost May Bug. She looked like a student who seeks to solve great problems, and who loses his health and strength in long vigils. She left her bed at night and strange sounds were heard in her cell.
“She sleeps too warm, perhaps,” said the keeper: “give her a cooling shower!” And this merry follow bade them hold her under the icy douche until she fell, chilled and exhausted, to the ground. This occurred twice. After that there were no more nocturnal disturbances. The keeper chuckled.
“I know their tricks,” said he.
The girl became very quiet and circumspect. She began to manifest interest in objects about her. She was strangely observant, and occupied herself for hours in examining the scanty appointment of her cell. Once the keeper fancied he saw her fumbling with the bars of her grated window.
He went in and examined the place.
She watched him with stealthy eyes.
When he turned she spoke to him pleasantly. She was always gay with him now. The brave man never detected a false note in the clear, crystal tones of her laughter – his ear, like his eye, made no fine distinctions. After this episode, however, she was more prudent and gave no cause for suspicion.
She was thoughtful – oh! very thoughtful at times preoccupied but patient, good-tempered and obedient. Soon she began to talk rationally, and answered all questions with sense and judgment.
One day, in, the late fall, the keeper summoned the doctor.
“If Monsieur the Doctor would call and see No. 80, who seems quite recovered?”
Monsieur the Doctor called. But Monsieur the Doctor was, as it happened, an old and skillful practitioner, who for many years had studied every form of insanity under the light of his own interests. Monsieur the Doctor had no intention of speedily ridding the asylum of any patient who materially increased his income.
“H’m:” said the doctor, “wait a while longer! It is best to be Prudent”
“The girl is harmless?”
“Perfectly so!”
“She can be given a little liberty?”
“Assuredly, yes! She is quite harmless!” and the worthy physician smiled and rubbed his hands softly together, and, thinking of the clear, quiet eyes which met his own so steadily, the cool hand which rested obediently in his, the girl’s normal, composed manner, repeated to himself, “Oh, certainly! Quite harmless!”
It was after this that the keeper made himself easy. The examination of cell No. 80 was no longer considered necessary. No. 80 herself grow paler and ate but little. This could scarcely be said to distress the keeper, whose family profited thereby. Winter came, and from her grated window the poor young creature watched the year grow grey.
A few withered leaves fluttered in through the casement and she treasured them – poor dead things! They were redolent of the free life beyond cruel bars. The swallows in the courtyard complained shrilly of hunger, and beneath the eaves they huddled, pluming themselves and giving piteous little cries. She would have liked to have fed them, but the family of the keeper could use even the crumbs, and, harshly, he forbade her to waste good bread.
She was now very thin and her eyes were brilliant with fever – that consuming mental fever which burns in the eyes of all great toilers who fancy they see near them the desired end for which they have striven long and patiently.
Now came the long winter nights, when the white moonlight lay on the floor of the cell. The girl hated the moon. It was a great Eye, she thought.
Calm, impartial, all-seeing, why did it watch and watch, and wait and wait, the night through to see what she would do? And it was so cold – ah! so cold! And she turned her back to the window and crept to her bed, drawing the covers up over her head to shut out the hateful Eye. And at last it went away, and there were long dark hours when its silver face was hidden, and at last she could move stealthily about her cell at night, could go on, silently and swiftly, with the great work she had been planning, without feeling continually spying upon her the cold stare of this mysterious enemy. By this time she had won the entire confidence of the keeper.
She was so patient and docile.
Ah? more patient than this good man guessed, and more cautious, too, and more furtive!
And; at last, it happened on a cold, black night when the heavens were overcast by threatening clouds, and all earth’s creatures sought shelter from the bitter touch of Winter’s hand, a light figure crept between the loosened bars of a cell window and dropped noiselessly to the ground. Swift and straight it took its way across the court, never swerving, never hesitating in spite of the impenetrable darkness; for in the slow elaboration of this mighty idea, all had been calculated – recalculated – with the triple patience which comes of madness, of solitude and of imprisonment.
Veiled in the darkness, No. 80 took her silent way past the square garden-plot.
She moved with the noiselessness and the certainty of a cat. She never stopped, but as she moved rapidly she lifted her face to the free night air as if she loved it and had longed for it. Her face was like a moon beam against the shadows of the night. Its peculiar pallor seemed to radiate a faint, unearthly light. Almost as if she wore conscious of this, she bent her head and quickly covered her face with her long hair.
She passed on in the shadow of the asylum walls and paused before the keeper’s quarters. Here there was a small door. Well she knew it! Long and patiently had she waited to hear from some one through which door she must pass to accomplish her grand purpose.
She stood hero listening for an instant, then thrust into the keyhole something she held tightly in her hand. There was a faint clicking sound – then a sharp squeak, which might have been made by a mouse, and a little rectangle of darkness opened before her.
Silence!
The clouds gathered thickly over the mournful walls of the asylum. A wild night-wind sobbed in the gaunt arms of the leafless trees in the court-yard. A single star trembled for an instant in the black mass of moving clouds and was gone.
Suddenly a woman’s sharp cry smote the night air. It seemed to come from the keeper’s quarters, but one could scarcely tell whence it began, for it was instantly caught up by the startled creatures in the asylum and passed on from one to another with varying and terrible modulations of fear, of anger, of insensate joy! The night was soon hideous with their cries! The panic spread! From every cell came curses, shrieks, groans, wailings and sobbings: the sickening sound of human bodies beating against the invincible bars which held the captive; despairing cries mingled with snatches of obscene song.
Tho sonorous voice of some frenzied orator delivering his theories; the heartbreaking prayers of maniacs begging to be delivered from imaginary tortures, all the horrors of the bestial scene, indescribable as it is awful, enacted in these living hells where men and women live the lives of caged brutes, forsaken by Reason, and, seemingly, by God. The doors opened, and the director of the asylum made his appearance among the keepers. His face was pale.
This was unusually bad, he thought, even for the violent wards. Awakened from a deep sleep by the horrible uproar, he had feared a general riot among the patients. Suddenly a woman appeared at the end of the passage. She was in her night robe. She held a candle in her hand, and two children clung to her skirts.
“Here! Monsieur the Director! Here!
And oh! come quickly!”
The director moved toward her. He recognized tho wife of the keeper, Desambre.
Well?” he questioned briefly.
The woman began a mournful litany, broken by fitful sobbing. Alas! She could hardly tell! She had been sleeping! There had been something – she knew not what! Her husband had bounded up in the bed, had given a heavy groan, had fallen back on his pillow! Then a dark thing had sprung from the bed right by her side, glided across the room down tho stairs, perhaps – who knows? She had been unable to rouse her good man! Would not Monsieur the Director come to him?
Alas! Alas! And again – alas!
Tho director followed the woman to a room in the keeper’s quarters.
On the bed lay the body of the man Desambre.
Tho face was hideous. The eyes squinted horribly. The mouth was open. The teeth had closed upon the tongue.
“Alas! Alas!” wailed the woman.
The director examined the body.
A small brad had been driven through the left temple, obliquely into the skull.
There was no blood. The clumps of grizzled hair nearly concealed the wound. The nail was a slender thing, without a head, but it had been driven home with deadly force. A fine scratch extended to the eyebrow. It looked as if something had been picked from the wound and drawn sharply across the knotty forehead.
“The man is dead – quite dead,” said tho director, gravely.
He left the woman howling over the corpse. and notified the keeper.
“We will make the rounds immediately.”
The procession of lights moving up and down tho corridors was a grand festival for the maniacs. They had grown quieter under the forcible measures employed by the keepers, and now they gave fierce cries of pleasure. Only a few were enraged, and a few were sullen.
Number 80 was asleep.
The director bent over her bed with the lamp in his hand.
The light awakened her. She rubbed her eyes with one little hand. Then she smiled her adorable smile. The beautiful eyes were clear and serene – her face was joyous. She pushed back her glorious hair and raised herself a little from the pillow. Then she held out the other hand. It was tightly closed, as if something of great value. Slowly she extended the fingers that the director might see what she held. The little pink palm was empty. But she saw something there. She was quite satisfied.
“I have it,” she whispered, triumphantly.
The director patted her hand kindly.
You are dreaming!”’
He gave a cursory glance at the grating as he passed. He touched the bars at the window.
“Nothing wrong here,” said this wise and experienced man. “The girl has slept well.”
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short storyThere lived an old retired major in the hills of central Europe. No one knew in which armies he had fought, or which battles that had disfigured his wrinkled face. Some took for granted that he had supported the Nazis during the war. They barely knew his name, and only referred to him with contempt as “the grumpy old major”. His home was a log cabin, overlooking a valley that was often covered in mist. And when the rains and the wind darkened the evenings, the light from his window was a solitary gleam – like the eye of the mountains themselves – peering down on the village below.
The major was thoroughly disliked because of his ferocious temper. He arrived in the afternoons, unshaven, stinking of sweat and alcohol, and then he would be very rude and cold – if he indeed he said something at all.
The only creature on this earth that seemed to be good enough for the old major was his dog. No one knew the age of the creature, or even of the of the major himself. The dog walked with a proud skip in its steps, and he showered it with luxury and food. In the evenings the major would silently ponder the landscape from his vantage point. What his thoughts were, not even the dog could tell.
There was never a visitor to the old cabin, but the major sometimes sobered up and cleared the path. He worked into the afternoons with a pick ax and shuffle. When he was done he would take a seat in a chair outside, and drink whiskey and smoke until he fell asleep where he sat. The evening chill would wake him and then he would withdraw to his bed. Sometimes when the major slept he would kick and scream, as he was struggling for his life. Then the dog would jump down from the bed, and lie down in a corner until he quieted down. When the major woke, he would be sweaty and confused, and then he would drink coffee, and then read a book til dawn penetrated the morning mist.
The landscape around the village was vast and wild, and the major would limp up and down those isolated paths followed by his mute companion. In winter, blizzards would descend upon his outpost with terrifying violence. A lighted fireplace and piles of wood kept him warm. He stored canned food of various kinds, beans, spam, fish, and he salted meats to comfort himself. When the water froze he opened the door and collected snow in a bucket which he melted by the fire for his coffee.
Sometimes, when he was in the mood, he dug deep into a wooden chest and found an old battery powered radio, and he would sit quietly, intensely concentrated, trying to move the antenna back and forth in order to make out those almost imperceptible voices that penetrated into his dominion from the world outside. But sometimes this proved impossible, and therefore he did not receive advance warning of the horrific storm of 1973.
On 21 of October that year the heavens gave birth to the worst winds and heaviest snow fall seen in those parts. The other villagers never talked to the old major because they did not like him, and by the time storm had arrived, and he entered their thoughts, it was too late. They thought that the cabin on the hill has stood there for hundreds of years. Like the major himself it seemed carved out of the hillside. If he just sat quiet where he was, no harm could befall him.
And they were right, and the old major knew it. He did what he normally did during winter storms, lighted his fire. The flames flickered, and when the shutters were secured, they filled the room with comfort, light and heat, while the Day of Judgment brewed outside.
The old major was used to this, it had been his life, in every sense. He got up a bottle of whiskey, and sipped from a glass. His dog, however, was utterly terrified. It crawled under the table, and whined. The old major tried to reassure the creature, calm it with offers of treats, but the howl of the winds, the creaking walls and what seemed like an inexplicable drone from the heavens above frightened it, and it would take no food.
The old major then got down on his knees under the table and sat next to the dog with his glass of whiskey. He looked at the dog, and for a while dog was calm. But then suddenly a tremendous gust blew the door open, filling the room with swirls of snow. The old major rushed to his feet, and struggled against the wind to shut it. When that was done, he noticed that the dog had fled into the night to seek refuge among the trees.
First, he was overwhelmed with grief when the room was quiet. He looked at the empty space where the dog used to lie. Then his eyes were suddenly filled with defiance, an old soldier was returning to battle. He put on his thickest coat, and hat and scarf, grabbed an oil lamp and unlocked the door.
So it was that the old major decided to take on the very spirits of the mountain to fight for his dog. He waded to his ankles in snow for a few hundred meters up the hill. He shouted, but his voice was inaudible. As he became removed from his cabin, he saw its light extinguish in the storm. And not soon after, the old major was overcome with fatigue and sat down under a tree. That is where the men from the village found his frozen body two days later.
They did not have much sympathy for him because he had always been mean and yelled at them. The dog, however, was found alive in the shed outside. Everyone thought that this was the most faithful creature on earth which stayed so loyal to such a terrible person. It was brought down from the mountain, and given to a breeder, who made sure that it produced many litters, whose offspring still run around on the meadows in those parts. They say old majors die, but their dogs live on forever.
by Michael Henrik Wynn
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historyIn 2016, China’s submission to the Academy awards followed a 7th century monk on his journey of exploration to India. The record of Hiuen-Tsiang’s (b. 602– dec. 664) travel has had an enormous impact on Chinese culture, inspiring one of the country’s age-old novels. The manuscript also contains one of the most detailed descriptions of the old Nalanada monastery in India, an intellectual powerhouse that dominated the world for a thousand years, before being reduced to ruins. In this text from 1911, a prominent sinologist comments.
“Centuries before biography became a business, before the peccadilloes of royal mistresses and forgotten courtesans obtained a “market value’ the writing of the Master’s life by some cherished disciple was both an act of love and piety in the far East. The very footprints of the famous dead became luminous, and their shadows shone in dark caves that once withheld them from the world. Memory looking back viewed them through a golden haze; they were merged at last in ancient sunlight; they were shafts of God rayed in the tangled forests of time. In this spirit, then, the man of compassionate feeling, the Shaman Hwui Li took up his tablets and wrote the life of Hiuen-Tsiang.
The Master had already written his immortal Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (published 646 AD), yet the sixteen years of that wonderful quest in far-off India, of cities seen and shrines visited, of strange peoples and stranger customs, cannot be crowded into one brief record. And so we watch the patient disciple waiting on those intervals of leisure when the task of translation from Sanskrit into Chinese is laid aside, when the long routine of a Buddhist day is ended, waiting for the impressions of a wandering soul in the birthplace of its faith. The Life is supplement to the record. What is obscure or half told in the one is made clear in the other.
Hwui-Li begins in the true Chinese manner with a grand pedigree of his hero, tracing his descent from the Emperor Hwang Ti, the mythical Heavenly Emperor. This zeal for following the remotest ancestors over the borders of history into the regions of fable may be largely ascribed to a very human desire to connect the stream of life with its divine source. We are chiefly concerned to know that he came of a family which had already given notable men to the State, and was launched in the troublous whirl of birth and death but a little distance from the town of Kou-Shih, in the province of Honan, in the year 6oo A.D. Here and there biography leaves us a glimpse of his outward appearance as boy and man. We are told that at his opening life he was rosy as the evening vapours and round as the rising moon. As a boy he was “sweet as the odor of cinnamon or the vanilla tree.” A soberer style does justice to his prime, and again he comes before us, “a tall handsome man with beautiful eyes and a good complexion. He had a serious but benevolent expression and a sedate, rather stately manner.”
The call of the West came early to Hiuen-Tsiang. From a child he had easily outstripped his fellows in the pursuit of knowledge, and with the passing of the years he stepped beyond the narrow limits of Chinese Buddhism and found the deserts of Turkestan between him and the land of his dreams. Imperfect translations from the Sanskrit, the limited intelligence of the Chinese priesthood, the sense of vast truths dimly perceived obscurely set forth, the leaven of his first Confucian training—all contributed to the making of a Buddhist pilgrim.
The period of his departure, 629 A.D., was an eventful one for China. Taizong (b.598- d.649), the most powerful figure of the brilliant Tang dynasty, sat on the throne of his father Kaotsu, the founder of the line. The nomad Tartars, so long the terror of former dynasties, succumbed to his military genius, and Kashgaria was made a province of the Empire. Already the kingdom of Tibet was tottering to its fall, and Corea was to know the devastation of war within her boundaries. Ch’ang-an was now the capital, a city of floating pavilions and secluded gardens, destined to become the center of a literary movement that would leave its mark for all time. But the days were not yet when the terraces of Teng-hiang-ting would see the butterflies alight on the flower-crowned locks of Yang-kuei-fei, or the green vistas re-echo to the voices of poet and emperor joined in praise of her. Only two wandering monks emerge furtively through the outer gates of the city’s triple walls, and one of them looks back for a glimpse of Ch’ang-an, the last for sixteen eventful years of exile.
Others had crossed the frontier before him, notably Fa-hian and Sung Yun in the fourth and the fifth centuries AD, others in due course would come and go, leaving to posterity their impressions of a changing world, but this man stands alone, a prince of pilgrims, a very Bayard of Buddhist enthusiasm, fearless and without reproach.
As we read on through the pages of Hwui-li the fascination of the Master of the Law becomes clear to us, not suddenly, but with the long, arduous miles that mark the way to India and the journey home. Take the Master’s tattered robes, let the winds of Gobi whistle through your sleeve and cut you to the bone, mount his rusty red nag and set your face to the West. In the night you will see ‘ “fire-lights as many as stars” raised by the demons and goblins; travelling at dawn you will behold ‘ “soldiers clad in fur and felt and the appearance of camels and horsemen and the glittering of standards and lances; fresh forms and figures changing into a thousand shapes, sometimes at an immense distance, then close at hand, then vanished into the void.” The time comes when even the old red steed avails not, the Great Ice Mountains loom in front of you, and you crawl like an ant and cling like a fly to the roof of the world. Then on the topmost summit, still far away from the promised land, you realize two things—the littleness of human life, the greatness of one indomitable soul.
But the superman is also very human. With the vast bulk of his encyclopedic knowledge he falls on the pretentious monk Mokshagupta in the Kingdom of Agni, he flattens him and treads a stately if heavy measure on his prostrate body. And withal clear-sighted and intolerant of shams, he is still a child of his age and religion. With childish curiosity he tempts a bone to foretell the future, and with childish delight obtains the answer he most desires. In the town of Hiddha is Buddha’s skull bone, one foot long, two inches round. “If anyone wishes to know the indications of his guilt or his religious merit he mixes some powdered incense into a paste, which he spreads upon a piece of silken stuff, and tlien presses it on the top of the bone according to the resulting indications the good fortune or ill fortune of the man is determined”
Hiuen obtains the impression of a Bodhi and is overjoyed, for, as the guardian Brahman of the bone explains, “it is a sure sign of your having a portion of true wisdom (Bodhi).” At another time he plays a kind of religious quoits by flinging garlands of flowers on the sacred image of Buddha, which, being caught on its hands and arms, show that his desires will be fulfilled. In simple faith he tells Hwui-li how Buddha once cleaned his teeth and flung the fragments of the wood with which he performed the act on the ground ; how they took root forthwith, and how a tree seventy feet high was the consequence. And Hiuen saw that tree, therefore the story must be true.
But it is not with the pardonable superstitions of a human soul of long ago that we need concern ourselves. The immense latent reserve, the calm strength to persist, is the appeal. It comes to us with no note of triumph for the thing accomplished or the obstacle removed, but rather underlies some simple statement of fact and is summed up in these few trite words: “We advanced guided by observing the bones left on the way.” The little incidents of life and death are as nothing to one who looks on all men as ghosts haunted by reality. And so the Master of the Law resigns himself to the prospect of a violent end at the hands of the river pirates of the Ganges, to the miraculous interposition of a timely storm, with the same serenity with which he meets the long procession streaming out of Nalanda in his honor, with its two hundred priests and some thousand lay patrons who surround him to his entry, recounting his praises, and carrying standards, umbrellas, flowers, and perfumes.
“The tradition of the old people is this:
To the south of the convent, in the middle of an Amra garden, is a pool. In this pool is a Naga called Nalanda, and the convent built by the side of the pool is therefore called after his name. Again there is a saying that Tathagata whilst a Bodhisattva was the king of a great country and built his capital in this place. He was deeply affected towards the orphans and destitute, and, ever moved by this principle, gave away all he had for their good. In memory of this goodness they named the place ”doing charitable acts without intermission,” The place was originally the garden of the lord Amra. Five hundred merchants bought it for ten lacs of gold pieces, and presented it to Buddha. Here Buddha preached the law for three months, and most of the merchants obtained the fruit of Arhatship, in consequence.
After the Nirvana of Buddha an old king of this country called Sakraditya, from a principle of loving obedience to Buddha, built this convent. After his decease his son seized the throne, and continued the vast undertaking; he built, towards the south, another temple. Then his son built a temple to the eastward. Next, his son built a temple to the north-east. Afterwards the king, seeing some priests who came from the country of China to receive his religious offerings, was filled with gladness, and he gave up his royal estate and became a recluse. His son succeeded and built another temple to the north. After him a king of Mid-India built by the side of this another temple.
Thus six kings in connected succession added to these structures. Moreover, the whole establishment is surrounded by a brick wall, which encloses the entire convent from without. One gate opens into the great college, from which are separated eight other halls, standing in the middle. The richly adorned towers, and the fairy -like turrets, like pointed hill- tops, are congregated together. The observatories seem to be lost in the vapours of the morning, and the upper rooms tower above the clouds. From the windows one may see how the winds and the clouds produce new forms, and above the soaring eaves the conjunctions of the sun and moon may be observed.”
There are moments of sheer delight when scenes of physical beauty are fair enough to draw even a Buddhist monk from his philosophic calm, when even Hiuen-Tsiang must have become lyrical in the presence of his recording disciple. Who would not be the guest of the abbot of Nalanda monastery with its six wings, each built by a king, all enclosed in the privacy of solid brick?
“And then we may add how the deep, translucent ponds, bear on their surface the blue lotus, intermingled with the Kie-ni flower, of deep red color, and at intervals the Amra groves spread over all, their shade. All the outside courts, in which are the priests’ chambers, are of four stages. The stages have dragonprojections and colored eaves, the pearl-red pillars, carved and ornamented, the richly adorned balustrades, and the roofs covered with tiles that reflect the light in a thousand shades, these things add to the beauty of the scene.”
Here ten thousand priests sought refuge from the world of passing phenomena and the lure of the senses. Wherever our pilgrim goes he finds traces of a worship far older than Buddhism. He does not tell us so in so many words, yet underneath the many allusions to Bodhitrees and Nagas we may discover the traces of that primitive tree and serpent worship that still exists in remote corners of India, as, for instance, among the Naga tribes of Manipur who worship the python they have killed.
In Hiuen’s time every lake and fountain had its Naga-raja or serpent-king, Buddha himself, as we learn from both the Si-yu-hi and the Life, spent much time converting or subduing these ancient gods. There were Nagas both good and evil. When Buddha first sought enlightenment he sat for seven days in a state of contemplation by the waters of a little woodland lake. Then this good Naga “kept guard over Tathagata ; with his folds seven times round the body of the Buddha, he caused many heads to appear, which overshadowed him as a parasol ; therefore to the east of this lake is the dwelling of the Naga.”….
The Buddha sat for seven days contemplating this tree ; “he did not remove his gaze from it during this period, desiring thereby to indicate his grateful feelings towards the tree by so looking at it with fixed eyes.” Hiuen Tsiang himself and his companions contributed to the universal adoration of the tree, for, as that impeccable Buddhist the Shaman Hwui-li rather baldly states, “they paid worship to the Bodhi-tree.” How did Buddhism come to be connected in any way with tree and serpent worship? The answer is, through its connection with Bralimanism. As Buddhism was Brahmanism reformed, so Brahmanism in its turn was the progressive stage of tree and serpent worship. Siva the destroyer is also Nag Bhushan, “he who wears snakes as his ornaments.”…
But Hiuen-Tsiang was born into a world that beheld the tree of Buddhism slowly dying from the top. He bore witness, if unconsciously, to a time of transition and a noble faith in decay, and the swift, silent growth of jungle mythology around the crumbling temples of Buddha. His record of these sixteen years of travel is a priceless one, for through it we are able to reconstruct the world and ways of Buddhist India of the centuries that have passed. Yet far more priceless still is that record, read between the lines, of a human soul dauntless in disaster, unmoved in the hour of triumph, counting the perils of the bone-strewn plain and the unconquered hills as nothing to the ideal that lay before him, the life-work, the call of the Holy Himalayas and the long toil of his closing years. It is difficult to over-estimate his services to Buddhist literature.
He returned to his own country with no less than 657 volumes of the sacred books, seventy-four of which he translated into Chinese, while 150 relics of the Buddha, borne by twenty horses, formed the spoil reverently gathered from the many lands we call India. And so we leave him to his rest upon Mount Sumeru, where once his venturous soul alighted in the dreams of youth, with the serpents coiled beneath its base, with its seven circling hills of gold and the seven seas between, and the great salt ocean encompassing them all.
May 6th, 1911″
by sinologist Launcelot Alfred Cranmer-Byng (1872-1945).
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short storyBy Aleister Crowley
atricia Fleming threw the reins to a groom, and ran up the steps into the great house, her thin lips white with rage. Lord Eyre followed her heavily. ‘I’ll be down in half an hour,’ she laughed merrily, ‘tell Dawson to bring you a drink!’ Then she went straight through the house, her girlish eyes the incarnation of a curse.
For the third time she had failed to bring Geoffrey Eyre to her feet. She looked into her hat; there in the lining was the talisman that she had tested—and it had tricked her. What do I need? she thought. Must it be blood?
She was a maiden of the pure English strain; brave, gay, honest, shrewd—and there was not one that guessed the inmost fire that burnt her. For she was but a child when the Visitor came.
The first of the Visits was in a dream. She woke choking; the air—clear, sweet, and wholesome as it blew through the open window from the Chilterns—was fouled with a musty stench. And she woke her governess with a tale of a tiger.
The second Visit was again at night. She had been hunting, was alone at the death, had beaten off the hounds. That night she heard a fox bark in her room. She spent a sleepless night of terror; in the morning she found the red hairs of a fox upon her pillow.
The third Visit was nor in sleep nor waking. But she tightened her lips, and would have veiled the hateful gleam in her eyes. It was that day, though, that she struck a servant with her riding-whip.
She was so sane that she knew exactly wherein her madness lay; and she set all her strength not to conquer but to conceal it.
Two years later, and Patricia Fleming, the orphan heiress of Carthwell Abbey, was the county toast, Diana of the Chilterns. Yet Geoffrey Eyre evaded her. His dog’s fidelity and honesty kept him true to the little north-country girl that three months earlier had seduced his simplicity. He did not even love her; but she had made him think so for an hour; and his pledged word held him.
Patricia’s open favour only made him hate her because of its very seduction. It was really his own weakness that he hated.
Patricia ran, tense and angry, through the house. The servants noticed it. The mistress has been crossed, they thought, she will go to the chapel and get ease. Praising her.True, to the chapel she went; locked the door, dived behind the altar, struck a secret panel, came suddenly into a priest’s hiding-hole, a room large enough to hold a score of men if need be. At the end of the room was a great scarlet cross, and on it, her face to the wood, her wrists and ankles swollen over the whip lashes that bound her, hung a naked girl, big-boned, voluptuous. Red hair streamed over her back.
‘What, Margaret! so blue?’ laughed Patricia.
‘I am cold,’ said the girl upon the cross, in an indifferent voice.
‘Nonsense, dear!’ answered Patricia, rapidly divesting herself of her riding-habit. ‘There is nohint of frost; we had a splendid run, and a grand kill. You shall be warm yet, for all that.’
This time the girl writhed and moaned a little. Patricia took from an old wardrobe a close-fitting suit of fox fur, and slipped it on her slim white body.
‘Did I make you wait, dear?’ she said, with a curious leer. ‘I am the keener for the sport, be sure!’
She took the faithless talisman from her hat. It was a little square of vellum, written upon in black. She took a hairpin from her head, pierced the talisman, and drove the pin into the girl’s thigh.
‘They must have blood,’ said she. ‘Now see how I will turn the blue to red! Come! don’t wince: you haven’t had it for a month.’
Then her ivory arm slid like a serpent from the furs, and with the cutting whip she struck young Margaret between the shoulders. A shriek rang out: its only echo was Patricia’s laugh, childlike, icy, devilish.
She struck again and again. Great weals of purple stood on the girl’s back; froth tinged with blood came from her mouth, for she had bitten her lips and tongue in agony.
Patricia grew warm and rosy—exquisitely beautiful. Her bare breasts heaved; her lips parted; her whole body and soul seemed lapped in ecstasy.
‘I wish you were Geoffrey, girlie!’ she panted.
Then the skin burst. Raw flesh oozed blood that dribbled down Margaret’s back.
Still the fair maid struck and struck in the silence, until the tiny rivulets met and waxed great and touched the talisman. She threw the bloody whalebone into a corner, and went upon her knees. She kissed her friend; she kissed the talisman; and again kissed the girl, the warm blood staining her pure lips.
She took the talisman, and hid it in her bosom. Last of all she loosened the cords, and Margaret sank in a heap to the floor. Patricia threw furs over her and rolled her up in them; brought wine, and poured it down her throat. She smiled, kindly, like a sister.
‘Sleep now awhile, sweetheart!’ she whispered, and kissed her forehead.
It was a very demure and self-possessed little maiden that made dinner lively for poor Geoffrey, who was thinking over his mistake.
Patricia’s old aunt, who kept house for her, smiled on the flirtation. It was not by accident that she left them alone sitting over the great fire. ‘Poor Margaret has her rheumatism again,’ she explained innocently; ‘I must go and see how she is.’ Loyal Margaret!
So it happened that Geoffrey lost his head. ‘The ivy is strong enough’ (she had whispered, ere their first kiss had hardly died). ‘Before the moon is up, be sure!’ and glided off just as the aunt returned.
Eyre excused himself; half a mile from the house he left his horse to his man to Lead home, and ten minutes later was groping for Patricia in the dark.
White as a lily in body and soul, she took him in her arms.
Awaking as from death, he suddenly cried out, ‘Oh God! What is it? Oh my God! my God! Patricia! Your body! Your body!’
‘Yours!’ she cooed.
‘Why, you’re all hairy!’ he cried. ‘And the scent! the scent!’
From without came sharp and resonant the yap of a hound as the moon rose.
Patricia put her hands to her body. He was telling the truth. ‘The Visitor!’ she screamed once with fright, and was silent. He switched the light on, and she screamed again. There was a savage lust upon his face.
‘This afternoon,’ he cried, ‘you called me a dog. I looked like a dog and thought like a dog; and, by God! I am a dog. I’ll act like a dog then!’ Obedient to some strange instinct, she dived from the bed for the window. But he was on her; his teeth met in her throat.
In the morning they found the dead bodies of both hound and fox—but how did that explain the wonderful elopement of Lord Eyre and Miss Fleming? For neither of them was ever seen again.
I think Margaret understands; in the convent which she rules today there hangs beside a blood-stained cutting-whip the silver model of a fox, with the inscription:
‘Patricia Margaritæ vulpis vulpem dedit.’
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short storyAt an undisclosed time in British history, there lived a 14 year old boy with undiagnosed, but mild autism who was fond of school debates. His mind was such that he could challenge most normal people simply by overwhelming them with masses of facts from his prodigious memory. As he grew older, he realised that he could use this in a court of law, and make good money as a barrister. Passing a degree in pedantic quotation and logics posed no problems for a high riser of his particular talents. He got top marks, and was immediately hired by a large London law firm to argue a very important case before a senior and very respected judge.
When the new barrister entered the court, however, he immediately turned many heads because of the elevated sound volume with which the fresh legal representative presented his arguments, this being the method he had applied to win school debates. The old judge – first frowning, then staring in disbelief – observed the performance in silence, and then – out of sheer curiosity – got the solicitor into a short discussion. I say short, for five minutes later the fresh barrister was arrested in contempt of court on the grounds that “shouting and screaming like a madman does not improve a flawed line of reasoning”.
The barrister remained in his cold cell a few days, until the judge took pity on him, and paid a him a visit. He sat down next to the man, and assumed the role of a well-meaning grandfather. “I am going to order your release tomorrow”, he said. “But in my 40 years as a judge, I have never seen something similar in my court as what you perpetrated a few days ago.”
“I understand”
“There is a condition to my release, so do not rejoice until you hear it: I want you to promise me that you will NEVER work as a barrister, but in stead find a profession more suited to this kind of rudeness, these constant interruptions with tedious facts and details. This inability to allow a full line of reasoning to reach a natural conclusion. This sort of circus will halt all progress in my cases, and assure that nothing gets done, you see. Will you promise me this?”
The young barrister sighed. He was not a bad person, in fact he was kind. He just did not understand. Nor was he a person who would knowingly disrespect authority.“I will heed your advice, Your Honour.”
The door slammed shut behind the judge as he left, and the very next morning the barrister was released. He quit the law firm, and for while drifted aimlessly through various business ventures. Even with moderate success in these, he felt that he had been robbed of a setting in which his natural talents for debating would blossom. However, this story has a very happy ending, for the historical records indicate that he – 20 years after the said events – became the most admired Speaker in the history of the British House of Commons.
by Michael Henrik Wynn
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short story“Tribal Mark” by Iroakazi Ifeanyi
here I come from, scars are just enough to tell if you are good enough, especially when they appear on your face. They are not just the regular scars from mosquito bites or accidental injuries. They are deliberate scars that you carry from cradle to grave. So they come first before anything else. Your tongue is next before whatever hidden treasure you may think hiding beneath your skull, in your heart, or wherever- it can suit itself for any occasion!
Sometimes the scars appear on your cheeks, close to your nose; at the corners of your eyes, close to the brow tails; between the brows on your forehead, and other time they appear like a cat’s whiskers, growing from the corners of your mouth up until they ended just below your ears. You could get any of these and they set you apart to either make or mar you, but it all depends on the scars of those you meet.
I remember the day I took Amina to see my parents years ago. Amina suggested that because she had just said YES to me a week ago, and I was so happy and eager to show this narrow-faced, slim, and tall beauty to my parents that I decided it would be the following weekend. She was a perfect woman for me-maybe I never stared into her face long enough-she always teased me about being too shy to gaze at her without blushing. You’re too shy for my liking, she would say, laughing and tickling my nipples. I so much love to be tickled because it makes me laugh like a fool even at thirty-five. I would laugh until my head muscles begin to ache.
My parents were much happier when I called them. My only son is finally getting married, I heard my mother say in the background as she handed the phone to my father. Congratulations son, my Dad said. He has never used plenty words- he only give orders. My father was an ex Biafran soldier; one of those gallant soldiers who taught the Nigerian troops an unforgettable lesson at Abagana. He would often recount how he was nearly blown up while igniting the local made explosive, Ogbunigwe. One morning he had fallen off his wheelchair and after helping him up, he began to sing a particular Biafran war song that he always reminiscence his soldiering days with and as he sang, he looked up to the sky, saluting half of a yellow sun that was just breaking in the East. He began to grow gradually hysteric and soon he fell off again. It had always been funny but this time, he was seriously shedding tears and cursing Nigeria, Britian, Russia, and Egypt for confining him on a wheelchair for almost five decades. He was a boy when he lost his feet in the war and he has nursed the pain, and his hatred for the enemies to this day.
When I told Abike, my ex fiance, about my father, she said hers was like him, and for sure it did end things between us few months later. Amina had something similar to tell about his uncle. Thank God it wasn’t her father.
My mother was so happy that I was coming home with a woman that she prepared a mountain of Fufu and a full pot of my favorite soup as though a community of people were visiting. When we arrived at a park close to my mother’s wretched bread store, I noticed her running towards us with her whole snow-white teeth bare; her face bright and lovely; her cooing voice endearing and warm, but as she drew closer, her lips began to gradually hide the teeth and soon the smile was gone; her mouth twisted, her face furrowed.
Her ‘ welcome son’ , her ‘ nwunye m’ all lacked life, though I made it looked as elaborate as it could have been if I had come with a girl with a round face, broader nose, and who doesn’t pronounce ‘Papa’ as ‘ Fafa’ when greeting my father. Amina was beginning to notice the death of the distant excitement but she just kept her calm. She was before me, rushing to embrace her soon-to-be Mother-in-law whom she had prepared so much to meet. Ndewo Mama, she greeted in my dialect, swatting. I taught her that greeting for only one night and she learnt it perfectly.
My mother opened her arms, Amina hurried, I was flustered; smiling stupidly because I knew my mother was already praying in her heart for her God to intervene. Not again, she must have said countless times. When Amina buried herself in her embrace and she began to run her trembling fingers about her facial scars, it became obvious from the disappointment in her eyes as she stared still at me over Amina’s shoulder that my beauty wasn’t good enough for me. Although she pretended everything was alright afterwards, I did too, but Amina understood it was over. Her kinsmen maimed mine and crippled my father and we must punish her for that. She bore the scars of an alien, the mark of the enemies, so we had no place to exist together. That was my father’s verdict and it can’t be appealed.
by Iroakazi Ifeanyi, 2019.
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short story
“Karen’s Christmas” by Amalie Skram
Translated by Michael Henrik Wynn
At one of the steamship ports in Kristiania there was some years ago a gray wooden structure with a flat roof, no chimney, just over two and a half yards long and slightly shorter in width. At both end walls there was a small window, one slightly higher than the other. The door opened onto the waterfront and could be shut both from the inside and the outside with iron hooks that connected to eyes of the same metal.
The hut was originally erected for the ferrymen in order to provide shelter from rainy days and winter chills when they sat waiting for travelers to demand passage. Later, when the small steamships assumed more and more of the traffic, the ferrymen moved elsewhere. Now, the building temporarily became a residence for whomever had a use for it. The latest occupants were some masons who, two at the time, used to eat their meals there when they one summer repaired a nearby quay.
Eventually, nobody took any notice of the little old shack. It remained where it stood because the port authorities never conceived of the idea of removing it, and because nobody complained that it was in the way of anyone or anything.
Then, one winter night in December just before Christmas. There wasn’t much snow because it melted as it fell, and that made the mud on the cobblestones of the quay even thicker and more sticky. The snow lay like a fine-meshed gray cover on the gaslights and the steam powered cranes, and if you reached the ships, you could see that it hung like a festoon from the masts and the riggings. The dirty yellow glare of gaslights burnt in the dark-gray humid air, while the lanterns glowed murky and red. Now and again a sharp chime cut through the damp atmosphere, when the watch on board struck eight bells.
The constable who patrolled the quay stopped by the gaslights just outside the former refuge of the ferrymen. He pulled out his watch to check how late it was, but as he held up to the light, he heard something resembling the cries of a baby. His lowered his hand, looked about and listened. No, it couldn’t be? Then he looked at his watch again. Yet again there was the sound, this time mingled with a calming hush. He lowered his hand again, and again there was quiet. What kind of devil’s trickery was this? He looked around, but found nothing. A third time the watch was raised to the glare of the gaslight and this time he could, in the silent night, see that it was soon 4 o’clock.
He drifted along the quay, passed the old shack, wondered a little, but then dismissed it all as pure fancy….Or how could it be?
A little while later when he returned the same way, he approached the hut. What was that? Didn’t he detect movement inside? Light from gas-lamps flowed in through both the windows in the end walls, and made it seem as if the interior was illuminated.
He walked over and looked in. Quite right. There was a shape on the bench right under the window, a tiny huddled up creature, who leaned forward fiddling with something, he could not see what. He stepped around the corner, stopped at the door and tried to enter. It was locked.
“Open up!” – he shouted and and knocked with his knuckels.
He heard someone startled. There was a faint exclamation, then all turned quiet.
He knocked again with his fist and repeated:
“You in there, open up! Open up this instance.”
“What do you want? Dear God, there is no one here,” – said the terrified voice on the other side of the door.
“Open up. It is the police!”
“My goodness, the police–oh my dear, it is just little old me. I am not doing any harm, I am just sittin’ here, you see”.
“Can’t you get a move on and open this door, or I will most certainly give it to you straight. Will you…”
He got no further, for at that very moment the door opened, and in the next instance he hunched through the doorway into the tiny room, where there was barely enough space to stand upright.
“Are you mad? Not allowing the police entrance! What were you thinking?”
“I am so sorry Mr. Policeman, — I did open the door, you see.”
“And that was the best thing you could have done,” he growled.
“Who are you anyway, and who has given you permission to take up lodging here?”
“It is just me, Karen,” –she whispered. “I’m sittin’ here with my babe”
The policeman eyed her over closely. She was a slim little thing with a pale and narrow face. There was a deep scrofula scar, a straight line, on one cheek. She was barely an adult. She wore a light brown garment, some kind of sweater or jacket, with a cut that betrayed its age, and a darker skirt, which hung like rags down to her ankles. On her feet there were a pair of worn-out soldier’s boots, laces missing. In her one arm she held a bundle of cloth, which lay across her waist. Something white protruded from the top end of the bundle. It was a baby’s head, which suckled her meager breast. The woman had tied a ragged scarf around her head which was fastened under her chin. From her neck locks of hair stuck out. Her entire body shivered from cold, and when she moved, there came squishy and squeaking sounds from her boots, as if she was stepping in mud.
“I didn’t think I would be a bother to anyone” she stated in her shrill voice – “the hut is here anyway, isn’t it?”
The policeman suddenly felt uneasy. At first he had had intended to drive her out into the streets with harsh words – let her off with a warning. But then he saw the miserable wretch before him with a tiny child in her arms pushing up against the bench, so fearful and humble that she was afraid to sit down. He could not help but be moved.
“But dear God, my child, what are you doing here?”
She perceived the sympathy of his voice, her fears settled and she began to cry.
The constable reached for the door and swung it shut.
“Sit down for a moment” – he said – “the child is so heavy”
She slid down unto the bench.
“Now, then”- the constable said encouragingly and sat down on the bench opposite her.
“Oh dear, Mr Constable – let me stay here” she lisped through her tears. “I won’t do no mischief – not the slightest – keep clean, I will. You can see for yourself, I am hygienic. What you see over there are breadcrusts “. She pointed to bundle on the floor. “I go begging every day – there’s some water in the bottle. Let me stay the nights here, till I get back my job back – if only the Madame will come for me”. She blew her nose in her fingers and wiped them on her skirt.
“And this Madame, whoever might that be?” asked the constable.
“I was in her service, see. I had ever such a nice position with board, 4 shillings a month and breakfast. But then I got knocked up, you see, and then I had to go, of course, Madame Olsen herself went to the Charity and got me in. She is ever so kind. I was in her service right until I went there. You see, Madame Olsen is on her own, and she said she would keep me as long as I managed. But then Madame Olsen had to travel, see, she is a midwife. And then she got ill and bed-ridden out there in the countryside. And now they say she won’t be comin’ home till Christmas.”
“But dear God, are you planning to roam the streets with this baby while you are you are waiting for this Madame! What good can come of this?” The constable shook his head.
“I have nowhere to go” she whimpered. “Since my father died there is no one to help me when my stepmother throws me into the streets.”
“What about the father of your child?”
“Oh him,” she said and made a slight toss with her neck. “I don’t think he will be of much help either.”
“But surely you know that you can get him sentenced to pay child support?”
“Yes, they say so,” she replied. “But how are we going to go about it, when he doesn’t exist?”
“You just give me his name,” the constable interjected, “then he will be produced, you will see.”
“Yes, if I only knew,” she said casually.
“What are you saying? You don’t know the name of the father of your own child?”
Karen stuck a finger in her mouth and begun to suck on it. Her head tilted forward. She smiled in a helpless, silly way. “N-O” she whispered with a long emphasis on each letter and without removing her finger from her mouth.
“Never in my life have I heard such a thing,” the constable began, “How on earth did you hook up with this man?”
“I met him in the streets at night, when it was dark,” she replied without a hint of bashfulness, “but it didn’t go long before he was gone, and I haven’t seen him since”
“Have you not made inquiries?”
“Of course I have, but nobody knows where he has gone. He has probably gone into the country, because he either worked with horses or carriages, I could tell from his smell.”
“My God, what a mess you are in,” the constable muttered. “you must report to the authorities,” he said more loudly, –“then they can work things out for you.”
“No, I won’t do that,” she answered with sudden defiance”
“Surely it must be better to go to the workhouse and receive food and shelter than what you are doing now?” the constable said.
“Yes, but when Madame Olsen arrives — she is so kind, Madame Olsen — she will make me a temporary maid. I know this for a fact, because she promised me she would. Then I know a woman who will give us board for 3 shillings a month. She will look after the wee one while I am with Madame Olsen. And then I will help her out when I return from the Madame. It will all work out fine, when Madame Olsen comes. She will be here for Christmas, they say.”
“Very well, my dear, every adult know their own business. But you have no right to stay in this here hut.”
“What does it matter if I sit here at nights – does it harm anyone? Dear God, let me stay, the wee one won’t cry. Only till the Madame arrives. Dear Mr. Constable, only till the Madame arrives.”
“But you will freeze yourself blue, you and the child.” He looked at her poor clothes.
“Surely, this will be better than walking the streets? Oh, dear Mr. Constable- only til the Madame arrives.”
“Really, you should have accompanied me to the station, you see,” the constable said and thoughtfully scratched his ear.
She startled and moved towards him. “No, don’t do it,” she whimpered as her frozen fingers caught hold of his sleeve. “I beg you- in the name of our beautiful Lord – only till the Madame arrives.”
The constable reconsidered. There were only three days till Christmas, he counted.
“Very well,” he said as he got up. “You can stay till Christmas, but not a day longer. And mind you, no one must know that you are here.”
“God bless you, God bless you, and thank you,” she exclaimed.
But remember to be gone by 6 o’clock in the morning, before the rush of traffic begins out here,” he added when he was half-way out the door.
The next night, when he passed the hut, he stopped and looked in. She sat leaning against the window, the profile of her scarfed head dimly visible against the glass. The child was at her breast suckling. She did not move and seemed to be asleep.
Next morning, it was freezing. During the next day the thermometer dropped to 12 degrees below. It was bitterly cold, calm and cloudless. Rime formed on the windows of the tiny ferryman’s hut, the glass was no longer transparent.
The weather changed again Christmas Eve. There was a thaw, and every surface seemed to drip. You almost needed an umbrella, even if there was no rain. The storehouse windows were frost-free, and the roads more slippery than ever.
The constable arrived in the afternoon around two. His doctor had given him leave of absence from work the last few nights because of a feverish cold. Now he was coming down to talk with a man on one of the steamships.
It so happened that he passed the hut on his way there. Even in the fading daylight he saw, at several paces, something which caused him to stop. It filled his mind with worry. There she was seated in precisely the same position as she was two nights ago. The same profile was visible against the glass. He really didn’t give it much thought, just felt a sudden horror at seeing the petrified figure. A sudden chill went down his spine. Perhaps something had happened?
He hurried to the door, it was closed. He broke the glass in a window, got hold of an iron bar which he stuck through the opening and unhinged the hook. Then he slowly and carefully entered.
They were both stone dead. The child lay on top of her mother and was still suckling, even in death. A few drops of blood had trickled from the nipple down the child’s cheeks and coagulated on her chin. The mother was terribly emaciated, but her faced seemed fixed in a tranquil smile.
“Poor girl, what a Christmas she got,” the constable muttered rubbing his eye.
“But perhaps it was for the best for them both. I suppose our Lord has a purpose with everything.”
He left the hut, shut the door behind him and fastened the hook. Then he hurried to the station to report the incident.
The first day of work after Christmas weekend, the port authorities demolished the hut and removed it. They couldn’t have it there attracting all kinds of vagrants.
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historyThe ruins of Angkor were long hidden by the Cambodian jungle. Early explorers such as the French artist Louis Delaporte (1842-1925) sketched the glory of what they found. Little did they know that the past was even more magnificent than they imagined. Just over a hundred years later, new laser technology, or lidar, is able to strip away the overgrowth of centuries, and bring to light a clearer outline of that lost civilization. Now we can finally begin to understand what Angkor was and why the empire faded. Much still remains a mystery, but we were able to get some preliminary answers from dr. Damian Evans of the French Institute of Asian Studies (EFEO).
Historyradio.org: In what way does your new Lidar findings expand or confirm the view of Angkor presented by Zhou Daguan in his 12’ century travel narrative?
Damian Evans: There has always been a degree of uncertainty about the urban context of the temples, because it was made of perishable materials which have rotted away. However Zhou Daguan mentioned a system of residence in which multiple households were arrayed around communal ponds. Using the lidar we have identified patterns in the ground surface that we can identify as remnant traces of ponds, and earthen occupation mounds on top of which people built their houses. We’ve mapped a vast network of these features, several thousand of them, which essentially confirms the account of Zhou Daguan as it relates to residential patterning.
Historyradio.org: Marco Polo speaks of a great empire in Asia (not China), is there any chance he might have mentioned Angkor?
Damian Evans: There’s no evidence for that unfortunately. The Khmer Empire was one of many large political entities which flourished in the region at that time, so it’s not necessarily the case.
Historyradio.org: What was the population of an average city in the Angkor Empire and what was the total population?
Damian Evans: For population estimates we need to know two things: the spatial layout of the settlements, and the density of the neighborhoods. We have only just recently come to terms with the layout of the cities using lidar and other mapping techniques, and figuring out the density of inhabitants per hectare is the domain of household archaeology, which has really only just begun at Angkor. So we haven’t yet had the opportunity to sit down and make precise calculations, and we are still missing some crucial information. We can say though that figures in the one million rage for a population of Angkor are probably way too high, and I would say that there are several hundred thousand people at the capital, and some tens of thousands of people at each of the major regional centres.
Historyradio.org: What was the most surprising thing that you discovered?
Damian Evans: There are still quite a few features that we discovered that we don’t understand. There are large grids of mounds covering several hectares, and strange geometric shapes carved into the surface of the landscape. They don’t seem to have had any agricultural or residential function, and when we excavate them there is nothing inside, so they are not burial sites. They may have some larger symbolic meaning as geoglyphs or something, we don’t know. Work on that is ongoing, as they have turned up everywhere and were obviously an important component of the built environment, and perhaps also of a kind of sacred geography whose meaning is obscure to us.
Historyradio.org: Has this form of archaeology uncovered anything new about the lives of ordinary people in Angkor?
Damian Evans: Not directly, no, aside from confirming the residential patterning. One of the great values of lidar though is that it provides a very detailed and comprehensive picture of the built environment that allows field archaeologists to target excavations very precisely on areas that we know will deliver the most useful information. That work will now begin to deliver a wealth if information about the everyday life of the people. The insights from lidar are more orientated towards large-scale factors such as water management, landscape change, the structure of the urban environment, that kind of thing. One thing we can say is that people were living in a very densely inhabited space in the downtown area of Angkor, and with a lack of sanitation disease must have been an extremely serious issue.
Historyradio.org: Why are there so few traces of this empire in the historical sources?
Damian Evans: There is a local tradition of carving inscriptions in stone, and there is a corpus of around 1300 of those inscriptions. It is a rich historical record that informs most of what we know about the Khmer. In terms of accounts from outsiders, early sources are very few and far between so there are huge gaps in our knowledge. Later historical sources in the medieval period are very trade-centric, and are dominated by European accounts. Societies heavily engaged in commerce and/or located in coastal areas to take advantage of maritime trade are heavily privileged in these accounts. Angkor was engaged in trade to a certain extent, but it was most of all an inland agrarian empire and not of great interest to traders and trade emissaries, with the exception of Zhou Daguan.
Historyradio.org: Why and when did Angkor disappear?
Damian Evans: It’s a complex question, there are many theories to do with war, overextension of the empire and so on, but none of the theories really stand alone as sufficient explanations. Increasingly we are seeing that their water management system evolved over centuries in a way that was problematic and ultimately unsustainable; because it was crucial for the success and maintenance of Angkor as the capital region, when the water management system ultimately failed – perhaps in the face of extreme climatic events – the royal court decided to relocate towards the coast and re-orient the economy towards commerce.
Historyradio.org: If Angkor had such extensive building complexes, canals and waterways, isn’t it natural to assume that they were advanced in the fields of science, mathematics and engineering? Do we know the names of any prominent scientists from the Angkor period?
Damian Evans: Not really, no, although there are mentions of some specific professions like architects who seemed to be quite prominent within the royal court. The inscriptions in stone that are our main historical sources are not really informative on such kinds of issues, as they are mostly poetic dedications to the gods which glorify the rulers and list donations to the temples. So we know very little of the mechanics of how things were built and why, and by who. Looking at the extremely precise way that the temples were built however there would have been a cohort of professionals who were very skilled in these fields, and who had the benefit of thousands of years of technical knowledge inherited from China and India and beyond.
Historyradio.org: What sort of language did the ancient Khmer have, and are there any remains of their literature, either in their own language or in translations in other languages? If not, why not? After all ancient Greek sources often survived in Arabic translations?
Damian Evans: They had their own language which is the ancestral language of modern Khmer, although they had no indigenous script and expressed it in writing in a script that was borrowed from India. The language is intelligible to scholars. The high language of religion and the royal court was also borrowed from the Indian tradition – it was Sanskrit, which of course can also be translated easily enough. The corpus of 1300 or so inscriptions has been mostly translated into French.
Historyradio.org: The lidar technology that you used has been applied most recently on the ancient Maya. Is there any room for improvements in the technology? What will be possible in the near future?
Damian Evans: At the moment the technology is still very expensive. In the future, as lidar instruments become miniaturised and as UAV technology develops, we should start to be able to cover wide areas with that combination. For now though it is not practical to cover wide areas on the scale of Angkor for example with UAV technology. But that will come soon I think in the next few years. Unfortunately there are technical limitations which prevent high-resolution space-based lidars. But in a decade or two we might achieve that as well, which will provide cheap global coverage. The amount of archaeological material that will be uncovered then will be extraordinary.
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history / literatureEver since the invention of writing, authors have struggled with their craft. Modern writers apply word processing software, then email their text to editors, who comment and correct. Then, if they are lucky, the book is printed by machines and destributed via a modern transport network. Commercials market their work, and we pay for the product in stores. But what was the reality of writing and reading before all this, before the machines, the computers. How much has really changed? We asked a scholar of Latin and Greek classics.
Historyradio.org: There are many ways of looking at ancient literature. In what ways would you say that writers during the classical period innovated, broke rules and experimented?
Professor Richlin: Ancient literature was like jazz: a strong traditional basis, with performers or writers making a name for themselves by the way they riffed on what was given. Vergil turned Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey into an epic on the founding of the city of Rome; the anonymous players who made early Roman comedy took Greek New Comedy and stuffed it full of local shtick. Likewise within each culture: Attic Old Comedy sends up tragedy, and, within tragedy, Euripides plays around with his predecessors’ work and changes mythology.
Historyradio.org: Today when we think of classical literature many think of rigid rules and pentameters that must be adhered to. Why do you think that is?
Professor Richlin: Maybe because of the way Latin is taught in school? Because of the rules of grammar? As with most languages, though, you have to trudge through the early stages of learning how the language works before you can understand what’s going on in literature. And you have to know the rules in order to see how individual writers innovate.
Historyradio.org: How did one become a writer in ancient times, were you hired by a theater company? How did you make a living?
Professor Richlin: It worked very differently in different times and places. Sappho lived in a culture where there was a place for poets in the world of ritual and dance; Pindar, also living in the Greek islands, made a living by praising kings and tyrants for the victories of their chariots in races, and all kinds of other poets made a living in the courts of kings, all over the Mediterranean, especially in the 300s BCE. Major cities like Athens commissioned plays and poems for their big festivals; in Rome from 240 BCE through the 160s and probably beyond, the city magistrates also paid acting troupes to perform at festivals. But these troupes, made up of slaves and lower-class men, had to live all year, and probably made money performing at markets and fairs all over central Italy. They wrote their own material. From the 300s onward, troupes of Greek professional actors performed everywhere from Babylonia to Sicily, being paid and honored by cities. Among Latin-speaking people in Italy from the 200s onward, and eventually throughout the West from Carthage to Gaul, slaves and lower-class people (mostly men) became upwardly mobile by teaching and, sometimes, writing; already by the time of the elder Cato around 200 BCE, writing prose and some kinds of poetry had become a pastime for upper-class men and a few women, and this continues into the 500s CE when those men were now bishops.
Historyradio.org: Only a fraction of ancient literature has survived into the modern age? Have any new literary works been discovered recently?
Professor Richlin: Yes, a handful of previously unknown poems by Sappho have been found over the past ten years or so
Historyradio.org: What do we know about the reading habits during ancient times? What was the degree of literacy, and to what extent did the average Joe have access to the great stories and drama?
Professor Richlin: It’s been argued that the rate of literacy was very low, but then again there are graffiti everywhere, some of which quote poetry or are written in verse, which I think argues for quite widespread literacy. In addition, although books were expensive, the rich people who had private libraries also had people to read to them, i.e. slaves, so that reading and books were not exclusive to the rich; moreover, since reading aloud was widely used as dinner entertainment, everyone present could hear. The average Jo(sephine) had regular access to drama through public performance, which was usually free or very cheap, subsidized by cities or by wealthy individuals. In cities, children were sent to school, where Homer was among the first texts they learned. Most of the ancient world was rural, though, and literature must have been relatively unknown in the hinterlands. On the other hand, folk tales, jokes, myths were everywhere, probably including large amounts of Homeric poetry that people had memorized.
Historyradio.org: We have all heard about the great library of Alexandria, but were there smaller public libraries where text might be read, poetry, stories etc? Were there lending arrangements like in a modern library?
Professor Richlin: Yes, there were public libraries in Rome; the young Marcus Aureliuis jokes about having to seduce the librarian into letting him borrow a book he wants. There were also booksellers, and the poet Martial, at least, brags that his poetry books are popular throughout the empire.
Historyradio.org: Reading, of course, depended on proper lighting in the houses. In Victorian Britain they had gas, as you know, but evenings remained dark. What sort of lamps would the Greeks and Romans have had access to?
Professor Richlin: Oil lamps. Once when I was living in New Hampshire, I had to get by with oil lamps for a week, doing the reading for my classes and grading papers, and it was pretty hard on the eyes. But they got up very early in the morning; Marcus Aurelius, as a student, was often up before sunrise, reading in the predawn light.
Historyradio.org: What were the most popular literary genres and forms during the ancient period? I know they had comedy, tragedy and poetry? But did they have anything resembling a modern novel?
Professor Richlin: The Greeks seem to have invented novels, although Petronius’s Satyricon (60s CE) seems to be earlier than the earliest extant Greek novel. Since the Satyricon often parodies the norms of the Greek novels we do have, however, it seems clear that Greek novels started well before Petronius. Novels were tremendously popular; they morphed into saints’ lives, they were translated and adapted into many ancient languages (there’s one in Syriac about the biblical Joseph and his beloved Aseneth), they moved eastward through Byzantium and on into Russia, as far east as China, so I’ve heard. The Satyricon is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, it still makes me laugh. And only a bit of it is left! See below. Another great novel in Latin is Apuelius’s Metamorphoses, sometimes called The Golden Ass, about the adventures of a young man who gets transformed into a donkey, and that novel has survived in its entirety. The Greek novels are mostly “romances” — they have a marriage plot — but there are all kinds of others.
Historyradio.org: The classical period spans hundreds of years. Did they have literary schools that reflected any modern sensibilities, such as the stress and anxiety of urban living in a modernist sense. Or perhaps romantic idealization of nature, the way it is seen by a city dweller?
Professor Richlin: Lots of romantic idealization of nature, the Greeks invented that, too (and the Roman poet Horace wrote a comic poem satirizing that). The Romans invented satire, and Juvenal’s Satire 3 is about the stress and anxiety of urban living, though not in a modernist way. Modernism is a rejection of the classic, really, so I don’t see a big overlap.
Historyradio.org: In Umbert Eco’s The Name of the Rose, there is a crime plot centering on the rediscovery of an ancient text on comedy. Which lost text would you like to see rediscovered?
Professor Richlin: The rest of the Satyricon! Medieval Arabic satire shows some remarkable resemblances to the Satyricon; I have a fantasy that, somewhere, the novel was translated into Arabic before most of the Latin text was lost, and that someday we’ll find that manuscript. And I’d give a lot to have the comedies of Naevius, Plautus’s predecessor, whose tantalizing fragments make me long for even one complete play of his. The memoirs of the elder Agrippina: oh, boy. Tacitus mentions them — they must have been pretty hot stuff, in terms of telling the inside story of the house of the Caesars. The lost books of Tacitus, ditto.
In Greek: the rest of Sappho! And the other women poets, esp. Nossis, whose few remaining poems are so beautiful.
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short storyby J.-H. Rosny
published in The Chickasha Daily Express, December 21, 1900
e were strolling along the shore of the bellowing sea. The waves were magnificent. They advanced in caravans, crested with foam, singing crystal songs, they came with great cries and falling upon the rocks left long trails of snow. Rapid, irritable, angry, numberless, they assailed the cliffs, sometimes like a gorgeous garden of white and green flowers, sometimes roaring like ferocious troops of bears, elephants and lions.
“Look,” exclaimed Landa. “There goes Lavalle.”
All turned. In a little carriage, they saw a man still young by whose side was a woman of the Iberian type; one of those ravishing beauties who arouse desire, hate and jealousy in every man’s breast.
“He’s in luck that fellow,” murmured the banker Langrume when the carriage had passed. “By a single stroke be became owner of 90,000,000 francs, and the prettiest woman to be found from pole to pole. And I have worked thirty years to get my beggarly half dozen millions.”
“You are envious,” answered Landa.
“Don’t you know that Lavalle owes his fortune and his wife to a good speculation. It all came from an investment of exactly 1,000 francs.”
Fifteen years ago our friend Pierre Lavalle was a lucky young fellow of 20 years. He was rich, robust in health, and of a nature to avail himself of his advantages. His father sent him around the world. In Chile he had as a guide a most intelligent man of excellent family and between them a friendship arose. The guide pretended to have discovered rich veins of silver in the mountains, but he feared to be forestalled and dared trust no one.
At the moment of their separation Pierre offered him a thousand francs. Jose Alvarado thanked him with a dignified air and said:
“In ten years I shall be rich and you are my partner.”
Then he wrote in the young man’s journal this memorandum:
“In ten years I promise to share my property with my partner, Pierre Lavalle. Jose Alvarado Santiago, Nov. 20, 1885.”
Ten years later Pierre Lavalle was completely ruined. His father died of despair after unlucky speculations and left the son only a heritage of debt. The poor boy was forced to accept clerkship in a government office. None the less he still went about in society. As he did not try to borrow money from anybody, as he talked well and looked well the best hostesses asked him to their houses. One evening he attended a ball given by a rich Argentinian, Don Estevan Zuloaga. The affair was dazzling. All the South Americans in Paris were there, including many ravishing beauties. Pierre admired Spanish beauties with the enthusiasm of the old romancers. Those eyes where voluptuousness distilled their magic, those delicious curves of the figure, those little feet light and trembling, those magnificent mouths created for kissing aroused in Pierre an ecstatic drunkenness. Don Estevan had sought to bring together the richest human flowers of the Plata, Peru, Chile, and Mexico. The scene nearly turned the head of Pierre when he entered. But the grace and beauty of all the other women was dimmed in his eyes when he perceived a young Chilean on the arm of a young and handsome Spaniard. With a skin as clear as blonde’s out of a wonderful smoothness, with eyes that absorbed the light and emitted it again in dazzling electric rays; with a divine mouth as innocent as voluptuous; with graceful rhythmic walk, and the sweep of her undulating curves she seemed to possess the quintessence of, the charms and seductions of twenty exquisite women. Pierre was overcome with the despair that follows too violent admiration. The love of such a creature seemed to him something unattainable, a thing to which a man could aspire only by genius heroism or some other great quality. During the entire evening each time she passed near the place where he sat watching her dancing or walking, a wave of passionate adoration and sadness surged through his being. He saw her again. He was introduced to her and in time to her mother. During the winter he loved her silently and without the least hope. What right had he to covet such a love, hundred men, the elite of Paris, would have killed themselves for her. And she was fabulously rich. So he loved her as one loves inaccessible things, the clouds, the stars or the sun. She welcomed him as she did others and her mother seemed to like him. What did that signify? Pierre was an impossibility. In debt up to his neck he passed through the most humiliating period of his life. The chief of his bureau warned him that he must either settle, with his creditors or the bureau would be compelled to dispense with his services.
One evening the poor boy sat with his head is his hands reflecting upon his situation. The thought of suicide entered his brain. A tiny fire burned in his stove; the lamp with little oil flickered. He was cold and hungry, and he felt himself alone and without a sympathetic friend like an animal dying in a cave. In the midst of of the distress there came a vision of the Chilean belle and knowing that his clothes were no longer presentable, that his patent leather boots were cracked and that no tailor would give him credit, his desire for death became greater as he realized that he could not again meet his goddess.
Mechanically he raised himself and went to the box where he kept his souvenirs in the hope that he might find some jewel that be could sell. Some portraits, yellowing letters, locks of hair, notes, and leaves and dry flowers were crushed under his hand. He encountered the journal of travels and turned over the pages. The notes on Chile awakened his interest.
‘I was twenty years old then,” he sighed, “How could I have known or the misery in store for me?” He read the lines written by Alvarado: “In ten years I promise to share my property with partner Pierre Lavalle.”
He smiled sadly.
“This very evening the ten years. If the good Alvarado wishes to keep his promise he has not much time left.”
Two knocks were heard on the door. Pierre said to himself ironically:
“There he is now.”
He opened the door. He saw before him a man of large stature, white hair and beard with the mien of a cowboy and the color of cinnamon. The visitor addressed him in Spanish:
Excuse me,” he said. “I am late. You are Mr. Lavalle?”
“Yes,” replied Pierre astonished.
“I am Alvarado.”
The young man nearly dropped the the lamp.
Alvarado continued: “I have come to pay my debt.”
“Good,” thought Pierre, “It will enable me to buy some clothes so I can see her again.”
Alvarado continued: “I have made my fortune, I bring you our accounts as we are partners. Aside from my personal property which I deduct, we possess between 90,000,000 and 100,000,000 francs. The half of these have been realized and 25,000,000 francs are at your disposal.”
The the lamp fell.
“Good,” continued Alvarado, “you are content. It is natural. That encourages me to demand something of you. I prefer that the money remain in my family and my family is composed of my sister and my niece.”
Disappointment. Pierre had a vision of his magnificent Chilean and remained silent. “I wish that you marry my niece. You know her already. She is named Anita Fena.”
Pierre threw himself upon the cowboy and covered his white head with kisses, while he sobbed for happiness.
“And this,” concluded Landa, “is what it is to give 1,000 francs to a Chilean who seeks his fortune.”
“I wish I could find one like him to stake,” groaned Langrume. A beggar passed and asked alms in a piteous voice. Langrume turned away. “Why do not the police arrest these vagabonds?” he growled.
“It will bring you good luck to give him money.” said Landa.
The banker took a franc from his pocket.
“Make him write a memorandum in your Journal,” said Songeres.
translated by Mrs. Moses P. Handy (she died in 1933)
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history / literatureLewis Carroll, who wrote Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass, was, in private life, a professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He latinized Lutwidge to Ludovicus or Lewis and Charles to Carolus or Carroll, and, under this name, produced the first Alice book in 1865 and the second in 1872.
He produced other books as well – mostly on difficult mathematical subjects. Queen Victoria, enchanted by the Alice books, asked for all of Mr Carroll’s publications and was bewildered by the delivery of treatises on trigonometry and the binomial theory. Lewis Carroll was also the first of the great photographers, and his studies of children – especially of little Alice Liddell, who was both the heroine and the first reader of the two great books – have a charm and a mastery of technique envied by the snappers of today.
He never married, he was deeply and innocently religious, he liked to be cut off from the dangerous outside world. He was happy to be enclosed by the walls of an Oxford college and to tell stories to the little daughter of Dr Liddell, the great Greek scholar. But the publication of the two Alice books brought him fame. There was something in the adult imagination and yet it pleased, and continues to please, children. Carroll was a greater man than he knew.
Listen to an imaginative dramatization about how Alice in Wonderland was written, from 1937.
Both the Alice books are fantasies, aspects of the love of nonsense which was prevalent in England in the Victorian age. There was no nonsense in the rest of the world. When, in the early years of the twentieth century, France began to discover the delights of nonsense, this was called surrealism, and it was regretted that the British were too old-fashioned to produce surrealists in the staid age of Victoria, and of these perhaps Lewis Carroll was the greatest.
Surrealism consists in destroying the logic of ordinary life and substituting a kind of logic of the unconscious mind. Alice’s adventures take the form of dreams in which bizarre things happen, but these things are based on a more serious approach to language than we can permit ourselves in waking life. By language I mean, of course, the English language in which Carroll wrote; many of his dream-jokes are impossible to render into other tongues. If there is an insect called a butterfly, it seems dreamily logical to have a bread-and-butterfly, and Carroll’s illustrator, Tenniel, draws us one of these. The flower known as a dandelion is a dandy lion, hence it can roar. There is a school in which the lessons get shorter every day: the lessons “lessen”. If your watch stops, the dreamworld says that time has stopped. The watch of the Mad Hatter and his friends the March Hare and the Dormouse has stopped at teatime, so they must go on taking tea forever.
One of the characters who appears in the looking-glass world is Humpty Dumpty, who is a talking egg. His name not merely describes him: it is him (or he). An egg has a hump above and a dump below. He is the most dangerous, and yet the most persuasive, philosopher of language imaginable. He says “There’s glory for you”, and he explains that “glory” means “a fine knockdown argument”. Alice protests, but Humpty Dumpty says “It’s a question of who is to be master, you or the word.” Words, in other words, can mean what we want them to mean or else what the logic of dreams wants them to mean. Their normal everyday meaning doesn’t apply when we pass through the looking-glass.
Alice’s world is a world full of eccentric English Victorians disguised mostly as animals. Like real grown-ups they can be very rude or pompous to a child like Alice, but in her dreams Alice can answer back without being punished for her effrontery. She is temporarily living in a kind of Garden of Eden, in which total liberty seems to be possible – in Wonderland, Alice can change her shape and size merely by drinking from a bottle that says DRINK ME – but liberty is circumscribed not by notions of right and wrong but by mad logic. In the songs she hears or sings herself this mad logic seems to disappear, but there is substituted for it the spirit of parody, which implies an existing logic in the waking world. Alice knows very well a song that goes:
Twinkle twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are,
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky.
This becomes:
Twinkle twinkle little bat,
How I wonder what you’re at,
Up above the world so high,
Like a teatray in the sky.
Why bat? Why teatray? For that matter, why is a raven like a writing-desk? We feel that if we dig deeply enough we shall find our answers, but there is no time for digging, except for apples. If, in French, potatoes are pommes de terre, they are apples in the earth, and digging is quite in order. It is the very English eccentricity of the denizens of Wonderland and the Looking-Glass world that endears them to us. The White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the White Knight, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, marvellously drawn by Tenniel, are also very fully characterized by Carroll. They speak as we would expect them to speak, and they are full of an appalling self-will and vigour. But the men are less vigorous than the women. It is a child’s world of petticoat government in which the women – mothers, sisters, governesses – are near and magisterial, as well as wantonly cruel, while fathers are more distant, nicer, and busied with their own eccentric affairs.
But finally the appeal of the Alice books is to the creative imagination, by which space and time can become plastic and language itself diverted from the everyday course of straightforward communication. There is a strong poem, which Humpty Dumpty kindly explains to Alice, that sums up the possibilities of the dreaming world. It is called “Jabberwocky” and it begins:
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Slithy” is both slimy and lithe, to gyre is to gyrate, to gimble is both to gambol like a lamb and to turn like a gimlet or corkscrew. Humpty Dumpty calls these “portmanteau words”, because, like portmanteaux, several things can be crammed into them. James Joyce saw the possibilities of this Jabberwocky language and, in his great novel Finnegans Wake, which presents an adult, not a child’s dream, he used the technique. What, with Carroll, began as a joke ends, in Joyce, as the most serious attempt ever made to show how the dreaming mind operates.
But we leave it to the psychologists and literary critics to find in the Alice books great profundities and profound ambiguities. The Freudians have seen sexual symbols in them, which Carroll’s innocent conscious mind could not be aware of, and the Marxists have seen images of social tyranny and revolt. We are wisest if we become children again and use the books to recapture a lost innocence. We must learn to identify ourselves with a girl in a Victorian frock whose hair is long and golden and whose manner has the self-assurance of a product of the Victorian ruling class.
To be honest, Alice is not a very nice little girl. She is far too sharp and bossy and proud. She lacks humility, but – and this is an aspect of the British imperialist spirit – she also lacks fear. It requires great courage, at the trial of the Knave of Hearts, with the Queen shouting “Off with her head!”, for her to cry: “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” and to see the chaos of the mass pasteboard that, a minute ago, was an imperialist society whirling about her head. She is transported to mad colonial territories and retains something of her sanity. She is very British and very Victorian, but she is also admirably and universally human.
Listen to The NBC University Theater version of Alice in Wonderland, from 1948.
This abridged version of the article by the British novelist Anthony Burgess in the Unesco Courier (June 1982) was published online at the UNESCO website under a creative commons license: CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
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creative writing / literatureThere is no longer any need to argue that the communications satellite is ultimately going to have a profound effect upon society; the events of the last ten years have established this beyond question. Nevertheless, it is possible that even now we have only the faintest understanding of its ultimate impact upon our world.
There are those who have argued that communications satellites (hereafter referred to as “comsats”) represent only an extension of existing communications devices, and that society can therefore absorb them without too great an upheaval.
I am reminded rather strongly of the frequent assertions by elderly generals immediately after August 1945 that nothing had really changed in warfare because the device which destroyed Hiroshima was “just another bomb”.
Some inventions represent a kind of technological quantum jump which causes a major restructuring of society. In our century, the automobile is perhaps the most notable example of this. It is characteristic of such inventions that even when they are already in existence, it is a considerable time before anyone appreciates the changes they will bring. To demonstrate this, I would like to quote two examples, one genuine, one slightly fictitious.
For the first I am indebted to the Honorable Anthony Wedgewood Benn, now UK Minister of Technology, who passed it on to me when he was Postmaster General.
Soon after Mr. Edison had invented the electric light, there was an alarming decline in the Stock Exchange quotations for the gas companies. A Parliamentary Commission was therefore called in England, which heard expert witnesses on the subject; I feel confident that many of these assured the gas manufacturers that nothing further would be heard of this impractical device.
One of the witnesses called was the chief engineer of the Post Office, Sir William Preece – an able man who in later years was to back Marconi in his early wireless experiments. Somebody asked Sir William if he had any comments to make on the latest American invention – the telephone. To this, the chief engineer of the Post Office made the remarkable reply: “No Sir. The Americans have need of the telephone but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”
The second example is due to my friend, Jean d’Arcy, Director of Radio and Visual Information Services Division of the United Nations. He has reported to me the deliberations of a slightly earlier scientific committee, set up in the Middle Ages to discuss whether it was worth developing Mr. Gutenberg’s printing press. After lengthy deliberations, this committee decided not to allocate further funds. The printing press, it was agreed, was a clever idea, but it could have no large-scale application. There would never be any big demand for books for the simple reason that only a microscopic fraction of the population could read.
If anyone thinks that I am labouring the obvious, I would like him to ask himself, in all honesty, whether he would have dared to predict the ultimate impact of the printing press and the telephone when they were invented. I believe that in the long run the impact of the communication satellite will be even more spectacular. Moreover, the run may not be as long as we think. The human mind tends to extrapolate in a linear manner, whereas progress is exponential. The exponential curve rises slowly at first and then climbs rapidly, until eventually it cuts across the straight-line slope and goes soaring beyond it. Unfortunately, it is never possible to predict whether the crossover point will be five, ten or twenty years ahead. However, I believe that everything I am about to discuss will be technically possible well before the end of this century. The rate of progress will be limited by economic and political factors, not technological ones. When a new invention has a sufficiently great public appeal, the world insists on having it. Look at the speed with which the “transistor revolution” occurred. Yet what we now see on the technological horizon are devices with far greater potential, and human appeal, even than the ubiquitous transistor radio.
It must also be remembered that our ideas concerning the future of space technology are still limited by the present primitive state of the art. All of today’s launch vehicles are expendable, single-shot devices which can perform only one mission and are then discarded. It has been “recognized for many years that space exploration, and space exploitation, will be practical only when the same launch vehicle can be flown over and over again, like conventional aircraft. The development of the reusable launch vehicle, the so-called “space shuttle” will be the most urgent problem of the space engineers in the 1970s.
It is confidently believed that such vehicles will be operating by the end of the decade, the end of the 1970s. When they do, their impact upon astronautics will be comparable to that of the famous DC-3 upon aeronautics. The cost of putting payloads and men into space will decrease from thousands, to hundreds, and then to tens of dollars per pound. This will make possible the development of multipurpose manned space stations, as well as the deployment of very large and complex unmanned satellites which it would be quite impractical to launch (from Earth) in a single vehicle.
It must also be remembered that comsats are only one of a very large range of applications satellites; they may not even be the most important. The Earth Resources satellites will enormously advance our knowledge of this planet’s capabilities, and the ways in which we may exploit them. The time is going to come when farmers, fishermen, public utility companies, departments of agriculture and forestry, etc. will find it impossible to imagine how they ever operated in the days before they had space-borne sensors continually scanning the planet. The economic value of meteorological satellites and their potential for the saving of life has already been demonstrated. Another most important use of satellites, which has not yet begun, but which will have an economic value of thousands of millions of dollars a year, is their use for air-traffic control. It appears possible that the only real solution to the problem of air congestion, and the mounting risk of collisions, may be through navigational satellites which can track every aircraft in the sky.
Arthur C. Clarke predicts the internet, creative commons video from ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company):
In dealing with telecommunications problems it is convenient and often indeed essential to divide the subject according to the type of transmission and equipment used. Thus we talk about radios, telephones, television sets, data networks, facsimile systems, etc. as though they were all quite separate things.
But this of course is a completely artificial distinction; to the communications satellite, which simply handles trains of electric impulses, they are all the same. For the purposes of this discussion I am therefore looking at the subject from a different point of view, which may give a better overall picture. I am lumping all telecommunications devices together and am considering their total impact upon four basic units in turn. Those units are the Home, the City, the State, and the World.
Note that I start with the home, not the family, as the basic human unit. Many people do not live in family groups, but everybody lives in a home. Indeed, in certain societies today the family itself is becoming somewhat nebulous around the edges, and among some younger groups is being replaced by the tribe – of which more anon. But the home will always be with us.
There was once a time when homes did not have windows. It is difficult for those of us who do not live in caves or tents to imagine such a state of affairs. Yet within a single generation the home in the more developed countries has acquired a new window of incredible magical power – the TV set. What once seemed one of the most expensive luxuries became, in what is historically a twinkling of an eye, one of the basic necessities of life.
The television antenna swaying precariously above the slum dweller’s shack is a true sign of our times. What the book was to a tiny minority in earlier ages, the television set has now come to be for all the world.
It is true that, all too often, it is no more than a drug like its poorer relative, the transistor radio seen pressed to the ears of the blank-faced noiseaddicts one sees walking entranced through the city streets. But, of course, it is infinitely more than this, as was so well-expressed by Professor Buckminster Fuller when he remarked that ours is the first generation to be reared by three parents.
All future generations will be reared by three parents. As René Maheu, Director-General of UNESCO, remarked recently, this may be one of the real reasons for the generation gap. We now have a discontinuity in human history. For the first time there is a generation that knows more than its parents, and television is at least partly responsible for this state of affairs.
Anything we can imagine in the way of educational TV and radio can be done. As I have already remarked, the limitations are not technical, but economic and political. As for economic limitations, the cost of a truly global satellite educational system, broadcasting into all countries, would be quite trivial compared with the long-term benefits it could bring.
Let me indulge in a little fantasy. Some of the studies of educational comsat broadcasts — let us call them EDSATS — to developing countries indicate that the cost of the hardware may be of the order of $1 per pupil per year.
I suppose there are about a thousand million children of school age on this planet, but the number of people who require education must be much higher than this, perhaps two thousand million. As I am only concerned with establishing orders of magnitude, the precise figures don’t matter. But the point is that, for the cost of a few thousand million dollars a year, a few per cent of the monies spent on armaments could provide a global EDSAT system which could drag this whole planet out of ignorance. Such a project would seem ideally suited for UNESCO supervision, because there are great areas of basic education in which there are no serious disagreements. The beauty of television, of course, is that to a considerable extent it transcends the language problem. I would like to see the development, by the Walt Disney studios or some similar organization, of visual educational programmes which do not depend on language, but only upon sight, plus sound effects. I feel certain that a great deal can be done in this direction, and it is essential that such research be initiated as soon as possible, because it may take much longer to develop appropriate programmes than the equipment to transmit and receive them.
Even the addition of language, of course, does not pose too great a problem since this requires only a fraction of the band-width of the vision signal. And sooner or later we must achieve a world in which every human being can communicate directly with every other, because everyone will speak, or at least understand, a handful of basic languages. The children of the future are going to learn several languages from that third parent in the corner of the living room. Perhaps looking further ahead, a time is going to come when any student or scholar anywhere on Earth will be able to tune in to a course in any subject that interests them, at any level of difficulty they desire. Thousands of educational programmes will be broadcast simultaneously on different frequencies, so that any individual will be able to proceed at his own rate, and at his own convenience, through the subject of his choice.
This could result in an enormous increase in the efficiency of the educational process. Today, every student is geared to a relatively inflexible curriculum. He has to attend classes at fixed times, which very often may not be convenient. The opening up of the electromagnetic spectrum made possible by comsats will represent as great a boon to scholars and students as did the advent of the printing press itself.
The great challenge of the decade to come is freedom from hunger. Yet starvation of the mind will one day be regarded as an evil no less great than starvation of the body. All men deserve to be educated to the limit of their capabilities. If this opportunity is denied them, basic human rights are violated.
This is why the forthcoming experimental use of direct broadcast EDSATS in India in 1972 is of such interest and importance. We should wish it every success, for even if it is only a primitive prototype, it may herald the global educational system of the future.
It is obvious that one of the results of the developments we have been discussing will be a breakdown of the barrier between home and school, or home and university, for in a sense the whole world may become one academy of learning. But this is only one aspect of an even wider revolution because results of the new communications devices will also break down the barrier between home and place of work. During the next decade we will see coming into the home a general purpose communications console comprising TV screen, camera, microphone, computer keyboard and hardcopy readout device. Through this, anyone will be able to be in touch with any other person similarly equipped. As a result, for an ever increasing number of people in fact, virtually everyone of the executive level and above, almost all travel for business will become unnecessary.
Recently, a limited number of the executives of the Westinghouse Corporation in the United States who were provided with primitive forerunners of this device, promptly found that their travelling decreased by 20 per cent. This, I am convinced, is how we are going to solve the traffic problem and thus, indirectly, the problem of air pollution. More and more, the slogan of the future will be, “Don’t Commute – Communicate”. Moreover, this development will make possible and even accelerate another fundamental trend of the future.
It usually takes a genius to see the obvious, and once again I am indebted to Professor Buckminster Fuller for the following ideas. One of the most important consequences of today’s space research will be the development of life-support, and above all, food regeneration systems for long duration voyages and for the establishment of bases on the moon and planets. It is going to cost thousands of millions of dollars to develop these techniques, but when they are perfected they will be available to everyone.
This means that we will be able to establish self-contained communities quite independent of agriculture, anywhere on this planet that we wish; perhaps one day even individual homes may become autonomous closed ecological systems producing all their food and other basic requirements indefinitely.
This development, coupled with the communications explosion, means a total change in the structure of society. But because of the inertia of human institutions, and the gigantic capital investments involved, it may take a century or more for the trend to come to its inevitable conclusion. That conclusion is the death of the city.
We all know that our cities are obsolete, and much effort is now going into patching them up so that they work after some fashion, like thirtyyear-old automobiles held together with string and wire. But we must recognize that in the age that is coming. The city – except for certain limited applications – is no longer necessary. The nightmare of overcrowding and traffic jams which we now endure is going to get worse, perhaps for our lifetimes. But beyond that is a vision of a world in which man is once again what he should be, a fairly rare animal, though in instant communication with all other members of his species. Marshall McLuhan has coined the evocative phrase “the global village” to describe the coming society. I hope “the global village” does not really mean a global suburb, covering the planet from pole to pole. Luckily, there will be far more space in the world of the future, because the land liberated at the end of the agricultural age now coming to a close after ten thousand years will become available for living purposes. I trust that much of it will be allowed to revert to wilderness, and that through this new wilderness will wander the electronic nomads of the centuries ahead. It is perfectly obvious that the communications revolution will have the most profound influence upon that fairly recent invention, the nation-state. I am fond of reminding American audiences that their country was created only a century ago by two inventions. Before those inventions existed it was impossible to have a United States of America. Afterwards, it was impossible not to have it.
Those inventions, of course, were the railroad and the electric telegraph. USSR, China – in fact all modern states could not possibly exist without them. Whether we like it or not, and certainly many people won’t like it, we are seeing the next step in this process. History is repeating itself one turn higher on the spiral. What the railroad and the telegraph did to continental areas a hundred years ago, the jet plane and the communications satellite will soon be doing to the whole world. Despite the rise of nationalism and the surprising resurgence of minority, political and linguistic groups, this process may already have gone further than is generally imagined. We see particularly among the young, cults and movements which transcend all geographical borders. The so-called “jet set” is perhaps the most obvious example of this transnational culture, but that involves only a small minority. In Europe at least, the Volkswagen and Vespa sets are far more numerous and perhaps far more significant. The young Germans, French, and Italians are already linked together by a common communications network, and are impatient with the naive and simple-minded nationalism of their parents which has brought so much misery to the world.
What we are now doing – whether we like it or not – indeed whether we wish to or not – is laying the foundation of the first global society. Whether the final planetary authority will be an analogue of the federal systems now existing in the US or the USSR I do not know. I suspect that, without any deliberate planning, such organizations as the world meteorological and earth resources satellite system, and the world communications satellite system (of which INTELSAT is the precursor) will eventually transcend their individual components. At some time during the next century they will discover, to their great surprise, that they are really running the world.
There are many who will regard these possibilities with alarm or distaste, and may even attempt to prevent their fulfilment. I would remind them of the story of the wise English king, Canute, who had his throne set upon the sea-shore so he could demonstrate to his foolish courtiers that even the king could not command the incoming tide.
The wave of the future is now rising before us. Let us not attempt to hold it back. Wisdom lies in recognizing the inevitable – and cooperating with it. In the world that is coming, the great powers are not great enough.
Let us look at our whole world – as we have already done through the eyes of our moonbound cameras. I have made it obvious that it will be essentially one world – though I am not foolish or optimistic enough to imagine that it will be free from violence and even war. But more and more it will be recognized that all terrestrial violence is the concern of the police – and of no one else.
And there is another factor which will accelerate the unification of the world. Within another lifetime, this will not be the only world, and that fact will have profound psychological impact upon all humanity. We have seen in the annus mirabilis of 1969 the imprint of man’s first footstep on the moon. Before the end of this century, we will experience the only other event of comparable significance in the foreseeable future. Before I tell you what it is, ask yourselves what you would have thought of the moon landing, thirty years ago. Well, before another thirty have passed, we will see its inevitable successor – the birth of the first human child on another world, and the beginning of the real colonization of space. When there are men who do not look on Earth as home, then the men of Earth will find themselves drawing closer together. In countless ways this process has already begun. The vast outpouring of pride, transcending all frontiers, during the flight of Apollo 11 was an outstanding indication of this process.
Whether or not one takes it literally, the myth of the Tower of Babel has an extraordinary relevance for our age. Before that time, according to the book of Genesis (and indeed according to some anthropologists) the human race spoke with a single tongue.
That time may never come again, but the time will come, and through the impact of comsats, when there will be two or three world languages which everyone will share. Far higher than the misguided architects of the Tower of Babel ever could have imagined – 36,000 kilometres above the equator – the rocket and communications engineers are about to undo the curse that was then inflicted upon our ancestors.
So let me end by quoting the relevant passage from the 11th chapter of Genesis, which I think could be a motto for our hopes of the future: And the Lord said: “Behold they are one people and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do now will be impossible for them.”
A 1970 text by Arthur C. Clarke from The UNESCO Courier, originally published online at the UNESCO website under a creative commons license: CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
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short storyby Feng Menglong (1574-1646)(an interpretation by Michael Henrik Wynn)
It is said that during the cultural revival of the Song Dynasty in the early middle ages, there was a high-ranking official named Chen Ya, who, due to a dispute with the learned Zhang Zihou, was demoted to the position of pacification commissioner for the eastern region of Jiangdong. As such, he was obliged to oversee the important city of Jiankang, located inland on the Yangtze River.
One day, while attending an official banquet by the riverside, he suddenly heard a shrill voice beyond the perimeter shouting, “I am able to foresee all your futures, even without consulting the sacred Five Elements!”
“Who dares utter such words in my presence?” Chen Ya exclaimed.
One of the officials recognized the man and said: “That, my lord, is the fortune-teller Bian Yin of Jinling.”
“Bring him to me.” Chen Ya declared.
Bian Yin was summoned to the gate, and stepped barefooted forth from the crowd wearing nothing but rags and a tattered hat. His white bushy beard and gleaming eyes gave him a haggard appearance. Supporting himself on a staff, he made a deep and respectful bow before he sat down at the edge of the steps. “You are nearly blind and not even able to read ancient classics, how dare you belittle the Five Elements?” asked the commissioner.
“I am adept in discerning the minute signs that fate transmits by sound, the ebb and flow of life. I can even hear faint footsteps move across soft grassland,” the old man said.
“And how accurate are these skills of yours?” Chen Ya asked.
At that very moment a painted boat appeared suddenly on the river heading downstream, its oars creaked as its keel clashed against the water.
“What is the fortune of the vessel we now see? the commissioner said.
” I can hear sorrow in the creak of those oars, my lord. A man of high-rank has been summoned by eternity,” Bian Yin sighed.
The commissioner then sent someone to inquire. Upon their return, he learnt that Li, a lieutenant of the army stationed at Linjiang, had passed away on duty. The boat was transporting his remains to his hometown.
“Even if Dongfang Shuo were resurrected, he could not surpass you!” exclaimed the astonished commissioner. The old fortune-teller was rewarded with ten jars of wine and ten taels of silver, and then dismissed.
The first fortune-teller thus heard the fate of a man in moving oars.
But there was another fortune-teller named Li Jie. He came from Kaifeng, the capital city located in a bend of the great Yellow river. After serving in Zhuofu, a County deep inland, he set up a divination stall. Here he displayed a large sword and a sign that read:
“This blade is for use by anyone in China who wishes to question the skills of the owner.”
Li Jie was indeed well-versed in the Book of Changes (Zhouyi), adept at deciphering the Six Writings, and had a deep understanding of astrology and geomancy. He could explain the significance of the Five Stars and predict good or bad fortune like a deity. His knowledge of the Three Fates allowed him to determine success or failure and rise or fall with great accuracy.
One day, as he displayed his sign, a man entered his stall, wearing what might be termed an unusual costume: a headscarf, two black collared shirts, a silk sash around his waist, clean shoes, and neat socks. He also carried a scroll of text. He greeted the diviner, and provided his date and time of birth for a prediction of his fate.
“This fortune is difficult to foresee.” Li Jie complained as he examined the hexagram.
“Why is it difficult?”
“Honorable sir”, Li Jie said anxiously, “you should abstain from drinking and tell only the truth”.
“I am as sober as you, and I have nothing to hide,” the man muttered.
Fearing errors, Li Jie then verified the dates he was given, and recalculated. Upon seeing the hexagram, he then said: “Honorable sir, some fates are better unprobed.”
“Why?”
“I am afraid the signs are unfavorable.” Li Jie replied. He then wrote four lines:
“A tiger approaches your birthdate,When it does, calamity awaits.Tomorrow, at the hour of the Ox,Your family will grieve in shock.”
“But what does this hexagram indicate in terms of fortune and misfortune?” the man asked.
“I dare not hide the truth,” Li Jie sighed, “it means that you will die.”
“When?”
“This year.” Li Jie replied.
“In which month of this year?”
“This month.” Li Jie answered.
“On which day of this month?”
“Today,” Li Jie replied.
“At what time during the night?”
“At the third night watch of tonight,” Li Jie said.
“If I truly die tonight”, the man said, “everything will be over. If I do not die, I will deal with you at the county office tomorrow!”
“If you do not die tonight”, Li Jie said with sorrow, “come back tomorrow. On that wall hangs a sharp sword. You must then apply that blade upon my neck!”
The enraged man could not contain his anger, and dragged Li Jie out of the divination stall. Li Jie had meddled in worldly affairs and now he was deeply worried. However, several county officials approached the man, who was in fact, Sun, a magistrate. “What was this commotion?”“This man has tricked me by means of absurd arguments. I purchased a divination reading, and he told me I would die at the third night watch tonight. I am not ill, and how could I die at the third night watch? I will take him to the county office, and the official investigation will clear things up.”
“Divinations are like selling houses and selling divination readings is just talk. Sun, the magistrate, was sold a poor product,” was the popular and quite unanimous conclusion.
“You have reached beyond your skill by divining for Sun, the magistrate, “they told Li Jie, “and now you can no longer conduct divinations here. The fate of the poor and the lowly may be simple to forsee. Yet, the length of any life is shrouded in mystery, and the moment of death impossible to specify. Only fathers and brothers can predict life and death with the certainty of hours and minutes. You have been inconsiderate. Divinations can be inauspicious if they flatter people and can lead to misunderstandings if they tell the truth.”
Li Jie apologized, closed his divination stall, and moved to another city.
Sun, the magistrate, had been calmed by the crowd, and now he felt ashamed and returned to his office. At home, his wife recognized the worried lines on his face. “What troubles you, husband? Are you having problems at work?” she asked. “No, don’t ask!” But she continued: “Have you been reprimanded by your superior?” “No!!” “Did you have a dispute with someone of a higher rank?” she persisted. “No! I bought a divination reading today, and the fortune-teller told me that I would die at the third night watch tonight.” Hearing this, his wife widened her brown eyes and raised her brows, saying, “How could anyone deliver such a message in this way? Why didn’t you report him to the authorities?” “I wanted to, but I was persuaded not to. Wife, I want you to stay with me this evening. If I don’t die tonight, I’ll settle the matter with him tomorrow, which is better than you going to someone else’s house.” Dusk now descended on their home. “Let’s prepare a few cups of wine to pass the time. I won’t sleep; I’ll spend the night awake”, Sun said. After drinking three or four cups, however, he became intoxicated nevertheless, and Sun, the magistrate, then dozed off in his official chair. “My husband, you must not sleep,” she said and called their daughter for assistance. “Shake your father awake, child!” The daughter did her best – in vain. “My child, we must get your father into bed. The chair is not suited for sleep.” The drowsing and quite drunk magistrate had insisted on staying awake, as if attempting to keep Time itself at a standstill. But, such a feat is beyond even the very wise.
The magistrate struggled against the pull of his own mind, and his wife wishing to assist her spouse, instructed the maid, Ying’er, to light a candle in the kitchen. “Have you heard the awful news? A fortune teller has today told my husband that the hexagrams have predicted his death at the third watch tonight?” “Yes, I have heard. But how can this be?” “Ying’er, I will even pay you for your effort. Take what coins I have! If my husband does not die tonight, we will confront the fortune-teller tomorrow.” “Make sure you don’t fall asleep!” “I won’t dare!” Ying’er replied.Ying’er did her best, but eventually night overcame her, and she dozed off. “Ying’er, I told you to stay awake” the magistrate’s wife shouted. “How can you fall asleep?”“I won’t sleep,” the drowsy maid replied. But soon after, her head dropped, her eyes reluctantly shut and she drifted off. Her employer now shook the maid, but was unable was unable to get a response. At that very moment, the sudden and steady thumps of a drum pierced the night. The night-watch had arrived for the third watch. “Ying’er, stop pretending!” shouted the magistrates wife. “Don’t do this now!”
But to no avail.
Suddenly, the middle door of the house creaked, footsteps moved in the hallway and then the front gate slammed. In a frantic effort the magistrate’s wife woke the maid, lit a lamp and together spied into the darkness outside. The front door was open, and a human form dressed in white, the head of their household, slid hurriedly through courtyard towards the raging river, covering his face with one hand. They both rushed outside, only to see him jump into the water and vanish.
Two female voices echoed through the night: “What is to become of us now! Magistrate, why did you jump into the river?”
Several neighbors were then summoned for help, and the grieving wife then recounted the story of her husband’s death, as you have now heard it.“This is truly a strange occurrence!” the of them said shaking her head. “Yesterday, I saw the magistrate returning with a Taoist priest in a straw robe and carrying scriptures. I even greeted him.” “Yes, I also greeted the magistrate when he returned with the Taoist priest” added another. “I went to the county office in the morning, and I saw the magistrate scolding a fortune teller who was selling hexagrams. Who could have known?”
“Why didn’t the magistrate come to us for help?” They all cried, and before they left one of them turned in the door, placed her hand on the new widow’s shoulder and sighed: “Considering what a virtuous man your husband was, anyone would be overcome by grief. This decent man will now never be seen again.” The matter was immediately reported to the authorities, and the magistrate’s wife was ordered to perform good deeds and offer prayers for the deceased.
The mourning period passed in the blink of an eye. One day, two rosy-cheeked women came strolling towards the late magistrate’s house. One of them had a bottle of wine, and the other carried two bundles of wildflowers. “Have we come to the right place?” they said and lifted the curtains. The magistrate’s wife then recognized Zhang and Li, the local matchmakers. “I have not seen you two in a very long time!” she said. “We should have been here earlier. We hope you are not offended,” Zhang replied.“How long has it been since my husband passed away?” “Oh, more than a hundred days!” Li replied.“Over a hundred days,” the widow sighed, “well…. time flies! Sun was really a very decent man. Sometimes, he would scold me, but he could still be affectionate. Now that he has been gone for some time, the house is very quiet…….”“It’s time to discuss marriage proposals,” Zhang concluded.“I am not sure there will be another man like Sun in this world for me?” The magistrate’s wife said.“Actually, it will not be difficult to find one,” Li said confidently. “You have a good daughter-in-law, don’t you?” The widow nodded. “But, I am old and tired, and in order for another marriage to make any sense, I have certain specific demands….three in fact. If you can find one who matches my needs, then we can talk about a proposal. If not, I’d rather live alone.”
“What are your demands?” Zhang asked.“Well,” the magistrate’s wife said: “First, I am too old to change my surname. I am used to it now. I want to marry someone with the same surname as my late husband, Sun. Second, my late husband had a very good job as magistrate. So, I want someone with a similar position. Third, if we don’t marry, I want him to enter the household.” “Alright! And if we are able to find a person who meets your requirements, will you then agree to a marriage?” Li asked.“I will believe that when I see it. But go ahead and give it your best effort. Maybe fate will intervene, who knows?” Zhang smiled. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life! We will do our best,” she said.“I don’t have any couplets for marriage proposal in my house,” the widow replied.“I have some here,” Li said triumphantly and produced a pair of marriage couplets from her pocket. They read:
“Snow hides the mountains of Sichuan until it’s seen; Willow conceals the parrots’ chatter until it’s known.”
In the afternoon, the magistrate’s wife scribbled down her own marriage proposal and presented it to Li and Zhang. Gifts were then exchanged, and after a lengthy communication back and forth, a new husband nicknamed Little Sun arrived at her doorstep. Little Sun was everything the widow had wanted, and she was everything he wanted, and the union was judged a great success.
One day, the newlyweds both got drunk on sweet wine, and the maid Ying’er then decided to prepare some sobering soup. In the kitchen, she attempted to start a fire, but found that the chimney was blocked. She began knocking on the side trying to clear whatever it was that prevented the flow of air. Suddenly, a cold hand dropped from the opening. Then a neck and a noose followed. And finally the head itself covered by long silvery locks. The tongue protruded from mouth of the corpse, and its eyes seemed to weep blood. While she recovered her breath, she thought it lifeless. But then a spark flickered in the dark eyes, facial muscles contracted – and a faint whisper emerged from its blue parted lips:
“Do not forget!”
Then the scream of Ying’er echoed through the house, followed by a thump as she fell unconscious to the floor. Wife and husband rushed into the kitchen, and found her lying by the fireplace. Her face had seemed pale, her eyes had shifted back and forth as if she were in a delirium, her lips had turned purple and her fingernails blue. Eventually she came to, and later they told her how happy they had been in that moment. For some minutes they even feared that her soul had been freed, like some caged bird, from the confounds of her body.
They then brewed her a herbal potion to restore her health, and asked her what had happened. Ying’er told them about her strange and grotesque vision by the fireplace, how a corpse of what she had assumed was the late magistrate, Mr. Sun, with a noose around his neck, blood dripping from his eyes and hair covering his face, had appeared before her, whispered and frightened her from her wits.
This fantasy about the dead magistrate infuriated the widow who immediately slapped her maid in the face and said: “You idiot! I told you to make soup, and you start rambling about my deceased husband. Stop this charade, put out the fire and go to your room!” Ying’er returned to her room and soon after fell asleep.
Later that night, as the couple withdrew to their sleeping quarters, the widow whispered, “Husband, that girl is no longer useful. We should send her away.” “Yes, but where?” he replied.“I have a plan.” The next day, after they had breakfast, Little Sun went to handle official matters. The magistrate’s wife called Ying’er and said, “Ying’er, you’ve been with us for seven or eight years, and I’ve always treated you well. But now you bring back so many memories of my late husband. I know that you are dreamer. Have you never a dreamed of a husband yourself?” “I wouldn’t dare to expect such a thing. You should know that I am grateful for what you have done for me.” “I don’t want you to marry just anyone,” the magistrate’s wife continued, “we will consult the matchmakers, read sign and hexagrams, and set the same demands as we did for me. We will tell them you too should marry a man with the surname ‘Sun’. What do you say?” Ying’er hesitated, but realized that becoming the second wife of a magistrate like Little Sun was not only an honor, but a significant promotion.
However, once the principle of a marriage had been settled and the matchmakers had consulted wise men, hexagrams and the stars, it was decided that she marry another, more suited man. That man’s name was not Sun, but Wang Xing, a notorious drunk and a gambler. It did not take long before Ying’er saw all their savings vanish. One day, when Wang was drunk, he came home and scolded Ying’er, saying, “You worthless woman! Can’t you see how I suffer for us both? Why didn’t you ask your father for some money to support us?” Unable to bear his insults, Ying’er tied up her skirt, left her home, and returned to the residence of Magistrate Sun.
When the magistrate’s wife saw her, she said, “Ying’er, you’ve already married someone else. What brings you here?” Ying’er tearfully explained, “I don’t dare to hide anything. The man I married is a drunkard and a gambler. In just three months, we’ve spent all our money. I don’t know what to do, so I came to ask for a loan, we need three to five hundred coins to survive.” “Ying’er, your marriage is your own affair. I’ll give you some silver this time, but don’t come back again,” the magistrate’s wife replied.Ying’er accepted the silver and expressed her gratitude before returning home. However, a few days later the new money was gone as well.
One evening Wang was short of cash, and had to return to his house sober. When he saw his wife, he shouted:“You useless woman! How can you do this to me? Why didn’t you ask the magistrate’s wife for another loan? I need three or maybe five hundred coins!” “I have been once”, Ying’er replied, “I used the necklace as collateral, and told her all sorts of lies to persuade her. How can I go to her another time?” She sensed the anger in Wang’s eyes as he turned to her.“Listen, you’ll better do as you’re told. If not, I’ll break your legs!”
This was too much for Ying’er. As dusk descended, she walked the shameful path to the magistrate’s residence. When she arrived, she found the door bolted for the night. She could not wake the whole house by hammering at the entrance? So, she continued down the road passed the lighted windows of her old neighbors. As she stopped to rest, she suddenly heard a voice saying:“Ying’er, you must be ware! The path of any marriage is uncertain. Trust me, life must be lived on its own terms.”Ying’er immediately turned towards the source of the sound, and noticed movement under the eaves of a house. She made out the silhouette of a hat, and outstretched arms in the moonlight. “Ying’er”, was the sudden whisper: “I am the restless soul of the former magistrate. It is with great sadness that I approach you, please accept what I offer.” A lonely woman on a deserted road at night will do what she is told. Before she knew it the shadow had melted into dusk, and she was left holding a small silk purse – filled to the brim with shiny silver.
Tucking her robe tightly around her slim waist, she then hurried through evening mist. At home, she found the front door locked, and began knocking. To no avail.Then she shouted, and eventually there was a reply:“Damn you wife, why haven’t you gone to ask for help from the Magistrate? It may be too late now!” “I have already been there, but they’ve already bolted their door. I couldn’t make a nuisance of myself. I was about to return when a man calling himself “the former magistrate” appeared out of nowhere and practically donated me some silver.”
“What is this nonsense about ghosts! Bags of silver do not magically materialize. Show me this silver.” Ying’er handed him the silver. At first he was confused, but when he saw the amount, he exclaimed:“This is stolen property! We must report it, or face punishment!” He shook his head in despair. “Keep it safe, tomorrow we must bring it to the local courthouse”.
Morning, however, brought second thoughts to Wang.“You know, when I think about this,” he said, “……I cannot accuse a magistrate of theft or dishonesty? And what evidence do I have? He makes good money, why would he do such a thing?” His forehead furled under strenuous thought. “I have an idea, let’s order some new clothes and have them sent to my friend Pei’s house. We then collect them there. They will think he paid for the order.” He smiled.
A scheme was thus hatched, and the very next day Wang purchased fine silks and garments for himself and his wife, and had everything sent to his friend’s house. Arriving at the unwitting co-conspirator in the evening, they then cleaned themselves and changed into their new lavish costumes. However, the spectacle caught the eye of their friend’s curious mother.“Where did you get the money for all this?” she asked as she saw the colorful fabrics. “Yesterday I got two taels of silver from some work I had done, bought this and had it sent here,” Wang lied. “I have stopped gambling and drinking…” “Wang Xing”, the mother said thoughtfully, “can you spare your wife for a couple of days? I am old and I need her help, you see?” When the husband had left, her wrinkled face turned to Ying’er.“My dear,” she said, “tomorrow we will burn incense in the great temple.”
They woke at dawn, did their chores and made their way to Dongyue Temple. They burned incense in the two long corridors of the lower hall, and were moving passed some offices, when Ying’er felt her skirt loosen. She stopped to fix it while the old mother continued towards the exit. She was tying it up in the back, when she noticed a judge in one of the offices. He wore a slender hat, and like her he was in the process of arranging his attire, the corner of his belt had loosened. Suddenly his face turned towards her, and he whispered:“Ying’er, I am your first magistrate. If you want a sentence, I will pass one. This official paper is yours.”Ying’er received the sealed scroll with shaking hands.“But this is very odd!” she exclaimed. “How can a stranger pass sentences on me? I have never heard of such a thing…” Ying’er hid the document in her clothing, hurried on her way and said nothing to the old woman waiting outside.
However, when she entered her own familiar home, she did tell her husband. Wang examined the scroll. It turned out to be a riddle on a single sheet of paper, which read:
Follow women who waive in an alley,both young and old have purposeon both sides of a tomb. Listen to the drum of the third watch,Men will plunge and arise from water.
The text seemed incomprehensible, and a puzzled Wang ordered his wife to keep silent for many months.
It was in February, a year later, that the great Judge Bao entered the story. He was born in Luzhou district in southern China. His full name was Bao Mingzheng. During the Song dynasty, China had system of pavilions, which were higher state institutions. Bao became a member of the Longtu Pavilion, and later he rose to the position of bachelor there. Hence his name became Bao Longtu.
He was still a mere county magistrate when these events occurred. But he had been intelligent and upright since childhood, and in his official capacity he always cut straight to the bone, bringing clarity to many who struggled in confusion.
Judge Bao had been in office a mere three days, when he one night had a dream that he was sitting in the hall, and there was a couplet posted on the wall:
“To know the three changes, light your fires and plunge into water.”
The next morning, Bao went to the hall and summoned local wise men to explain the two sentences to him. No one could make any sense of them. He then asked for a white card on which to write a riddle that had come to him in his dream. When he was done, Judge Bao said:“If anyone can make any sense of this conundrum, they will be rewarded with ten taels of silver.”
He then hammered the card to the county gate causing much commotion. Even some officials and their servants, sensing an opportunity for profit, arrived to examine the mysterious text.
It so happened that Wang- Ying’yer’s drunkard of a husband – was buying food from a stall nearby. He noticed the chatter and the murmur, and overheard puzzled remarks about the magistrate who had pinned an unsolvable riddle to the old oak door.
Curiosity then got the better of him. He made his way through the throng, and approached the small white sign. He could not believe his own eyes, before him was the message that a ghost had presented to his own wife. Wang had the odd feeling of being watched, and turned. Suddenly he stared straight into the round face of his friend Pei.
“There is no use in hanging around”, Wang said desperately trying to mask his surprise, “the new magistrate is an odd man with a ferocious temper. I can let you in on a little secret”, Wang whispered, “my wife is the only person on earth – except for myself- that has any inclination about what this riddle might mean.”
Wang then bought his food, and returned home. The house was empty when he entered, and he began pacing back and forth across the squeaking wooden floor. It was by no means a large home, so he turned frequently, scratching his.arms as if bitten by a leech. At the sound of his wife outside, he rushed out. But then he stopped, afraid to appear unmanly, sucked it all up and followed her slowly inside. Finally, he could bear it no longer and unburdened his mind.
“First, the ghost of the old magistrate appeared three times to teach me to avenge him,” Ying’er said, “and I got a bag of silver for nothing. Whatever you do, you must not lock yourself up here like a coward.”
It was with a certain reluctance that Wang returned to the county gate. Again he navigated through the throng towards the sign, hoping that it had vanished. But it had not. When he again spotted his friend Pei, he felt slightly relieved and dragged him into a deserted street to ask his advice.
There were rows of two storied houses. The sky was blue, but the sun had passed its zenith and long shadows stretched of from the buildings on the opposite side, almost to their feet. They stood under the a solitary tree, and Wang recounted his story under the shade of sighing branches. Then Pei looked at him and said: “What do you want me to do? Where is this piece of paper that the spirit-judge handed your wife?” “The last time I saw it, my wife had stuffed into a closet with her clothes.”“We must bring this before Judge Bao and collect your reward. I will go and tell him that you will present crucial evidence in the case. Go home, fetch the paper and bring it to the court office. When Judge Bao asks for it lay it before him.”At that moment, they heard someone coming up the alley and lowered their voices. “Go now!” Pei whispered as he turned to make out the shadow approaching from the shade at the other end. Wang did as he was told, and hurried off.
Pei heard footsteps in the alley, but could not make out where they were coming from. This was not a common place for robbers? Suddenly a door in the side gallery creaked open, and the clear silhouette of Judge Bao appeared three paces from him. Pei immediately threw himself to the ground crying “My Lord, we were just coming to see you. Please do not harm me!”“My dear stranger, please get up!” Judge Bao exclaimed. “I am not here on your account”. Pei looked up with surprise, then he slowly rose to his feet, brushed dust from his clothes and glanced furtively at the Judge.“I am here to buy food from the stalls, just like everyone else,” he said and smiled. “But now that you have admitted that you have something I need to hear, you might as well tell me what that might be.” So it was that Pei recounted what he knew to Judge Bao.
Ying’er was nowhere to be seen when Wang opened the door. He headed straight for her closet, throwing all her garments to the floor, even her fine red silk scarf. At last he found the wrinkled piece of paper, but when he unfolded it the calligrapher’s strokes had vanished , leaving only solitary ink stain in one corner. There was no more evidence and no case to be made, and Wang sank down in a chair.
Daylight was fading outside, small gleaming stars penetrated the darkening blue above. Suddenly he heard the sound of a horse. It neighed, and out front and man’s voice shouted: “Wang Xing you are hereby summed by the Lord Bao to appear before his court. Bring your evidence and follow!”
Wang grabbed the blank paper, and followed the trotting horse of the stern sword carrying official down the road, across the bridge, through the city streets- all the way to the court house. Before he knew it he had been lead down several corridors and a great metal door had closed behind him. He was in a darkened hall, only lit by flickering oil lamps along the walls. In the middle stood Judge Bao.
“My envoy has informed me that you collected a piece of paper in the Yue Temple”, the judge said, “I wish to see it”. Wang bowed as respectfully as he could and said “My wife burned incense at the Yue Temple last year, my Lord. As she passed by an office, a spirit showed himself and delivered this written message. “I am sorry, My Lord, but the message seems to have vanished”
Judge Bao carefully examined the paper and then directed his penetrating eyes at Wang.“Wang Xing, I’m asking you,” the Judge said, “did that spirit give any instructions to your wife along with this piece of paper?” “The Shinto only instructed her to seek justice,” Wang replied. Judge Bao became angry and said, “Nonsense! No Shinto priest would ask such a thing? Shouldn’t she be the one granting justice instead? This is an absurd story! Who do you think you can fool?” Wang quickly knelt down and said, “My lord, I will explain.” “Your story does not make sense,” Judge Bao said, “If your explanation is reasonable, you will be rewarded; otherwise, you’ll be in trouble.” “My wife used to serve under Magistrate Sun’s family,” Wang began, “and her name is Ying’er. She heard an astrologer predict that Magistrate Sun would die at the age of fifty-three during the third watch of a certain year and month. When it happened as predicted, the magistrate’s wife remarried to the current Magistrate Sun and married off Ying’er to me. When Ying’er was working in the magistrate’s house, she saw the former magistrate appear twice. The first time, he was hanging on a well fence, disheveled, with his tongue sticking out and blood in his eyes. He said, ‘Ying’er, help me decide.’ The second time, near Magistrate Sun’s house, she met the former magistrate again, who gave her a bag of silver. The third time, at the Yue Temple, a mysterious shinto priest appeared and gave her this paper, instructing her to seek justice. The appearance of the judge was exactly like that of Magistrate Sun, who was formerly her guardian.”
“I see!“ Judge Bao said with a sardonic smile. “Bring me the second magistrate Sun and his wife. Now!” His subordinates lowered their gazes and did as instructed.
“You two have done a fine job! Well executed,” Judge Bao said mockingly as they were brought before him.“We have done nothing wrong,” Magistrate Sun replied.Judge Bao then lifted his scroll, looked at them with doubt and pronounced the following solution to the unsolvable riddle:
“‘This text speaks of two magistrates, you and your predecessor. It also hints at your marriage to his widow. And even specifies the time of your predecessor’s death, and the rewards lavished upon you by such good fortune. But more than this, the spirit claims that you keep him prisoner below boiling water. We all know what what your maid saw: the dangling corpse with bleeding eyes and protruding tongue ….and fluttering white locks. In my experience this is the face of a strangled man. Finally, the ghost mentions the time of my arrival and these very words now spoken to you.”
The widow sighed.
“Take Magistrate Sun and his wife to their house”, Judge Bao ordered. “Search that stove and kitchen from end to end. Every spirit must be free to join its ancestors!”
The small crowd looked at each other with doubting eyes and muttered. However, they all obeyed without question, and wife and husband were brought to their own home. There they stood silent while men scoured the kitchen. Even the great stove was moved to one side. Immediately, a hidden stone slab appeared, and beneath it they found a well with cold and murky water. The well was then drained, and a bamboo basket was lowered. From that moist and dark cavity a rotting corpse was then retrieved. It was the old Magistrate, and there was evidence of strangulation. The widow and her new husband turned pale and mute. The onlookers were shocked.
As it turned out, the younger Magistrate Sun had initially been a man who been saved from the cold during a heavy snowstorm. After restoring him to health, the elder magistrate had taken him in, educated him, and taught him to read and write. However, the young man later had an affair with Magistrate Sun’s wife. On the day a diviner predicted the death of the elder Magistrate Sun, the old man had discovered the truth.
Fearing exposure, the younger magistrate got his rival drunk and strangled him to death, hiding the body in the well. The couple then staged a suicide using the maid as a witness. Thus the rumor of a personal tragedy was spread, an old magistrate had drowned himself. Later, his young rival returned and moved the stove to cover the well. A marriage was then arranged. No-one would have suspected, unless the elder Magistrate’s spirit, tormented by the lack of a proper burial, had made three visits to the maid, Ying’er.
This case helped spread the reputation of Judge Bao far and wide. To this day, people speak of Bao Longtu, who solves riddles from this world and the other. As you can hear in the following poem:
In a calligrapher’s elegant riddle we find,Judge Bao tracing your footsteps in his mind.If the deed is done, you must be ware,His scarred spirit will be arriving here.
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literatureMorocco is a land of contrasts, with scenery ranging from the most beautiful mountain valleys to deserts and sprawling metropolitan areas. It is also a land of unequal wealth, a gap between the rich and the poor- prostitution and crime. Yet, while the arab world has been in turmoil, Morocco has remained fairly stable. It is perhaps not so strange then that the country is the center of an unlikely arabic revival: the police procedural. We talked with the founder of the arab noir genre, Abdelilah Hamdouchi, and we followed the literary traces of his hero, detective Hannach, through some distinctly Moroccan alleyways.
Historyradio.org: Tell us a little about your background. When and how did you decide to become a crime writer?
Abdelilah Hamdouchi: When I decided to write my first crime novel in late 90s, Morocco had just started a new political experience under the banner “A Government of Change”. This change followed a general amnesty for all political prisoners. Also, some democratic practices began to take hold in the running of the state and society, to the extent that a former convict and exiled leftist became head of the government.
In those days, I had penned novels about social affairs, but no one took notice of these writings. So I decided to try the crime novel, even if I only was familiar with Agatha Christie in this niche.
Historyradio.org: A while back I heard a theory that no crime novel could exist in a non-democratic country, simply because the citizens in dictatorships didn’t trust the police? Yet, your Moroccan police procedurals show otherwise? Do Moroccans trust the police?
Abdelilah Hamdouchi: This is relatively true, the crime novel finds its space in democratic countries; or human rights and the law. Russia, for example, never knew this kind of literature during the Soviet era, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and the Francoist Spain neither, and the first crime novel in Spain was written after the death of dictator Franco in Spain in 1974. This can be said of dictatorships in Africa and in Latin America. But, of course, it does not prevent exceptions from emerging, like the author Leonardo Padura, who wrote the crime novels in Cuba.
My country, Morocco, is a special case in the sense that we have always lived under a regime that adapts by drawing red lines not to cross, including the kingship, the territorial unit and the Moslem religion, Malekite. If someone goes beyond these red lines, he is overtaken by the law. Otherwise everything is subject to opinions and criticisms freely.
Historyradio.org: When did Moroccans begin reading crime fiction, and what sort of crime fiction do they prefer?
Abdelilah Hamdouchi: My experience is unique and even avant-garde in Arab culture. In part, this has left me with almost a feeling of rush to be translated into English and other languages. The Hoopoe Publishing House has commissioned me for a series of Moroccan thrillers whose hero is a certain Hannach.
The crime novel is almost absent in our literature and Moroccan cultures in particular and Arabs in general. Even translations are limited to Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle.
Historyradio.org: They say many Italian police procedurals have open endings or let the bad guy get away because they reflect public expectations of corruption and incompetence in the police force? Is there a similar tradition in Morocco?
Abdelilah Hamdouchi: We must not forget that Italy is the country of the Mafia and organized crime. The majority of the crimes in Morocco are of individual nature or connected to family affairs, and the motives are often money-related or sentimental. Organized crime, like in Italy, is almost absent. It is true that Moroccans are part of mafia organizations, but the majority of crimes are individual.
Historyradio.org: What sort of hero is Detective Hannach? How does he compare with let’s say Mankell’s Wallander? Does he drink? Is he flawed in any way?
Abdelilah Hamdouchi: Hannach is fond of life: he loves beautiful women and has experienced both good and bad times, against a backdrop of corruption, he has a good heart.
Historyradio.org: How does he go about solving his crimes, does he have a method or does he just stumble his way towards a solution in the manner of Philip Marlowe?
Abdelilah Hamdouchi: First, he has a proper background. He worked in the narcotics brigade in Tangier and built a career. He then joined the criminal brigade in Casablanca, where his experience with the drug squad helped him in his new mission, especially since he is intelligent and organizes his teams with professionalism. Before solving the crime, he asks all his colleagues their opinion.
Historyradio.org: What about yourself, how do you write your novels? Do you write on instinct or do you outline the plot in advance?
Abdelilah Hamdouchi: In general, before I start writing, I have a pretty clear idea of my subject. I am inspired by various facts; to put my writing technique at the service of the crime novel with everything that leaves the reader in the pleasure of reading.
Historyradio.org: Do you have any literary role models, writers who inspired you when you started writing?
Abdelilah Hamdouchi: In principle I have no model, I read a lot, literature, crime novels, other than that I admire the clear and transparent style of Paul Auster. Also I much admire Henning Mankell.
Historyradio.org: You were among the first to write modern police procedurals in your country. Have you met with any difficulties? How were your first novels received?
Abdelilah Hamdouchi: My first crime novel was about the world of Hashish, and lower-ranking police officers who made a considerable effort to dismantle the traffic, and who see their effort in the water following the interventions of the officers. The purpose of this crime novel was to convey a certain message. This first noir was well received, both commercially and critically, which resulted in the making of a TV movie.
Historyradio.org: According to Al Jazeera, Maurice Leblanc’s golden age rogue, Arsene Lupin, is popular in the arab world. Would you say that the cozy 1920’s crime puzzle still fascinates Moroccans?
Abdelilah Hamdouchi: I’m not so sure about Al Jazeera Television’s conclusions, but the Arab reader does not consume a lot of crime novels, due to a lack of available translations.
Historyradio.org: Apart from yourself, are there other major crime writers in Morocco?
Abdelilah Hamdouchi: Yes, there is another author who writes in French, and who (coincidentally) has the same surname as me, Miloudi Hamdouchi. He was a very popular detective writer in the 90s and was known as “Colombo” in the popular press.
You can buy 3 of Hamdouchi’s latest thrillers at Amazon.
Whitefly (2016)
The Final Bet (2016)
Bled Dry (2017)
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short storyBy Margie Harris, Mobs magazine 1930(Courtesy of John Locke. His collection of her stories is available from Amazon)
A mystery night club queen, with a look of death in her eyes and a little black book filled with names . . . a steadily shorter list!
eattle, Queen City of the Northwest, gleaming like a great, white jewel on rising ground overlooking Elliott Bay, is a city beautiful. There roses bloom the year around. There men and women live and love and die, far from the tenements and slums of the great Eastern cities.But in Seattle lies hidden one canker spot. It is the district below Yesler Way, which is the sole blot on the city’s fair escutcheon. There is to be found the last remaining trace of those other days when lumberjacks from the woods and miners from Alaska came whooping forth with gold-filled hands, demanding of Life those things of which they had been deprived.“Below Yesler” is evil, and of all the evil things within its purlieus, none is more depraved, more terrible in the minds of the decent and law-abiding than the underworld cabaret and speakeasy operated for nearly two decades by “Scar” Argyle. There gathered waterfront thugs, gangsters, racketeers, gunmen.Most fearsome of all, to the uninitiated, was its proprietor. His face was thoroughly repulsive. A great red seam led from the stiff hair above his left temple and down across the bridge of his nose. It ended at the right jawbone after creasing the cheek deeply. In healing it had drawn the flesh so that the mouth seemed cast in a permanent sneer. The right eye was so affected that half of the lower eyelid turned down, gleaming redly.That was Scar’s reminder that he once had double-crossed “Nigger George,” a piano player. True, Scar had seen to it that there was an early funeral in George’s personal social circle, but the razor slash had put a permanent end to whatever was delightful, either in countenance or disposition, of Argyle. Now he was a leering, gross mountain of fat. For hours he would sit, seemingly without movement, his piggish black eyes searching, always searching for new methods of vile profit.
On a bright afternoon in March, Scar sat cursing his luck, his failing patronage and most of all the police of his precinct. Their increasing demands for graft and favors bade fair to turn his once prosperous business into a losing venture.Only that day he had received a shipment of liquor and had paid his “delivery charge” to the policeman on the beat without demur. Later he had sent to the precinct captain the usual weekly payment for protection. Now, within the last four hours, four sergeants had slipped in to see him.One had compelled him to buy four tickets for a police ball. The next had asked for two quarts of prime liquor “for the lieutenant.” Number Three asked for a couple of drinks and then borrowed five dollars.The fourth brought the crowning blow. With him came a stranger—a supposed friend. Scar had been bullied into cashing a twenty dollar check for this man. He tore it up after they left. Too many such had bounced back from his bank. Truly the lot of an underworld cabaret owner was trouble filled.The side door bell rang as Scar cogitated on his woes, and the doorman turned to say:“Lady to see youse, Scar. Good looker!”“Hell, let her in!” Scar almost spat the words. “Probably a hen cop with another touch; they’re all that have overlooked me this week.”His eyes brightened, however, as a modishly gowned, athletic appearing girl stepped through the door and looked unconcernedly about her. Few such had been there since the days of the gold rush. When her eyes encountered his, Scar beckoned. She walked to the table and took a place opposite him.“Pat Jennings told me to see you,” she said confidentially. “My name is Kate Dever. I’m on the lam from New York—witness in a gang killing, which means a year in the sticks for me. Jennings says you need a hostess to pep up your game; I need a job. Also I know my stuff, Big Boy, and the jack I can make for you will be nobody’s business. I’ll have to do it in my own way, though; no buttinskys.”As Argyle stared suspiciously at her, the girl dropped her coat from her shoulders and removed a close-fitting hat. Scar’s eyes lighted as a throat and shoulders a Diana might have envied, were revealed. He grunted in renewed admiration as the dim lights outlined a beautiful, resolute face and a frame of dark-red hair, well kept and bobbed in the latest mode.“Hell, kid,” Scar burst forth breathlessly. “Sure! You’re fixed fer life.”The tone, the gleam in his eyes, made his meaning all too clear. Kate Dever did not seek to evade his burning glance.“Yes?” she queried coldly. “You wouldn’t kid a little girl, would you, Scar? You think you want me? Then come and take me.”The man lurched to his feet with a speed surprising in one of his bulk and clawed at her in an awkward attempt to draw her into his arms. One hand fixed itself on her shoulder. Before he could do more, she sprang up, thrusting with both hands against his chest.Scar stumbled backward a step and the girl slipped out from behind the table. In her hand, seemingly juggled out of thin air, was a gleaming Spanish dagger, needle-pointed and with a blade almost paper thin. Scar eyed the knife; noted that it was held in the thrusting position—and that the point was aimed directly at his stomach. His arms dropped to his side in token of surrender.“What th’ hell do you think—?” he began thickly.Kate, smiling now, resumed her seat.“Oh, sit down, stupid,” she said quietly. “Sit down and buy me a drink. You had to learn it some time—and right at first is the best time. Remember this hereafter. I’m no man’s woman. Any man who puts his hands on me gets hurt. I know how to take care of myself morning, noon and night—also vacations. Now how about the job?”Scar had signaled for a waiter, who brought whiskey. Scar gulped down a huge portion. Kate poured a few drops in a glass with ginger ale and tossed it off.“My first and last drink in your place,” she said. “If I work here I’m served tea for whiskey, distilled water for gin and sparkling cider instead of what you call champagne. And Lord help the waiter who brings me anything else!”
Here was a new type to Scar. A beautiful woman who dared to come to his own joint and flout him when the odds were all his way, would be an asset. He visioned the returning trade when the word went out through the underworld that the Argyle Club had a new hostess who could not be “made.”“You’ve got the job,” he said decisively. “Seventy-five a week and a piece of the profits over the first thousand. That’s about what I’m doin’ now.”“Big-hearted Scar!” Kate mocked him. “Hundred a week, five per cent of the gross—and I start tonight.”About to protest, Scar thought better of it and extended his hand for the underworld shake of acceptance. Instead, Kate turned sidewise, circled his arm with her left, caught the knuckles of his fist with her right and bent the member downward. Scar grinned. It was the gangster method of making the sucker loosen up from whatever he held.“Know your grapes, don’t you?” he chuckled. “Well, I’ve loosened for a yard and five per cent a week, so be here at eight. Wanna little advance?”Kate opened her purse and smiled. A wad of yellow-backed bills had been thrust in there loosely.“No, thanks,” she replied sweetly. “A nice old gentleman on the train attended to that for you. Somehow he got off at the next station; the conductor put him off. He tried to get into my berth.”“Onto all the games, hey?” Scar queried. “Now, what’s your deal?”“What are you using?” she countered, looking about at the small stage and the orchestra stand.“Pretty fair nigger string band, six dancin’ girls who double as drink grafters and cigarette girls, an’ a good boy hoofer. You sing, kid?”“Nor dance,” Kate replied. “I work from the floor; out where the money jingles and the saps need encouraging. Leave it to me, Big Fellow, and don’t mind later on if I make some changes.”Scar nodded perplexedly.“It’s O.K. by me, girlie,” he replied, “but leave Little Laura on th’ job if you can. She’s a good little guy—kinda fond of me. And by the way, kid, what’s your moniker? Got one?”Kate looked him squarely in the eye and said:“They call me ‘Cougar Kitty’—better let that spread around a little.”“She mountain lion, huh?” Scar mused. “Damn if they ain’t right.”
Midnight in Scar’s cabaret was merely breakfast time in Gangland.Kate, resplendent in a gold sequin gown which cast forth points of light in every direction as she moved, sat chatting with Scar at a table near the orchestra. With them, snuggled close against the proprietor’s bulk, was the cigarette girl, Little Laura. She was a big-eyed, wistful child woman of the clinging type, but except when she looked at Scar, there was a hard little glitter in her eyes.Scar had said she was “kinda fond” of him. Strangely enough, Kate reflected, there seemed reason for the statement. Between the big-eyed girl and the gross flesh-mountain of villainy there existed some bond. When he spoke to the girl, Scar’s tone was gentle and as nearly affable as it could be. Laura was serious in her talk with him and actually seemed to enjoy his elephantine pawings.The grapevine telegraph of the underworld had carried the news of Scar’s new attraction. Already the tables had filled with a swaggering crew of gangsters, sleek haired, gorgeously dressed young gunmen, and here and there older men—cold of eye, and each seemingly determined to sit so as to face the door.Many brought their molls and, because a thug’s standing is measured by the appearance of his woman, they made a brave showing of costly garments and gleaming jewels. Only those older men, the square jawed poachers in the Land of Rackets, were alone. They hunted among the ranks of the hostesses and entertainers.Presently Kate caught Scar’s eye and nodded. He had his orders and when he lumbered to his feet and stopped the music, everyone became quiet.Scar was about to make a speech! Usually he contented himself with howling, profane comments from his chair by the orchestra.“Listen, guys and molls,” he rumbled. “Seattle ain’t so big as Noo York, but she’s just as lively, and when it comes to givin’ you the best in ent’tainment, Scar Argyle’s the boy to do it. From now on, the Argyle Club’s the live spot here. And I now takes pleasure in int’ducin’ to you Miss Kate Dever—knowed mostly as ‘Cougar Kitty,’ our new hostess.”Kate, self-possessed as her namesake in the home nest, walked to a place beside him and smiled brightly. Prolonged hand-clapping and a few cheers greeted her.“I am glad to be here,” she said, “and I want one and all of you for my best pals. Scar Argyle has given me the right to do what I please for your entertainment. The word hereafter is ‘Go as far as you like, as fast as you like, so long as you keep fairly quiet—and so long as you don’t get fresh with the new hostess.’ ”New applause burst forth and Kate nodded to the orchestra. Instantly a mad, jazzing dance number flared forth. Some derisive laughs had greeted Kate’s reference to herself and some of the bolder of the young cannons left their tables to gather around her.Scar was watching, fascinated. Kate dismissed the pleas of dance partners one by one, until Speedball Kane, a leader among the gunmen and handsome in a wild, boyish fashion, clasped her about the waist. He fell into a dance step and tugged. The smile never left her face.
Suddenly her hands came up apparently to hold him off, but instead they caught both of his shoulders firmly. At the same moment she stepped forward with the speed of a striking reptile. She thrust her toe back of his left heel, then pushed him backward with all her surprising strength.Though he was a rough-and-tumble fighter trained on the docks, Speedball had not expected the reverse back-heel from a handsomely gowned night hostess. The backward thrust was too powerful, the fulcrum supplied by her foot too far below his center of balance to be resisted.The gangster crashed to the floor on his shoulders. A split-second later his head collided with the maple with a resounding thump. A roar of laughter followed. It stilled a few seconds later when the young tough failed to rise. Two of his friends moved toward him.“Leave him there,” Kate commanded coldly. “I want him to come to there so he’ll realize that he’s to keep his hands off me in future. I’m no better than he is—but I’m as good—and when I want a man’s hands on me, I’ll ask him to put them there.”Speedball stirred, blinked, dragged himself to his knees. Then his glance swept upward and encountered the gleeful eyes of Cougar Kitty. He shook his head and looked about. On every hand he saw the awe-stricken eyes of his friends. Instantly a dull red suffused his face. He gathered his muscles for a leap at the mocking girl before him.“Damn you—” he began. Then the words choked in his throat and his eyes went wide with surprise.Kate’s right hand was extended toward him. A dull ring of blued steel peeped out between her second and third fingers; the whole hand was tightening on something within her palm. Too well Speed knew what that meant.For Cougar Kitty was holding in her plump, beringed hand one of the dwarfed, vicious little plunger guns of Gangland. It was a mere ring of metal extending out of a firing chamber, back of which was a trip plunger which released the pin against a solitary bullet of heavy caliber.Speed could be forgiven for pausing. The one-inch barrel was trained directly on his forehead. A child could not miss at that distance. The crook teetered on his feet uncertainly. Then a girl’s voice cut the silence:“Slap the broad down, Speed,” it said. “Don’t spoil a good notion.”Kate smiled bleakly and waved Speed back to his place. Then came a muffled roar and gray smoke curled from between her fingers.She had fired the weapon into the floor as the best means of squaring Speedball against later accusations of cowardice. Everyone leaped up; all had some question to ask.Kate held the still smoking weapon above her head.“Sorry, boys and girls,” she said. “I hate to pull off rough stuff on our first evening together—but I had him covered—plenty. I had to let you know I meant it when I said: ‘Don’t get fresh with the new hostess.’ All right? Well, let’s play again.”She motioned to the goggling bandsmen to continue playing. Then, under cover of the opening notes, she walked straight to where Speedball was struggling into his light overcoat. He felt alone, disgraced in the eyes of the other gangsters and their molls. The red of shame colored his face, but about his mouth was the deadly white line which marks the killing rage in man.
Everyone was watching openly. Kate moved as one who has decided on a definite course. Speed jerked his coat into place and clapped his hat down over his eyes. She was at his side now, hand extended.“Sit down, Speed,” she said in a tone intended for his ears alone. “If you go out now, you’ll leave these others laughing. Be nice and I’ll make it all jake for us both. Now shake hands like a sport and tell me it’s all right—even if you did start it.”Speed took her hand, shook it heartily and grinned. Too well he knew it was his only course. Unless there was more to add to the story, Gangland would be yelping taunts at him for months to come. Maybe, he reflected, he could turn the tables on this wise broad from New York if he was crafty.“I’m game; speak your piece,” he half whispered. “But don’t figure to start nothin’ more.”“Be your age,” she replied. “Now, listen, Speed, I’m starting a new racket here and I need at least one friend on whom I can depend. You made me tangle with you before your friends, but I didn’t ask you to. Now, we can be the best of friends, and at the same time I’ll show you how to get yourself some good out of it.“I’ve heard about you. They call you ‘Speedball’ because you drive the stickups and hijackers away so far and so fast, they have to wait ten minutes before they start to make an alibi. What?”Such tribute to his unerring efficiency at the wheel of a getaway car caused the young gangster to flush happily. Maybe here was a woman worth hanging about after.“No,” Kate went on as though reading his thoughts, “you don’t mean any more to me than any other man, but if you wish, I’ll let you be my Number One Pal. We’ll play around together and sometimes you can take me home—as far as the door.“What I want of you is to keep them off my back if things get rough—nothing more. If the others see us palling around together we’ll be accused of having fallen for one another. Now, say it. Want to play, or will you put on the funny hat and coat and go out and get yourself laughed at? First and last chance, boy.”“Sure, Kitty, I’ll play,” he answered, “just to square myself.”“Speedball and I are all made up ‘n’ everything,” Kate announced to the watching crowd. “And now I want you all to walk past here in line and shake hands with us both. Then we’ll all be the best kind of pals. Scar will buy a drink for the house, and I’ll show you the latest New York racket.”She was exerting herself now, putting into her simple little speech and almost childish plan of personal contact with each, all of the hard won personality she possessed. She let her eyes flicker toward Scar. He sat there, a contented mountain of evil, literally drooling over the manner in which she was earning the attention of his patrons.
The idea struck the gangsters and their molls favorably. There was an instant rush to get into line. Speed fell into place beside Kate as the orchestra struck up a slow drag march. The head of the line moved forward. Kate had a bright smile, a word, a nod for each. One plump patron found himself being prodded in the ribs. Another laughed when Kate flicked his tie from under his vest. One pretty girl simpered when Kate whispered: “Gosh, kid! I’m jealous of you—you’re so darn lovely.”Scar came to his feet as the last of the line passed and bellowed for the drinks. Kate held up her hand for silence.“Wait, please,” she said. “Will the tall gentleman in dinner clothes, the one at the last table—you, handsome—; the girl with the black hair and the red dress; the man who left his hair at home but wore a horseshoe pin in his tie—and you, Mister Red Necktie—all please come forward?”The four responded somewhat sheepishly.“I want you to search my new pal, Speedball,” Kate said smilingly. “I think he’s turned dip. Look in his left, outside pocket.”Speedball did not wait to be searched. He felt in the pocket himself and gaspingly brought forth a watch, attached to which was a fine chain and gold key; a gold mesh coin purse wrapped in a handkerchief, a diamond stickpin and a thin, but costly, cigarette case.The crowd roared with laughter at Speed’s consternation. No other group could appreciate better what had happened. None had even a remote suspicion of the youth. He was a known gunman and gangster, and as such, he looked down on the dip as dips in turn look down on doormat thieves.Kate waited until there was a measure of silence.“That’s one of the New York night club tricks,” Kate laughed as she restored the property to its owners. They get you all hot and bothered over something that’s happening and then the waiters and house dips put the vacuum to you. One man swore somebody’d stolen his underwear while he waited to kiss a toe dancer whose number he’d drawn in a lottery!”“What a dame,” someone croaked admiringly. “She’s oke for me,” another chimed in. For minutes the place buzzed with admiration for Kate’s deftness. Scar bought for the house. The two losers of property would not be outdone in generosity and the girl in red, whose coin purse was restored, argued her boy friend into loosening up as well.It was daylight when the last patron left. That was Speedball, who had waited for Kate. She dismissed him with a shake of her head.“See you tonight, pal,” she said. “And wear your rod.”When Scar counted up, he found a take for the night of $900.Cougar Kitty was an established institution in Seattle’s underworld.As she walked to the corner of First Avenue to catch a cab, Kate noticed one of the waiters slipping from door to door behind her. As she entered the taxi, she saw him sprint forward and flag down another.“Drive around for half an hour,” she told the driver. He nodded joyously at such luck at the beginning of his day’s work. Kate, sitting in the center of the rear seat, used her compact mirror to watch the street behind her. She was not mistaken, the other car was dawdling along half a block behind her.“Keep ahead and when you get a chance pretend to try to lose a cab that’s following us,” Kate told the driver, putting a folded bill into his hand. “Then when you get a chance, make him pass you and cut him off at the curb. I want to talk to his passenger.”The driver looked at the bill and smiled knowingly. “I’ll have him in two blocks,” he said.At the next corner he slipped along the right hand curb until traffic changed for east-and-west travel. Then he meshed his gears and swung right up the hill to Second Avenue, going at a furious pace in low gear.At First Avenue he turned south again and stopped with a shrieking of brakes just past the building line. In a few moments the other cab charged up the hill and turned right also.“Get him!” Kate commanded. Her driver swung wide from the curb, ran even with the other cab and forced it slowly but surely against the curbing despite the other driver’s shrill curses and the sounds of his horn.A policeman ran up. “Here!” he demanded. “What’s goin’ on?”Kate opened the cab door and smiled at the officer.“The man in the other cab has been following me all over town,” she said, “and I wish to prefer a charge against him, if you please, officer.”The policeman dragged the luckless waiter from the cab by his collar.“Tell me about it,” he demanded of Kate.“He works at Scar Argyle’s,” she replied. “I was there for awhile and when I left this fellow got in another cab and followed me.”But great was the power of Scar in policedom.“I wouldn’t do that, lady,” the officer replied. “You go on about your business and I’ll keep this baby here. If you have him pinched, you got to go to court.”“All right, officer—and thanks,” Kate said as her cab moved off.
It was late afternoon when Kate emerged from her tiny apartment in a huge building on the shores of Lake Union to go abroad again in a taxicab.Her first stop was at the office of The Hour, greatest of the city’s newspapers. Largess properly distributed to a reception clerk and office boy bought her way into the paper’s morgue of photographs and clippings.A chubby, partly deaf statistician was in charge. His sole desire seemed to be to prevent any intrusion into his domain. A five dollar bill again wrought wonders and soon Kate was deep in a huge envelope of clippings out of the “H” file.When she departed, the attendant also dumped out the clippings and studied them.“Humph!” he grunted. “Now I wonder?”From the newspaper office she drove to a tall building given over to plastic surgeons, beauticians and hair dressers. One of the latter “touched up” the roots of her dark-red hair. A dermatologist on the floor above injected a white liquid under her skin at the temple, massaged it, and said:“Lay a good cold-cream base under the powder. When you are ready I will radium-peel your face and we’ll hide that scar entirely.”“Thanks, doctor,” she replied. “But I’m a busy girl now.”Dinner at one of the better cafés, a picture show afterward and then Kate took a cab to the Argyle Club where she found a deferential corps of barmen and waiters ready to extend her a grinning welcome. Also she found the place well filled. Her name and fame had spread rapidly among the cannons and molls of South of Yesler.Scar too waved a warm welcome. She walked to his side in response to a beckoning finger.“Where you livin’, kid?” he demanded. “It’s a police regulation, you know.” He produced a soiled memorandum book and a stub of pencil expectantly.“Find out like you tried to this morning,” Kate jeered, but she softened the taunt with an amused smile.“That’s a bet!” Scar replied. “Think I can’t, huh?” He was in nowise disconcerted.“Not by using a waiter for a gumshoe, anyway,” Kate replied, seating herself at his table. “What did it cost you to get him loose?”“Crook of me finger,” Scar jeered in turn. “The bulls don’t want none of my boys.”“Right, Scar. Now tell me, how did you like my stuff last night? Shall I keep it up?”“That’s what I hired you for.” Scar was becoming wary now.“Then we’ll have a novelty night once each week, beginning tonight. You know what I mean? Funny light flashes, contests with everybody doing goofy things like they do at highbrow parties? Get everybody into it and the losers have to buy. Get the idea?”“The dump’s yours from now to closin’ time. Take it apart if you want to.”Kate rose, smoothed down her skirt, and said casually.“By the way, I ordered a regular stage electrician to be here at 11 o’clock to handle the lights. He’s bringing a dimmer; the rest we’ll do with the master switch.”“Bring two,” said Scar grandly, “or three—if he’s triplets. Keep on getting in the jack and you can hire the devil himself.”“No need, Scar old thing,” Kate laughed. “He’s here already—and wearing your union suit.”Scar grunted happily, the nearest to a laugh of which he was capable.“Wrong,” he said. “Mine’s two-piece.”
Meanwhile Kate was going from table to table, welcoming the friends of the night before and newcomers, attracted by the news of the tiger-girl hostess at the Argyle Club.The bleak-faced victim of the pocket-picking episode of the previous night was back at his usual table in a corner across from the orchestra and not more than three feet distant from Scar’s customary seat. As Kate stopped before him, he stared at her searchingly.“Did I ever see you before?” he asked suddenly.“Surely you did,” she laughed. “I’m King Tut’s daughter. Remember how you used to hold my hand under the purple Egyptian skies—or what have you?”“Can the jokes,” the man snapped. “I’m serious.”“Oh-h-h!” Kate said derisively, “so, Mister Kinney, racketeer-in-chief and Big Fixer mustn’t be kidded by a night club hostess.”“Drop it!” the man snarled. “Forget that name here. It’s ‘Hanson’ now. What the— Say, did you know me in Detroit?” With the question he snatched at her wrist, his fingers pinching deep into her flesh.The girl did not reply, nor did she wince. Instead she leaned slightly forward, bringing her sneering, ice hard glance on a level with his own.“All right, Kinney-Hanson,” she said, and there was a deadly chill in her tones. “Don’t move that other hand. I can get you before you ever could touch your gun—and believe me, it’ll be one big pleasure to do it.”Hanson’s hard eyes searched hers angrily. The smile clung to her lips but he recognized the basilisk expression of the natural killer seeking the slightest excuse to slay. Yet he held to her wrist, trying to probe her mind—to find some reason for such bitter hatred from the mere touch of his hand.“Let go!” Kate rapped the words out venomously. “I said last night that nobody is permitted to touch me. If I let you get away with it, then I’m sunk here.” Then, in a louder tone for the benefit of those nearby, she said airily:“Unhand me, vill-yun—and when are you going to buy a drink?”Hanson’s steely fingers relaxed. He gestured to a seat across the table.“You’re a nice, pleasant little thing,” he said sarcastically, “but tell me what you want to drink—and all about Detroit.”“Champagne,” Kate replied with a disarming smile. “Detroit? No, I don’t know much about things there. A girl friend of mine was married to a boy named Wilbur Bealey—‘Wib the Gun,’ they called him. He was mixed up in a booze running gang, and soon after I left there he was killed. Someone said his own gang finished him.”“Know him pretty well?” Hanson demanded.“Oh, in a way,” Kate replied nonchalantly. “Daisy, his wife, was an old sidekick of mine, but Wib was away most of the time when I was visiting her.”“Who else did you know there?” Hanson continued.“Let me see—why, you were there! I saw you out at a Grosse Pointe roadhouse the night Merrill Orrum, the criminal lawyer, was killed.”Hanson’s eyes were pinpoint lights of green now, but his poker face did not change. Quietly he produced a cigarette and lighted it. Kate noted that the hand which held the ornate gold lighter did not tremble.He let a thin cloud of smoke drift from his mouth and Kate felt his eyes studying her critically. Her expression was bored, a trifle uninterested.“Ah yes, Merrill Orrum,” he said musingly. “I’d forgotten his name. And by the way”—he almost hissed the words—“how does it happen that you, a stranger, remember it? That was a whole year ago.”“Oh, I don’t know,” she shrugged her shoulders as though tired of the subject. “Probably it was because it was an unusual name and the papers said they—the other mobsmen—called him ‘Mary Lorum’ for a nickname, sort of a pun name. Things like that stick in one’s mind, don’t you think so?”“Not so you’d notice it,” Hanson replied quickly. “You haven’t told me all of it. Damn it, you remind me of someone—”“Some dizzy blonde from over the river in Windsor probably,” Kate suggested teasingly. Hanson’s eyes narrowed to mere slits.“Blonde!” he said explosively. “What do you know about a blonde in Detroit?”Kate laughed merrily.“Listen, Big Boy,” she replied, “What I know about all Detroit blondes is plenty. Did poor, little Hansy-Hanson get all mixed up with a fuzzy yellow-head?”Hanson flared up again at the derisive note in her voice.“Hell with her!” he growled. “I fixed her up good and plenty; don’t worry. But it’s you I’m wondering about. What’re you holding out on me?”“What would you give to know?”“Nothing or a lot; I don’t know which. I’ve got a hunch about you, Miss Cougar Kitty whatsyourname, and the first thing you know I’ll be calling the turn on you. Don’t figure me for a dumbbell.”“Do your prettiest, Big Boy,” she replied as she rose. “And if you guess right—you’ll have something coming to you. I said—‘you’ll have something coming to you’!”She accented each of the drawled words. Hanson caught a note of menace in her voice; frowned as he watched her retreating form and sought for the answer to the riddle.He motioned to Scar to come over.“Where’d you get that damned twist?” he said in a low tone. “She just called the turn on me in Detroit—cracked about ‘Wib the Gun,’ and that lousy mouthpiece, Orrum.”Scar grinned knowingly.“She’s a wise head,” he husked. “Doin’ all right here and maybe’ll stand a little watchin’. If she gets flossy she’ll go for a ride—but I ain’t worryin’ none about her. Don’t you, neither.”Further conversation ended with the entrance of Speedball Kane.“Whoopee!” Kate sang out. “Solomon in all his glory! Lookit the boy friend!”Speed was attired in his first dinner clothes. His broad shoulders filled the pinch waisted coat perfectly. He had been shaved, pomaded and massaged into the condition of pink shininess which in Gangland is accepted as perfection.It is true that he hitched once at the harness of his shoulder holster, but in Argyle Club circles that meant no more than button-fiddling meant in the higher walks of life.“Everybody give the dressed-up boy friend a hand!” Kate demanded. The guests obliged. “Boy friend and I will buy a drink now.” She continued. There was more applause. Kate drew Speed to a place near the orchestra.“Speed is to be associate master of ceremonies tonight,” she continued. “So I told him to bring his rod. His job is to see that everybody does just what I tell them to. We’re going to raise hell tonight and put a chunk under it, but we can’t do it unless everybody helps. The first number will be a button busting contest, with Scar Argyle leading off.”“Huh?” Scar grunted in amazement. “Run your own damn show.”“Burn him down, Speed, if he don’t mind,” Kate laughed. “Oh come on, chief, it’s easy. Draw a big breath, lean against the inside of the old vest and see what happens. Snap into it, dearie, take a big breath and do your stuff.”
Scar’s mind dealt largely in cash-register terms. Kate had said the loser would buy the drinks. Very well, then, the idea was for him not to lose.Slowly he inflated his huge chest. His cheeks began to purple as he set his muscles and began to expand. Quickly the vast mountain of fat and muscle pressed outward. An audible “pop” followed and a button tinkled on a glass table top across the room.“One!” cheered Kate. As she spoke there were three other “pops.” “Two, three, four!” she counted. “Don’t anybody wisecrack. If Scar laughs now he’ll undress himself.” The final button held but tore its way through the buttonhole.“Fine!” Kate exclaimed. “Four buttons and one buttonhole. Now, who’s next?”Several of the gunmen patrons went into a huddle. Presently ‘Shanty’ Boles turned and said:“Us four’s buyin’ for th’ house, Kitty. Name it an’ we pays. Dat’s cheaper’n buyin’ new vests!”“Lovely!” Kate responded. “Did someone tell me Shanty wasn’t bright?”As the round of drinks was being served, the electrician touched Kate’s arm and told her the dimmer was connected.“Don’t test it,” she ordered, “just follow up the orders I gave you. Everybody out now,” she demanded, turning to the patrons. “There’s another surprise for you. We start off with a march around the room. When the lights go out, drop your partner and take the girl ahead of you for a partner. That leaves an extra man and he goes to the end of the line.“When the orchestra stops playing, everybody buys a drink for the girl with him. Remember now—no cheating or hitting in the clinches.”The orchestra struck up a jazz march and the patrons, hard-boiled thieves and killers playing a “kid” game for the first time in their lives, began to parade about the room. Kate nodded and the electrician pulled the main switch. Stygian darkness followed.“One, two, three, four, five, six!” Kate counted slowly. “Lights on!”As they flared forth everyone went into shrieks of laughter. From a recess back of the stage where Kate had concealed her, an immense negro girl had emerged, taking a place silently beside Scar. She had been well coached for, as the light came on, she leaned confidingly toward the proprietor and snuggled her head against his shoulder.Scar leaped up, glaring ferociously at Kate while the patrons vented jeers and catcalls. Kate raised her hand and said:“The house buys on that one, gang—and Scar ought to be thankful that we didn’t see her coming in with him.”The negress, grinning happily, waddled out. Kate patted Scar’s shoulder and whispered:“We’ve got to give ‘em stunts, Scar—and we can’t kid the money customers all of the time.”The evening was off to an auspicious start. Stunt followed stunt in rapid succession. The lights, on dimmers now, went up and down the range of their power; again they flashed like lightning’s play. They would go out and come on again, occasionally disclosing grim gunmen and their molls engaged in the softer process of “necking.” This brought jeers and another round of drinks.Kate kept it going at fever heat. Between dances she had the girls balancing on beer barrels laid on their sides, or trying to step through the “U” made by their arms and a broom handle. It was a real novelty to the socially starved tough boys and girls and through it all Scar sat and listened happily to the tinkle of the cash registers.Here and there heads not hard enough to resist the kick of Scar’s raw liquor, had succumbed. Shanty Boles and his moll slept side by side, their heads pillowed on the table before them. Someone had taken a lipstick and painted Shanty’s nose a violent crimson.Through it all, Hanson sat sipping his liquor, smoking innumerable cigarettes—but always watching Kate narrowly. He seemed to enjoy chatting with one of the chorus girls—Gladys King—whom he had chosen for his companion of the evening.Once, as the lights came back on, Kate saw him slip a heavy automatic back under his arm. He was taking no chances of an attack in the dark. She slipped to Speed’s side and asked:“What’s the matter with Hanson? He’s out with the gat every time the lights go down.”“He’d better,” Speed whispered. “He’s a wholesale junkie. There’s a gang back east gunnin’ for him, and some of the big boys here figure to spot him if they can get him right. He’s nudgin’ in on their racket.”
As they talked, a clock outside chimed the hour of four. Thereafter, Kate kept a close check on the face of her watch.Fifteen minutes later she snapped into action. First she nodded to the orchestra with a signal for a mad jazz number, calling to the electrician, “Use your own judgment, Johnny.”With this she stepped over beside Scar and Little Laura. It seemed to Scar that her fingers, pressing on his shoulder, were unduly heavy. Thus she stood while the electrician ran the gamut of his light changes. Scar still could feel the weight of her fingers on his shoulder when the lights went completely out.There followed a moment of silence, punctuated by minor squeals of fright and laughter. Suddenly someone grunted as though in pain.A gun roared heavily in the blackness. A girl’s screaming moan sounded as a body struck the floor. The music had been silenced with the sound of the shot.Out of the babel of sound came Kate’s clear voice: “Lights—quick,” she commanded.As they came on the horrified merrymakers saw Gladys King squirming on the floor, blood flowing from a wound high up on her right shoulder. Scar leaped up and barked angrily:“Shut up your damn noise—want the bulls in here?”Kate knelt beside the injured girl. A cool-headed waiter brought water and Kate began bathing the girl’s forehead.“What was it, dear?” she asked tenderly. “What happened?”“He—he—shot me!” Gladys replied. She pointed weakly at Hanson.From the others there came a growl of anger. Gladys was a favorite. Then followed a concerted rush to the table where Hanson sat, apparently unperturbed. His eyes were half closed. But as the foremost of the gang reached him his body seemed to sag. Then he toppled and his chin struck the table with a thud.The color had drained from the flesh in his neck. Right at the edge of the hair a single drop of blood stood for a second. It rolled down inside the dead man’s collar and another welled slowly in its place.Hanson unquestionably was dead. Too many present knew the marks of the coming of the Dread One. An unerring hand had struck once at the base of the brain, severing the spinal cord.Scar glared around the room ferociously. A mighty anger shook his frame. Hanson, as an individual, meant nothing to him. As a racketeer, head of a junk-running organization of no mean proportions, his murder spelled trouble.“Who done this?” Scar roared. “Get up on your damned hind legs and have the guts to say so—” A stream of horrible profanity welled and bubbled from his lips.Kate whispered something to Speed under cover of the noise. The gangster moved quickly to Scar’s side. He talked rapidly in an undertone. At first the proprietor shook his head impatiently. Speed continued talking until silenced with a gesture.“Listen, guns and molls,” Scar said after a moment of thought. “This here thing ain’t goin’ to do us any good. Now, we’re all-right guys here tonight; there ain’t a rat or snitch in the joint. Hanson’s croaked. Nobody knows who done it, but me and Speedy figgers it will be a good idee for him to be found somewhere else. What say?”“Take the blankety-blank out and dump him in the bay,” someone growled. “That’s the ticket—out in the streets some’rs,” another said. Scar and Shanty Boles turned to the gruesome task of dressing the corpse in overcoat, gloves and soft gray hat.“Whose car are you going to use?” Kate asked quietly. Then before anyone answered, she suggested: “Better steal one, Speed, and leave him in it out in the residence district. And while we’re about it, poke a gun in his ribs hard. The blood will settle there and the dicks will think his kidnappers did it.”“Damn smart,” Scar applauded. “Go ahead, Speed. Find a likely lookin’ bus and shoot her in the alley. I’ll have a lookout waitin’.”Thus it was arranged. Hanson’s body, with a gangster on each side of it, was loaded into a stolen limousine, Speed at the wheel. Larry Michaels, his buddy, followed in another car. Within thirty minutes all were back at the Argyle Club.Scar closed soon afterward. Kitty, en route home, made certain she was not being followed. When she had disrobed and made her night toilet, she unfastened a secret compartment in a suitcase and brought to light a small memorandum book.Then she drew a heavy black line through the first of three names inscribed on its fly-leaf.The name was “Lester Kinney.”
Seattle morning newspapers had good reason for first-page streamer lines that morning.Henry Wilson, a milkman, discovered Hanson’s body, rigid behind the steering wheel and with the gloved hands in driving posture. It was in a shining limousine, standing before one of the beautiful homes in the exclusive Queen Anne Hill district.Wilson notified the police and detectives made several startling discoveries. The first was a footprint in the mud of the gutter where apparently someone had stood beside the car. Plaster casts were made, but later the sleuths were chagrined to find it matched perfectly to the milkman’s brogans.Next came the news that the limousine had been stolen from a patron of the Elk’s Club. Atop of this came the medical examiner’s announcement that Hanson’s death had been brought about by someone thoroughly skilled in surgery.Then the discoloration on the side of the body was discovered. As Kate had predicted, the detectives seized on this as proof that someone had jammed a gun against the victim’s side, had kidnapped him and taken him for a ride.“Gawd, kid!” Scar said to Kate when she entered the club that night, “you sure saved ol’ Scar’s bacon with quick thinkin’ last night. Hereafter they’s another five per cent in the cut fer you.”“Thanks, Scar,” Kate said listlessly. “Who do you think did it?”Scar ruminated for a time, then said in a low voice:“If you hadn’t stood with your hand on my shoulder all the time the lights was out, I’d have said, ‘Mebbe you!’ I seen you and Hanson glarin’ at one another, an’ I copped you two watchin’ each other all evenin’. But I ain’t answerin’ any questions—nor askin’ any. I know where you was every second.”“Who was against him in the dope game here?” Kate asked after a brief pause, during which she studied Scar’s face attentively.“Mugs Dietrich,” Scar replied. “He was the big junkie until Hanson showed up nine-ten months ago. Hanson nudged in on the alky racket, but as soon as he’d built up a gang, he hijacked a trunkful of dope, coming from Kansas City to Mugs.“They was better’n fifty thousand dollars worth in it. Hanson sent for Mugs, covered him with a rod and they talked turkey. When Mugs left, he had half the dope and Hanson had half the town. That’s how Hanson worked. Since then, he’s been edgin’ in on Mugs and four-five boys on both sides has been croaked. Mugs got sore last week and cracked that Hanson better come smokin’ next time they met. That’s why the dicks is figgerin’ last night’s job as a gang-spottin’.”“Who is Hanson’s Man Friday—his next in command?” Kate asked.“A guy twicet as hard as Hanson ever wanted to be. They call him Sugarface Mallon. He’s the reason I didn’t want anybody to know Hanson was croaked here. This pritty boy came from the East with Hanson, and after the first week none of our gunnies wanted any of Sugarface’s game. He throws hot lead faster ‘n easier than anybody I ever did see—and some of the best of ‘em has come through that door there.”
Thrill-seeking and curiosity brought back all of the crowd of the night before and yet others who had heard of the live-wire Cougar Kitty. It was by that title she was known in Gangland now; few could have told her last name.But it was an apathetic crowd. Even Kate’s flaming personality could not evoke a real response, except from the newcomers. The shadow of tragedy still lingered over the place.The bar patronage was holding up well, however. Some of the patrons seemed anxious to drink themselves insensible in the shortest possible space of time. These were succeeding admirably. Such failed to witness the new situation which unfolded itself suddenly.During an interval when the orchestra was silent, the doorbell pealed shrilly. When the doorman swung the steel-faced portal open, two well-dressed men stepped into the room. Both stood looking the crowd over coldly.One, the taller, might have posed for magazine collar advertisements. Nature had given him a trig slenderness, height, a handsome face and a certain air of real gentility. His companion was shorter, dark and glowering, seemingly dissipated and he had a hangdog air. As he turned it was apparent that one of his ears was badly cauliflowered. Both had one thing in common. Their air was purposeful and either could be depended on to do what was needful, no matter what the circumstances.Scar started to struggle to his feet, but sank back at a signal from Kate. Straight to the pair she went, eyes shining, teeth flashing in a smile of welcome.“Greetings, Mr. Sugarface Mallon,” she called from the middle of the floor. “Come on in, both of you. The water’s wet—and we haven’t any.”Mallon eyed her with evident admiration, yet curiously. His companion scowled darkly and whispered something. Sugarface stepped forward and took Kate’s outstretched hand.“A stranger in town, yet she calls my name,” he said suavely. “Who am I—to be so honored?”“Tell you later,” Kate said in a low tone. “Play up now.”Now Scar came lumbering forward. Mallon gave him a cold nod; his companion struck the owner’s outstretched hand aside. Scar turned and waddled back to his chair.Two of the waiters removed a somnolent drunk from one of the tables, brought a third chair and Kate, Mallon and the other man sat down. Kate and Mallon faced each other across the table; the other’s back was to the dance floor.“This is Kid Sharkey,” Mallon said, pointing to his companion. “He’s with me always—now that Hanson’s dead.”“Oh yes,” Kate said nonchalantly, “I read of it in the papers. You were his associate, weren’t you—both here and in the East?”Mallon’s eyes probed hers ominously, curiously, for a moment.“See here,” he said as though in sudden decision. “They tell me you’re a wise head; anyway you look it, and I’m going to lay ‘em right out before you. There is a whisper that Hanson was done in right in this room. It is a whisper that hasn’t reached the police, however. One of my boys heard a girl stew talking about it and came to me with the story.“Now get me right; I’m not caring one half-witted damn about Hanson being rubbed out. Probably it saved me the trouble. He was a bad one and would knock me off in a minute, but he knew I could let him draw and then kill him. For the last six months when we talked he sat with his hands folded over his most recent meal. I’d warned him to.“But I’m head of the gang now. I’m taking over where he left off. If it was one of Muggsy’s gang that croaked him, then I know where to watch. If it was done here, then there’s a new enemy for me to go gunning after.“What would you do in my place?”He fairly hissed the last words.“I’d buy a drink!” Kate said nonchalantly. “Waiter!”A red surge of color leaped to Mallon’s pale face.“Damn it!” he snarled. “Answer me, you rotten—”Kate’s hand—the right one—slipped over the edge of the table. With the index finger of the left Kate pointed casually toward it. Mallon’s eyes dropped; visioned the deadly steel muzzle of the little plunger-gun between her fingers. Kid Sharkey gasped. For the fraction of a second the weapon turned on him, then flashed back to Sugarface.“Rotten—what—?” she demanded. “Say anything that’s in your system—and if I don’t like it, then it’s my turn to say or do something—you fool. Say it!” she demanded coldly. Now she was Cougar Kitty indeed.
Speedball Kane, who had lost no item of the byplay from a distance, came slipping to the table. His body was poised on the balls of his feet. The right hand was under his left lapel.Kate sensed, rather than saw him.“My affair,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t interfere unless things get hot—and if they do, then burn Kid Sharkey down and burn him fast.”“Baby,” Speed said with deep conviction. “He’s afire now.”“What a broad!” It was Kid Sharkey’s unwilling tribute as he realized just how hot things had become.Mallon it was who broke the tension.“Stand off all around,” he said putting his hands before him on the table. “I’m apologizing—not because of the palm-gun, but because they taught me as a kid not to call girls bad names.”The deadly muzzle slipped out of sight beneath the table. Mallon had a dubious impression that it still covered his stomach.“Right,” Kate snapped. “Now what do you want to know?”“Was Hanson fixed up here? That’s all.”“He was not,” she replied steadily. “He left here about two.”“Alone?”“Alone. I think he had a telephone call.” Then, before Mallon could stop her, she called over her shoulder, “Oh, Scar!” When he lumbered over, she asked:“Hanson left last night about two, didn’t he—alone?”“Uh-huh, about then,” Scar said easily. “I got th’ idee somebody was waitin’ for him—or did he get a ‘phone call?”“Thanks!” Mallon said carelessly after a moment’s close scrutiny of the scarred, evil countenance before him.“S’all right,” Scar rumbled. “Let’s us have a drink.”“Why not?” the younger man replied lightly. “Kid, you go along and see about the trucks. I’ll be at the hangout later.”Sharkey started to protest, then rose and lurched from the place. His last glance at Kate was one of reverent worship. Kid Sharkey had seen his first real gun-moll.Mallon rose as Kate did and accompanied her to the table adjoining Scar’s lookout chair, unwittingly dropping into the seat where his chief’s body had been but a few hours before.Suddenly Kate felt his eyes on her and turned about to surprise the same searching, calculating expression she had encountered in Hanson’s eyes. She smiled, blandly, seated herself across from him and said:“Want to tell an inquisitive girl something, Mr. Mallon?”“What?” he demanded. She paused before replying, holding his glance by sheer willpower for a moment.“How is it that a man of your class, who could be anything he set out to be, is in the booze and dope game?” she said at last.“Just naturally bad, I guess,” he replied, but Kate saw she had scored her first victory in her fight to draw his interest to her personally.From then until the moment later when Mallon, now warmed by a number of drinks, began paying her elaborate compliments, Kate used her every art to let glances and half spoken sentences show him that she was not indifferent to him. At last, while the electrician had dimmed the lights to almost out, he leaned across the table and whispered:“I’m waiting for you tonight, baby—and every other night, if you say so.”Kate did not answer, contenting herself with letting her hand touch his for a moment in a quick, firm pressure. Then she excused herself and turned to the other patrons. The crowd was thinning out now. Several of the more intoxicated still slumbered in their chairs.
Not more than fifteen couples were on the dance floor when Kate stopped the music with a wave of her hand and said:“Not enough pep, gang. We’re closing soon now, and let’s make it all hot ‘n everything in the meantime. Make it snappy now, for Speed and I have a surprise for you pretty soon.”The orchestra swung into a mad jazz number, quickening the cadence until the dancers’ feet literally were flying. Kate called Little Laura to her away from Scar’s side, and whispered something. The girl laughed and took a chair at a vacant table.Kate caught the electrician’s eye and nodded, holding up a silver chime whistle as a signal. He nodded and began a furious succession of light changes. They flickered up, then dimmed down to mere red-brown shapes within the globes. On again—and the electrician snapped the main switch off and on rapidly, giving the effect of lightning flashes. Once Kate caught Mallon’s eyes and tossed him an airy kiss from her fingertips. Scar, sitting three feet distant from him, scowled wonderingly.Occasionally couples would barge together on the dance floor, the girls screaming curses or ribald commands. Kate’s eyes narrowed calculatingly watching the unconscious distribution of the couples about the floor.Suddenly she sounded a musical trill from the whistle. The music rose to a shrill crescendo of noise as the electrician pulled the main switch and threw the entire club into darkness.But over the music, the shouts of laughter and the scrape of feet, there sounded ten clearly spaced blasts of Kate’s whistle as though she was marking time for the next stunt.Three sharp blasts followed one another in rapid succession. The lights flared on and the music ceased in the middle of a bar.For an instant there was a grave-like silence; then gasps of surprise—here and there a nervous titter from one of the molls.There was reason. Midway down the room, clear of the dancers and at a point where every person in the room was under her eye stood Cougar Kitty, in each hand a thirty-eight automatic. Flanking her, four at each side, stood the club’s eight waiters. Now they were masked with handkerchiefs tied across their noses to conceal mouths and chins. Each carried two snub-nose, small caliber automatics! These were trained on the dancing group and the orchestra.Kitty’s guns covered Mallon and Scar.“Up with them,” she demanded dramatically. “Drag me down a star and let me look at it. This is a stick-up and I don’t mean perhaps.”Mallon and Scar laughed happily, admiringly.“Some twist, that one,” Scar said out of the corner of his twisted mouth. “Who else’d think of a stunt like that?”With the words the tension broke. The waiters snapped the handkerchiefs from their faces, broke the seeming automatics and disclosed that they were cigarette guns, made in the shape of pistols. These were distributed to the dancers as they crowded about the smiling hostess.Kate, meanwhile, stood toying with the weapons hanging loosely at her side. She looked anxiously about for Speedball. He was at one of the tables, retying a shoelace. He looked up at her and grinned.It was Scar, master of the double-cross and personification of vileness, who was the first to sense the tenseness which had descended on the room.
As he dropped his hands to the chair arms, ready to derrick his great body to a standing position, Kate whirled and leveled both guns.“Down!” she snapped savagely. “Up with them—both of you—you’re in on this too, Mallon. “Quick—fingers together behind your heads.”The muzzles of both guns jumped in unison. With the roar came a splintering crash as the missiles flew past the heads of the two men and buried themselves in the wall behind them.There was no question now of obedience. Mallon, white, silent but watchful as a snake, cradled the back of his head in his hands. Scar was slower and his gross face was splotched and purple as he too withdrew his hands from his holster.The girl’s tense figure, alone in the center of the floor as she held two redoubtable gunmen helpless, appealed to their sense of the dramatic. They were breathless with suspense when at last she broke silence to say in a lifeless monotone:“Listen everybody—I’m going to tell you about a couple of damned, lousy skunks—the two sitting there, and another I got last night—Hanson.“In a little while, I’m going out of here. It is up to you—you boys and girls who, like me, have had to fight for yourselves—it’s up to you whether I go out of here—or whether I don’t! But I’m going to take Skunk Mallon and Skunk Argyle with me! It’ll be the hot seat for them! And I’ve nothing on you!“I’m a slum kid from Brooklyn. My dad was a drunk; mother was a decent woman. I had two brothers, Wilbur and Merrill. Our family name was Orrum. Merrill, the older brother, was a good kid. He made me go to school just as he did. The other was weak, a sneak thief at twelve and an ex-con at twenty. They called him ‘Wib the Gun.’ ”Scar’s arms jerked at the words and the girl’s finger tightened for an instant on the trigger of the weapon in her right hand.“Means something to you, doesn’t it, Skunk Argyle?” she taunted. “Wib was the lad you and Hanson and Mallon, jobbed into killing his own brother that night in Detroit—the lad Mallon and Hanson killed later to stop his mouth.”Someone in the crowd grated out a curse. She continued her story.“Merrill had worked his way through law school and had taken up criminal practice. In a few years he was known as the best crook mouthpiece in Detroit. I was his helper—his private investigator.“But Merrill fell out with Hanson and Mallon, and also with Scar who was the big money back of their booze and dope running. They got poor Wib drunk one night and planted him out to kill a Federal dick near a roadhouse. They decoyed Merrill to the spot and let Wib kill his own brother.“When he found out what he’d done, he went into hiding. It took me days to find him and when I got there he was croaking. He had just enough strength to tell me the story and to let me know that Mallon had run him down and shot him to silence him.“I went crazy then. When I found where Hanson was planted out I went there one night and got into the house. I hoped to get him as he slept. But Sugarface Mallon was on the prowl and got me before I could shoot.“He tied me up. He didn’t call Hanson. He just gagged me—and for that night I was his prisoner. Figure that for yourselves.“The next morning he threw me down the front steps. He’d finished wrecking the Orrum family. Nice boy—Skunk Mallon—isn’t he?”“Hanson and Mallon disappeared,” she continued, and now she was tumbling the words forth with machine-gun speed. “But I found they were here, working with Scar Argyle on a new dope underground.“My hair was gold-yellow. I dyed it red. My figure was slight. I ate sweets, drank heavy cream, stuffed like a Strasbourg goose until I had gained twenty pounds. I went to Chicago and then New York to establish a new identity, but always I kept track of the three skunks.“You know most of the rest of it. I came here and tricked Scar into giving me work. Last night I stood beside Scar, pressing my fingers into his fat shoulder until the lights went out. Then I got Hanson in the neck with a thin, knife. I was back beside Scar when the lights went on again. He thought he had felt my hand on his shoulder all of the time.”She paused for a quick glance about the tables, flashed her eyes toward the doorway where waiters and barmen were grouped.But even that brief second of respite was enough for Sugarface. As she turned back his right hand was flitting under his coat lapel, fingers clawing for the gun butt nestling there.Cougar Kitty’s left gun jerked twice and a horrible oath spat from Scar’s lips as two black holes appeared, one above the other, in Mallon’s smooth, white forehead. He teetered for a moment in his chair, then fell sideways across Scar’s feet.The death threat in the girl’s eyes as they flickered to Scar nerved the gross man to action. He threw himself, wedged as he was in his great chair, sideways to the floor. His hand flashed with incredible speed to the butt of his gun.Cougar Kitty, her eyes pinpoints of blazing hate, waited as the thick fingers grasped the weapon, started to raise it.Crash! Crash! Crash!Her gun spoke thrice in rapid succession. A jet of blood leaped from Scar’s lips as the first bullet smashed against his set teeth.The second smashed through the center of the scar under the victim’s right eye and ploughed into the brain.The third struck squarely between the eyes—a small, purple edged perforation which wrote the final period on the life-tale of Scar Argyle.For a moment Cougar Kitty stood silent, staring at the two unmoving bodies on the floor. “Killing was too good for them!”Then with a gesture of finality she let the guns crash to the floor. Turning, her hands outstretched toward the silent group of grim-faced onlookers, she whispered:“And now—the verdict. Getaway—or?”Tense eyes stared back into hers. Still no word was spoken.Suddenly, as though an invisible wedge was driving into the group, they began to fall back.White lipped, staring unseeingly before her, Kitty passed the grimly watchful cannons and molls who lined her pathway.
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historyIn the shadow of the dying Hapsburg Empire a new treatment that focused on conversation was invented: psychoanalysis. However, who would benefit from Freud’s new method and what end would it finally serve?
Sigmund Freud saw himself as part of the supercilious materialist wave that reduced men to Darwin’s apes. He was part of the liberal bourgeoisie of Vienna around 1900 and was educated in the neuro-physiology of Brucker and the hypno-theraphy of Charcot. Some time between 1895 and 1900, he broke with his old mentor Breuer and produced psychoanalysis.
Like his role model, Charles Darwin, whom he praised in a 1917 essay*, he benefited greatly from his privileged background, and like him, he was sometimes haunted by his historic limitations. While Darwin swore by his own observations, Freud based his ideas on conversation and analysis. At the turn of the century, Freud was tested in a way that would expose the difficulties of psychoanalysis, the case of Dora.
Privileged patients
Psychoanalysis was the outcome of Freud’s conversations with women who could not survive in their social straitjackets. So it was with Dora, or Ida Bauer, as her real name was, an 18 year old who was sent to Freud by her wealthy family. She had been abused by an older friend of the family as a 14-year old, and as a result she had developed several symptoms, such as continued arguments with her father, fainting and the writing of suicide notes.
«In their nature women are like feeble, exotic green house plants» Stephen Zweig joked. The contemporary ideal was, according to Zweig that «A young girl from a good family should not have the faintest idea about what a man’s body looked like; not know how children are conceived, they were innocent angels». Freud never denied the fact that he benefited from family power structures and that the psychoanalyst borrowed his authority from the father figure.
But because Freud saw himself as the as a prophet of psychology, he never understood the ways in which he came to rationalize oppressive conditions in his own society. Ida Bauer was told that she denied her own sexuality when she described her fear of her abuser, «Mr K», and this qualified her to the obscure diagnosis «a hysteric». However, there were many women who claimed to be sexual victims, and Freud may have had some reason for doubt. Even so, the diagnosis becomes incomprehensible without understanding the social and historical context.
Vienna at the time
At the start of the 1900s Freud was an ambitious doctor who had struggled long in the shadow of positivist physiology; he was well established with a large family which, excluding himself, included his wife Martha, as well as relatives, colleagues and a brood of children. From the safety of his home at Berggasse 19 he could defy the medical establishment and acquire the clinical experience that brought him- after several detours- to a better method of treatment. In addition, he developed a new theory about dreams and the structure of the mind.
In spite of progress, Freud failed to rise in the academic hierarchy at the university of Vienna, where he had been employed as an assistant professor for years. Vienna was the center of a conservative empire. According to Stephan Zweig there was only one thing that could shatter the social neurosis and liberate the creative forces: Art. «all these social strata existed in their own own circles and even in their own neighborhoods, the aristocracy in their palaces in the center of the city, the diplomatic corps in a third area, industry and merchants around Ringstrasse, the petty bourgousi in the inner parts, the proletariat in the outer. But they all met in the theater».
Anti-semitism flourished in the wake of various financial scandals and the French Dreyfuss affair. The right wing mayor Karl Leuger had been elected in spite of massive protest from the aristocracy and the powerful Jewish bourgeoisie. Barring the foul mob that rose from the gutter, few had the power to force through moderate reforms. Upper-class liberals like Freud now turned their back on politics and sublimated their own rebellions. A rigid society therefore seem to wither from within.
Complicated by social factors
Freud was among the first to develop a theory about how human dialogue can solve mental problems. A bi-product of this was an unsentimental description of the power structures in this conversation, both how they prevented and contributed to communication. When Dora one day slammed her door and shut Freud out, Freud saw it as a sign of weakness. Posterity, and a few literary scholars and theoreticians in particular, has compared Dora to Ibsen’s famous heroine, Nora.*
To other thinkers like Hélène Cixous, Dora became the woman who exposed Freud as a chauvinist. Women, like some religious people, have discovered that the more you criticize psychoanalysis, the more you seem to confirm its diagnosis. In the essay «On femininity» Freud declared that psychoanalysis doesn’t ask what a woman is, but how she is made. Psychoanalysis is seemingly impervious to any attack, and raises itself high above women, the religious and other so-called pathologies.
More humane after all
On the other hand, Freud took an important step away from the macabre laboratories of neuro-physiology and the institutionalized sadism that preoccupied many contemporary institutions. He communicated with his patients and wasn’t afraid of touchy subjects, like sex, death and aggression. But perhaps because Freud developed a theory to penetrate the defenses of the self and unveil hidden motives, he was later seen as the architect of a state sponsored invasion of the private sphere. In the doctor-patient relationship, historical positivism and its wave of materialism became a social tool of the establishment.
The power of definition
Of course, this spurred a host of counter-theories. Freud’s studies revealed that all women at some point in their childhood discovered that boys have something which they apparently lack, and that leads to “penis-envy” and supposedly causes neurosis later in life. Freud never accepted that this was in some ways a description of, if not a rationalization of, contemporary attitudes.
Later psychologists like Karen Horney understood that women needed to justify fundamental needs. They need to find a response to the old language of power. The feminist Susan Gubar begins one of her articles with the question «Is anatomy linguistic destiny?» Such a fate seemed inevitable to early feminists who suggested that penis-envy be replaced by “womb-envy”, or the stage in a boy’s life when he discovers that he is unable to give birth and consequently develops neurosis. It is not hard to see that this theoretical tug-of-war masks a power struggle.
Psychoanalysis in a vacuum?
Darwin had won his victory by gradually placing his followers in strategic positions within the scientific societies. The psychoanalytic movement followed a similar pattern, and spread throughout Europe after 1906 through intrigues and personal animosity.
The totalitarian side of psychoanalysis became increasingly more apparent as Freud clamped down on heretics within his own movement: Fleiss, Adler, Jung, Reich and others. This is a fate that psychoanalysis shares with Marxism. Where Marx saw exploitation, Freud saw neurosis, and the twentieth century seemed to follow these two in their search for hidden agendas.
Whether Freud was a positivist is debatable. However, he did write texts in which he saw himself as part of an accumulating corpus of knowledge. He also clung to scientific objectivity, and is consequently often scolded for his arrogance. Yet, it seems like posterity has blamed him for not being able to bring conversational analysis into a social vacuum. Can we really predict human behavior as reliably as the laws of Newton or describe them as eloquently as Darwin’s finches? It is not without reason that the great Karl Popper labeled both evolution and psychoanalysis as «metaphysical research programs».
Such unreasonable demands may also have also influenced Freud’s view of himself. However, in 1914, after a heated debate over psychoanalysis, the world experienced a series of irrational tremors that swept the old bourgeoisie and their prejudices aside: the shell shocks of the first world war. The immense tragedy of that conflict secured both women and psychoanalysts a better position in society.
Michael Henrik Wynn
* “A difficulty in the path of psychoanalysis” Sigmund Freud 1917.
* A simple search in google scholar revealed serveral who made the comparison.
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literatureA few years back Ify Iroakazi, a Nigerian drama student, sat down and wrote a fantasy novel, a dark 400-page epic about war between kings, magic and revenge. However, writing such a book is one thing, getting it out to the public is another. We asked him some questions about the difficulties he has faced as an African.
Historyradio.org: There can’t be that many African fantasy epics? Why did you decide to write a fantasy novel?
Ify Iroakazi: I chose fantasy because this literary genre affords me the opportunity to explore life and reality beyond this material world. I think that it is only in fantasy that writers stretch their imaginative string to its limit. Your imagination must be highly fertile before you will be able to write a great fantasy novel. Take Harry Potter and the Songs of Ice and Fire (Game of Throne) series, The Wheel of time, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and many more. The writers of these fantasy novels taught me that fantasy writers are not only writers, but also inventors and creators. We invent objects and create beings in fantasy books. And by reading these works, readers will enrich their lives.
Historyradio.org: Which writers would you say inspired you the most?
Ify Iroakazi: A lot of writers inspired me. I am simply a lover of words and beautiful sentences. I enjoy fiction and non-fiction – there are no limts – I am good as long as I have something new to learn or faint memories to rekindle. But I would say that Shakespeare’s The Tempest introduced me to fantasy.
Historyradio.org: When you wrote the novel, did you have any idea about how you would go about getting it published?
Ify Iroakazi: No. I knew absolutely nothing about publishing when I began writing this work, but I believed like every other writer that somehow it would be published. Even when I was done writing, I still was not sure of the direction.
Historyradio.org: Tell us something about the difficulties you have faced?
Ify Iroakazi: The first difficult was money. I was and still am very poor. There is no shame in telling the truth about yourself. Born and raised in an environment where I lack the basic necessities of life, I struggle to survive each day. I am very ambitious and I would dare even the devil (hahaha) to change my narrative. My worst ambition was trying to get a university education. This is truly the worst. I think poverty is the major challenge in this part of the world. People rarely afford what to eat, decent shelter and decent clothes. I could not afford the services of proofreaders/ editors when I was done writing the final manuscript. This is one of the reasons it took so long for the book to be published.
Another difficulty is finding interested literary agents and traditional publishers to pitch my manuscript. I tried few online. Well, I don’t want to go into my experiences here. But just remember that I am a Nigerian. The first person (I think he is also the only person) who has ever trusted and believed in me outside the shores of Nigeria is a Norwegian guy I met on Facebook. He edited this work for me and helped with the publishing as well.
Historyradio.org: You don’t even own a computer, do you? How did you manage to get the text into a digital format?
Ify Iroakazi: No, I don’t own a computer. I wrote the greater part of the work on paper, a large exercise for a book, and then paid for it to be typed. The last part of it I typed with my phone using an app.
Historyradio.org: What about the price of the book, can you afford to buy your own book?
Ify Iroakazi: Hahahaha…This is a very funny question. But unfortunately the answer is that I cannot afford the paperback of my own book which is 14.99 USD. The one I think I would have been able to afford was the Kindle version which is 4.99 USD if Amazon had not restricted readers in Africa from accessing it.
Historyradio.org: What about other Africans, can they buy it?
Ify Iroakazi: I think not as many as those on the other side of the planet can afford the paperback. Like I said earlier, Amazon restricts readers in Africa from accessing the cheaper version, the eBook.
Historyradio.org: What about payment. Not all payment options are available to Africans, are they?
Ify Iroakazi: No. This was also the difficult I faced during the time I was trying to publish this work. Amazon KDP doesn’t do direct deposits into bank accounts in Nigeria. Writers and publishers here have to go through certain intermediaries to receive their royalty. Some of these intermediaries include PayPal and Payoneer, but unfortunately PayPal currently does not allow deposits into account holders receding in Nigeria. You could send out money but can’t receive. Payoneer is the payment option that is currently working for Nigerian KDP authors and publishers.
Historyradio.org: We have heard that you have no birth certificate and no identity card, is this common in Africa? How did this affect your publishing efforts?
Ify Iroakazi: Yes it is common in Nigeria, probably all over Africa, in that most people were not given birth to in an established hospital. In fact, most of us were born at home. In the farm, etc. So your birth certificate is always a court affidavit which you get later in life when official necessities call for it. Well, I didn’t care about an identity card, especially the National Identity card, because of the bottleneck involved in getting one until I was asked to fill information from such a card during publication.
Historyradio.org: Now the book has been published, has there been a lot of attention?
Ify Iroakazi: Well, NO is the answer for now. But it’s too early for that. The book is not a month old. However, I have been getting a lot of of congratulations from many people. Many from my university chat and call to know how they can get my book.
Historyradio.org: Do you have a marketing plan?
Ify Iroakazi: For now I don’t have a very serious marketing plan other than a kind of book signing in December. I am hoping to make my book available to those those who have the resources to support me come December. I have plan of using that medium to get my books to local libraries and those who love reading, but cannot afford to buy a book.
Historyradio.org: If you were to give any advice to other African who try to self-publish a book, what would that be?
Ify Iroakazi: Be ready for the challenges would be my advice.
Historyradio.org: What is next for you now that this book has been published?
Ify Iroakazi: Next is to take my time and decide on my next move.
Ify’s novel is available from Amazon.
Click the link below to get it:
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historyArchaeologists have discovered a treasure deep in the jungles of meso-America more valuable than any city of gold: a Mayan writing system that developed in isolation from Europe or the ancient cultures of Africa and Asia. However, due to the passage of time and our own brutality as colonizers only fragments remain. But what do we know about these sophisticated, urban people and their hieroglyphs? As always, language offers rare glimpses into the minds of the defeated. Historyradio.org contacted Brown University’s Anthropology department, and talked to Mallory Matsumoto, a Ph.d. student who is a specialist on Maya culture and writing.
Historyradio.org: The Maya were one of the very few literate cultures in ancient meso-America, how common was reading and writing among their people? Did everyone know how to read and write?
Mallory Matsumoto: As far as we can tell—from the quantity of texts we have, their contents and contexts, archaeological evidence for scribes, and comparison with other cultures—only a small minority in pre-Columbian Maya society would have been able to read or write. Moreover, these people probably would have been elites; some lower-status persons or commoners, who were the majority, may have been able to recognize the hieroglyphs as writing or even interpret a few signs, but probably did not engage with the writing system much more than that.
Historyradio.org: Did the Maya use literature for personal entertainment like we do today?
Mallory Matsumoto: For the most part, we don’t have direct evidence indicating in what context or for what purposes the Maya used their hieroglyphic texts—we must deduce this largely from text content and context, including where and when it was created. For example, some monumental texts were positioned to be clearly visible to people, in a space that would have been accessible to many; thus, these may have been intended to serve a broadcasting function. Their texts often record historical or biographical information about the dynasty and appear with images of the king or his allies. The relatively few surviving murals, like those at Bonampak, Rio Azul, or Xultun, would have only been visible to those who were able to enter the building or tomb in which they were painted, and in some cases, the hieroglyphs were small enough that the viewer would need to come up to the wall to read them. In contrast, writing on portable objects, like ceramic vessels or ornaments, is thought to have been intended for more restricted or even individual use. These texts may more directly address the object itself or a mythological narrative, for example, rather than political events.
Historyradio.org: Do we know anything about what sort of literature they had? Is it possible to talk of any Maya literary style, for instance?
Mallory Matsumoto: Unfortunately, it’s not clear to what extent the texts we have represent the entire breadth of Maya hieroglyphic writing as it was used in pre-Columbian times. Most hieroglyphic texts have not survived, because of a combination of preservation bias that favors materials more durable than bark paper or (probably) palm leaves, (intentional or otherwise), and random chance.
Nonetheless, one key stylistic feature of Maya writing and orality for which we have ample evidence is parallelism, a strategy of articulating two or more comparable elements (words, grammatical forms, etc.) to add nuance or communicate additional meaning. In its most basic form, this strategy juxtaposes two elements (words, grammatical forms, etc.) in a couplet. But more elaborate examples can combine three or more elements to convey very subtle levels of nuance. We have examples of parallelism in hieroglyphic texts from pre-Columbian times, as well as in alphabetic writing and oral traditions recorded since the early colonial period, and it remains an integral component of Maya expression through the present.
Historyradio.org: Many of the books were of course destroyed during the Spanish conquest by people like Diego De Landa? Do we know anything about what was lost? What do the sources tell us about what Landa destroyed?
Mallory Matsumoto: Almost all pre-Columbian books have been destroyed or lost. Some simply decayed; painted and plastered bark paper would have needed extraordinary conditions to survive, especially in the hot, humid Maya Lowlands. In this context, it is unsurprising that the four books that we do have all date to within a few centuries of European contact. Archaeologists have found eroded remains of much older, pre-Columbian books, but they are illegible because they are so fragmentary.
Most of those books that did manage to survive the stress of time, the elements, and general wear and tear, were abandoned or confiscated by colonial officials as part of cultural persecution under European colonialism. Because these books were written in a writing system completely foreign to the colonizers and many books were integral components of Maya spiritual and ritual practice, they were seen generally as threats to the Europeans’ civilizing and evangelizing mission. We do have records of Europeans seeing these books, but for the most part, their descriptions have proved to be unreliable for reconstructing the original books’ contents. More frequently, they refer to the documents in passing as exotic and impenetrable, if not outright threatening, objects.
Historyradio.org: What about the remaining manuscripts, what sort of text are they?
Mallory Matsumoto: Only four books or codices are known to have survived into the present. These books contain hieroglyphs and images painted on bark paper, and their contents are, as far as we can tell, largely calendrical, religious, or astronomical. However, many passages are still opaque, so there is plenty that these codices have left to tell that we don’t yet understand.
Historyradio.org: Are there any significant literary texts inscribed in stone?
Mallory Matsumoto: Almost all known hieroglyphic writing is preserved on more durable media, like stone or ceramic, although a handful of surviving texts were recorded on wood, bone, shell, or other, more fragile materials. Hence, texts inscribed in stone have been critical in decipherment efforts and in the ongoing development of our understanding of pre-Columbian Maya political history, among other issues. However, they are not, as far as we can tell, representative of all genres of Maya writing: those on stone monuments typically deal with politically, historically, or dynastically relevant information, whereas those on portable stone objects like jade celts or earspools are, necessarily, briefer, and tend to focus on the immediate context of the object itself and its user.
Historyradio.org: What about the oral traditions of the Maya people, do they in any way reflect what you have discovered in manuscripts and in texts?
Mallory Matsumoto: Many narratives known from later oral traditions probably would have been recorded in books and other media that have not survived into the present. We see hints of this in texts from the colonial period, most famously the Popol Wuj, that record community histories and cosmology. However, it’s likely that much content of known oral traditions would not have readily been written down during the colonial period, at least not in documents that were made available to those from outside the local community, because they could have been seen as incompatible with European (especially Christian) values. We have a small number of comparable texts from the pre-Columbian period as well, including the four surviving codices, but most known hieroglyphic texts are different in content and style from oral traditions that have been recorded since European contact.
Historyradio.org: The Maya language system seems very difficult, does it bear any resemblance to any other language found in meso-America or elsewhere?
Mallory Matsumoto: Mayan languages form their own linguistic family and are not known to be related to other languages in Mesoamerica, but there has been a substantial amount of contact and borrowing between Mayan languages and those spoken by their neighbors, including Mixtec, Zapotec, and Nahuatl. The language primarily recorded in hieroglyphic texts, now referred to as Classic Mayan, is no longer spoken today. Even at the time, it was probably an elite, literary language that was not spoken by most of the population. Around 30 Mayan languages are spoken now by several million people, although most of them are not directly descended from Classic Mayan.
Historyradio.org: Do you know if the rediscovery of the Mayan script has influenced any modern mexican writers, or literary movements?
Mallory Matsumoto: Research on pre-Columbian Maya contexts has certainly influenced contemporary literary and artistic movements. Artists are incorporating elements and motifs from pre-Columbian Maya culture into their paintings, sculptures, prose, poetry, etc. Growing interest, both locally and internationally, in (especially pre-Columbian) Maya society and culture has also generally inspired more pride and association in some contemporary Maya peoples with the heritage of the more distant past. One important, recent development in this context has been the revitalization of the hieroglyphic script itself, led by local and international intellectuals interested in reclaiming the ancient writing system in the present. In addition to hosting workshops to disseminate knowledge of the script, they have also created new murals, paintings, books, and monuments with hieroglyphic writing.
Historyradio.org: What is the most surprising thing you have discovered after the Mayan scripts were deciphered?
Mallory Matsumoto: One key realization, catalyzed by the work of Tatiana Proskouriakoff and Heinrich Berlin in the mid-20th century, has been that the content of hieroglyphic texts, especially on monuments, is overwhelmingly historical and biographical, rather than singly focused on esoteric, spiritual themes. This advancement had consequences for our view of pre-Columbian Maya civilization as a whole—as scholars have become able to read more and more and have interpreted them as historical sources, they have developed a more dynamic view of Maya politics and warfare, among other aspects of society. It continues to drive much current epigraphic and archaeological research as we have been able to reveal more of the complexities of pre-Columbian Maya society.
For me personally, one of the more surprising aspects of studying the Maya hieroglyphic script has been the sheer diversity of the corpus—of the text forms and contents, of the objects on which they were created, of the manner of presenting the texts, of the materials used to produce them, of the contexts in which they were made and used, among other aspects. It continues to remind me just how many perspectives and corners of Maya epigraphy there are to be explored.
Historyradio.org: Are there any remaining mysteries concerning the Mayan scripts?
Mallory Matsumoto: Despite decades of intense and insightful epigraphic work, the Maya hieroglyphic script has not yet been fully deciphered; a number of glyphs cannot yet be interpreted, phonetically, semantically, or both. The early and late hieroglyphic texts remain some of the most enigmatic—to really understand the history and development of the script, we need to be able to read them, which will require the discovery of additional texts and more concentrated effort from scholars.
We also know relatively little, for instance, about how much linguistic diversity that the hieroglyphic script records. Most texts seem to have been written in a relatively standard variant, now called Classic Mayan, but this elite literary language would not have been the primary language of everyone, certainly not most non-elites across the region who spoke any of many different Mayan languages. Scholars have found some evidence of local, vernacular influence on hieroglyphic texts, but we still do not fully understand the relationship of the writing system to spoken languages(s), and work on this topic remains ongoing.
And these are just a few examples—there certainly plenty of issues waiting to be addressed by future generations of Maya epigraphers. Every discovery or advancement in Maya archaeology or epigraphy raises more questions.
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short storySCARFACE, a short mafia novel by Maurice R. Coons (1902-1930)
CHAPTER I
Tony Guarino, destined to be the greatest of all America’s notorious gang leaders, was eighteen when he committed his first serious crime. And the cause, as is so often the case, was a woman. But what a woman! Standing there in the dark alley that gave access to the street from the sheet-iron stage door of the cheap burlesque house, Tony could visualize her easily. A tall, stately blonde with golden hair, and a pink and white complexion and long, graceful white legs. From the audience he had watched those legs many times while she danced her way through the performance and they never failed to give him a tingly thrill that left him rather breathless. The stage door opened suddenly, letting a square of yellow light out on the throng of dark, overdressed men and older boys waiting, like so many wolves, for their night’s prey. Then the door slammed shut with a dull clang, plunging the alley into darkness again, and a girl swished rapidly through the crowd, seemingly oblivious of the hands that reached out to detain her and of the raucous voices that brazenly offered invitations. It was she! None but Vyvyan Lovejoy used that particular heavy, sensuous perfume. Tony plunged after her, toward the lights and noise that indicated the street. She paused at the sidewalk, a lithe, slender figure, overdressed in a vivid green ensemble suit with a skirt that was both too short and too tight, and glittering with much imitation jewellery. People with a proper perspective would have recognised her for the false and dangerous beacon of allure that she was, but to Tony she was marvellous, something to worship and possess. He moved up beside her and took off his cap. That was one of the things he had learned from the movies, the only social tutor he had ever had. “Good evening, Miss Lovejoy.”
She turned on him the face he thought so lovely. He couldn’t see that its complexion was as false as her jewellery; couldn’t see the ravages of dissipation that lay beneath the paint and powder; didn’t notice the hard cruel lines about the garish mouth, nor the ruthless greed in the painted, rather large nose. As she surveyed him, contempt came into her hardened bold face and her greenish eyes took on a strange glitter. “You!” she said. “Again.” “No – yet.” Tony laughed at what he thought a brilliant witticism. “And I’m going to keep on being here every night till you give me a date.”
The girl laughed, a short, sharp, mirthless sound that was more like a grunt. “Can you imagine the nerve of the punk?” she demanded as though addressing an audience, but her cold green eyes bored straight into Tony’s defiant black ones. “Just a mere child without even a car and trying to date me up. Say, kid, do you know who my boyfriend’s?”
“No, and I don’t care,” retorted Tony with the passion-inspired recklessness of the Latin. “But I’m going to be.”
“Well, it’s Al Spingola.”
Something inside of Tony suddenly went cold. Al Spingola was one of the city’s important gang leaders, a ruthless man with a big income, a lot of hoodlums who were loyal to him because they feared him and he paid them well, and a quick trigger finger himself. A dangerous man! “Aw, I bet he ain’t so hot,” answered Tony stubbornly.
“Well, maybe not,” conceded Vyvyan, “but at least he can give a girl sonip’m more substantial than kisses … whenever you get a flock o’ dough, kid, an’ a big car, why come around and then maybe I’ll talk to you.”
She laughed again and stepped out to the curb as a big shiny limousine drew up with a rush and stopped. Tony started after her. Then he paused as he recognised the man at the wheel of that car. It was Al Spingola! A heavy-set, swarthy man with hard, reckless dark eyes and a cruel mouth with thick, brutal lips, handsomely dressed in grey and with an enormous diamond glittering in his tie. As everyone knew, the most important part of his dress lay snugly against his hip, a snub-nosed blue steel revolver seldom seen, but when it was, sure to be heard and felt by someone.
Tony realised that for him to say another word to Vyvyan then would be certain death. Not at the moment, of course, because that place was too public. But within a few days his body would be found in an alley somewhere. Spingola glanced at Tony as the girl climbed into the car. And the boy felt cold and nervous until the expensive machine purred away at high speed. Spingola, like other of his ilk, always drove at high speed, thereby lessening his availability as a target. Tony watched the car race away, then he put on his cap and lighted a cigarette. Walking around the corner to a poolroom which was his main hang-out, he sat down in one of the high chairs to think out this thing that was his first adult problem. Usually his mind, even though uneducated, was alert and precise, its processes rapid and sound. But now it was dulled by the gnawing, overpowering hunger of his first great passion. Of course he had had any number of affairs with the neighbourhood girls; no boy as good-looking as he could help that. But somehow they hadn’t satisfied him. He wanted something bigger, more mature than the shallow, entirely physical emotion that these girls offered. He was shockingly old for his age, as is almost every boy from such an environment. He looked twenty-five with his wise eyes, cynical mouth and well-developed beard that left a heavy pattern on his swarthy cheeks. And he possessed more actual knowledge of mankind and its vagaries than most men acquire in a lifetime. You could have set him down flat broke in any city in the world and he wouldn’t have missed a meal. Nor would he have needed to steal; stealing was the way of people without brains. He held a contempt for thieves; particularly those of the petty larceny variety. “Say!” whispered a surly voice in his ear.
Tony looked up into a rat face topped by a dirty, rumpled checked cap. “Well?” he said coldly. “Some of us are going out and knock over some gas stations,” answered the other boy hoarsely. “Want to come along?”
“No.”
“It’ll be an even split all round.”
“No,” I said. I ain’t risking a pinch for a coupla bucks.”
“Aw, there’ll be more than that, Tony. All those places got fifty, sixty bucks laying around. An’ there’ll only be about four of us.”
“Screw!” snarled Tony. “Before I paste you one.”
The other boy hurried away, muttering to himself. To the other boys who loafed around this poolroom, Tony was a puzzle. They never became intimate with him the way they did with each other. Somehow it just never occurred to them to do so. They realised the difference; so did he. But neither of them knew the reason. A psychologist would have explained it by saying that Tony had a mental percentage on the others, it was the difference between a man destined for leadership and men destined to run in the pack. Most of the boys in the neighbourhood made illegal forays nightly. Never in their own ward, of course, because that would have alienated the alderman. Whereas when they made raids only in outside wards, their own alderman – in case they were arrested – would come down to the station, tell what fine reputations they had in their neighbourhood, and help get them out. Then on Election Day, each hoodlum not only voted fifteen or twenty times, but hordes of them swept through the ward and threatened everyone with dire reprisals if the alderman were not re-elected by a handsome majority. And the people, realising the truth of these threats, re-elected the alderman, even though they knew he was a grand old thug. Tony always refused to join these nightly expeditions for ill-gotten gains. “Petty larceny stuff,” as he contemptuously referred to their depredations, did not interest him. He wanted to be a big shot, a leader, perhaps a politician. He had a hunger for command, for power, for wealth. And he meant to have it all. In the meantime, though he had no job that anyone knew of and although he refused to fall in with the criminal ways of his neighbours, he dressed better than they and seemed to have all the money he needed. Many of the boys wondered about that, but inasmuch as he chose to volunteer nothing, it was likely to remain a mystery for, in that neighbourhood, one did not inquire into the source of income of even an intimate friend. And Tony had no intimate friends. There was a sudden commotion at the front door of the poolroom and several burly men came in. Some of the people already present tried to escape by the back door, only to be confronted and driven back in by other burly men coming in there. Detectives, of course, going to look over the crowd. Knowing that they had nothing on him, Tony watched with faint amusement and a large sense of virtue while the dicks went through the poorly lighted, smoke-filled room, tapping hips, asking questions, occasionally bestowing a hard, backhand slap on the ugly mouth of some hoodlum who tried to talk back. As he had expected, they made no move to molest him. “This kid’s all right,” said a man he recognised as Lieutenant Grady from the neighbourhood station. “He’s Ben Guarino’s brother.”
“That means nothing,” retorted a burly, cold-eyed man whose hard-boiled demeanour identified him as from headquarters.
“Does to Tony!” snapped Grady. “We’ve never heard of him being outside, the law yet, either in this ward or any other.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant!” smiled Tony. “Can’t I buy a cigar for you and the boys?”
They all laughed at that. Not a man of them but what was old enough to be his father, yet he called them “boys” and they liked it. With all the poise and self-possession of a judge on his own bench, Tony led the crowd of officers to the front of the poolroom and purchased cigars for them all. Then they exchanged cheery “Good nights” with him and departed. Already Tony had learned the manifold advantage of having a good rep with the cops. Also he knew the great power that came from having people in one’s debt, even for such little things as cigars. Tony seldom accepted a favour from anyone, but if he did, he always tried to return one twice as big, thus removing his moral debt to them and making them indebted to him. He had the mind and soul of a master politician. Tony suddenly realised that the stuffy, smoke-filled atmosphere of the poolroom had given him a headache, and decided to go home. Except for occasional oases like the poolroom, the neighbourhood was a desert of gloom and deserted frowziness. Street lights were infrequent and those that existed were of the old-fashioned, sputtering type that, like some people, made a lot of noise but accomplished little. It hadn’t rained that night, yet there was an unhealthy dampness about. The dingy old buildings, with their ground-floor windows boarded up like blind eyes, seemed to hover malevolently over the narrow, dirty streets. One street that served as a push-cart market by day was littered with boxes and papers and heaps of reeking refuse. An occasional figure, either hunting or hunted, skulked along. Infrequently, a car raced past, awakening echoes that could be heard for blocks through the quiet streets. Over all hung a brooding stir of ever- present menace, an indefinable something that made sensitive strangers to the neighbourhood suddenly look back over their shoulders for no good reason. This was the setting of gangland, its spawning place, lair, and one of its principal hunting grounds. It was also Tony’s neighbourhood, the only environment he had ever known. But he could not see that a great scheme of circumstances, a web much too intricate for him to understand, had gradually been shaping his destiny since the day of his birth, that it was as difficult for him to keep from being a gangster as it was for a Crown Prince to keep from becoming King. Tony reached the little grocery store that his parents owned, and above which the family lived, passed to the door beyond, inserted his key and clattered up the dirty, uncarpeted steps. A light was on in the dining room, which also served as the parlour. Seated in an old rocker which had been patched with wire, sat Ben Guarino reading the paper, his blue uniformed legs and heavy, square-toed black shoes resting on the dirty red and white checked tablecloth. His revolver, resting in its holster, hung suspended by the cartridge belt from the back of another rickety chair upon which rested his uniform coat and cap. As Tony came in, Ben looked up. He was a stocky chap in the middle twenties with a brutal mouth and jaw and defiant dark eyes that usually held a baleful glitter. For a number of reasons, all of which he kept to himself, Tony felt that his brother was going to be a big success as a policeman. To Tony, the only difference between a policeman and a gangster was a badge. They both came from the same sort of neighbourhoods, had about the same education and ideas, usually knew each other before and after their paths diverged, and always got along well together if the gangsters had enough money. “Where you been so late?” demanded Ben truculently.
“What the hell’s it to you?” retorted Tony, then remembering the favour he was going to ask, became peaceable. “I didn’t mean to be cross, Ben. But I got a nasty headache.”
“Down to that O’Hara joint again, I suppose?”
“Well, a fellow’s got to have some place to go in the evening. And the only other place is some dance hall with a lot o’ them cheap, silly broads.”“Getting choosy about your women, now, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s right,” answered Ben with a grin. “There’s nothing will take a man to the top – or to the bottom – faster than a high-toned woman egging him on.” Suddenly his feet struck the floor and he leaned forward, his eyes boring straight into those of his brother. “Say, what’s this I hear about you delivering packages for Smoky Joe?”
“Well?”
“Didn’t you know there was dope in them packages?”
“No, I didn’t. But now that I do, it’s going to cost him more.”
“You let that stuff alone.”
“Oh, all right. I suppose some cop belly-ached to you about it. Well, he can have that little graft, if he wants it. I got other things I can do.”
“Yes, I guess you have,” agreed Ben drily, “from all I hear. So you been a lookout down at Mike Rafferty’s gambling joint, too?”
“Yes. And why not? That’s a decent way of making a few bucks. Would you rather have me out pullin’ stick-ups like the rest of the guys in the neighbourhood?”
“Of course not.” He leaned forward and spoke seriously. “Don’t ever get in no serious trouble, Tony; it would ruin me at headquarters.”
“I won’t. Don’t worry about me. You got enough to do to watch your own step.” “What do you mean?”
“Nothin’,” answered Tony casually with a smile, enjoying the sudden fear that had come into his brother’s face. “That’s just a friendly tip from a fellow that knows more than you think he does.”
“Who?” demanded Ben hoarsely.
“Me.” Tony grinned again and flipped his cigarette ashes on the bare floor. “Say, Ben, can I have your car tomorrow night?”
“No. I’m using it myself. That’s my night off.” “How about the next night?”
“No. You’d probably get in trouble with it. Kids and cars don’t go together.”
“All right. I’ll have one o’ my own pretty soon and I’m going to get it as easy as you got that one.” With which parting shot, Tony went in to bed, slamming the door shut behind him. How a fellow making a hundred and fifty a month could acquire honestly a car that cost nearly six hundred sixteen pounds was too much for Tony. But then all policemen had big cars, and captains had strings of apartment buildings and sent their children to European finishing schools. The strange quiet that momentarily descended over the Guarino household at this time of night was balm to Tony. It was the only period of the twenty-four hours that he could spend at home without feeling that he was about to go crazy. The rest of the time it was … noise … He wondered if other people’s homes were as uninviting and repellent; all those he had ever seen were. He undressed quickly and climbed into the grimy bed which he and Ben shared. He wanted to sleep before Ben came in so that they couldn’t argue any more. But his mind was racing and it kept swinging around to Vyvyan Lovejoy. Even to think about her made him alternately hot and cold all over and left him trembling with anticipation. He would have her; none could stop him – not even Al Spingola. The fact that the woman he wanted belonged to another made not the slightest difference to Tony. All life was a battle and the strongest man got the gravy. Anyway, she had said she would talk to him if he had a car and some money. Well, he’d get them both and be back at that stage-door tomorrow night.
CHAPTER II
Promptly at ten-thirty the next night Tony Guarino entered the dark alley that led to the sheet-iron stage door of the tawdry Gaiety Theatre. And he swaggered a little as he walked. He felt big and powerful and grand, an unnatural exultation due partly to his having visited three saloons on the way over – an unusual occurrence for him – but due mainly to the fact that he was ready for anything. At the curb stood a fast and expensive sport roadster that ordinarily saw service in more nefarious enterprises. He had rented it for the evening – -just why he didn’t know. According to the people who were in that racket, stealing a car was about the easiest of all crimes, both to commit and to get away with; it was the way ninety per cent of criminals started. But he didn’t intend to be pinched the very first time that Vyvyan honoured him with her company – because she was going to go with him tonight, even if she didn’t know it yet – so he had rented the roadster for the night. In his pants pocket bulged a wad of bills that totalled £41.07 – all the money he had in the world. It was so arranged that a crisp new bill of £20.54 denomination served as wrapper on the outside. The inside, a few fives but mostly ones, expanded the £20 note until the roll looked to be worth ten times its real value. Thus he had everything she had asked for. But he also had something else. In his right hand side coat pocket rested an ugly blue steel revolver he had bought that afternoon. He had never carried a gun before and he found in it a big thrill. It gave one a sense of security and power, of equality with all the world. Why, with this revolver in his pocket he was just as good as Al Spingola. Thus Tony argued himself into a state of exaltation and high courage. But deep in his own soul he wondered just how he would act if he should be forced into an actual life-and-death encounter with Spingola. Vyvyan came prancing out a little early, glittering and fragrant as usual, an enormous picture hat framing her hard face. “Well, for God’s sake!” she exclaimed when she saw him. “Mary’s little lamb is on the job again.”
“Bet your life,” grinned Tony. “An’ I got the car an’ a flock o’ dough like you wanted.”
“You have?” she said mockingly. “Well, that puts little Johnny at the head of the class.”
Tony’s grin faded suddenly and he grabbed her arm. “Listen, sister, don’t try to kid me!” he snarled.
“You an’ I are going stepping tonight.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah! So you might as well make up your mind to it and come along.”
“Well,” she said wearily, “I’m not to see Al till tomorrow night so I suppose I might as well take a chance on you now. But I don’t want anyone to see us, so that he’ll hear about it.” She shivered slightly. “Al’s dangerous, kid. So drive to the corner of Taylor and Sangamon and wait for me there. I’ll take a taxi and be along within five minutes.”
“You’re not giving me the run-around?”
“Absolutely not. I’ll be there.”
“Well, you better,” said Tony darkly. “Or I’ll be back tomorrow night and shoot up the place.” He entered the roadster and roared away, feeling very important. At the appointed corner, he waited nervously, muttering dire threats to himself. But she came, and hurriedly climbed in beside him. The narrow confines of the roadster caused their thighs to touch for their whole length and he felt a sudden thrill from the contact. When she looked up at him suddenly with a queer light in her greenish eyes, he knew she had felt his revolver. “It’s all right, baby,” he grinned reassuringly. “I won’t use it unless I have to.” He drove her to a North Side restaurant that was noted for its discretion. Seated opposite each other in a small private dining room on the second floor, they consumed a fine and expensive meal, and two bottles of champagne. Those were the days when real champagne could be had at almost any restaurant. The meal over, and with only another bottle and glasses on the table, Tony moved his chair around beside Vyvyan’s. She had progressed nicely and by now had reached the stage where she occasionally blew a long breath upward along her face with a loud whoosh as if to blow her hair out of her eyes. “Well, kid, how do you feel?” asked Tony, reaching for her hand.
“Kinda warm,” she giggled.
“So do I.”
When he took her home shortly before five in the morning, she kissed him good night and climbed out of the roadster with a heavy sigh. “Boy, you sure can love!” she said weakly and tottered into her cheap hotel.
Tony arose at noon that day. A close shave with plenty of powder at the end made him look a little less haggard. There was a curious sense of elation singing within him. At last he had mastered a real woman, a woman much older and more experienced than he. He had found, too, that it was the mastering of another that he enjoyed in love. The thirst for power was almost a mania with him. And the fact that circumstances and conditions made it so that he had no right to ever expect to have any made him want it all the more. His sister, Rosie, a tall, pretty girl of sixteen, cooked a meal for him. The six other children were at school. He ate hurriedly and in silence. There was so much to do now. Clattering down the stairs, his mother’s raucous, commanding shout reached his ears. He hesitated a moment, then entered the store, looking sullen and defiant. Mrs. Guarino was a squat, wrinkled Italian woman of fifty, with a figure like a loosely packed sack tied tightly in the middle, dressed in a shapeless, indescribable grey wrapper whose waistline was invisible from the front due to her breasts dripping over it. Her un-bobbed grey hair was drawn up all around and screwed into a tight knot atop her head. Heavy, plain gold ear-rings hung from holes punched through the lobes of her ears. Yet despite her ugliness and barbaric appearance, her features were good, indicating native intelligence and honesty. Carlotta Guarino was a good citizen. If only she could have made her children as good citizens as were she and their father – but then that was impossible, though she didn’t see why, nor did they.
“Where’re you so late?” she demanded in rapid-fire Italian. “It’s after five when you came in.”
“Aw, I was talking business with someone,” answered Tony in English.
“What kind of business could you talk at that time of the morning?” she demanded again in Italian.
“You come home earlier. You be a good boy like Ben and don’t get us into any trouble.”
“All right,” assented Tony and hurried out, relieved at escaping after so short a grilling. That was the way it always went, reproaches, recriminations, cautions. She and his father could think of more things he shouldn’t do. It never occurred to him that they were endeavouring to implant in him their own code of ethics and honesty. Their crudeness of expression kept him from realising that. Even if he had realised it, he wouldn’t have accepted it. Because, while he loved his parents with the fierce, clan-love of the Latin, he did not respect their ideas. There were many logical reasons for that – their inability to learn English well, their inability to keep step with the times and country, their bewilderment – even after twenty years – at the great nation which they had chosen for their new home, the fact that even with his father working hard every day and his mother tending the little store they had been able to make only a bare living for the large family. So why should he accept their ideas on ethics? Where had those ideas gotten them? Tony didn’t intend to live in squalor like this all his life; he meant to be a big shot. Thus another decent home spawned another gangster, as inevitably as an oyster creates a pearl. There were other factors, of course, that contributed strongly in making Tony a gangster. His attitude toward the law, for instance. His first contact with it had come at the age of six when, hungry, he had snatched a pear off a push-cart and a policeman had chased him. Thus, from the first, he had known the law as an enemy instead of a protection, as something which stood between him and the fruition of his desires. His affair with Vyvyan seemed to have crystallised all this within him, to make him think and act with a ruthlessness and lawlessness hitherto foreign to him. From a booth in a corner drug store he telephoned her at her cheap hotel. “Hello, darling!” he said. “How do you feel?”
“Not so hot,” she answered wearily.
She sounded as if she had just awakened. “I’m kinda tired myself,” he admitted. “But it was a great night, so what’s the difference … Listen, Vyv, don’t forget that we got a date again tonight?”
“I’m supposed to see Al tonight.”
“To hell with Al!” Tony burst out angrily. “You’re seeing Al no more. Get that, baby. An’ if he gets rough, I’ll take care of him. I can gather up just as many gorillas for a battle as he can. So don’t worry about him. Leave as early as you can tonight – he never gets around till late – and meet me at the same corner where we met last night. An’ be there, baby, or there’ll be hell to pay.”
The rest of the day Tony spent in making an inventory of all his rackets or ways of making money, with a few calls putting into smooth running order those that he had neglected somewhat recently and with other calls starting brand-new ones which were not a bit popular with the unwilling customers but which were going to be profitable to him. From now on he could afford to be interested only in the most profitable ones because he had a hunch that Vyvyan was going to be a mighty expensive proposition. Lounging early that evening in his usual poolroom hang-out, Tony looked up in surprise as an ugly man slunk into the next chair and nudged him.
“Well?” said Tony coldly.
“You’re Tony Guarino, ain’t you?”
“Yeah. What of it?”
“Just this. If you go out with Al Spingola’s moll again, you won’t last a week. And that’s from de boss himself.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Tony, though he knew well enough.
“Don’t be dumb. They’ll find you in an alley some night with your throat cut.”
“I’ll take my chances with him and his gorillas,” bluffed Tony, and laughed. “A gun’s better than a knife anytime and I can shoot better than any of them. So run along, sonny and tell your whole damn gang to chew that on their back teeth.”
Tony laughed outright at the expression of amazement on the henchman’s ugly face, then with a sneering smile watched the fellow move away. In his side coat pocket that revolver still rested comfortably and reassuringly. It was amazing how much courage that weapon put into him. It bridged the difference between a David and a Goliath – it always does to a born gangster. Also that afternoon he had, arranged for a friend of his who was a good shot to trail him everywhere he went at night now, and be ready to shoot down from behind anyone who tried to get Tony in the same way. Vyvyan was nervous and shivery when she arrived at the appointed corner in a taxi and climbed into the roadster beside him. “I’m scared, Tony,” she said and gripped his arm while she looked back over her shoulder. Then she half screamed. “Oh, there’s another car starting up after us,”
“Don’t worry; that’s my bodyguard.”
“Oh! … Well, just as I started into the theatre tonight the meanest looking man I ever saw stepped right in front of me and jammed a note into my hand. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had started to murder me right there. But he went on. When I got into my dressing room I read what he had given me. It was written in pencil, all scrawled and dirty, but plain enough. This is what it said: ‘If you stand me up again, your life won’t be worth a lead nickel. Remember that!’ It was from Al, of course,” she finished.
“Yeah. Another one o’ his mugs tried to bluff me at the poolroom tonight but I told him I was able to take care of myself with Spingola or anyone else.”
They drove to the same restaurant as the night before and were shown to the same little private dining room. Half an hour later the door was thrust open violently and Al Spingola stood framed in the opening. His swarthy face was a sort of ghastly grey, his eyes blazed with the fires of hell, and his brutal mouth was set in a nasty snarl. Most important of all, his right hand was plunged deep into his side coat pocket. Tony had turned a strange greenish white and his eyes were glazed. The encounter between himself and Spingola had come at last and that it was a life-and-death fight was obvious.
“Al!” gasped Vyvyan. “Don’t do–”
Her voice trailed off. Tony and Spingola were staring straight into each other’s eyes. The younger man looked nervous; it isn’t easy to kill your first man. “So you couldn’t take a warning, eh, you two punks; you thought you could get away with giving me the run-around.”
“Who are you?” asked Tony, knowing that to be the most disconcerting thing he could say.
“Who’m I?” spluttered Spingola. “I’ll show you–”
And at that instant Tony fired through his coat pocket. He had been reaching for his napkin when Spingola came in. Immediately but without perceptible movement, his hand had shifted to his gun. He had had the drop on Spingola the whole time and had merely created a little diversion to make absolutely sure of winning his first gun battle. Spingola looked surprised, then sagged to the floor. With a handkerchief Tony quickly rubbed his gun free of fingerprints, then threw the weapon out the window into the alley below. “Come, dear,” he said coldly, reaching for the shaking Vyvyan’s arm. Now, that the deed was over, he felt strangely calm and strong, ready for anything. He dropped a £10 bill on the table and rushed the girl down the back stairs. Through the alley they hurried, to where their roadster was parked. They raced away down an impenetrably dark street just as two uniformed policemen hurried in through the cafe’s front door. Tony wasn’t worried. He knew that the owner and waiters would give a description of the people who had occupied that private dining room but it would be so vague, in case it were not actually false, that it would be absolutely valueless to the police.
CHAPTER III
The killing of Al Spingola created a sensation. It happened just before America entered the World War, long before gang-dom had achieved anything like its present power or affluence or willingness to murder in unique fashion. Fights were plentiful, of course, and an occasional stabbing did not arouse great excitement but actual gunplay was rare. Spingola had been about the first of the city’s gang leaders to enforce his power with a gun and his being dropped off so suddenly was most disconcerting to the other leaders who had been about ready to use the same methods. But now they couldn’t decide whether a gun was the best source of power or not. The morning after the affray, Tony rose early, feeling a little rocky, and immediately induced his mother to sew the small burned hole in his coat, explaining that he had done it with a cigarette. Then he wisely decided not to wear that suit on the street again. He went first to Klondike O’Hara’s saloon.
Klondike himself was behind the bar. A burly, red-faced young Irishman, he cut quite a dash in his own neighbourhood as a gang leader and had been one of Spingola’s most faithful enemies.
“I’m Tony Guarino,” announced the boy, “from over on Taylor Street.”
“Yeah?”
“I suppose you read about Al Spingola gettin’ his last night.”
“Yeah,” assented O’Hara cautiously, chewing on a black cigar.
“Well, I know you and him were enemies so I thought if they took me up for his death you’d see that I had a good lawyer and so on.”
“You? Did you get that rat – a punk like you?”
“I didn’t say so,” retorted Tony doggedly. “I just wanted to know if they picked me up if you’d get me a lawyer.”
“Bet your life. An’ from now on you’re welcome around here any time. I can always use another kid with guts.”
“Thanks.”
From O’Hara’s saloon, Tony went to see Vyvyan at her cheap little hotel. She was nervous and tearful but back of the nervousness he could detect a new attitude of overbearing hardness, and behind the tears her green eyes held a glitter that did not reassure him. He wondered if she knew how much her silence meant to him – and decided that she probably did.
“You’ve taken Al away from me,” she sobbed. “So now you’ll have to take care of me the way he did.”
“Shut up!” snapped Tony. “I’m going to. Let’s rent a nice little flat today.”
Thus within the space of twenty-four hours, Tony Guarino killed his first man, joined a regular gang and took unto himself a common law wife. Events move rapidly in underworld neighbourhoods. Tony didn’t intend to move away from home himself just yet; it wouldn’t look right to his folks. Again he crossed the deadline between the domains governed by the Irish and those governed by the Italians, and started for O’Hara’s saloon. A heavy car drew up to the curb and stopped with a screeching of brakes.
“Hey, kid!” shouted a raucous voice. “C’mere.”
Tony’s first impulse was to run, but having recognised the car as one of those from the Detective Bureau, he realised that to do so would mean being shot. So he walked over to them. “Get in!” commanded a burly brute.
He practically dragged Tony into the tonneau and the car raced away. Arrived at the bureau, the whole party with Ton/in the centre, ascended to one of the con-ference rooms on the second floor.
“I suppose you heard about Al Spingola being bumped off last night,” said the man who appeared to be the leader of the party.
“Yes,” assented Tony, not to be outdone. “I read it in the morning paper.”
The half dozen men laughed nastily.
“The hell you did!” said the first one. “You knew all about it a long time before that. Because you killed Al Spingola.”
“Has the heat gone to your head?” demanded Tony coolly.
“Don’t try to stall or it’ll go hard with you. We know all about it. C’mon now and spill it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” retorted Tony as if greatly bored by the proceedings.
“Oh, you’re going to be tough, eh?”
“No. Just truthful.”
“Where were you last night from twelve to three o’clock?” “Home in bed.”
“Can you prove it?”
“My whole family would swear to it.”
“Where’d you get that?” demanded another detective suddenly.
He thrust before Tony’s astonished eyes the revolver with which the Spingola killing had been committed. The boy gulped but with a terrific effort retained his outward calm.
“I never saw it before,” he retorted doggedly. He wondered just how much they did know. It looked bad. For those were the days when the police took the same interest in a gang killing as in any other murder and made, just as eager and earnest an effort to solve it. Well, the only thing to do was bluff it out. “I never saw it before,” he repeated, straightening up defiantly.
The leader of the party suddenly struck him a hard backhand slap across the mouth.
“Quit stallin’,” he snarled. “C’mon an’ tell us the truth.”
“Cut the rough stuff!” snapped Tony coldly but his eyes were blazing. “I’ve got a brother that’s a cop and I know all about the way you do people. Furthermore, I got a lot of powerful friends and I’m going to be a big shot in this town myself someday. So treat me decent an’ it’ll be better for all of us.”
“Well, would you listen to that?” jeered one, of the dicks. “Of all the big-mouthed punks I ever seen–”
“I hear you been going around with one of Spingola’s girls,” said the leader. Tony smiled. “From all I’ve heard, he had so many that half the girls in town were his.”
“Naw, I mean his particular steady girl – his moll. You know the one I mean – that tall, spindly-legged blonde down at the Gaiety Theatre.”
“Don’t know her.”
“There’s been talk about you an’ her going around among the wise-guys in your neighbourhood the last two, three days. Everyone’s been looking for trouble over it. An’ now Al’s dead.”
“Well, that don’t prove nothing against me,” argued Tony. “Even if all you say was true, it would be him that had a motive for bumping me off. And anyway, do you think as good a gunman as Spingola would ever let a kid like me get the drop on him?”
“It’s unlikely,” admitted the leader of the squad.
There was a sudden commotion outside the door and a bright-eyed, be-whiskered little man came bustling into the room. “I’ve here a writ of habeas corpus for the release of Mr. Tony Guarino,”
he announced with dignity and flourished a document. The detectives gasped. For a writ to be run so soon indicated that the prisoner had connections. They had never dreamed that this kid was hooked up with the systematized elements of the underworld. But here the writ was. As they hadn’t sufficient evidence to place a charge against Tony, book him, they had to honour the writ, and release him.
“No hard feelings, boys,” he said pleasantly as he followed the lawyer out.
CHAPTER IV
Tony found his connection with the O’Hara gang active and pleasant. At first the Irish boys were somewhat suspicious of an Italian in their midst but when it was whispered around that it was he who had shot the redoubtable Al Spingola, their hostility vanished like fog in sunshine and they welcomed him with open enthusiasm. Tony himself never mentioned the occurrence, neither denying it nor bragging about it. But day and night he was watching for a reprisal from some of Spingola’s henchmen. He still had his armed bodyguard following behind every time he went outside and not even the members of his own gang knew that. Tony’s executive ability soon revealed itself and before long he was acting as O’Hara’s lieutenant. He made it plain to Klondike from the first, however, that he would not take a hand in second-story jobs, robberies, hold-ups or burglaries of any sort. And he explained his stand with his little phrase that later was to become so famous: “I ain’t risking a pinch for a couple of bucks.”
It wasn’t a matter of ethics with him; it was a matter of economics, the balancing of probable gain against probable risk and finding-out whether it was worth it. Anyway, there was no fun to rough stuff, no adventure or sportsmanship about it. Tony liked the smoother and wittier forms of larceny, those that bordered on extortion and blackmail. For instance, he could convince a small storekeeper in a few minutes that £1 or 2 a month was very cheap protection against having his store robbed or himself knocked on the head when he went home at night. And there were any amount of ignorant, fearful mothers who could be convinced readily that £0.05 or £0.1 per month per child was cheap insurance against having their children kidnapped and held for ransom. And once convinced, they paid their tribute regularly and un-whimpering-ly whenever he sent his collector around, just as they would insurance. He could think up two or three new schemes like that a day, and they always worked. As he said to O’Hara: “What’s the use of sticking people up or banging them on the head when you can talk them out of it? My way’s not only a lot safer but more fun.”
On all sides now he was accorded the greatest respect. And he knew why; it was because the word had gone around that he was a killer. He had killed only once, really in self-defence, and actuated largely by fear, yet he was marked as a killer and through life he would be subject to the advantages and disadvantages that went with the appellation. His income now was running about three hundred a week – which was enormous for a gangster before Prohibition came along and made them millionaires – and with Vyvyan’s help he was managing to have a nice time. He had taken a nicer flat for her by now and she had quit the show.
“I just can’t bear to think of other men staring at them pretty legs of yours, kid,” he explained when insisting that she quit. “I’m making plenty o’ dough for both of us, so throw up the job.”
Being fond, like most blondes, of an easy life secured with the smallest possible expenditure of energy, she obeyed orders. Tony himself was still living at home but intended to move as soon as he could get up the necessary courage. His brother Ben, the policeman, hearing of his headquarters grilling over the Spingola killing, had given him another one at home while the rest of the family wailed in the background. But the wily Tony had been grimly silent at the right moments and suavely voluble at others, with the result that he convinced his family, just as he had the detectives, that he had nothing to do with Spingola’s demise. Tony went to Vyvyan’s flat shortly before seven one Saturday night, feeling in rather high spirits. “Well, kid, what do you want to do tonight?” he asked.
“Let’s go to Colosimo’s.”
“No, I don’t like that joint. Let’s go out to one of those nice North Side places.”
“No, I want to go to Colosimo’s.” Her lower lip puckered threateningly.
“No, I don’t like that joint, I said.”
“Why not?”
“A lot of the old Spingola mob do their stepping out there on Saturday night.”
“Afraid?” she sneered.
She seemed to be in a nasty humour tonight. “No!” he snapped. “But I never liked the idea of being shot in the back.”
“Oh, all right, if that’s the way you feel about it. How about Ike Bloom’s?” “Well, it ain’t very far from Colosimo’s, but it has a lot nicer people. All right, we’ll go there if you want to.”
Tony kept most of his wardrobe at the flat. He bathed and shaved now, and dressed carefully in a well-tailored, nicely pressed tuxedo. But when he stepped out into the living room, there was a revolver in a shoulder holster hanging in his left armpit, and a tiny blue steel automatic fitted snugly into his right vest pocket. Vyvyan was quite stunning in a flashing green evening gown and a soft white cloak. They made a handsome couple as they descended to the street and entered the waiting limousine. It belonged to Tony; he had made good his promise of having a car better than his brother’s and of getting it as easily. At Ike Bloom’s enormous and beautiful cabaret on Twenty-second Street, they took a table at the edge of the balcony, a point of vantage from which they could see everything without being at all conspicuous themselves. And they were around at one end of the horseshoe-shaped cafe, so that Tony might have his back to the wall and therefore enjoy the evening more. They had a splendid dinner, with excellent champagne, saw the sparkling if somewhat naked revue, then relaxed – smoking, drinking, chatting – -until the evening’s gaiety began shortly after eleven. Tony scrutinized carefully the other guests as they entered. But by twelve-thirty, when the place was practically filled, he hadn’t seen an enemy, nor even anyone of whom he was suspicious. So he consented to dance with Vyvyan. They took advantage of almost every dance after that, drinking and nibbling at various inconsequential but expensive items of food between times. And every hour a new revue was presented. During the presentation of one of these shows, while a huge woman with a nice voice and too many diamonds, crooned something about loving in the moonlight, Tony suddenly sat straight up, I his gaze riveted to a woman straight across from him at the other end of the balcony. She was a brunette, a stunning brunette, obviously young, and dressed in a gorgeous white evening gown. The bulky young man with her looked like a prize-fighter. “What a dame!” breathed Tony in admiration.
“Where?” snapped Vyvyan.
“That brunette over there in white.”
Vyvyan looked, anxiously and with narrowed gaze. Then she glanced back at Tony. “I can’t imagine what you see in her,” she snapped scornfully.
“Jealous?”
“Of that? I should say not. And that bum with her looks like a burglar.”
“Maybe he is,” assented Tony imperturbably. “There’s worse professions. But she’s a stunner. I wonder who she is.”
“Some common hussy, I’ll bet.”
“Well, I’ll bet she ain’t,” snapped Tony, and Beckoned the waiter over. “Say, do you know who that dame is – the good-looking brunette in white over there?”
The waiter looked, then smiled.
“That’s Miss Jane Conley,” he answered.
“Never heard that dame before,” muttered Tony.
“Perhaps you’ve heard of her under her other name,” suggested the waiter. “She’s known mostly as ‘The Gun Girl.’”
“My God!” gasped Tony. “Is she the gun girl?”
“Yes, sir. Though we like to keep it quiet because we don’t want any trouble here.”
“No, of course not,” agreed Tony drily.
“Who’s the gun girl?” demanded Vyvyan snappishly when the waiter had gone.
“Well, kid, I’ll wise you up a little on underworld stuff, though God knows that ain’t the only thing you’re dumb in. A really good gunman is usually pretty well known, not only to other crooks but to the cops. Whenever they see him on the street, they stop him and frisk him, to see if he’s up to something. He can’t go two blocks in any direction without being stopped and frisked by someone – either dicks or harness bulls. So he has to have someone else – usually a good-looking well-dressed girl that none would suspect – carry his gat for him and trail him till he’s ready to use it.
Then she hurries up, slips it to him and strolls slowly down the block. He pulls off his job and runs down the street, slipping her the gat as he goes past. Immediately she disappears – street-car, taxi, or afoot, anyway – but without looking like she’s in a hurry. So if he should git pinched, they, can’t find anything on him. See?”
“I don’t see anything so grand in that.”
“You don’t, eh? Well, let me tell you, there’s nothing scarcer than a good gun girl. It takes brains and a lot of guts. That girl across there – if that waiter didn’t lie to me – is the most famous of all of them. She’s known as The Gun Girl. I’ve heard about her for a couple years but I didn’t even know what her name was. She started out in New York, working with Leech Benson. When he finally got sent up she switched over to Lefty Kelly and when he got killed she come out here to work for Ace Darby. I guess she’s still working for him. I wonder if that’s him with her now.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“How do you know?” “Because I met him one time – at a party.”They went down to dance again. The Gun Girl and her escort also were dancing. And the fascinated Tony, finding the girl even more beautiful and charming at close range, kept his glance on her so much that it was some time before he realised that a man was trying to flirt with Vyvyan. A large, bulky man dressed in a grey business suit that fitted him none too well, a man who looked old enough to know better. He was dancing with a tiny blonde that he folded up in his arms as a child would a doll. Evidently he had a weakness for blondes. But he was no gentleman. He was obviously drunk and making a show of himself. He waved at Vyvyan and winked portentously as the two couples came near each other for an instant. Tony’s swarthy complexion began turning a sort of deep purple. The next time the two couples converged, the man spoke: “Hello, cutie!” he exclaimed with a grin. “How about the next dance?”
Tony released his partner, snatched the little blonde out of the big man’s arms and clouted the man solidly on the jaw, a blow so hard that it not only knocked the man down but slid him ten feet along the dance floor. “Come on, kid, let’s get out of this,” snapped Tony and grabbed Vyvyan’s wrist.
There was a small, seldom-used stairway that led up almost directly to their table. They hurried up and Tony beckoned frantically to the waiter. That was a grand sock you gave him, sir,” smiled the waiter as he quickly added up the check. “And he sure had it coming to him. But there’s sure to be an awful row when becomes to. You know who he is, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Captain Flanagan.”
“Oh, my God!”
Tony glanced at the check, then threw down a £10 bill and rushed Vyvyan out of the place. “Who’s Captain Flanagan?” asked the girl as they raced away.
“Chief of Detectives, and supposed to be the hardest-boiled man on the force.”
“Do you suppose you’ll have any trouble over this?”
“Well, it’ll do me no good,” retorted Tony grimly. ‘
Four blocks away he slowed down to allow his rear guard to catch up to within half a block. Then when he saw the other car’s headlights reflected in his side mirror he increased his speed again.
They drew up in front of Vyvyan’s flat and she climbed out quickly. Then a car rushed past, spouting fire and bullets, and whizzed away into the night. Vyvyan screamed and turned back.
“Tony!” she called. “Are you hurt?”
He crawled up from the floor where he cautiously had thrown himself the moment he heard the high-pitched song of the other machine’s racing motor.
“No, they didn’t touch me!” he growled. “But it wasn’t their fault. Lucky you were out of the car because there wouldn’t have been room for two on the floor … Say, you got out in an awful hurry. Did you know anything about the arrangements for this little party?”
“Why, Tony, how can you say such a thing?”
“A man can say a lot of things when someone’s just tried to kill him.”
CHAPTER V
Captain Flanagan showed his teeth immediately. Monday noon a squad of detectives from the bureau burst into Klondike O’Hara’s saloon, singled Tony out from the crowd lounging about and ordered him to come along. “I know what this is all about,” said Tony to the bewildered and apprehensive O’Hara.
“And I think it’ll come out all right. Anyway, wait a coupla hours before sending down a mouthpiece with a writ.”
They took Tony straight to the detective bureau and ushered him roughly into Captain Flanagan’s office, then slammed the door, leaving the two men alone. Flanagan rose and came around from behind his desk. He was a big man, broad and thick, with a belligerent jaw, a nasty sneering mouth and gimlet-like, bloodshot grey eyes that were set too close together.
“So you’re the hoodlum that socked me at Ike Bloom’s the other night, eh?” he snarled.
“Yes, sir,” said Tony calmly. “And anyone else would have done the same. You would have yourself if someone kept insulting the girl you were with.”
“Is that so? Well, I don’t imagine a hood like you would have a dame with him that could be insulted. So there!”
Without warning, he gave Tony a terrific backhand slap across the mouth, a hard stinging blow that staggered the boy for a moment and made him draw in his breath sharply as he became conscious of the pain in his bruised lips. Then his eyes glinted with fury and his hands went up.
“Don’t lift your hands to me, you punk!” snarled Flanagan. “Or I’ll call in a dozen men from out there and have them beat you half to death with rubber hoses.”
“You would,” assented Tony bitterly. “You’re the type.”
“What do you mean – I’m the type?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s your game, anyhow?”
“I’ve none.” “No? Well, you hang around with Klondike O’Hara’s mob, and they’re a bunch of bad eggs. Come on now, quit stallin’ – what’s your racket?”
“Nothing – in particular.”
“Well, what do you do for O’Hara?”
“Obey orders.”
“Oh, a smart guy, eh?” sneered Flanagan. He slapped Tony again, then reached for his hip as the boy automatically lifted his hands. “Put down your hands, you thug. I’ll teach you to have some respect for your betters. Come on now, what’s your game – second-story, stick-up or what?”
“I never was in on a stick-up or any other kind of a rough job in my life,” retorted Tony proudly.
“Well, just how do you get all these good clothes and the big car I understand you own?”
“I got ways of my own.”
“I don’t doubt it,” agreed Flanagan with dry sarcasm. “That’s what I want to know about – these ways of yours. Come on now and talk, or I’ll have the boys give you a pounding you’ll never forget.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” answered Tony, his eyes and tone coldly menacing. “I might be a big shot in this town yet – and paying you off.”
“What do you mean – paying me off?” snarled Flanagan. “Do you mean to say that I could be bought?”
“I don’t see why not – -all the other dicks can. You’d be an awful fool not to get yours while you could.”
“Of all the impudent punks!” gasped the chief of detectives. His rage was so great that he seemed to be swelling out of his collar. “Listen here, you,” he said finally. “I ain’t got any more time to waste on you. But I’m giving you just twenty-four hours to get out of town. And you better go. Get me?”
“Yeah. But that don’t mean I’m going.”
And the boy strode out of the office. Tony went back to O’Hara’s saloon with cut lips and murder in his heart, and explained the whole thing to Klondike himself. The gang leader was obviously upset.
“It’s bad business, kid,” he said slowly. “Flanagan’s hard-boiled and he can make life miserable for anyone if he wants to.”
“To hell with him!” scoffed Tony. “He ain’t so much.”
Tony remained in town beyond his allotted time. And he soon discovered that Klondike O’Hara was right. For he found himself involved in a police persecution more complete than he had thought possible. He was halted half a dozen times a day, in O’Hara’s place, on the street, anywhere and everywhere, stopped and searched and questioned. He dare not carry a gun because if they found him with one he knew they’d give him the works; yet he knew that the remains of the Spingola gang were actively and murderously oh his trail. It was a nerve-racking week. The detectives even burst into Vyvyan’s flat one night when he was there and turned the place upside down on the pretext of looking for stolen property. And they questioned her with more thoroughness than gallantry. “So that’s the dame you swiped from Al Spingola?” said one of them to Tony with a leer in Vyvyan’s direction. “Well, I don’t blame him for getting mad. She sure ain’t hard to look at … How about a little date some night, kid?”
“Listen–” began Tony ominously.
“I don’t even speak to dicks if I can help it,” retorted Vyvyan and turned away with her nose in the air.
“Well, there’s probably been a good many times in your life when you couldn’t help it,” snapped the detective. “And there’s going to be a lot more if you keep hanging around with the likes of this gorilla. So don’t high-hat us, baby; we might be able to give you a break sometime.”
On Friday Klondike O’Hara called Tony into the office, a cluttered frowsy little room with a battered roll-top desk and two once golden oak chairs. The Irishman was coatless and his spotted, unbuttoned vest flapped unconfined save for such restraint as his heavy gold watch chain strung across its front placed upon it. His derby was pushed forward over his eyes until its front almost rested on the bridge of his nose, and a thoroughly chewed, unlighted cigar occupied one corner of his slit-like, tobacco-stained mouth. “Sit down, Tony,” he invited.
Tony sat, feeling very uncomfortable and wondering what this portended. Ordinarily O’Hara gave orders, received reports and loot, and conducted all the other business of his gang over one end of the bar. When he held a conference in the office, it was something important.
“I been worried all week,” began the leader, “about you. The dicks are after you, kid; there’s no doubt about it. And because of that Flanagan business, they’re going to keep after you till they get you. Flanagan’s hard-boiled and he hangs on like a bulldog – when he wants to. If you was big enough to pass him a heavy piece of change every week he’d probably lay off. But you ain’t. So you got to take it. In the meantime this is going to get me and the whole mob in Dutch at headquarters. Those dicks that come poking around here every day are after you, of course, but just the same they’ve got an eye out for anything else they can see. If they keep that up long enough they’re bound to see or hear somep’n that’ll ruin us. So I’m going to have to ask you not to come around here.”
“So you’re giving me the gate, eh?” demanded Tony coldly.
“Not that. Jeez, kid, I like you and I’d like to have you with me always. But don’t you see that being under the police spotlight this way is sure to ruin us?”
“Yes, I guess maybe you’re right. But what about the ideas I give you, the schemes I started?”
“You’ll keep getting your cut on them every week; I’ll send it every Saturday night any place you say. And I’ll play square with you, kid; I want you to have everything that’s coming to you. But I just don’t dare let you stick around here; it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the boys.”
They shook hands and Tony walked out, dismissed because of the unwelcome attention that his persecution by the police was bringing down upon the whole gang. In the bar, one of the O’Hara henchmen sidled up to him.
“Listen,” he said out of one corner of his mouth, “I heard today that the Spingola mob’s out to get you.”
“They’ve tried it before,” retorted Tony coldly.
“I know. But this time it’s for blood; they say they’re not going to miss.”
“Thanks,” said Tony. “Well, I guess I’ll have to go back to packing a gun, dicks or no dicks, and take a chance on being able to throw it away if they pick me up.”
Tony moved slowly out to the sidewalk and beckoned his bodyguard, who was lounging in a doorway across the street, smoking a cigarette. The boy came across the street, a slender, white-faced chap with a weak chin and burning black eyes.
“I just got a tip that the Spingola mob’s after me right,” said Tony. “And I ain’t got a gun. I’m going to the flat now to get my artillery. So watch sharp.”
He glanced quickly up and down the street then he timed and started down the sidewalk, walking briskly, his keen glance roving suspiciously in all directions, the other boy trailing along some thirty yards behind, his hand plunged deep into his right coat pocket. Vyvyan was beginning to grow restive under the strain of this constant surveillance and heckling by the police. She was wrought up and irritable at dinner and Tony went out to a movie alone. America had entered the World War but a few days before and the screen flashed an appeal for volunteers to join the army for immediate overseas service. Tony wondered what sort of saps would fall for that. Not he. What did he owe the country? What had the country ever done for him? He was chuckling cynically to himself as he walked out at the conclusion of the show. His glance roved over the crowd, seeking possible enemies, either those of the law or those outside it. But he saw none and started home, walking briskly, for his car was not yet out of the garage where he had placed it for repairs following the attempt on his life in front of Vyvyan’s flat the Saturday night before.
Turning off the business thoroughfare of the district and plunging deeper into the dark, deserted side streets, Tony suddenly became aware of other footfalls besides his own. Turning his head cautiously, he saw three men across the street but a little to the rear, and walking in the same direction as himself. Something seemed to grow cold within him and his hand quietly sought the ready gun in his side coat pocket. But first he must test his Belief that these men were after him – that they were killers from the Spingola mob. At the next corner he turned to the left and increased his pace. Quickly the other men crossed the street and followed, half-running until they were again in their preferred position across the street from him and slightly to the rear. Tony realised that their task of the night was to assassinate him, that they were only waiting until he reached some prearranged or some favourite spot of theirs. And there was no possible way of escaping their murderous attentions. To run would only hasten their fire; to shout would accomplish the same end and no one would come to his assistance, for minding one’s own business had been developed to a fine art in this neighbourhood. There was nothing to do but wait and shoot it out with them when they opened the attack.
The horror of his situation, of being trailed to his death with almost the same inevitability as a legal execution, never struck him, for, like all gangsters, Tony was totally without imagination. The men suddenly swerved and began crossing the street, moving toward a position directly behind him. Knowing the tremendous value of a surprise attack, Tony decided to pull one. With the swiftness of a shadow, he faded into a doorway and began firing. The guns of the three men answered viciously and bullets thudded and whined about the boy. From beyond he could see the flashes and hear the reports of his bodyguard’s gun. The assassins were between two fires. Tony himself, partly sheltered and cold as ice, was firing slowly but with deadly effect. He saw one of the men go down and stay down. He saw another go down for a moment, then scramble to his feet and flee, limping, with the third. The enemy had been routed. In the distance he heard the peculiar “Clang-clang-clang!” of a detective bureau squad car. Undoubtedly they had heard the shots and now were racing there. Tony dodged out of the sheltering doorway and hurried past the inert figure without pausing to glance at it. Catching up with his bodyguard, he led him into a dark, smelly alley at a run.
“Good work, kid!” panted Tony as they ran and slipped the boy a £5 bill. “We bumped off one and winged another. But we got to cover our tracks fast and complete. Throw your gun over one of these fences.” His own went over and the other boy’s followed. “Now, if we’re pinched, there’s nothing on us. But we don’t want to get pinched. At the end of the alley we split. Get as far from here as you can as quickly as possible but don’t move so fast that you’ll attract attention. If you should be picked up, you haven’t seen me all evening. You been to a movie. See?” The boy nodded and as they reached the end of the alley on another street, swerved to the right and disappeared in the darkness. Tony turned to the left. Within five minutes he was seven blocks away from the scene of the shooting. In that hurried walk, he had done a lot of thinking. Undoubtedly that dead man was a member of the Spingola mob.
The police who found him would know that, of course, and they would have a pretty good idea as to how he came to his death. Tony realised that they would begin looking for him immediately. Between the police and the Spingola mob – for tonight’s occurrence would only increase their thirst for his blood – the town was going to be too hot to hold him for a while. He would have to leave for a few months. But where could he go? What could he do? Then he remembered that appeal on the movie screen tonight. And he chuckled. He would join the army. It had a lot of advantages, now that he began to catalogue them – none would ever think of looking for him there, he’d do some traveling and see a lot of new things at no expense to himself, and so on. The war wouldn’t last long, now that America was in it; he’d have a nice vacation for a few months. In the meantime, his predicament was serious. The police were sure to be looking for him immediately in all his known haunts. He dare not go home, nor to Vyvyan’s, nor to O’Hara’s place. He went into a drug store and telephoned O’Hara. “Hello, Klon,” he said in a guarded tone. “This is Tony. I just had a battle with some of the Spingola mob. Bumped off one and nicked another. I suppose the dicks will be looking for me right away. I’ve decided to get out of town for a while. And I want to see you and Vyvyan before I go, but I don’t dare come either to your place or hers. Where can we meet?”
“Better meet at the flat of one of my dames, I guess,” answered O’Hara. He gave the name and address. “We ought to be safe there. I’ll hurry right over there and be waiting for you.”
Tony telephoned Vyvyan, then hailed a cab. The address proved to be a large apartment house in a quiet section. Ascertaining that the flat he wanted was on the third floor, Tony hurried up and knocked quietly. O’Hara admitted him and introduced him to a large horsy blonde named Gertie. Gertie had lots of yellow hair, pale, empty-looking blue eyes with dark circles of dissipation under them, and an ample figure wrapped in a lavender negligee with quantities of dyed fur. She wore lavender mules with enormous pompoms but her legs were bare. She laughed loudly and hollowly on the slightest pretext and seemed to have a consuming fear that everyone wouldn’t get enough to drink. The apartment was a rococo affair done in French style, with the walls hung in blue taffeta, and jammed so full of ornate furniture that one could hardly walk. Tony quickly explained the situation and his plan of getting away for a while. O’Hara approved it and promised to send Vyvyan and Mrs. Guarino money every week, Tony’s share of the profits from the rackets he had conceived and instituted. Then Vyvyan arrived and O’Hara, with a penetration rare in one of his type, led Gertie out into another room so that Tony could be alone with Vyvyan for a few moments. Quickly he explained everything to her, then told her of his resolve to join the army. “But you might be killed,” she objected.
Tony grinned. “Well, if I stay here, I’m either going to get bumped off or be sent away for a few years.”
“But, Tony, I can’t do without you,” sniffed Vyvyan.
“I’ve arranged with O’Hara to send you money every week,” answered the boy shrewdly. “So you’ll manage to get along for a few months – till I get back. Oh, I’m coming back – don’t worry about that. And when I get back,” he said with an ominous edge in his voice, “I’ll expect you to be waiting for me.”
“I will, Tony, oh, I will.” She was clinging to him now, kissing him with great fervour and sobbing furiously. “Oh, I love you so, kid. Please come back to me.” He kissed her with all the passion that had made him risk his life to get her that had made him kill for her, then hurried out with O’Hara, her sobs and pleas for his return ringing in his ears. O’Hara drove him to South Bend, Tony lying down in the tonneau of the car until they were beyond the city limits. There was a New York train that came through there shortly after one in the morning. Tony caught it. Two days later he was in the army, and lost from all his enemies. They did not ask many questions of men who wanted to be a soldier then.
CHAPTER VI
Tony Guarino made a good soldier. They put him into a machine gun company and he loved it. Officers considered his nerveless coolness under fire remarkable. They didn’t know that being under fire was an old story to him, and that he was unaccustomed to having countless thousands of men to help him repel the attack. Trenches, too, were a protection unknown in the street battles back home. All in all, he considered war a rather tame proposition and plunged into it with gusto. Within six months he was first sergeant of his company. The men, being mostly country boys and therefore having nothing in common with him, didn’t like him very well personally but he had that indefinable “it” of the born leader that would have made them unquestionably follow him anywhere. They had to, once. It was a nasty night engagement in the woods. Tony came staggering out of the dark, carrying the unconscious captain on his back, and almost blinded by his own blood, to find all their officers down and the leaderless men on the verge of panic. Tony let the captain carefully to the ground, instructed two men to do what they could for him from their first-aid kits, then dashed the blood out of his eyes and quietly took command of the situation. Shortly after dawn the amazed colonel discovered Tony in command of three companies, with his position well consolidated and holding his section of the line comfortably. Tony himself was sitting on a little hillock, in deadly peril from snipers, with his automatic lying on his knee and with his keen glance wandering up and down the line in an effort to find some man who seemed disposed to retreat. He was somewhat of a sight, with his legs bare and muddy, and his head tied up in bloody handkerchiefs and his puttees; only his eyes and mouth remained uncovered. “Of all the dashed impudence!” exclaimed the colonel to the officers with him. “Taking command of the whole works and running it better than many a major could have done. If the Heinies had penetrated through here, they’d have wiped us out. Say,” he called to Tony from the shelter of the messy trench through which he was making his way in an effort to gather up his scattered regiment, “come down from there and go back and have your wounds dressed.” “We ain’t got any officers,” retorted Tony doggedly. “Most of them got bumped off during the night but a few only got nicked and I sent them back to get patched up. They wouldn’t have gone, of course, if they’d been conscious but they was all out like a light so I didn’t have any trouble with them. The men fight grand when there’s someone to see to them,” he continued, “but they’re a little skittish when there ain’t. So I’m seeing to them till some officers’ get here.”
“Damn!” exclaimed the colonel to his staff. “Can you beat that; argues with me to stay up there and get his head blown off?” Then he raised his voice and called to Tony again: “I’m Colonel Riley. I’ll have Captain Stone here to see to your men. Now you come down from there – at once, do you hear? – And go back and have your wounds dressed. I can’t afford to have a man like you getting infection and dying on me.”
So Tony scrambled down from his dangerous observatory hillock, saluted the colonel, who silently shook hands with him, and reluctantly started for the rear. Before the day was over, Colonel Riley was in possession of a complete story of the night’s activities and he sent a report into G.H.Q. that would have made Tony’s ears ring. They gave Tony the D.S.C. and the Croix de Guerre for that night’s work and he couldn’t see what for; he’d merely done what the situation demanded, the same as he would in a street fight back home. Eventually came the Armistice and Tony was sent home. He was ready to go home. Being a shrewd gambler he had taken the saps for a ride, running his small capital up to something over £1232 that he carried in cash in a belt around his waist under his tunic. And there had been many a time in France when he would have given all of it for an hour with Vyvyan. Having perfected him in every branch of the fine art of murder and having made every effort to readjust his mental processes so that he was willing at any time to translate this knowledge and technique into action, the government, in turning him loose with its blessing in the shape of an honourable discharge, seemed to expect him to forget it all immediately and thereafter be a peaceable, law-abiding citizen. Which was a lot to ask of any man, much less Tony. He had come home with a new face and a lot of new ideas, ideas that were going to be profitable for him but detrimental to the community in which he put them into practice. That awful night battle in the woods which had gained him the medals – he had them buttoned up in an inside pocket, not even showing the ribbons where anyone could see them – had also left him with a long livid scar down the left side of his face, a heavy scar running from the top of his ear to the point of his chin. In some manner the nerves and muscles around his mouth had become involvedin the matter and now the left corner of his mouth was drawn upward permanently, not much but it had changed his appearance surprisingly. When he smiled, that corner didn’t, and it gave his face an amazingly sinister look. He hurried eagerly out of the depot, looking boyish and jaunty in his uniform and overseas cap. He had a grip and in the side pocket of his tunic a German officer’s automatic that he had brought home as a souvenir. Now that he was home, the first thing was to see Vyvyan. God! Wouldn’t it be grand to have her in his arms again, to feel her lithe, supple body pliant and vibrant against his? He hailed a taxi and gave the address, ordering the driver to step on it. His hungry eyes recognised the building, even in the dark, two blocks away, and his glance sought their old apartment. Yes, there was a light. She was home! That is, if she still lived there. He added that as an afterthought, as a dreadful possibility. Then he grunted and grinned. Vyv would be waiting; he remembered how she had sobbed and promised that night he left. He gave the driver a handsome tip for his speed and, hurrying inside, eagerly scanned the names beside the letter boxes. Yes, there it was in the same place – Vyvyan Lovejoy. What a surprise his coming would be to her; he hadn’t written for two months, there’d been so much else to do. He tried the hall door on the chance that it might be open. It was. He hurried softly upstairs and with his breath catching in his throat knocked at the familiar third floor door. He heard a sort of scuffling sound inside but no one came. He knocked again, loud and a little impatiently. Then the door opened slightly. Tony’s ready arms dropped to his sides and his eyes suddenly flashed fire. For holding the door was a man, a ratty-looking young fellow with a crook’s face but sensual lips and a passionate nose. He was in his shirtsleeves. With a lunge, Tony flung the door wide open, almost overturning the other man as he did so, and plunged into the room. “Where’s Vyvyan?” he demanded.
She came hurrying out of the bedroom, wrapped in a beautiful negligee that he had bought her. He could see that she had on only pyjamas beneath it and that her legs were bare.
“Who are you?” she demanded furiously. “And what do you mean by breaking in here this way?”
Tony caught his breath; she didn’t recognise him. “Why, I’m Tony. I know I’ve changed a little,” his fingers unconsciously felt that awful scar on his left cheek, “but surely you–”
“Tony!” she exclaimed in amazement and came closer to stare wonderingly up into his face. “Why they reported you killed about six weeks ago; it was in the papers.”
“Well, I wasn’t. I’m right here, and as good as ever.” Then he suddenly remembered that strange man, who had closed the door by now and was waiting behind him. He whirled, facing them both accusingly.
“Who’s that?” he demanded, and in his voice was a tone that made Vyvyan cringe. “A – Friend of mine,” she answered.
“A friend of yours, eh?” he repeated bitterly and stared contemptuously at the other.
He whirled and rushed back to the bedroom. There in the closet, all mixed up with Vyvyan’s things, he found a man’s shoes, half a dozen masculine suits, even a man’s pyjamas. His things had been there when he went to war; but they were all gone now – these things were strange, evidently the property of that rat-faced crook in the parlour. Tony rushed back there, trembling with fury. “So you two-timed me, you little bitch!” he snarled through gritted teeth. “I suppose you’ve been feeding him out o’ the money I had Klondike O’Hara send you every week.”
“No, Tony,” gasped Vyvyan breathlessly. Her hands fluttered to her throat and she seemed to find it almost impossible to speak. “Tony, you mustn’t think what you’re thinking. I never looked at another man all the time you was gone, not until that report about you being killed; I swear to God I didn’t.”
“Well, you didn’t wait long after; a woman don’t go to living with a man the first night she meets him. You didn’t take the trouble to find out if that report was true; you didn’t wait for a little while to see if I might come back, like I did. No, you grabbed somep’m else right away. And I don’t see any mourning among your clothes; they’re all just as wild and gay as ever. A lot you cared about me, outside of a meal ticket.”
Suddenly he saw red; his mind seemed frozen with rage. Automatically his hand darted to that pistol in his pocket. “You didn’t give a damn about me, you lousy little–
” The dreadful word he flung at her was drowned in the roar of the gun. She clutched at her throat and fell, a fluffy, blood-stained heap. The man had dodged and was trying to hide behind a chair.
But Tony mowed him down with deadly precision. Then he secreted the empty pistol under the cushion of an overstuffed chair and hurried out of the apartment, still carrying his bag.
CHAPTER VII
It was after midnight. He saw no one on his way out. He had seen no one on his way in. He felt sure he was safe from identifying witnesses. Two blocks away he hailed a taxi and gave the driver the name of one of the best hotels in town. The police, even if they were looking for Tony Guarino, would never think of looking for him at a hotel like that. There were many uniforms on the streets and even in the lobby of the rather expensive hotel to which he went. It was not a conspicuous costume. He registered as I .H. Stevens, Denver, Colorado and was shown to a handsome room with private bath. He removed his tunic and stretched out in an easy chair to smoke and think. He had killed Vyvyan and her new lover. There was no doubt of that; three or four shots from a Luger aimed with his skill would finish anyone. And he did not regret his act. Vyvyan never had loved him; he could see it now. In fact, he felt a sense of relief that her mouth was, shut forever. She could have turned him in for that Spingola killing any time she liked, and she Was just the type to do it if something made her jealous or mad. Yes, he could breathe easier now that she was gone. So he had been reported killed, eh? He wondered if Vyvyan had been lying about that, if she had only used it as a subterfuge to try to justify her conduct. He must know; for the answer to that question would have a large part in shaping his future course of action. He reached for the telephone at his elbow and called Klondike O’Hara’s saloon. “Let me talk to Klondike,” he said in a hoarse, disguised voice.
“Klondike was bumped off about six months ago,” answered a strange voice.
“That’s too bad. I been away for some time and I hadn’t heard about it. What I wanted was to find out where I could reach a kid that used to work for Klondike – Tony Guarino, his name was.”
“Him? Aw, he got patriotic and joined the army right after war was declared. And he was killed in France just a week or so before the Armistice.”
“How do you know he was?”
“It was in the papers – in a list of killed and wounded. Say, who are you, anyway?”
But Tony had hung up. And in his eyes flamed a great elation. So it was true. Everyone here at home thought he was dead. No longer would the police or the Spingola mob be looking for Tony Guarino. That his appearance was changed even more than he realised was proven by the fact that even Vyvyan had not recognised him at first. His old identity was dead; he would let it stay dead and go on his way as a new man. That course would cause his family no suffering; they already had done, of course, the same grieving as if he really had been killed. He laughed aloud. What a break!
He arose late, after a good sleep, and went down to a large store adjoining the hotel, where he purchased a complete outfit of civilian clothes. Leaving instructions to have the packages delivered to his hotel room immediately, he returned to the hotel lobby, purchased the morning papers and ascended to his room. He found the killing of Vyvyan and her lover featured prominently in all the papers. And it was played up as a deep mystery. He discovered from the articles that the man in the case was “Frog” Merlin, owner of a North Side gambling house and reputed bootlegger. The death weapon had not been found and there were no known clues to the perpetrator of the crime. Detective Sergeant Ben Guarino was in charge of the case. Tony read that last line three times then laughed uproariously. So Ben was a detective sergeant now. Well! Well! Wouldn’t it be funny if they met some time? Then Tony’s face hardened. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so funny.
When the packages arrived, Tony donned his new outfit, then descended to the street. After a hearty breakfast he went out to the old neighbourhood. It was an almost irresistible temptation to rush to the little grocery store and see the family but he steeled himself and turned in the opposite direction. He saw many people that he knew but he gave no sign of recognition, and none of them even gave him a second glance. He spent the day in various illicit barrooms, listening to everything he could hear, asking as many and as detailed questions as he dared. He found the situation about as he had expected. The booze traffic was making the gangsters wealthy, and already the competition over the enormous profits was beginning to become acrimonious. Killings were liable to commence any time. One man had held complete control of the situation for some little time after Prohibition came in. Then he was killed by being thrown from his horse on the Lincoln Park bridle path – what a horribly prosaic death for a gangster, for a man who had lived violently and who had every right to expect to die the same way. All of his lieutenants had tried to succeed him but none had been strong enough to gain the support of a majority of the gang. So they had split, each taking those loyal to him, and now there were half a dozen main gangs spread over the city,, each holding sovereignty over a certain section and daring the others to trespass. Tony could see that the big profits ultimately would go to the man with a well-oiled organisation which was run as any other business enterprise. For he knew that the average gangster – even the leaders – had no more executive ability than the revolver with which he ruled. The only thing he knew was the old law of the survival of the fittest – might made right and the devil took the hindmost. But when you fought him with brains as well as strength, you had him licked. Tony’s, inquiries showed him that the best executive of the lot was Johnny Lovo, who had his headquarters in Cicero, a rather large but somewhat frowsy suburb which joined the city on the west. Though the stranger could not discern where the city left off and the suburb began, Cicero was a separate entity with its own government and the city police had no right to meddle there. It impressed Tony as an ideal place from which to operate and that night he went out to see Johnny Lovo. Those were the days before the present great secrecy as to gang leaders’ movements and whereabouts was necessary and Tony had no difficulty in locating his man at his headquarters on an upper floor of a hotel whose appearance was far better than its reputation. Lovo was a short, squat, dark man of perhaps thirty-five, with fine clothes, a large diamond ring and stickpin, and a ready smile on his not unhandsome face, who constantly chewed a long black cigar. He had been prominent in Cicero for some years as an operator of vice and gambling dens. Prohibition had merely placed in his hands another weapon with which to continue his pursuit of enormous wealth. Tony liked him instantly. Here was a man who not only could act and give orders but who could plan. “I just got out of the army two days ago,” explained Tony without preliminaries. “And I wanna get in this racket. I’d like to join up with you.”
“Yes? Who’re you?” asked Lovo with the natural suspicion of his kind.
“Tony – Camonte.”
His former identity was dead; he intended to let it remain so. “Ever been with any mob before?”
Lovo’s keen eyes were examining him thoroughly. “Yes, sir. I was Klondike O’Hara’s main lieutenant before the war. But of course I don’t want that known now; I want to forget it.”
“Don’t blame you. That was small-time stuff.”
“Not so small,” defended Tony quickly. “My end used to run around three hundred a week.”
“Really?” Lovo was viewing him with heightened interest. “You must have been clever.”
“I was,” admitted Tony frankly, then added proudly: “And I never pulled any rough stuff either, no second-story jobs or stick-ups or anything like that.”
“I understand,” smiled Lovo. Already his quick mind had seen the picture of Tony’s former activities. “And I think you may be very valuable to me in time. But you’ll have to start at the bottom, of course, and I’ll have to test you awhile first. I’ll give you a job driving a truck at a twenty-one pounds a week.”
Tony’s heart sank. Driving a truck – he who had never been a roustabout but always a white collar gangster who had never done any but the smoother and more gentlemanly types of gangster activity and who had been somewhat of a figure in that small-time pre-war gangland. But then these were different times and this was a much bigger game that he wanted to sit in. “All right, sir,” he assented. “But I don’t want to do that any longer than I have to; there’s plenty of common hoods that can be hired for jobs like that.”
“You can shoot?” queried Lovo softly.“Yes; I have.”
“In the army, you mean?”
“Yes. And before I went into it.”
“Interesting. No, I don’t think you’ll be driving a truck very long … Got a gat now?” “No, sir.”
“We’ll furnish you one … broke?”
“No, sir. I got about six grand of my own.”
“Good. But don’t let anyone else know it. Rent a safety deposit box tomorrow at that bank across the street and put it away. Never carry a lot of money around with you; it isn’t healthy. Be here at noon tomorrow.”
And Tony became a real modern gangster, a member of a big, powerful, wealthy organisation that collected more than a third of all the profits that came from liquor, gambling and vice in America’s second largest city and a considerable territory around it. Tony spent most of his time driving alcohol from the innumerable stills that were being operated for Lovo in all the western suburbs to the big plant in Cicero where the whisky was manufactured. He was never molested by officers; they were all being paid by Lovo. His only concern was hijackers, who were beginning to become active. But he always carried two guns – a six-shooter and an automatic – in the truck and his lips tightened when he thought of hijackers. At last an idea came to Tony. Why not have all the trucks equipped with enclosed cabs of steel and bulletproof glass so that an attacked driver could defend himself and his employer’s goods with impunity? He went to Lovo and presented his idea.
“Great!” approved the gang leader. “I’ll have it carried out at once. Here’s a little bonus.” From a thick Toll he peeled off a £20 bill and tossed it across the desk. “I think you’ve driven a truck long enough, Tony. Be here at nine tonight; I’ve got a little job I want you to handle for me.”
Tony returned to Lovo’s office promptly at the appointed hour, feeling considerably elated. He had been promoted; he was going to get somewhere in this racket yet.
“The North Side gang’s been cutting into my territory,” explained Lovo, and his dark eyes glittered with a hard, vindictive light that Tony had never seen in them before. “I don’t want to open up a big battle with them if I can help it. But I do want to throw a good scare into the saloonkeepers and hold them in line so they won’t buy from anyone else. Now, here’s what you’re to do.”
Tony listened carefully to his instructions, then hurried out with both his hip pockets very heavy. Fifteen minutes later he walked slowly into a large corner saloon in a rather ratty district. Lounging against the bar, he ordered a drink and paid for it. Then he walked nonchalantly down the room until he finally stood at the end of the bar, a position from which his eyes and guns would command the situation without possibility of upset. In addition to himself and the owner, who was acting as his own bartender, there were perhaps forty men in the place, the loud, rough, mixed crowd that one would expect to find in a frowsy saloon in a cheap neighbourhood. Deliberately Tony lit a cigarette, then with an incredibly quick movement he pulled his two guns. One he pointed down the bar, while the muzzle of the other roved about. “Step right up, boys, and have a drink,” he commanded quietly. “It’s all on me.”
They stared at him in amazement. But the guns looked ominous and, though obviously puzzled by the whole proceeding, the men flocked to the bar. The surprised owner nervously began serving, his glance often wandering to that revolver pointing fixedly at him. After that first drink, Tony quietly commanded them to have another, and another and another. Whisky, gin, wine, beer – it was all swilled down until not another drink was left in the house. Then with one of the guns, Tony motioned the owner to him.
“Don’t buy any more stuff from that North Side outfit,” he commanded in a low tone. “Stick with Lovo, where you started. If you don’t, the next time I drop in one of these pets of mine is liable to go off. Goodnight!”
He backed out of the door, ran half a block, and dodged through an alley to the next street, where he hailed a taxi.
CHAPTER IIX
You did a good job, Tony,” commended Lovo when the boy reported the next morning. “I think it’s awfully funny, you telling that saloonkeeper that it’s all on you.”
He threw back his head and laughed heartily. Tony’s eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t tell you I said that.”
“No,” admitted the gang leader. “But I know you did say it. You see, I had two other men there last night – to help you in case you needed it.”
That explanation did not fool Tony for a moment. Those other men had been there to watch him, to see how he worked on a high-pressure job. Johnny Lovo was even cleverer than Tony had given him credit for.
“You carried it off in great shape, kid. I’ll have some more particular little jobs for you soon. And from now on your salary’s two hundred a week.”
Tony’s new assignment was to visit saloons, keeping in line those who were already customers of Lovo, and trying to persuade the others to change their business to – the Lovo organisation. It was a dangerous assignment but Tony loved it. Undeniably he had a gift of gab far beyond the average boy of his education and environment. And he could put the screws on with a smiling suavity that was little short of masterful. His success was surprising. As he made his rounds one afternoon, a heavy car screeched to a halt at the curb beside him.
“Hey, you!” snarled an ugly voice. “C’mere.”
Tony turned. There were four toughs in the car and the ugly snouts of sawed-off shotguns pointed directly at him. For an instant he felt the helpless, strangling sensation of a drowning man, past events rushing through his mind in the same kaleidoscopic fashion. Was this to be his end, an ignominious death at the ruthless hands of a band of thugs? To attempt to draw his own gun would mean certain death; so would an attempt to escape. There was nothing to do but obey. He crossed the sidewalk to the side of the car.
“Well?” he said coldly.
There was about him not the slightest suggestion of fear. “Listen, you!” snarled the apparent leader, an ugly brute with a flattened, misshapen nose and tiny, granite-like grey eyes. “You’re going around trying to steal the North Side outfit’s business, trying to make the saloonkeepers switch over and buy from Lovo. Well, cut it out, see? We’re only going to warn you this once, like we have the other Lovo men. Then you’ll be taken for a ride.”
The car raced away, leaving Tony staring after it. Taken for a ride – so that was what they threatened him with, the most feared of all gangland reprisals. A ride always ended in death – the body was usually found out in the country somewhere – but what happened before death was oftentimes an awful thing. Bodies of gangsters had been found without ears, without tongues, hacked in various ghoulish ways, bearing all too plainly evidences of dreadful torture before bullets had mercifully ended it all. But then that was the purpose of a ride – it was as much a warning to others as it was a wreaking of vengeance upon one man. It was characteristic of Tony that he did not halt his activities after this warning. But he added another gun to his equipment and kept them handy at all times; he watched his step with greater care than he ever had before and he resumed his old practice of having an armed bodyguard follow him. At noon one day, Tony received a rush call from Lovo to come to the leader’s office immediately. He found Johnny seated at his desk, his swarthy face pale and set, in his black eyes the bright ominous glitter that can be seen in the eyes of a rattlesnake when it is about to strike.
“Sit down,” commanded Lovo. There was no greeting; no smile. Tony knew immediately that something serious either had happened or was about to happen. “Al Swali’s been taken for a ride.”
Tony gasped and his own swarthy countenance paled slightly. Al Swali was one of Lovo’s best men, who had been on the same sort of assignment as himself. So those thugs had made good their threat!
“They found his body out the other side of Melrose Park,” continued Lovo bitterly. “Tied hand and foot with wire and shot a dozen times. He was identified from some papers in his pockets and they telephoned me a few minutes ago.”
“It was the North Side gang, that got him, of course,” said Tony in a low tone and told Lovo of the warning that had been given him a few days before.
“I suppose you’re marked to ride next,” said Lovo with matter-of-fact resentment. “Well, they’re not going to get you or anyone else in my mob. I’m going to put the fear of God in them and do it quick. Are you game to help me pull something daring?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good. If you put it over, there’ll be a grand in it for you. Be here at eight in a tux … have you got one?”
“No.”
“Well, buy one – -with all the trimmings. You’ll probably need it often. You got to be fixed up fashionable to pull the job I’m planning … Don’t forget – eight o’clock here and be all togged out. I’ll have a gun girl here to go with you.”
Tony hurried out, feeling strangely excited. He knew that it was a killing on for that night and there is always a thrill – even to an experienced gunman – in going after such important game. And Lovo had said that a gun girl would go with him. He wondered if it would be the gun girl, that noted one about which he had heard so much, that striking brunette that he had seen in the cabaret the night he knocked down Captain Flanagan for insulting Vyvyan. It wasn’t likely, of course, yet it was a possibility. He looked forward to the night’s activities with keen anticipation. He approached Lovo’s office that evening with his heart pounding. Would it be the gun girl? He certainly hoped so; he’d always wanted to know her. In conformity with orders, he was attired in a dinner jacket with all the trimmings. And quite handsome he looked, with his erect, well-built figure and thoroughly barbered countenance. He knocked, then turned the knob and crossed the threshold. Lovo was seated at his desk just as Tony had left him hours before and by his side sat the gun girl. Tony recognised her instantly and a gasp of admiration caught in his throat. God! She was beautiful! A lithe, slender brunette with a superb figure cunningly revealed by the close-fitting, very low cut evening gown. Its sheer whiteness provided a startling contrast with ‘ her vivid dark beauty, the ivory tint of her skin, the long, fashionably coiffed hair so black that its depths held bluish glints like fine gunmetal, the great dark eyes with their hints of hidden inner fires, the beautifully shaped red mouth. “Jane, Tony,” introduced Lovo briefly. “Sit down, kid. You look great.” Tony sank into a chair, feeling trembling under the appraising stare of the girl’s great dark eyes. “This is a big job I’m trusting you to handle tonight, Tony,” said Lovo. “Perhaps it’s too big for you. But I don’t think so and you’ve proven yourself so damn loyal to me that I’m going to give you a crack at it. Of course, if you fail, you’re through with me and I’ll have someone else do it. But I’m not expecting you to fail. I want you to get Jerry Hoffman.”
“Jerry Hoffman!” exclaimed Tony.
The girl said nothing, not even indicating the surprise she must have felt. “Exactly,” continued Lovo. “Jerry Hoffman, the biggest guy on the North Side and leader of that whole mob. Right now, there’s none big enough to step into his shoes and his death will ruin the whole outfit. They’ll know, of course, that some of my mob did it but they won’t know exactly who pulled the job – that is, if you two are as clever as I think you are – and his being bumped off will throw them into such a panic that I think they’ll be afraid to try any jobs on us for a long time. It’s high stakes we’re playing for, folks, but the reward will make the risk worthwhile.”
“All right,” said Tony shortly. “I’m game. What’s the plan?”
“I’ve found out that Hoffman is giving a little party tonight at the Embassy Club.”
“Him – at the Embassy Club?” exclaimed the girl incredulously, speaking for the first time.
And her voice – rich, full, throaty, gave Tony as big a thrill as did her appearance.
“Oh, yes,” answered Lovo with a short laugh. “Surprising the places you can buy your way into – if you’ve got the price. Well, he’s giving a little party there tonight. Very select affair, couple of judges and an assistant district attorney or two and so on. He won’t have the slightest suspicion of being attackedthere and in that company, so he won’t have his bodyguards around, and as he doesn’t know either one of you by sight it ought to be easy for you to get him. I’m not going to give you any orders as to how to handle the job. Work it out on the spot as you think best. But get him! Got a gat on you, Tony?”
“Certainly.”
“Give it to me. Jane does the gat carrying tonight – she’s got it on her now. When you’re ready and want it, she’ll give it to you. The minute you’ve pulled the job, slip it back to her at once and she’ll hide it again. Then if some wise guy should recognise you and have you frisked, you haven’t got a thing on you. See?”
Reluctantly Tony passed over his own gun, accepted the admission card to the Embassy Club which Lovo handed him, and escorted the gun girl out to the waiting limousine which Lovo had provided. The Embassy Club was the most exclusive of the expensive night clubs which had sprung up since the war – and Prohibition. As well as providing food, dancing and entertainment, it sold the best of liquors and one had to have a card to gain admittance. Where Lovo had secured the card which now rested in his well-filled pin seal wallet, Tony had no idea, but as the gang leader had said – money would do amazing things. A large table, handsomely set for ten or twelve, indicated where the Hoffman party was to be and Tony maneuverer the head waiter into seating him and his companion directly across from it and not more than thirty feet away. It was a splendid position, too, for a strategic retreat, being in a direct line with the door and not far from it. Tony felt a little nervous as he ordered. This was the first time he had ever worked with a gun girl and he found it a strange sensation not to have his own gun where he could reach for it whenever he wished. But Jane was as calm as though they were there bent only on pleasure and her calmness finally soothed him. God! She was beautiful! What he would give to have a woman like that for his very own.
They chatted about this and that as they ate. But she did most of the talking. Tony was quite content to just sit and watch her, drinking in her beauty. The little pauses that fell between them now and then were tense to the point of being electrical. Tony, believed he was making progress. There was considerable hubbub when the Hoffman party came in. It required the attentions of the owner, the head waiter and half the other waiters to see that the party was properly seated. Truly, money – regardless of its source – commanded respect and service. Tony stiffened and his keen glance surveyed the situation. He recognised Hoffman immediately – a tall, rather heavy man with a red face and sandy hair. Tony scanned the rest of the party carefully but he could find none that looked like a gunman or a bodyguard. Now Hoffman probably felt entirely safe there in that exclusive cabaret in the company of men whose importance was unquestioned. It would be a cinch to bump him off there; the only thing was to pull the job at the proper time. Tony waited, smoking one cigarette after another with an outward calmness that was the result of iron self-control. Jane was chatting gaily about nothing in particular and occasionally laughed lightly for no reason. Tony realised that she was playing her part well, giving their table an air of casualness and gaiety. He tried to join in with her but; he was naturally a silent type and now he could hardly keep his eyes off the man who was soon to be his target. Champagne corks were popping at that other table and there was much loud laughing. Tony called for his check and paid it. Then the main lights were snapped off, a spotlight centring on the small dance floor. A brash, overdressed young man stepped out into its glow and began telling about the show that was to follow, interspersing his remarks with supposedly funny wisecracks. Now was the time to pull the job, when everyone’s attention was centred on the show. Tony looked at Jane and nodded slightly. She gave him a look of understanding, then, with every appearance of affection, caught his right hand and gently manoeuvred it beneath the table. His hand found her knee, rested there. And he thrilled at the contact. But she did not shrink. Then he felt cold steel against his flesh and his eager fingers clutched an automatic. His thumb slipped off the safety catch and he waited. Some woman sang a comic song that made Tony laugh – even in the tenacity of the moment – then the chorus came on. While doing a fancy dance routine, they sang at the top of their voices, the jazz band blared madly, and the customers beat time with little wooden mallets provided for the purpose. The din was tremendous. Tony brought the gun up into his lap, then cautiously reached out, holding the weapon close beside the table and well below the level of its top. None yet had been seated on that side of them; at the moment not even a waiter was there. Tony took careful aim and fired three times, so rapidly that the reports almost merged into each other. He saw Hoffman slump forward as he jerked the pistol under the table and slipped it back to Jane. Her fingers were cool and steady as she took it from him. The noise of the shots had penetrated even that din, of course, and there was a sudden commotion. The main lights were snapped back on and everyone stood up, staring horror-stricken at that table where Hoffman lay slumped low in his chair, an ever widening spot of crimson disfiguring his snowy shirtfront. Then began a mad scramble to get away before the police should arrive. These people had no wish to be questioned about a murder, and have their names and perhaps their pictures in the papers. Tony and Jane were in the van of that frantic, fear-struck mob. Within less than two minutes they were comfortably seated in-‘ their limousine and were being driven rapidly away from the scene. Tony took a long breath.
“Well, that’s done,” he said calmly. Now that it was all over, he felt calm, even gay. “We’ve done a good night’s work for ourselves. And for Lovo. He won’t forget it either, I think. But say, girlie, you sure have got guts.”
“A person has to have to get along these days,” answered Jane Conley quietly.
He reached out and caught her hand, fondled her fingers. It thrilled him to see that she made no effort to pull away.
“You and I will probably work together quite a bit from now,” he said huskily. “Why can’t we be good pals and – play together, too?”
“Perhaps we can.” Obeying a sudden irresistible impulse, he caught her in his arms and kissed her with all the frantic ardour of a strong, eager passion long repressed. And she made no effort to resist.
CHAPTER IX
Jerry Hoffman’s death created a sensation and for days the city was rife with conjectures as to who could have carried out such a daring murder plot. But the police and gangland both had a good idea as to who was responsible. The dicks took Johnny Lovo down to headquarters and questioned him for half a day but he told them nothing beyond proving an alibi for himself. Nor did he give the impression of defiantly holding back something. On the contrary, he blandly and smilingly convinced them that he actually knew nothing. But the North Side gang was far from convinced and some day they meant to have vengeance for the death of their chief. Neither Tony nor Jane was ever mentioned in connection with the affair. Lovo gave them £206 each and thanked them profusely, promising to let them handle any other little jobs he might have in the future. In the meantime he sent an enormous and elaborate floral piece bearing his card to Jerry Hoffman’s garish and expensive funeral and gave Tony various assignments in connection with the gang’s activities. But he didn’t send Tony back to the interesting but perilous task of proselytizing saloonkeepers – he considered the boy too valuable an aid now to risk in such reckless fashion. No, Tony had become a staff officer now. His work consisted mainly in relaying Lovo’s orders to the powerful leader’s henchmen and in receiving reports that Lovo himself was too busy to hear. There was no detail of the gang’s operation that Tony did not come to know. He spent all his spare time in pursuing Jane Conley. And the more he saw of her, the more fascinated he became with her. Yet there was something elusive about her. He could never feel that he had a definite grasp upon her. Yet he finally got his courage up to the point of proposing that they take a flat together. “I’m not interested in marriage,” she answered with a shake of her shapely head.
“Neither am I,” agreed Tony quickly. “But who said anything about marriage? I said I thought it would be nice for us to have a flat together.”
Again she shook her head. “I’ve never lived with a man.”
“Well, you might find it a pleasant experience.”
“Yes,” she admitted frankly, looking him straight in the eye. “And then again, I might not. I’m afraid it would be too – intimate; that people, even if they were very much in love – when they started, would surely tire each other finally.”
“Is there – someone else?”
“Not particularly.”
“But there is someone?” he persisted jealously.
She laughed lightly. “There is always someone else. Any girl knows more than one man and often likes more than one very much.”
“Then you do like me a little?” He was at her side with her hand caught in both of his. She nodded.
“And you will think about what I proposed?”
“Yes, I’ll think about it.”
And with that he had to be content. This Jane Conley was a very strange woman, he reflected. He often wondered who she was, where she came from. As much as he had been with her, he really didn’t know her at all. And he knew enough about women to realise that that very mystery and elusiveness was one of the main reasons why she fascinated him so intensely. But he had enough on his mind without troublesome love affairs. Contrary to expectations, the North Side gang had found a new leader and apparently an able one, a wily little Italian rightly named Schemer Bruno. Rumour had it that he was reorganising things in every direction and preparing to set out on a campaign of reprisals and business-getting that would set the city by the ears. That he was utterly ruthless and intended carrying on with gusto the feuds begun by his predecessor was proven by the fact that another of Johnny Lovo’s best men was taken for a ride, his body discovered out in the country with a scrawled note, In Memory of Hoffman, tacked to his chest with the blade of a pocketknife.
“I tell you, Tony, I don’t like this,” said Lovo after the man’s body bearing its gruesome message was brought in.
“Not getting scared, are you?” demanded Tony.
He talked to Lovo now with the freedom of a privileged counsellor.
“Hell, no!” snapped the gang leader, but he talked like a man who is assuming a falsely ferocious air to maintain his own courage.
“But just the same I don’t like it. It may be you next – or me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life having someone shot and trying to keep someone else from shooting me or my employees.”
“Forget it!” advised Tony. “It’s all in the game. We’ll fight them to a finish and get this Schemer guy too if necessary.”
“No, not yet. Maybe he’ll quit now. I don’t want to spend all my time in a war; it takes too much time away from making money.”
Tony departed from that interview much disgusted with Johnny Lovo. He did not realise the essential differences between them; that Lovo was merely a shrewd and unscrupulous man willing to do anything for money; that he was much more a business man than a fighter; and that he had had none of Tony’s war experience which had taught the younger man such a supreme contempt for human life. Then for the first time Tony actually saw the close contact which exists between crime and the law. Lovo was summoned to the District Attorney’s office and he took Tony along as a sort of bodyguard and aide-de-camp. The District Attorney was a little man with a flat nose, an undershot belligerent jaw and mean little eyes.
“This shooting has got to be stopped,” he barked at Lovo. “It’s–”
“But I’m paying–”
“Of course you are. And you’ll keep on paying if you want to keep on doing business. It isn’t your business that I’m objecting to; it’s this damned shooting that’s going on among you. It’s getting the city a bad name and what’s more important, the newspapers are beginning to ride me and my administration. I don’t want to interfere with you boys any more than is absolutely necessary, but this killing has got to be stopped.”
“I’m willing. It’s that North Side outfit.”
“And they say it’s you. I had this Schemer Bruno in here for an hour this morning and he promised his mob would do no more killing if yours didn’t. So that’s settled, then. Now I don’t want to hear of any more gang wars.” For six months there was peace, that is, on the surface. There were no killings but fist-fighting and stabbings occurred with too great frequency to be accidental. Therivalry for business was becoming keener and bitterer daily, and all sides knew that it was merely a question of time until someone blew the lid off and started the old feuds all over again. The two South Side factions also were beginning to meddle in districts which belonged to other gangs and on the near west side a crowd of five brothers had suddenly set up in the bootlegging and allied rackets with a strong gang of their own. Tony was growing restive from inaction. And he was deeply resentful of many things, of the fact that the last murder of a Lovo man was still unavenged, of the fact that other gangs were beginning to encroach upon the Lovo territory and that they were not being challenged by the bullets that should be poured into them. He had just about decided to begin a lone war of reprisal when the lid was blown off. He and Johnny Lovo were dining at a table in the ground floor restaurant of the hotel where Lovo had his headquarters and which he owned. Suddenly there was a rapid staccato rattle of shots from outside somewhere, the tinkling crash of shattered plate glass windows and the spiteful whizzing of bullets. With one sweep of his arm, Tony overturned the table and dragged Lovo down behind it. He had recognised that peculiar stuttering of those guns outside. Machine guns! Why hadn’t someone used them before? Why hadn’t he, an expert machine gunner, thought of them and brought them into play in this other war that was for money only? Well, if that was the way they were going to play now, he’d give them a nasty dose of their own medicine. That shooting had been a direct attempt to get Johnny Lovo himself. It was the most daring move of the enemy so far. And it had been partly successful. Lovo had been hit in the shoulder. It wasn’t a serious wound but the fact remained that he had been hit for the first time and it brought a hunted look into his eyes that remained there forever after.
Johnny wasn’t a warrior when his own person was involved; his nerves weren’t constructed to stand the strain. That attempt to kill Lovo made Tony furious. He felt that it was a gesture of contempt which must not be allowed to remain unanswered if the Lovo organisation was to continue and to endure. Without saying a word to anyone, he managed to purchase a machine gun himself. Then one night he set out on a little war of his own. The headquarters of the North Side gang was upstairs over a florist’s shop which had been the property and hobby of the gang’s first and greatest leader, the famous Tommy Martin, who had been shot down among, his own flowers – the first post-war gang leader to die from the bullets of an enemy. The shop, which was directly across the street from a large cathedral, was located on a thoroughfare which was dark and quiet at night. Sitting in the tonneau of the car with his machine gun on his lap, Tony ordered his chauffeur to drive slowly past the shop. As the car moved deliberately along, Tony lifted the machine gun to his shoulder – it was one of the new type that are operated much as a rifle – and riddled the front of the shop, both upstairs and down. There had been a light on the second floor which went off the moment he started firing and he had no means of knowing if he hit anyone. But he had certainly done plenty of damage, he reflected happily as the car raced away from the scene. He’d given them as good as they sent, and with their own weapon. Since machine guns had been introduced into the war, the score was even.
CHAPTER X
At first Tony had considered that long scar on the left side of his face a blessing because of the change it had made in his appearance. But now, he was beginning to regard it as a curse. It was
making him a marked man. Already he was known through the underworld, not only to the members of the Lovo gang but to those of other mobs, as “Scarface Tony.” And to be so well known
that he could be easily identified was distinctly not a part of his plans. He felt, too, that that scar might be hurting his suit with Jane Conley, the gun girl. Women could not make themselves love
men who had disfiguring marks of any kind and that scar, even though it was becoming less noticeable as time went on, was not a thing of beauty. He and Jane were the best of friends, often
going places together and seeing a great deal of each other. Yet he felt that he was actually no closer to her than he had been the first time they met the night they had disposed of Jerry Hoffman.
But the lure of her was growing upon him more and more, if such a thing were possible. “Listen, girlie,” he said one night, “I love you – more than I could ever tell you; I’m not much good at talking.
But all I want is a chance to prove it. Please say ‘yes’ to that proposition I made you a long time ago.”
Jane looked him straight in the eye for a moment and the directness of her gaze was rather disconcerting. “All right,” she answered. “We’ll look around tomorrow for a place.”
“You’ll do it?” he cried, almost beside himself with elation.
“For one month – on trial. If at the end of that time I am not pleased with – everything, I am to leave and you are to say nothing, not even seeing me again if I ask you not to. Those are my
conditions. Do you accept them?”
“Yes.”
“Very well; it’s a bargain.”
“And if you are pleased with – everything?” he queried.
“The arrangement will probably last some time,” she answered quietly.
Tony went away from the house that night, almost choking with triumph. At last he had won; that glorious creature was about to become his – even, if only for a month. But he meant to make
things so pleasant that the arrangement would last much longer. But he said nothing about it to Lovo when they met next morning. In the first place, it was a private matter and none else’s
business; and in the second, the gang leader was obviously preoccupied. Tony watched him pace nervously around the office, his unseeing gaze now on the ceiling, now on the floor, with a funny
little sense of fright catching at his heart. What’s troubling Lovo?
“I want to talk to you, Tony,” said the other finally. “Sit down.” Tony took his place on the other side of the desk, feeling an odd sense of drama as though important events were about to transpire.
Finally Lovo sat down himself in his big chair and lit another cigar. “I’ve heard about your shooting up the florist shop the other night,” he began.
“Yes?” said Tony uneasily.
He wondered if he was to be sharply reprimanded. “It’s daring and all that but terribly dangerous. You must learn not to risk yourself like that.”
“I – I’ll try. But there’s a lot of fun in pulling a job like that.”
“I suppose so,” assented Lovo. “For those that like it. Well, I’m not one of them. I’d rather be peaceable and make money. When they drag in machine guns, it’s a bit too much. I’ve got plenty of
money, Tony; more than I can ever spend if I use common sense. I think I’ll take a trip, to Monte Carlo or Havana or some other gay sporting place where life is pleasant.”
“For how long?”
“Years. In fact, I doubt very much if I’ll ever return.”
“But the mob! You can’t let it break up and go to pieces–”
“It would be a shame to let such a complete organisation wreck itself, wouldn’t it? Well, can’t someone else run it?”
“Certainly.” Then remembering to whom he was talking, he added: “Perhaps not as well as you’ve run it, but they’d hold the crowd together and keep things moving. And there’s so much jack
laying around just waiting to be picked up.”
His voice almost became a groan as he remembered and mentioned the large illicit profits waiting to be garnered. “I know,” assented Lovo. “I’m not through with those profits yet myself … listen,
Tony, do you think you could run this mob?”
“I know I could,” answered the young man eagerly. “I wish you’d give me the chance.”
“I’m going to, It’s a heavy responsibility for a young fellow or even for an old one. But I’m going to take a chance on you and I believe you’ll make good. You’re to send half the net profits to me
every month wherever I direct. If my payments don’t come through regularly, of course I’ll have to come back and – make other arrangements!” Their eyes met as he said that and it was evident
that they understood each other completely. “Of the other half, you’re to keep two-thirds of it and give the other third to your first lieutenant, Steve Libati.”
“You want him to work that close to me?” asked Tony.
He disliked Libati intensely. “Yes. He’s much older at the game than you are and can give you good advice. Besides, he’s always been completely loyal to me and I know he would never do
anything that would hurt the organisation. If – anything should happen to you, he is to take command.”
“Does he know about all this?”
“No. But I’m going to tell him in an hour or two, after you and I have gone over some details.”
For two hours the gang leader and his successor, discussed various aspects of the mob and its activities. Tony merely assented to whatever Lovo said but his own mind was formulating rapidly
a plan of campaign, an aggressive, ruthless campaign that would leave the Lovo organisation in command of the field. His eyes glinted as he thought of the many daring moves he wanted to
make. At last Steve Libati was called in and apprised of the situation. He was an ugly brute in the late thirties, a gangster of the old school, the type that wore sweaters and shapeless checked
caps and lounged in front of frowsy corner saloons with a cigarette dangling from one corner of their ugly mouths while they talked hoarsely from the other. He had hard grey eyes and a nose
bent slightly to one side and a mean mouth that sneered easily and nastily. Tony disliked him intently and he had never evidenced any particular affection for Tony. They represented two entirely
different epochs in gangland, and had practically nothing in common. Steve was of the pre-war strong-arm type, who knew nothing except the law of might. Tony was of the dapper, business-like,
post-war type that went in for efficiency and regular business administration in crime, and that handled its necessary rough stuff with a breath-taking speed and thoroughness that accomplished
the end without leaving, any traces of the perpetrators. Furthermore, Tony had none of Lovo’s faith in either Steve’s ability or his loyalty. He had never seen the fellow do anything that proved
either one. And he resented having the man handed to him on a plate and being told to make the best of it. But already he had resolved one thing – if he and Steve didn’t get along well together,
he intended to rid himself of the fellow. There were ways … “Well, kid, we’ll hit it off together in great shape, won’t we?” exclaimed Steve with a great show of heartiness when the conditions of
Lovo’s virtual abdication had been explained to him.
But there was a sly look in his hard eyes and a patronising note in his rough voice that angered Tony. “I hope so,” he said coldly.
He turned to say something to Lovo. Tony walked out of the hotel in the grip of a strange mixture of emotions. He was elated, of course, at being elevated to command of the big Lovo organisation
– it furnished him with the break he had always wished for and which would give him a chance to make good in a big way and clean up. But he resented Steve Libati. The more he thought about
him, the more he disliked and distrusted the fellow. He could see him only as a spy for Lovo and as a general meddler. Oh, well, that problem would work itself out in time. He met Jane and they
went flat-hunting together. He told her of his big promotion and she was as excited as a child over a new toy.
“What a marvellous opportunity!” she exclaimed repeatedly. “You ought to be able to
clean up and retire in a couple of years.”
“Who wants to retire?” he demanded. “I want to live. Just because I’m the boss don’t mean that I’m going to hide myself in an office some place and let someone else have all the fun. I’m going
to be out on the firing, line myself every now and then. You and I are going to pull some more little jobs, girlie; don’t forget it. And there’s going to be plenty of jobs to be done. If I’m to run this
mob, I’m going to run it, and no halfway business. Moreover, I’m either going to run the competition out of town or kill them off.”
They found a handsome furnished apartment in a large building in a fashionable section. The rent was enormous but they both liked the place and Tony was a big shot now. They rented the place
for one month and he paid the rent in cash. And the following day found them installed, Jane as tremulously happy as a bride on her honeymoon. Lovo departed on Friday. Tony drove him to asmall station on the far South Side where he took a train for New York. Thus, there were no reporters or photographers around and the public at large had, no inkling that he was gone. Tony
wanted to have everything running smoothly and have his own position and leadership thoroughly established before Lovo’s absence was known. Returning to Lovo’s former office in the hotel to
take command, Tony found Steve Libati comfortably established there, tilted back in Lovo’s big chair, his feet on the desk, smoking a cigar. “’Lo, kid!” he greeted Tony.
And again his voice held that patronising tone that made the younger man furious. “Would you mind moving to another chair?” asked Tony coldly. “I want to sit there.”
“Oh, all right.” Steve shifted to another chair and Tony sat down at the desk. “As we’re going to run the mob, I thought you and I ought to have a little talk.”
“I don’t know what about,” retorted Tony coolly, picking up some papers and riffling through them in a this-is-my-busy-day manner. “I’ve decided on no definite plans yet. When I do, I’ll let you
know and give you your orders for your part in them.”
For a long moment the two men stared at each other. Tony’s right hand had moved quietly to his side coat pocket. He was waiting for definite insubordination. It did not come. Steve’s mean eyes
narrowed and his ugly mouth twisted into a snarl. Then he relaxed and forced a smile. “All right,” he said, “if that’s the way you feel about it.”
He picked up his hat and walked out. Tony had won the first tilt. But he realised that the inevitable serious trouble between them had only been postponed. Tony worked hard the rest of that day
and evening and all the next day and evening, getting things organised both in his head and on paper. The gang had been gradually falling lately, both in efficiency and income, because of Lovo’s
reluctance to carry out reprisals. There was much to do. The first thing was to carry out successfully two or three daring coups – preferably killings – against the enemy so as to give the boys
some confidence and pride in their own outfit. Then would come the serious organisation work that meant big profits. Within sixty days, Tony meant to have those profits bigger than they had ever
been under Lovo’s leadership. It was almost ten o’clock on Saturday night when Al, the little rat-faced gangster who acted as guard and doorman for the office, came in to Tony. “Captain Flanagan’s
here,” he announced.
Tony looked up quickly. “Who?” he demanded.
“Captain Flanagan, chief of the dicks at headquarters,”
A grim smile played about Tony’s lips. So Flanagan was here! Well he remembered that bullying officer whom he had knocked down in the cabaret for insulting Vyvyan and who thereafter had
practically run him out of town. The shoe was on the other foot now. Tony took an ugly automatic out of a drawer and laid it on the desk within easy reach. “Show him in!” he ordered grimly.
CHAPTER XI
Captain Flanagan, chief of detectives, came striding into the new gang leader’s office with the confident, arrogant air of one who is on familiar ground and who, though not expecting a warm
welcome, realises that his position demands a certain courtesy and respect. Scarface Tony, seated behind the desk to which he had just succeeded, with his right hand resting lightly on the
automatic lying on its top, watched the official enter. And a blast of rage as fierce as the heat from a suddenly opened furnace door swept through him. But the main thing he wondered was
whether or not Flanagan would recognise him. Flanagan evidently did not see in this smartly dressed man with a livid scar traversing the left side of his hard face from ear to jaw the handsome
boy who had knocked him down less than three years before and whom he later had practically run out of the city. For there was no hint of recognition in the officer’s granite grey eyes as he
pushed his derby to the back of his head and with his big feet planted widely apart and his hands thrust deep into his pockets, stood staring at the new leader of the powerful Lovo gang. “Where’s
Johnny?” demanded Flanagan.
“Mr. Lovo isn’t in.”
Tony’s eyes were as coldly impersonal as his tone. “I can see that,” snapped Flanagan, his cruel mouth twisting angrily. “I ain’t blind. Where is he?”
“Out of town. And he won’t be back for some time.”
Flanagan snorted. “Quit kidding,” he snarled. “Johnny’s always in on the first of the month – for me.”
“Oh! I see. Just a moment.”
From one of the desk drawers Tony produced a small notebook which contained the gang’s pay-off list, the names of those officials, high and slow, who had to be padded, and the amount of the
monthly bit of each. The list was carefully arranged in alphabetical order and Tony soon ascertained that the Lovo mob’s monthly contribution to the happiness and prosperity of Captain Flanagan
was £103. Tony dropped the little book back in the desk drawer. Then he pulled out a fat roll of money and peeling off five £20 bills, threw them across the desk in a manner most contemptuous.
“There you are. But remember that we want some service for all this jack we pay out.”
“As if you didn’t get it,” snarled Flanagan, snatching up the money and stuffing it into his pocket. “What I could do to this outfit if I wanted would be a sight.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” admitted Tony reflectively. “Yet we boys have our own methods for discouraging our enemies.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” answered Tony calmly, but he could see that his veiled warning had registered. “And now, Flanagan, I think it might be a good idea for you and I to have a little talk. I’m Tony Camonte.
And from now on I’m in command of this mob.”
“You!”
“Me,” asserted Tony solemnly. “Johnny Lovo left yesterday for a long vacation. He may be back sometime but I don’t think so. He’s got plenty of dough and he’s tired of this racket. Of course he’s
still interested but he turned the active control of things over to me.”
“Won’t some of his other lieutenants question your authority?”
“Maybe. But they won’t question it more than once.”
Tony patted the automatic and the glance he gave Flanagan was significant. “Well!” exclaimed the captain. “This is news. Though I been wondering lately if Johnny hadn’t lost his nerve or some
p’m. This mob’s been pretty quiet for a while.”
“Too damn quiet!” agreed Tony, his eyes snapping with energetic resolve. “But all that’s going to be changed now and changed damn quickly.”
“That’ll be interesting to the other mob leaders.”
“Let them find it out. They don’t have to be told anything. I don’t want this change spread around or leaking into the papers. But I wanted you to know about it so that if I give you a ring someday
and want a favour done in a hurry you’ll know who I am.”
Tony sneered at the captain’s broad back as Flanagan departed. There, he thought, was a good example of the men who are supposed to stand between the lawless and the law-abiding citizenry.
Trafficking for his own profit with those he had sworn to hunt down. That was the nub of the whole matter, Money. The underworld now was too wealthy to allow itself to be hunted down. But even
a cop was human, thought Tony; how could people be so foolish as to expect him to do his duty for five thousand a year – and sometimes less – when not doing it would make him twenty-five
thousand and oftentimes more. A knock at the door roused him from his reflections on cops in general and Flanagan in particular. “Come in,” he called brusquely.
He had the automatic trained on the portal before one could turn the knob. But it was only Al, the little rat-faced outer doorkeeper. “Someone just phoned on that back room wire at the cigar store
downstairs,” he announced, “and said that Charlie Martino, one of our truck drivers was hijacked and shot a little bit ago. He’s at a garage in Maywood now – here’s the address – and whoever
phoned said he needs a doctor bad.”
“Wonder why he didn’t give them one of our numbers up here to call,” Tony said.
“Probably didn’t want to give them to strangers. Charlie’s a good, reliable boy, boss,” said Al pleadingly, “I know him well.”
“If it’s true, I want to help him all I can,” said Tony. “But most likely it’s that North Side mob trying to put me on the spot. We got to go careful on this.” Within five minutes – so thoroughly systematized
was the Lovo organisation and its operations – Tony was in possession of Charlie Martino’s scheduled movements for the evening and also of his past record with the gang. The latter was
unblemished, both as to loyalty and ability, over a period of two years. This evening Charlie was supposed to be bringing a load of raw grain alcohol from Melrose Park, a suburb where almost
every house had a big still and the Italian inhabitants were making comfortable little fortunes by “cooking alky” for the big syndicates, into a warehouse near the gang’s headquarters in Cicero. A
call to Melrose Park revealed that he had picked up his load and departed according to schedule. But another call revealed that he had not arrived at the warehouse. It looked as though the plea
for assistance was genuine. “Tell six or seven of the boys downstairs to bring around a couple of cars and plenty of gats,” snapped Tony, his black eyes glittering with excitement, though his voice
was as cool and calm as if he were giving a telephone number. “I’m going out and have a look at this.”
Al hurried away, to relay orders to the cigar store downstairs which was a sort of squad room for the gang. Tony called a safe doctor – one of those rare physicians who, for enormous fees, will
attend the underworld’s gunshot wounds without going through the prescribed formality of reporting them to the police – and giving him the address in Maywood, ordered him to proceed there
immediately. Then he grabbed his automatic and hurried downstairs. In the dark alley back of the hotel – that was the gang’s headquarters because Lovo owned it – he found a group of shadowy
figures moving about two large dark touring cars with drawn side curtains. The clank of metal came to his ears as he advanced. They were loading in the machine guns, of course. “Ready, boys?”
he enquired. “Good! Let’s go!” He leaped into the tonneau of one car. Men piled in around him and in front and he saw the other men climbing into the car ahead. Motors roared into pulsing life
and with a whine of racing engines the two carloads of expert gunmen sped away on their errand of either mercy or murder. Tony hoped it would prove to be both. To his left he could discern in
the gloom the ugly snouts of two machine guns. He reached over and pulled one of them into his lap. “I’m with these babies like some people with a car,” he said with a laugh. “I feel safer when
I’m at the wheel.” A block away from the garage which was their objective, they cut put the engines and coasted the rest of the way. But their practiced eyes found nothing suspicious on any side.
Abruptly the engines roared again and the two big cars, bristling with the most modern death-dealing machinery, ready for anything, swept into the garage and ground to a halt. A man in greasy
mechanic’s coveralls, came forward, wiping his hands on a bit of waste. Tony opened the door next to him and looked out. “We’d a call that there was a man here – hurt,” he said brusquely.
“Yes. He’s back there in my little office. A doctor just came to see him.”
The man jerked a dirty thumb toward a small coupe which Tony recognised as belonging to the doctor he had summoned. The gang leader lifted his machine gun to the floor of the car and
stepped out. But as he followed the other man across the grease-spotted concrete floor, his right hand was plunged deep into his side coat pocket and his keen glance was searching the shadows
on all sides. Behind him, he knew that other keen glances were doing the same thing and that he was covered by an amazing amount of artillery. As the two men entered the cluttered little space
partitioned off from the rest of the building, the doctor looked up. He was a thin, nervous little man with a pallid complexion and shifty black eyes. But he knew his business, as many a live gangstercould testify. “Pretty serious,” he said with a gesture toward his patient who lay stretched out on a canvas cot, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and hoarse. “Shot twice through the chest. He’s
lost a lot of blood. We ought to get him somewhere where I can work on him.”
“Can he be moved?” asked Tony.
“Yes. I’ll give him a stimulant.” The doctor quickly filled a hypodermic needle from some of the bottles in his grip and injected the contents into the patient’s wrist. In a few moments the boy – he
was little more than that – opened his eyes. Tony walked over to him. “He’s too weak to talk,” cautioned the doctor.
Tony grasped his henchman’s hand. Their glances met, held, and the boy’s vacant stare changed to happy recognition. “Was it the North Side outfit?” demanded Tony harshly. “Schemer Bruno’s
mob?” The boy tried to speak but so much effort was beyond him. He nodded. “All right, we’ll see them, kid,” promised Tony gruffly and gripped that limp hand hard. The garage man’s eyes
widened when he heard that ominous threat of gangland vengeance. When Tony turned on him, he told his story quickly. Returning from towing a car out of a ditch, he had come upon the
wounded boy lying at the side of a lonely road, and had brought him on to the garage. The boy had pleaded with him to call only a certain number, a request to which he had acceded. “You see,
I thought it’s probably a case that it’s best not to make too much fuss about,” he concluded.
“You’ve done well,” Tony commended, and slipped him a twenty pound bill. ”.How’s your memory?”
“Terrible, boss,” grinned the man with a knowing wink. “Why, I’ve to look up the number every time I wanna phone my own house.” Tony grinned himself and slapped the man on the back. Money
and power on one hand and lack of them on the other has a way of making people understand each other quickly and thoroughly. They took the wounded boy back to a room in the hotel which
was the gang’s headquarters and the doctor went to work on him in an effort to save his life. Tony retired to his private office and sent for Steve Libati, the man whom Lovo had appointed as
second in command of the gang during his absence and who, Tony realised, was very jealous of his position as chief. He felt that now was as good a time as any to give the man an important
assignment, to test his ability and his loyalty.
CHAPTER XII
Steve Libati came in looking somewhat sullen and defiant. A gangster of a somewhat older school than Tony, of the sweater-and-checked-cap era, he had never quite accustomed himself to the
smooth, suave, business-like methods of the modern, post-Prohibition gangsters. Though he now wore the best clothes and drove an expensive car, he still talked from one corner of his cruel
mouth and, at times, revealed other distressing symptoms of having been a common street-corner thug.
“That North Side mob’s at it again,” said Tony, plunging immediately to the heart of the matter. “They hijacked one of our trucks of alky tonight and knocked off the driver. Kid named Charlie
Martino. I took some of the boys and went out and got him a little bit ago. He’s down the hall here now and Doc’s working on him to try to keep him from croaking. Happened between Maywood
and Melrose Park. That’s the first time that outfit has come that far into our territory and it’s going to be the last.”
“Think you can stop them?” asked Libati calmly, his head cocked on one side and his left eye closed against the smoke curling upward from his cigarette.
“I’m going to stop them.” Tony punctuated the statement with a sharp blow on the desk with his clenched fist. “If I have to have every man in the mob bumped off. Things have been too quiet
lately; from now on, they’re going to see action that’ll curl their hair. Johnny thought that Jerry Hoffman being bumped off would ruin that mob but they found this Schemer Bruno guy and he’s
turned out to be the best leader since Tommy Martin, better than Jerry ever thought of being. From now on, the war’s between that mob and this one; the others don’t cut much ice. Now, Steve,
bumping’ off small fry like Charlie is a nuisance but it don’t really hurt a mob. You can always find plenty of kids who’ll take a chance for the price. To ruin a mob, you gotta get the leaders, the
brains of the outfit. And you can bet this Schemer guy knows that as well as we do. So it’s just a matter of time till he takes a crack at me – or you. Well, I’m going to beat him to the draw and get
him before he gets me. And I’ve picked you to do the job.”
Steve tensed. His ugly features settled into an angry scowl. “Why me?” he demanded.
“I gotta have someone reliable that I can trust to handle it right.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?”
For a long moment Tony stared at his subordinate while fury gathered in his eyes. He strangled it with an obvious effort. “Because I don’t choose to. As head of the mob, I think my duty is to stay
in the background and run things.”
Libati laughed sarcastically. Tony’s eyes blazed. “I’d get Bruno,” he snapped furiously, “and do it within forty-eight hours. Don’t think I wouldn’t like to. And I will if necessary. But with my position
now, I feel I shouldn’t take chances like that if I don’t have to. Just the same, I’ll never ask a man in this mob to do anything that I can’t or won’t do myself. I got Jerry Hoffman and I got others. A
good many times I proved I got guts enough for anything. But I never heard yet of you proving that you’d any. Now’s your chance.”
Libati paled at the insinuation and his cruel mouth set in a nasty snarl. For a moment it looked as though he was going to pull a gun. Tony hoped he would, for he himself was ready and that would
settle his problem of what to do with Steve Libati. But the fellow had sense enough to regain his self-control. “You talk like you was the only big shot in this mob,” he snarled. “What about me?
Ain’t I one of the leaders?”
“Yes,” answered Tony quietly. “And I didn’t ask you to do the job yourself. But I want you to handle it, to get the dope about where and when he can be put on a spot and then get him. You can
work it your own way, have any of the boys you want to help you, but I want it done.”
“And if I don’t care to do it?” queried Steve impudently.
“You’re through with this mob,” retorted Tony coldly.
“After the orders Johnny left?”
“That don’t cut any ice. There’s none stays in this mob a minute that don’t obey my orders. That goes for you as well as the truck drivers. And there’s my authority!”
He whipped out his heavy, ugly automatic and slammed it down on the desk. Libati’s glance riveted to the gun for a moment, then he looked up at Tony and his eyes shifted again. He rose. “All
right, I’ll do it,” he said and walked out.
Tony smiled a little when the man had gone. Again he had won over the sullenly defiant Libati. He felt that he might yet master the fellow and make him a highly useful subordinate. Well, one
thing certain; he’d either master him or make use of the authority he had exhibited to clinch his argument. For half an hour Tony sat quietly smoking while he thought over the situation. It began
to look as if this Schemer Bruno had come by his name rightfully, as if he were a worthy foe. And as an instrument with which to carry out his schemes he had as powerful a gang as was to be
found in the United States. Its personnel was at least as strong as that of the Lovo mob and had proved itself to be equally resourceful and ruthless. And under the able leadership of this Schemer
Bruno it seemed to have set out on the same sort of ambitious program of expansion that Tony himself now intended embarking upon with the aid of the Lovo gang. Tony had heard, too, that the
three most important gangs on the South Side were about to consolidate and, under a unified direction, attempt to extend their operations to the rest of the city. That meant three major organisations,
each holding sovereignty over a certain section but struggling to gain the territory controlled by the others. It was going to be a grand fight, and a bloody one, with the big profits going to the gang
that could shoot the straightest and whose leader could think the fastest. And Tony welcomed the coming battle, every wily, murderous phase of it. He reached under the desk suddenly and,
pressing a button there, summoned Al, the little, rat-faced gangster who acted as office boy and outer doorkeeper. “I want someone to do something for me,” he said. “See who’s downstairs and
let me know right away.” In five minutes Al was back and recited a list of the gangsters who were loafing in the cigar store below. Tony considered a moment. “Tell Mike Rinaldo to come up here,”
he ordered finally. Mike proved to be a slender, dark young man, foppishly dressed in the latest fashion, and with a somewhat elegant manner. In evening clothes, he could have passed as a
foreign nobleman at a Ritz reception. Yet he was chief of the Lovo gang’s gunmen and personally was the most daring and resourceful gunman Tony had ever encountered. “Sit down, Mike,” said
Tony. “I’ve a little job for you.” Mike obeyed, carefully easing his pants over his knees so as not to spoil their razor-like creases. Then he lighted an imported, cork-tipped cigarette with an ornate
silver and mother-of-pearl lighter, and looked up expectantly. “Do you know any of the men in the North Side mob?” demanded Tony.
“A few – by sight,” answered Rinaldo cautiously.
His eyes narrowed with suspicion at the unusual question. “I want one of them. And you’re to get him for me.”
“I don’t think I quite get you, chief.”
“I want one of Schemer Bruno’s men – the higher up in the gang he is, the better I’ll like it – brought here to me. I don’t care how you do it just so he’s alive when you get him here. I want to find
out some details about how that mob operates.”
“But, good God, chief, none of them would talk.”
“The hell they wouldn’t!” snapped Tony. “Did you ever see that little room we’ve got down in the cellar here?”
“No,” answered Rinaldo, suddenly pale. “But I’ve heard about it.”
“Oh, he’ll talk all right,” said Tony with a grim smile. “All you have to do is get him here. And if you get me someone that knows something, there’ll be five G’s in it for you.” The gunman departed,
his close-set eyes sparkling at the thought of making £103 in one chunk. It was now after one in the morning. Tony could think of no other important tasks which could be done that night and
decided to go home. Jane Conley, famous in the underworld of half a dozen cities as The Gun Girl was still waiting up for him in the luxurious living room of the expensive apartment he had rented
for the thirty-day period of unconventional trial marriage to which they had agreed. And he felt a quick surge of passion rush through him as his keen glance caught a suggestion of the alluring
curves of her fine figure through the filmy folds of the flaming orange-and-black negligee which set off so brilliantly her vivid dark beauty. A magazine lay open in her lap but her eyes looked red
and strained, as if she might have been weeping. “What’s the matter, dear?” he asked after he had kissed her. “Unhappy already?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been thinking. And I guess it kinda got me upset. You know, Tony, you ought to watch yourself more. Now that you’re in Johnny Lovo’s shoes, all these other mobs are
going to try to bump you off. You ought to have bodyguards with you all the time.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right, kid. I’ll see about that tomorrow.”
“And I think we ought to be better armed here.”
“All right. I’ll bring up a machine gun tomorrow night if you say so. None knows we’re here and if they did, they’ve got sense enough not to try to pull off anything in a place like this.”
“You can’t tell, Tony. All the mobs are getting too ambitious and from now it’s going to be for blood.”
“What’s the matter; losing your nerve?”“Not by a damned sight!” flared Jane, her eyes snapping. “You know damn well I’m not yellow; I’ve proved it more than once. But I think it’s foolish to take any more chances than you have to.”
She came to him impulsively and laid a hand on his arm. “I – I’ve got some things on my mind/ Tony, and if anything ever happened to you, I could never forgive myself.” With the taciturnity and
inarticulateness of his kind, Tony did not question her about that cryptic remark. But to himself he puzzled over it. And before long he was destined to puzzle over it a lot more.
CHAPTER XIII
GANGLEADER FLEES
Tony read the newspapers next morning with unusual interest and a mounting fury. It was the big, black headline on all of them. Beneath that was a chronicle of Johnny Lovo’s abdication and
departure and of the succession of Tony Camonte, a young, little known gangster to his place as commander of the mob. And all the papers carried an interview with Captain Flanagan, chief of
detectives, in which he calmly assumed credit for having run Lovo out of the city. The captain also intimated in the interview that the Lovo mob had been so thoroughly harassed by the men in his
department that it was completely disorganised and would soon be a thing of the past. The captain closed with a trite, high-sounding but really meaningless statement as to the inevitable triumph
of law and order when properly administered and promised the people that he would continue to exert his utmost efforts to rid the city of gangs. It was easy to see where the papers had received
their information; the temptation to grab unearned glory had been too much for the captain. “That bastard.” Tony’s voice crackled with venom as he spat out the epithet between clenched teeth.
“I’ll get him yet.”
Tony drove to his headquarters with a ferocity that brought down upon him the profane maledictions of innumerable pedestrians and other motorists. But by the time he reached his desk his fury
had cooled to an icy, wordless anger infinitely more dangerous. Never yet had he failed to get even with a betrayer. “The DA’s been calling up every five minutes for the last hour,” said Al, the
little, rat-faced doorman. “Said you was to give him a ring the minute you come in. Sounds like he’s awful upset about some p’m.”
“To hell with him!” snarled Tony. “If he wants to talk to me, he knows where to find me. We ought to get some service out of that bit we pay him every month.”
“Better be careful with him, chief,” warned Al. “He’s more dangerous than any mob leader in town: He’s got a strong-arm squad that’s took many a poor guy for a ride.”
Tony considered a moment then, with an angry grunt, reached for the telephone and called the District Attorney’s office. At last there came to him over the wire a gruff voice that he recognised
from that conference long ago to which he had accompanied Johnny Lovo. “Camonte?” barked this voice brusquely. “This is District Attorney Crowder. I see in the morning papers that Lovo’s left
town.”
“Yeah.”
“And that you’re in command of his mob now.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Well, I presume you are familiar with his – er – arrangement with me?”
“Yeah, I got a complete pay-off list of the bits and I’ll keep takin’ care of them just as he did.”
“Don’t say things like, that over the phone,” commanded the D.A. sharply, in his voice such concern that Tony grinned. “Then things are going to go right ahead?”
“Yeah, only more so. This mob’s been too quiet lately.”
“Well, keep things out of the papers.”
“That’d be easy, if the dicks wasn’t so damn mouthy.”
“I know. All right, then, I’ll send Moran out to see you tomorrow afternoon.” Tony hung up, his lips curved in a sneering smile. The DA had been worried about his monthly bit, now that Lovo had
gone. And he was sending Moran out for it the next afternoon. Moran was one of his younger assistants, a brilliant prosecutor when he and his chief wanted him to be, but in the meantime the
collector for his superior. Reporters besieged the headquarters all morning but Tony refused to see them or even to send out a statement. The less publicity he got, the better he liked it. Shortly
before noon Al brought in a note to him. It was written on cheap white paper in a graceful feminine hand and read:
Dear Mr. Camonte,
May I see you for five minutes? Thanks!
Katherine Merton
Tony looked up, frowning in annoyance. “Who’s this dame?” he demanded.
“Don’t know, chief. Never saw her before. But she sure is a swell looker.”
“Yeah?” Tony seemed to brighten up a bit. “She don’t look like a gun girl or anything?”
“No. A dame with eyes like this one’s got couldn’t hurt a kitten.”
“All right, I’ll take a chance. Send her in.”
A moment later Miss Merton came in and Tony’s first glimpse of her made him glad that he had granted the interview. Al’s description of a swell looker was all right as far as it went but it did not
take into account her dignity and charm. She was the sort of girl that immediately and unconsciously made a young man ambitious for more intimate acquaintance and an old man regretful for his
age. Tall, with an athletic figure and an easy, graceful stride, she walked into the office with a calm, un-brazen assurance. She was dressed in a grey tweed suit and a small grey and black hat
that fitted closely the fine contour of her head. “How do you do, Mr. Camonte,” she said and extended her hand. “I’m Miss Merton.” Tony accepted the hand and felt sorry that he had no right or
excuse for holding it longer than he did. Her voice was rich and soothing, well-placed and completely poised, and her frank blue eyes held an engaging twinkle of understanding good humour. “I
want to ask a favour of you, Mr. Camonte,” she began. “I’ve found that men of your type are almost always chivalrous if they’ve the opportunity to be.”
“Yeah, sure,” mumbled Tony, embarrassed. “Be glad to do anything I can.”
“I thought so. Now, the problem is this: I’ve a job that I very much want to keep. And right now you’re the only person in the city who can help me keep that job.”
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“I’m with the Examiner,” continued the girl gently, almost regretfully. “And the city editor told me this morning that if I didn’t succeed in getting an interview with you he’d fire me.”
“A reporter!” exclaimed Tony in amazement and his expressive black eyes flashed angrily. “I’m seeing no reporters.”
“I knew you’d not, of course. And I understand just how you feel. But you see how it’s with me – I had to come out here and try to see you or lose my job. I guess though, that I’ll lose it anyway.”
She sighed and, succeeding in looking small and miserable for a moment, sniffed audibly. Tony growled under his breath and lit a cigarette. “Well, miss, I can’t tell anything about my business,”
he objected doggedly.
“Of course you can’t,” she seemed amazed at the mere idea, “and I’d think of asking you nothing like that even to save my job. All I wanted to know was if Mr. Lovo really had left and if you’re
really going to be the commander from now on – my, I’d think it would require unlimited brains and nerve to manage an – or – operation like this. And you look so young to have such an important
position.” During the ensuing twenty minutes Miss Merton secured her interview. Her questions were adroitly harmless on the surface, dealing only with things which were already known or soon
would be known about the gang and its operations, and Tony had no realisation of how much he had said. “I’ll bet you’d make a wonderful husband,” she said finally, her eyes sparkling in a way
that gave him an unaccountable thrill. “Men who lead adventurous lives always do; they like the relief of a quiet, comfortable home.” Thus she steered the conversation into romantic channels
and for some little time they dealt with love, marriage and so on. Mostly they talked in generalities but occasionally she elicited from him a personal opinion that would be meat for a sensational
newspaper story on A Gang Leader’s Ideas of Love or some such shop-girl-appeal topic. “By the way,” she said at last, “did you ever know a girl named Vyvyan Lovejoy?”
The question gave Tony such a shock that he almost cried out. Only his iron reserve enabled him to keep from betraying himself by an obvious reaction. Did he know Vyvyan Lovejoy? Did Romeo
know Juliet? Vyvyan was the burlesque leading woman who had been his first love. He had killed Al Spingola, the city’s most important gang leader at that time, in order that he might have her
for himself. It was his reckless love for her that had started him on his career beyond the law. And when he had come back from the war and found her living with another man he had killed them
both. At the mention of her name, all these events had rushed through his mind like a private mental movie. As it came to an end, his eyes narrowed and his mouth set grimly. “No,” he said. “Why
do you ask?”
“I interviewed her once,” answered the girl smoothly. “And you look a great deal like a picture she’d. There’s something about the eyes–”
Tony felt considerably upset. To his knowledge, Vyvyan had never had a picture of him. Nor had anyone else. In fact, he didn’t know of his picture ever having been taken. He didn’t believe in
pictures; they were too liable to fall into the wrong hands and sometime be a means of identification. “And by the way,” continued Miss Merton smoothly, “do you ever see that stunning brunette
who was with you at the Embassy Club the night Jerry Hoffman was shot?”
At this question, Tony did start. Even his iron-like nerves could not withstand a shock like that. He and Jane Conley, “The Gun Girl,” the girl with whom he was now living, had killed Jerry Hoffman,
then leader of the North Side gang, that night at the Embassy Club, the city’s most exclusive night resort. Johnny Lovo had given the orders and paid for the job being done. And so far as Tony
knew, Lovo was the only other person besides himself and Jane who even knew that they had been in the club that fatal night. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“You see I was there that night and my escort pointed out all the notables to me. You’re among them. He said he thought you’d make a great success in your chosen profession.”
She laughed lightly. “Who was your escort that night?” demanded Tony.
“Oh, I don’t think it would be fair to tell.” She rose, smilingly, and extended her hand. “I’ll take up no more of your valuable time now, Mr. Camonte. But perhaps some other time we can chat a bit.
Anyway, thanks so much for a very interesting interview; it will enable me to keep my job.”
And she departed, leaving behind her a much perturbed gang leader. Now that he was no longer under the influence of her personality – and her expert flattery – he realised that she was a
smooth worker, that she had attained her objective in spite of him. And how had she known so much? And what could possibly have been her object in mentioning those past occurrences to him?
The more he thought about it the more worried he became. At last, in response to a sudden awful suspicion, he picked up the telephone and, calling the Examiner, asked to speak to Miss
Katherine Merton. A moment later he hung up slowly, feeling dazed and very uneasy. The Examiner had no one by that name. Then who was the girl? And what had been her object?
CHAPTER XIV
Charlie Martino, the alky truck driver, who had been hijacked and shot the, night before, died during the afternoon, without regaining sufficient strength to relate the details of what had occurred
to him or to give a description of his assailants. Tony looked down at the boy a moment, then, using again that uncanny yet unconscious knowledge of psychology which he possessed, ordered
every member of the gang who could be reached to come in a few at a time and view the body. He felt that the sight of one of their own dead would put the spirit of battle in them. At last he
ordered a fine funeral for the boy and went back to his private office in grim silence, vowing vengeance on the North Side gang. Tony, in a savage humour from the day’s events, was just ready
to go home shortly after ten that night when Mike Rinaldo, the dapper gunman, arrived. And the three men who followed him into Tony’s office proved that he had succeeded in his quest. For the
man in the centre was obviously a prisoner. “Got him, chief,” announced Mike with an elegant gesture toward the glowering captive.
“Who is he?” demanded Tony.
His manner indicated that nothing short of Caesar would be acceptable. “Benny Peluso, one of the big shots in the North Side crowd.”
“Frisk him?”
“Certainly,” answered Rinaldo, evidently aggrieved at the query. “Found a nice load of gats too.”
“Well, frisk him again here. Strip him to the hide.”
From his vantage point behind the big desk Tony surveyed the captive while his three henchmen stripped the man and searched every inch of his clothing for possible weapons. The fellow was
short and slightly stocky, with a heavy brutal face that instantly bred distrust. His black eyes, now blazing with anger, were shifty and set far too close together. Tony removed a heavy automatic
from the desk drawer and laid it on the desk conveniently close to his practiced right hand. “All right,” he said when the three men had completed their fruitless search and the prisoner was
indignantly donning his coat. “You,” pointing the pistol at the captive, “sit down there. The rest of you wait outside until I call you.”
He toyed silently with the weapon until the door had closed behind his men. Then he looked at Peluso and stared at him until the man’s glance dropped. “Do you know where you are?” demanded
Tony suddenly.
“Yeah,” snarled the prisoner.
“Speak nicer if you expect to get out of here alive,” snapped Tony. “Do you know who I am?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m Scarface Tony Camonte, the new chief of the Lovo mob. And I’m just about ten times as hard-boiled as Johnny Lovo ever thought of being. I’ve bumped off six or eight myself and
another one – especially a rat like you – wouldn’t mean a thing in my young life. Get me?”
“Yeah.”
But the man’s tone now had changed from defiant anger to sullenness and his glance remained riveted hypnotically to that pistol. “There’re some things I want to know. And you’re going to tell
me.”
“You got the wrong man, bro. I won’t spill nothing.”
“The hell you won’t!” Tony leaned across the desk, the pistol pointed unwaveringly at the hapless captive. “Do you want a load of that in you?”
“No, course not. But if I talked, my own crowd would bump me off.”
“Maybe not.” Tony leaned back. “How much jack do you make with your mob?”
“’Bout three C’s a week. Sometimes more.”
“Three C’s, eh? That’s not very much, is it, for all the work you do and the chances you take?”
“I’m wort’ more,” agreed the man darkly.
“Yeah. But you’ll never get it, not with this Bruno guy, from what I hear of him. Where do you think he got that name Schemer anyhow? When a guy’s a moniker like that hung on him there’s a
reason for it. Now, Benny, I’m not a bad guy when you don’t cross me. And I’m always willing to see the boys get a piece of change for themselves.” He leaned across the desk. “How would you
like to have three grand – in one chunk?”
The prisoner’s eyes sparkled and he licked his lips. “Jeez!” he exclaimed. “That’s a lot to jack even if you ain’t got it.”
“I’ve got it. And it’s yours if you want to talk.”
“What do you want to know?”
“That’s more like it,” smiled Tony. “I want to know a lot of things about the Bruno mob, where their warehouses are, and their breweries and their main alky cooking plants. I want to know what
garages they keep their trucks in and what roads they use mainly in hauling their stuff in and out of town. I’ll think of a few more things as we go along.”
“God! I couldn’t tell you all that stuff.”
“Why not?”
“They’d bump me off sure.”
“Well, if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll bump you off.”
“An’ if I do tell you, they will. What chance has a poor guy got?”
“Listen, mug!” snapped Tony. “Don’t you know that fifteen grand’s a lot of dough? That’s as much as you make in a year with the mob, and if you stay here with them you’ll never have that much
in one chunk. If you had that much jack, you could go to Frisco or New York or even Mexico or some other crazy place and open a gambling house or get in some kind of a racket and be set for
life.”
“Yeah, I know. I – I’d like to have it all right. But those guys would follow me any place.”
“They wouldn’t know where you was. They’d think you’d been took for a ride. Don’t plenty of mugs from these mobs around here disappear every year?”
“Yeah, I guess they do. But I couldn’t do it. They’d get me sure. And what good’s dough to a dead man?”
“Come on, now, don’t be a fool!” snarled Tony menacingly and aimed the pistol again. “Either you talk or you get it.”
The man’s eyes glittered against the background of his ghastly pale face and he licked his lips constantly. “Well, I know I’m going to get it if I do talk,” he answered doggedly. “So I guess I’ll have
to take my chances of getting it if I don’t.”
“So you won’t spill it, eh?” gritted Tony. The hole in the muzzle of that automatic must have looked as big as a barrel to the prisoner. But he caught his breath suddenly, closed his eyes and shook
his head. “I think you will!” said Tony. “Get up!” He called in his henchmen from the other room. “He’s a hard nut,” he explained. “Got to take him to the cellar.”
Rinaldo paled. He could shoot a man down without even giving serious thought to the matter but the mere thought of what was in that cellar made him weak. “Come on!” snapped Tony and
included them all with a comprehensive gesture of the automatic. “You taking me for a ride?” asked the prisoner as they descended in the elevator.
“No,” retorted Tony grimly. “Not yet.” The place to which they took him was a sub-cellar beneath the regular cellar under the hotel. It was reached by a rather rickety wooden stairway and proved
to be a large square room with concrete walls from which were suspended by chains various strange-looking iron appendages. Before Peluso could hardly realise what was happening he had
been stripped to the waist and rigged up against the wall, his arms stretched high overhead, his body suspended from the wrists which were encircled by tight iron bands. Tony motioned to one
of his men who stepped over to a small, furnace-like arrangement. Tony himself caught up a large, razor-edged knife and, fingering it significantly, looked at his prisoner. “You know, Benny,” he
said grimly, “a lot of these mugs they find out on the road somewhere after they’ve been took for a ride don’t look so pretty; ears off, tongue out, and other little details like that. And all those things
always happen before the guy is actually bumped off. Nice to think about, ain’t it?”
Tony turned back toward the furnace. Rinaldo followed him. “I don’t like to say nothing, chief,” said the gunman hoarsely in a low tone, “but, honest to God, I don’t believe I can stand this.”
“Then look the other way or get out. I don’t like it any better than you do but it’s got to be done. Makin’ this bird talk means that our mob will control the city before long. And don’t forget this, Mike;
Bruno or any of that North Side mob of his would do this same thing to you or me or any of us in a minute if they had the chance.” He turned abruptly to the other man. “Ready?” he demanded
brusquely.
“Here you are, chief.”
From within the furnace, the gangster drew out a long, thin iron bar. One end of it was red hot. Tony caught it up by the cold end and approached the trussed prisoner. “Now, damn you,” he
snarled, “you’ll either talk or I’ll ram a hole clear through you with this.” And he started the sizzling iron bar slowly but surely toward the gangster’s bare flesh. The man cringed and his eyes
widened with terror. Finally he yelled, though the iron had not yet touched him. “Go ahead and yell,” said Tony grimly. “No one will hear you.”
Facing a pistol is one thing; facing red hot iron against one’s bare flesh and other unknown tortures is another. Peluso cracked. “I’ll talk!” he gibbered when the iron was yet half an inch from him.
“God! Take that away.”
For an hour they cross-examined him, Rinaldo and the others jotting down details while Tony asked the questions. The leader’s eyes were sparkling; he was gaining a complete knowledge of the
operations of his most important enemy. “Well, do I get the dough?” asked Peluso when he finally had convinced them that he knew no more.
“Yes,” retorted Tony. “After we’ve checked up on this story of yours and carried out a plan or two I’m hatching up right now. In the meantime, you stay here; I’m not takin’ any chances with you
rushing to Bruno and blabbing everything to him so that he could change his whole line-up before I can ruin it for him.”
Tony immediately selected his half dozen cleverest men – including Mike Rinaldo – and sent them out to investigate what Peluso had told. For over a week they worked day and night, circulating
around the city, spying, asking apparently aimless questions, doing a great deal of motoring, snooping carefully but efficiently in many quarters. And they reported back that every detail of the
prisoner’s story seemed correct. Elated, Tony at once set in motion the machinery over which he now had control. A dozen new machine guns were imported from New York by devious methods.
And certain members of the gang who were acknowledged experts in that line were set to work constructing powerful bombs or pineapples as they are known in gang circles. Tony was a veritable
dynamo of energy during these preparations and his vigorous – and murderous – enthusiasm gradually communicated itself to the others until the entire gang was a real fighting machine anxious
to get a chance at the enemy. Libati came swaggering into Tony’s private office, late one afternoon. “Well, I guess we’re about all ready for the war to start. What’s the first move?”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve decided,” retorted Tony coolly.“How about this mug, Peluso? What are we going to do with him?”
“Do with him! Why, as soon as the campaign on the North Side gang is well opened up, I’m going to give him the jack I promised him and have him taken to a train for the West. I imagine he’ll be
glad enough to blow town.”
“I’d think so. But surely you’re not going to be such a sap as to pay him off now. He’s told us all he knows. Why not take him for a ride and save the dough?”
Tony, unaccountably shocked by the cold-blooded proposal, looked up with flashing eyes. “I keep my word, Steve, whether to friend or enemy, and no matter what I’ve promised, either good or
bad,” he retorted grimly. “The other day I gave you an assignment to get a certain man. You haven’t done it yet. Do you remember what I promised you if you didn’t carry it out?”
Steve’s glance shifted uneasily. “Yes.”
“Well, that stands. And I don’t intend to wait all summer either. Better get a move on.”
CHAPTER XV
Tony took Jane Conley the Gun Girl to one of the swankier night resorts that evening. They both enjoyed such high-powered diversion and it always brought back memories. It was at Ike Bloom’s
that Tony first had seen her and been struck by her beauty. It was at the Embassy Club, while they sat waiting for Jerry Hoffman to come in so that they could carry out his death sentence
pronounced on him by their employer, Johnny Lovo, that they really had become acquainted. Tony, his evening clothes immaculate and perfectly fitted save for a slight bulge under his left arm
where an automatic hung suspended in a shoulder holster, looked about the luxurious but crowded and noisy place, then glanced at Jane with satisfaction glowing in his expressive eyes. She
was the most beautiful woman in the place, or the joint as he mentally worded it. He wondered, with a sudden twinge of jealousy, if she would stick with him after the thirty-day probationary period
had expired. He observed that she seemed somewhat distraught tonight, her hands fluttered nervously, little lines of concern wrinkle her forehead, and her glance kept wandering around as
though she were looking for someone, yet hoping that she wouldn’t see him. “What’s the matter, baby?” asked Tony expansively.
“Nothing. I just don’t feel very well.”
“Aw, cheer up! Let’s dance!” They rose and moved out on the small, crowded floor, quite the handsomest couple in the place. Jane was a superb dancer and Tony, with his native Latin grace and
sense of rhythm, equally good. None watching them would have dreamed that they both had killed, not in the heat of passion, but coolly and deliberately – for money; and that they would kill
again whenever the occasion seemed to demand. And yet they were not murderers, except legally. In their own minds, they felt completely justified for everything they had done. And their
operation never had been and never would be the slightest menace to the general public. When they stalked with murderous intent, they invariably were after some certain person who had it
coming to him and who would have done the same to them without any more compunction than they showed. And they always took care not to harm innocent bystanders. When the cabaret’s
gaiety was at its height in the wee hours, Tony saw Katherine Merton, the mysterious girl who, in the guise of a newspaper reporter, had visited him at headquarters and questioned him at length
about many things. She was seated now on the other side of the club, attired in a somewhat daring evening gown of flashing sequins, and escorted by a dark, handsome man in a dinner jacket,
whose general appearance, somehow, was anything but reassuring to Tony. He wondered suddenly why she was here, if there was anything behind her presence beyond participation in the
general gaiety. The possibility worried him. He wondered if she had seen him, and hoped she had not. “Say, baby,” he said, “do you know that dame over there, the one with the diamond dress?”
Jane turned and her glance searched the room. When she finally saw the mysterious girl, her eyes widened and she bit her lip. “No,” she answered sharply. Then, “Let’s go!”
Puzzled, Tony escorted her from the club. He knew she had lied. But why? Newsboys were crying the early editions of the morning papers. Tony bought one, then his face set and an involuntary
“Hell!” burst from his lips.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jane anxiously.
“Steve missed, the damn dumbbell!” snarled Tony. The girl took the paper from him and looked at it. An attempt had been made that night on the life of Schemer Bruno, now leader of the North
Side gang. But miraculously he had come through it unscathed. Questioned by police, he had admitted that he had an idea who was behind the attack but had refused to give them any information.
It was thought by the police that the attack meant the beginning of a new gang war. “The clumsy fool!” snarled Tony. “I’d have known better than to trust that job to him. Now Bruno will be after
us right. And he’ll be so careful himself that we may not be able to get another crack at him for a hell of a while.”
“Oh, Tony, that worries me!” said Jane. “You must be very careful.”
He drove home in wordless wrath, his active mind racing with murderous plans for annihilating his enemies. In front of the luxurious apartment house where they lived he stopped and let Jane
out. “I’ll put the car away and be right back,” he said absently.
At the corner he swung to the left and headed for the garage a block away. Suddenly the angry whine of a heavy car approaching from the rear at high speed obtruded itself into his consciousness.
Instantly suspicious, he increased his own speed. But the other car came alongside. He could see that it was long and low and black, with side-curtains in place – the typical death car. Then a
thin red stream burst from its side, he heard the rattle of machine-gun fire, and bullets tattooed against the side of his own car. But the body of his sedan was heavy steel and the glass was bullet-
proof. It shed bullets as a duck does water. Yet these enemies, whoever they were, would not be satisfied until they had accomplished their murderous mission. He realised that he dare not go
into the garage for the death car would follow and finish him there. And: the employees would be of no help. He must get to his own district, where these men would hardly dare follow and where,
if they did, his gangsters always loafing around that all-night cigar store on the ground floor of the hotel which was his headquarters would come to his assistance and make short work of them.
Abruptly he pressed the accelerator to the floor and the big car leaped forward. At a crazy pace he raced through the dark, deserted city streets. And that other car hung doggedly to his trail.
Several times they gained slightly, coming almost close enough to use their guns again. But always he managed to keep ahead of them. On and on and on went that strange race, for him a race
for life, for them a race for death – his death; careening around corners, streaking along on the straightaway. If only he could reach his headquarters before something happened. Surely they
would not dare to follow him there. From behind came the stuttering rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire again. Two of his tires, evidently pierced by the bullets, blew out with loud reports. The car
slewed to the right, struck the curb with terrific force, and turned over. Tony felt himself falling then everything went black. When he regained consciousness he was lying prone but in an
uncomfortably cramped position. There was a carpet under him and feet all around him and he was aware of a jolting, swaying motion. Abruptly he realised that he was on the floor of a car
tonneau and that the car was moving. It couldn’t be his car. Then it must be that of the enemy. He sat up, wildly staring about him. There were two men in the rear seat but it was too ark to
distinguish their faces. “He ain’t dead, after all,” said a strange voice. “Jeez! Ain’t that top bad?”
“What the hell’s the idea?” demanded Tony.
“You’ll know soon enough.”
“Well, let me up on the seat there. This is too damned uncomfortable.”
He tried to get up and found that he was weak and very dizzy. One of the men reached out and jerked him into the seat between them. He could see now that the front seat also contained two
men. “You want to enjoy this ride, kid!” snarled a voice in his ear. “Because it’s the last one you’ll ever take.”
Tony’s heart almost stopped. He’d faced danger and been in tight places before; but never a situation like this. He was being taken for a ride, about to be made the victim of the most feared and
the most conclusive of all the means gangland used for ridding itself of its enemies. He turned to the man who had spoken. “This is some of that damn crooked North Side outfit, I suppose,” he
said bitterly.
“Yes.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Me?” The man laughed mirthlessly, a menacing laugh strangely like the rattling of a snake about to strike. “I’m Jerry Hoffman’s brother.”
CHAPTER XVI
Mentally Tony rehearsed the steps ahead of him. The swift, ominously silent ride out into the country. Then when a sufficiently deserted spot had been reached, he would be kicked out of the car,
riddled with bullets and left dead in a ditch, to be found by some passer-by or perhaps picked to pieces by buzzards if the place were remote enough. A fellow had some chance in a street gun-
fight, no matter what the odds against him, but a ride was more inexorable than the death sentence imposed by a jury and court. For there was no appeal from it. There was no possibility of
escape from it. It was carried out with the cool, precise deadliness of a state execution. And it was even more inevitable – at least it always had been. A nervous or sensitive man faced with cruel,
and certain death within an hour would have shouted, screamed, pleaded, and perhaps battled his captors with that reckless strength born of despair. But Tony was neither nervous nor sensitive.
A man who requires a steady trigger finger can’t be. Tony was thinking. Not with frantic, chaotic haste; but coldly, deliberately, resourcefully. The hopelessness of his situation did not appal him.
It merely stimulated that abnormally keen animal cunning which had made him, while still in the twenties, the most daring and powerful gang leader in that city noted for daring and powerful gang
leaders. And at last his agile mind found a possibility – focused upon it. It was a mad scheme; the chances were a hundred to one against his coming out of it alive even if it worked. He realised
that, yet experience had taught him that a plan seemingly impossible of success sometimes succeeded because people thought none would be silly enough to try it. As things stood, he was sure
to be dead within an hour; if he attempted his mad plan, he had a bare chance. He decided without a second thought to assume the risk. Calmly, coolly, he bided his time, sitting there in the
tonneau of the big car between two of his captors while the other two occupied the front seat. At last he saw a car approaching from the other direction. His gaze narrowed as he tried to gauge
their relative speeds and the distance between them. Then, with a sudden, panther-like spring, he leaped forward, launching a terrific blow at the chauffeur’s head and grabbing for the wheel. The
speeding car staggered crazily. But the surprised driver was still hanging on. Tony was battering the man’s head, trying to strangle him, with one hand while he tugged at the wheel with the other.
He felt blows raining on his own head and back, then a gun flashed and roared in the tonneau and he felt a sharp burning in his side. But he gritted his teeth and stuck to his task. The big car
swerved to the right, dropped into the ditch with a blinding crash, then turned repeatedly, its engine racing madly with a shrill, agonized whine, and finally came to rest on its side, still quivering,
like a stricken animal. Tony piled on top of the other two men who had been with him in the tonneau, shook his whirling head in an effort to clear it. His whole body seemed to be only a mass of
excruciating pains, but he was still conscious. He realised dully that none of the others had moved or spoken. His left arm was twisted under him in an unnatural way. He tried to move it and found
he couldn’t. It was hurting terribly, too. Cautiously he reached out with his right hand, feeling the pockets of his inert companions. Finding a familiar bulge, he reached in and pulled out a .45
automatic. The feel of the cold steel against his flesh, the realisation that he was armed again, revived him like cold water. He struggled upward, seeking a way out of the twisted wreckage. Thenhe heard approaching footsteps clicking on the frozen ground and a shadowy figure appeared beside the overturned car. That was someone from the other automobile, of course; he had counted
on that. “Say!” he said hoarsely, and was provoked to find his voice shaky. “Help me out of here, will you?”
A flashlight was snapped on, then its conic yellow beam penetrated the tonneau and finally came to rest on his face. “Sure!” said the stranger. “But I’m surprised any of you are alive. God! That
was an awful sight!”
He helped Tony out through a smashed and twisted door, then turned his light on the others. The driver and his companion were obviously dead, their faces horribly cut by the broken glass. The
two men in the tonneau were unconscious but looked to be alive. “Come on, let’s go,” said Tony.
“But the others–” objected the stranger in amazement.
“To hell with the others!” snarled Tony harshly. “They’re gangsters and they was takin’ me for a ride. I hope they’re all dead. I guess I ought to make sure–”
He produced the pistol and aimed at the two inert figures in the tonneau. “For God’s sake!” gasped the stranger, laying a trembling hand on his arm. “Don’t! You can’t–”
Tony turned and stared at him for a moment, then shrugged contemptuously and allowed his gun hand to drop to his side. He had decided that it would probably be best not to do any murdering
before a witness, especially when he needed that witness badly for the next half hour. “All right!” he growled. “But you’re going to take me where I want to go and fast. Come on!” He prodded the
stranger with the automatic then almost grinned as the man shivered and hastily began leading the way back to his own car parked on the road. Tony ordered the man to make all speed for the
gang’s headquarters then silently settled back in the seat with a sigh of relief and began making plans for vengeance. But his own misery would not allow his mind to dwell on that enticing problem.
His left arm was broken; his right side throbbed and burned from the bullet wound; he found it impossible to assume a position which was even remotely comfortable. And pain and warm little
trickles warned him that his own face had not escaped the flying glass. Altogether he felt, and imagined that he looked, a total wreck. The man beside him obviously was burning up with curiosity.
Several times he tried to question his passenger but Tony either answered in grunts or not at all and he finally gave it up. But he drove like fury; they pulled up before the hotel gang headquarters
much sooner than Tony expected. “You’re all right,” said the gang leader briefly, reaching for his wallet. He found it contained £70 and generously thrust the whole wad of bills into the surprised
stranger’s still trembling hand. “There’s a little gas money,” he said with an attempt at a smile. Then his face sobered into a frown and his voice came hoarsely from between gritted teeth. “But
keep your mouth shut about this!” he commanded savagely. “Or you’ll get what they tried to give me tonight.” Even at that hour of the morning, there were a few gangsters lounging in the all-night
cigar store and in the small, dark lobby of the hotel. Tony’s entrance in such a condition created a sensation and they all looked eagerly curious. “Been in an automobile wreck,” volunteered Tony
curtly, then immediately ascended to his own private quarters on the top floor and called a doctor. An hour later, his wounds dressed and his broken arm set, Tony went to bed. He felt certain he
would be unable to sleep, yet it was after noon when he awakened. Laboriously he hauled his weary, battered frame out of bed and tried to dress. But with only one arm, and it so stiff and sore
that he could hardly move it, he had to call Al, the little, rat-faced doorkeeper to help him. Fortunately Tony kept part of his extensive wardrobe at the hotel; he would have looked funny transacting
the day’s business in evening dress. He had a big breakfast sent up then went to his desk and sent for Steve Libati. And his eyes flashed as he gave the order. This was to be a day of settling
scores.
CHAPTER XVII
The assistant chief of the powerful Lovo gang came in with an air of genial assurance that somehow seemed forced. His ugly face bore a smile but his eyes were narrowed and searching, as if
he were anxious to know what sort of reception he was to receive. “Sorry to hear about your accident, boss,” he said. “The cops phoned that your car had been found out on the North Side
somewhere. There’s been a lot of reporters out here this morning, too; they say there’s bullet-holes in the tires. But I told them you wasn’t around–”
“Yeah,” growled Tony sourly, “you’re a big help to me.” He stiffened and leaned across the desk, his mouth twisted in an ugly snarl. “What the hell did you miss Bruno for?” he demanded.
Libati shrugged. “Just a rotten break.”
“What do you mean – a rotten break?” demanded Tony savagely. “Bullets go where they’re aimed … How’d you try to pull the job, anyway?”
Libati explained. One of the two gunmen that he had selected to help him murder Schemer Bruno, wily leader of the strong North Side gang, had discovered that Bruno was to visit a certain place
at ten o’clock the night before. In a parked car across the street, they had lain in wait for him. He came out in a few minutes and just as they were ready to fire, another car had run through the
street, obscuring their human target for a moment. When their opportunity finally came, he was walking rapidly toward his car. They had all fired a volley at him and then fled in their car, before
his friends inside the saloon could pile out and make the gun fight two-sided. “All three of you put a rod on him?” demanded Tony.
“Yeah.”
“And all three of you missed?”
“I – guess so. The papers this morning says he wasn’t hit by this mysterious attack!”
“Well, what a fine lot of gat-packers you are,” snarled Tony in disgust. “Why, I could throw a gat at a guy and hit him with it … Why in hell didn’t you finish the job?”
“But the guys’ inside–”
“If there’s anything I hate, it’s a quitter … I suppose you didn’t know that if you missed, Bruno was sure to know who was behind the attack and set all his gorillas on my trail … Listen, Steve,
there’s two kinds of guys that this mob ain’t big enough to hold – -those that can’t obey orders and those that won’t obey orders. And I think both counts fit you.”
Libati flushed slowly until his swarthy complexion had turned a sort of dull purple. And his shifty black eyes had taken on a glittering menace. “I – don’t think I get you,” he said slowly and his lips
compressed into a thin, hard line.
“No? Well, I’ll put it plainer, so plain that even you can get it. Either you and the men you picked to help you get Bruno are no good or you sold out to the enemy and missed on purpose.”
“Damn you!” gritted Libati, leaping to his feet, his right hand darting for his side coat pocket.
But Tony had lifted his automatic from the desk with the smooth ease and incredible rapidity of the expert and had it trained on his lieutenant’s middle coat button before the man was completely
out of the chair. “Don’t pull, you fool!” hissed the leader. “I don’t weaken and I don’t miss. And you better not let that right mitt of yours get nervous again while you’re in my presence. It’s only my
left arm that’s broke, you know,” he added with grim humour. Steve let his gun hand fall to his side, then ostentatiously lifted it to light, a cigarette that he had taken from his left hand pocket.
“You’ve been after my job ever since Johnny left,” said Tony. “And you ain’t the type to be particular how you got it – or anything else, for that matter. If I was dead, you’d have it, see? That’s why
it would be so nice for you to have Schemer Bruno still alive so he could get me. Well, I ain’t dead yet, Steve, and I don’t intend to be for a long time. So I think you’re wasting your valuable time
around here waiting for me to drop off.” His voice dropped to the cold, monotonous level of a judge pronouncing sentence. “You and those two mugs who was with you last night are through with
this mob.”
“Don’t talk foolish!” snapped Steve. “You can’t fire me out of this mob. Johnny–”
“Johnny’s gone. And he left me the boss. There’s my authority, lifting the heavy automatic and gazing at it – fondly. “From today on you don’t get a dime out of here and if I hear of you hanging
around here, it’s liable to be curtains. You’re all through, see? You can either go out like you are or in a hearse, I don’t care which.”
For a long moment the two men looked into each other’s eyes. Tony’s were cold, hard, steady; Steve’s shifty, and blazing with fury. Rut at last the erstwhile lieutenant turned without a word and
strode out of the room. Again Tony had won; permanently this time, it seemed. Tony’s next act was to arrange a bodyguard for himself, an ample one. Then, with a retinue befitting a person of
his importance – and danger – he returned to his apartment. From now on he would travel as he was doing now, between two watchful henchmen in the rear seat of a sedan with a steel body
and bullet-proof glass while the well-armed chauffeur and the man beside him, as well as the four men following closely in a similar car maintained a constant vigil in every direction for suspicious
automobiles or people. Tony entered his luxurious apartment briskly, his hard eyes glinting with anger. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask Jane. He found her curled up in a big chair in
the living room, reading a novel and munching a box of chocolates with what he considered unpardonable placidness. She looked up in surprise at his entrance, then her eyes widened in shocked
amazement as she noted his appearance. “Why, Tony!” she exclaimed. “What’s happened?”
“A lot you care!” he growled. “I go around the corner to put the car away, don’t come back till the next day, and you look as if you hadn’t even wondered what kept me.”
“But I have wondered, Tony. I’ve been terribly anxious. But I supposed that you knew your own business and I thought you might resent my butting into your affairs.”
“Yeah? Well, the Bruno mob tried to take me for a ride last night. And I think you knew they were going to.”
“Tony!” The girl’s face had gone deathly white and her eyes were glittering. “How can you say–”
“Who was that dame at the cabaret last night, the good-looking moll in white with that dark mug in a dress suit?”
“I – don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. I pointed her out to you and I could see in your eyes that you knew her.” He went close to her, caught her arm in a vice-like grip and twisted cruelly. “Who was she?” he rasped.
“She’s – a gun girl,” panted Jane finally. “Schemer Bruno’s moll.”
“So that’s it, eh?” He released Jane’s arm and stepped back, gazing down at her with sneering contempt. “Was that Bruno with her?”
“Yes.”
“God! If I’d only known that,” gritted the gang leader, murder in his eyes. “And you knew it all the time and wouldn’t tell me?’
“No. If I had, you’d have tried to bump him off right there. And you would have either been killed by some of his mob – he always has a bodyguard with him – or been pinched by the cops and
tried for the job.”
“Humph! Don’t make me laugh! They’d hang nothing on me in this town.”
“Don’t be too sure! Bootlegging’s one thing; murder’s another.”
“What made you want to leave right away when you saw her and Bruno?”
“I – was afraid they might be going to try to pull something. I wanted to get home – to get out of their reach.”
“Humph! Looks to me like you were more afraid of your own hide than mine.”
“What if I didn’t want to get bumped off?” demanded the girl, a trace of her usual defiant assurance returning. “None wants to croak at my age. But I was worried about you, too, Tony,” she
continued hurriedly as she saw the storm clouds gathering in his face. “Haven’t I tried for days to make you fix a bodyguard for yourself?” Tony considered, realising the truth of that. She had
pleaded with him for the past two weeks to arrange a competent bodyguard for himself. But he had hesitated, feeling that to move around constantly surrounded by a squad of gunmen was areflection upon his own courage and marksmanship. Yet he could not rid himself entirely of the idea that she had been treacherous to him. And his ruthless direct mind could find only penalty for
treachery – Death. “I love you, Tony,” she went on while his piercing glance surveyed her. “And I’ve been doing everything I could to protect you.”
“Yeah? Well, I have my doubts. But I’ll give you a chance to prove it. If you love me, get Schemer Bruno for me.” Her eyes widened slowly as she realised the enormity of the assignment and the
thoughts within his mind that must have prompted it. Tony laughed. “Lost your nerve?” he demanded.
Jane gazed at him with sudden contempt. “Of course not!” she snapped. “I’ve as much guts as you – any day in the week, bigshot.”
“Yeah? Then prove it and your love for me by getting the Schemer.”
“What a nice chivalrous mug you turned out to be!” she rasped contemptuously. “Handing me the job of bumping off the biggest rod in town – next to you. And alone. You know damn well, Tony,
that I never pulled a job by myself. But I’m quite a help, if you’ll just remember back to the time that we got Jerry Hoffman together that night in the Embassy Club. But if you’ll help, I’ll do my part.
I’ll snoop around until I find when he’ll be on a spot. Then we’ll pull the job together.”
“Well, all right,” he growled. He had cooled off considerably from his first anger and as he surveyed the girl’s ample charms, but ill-concealed by an expensive negligee, he decided that it probably
would be best not to lose her just yet. But of course he must not let her realise that. He stepped forward and caught her arm again. “But you little devil;” he rasped through gritted teeth, “If I ever
catch you turning me up or doing me any kind of dirt, it’ll be curtains. See?” So these two who never had failed to complete a killing assigned them, assigned one to themselves and verbally
signed Schemer Bruno’s death warrant. Yet Tony’s doubts and the ensuing quarrel had opened in their relations a rift which was to have far-reaching consequences.
CHAPTER IIXX
Tony immediately set out on a reckless yet precisely deadly campaign of reprisal against the North Side mob led by the redoubtable Schemer Bruno. He was beginning to have a sneaking respect
for the notorious Schemer. He had seen plenty of examples of that wily leader’s sagacity and ruthless courage and that business at the cabaret had been the final touch. A man who could, an
hour after an attempt had been made on his life, sit in a cabaret but a few tables away from the man he knew to be responsible for that attempt, was a man worthy of admiration. But the realisation
of his opponent’s courage and ability only strengthened Tony’s will to win and forced him to plan out amazing coups. They bombed warehouses, hijacked trucks both singly and in fleets, intimidated
still-owners who helped supply the North Side outfit into moving and shot a few as an example to the others; browbeat saloonkeepers into shifting their allegiance and promised them ample
protection for doing so; killed off half a dozen of Bruno’s best gunmen and threatened others with the same fate if they didn’t leave town; repeatedly held up and robbed gambling houses known
to be owned by Bruno and bombed those that put in the speakeasy system of locked steel doors and peep-holes: and in general harassed the other gang in every way possible to a daringly
resourceful leader and a powerful organisation. When his campaign was rolling merrily along, Tony had Benny Peluso, the former Bruno lieutenant, who had been captured and forced to talk,
brought before him. After all, the success of his present campaign was due largely to the information which Benny had unwillingly given. The squat, ugly gangster looked sullen and more than a
little frightened as he came in between the two gunmen who originally had captured him and brought him in. “Well, Benny,” said Tony, “the dope you gave me has proved ok. And here’s the dough
I promised you,” tossing an envelope across the desk. “These men will take you to a train bound for the West; they’re to guard you from any of the Bruno mob who may try to get you.”
The little gangster who had been compelled to squeal on his associates for a price seized the envelope and greedily thumbed through £3080 it contained. Then he looked up at Tony and smiled
gratefully. In gangland, it was indeed a pleasure to find an enemy – or even a friend – who kept his word when he didn’t have to. “Thanks,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d come through!”
“I always keep my word – good or bad,” retorted Tony, his former enemy’s sincere gratitude touching him as much as anything could. “On your way – and good luck!”
Tony’s own gunmen, the dapper, polished Mike Rinaldo in command of the little party, escorted Peluso away. An hour later, Rinaldo returned, looking rather downcast. “Got a little bad news to
report, chief,” he said. “On the way down to the depot, another car forced us into the curb and a couple o’ hoods bumped Benny off before we could pull our gats. We jumped out of the car and
beat it before the cops came. Some of the Bruno mob must have found out we had him here and been on the lookout for him to come out.”
“All right,” said Tony wearily. “I suppose the cops and newspapers will blame me for having him bumped off because so far as they know he was still an enemy of ours … See that we get the car
back.” Tony thought over that report for some time after the dapper but dangerous Rinaldo had gone. He was wise in the ways of gunmen and he had a strong hunch that Rinaldo and his assistant
had murdered Peluso themselves for the £3080. But there would be no way of pinning it on them; the savage enmity that the Bruno mob was sure to feel against Peluso if they suspected what
he had done prevented direct suspicion being levelled against the two gunmen. Well, what was the difference; he had kept his end of the deal in good faith, and Peluso was a yellow rat anyway.
In his heart, Tony knew that they were all yellow rats when faced with a situation that demanded character and moral courage. His suspicions were verified, to a certain extent, when Rinaldo
appeared the following week driving an expensive new car. Tony again directed his attention to the campaign against the North Side outfit with undiminished zest. For Schemer Bruno was not
lying supine under the onslaught of his enemies. He was fighting back with every resource of his wily, daring brain and his strong organisation. Altogether it was as desperate a reign of terror as
has ever been produced on this continent in time of peace. And the newspapers began to howl about the rights of citizens, the danger to the lives and property of innocent bystanders. “Damn
them!” growled Tony to Jane one night. “Don’t they know that we don’t hurt none but hoods? Neither I nor any of my men ever hit anyone except the mug we was after. And I never heard of any
other mob that did. And we never throw a pineapple unless we know what’s going on inside the place. If decent citizens own some of the property, let them keep the racketeers out; you can’t tell
me that a man don’t know what’s going on in a building he owns. If he wants to take the chance to get a bigger rent, he’s no better than the hoodlums he rents to and he’s got to take the chance
of the place being blown up.”
But the next morning Tony received a telephone call from the District Attorney. “Camonte?” demanded the familiar overbearing voice. “I wanna see you this afternoon. Suite F, in the Sherman
Hotel. Two o’clock sharp.”
“Why not at the office?” objected Tony. “What’s up anyhow?”
“Never mind. Be there, that’s all.”
And the DA hung up. Until one-thirty Tony puzzled over that official command. He couldn’t figure it out. For a while he suspected a trap and almost decided not to go, then he realised that the
District Attorney would not dare to be in on a murder plot against a leader as prominent as he. But one thing certain, it boded no good. He was still sunk in gloomy and somewhat uneasy thought
when he rode downtown accompanied by his bodyguard. Piling out of their two cars in front of the huge hotel, the men formed a close circle around him and escorted him inside. They crowded
quickly into an empty elevator, practically filling it, then commanded the operator to take them to Suite F, and “make it snappy.” The operator hesitated, waiting for two or three more passengers,
then took another look at those he already had and obeyed their command. Released into the hallway of an upper floor, the entire party was immediately surrounded and taken in hand by a dozen
detectives, who began disarming them with systematic and none too gentle thoroughness. “Hey! What’s the idea anyhow?” demanded Tony belligerently.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” retorted a burly dick. “Pass over your gats, too. There’s going to be none bumped off here today.”
Tony ground his teeth but he offered no resistance. Killing a detective in the heat and obscurity of an alley gun battle was one thing while shooting one deliberately in a prominent hotel in the
presence of a dozen of his fellows was quite another. But Tony was outwardly very indignant and inwardly very uneasy. His followers were silent and docile,, as modern gangsters always are
when disarmed and outnumbered. When the disarmament program had been completed, the crowd was led down the hall to an open doorway and Tony’s henchmen were herded inside. “You’re
to stay in here until we come after you,” said the detective who seemed to be in command. “And don’t make any fuss or we’ll take you down to the bureau and give you all a treatment with the
rubber hoses we keep on hand for hoodlums like you.”
Then he locked the door, pocketed the key, and leaving two of his men on guard before the portal, led Tony on down the hall to a closed door marked key grate in the lock. Then his glance riveted
upon the scene of which he had become a part and he stiffened. F. He knocked, then opened the door and practically shoved Tony inside. Tony heard the door shut behind him. Around a large
table in the middle of the luxurious parlour sat half a dozen men. There was one empty chair, evidently for him. Tony recognised all those men. At the head of the table, alone, sat the District
Attorney, a squat, slightly corpulent man with mean little eyes and a heavy, bulldog jaw. The other men included every prominent gang leader in the city and county including Schemer Bruno.
“Come on and sit down, Camonte,” snapped the DA brusquely. “The meeting’s ready to begin.”
Tony walked forward slowly, assuming a bold air of cool calm that he did not feel, and sat down, glaring at Bruno, who allowed a slight smile to curve the lips of his lean, handsome face as he
noted Tony’s left arm in its sling. It was their first meeting. “What’s the matter with your arm?” he asked.
His tone and manner were polite, yet there was an underlying note of contempt and amusement that made Tony’s blood boil. “I was in an auto wreck the other night,” retorted Tony. “But there
were other people hurt, too,” he added with grim relish as he remembered that overturned car with its cargo of dead and injured. Bruno’s smile faded like a dab of dirt that is wiped away with a
quick dash of a cloth and his face froze into a hard, expressionless mask in which the eyes were the only sign of life. But they burned with an intense, malevolent hatred. From his own feelings,
Tony knew that Bruno’s right hand was itching for a gun. “That’ll do,” snapped the DA. “I’m doing the talking today.” The six men, most important of the city’s underworld leaders and representing
its every element except petty thievery, turned and looked at the man who was the most powerful of the law-enforcing agencies, the man who had been elected by trusting citizens to protect them
from the machinations and henchmen of the men with whom he now sat in conference. All were paying him heavily and all despised him, feeling for him the contempt that must always be the lot
of the one who betrays his trust. Yet secretly they all feared the great power which was his, the extermination which he could mete out to them if he wished. “This war’s to stop!” exclaimed the
DA, pounding the desk to emphasize his command. “The newspapers are raising hell and even some of the big politicians are worried about it. Some of the influential men here have gone to the
governor and told him that the city’s getting such a bad name people are afraid to come here and that it’s hurting business. There’s even talk of appointing a special prosecutor – some wealthy,
fearless lawyer who couldn’t be reached – and a special grand jury to investigate the gang situation. And you know what that would mean.” The gang leaders shifted uneasily. They did know what
such an investigation would mean – a lot of unpleasantness and, perhaps, extinction. “Camonte,” continued the DA, glaring at Tony, “I know that you and Bruno are the guilty ones in this latest
outbreak, the most savage we’ve ever experienced. But I also know that the only reason you other fellows aren’t in it is because you’re not big enough to compete with these two and you’ve got
sense enough to know it … there’s enough business here for all of you and you’ve got to declare a truce and operate peaceably, all taking your share.”
“Do you think he’d keep a truce?” demanded Bruno with a contemptuous nod at Tony.
“You wouldn’t, that’s one damn sure thing,” blazed Tony, his mouth curled into a nasty snarl.
“I wouldn’t dare to – with you. Who wants to be shot in the back?”
“Why, you dirty–”
“Shut up!” snapped the DA savagely. “And listen to me. Or I’ll run you out of town.”“You’d lose a good part of your income if you did,” sneered Tony, roused to fury by his altercation with Bruno.
Stung to anger by the impudent remark, the DA frowned and turned upon him a baleful glare. “I’d better have a part of my income than none at all,” he retorted through gritted teeth. “Another
crack like that out of you and you’ll be the first to go.” Tony subsided but he was seething with fury. Given sufficient time he would get all his enemies, perhaps even the DA himself. Stranger
things had happened, and he certainly had it coming to him. The District Attorney had spread out on the table a large map of the county, which included the large city which took up most of it.
Already the map was divided by red lines and inside of each square thus produced was written the name of one of the men present. “Here are the territories I’ve assigned to each of you,” continued
the DA. “And I think all of you will agree that I have been very fair. You big fellows have been allotted most of it, of course, but the little mobs have their proportionate share because they have to
get along, too.” The gang leaders stared at the map. And in their own hearts they all realised that the DA had made a fair division of the territory. Each of them also realised that within the district
assigned to him for sovereignty lay sufficient business to keep him and his mob busy and to make them exceedingly prosperous. Yet their code had always been to hold their own territory and
fight the other fellow for his, just as they expected him to fight them for theirs. And to the victor belonged the spoils of both. “Here are other maps just like this one, a copy for each of you, with
your territories outlined on it,” continued the D.A., passing the folded papers around. “And the first man who oversteps his bounds gets run out of town, I don’t care who he is. Furthermore, you
are to report this arrangement to your respective gangs, acquainting them thoroughly with the limits in which they may operate, and see that they obey. Each man is responsible for the acts of his
mob; if he can’t control his men and make them obey his orders, he’s not fit to be leading the mob. And no more shooting or I’m going to prosecute the guilty people for murder, I don’t care who
they are … You can go now – Camonte, you first with your men. You others can go later one by one after he and his bodyguard have left. And be sure you leave at once, Camonte. I have
detectives watching outside and any loitering in the expectation of exacting vengeance upon anyone here will be met with arrests and prosecution.” Tony rose and surveyed the gathering, giving
Bruno a particularly thorough stare, then turned and strode out of the room. For him, the conference had served one good purpose – he had met Schemer Bruno face to face. He knew exactly
what his arch enemy looked like and, from now on, would be able to identify him with certainty even at some little distance. Which was a great help for accurate night shooting.
CHAPTER XIX
For a while, almost four months in fact, things were quiet. Everyone was making money and there were no killings. Then the men began to grow restive, as men of action will after a certain period
of inactivity. The resumption of hostilities began with minor affrays between insignificant members of the various gangs which usually resulted in nothing more serious than bloody noses and black
eyes. Then an occasional stabbing began to creep in among the hitherto comparatively harmless sport, and finally a shooting or two. The anxiety for action, for war and vengeance, became more
marked. A tense air of watchful waiting, of incipient menace, hung over the headquarters of the various gangs. The men mentally were like bloodhounds straining at the leash. Tony sensed the
situation. He was weary of inactivity himself. And he was becoming suspicious of the prolonged quietude of his enemies. He knew that they and their men were no more capable of interminable
peace than were he and his mob. It was rapidly narrowing to a question of who would strike first. Among Tony’s various valuable possessions were a number of gambling places. One of these
was a second-floor establishment in the heart of the city. Despite its central position, it was located on a street which contained no department stores and in a block which consisted of wholesale
barber supply stores and other such enterprises which dealt with few customers. Which made foot traffic on its sidewalks quite light. Tony visited the place almost every day, a fact which he had
never tried to conceal. As he stepped out of his sedan in front of the place one afternoon and paused an instant for his bodyguard to gather around him, he heard the sudden stuttering rat-tat-tat
of a machine gun. He saw two of his bodyguard go down before the deadly hail of lead and the others, darting low to take advantage of all the shelter the two sedans offered, look frantically about
in an effort to find the source of the attack. Tony himself leaped inside the doorway that led to his second-floor establishment, but not before he felt a dozen heavy blows against his body. The
marksmanship of his assailants had been deadly accurate, all right, but he was wearing a bullet-proof vest. In the comparative shelter of the narrow hall that led to the stairway, he turned. Already
his automatic was out, ready for execution. He could see two of his men firing upward at the windows of the small hotel across the street. But with his own disappearance the vicious stuttering of
the machine gun had ceased. He imagined that the attackers already were in flight, trying desperately to make their escape before the arrival of the police. And his own men must do the same,
to avoid arrest and serious charges. A daylight gun battle in a downtown street was no simple matter to adjust with the authorities. He stepped to the doorway and searched the windows of the
hotel with a quick but careful glance. He saw nothing suspicious. “Cut it!” he snapped. “Into the cars, quick! Let’s go!” He made a flying leap for one of the sedans and clambered in. The men piled
in around him and into the other machine. The two big cars roared away down the street. With only inches to spare, they swerved around a traffic cop who was frantically blowing his whistle at
them, and raced onward, bound for home and safety. Tony’s eyes were glittering with cold, deadly fury but within him he felt a great exultation. The war was on again!
“They’re on the third floor of the hotel, boss,” panted one of the men. “We see them plain – two of them. One of them was using a Thompson and the other one had a automatic.”
A Thompson is that particular type of machine gun which is the favourite weapon of the modern gangster, an easily transported but wicked death machine which can be handled with the ease of
a rifle and which, while weighing only ten pounds, will hurl one hundred bullets per minutes. When they reached headquarters, Tony went immediately to his private office and telephoned the
District Attorney. “They just tried to get me from the third floor of the Victor Hotel,” he said almost gleefully.
“I know. I just got a flash on it from the detective bureau.”
“Must’ve been some of the Bruno mob. What are you going to do about it?”
“Just what I promised at that last conference. As many of the North Side mob as we can get our hands on will he rounded up tonight, questioned and brought into court in the morning.”
That sounded fine, thought Tony, but didn’t mean a thing. The chances were very strong that the actual assailants had made a clean getaway, none of the others would talk – in fact, they would
probably know nothing of the attack until they saw it in the papers or were arrested – and the D.A.’s office would be able to prove against them nothing more serious than a charge of carrying
concealed weapons. Tony realised that the whole round-up and subsequent activity would really amount to nothing more than a grand gesture for the benefit of the newspapers to pass on to the
public. But, Tony felt that a round-up like that was too great an opportunity to be lost. He called in a dozen of his most reliable gunmen and for an hour drilled them in the details of a plan which
would be the most daring gangland gesture the city had yet seen. The evening papers – always more sensational than those published in the morning – made a great fuss over the afternoon
attack, giving it huge headlines and a great deal of space. And some of the information was of the afternoon attack, giving it huge headlines and a great deal of space. And some of the information
was of great interest to Tony. The police, in the search of the hotel following the attack, had found in a third-floor room fronting the street a Thompson machine gun, an empty automatic and a
dead man with half a dozen bullets in him. And the dead man later had been identified as Stave Libati. “The dirty–!” breathed Tony venomously. “Turned traitor, did he? And some of the boys got
him. Either that or his own partner shot him in the back, afraid that he might turn him up later. Well, anyway, he sure had it coming to him.” Tony studied over the various angles of the occurrence
for some time. The identification of one of the assailants as his former lieutenant brought in a new element. There was a chance, of course, that Steve had carried out the attack as a matter of
personal vengeance. But it wasn’t likely. He didn’t have that much brains. No, the affair had been planned out by the crafty Schemer Bruno, who had used the ready Libati as a cat’s paw. The
chances were that Steve, upon being fired by Tony, had joined the North Side outfit, being admitted because of the valuable information he could furnish Bruno and because of his avowed hatred
of Tony. The morning papers, while showing a trifle more reserve about the whole matter, carried the news that the most thorough dragnet of years had been sent through the North Side during
the night, with the result that a large portion of the notorious North Side gang – including the wily Schemer himself – had been rounded up and were now reposing in cells, from which they would
be removed for court appearances that morning on various charges. At nine-thirty, Tony loaded his dozen carefully selected gunmen into two big sedans and set forth on the little expedition he
had planned the day before. When slightly less than a block away from the police court where Tony knew the North Side mob would be arraigned, he ordered the cars parked – but with their
engines kept running for an instant getaway – and instructed his men to spread out along the street. He watched them take their stations then smiled coldly with pleased anticipation. When
Schemer Bruno and his men came out – as they were sure to do – they would get a terrific surprise. And of course, just coming from court, they would be unarmed. It looked as though this
morning would put a terrible dent in the North Side mob. Suddenly the double doors of the police station – the court was above a station – swung open and a stream of detectives and uniformed
officers streamed out and bore down on Tony’s men. “Hell!” gritted Tony who had remained sitting beside the chauffeur in one of the cars. “The cops have seen them. Step on it!” The big car
roared into life and swerved around the corner, but not before two shots had rung out in the street and two bullets had thudded against the rear of the machine. “Stop!” commanded Tony, and the
car ground to a halt. Close as they were to the station, they were out of sight of it. “Give me your gat!” The chauffeur quickly handed over his revolver and Tony calmly dropped it down a convenient
open sewer. He tossed his own heavy automatic after it then removed his small vest-pocket automatic from its customary position and shoved it down inside of one sock. When two detectives
came puffing around the corner with ready revolvers – as he knew they would – he was standing calmly beside the car. “Did you want to talk to me?” he demanded with a frown.
“I’ll say so,” panted one. “It’s lucky Lieutenant Grady looked out the window and recognised some of them gorillas of yours hanging around outside, or we’d had a whole street full o’ murders on
our hands.”
“Lieutenant Grady, was it?” queried Tony pleasantly. “I’ll have to remember that.”
“I don’t care what you remember. Just come along quietly, both o’ you mugs.”
“Got a warrant?”
“No, ‘course not.”
“What’s the charge?”
“Carrying concealed weapons.”
“But I’m not carrying concealed weapons.”
“No?” exclaimed the burly detective incredulously. “Humph! Trying to stall, eh? Keep the rod on them, Jim, while I frisk them.” Quickly and thoroughly he searched Tony but of course he did not
extend it below the knees. Obviously puzzled, he hauled the chauffeur out of the car and searched him – without result. With evident bewilderment he surveyed these two men on whom he knew
he should find guns. Then an idea occurred to him as it sometimes does to an unusually bright police detective. “I got it!” he exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm. “You dropped them on the floor
or hid them in the car some place. That’s an old trick of birds like you.”
He went at the car as if he were going to take it apart. And he did as well as he could without the aid of dynamite or tools. But he found nothing incriminating. “You see?” said Tony. “I told you the
truth. I’m just out for a little drive this morning. And I don’t like being shot at without reason when motoring.” He produced two £10 and passed one to each of the puzzled detectives. “Now, boys,
buy yourselves some cigars and forget that you ever saw me in this neighbourhood this morning. And I won’t tell anyone what a silly trick you pulled.”
He climbed into his car and drove away, within three blocks removing the small automatic from his sock and placing it in his coat pocket ready for an emergency.
“Jeez! Boss, that’s smooth work!” exclaimed the chauffeur admiringly.“If the cops was as sharp as we are, we wouldn’t have a chance!” answered Tony wisely. From his private office at his headquarters, he telephoned Captain Flanagan. “This is Tony Camonte!”
he said brusquely. “I hear they picked up some of my men out at Lawrence Avenue.”
“Yeah. Just heard about it.”
“Well, how about springing them? I ought to get some service for that monthly bit.”
“Sorry, Tony, but there isn’t a hell of a lot I can do. If they was here at the bureau, it would be different, but it would look funny if I interfered too much out there. Some snoopy reporter might find
out about it and shoot the works. I’ll see, though, that none of them are booked for anything more than concealed weapons. But you better send down a mouthpiece to front for them.”
So Tony telephoned one of the able attorneys on his staff to go out and represent his men at their hearing, then fell into a mood of vengeful brooding. One plan had failed. The next one mustn’t.
CHAPTER XX
In his mail one morning Tony Camonte received a unique communication, an ornate, engraved invitation to the opening of the Woodland Casino, a new road-house and gambling place some little
distance out in the country, far beyond the jurisdiction of city authorities but not so far away as to be beyond the reach of city patrons. The invitation also conveyed the information that the opening
night was to be a Bal Masque and that admittance would be by card only. Tony didn’t know what a Bal Masque was and he felt no urge to find out. But the other bit of information interested him
somewhat. In common with other wealthy but socially ineligible people, he had an almost irresistible curiosity to see the inside of exclusive places. The realisation that hundreds of these invitations
must have been sent out did not prevent his own vanity being tickled by receiving one; the fact remained that everyone who might want to couldn’t get in. For a moment he toyed with the pleasant
thought that he was getting to be a man of some importance in the city. Then his suspicion of everything and everyone, born of native cunning and bitter experience, asserted itself. The thing was
probably a plant of some kind; perhaps an attempt to put him on a spot. He looked closely at the enclosed engraved card. There seemed to be no identifying marks upon it but his momentary
illusion of possible social grandeur had been dispelled by his innate caution. Half the gangsters in town were sure to be at a place like that; it sounded like just the sort of layout that appealed to
them for sport. But did they think he’d be simple enough to fall for a game like that?
He crumpled the invitation and card with strong, tense fingers and tossed them in the wastebasket. A few minutes later the telephone at his elbow rang. It was Jane. “Could you run home a few
minutes, dear?” she asked. “I have something very important to tell you.”
“Tell me now.”
“Can’t. You never can tell when some nosy mug – a cop or someone’s – listening in on a phone.”
“Won’t it wait till tonight?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” doubtfully. “But I wish you’d come now.”
“Oh, all right,” growled Tony.
So he summoned his bodyguard and went home, ordering them to remain outside while he hurried up to his luxurious apartment, a vague uneasiness clutching at him. But Jane was happy and
smiling. “Darling!” she exclaimed happily. “I’ve found the spot where we can get Bruno … he’s going to the opening of the new Woodland Casino tomorrow night. That’s our chance.”
Tony’s sharp gaze narrowed. “Yeah?” he said. “How’d you find that out?”
“Don’t ask me, please. I’m not very proud of the way I got the dope but I did get it – that’s all that matters. And that’s our big chance to bump him off, Tony. He won’t be looking for trouble at an
affair like that and he won’t have a big bodyguard with him – maybe none at all. Anyway it’s a masked affair – everyone will be in costume and wearing masks – so none’ll know who we’re.”
“No? Then how’ll we know who they are?”
“It’s up to us to find out.”
“Well, I’ll think about it.” He returned to his headquarters and rescuing the all-important admission card from the wastebasket, thought about it for the rest of the afternoon. Something warned him
not to go, yet the chance of killing Bruno himself proved a temptation too strong to resist. He decided to assume the risk. The next morning, accompanied by four of his bodyguard, he went down
and looked at costumes. But he selected nothing, because he did not want the costumer to know his disguise. He was afraid that such information might be passed on to his enemies and he
realised fully that his safety lay in the strict preservation of his anonymity. But in the afternoon he sent down another man for a Henry the Eighth outfit. In his mind, he had chosen that during the
morning inspection because a comfortable amount of artillery could be concealed under the voluminous velvet upper part and the false beard that went with it would effectually hide the scar on
the left side of his face. He and Jane – she was lovely in a Juliet costume – drove out shortly after ten, taking with them a bodyguard of four fearless and expert gunmen. Two of the latter, who
were sufficiently small and slender to get away with it were in feminine costumes, so that it seemed like a nice party of three couples. Tony had had one of his men rent a sedan for the night, a
much smaller and less expensive car than he ever used, so that neither car nor license could give them away to possible watchful enemies. Yet it was a very fast car – he had made sure of that.
A hundred yards from the place, Tony halted the car and they all affixed their masks. Then he drove up and parked facing the road. Tony was a little uneasy about the admittance of so large a
party on the one card but the doorman, masked and attired in the ornate costume of a Turkish harem guard, bowed them all inside with eager welcome. With how eager a welcome, Tony had no
idea. For there were certain things about this affair that Jane had not discovered and that he had not suspected. For instance, Jane had not found out that Schemer Bruno was the owner of this
new place and Tony had never dreamed that the card sent to him was the only one which bore the word “Gambling” engraved in the lower left-hand corner. Thus they were identified the moment
they entered the place. In fact, they were the guests of honour but they didn’t know it. The Woodland Casino was unusually spacious and elaborate for a place of its type. A large dining room,
arranged in cabaret style with a dance floor in the centre, occupied most of the first floor. A good orchestra blared toe-tickling jazz from a dais at one end and waiters scurried about with trays of
food and drinks. Tony and his party, unknowingly under the murderous gaze of a dozen pairs of eyes, casually surveyed the throng present, then moved upstairs. The second floor was divided
into numerous gaming rooms, in which could be found every imaginable device for pitting one’s luck against the game-keeper’s skill. All the play was for high stakes. Tony abstractedly took a
whirl at roulette and because he wasn’t interested in the game, caring for neither profits nor losses, won more than £411 in half an hour. The croupier, hoping to win it back for the house, urged
him to continue but Tony shook his head and led his party away from the table. They went back downstairs. The crowd was bigger now and very gay. The noise was fearful yet somehow diverting.
Tony and his accomplices would have enjoyed it a lot except for their deadly errand. Tony himself was tense and silent, as he always was just before pulling a job of murder. In whispers, he
instructed his henchmen not to stick so closely to him as to excite suspicion, but to maintain a keen watch. He danced three or four times with Jane, his gunmen dancing close by. Then he led
her aside. “Mix around a little,” he ordered. “See if you can find out whether Bruno’s here and if he is, what kind of a rig he’s got on.” Jane nodded and moved slowly away. Tony allowed his
penetrating glance to make a deliberate search of the merry throng. If only he knew how Bruno was dressed. Here and there, he noted subconsciously an exceptionally striking woman. Then
abruptly his gaze riveted to the most commanding feminine figure in the crowd. Tall and slender she was, regally attired in an obviously expensive white gown with a long court train. Resting atop
her head to complete the effect was an ornate crown studded with flashing brilliants. She was walking when he saw her first and it was her walk that struck him particularly. It was graceful, regal,
the proper walk for the Queen she represented. And he had seen it before somewhere. He tried to recall and found he couldn’t. But he was certain he had seen that identical walk before and,
subconsciously, he knew that the remembrance was not pleasant. He watched her closely, still trying to remember, and found her receiving a great deal of attention from a cloaked figure of Satan,
a tall, well-built, graceful man who moved with the lithe quickness of a trained body actuated by an agile mind. At last she moved away from her red-clad companion and began drifting toward
him. She hesitated as she came opposite and looked at him deliberately. The mask made the glance curiously enigmatic yet the sparkling eyes behind the mask seemed to hold an invitation.
Then she moved away again. Reaching the doorway, she paused and looked back, then stepped through the portal. It was all as plain as if she had spoken. She was going out on the big wide
porch and inviting him to follow. Momentarily warming to the chase, he started forward impulsively. But at that instant he suddenly remembered where he had seen that walk before. She was
Katherine Merton, the girl who had come to his office pretending to be a reporter and who, in reality, was Schemer Bruno’s moll. Then Satan must be Bruno. What a singularly appropriate costume
for the Schemer, he thought. And that cloak would conceal an almost unlimited amount of artillery. He saw the whole plot in a flash now. How they had discovered his identity, he couldn’t imagine
– but they had. And this moll was trying to lure him out on the porch so that they could bump him off without endangering the other customers. Clever, all right, but it wasn’t going to work. He
darted upstairs and cautiously peered out a window. Four or five costumed and masked figures were moving slowly around in front of the place. And the cloaked devil was among them. It was a
death plot all right. He hurried back downstairs and without any appearance of haste gathered his group around him. “Take Jane out and put her in the car,” he ordered one of the gunmen, one
also dressed as a woman. “Don’t hurry … but have the car ready for a quick getaway … The rest of you come with me.” He knew that Jane and her companion would not be targets for assassins’
bullets. It was he they were after. He led his three gunmen toward the kitchen, to the right of which was a mahogany bar, now three deep with thirsty patrons. There would surely be another
entrance from the kitchen. Then he saw it, an open doorway. Before the surprised chef and his assistants could object, Tony had led his gunmen across the kitchen and out into the night. Quickly
but silently they stole forward and Tony cautiously peered around the corner of the building. The waiting men were still there, tensely expectant. On the porch, a white-clad figure was glancing
back into the reception foyer. Evidently the moll couldn’t understand why he didn’t appear. “See those mugs out there?” demanded Tony in a hoarse whisper. “That’s Schemer Bruno and some
of his mob waiting to get us. But we’re going to beat them to it. You guys take care of the rest of them. I’ll get the devil.” Slowly Tony lifted his heavy automatic and took careful aim. Then his
steady trigger finger squeezed down and the weapon spoke with a thunderous flash. Elation surged through him as the red-clad figure staggered and crumpled to the ground, but he fired four
more times with deliberate precision at the prone figure. His men were firing, too. Revolvers were flashing and cracking ill around him. But the others were fighting back. At the first shot they had
all dropped to the ground, making themselves much smaller targets, and now they were firing savagely. Tony and his men could hear bullets whistling and thudding around them. At first there
were four exploding revolvers in that line, then three … two … one. And finally it ceased. “Let’s go!” exclaimed Tony happily and ran for their car, fifteen yards away. They all piled in and it raced
away at high speed. “Step on it!” commanded Tony. He knew there were more enemy gunmen inside that roadhouse and he didn’t care to battle them if it could be avoided. He looked back just
in time to see a white-clad figure crumple to the floor of the porch and other people come streaming out through the double door. “God! That was a narrow squeak!” exclaimed Tony as the car
raced back toward their headquarters. “If I hadn’t remembered that dame’s walk, they’d a got me sure as hell. They damn near put over a fast one! Say,” he said suddenly, turning on Jane with
angry suspicion, “what do you know about this, anyhow?”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“You know damn well what I mean,” he growled. “Didn’t you know they had it all fixed to put me on a spot?”
“Of course not! Tony, surely–”
“Well, where’d you get the dope about him being out here tonight?”“From Katherine – his moll.”
“From who? For God’s sake, how’d you get her to talk?’
“She’s – my sister.”
“Oh, my God! Here I’ve been a sort of brother-in-law to the Schemer, my worst enemy all this time. Jeez! What a fine family mess I got into.”
“I thought I was pumping her when we met yesterday, making her tell something that she didn’t wanna,” continued Jane in a strained voice. She was overwrought and on the verge of tears. “But
I guess I only fell into the trap she was helping the Schemer bait for you.”
“Well, it’s all right,” answered Tony generously. “We got the Schemer anyhow.” Schemer Bruno’s sudden and mysterious death was a citywide sensation for days. His funeral was a grand affair,
attended by the District Attorney, the Chief of Police, eleven judges, and some two hundred carloads of politicians and other hoodlums. Tony sent a £41 floral piece and considered it the best
investment he had ever made. His only regret about the affair was that he hadn’t had cause to send it sooner.
CHAPTER XXI
A year passed rather uneventfully. Tony’s power, undisputed save for sporadic, disorganised, short-lived outbreaks here and there, grew until it almost became burdensome. And his income had
gone far beyond his wildest dreams. Always being written up and talked about but almost never seen, he had become a legendary figure, symbolical of underworld success. Two items in the
papers concerning his own family had interested him. His father had died and his brother had been promoted to a detective lieutenancy. Tony’s answer to the first had been to arrange for one of
his trusted attorneys to inform his mother of the death of some mysterious relative in the West and thereafter pay her £206 a month, supposedly from the deceased’s estate. His answer to the
second had been a long, loud, ironical laugh. He had heard through various reliable sources that his brother was not averse to graft and was quite a devil with the women, despite his wife and
child. Tony grinned when he thought what a stir there would be if it were discovered that the brother of Detective Lieutenant Ben Guarino was the famous gang leader, Scarface Tony Camonte.
He and Jane were still together, constantly quarrelling a bit more, but still together. They moved often, as often as the owners of the luxurious apartment houses to which they confined their
residence discovered their real identities. But they enjoyed the best of everything and waved wads of money in the envious faces of the stiff-backed genteel who snubbed them. Tony had no fault
to find with the world so far. Success wasn’t difficult, if you weren’t squeamish about how you achieved it. He surmised wisely that many another millionaire had discovered that fact early in his
career. But inactivity palled on Tony! He stretched and began looking around for new worlds to conquer. People said the East – New York – was the most lucrative liquor and racket section in the
country. There were a lot of hoodlums in it, of course, but they weren’t used to the ruthless Middle West methods. Machine guns and bombs would give the more effete Easterners the surprise of
their lives. At about that same time rumours that the Easterners were looking westward with avaricious eyes gained circulation and credence. It was said that the notorious Frankie Wales, most
ruthless of the Eastern gang leaders, was planning an active campaign for the Middle West with the Middle West’s own methods and weapons. But Tony only laughed contemptuously when his
lieutenants came to him with such stories. He was too powerful, too well known even in New York for any other leader to even dream of wresting his power and wealth away from him. But the
suggestion of another hot battle brought back the old sparkle to his eyes. If anyone tried to cut in on him, he’d show them a thing or two. He’d not only hold his territory but he’d capture theirs,
wherever it might be and whoever it might be. Tony didn’t believe the reports of the Eastern invasion until one night when he was eating dinner in the main floor dining room of his hotel headquarters.
The sudden crash of shattering glass and the vicious stuttering of a machine gun in the street outside startled him from his complacent reverie. He ducked under the table and drew his automatic.
That nasty rat-tat-tat was still going in the street, the big plate glass window up in front was still splintering. And he could hear whizzing bullets whining spitefully above his head. Then the machine
guns hushed and he heard a powerful car roar away. There was no doubt as to whom they were after. Had he been a second later in dodging beneath the table, his well-tailored form would have
been drilled by a score of bullets; the holes in the wall back of where he had been sitting proved that. He remembered suddenly that the North Side mob had scared Johnny Lovo into leaving town
by that same trick. Well, whoever had pulled it this time, would find he wasn’t afraid of anything. If they wanted a war, they could have one. And he’d be glad to see that they got a good one. That
his unknown enemies meant business was proved by their activities the rest of the night. They bombed his biggest warehouse and killed two of his henchmen who were driving the sedan which
he ordinarily used. Things were picking up. Tony smiled with keen anticipation. Walking quickly into the lobby of the hotel the next night, following a tour of inspection and preparation at various
outposts of his activities, Tony saw two people getting into the elevator. Mike Rinaldo, his prize gunman, and a girl. But the glimpse he got of the girl’s face before the door clanged shut and the
car shot upward made his eyes widen and his breath catch. Surely it must be – he turned to a small group of his henchmen lounging nearby. “That girl who just went up with Mike,” he said slowly,
coldly. “Do any of you know who she is?”
“Why that’s one of the sweetest little propositions that’s turned up around here in a long time. But particular – Jeez! Mike’s the only guy in the mob that’s been able to make her so far. Her name
is – let me see – I think it’s Rosie Guarino.”
“God!” breathed Tony hoarsely.
“What’s the matter, chief?”
“N-Nothing,” answered Tony breathlessly.
But his face had gone deathly white. His thoughts seemed to be trying to race frantically up a terribly steep hill. Rosie, his little sister Rosie, the one that had always been such a model little
housekeeper while their mother tended to the store. He realised suddenly that she must be twenty-two or three now. And he had been thinking of her as a beautiful kid of sixteen. But here in this
disreputable hotel, gone upstairs with Mike Rinaldo, the accomplished and unscrupulous heart-breaker who was the best gunman in the city … His sister … No, it mustn’t be … If she hadn’t sense
enough herself, someone else – he walked over to the desk, his step a trifle unsteady, his eyes glazed in contemplation of a horror more terrible than any he had seen on French battlefields.
“What number did you give Mike Rinaldo?” he asked.
“Six-twelve,” answered the clerk. “But a lady went up with him, Mr. Camonte. Wouldn’t it be better to calf?”
“Thanks. I – I’ll call him later.”
He walked over and entered the elevator that had come back down. “Six,” he said dully and swayed a little from the sudden jerk as the car started upward. He had killed for money, for vengeance,
for lust, for almost every reason except a worthy one. His sister … upstairs … in his own hotel … with one of his own gunmen … Of course, Mike was the straightest and most ruthless shot in the
city. Tony realised he might be facing death, probably was. Mike was touchy about his heart affairs. But Tony had faced death before. He’d always won before. One of these days he was bound
to lose – luck couldn’t run the same way all the time. But whichever way things went, he would always be facing it. The door clanged open and Tony stepped out into the hall, his right hand
plunged deep into his side coat pocket, his lean fingers tensed about the cold butt of the heavy automatic there.
CHAPTER XXII
Slowly, yet with a tense, frantic haste, Scarface Tony Camonte went down the hall; peering intently at the brass numbers on the doors, his hand rigid about the butt of the heavy automatic in his
side coat pocket. Then he found it. 612. He halted and turned toward the door, gathering himself like a furious animal making ready to spring. With the silent, effortless ease of a fatal snake, his
practiced right hand drew the automatic, then gently dropped to his side. Then his left hand reached out to the door-knob, and he quietly tried it. But the door was locked. Tony’s lips curled into a
vicious snarl and his clenched fist banged savagely against the polished wood of the fastened door. There was a pause. Then: “What do you want?” came the angry growl from within.
“Come out here!” snapped Tony and instinctively moved aside so that when the door opened he would not be visible.
“Go ‘way and let me alone,” came the retort. “I’m busy.”
The gang leader’s face flamed with rage and his breath came in short, hoarse gasps. “This is Tony Camonte, the boss,” he gritted, his mouth close to the crack where the door met the jamb. “I
want to see you now. If you don’t come out, I’ll send for a pass-key and come in.”
He drew back again and his grip on the automatic tightened. He heard muffled sounds of stirring within the room and a feminine giggle. And he muttered an awful curse under his breath as the
key turned in the lock. The door swung open. “Say, chief, what the hell’s the matter with you anyway?” demanded Mike Rinaldo’s voice.
Then Mike himself appeared. His coat and vest were off, his collar open at the throat. His handsome dark face was flushed and his oily black hair tousled. His appearance alone was enough,
under the circumstances, to give Tony the final impulse to murder, to furnish the igniting spark for the ready powder. Surprised and angry, Mike turned to face his employer. Tony’s right hand
snapped up and the ugly black barrel of the automatic centred steadily on the gunman’s body a few inches above his shining gold belt buckle. “You rat!” snarled Tony. “You picked the wrong
dame this time.” The two pairs of cold, hard, expressionless eyes, murderers’ eyes both, met, clashed. Then Mike’s widened at something he saw in those of his employer. He was staring death
in the face and he realised it. His right hand darted for his hip. But he hadn’t a chance; Tony didn’t dare give him a chance. Under any other conditions, Tony would have been glad to meet him
on even terms, but now the great gang leader felt that he dare not take any risks. He must make sure, because of that girl in there. In the language of their kind, Tony let him have it. The shots
roared out. Half a dozen of them. Yet so close together that they seemed to merge into a single explosion as they reverberated down the hall. Mike’s jaw dropped and he gazed stupidly at his
murderer through the haze of a bluish smoke. Then he passed a trembling hand bewilderedly over his suddenly ashen face and with a gasp abruptly sagged to the floor. Half a dozen spots of red
had appeared on his hitherto spotless white shirt-front. Tony watched with interest as they enlarged, then finally merged into one big stain that grew bigger. Suddenly Tony laughed, a little
hysterically. Then he became aware that the girl inside the room was screaming madly. That screaming cleared his head like a dash of cold water. With his foot, he moved the body beyond the
doorway, then walked into the room. A beautiful dark girl, clad in pink silk lingerie and with a dress clutched in her hands, stood there shrieking. Her eyes dilated with terror as she saw him come
in and she backed away, lifting one hand as if to ward off an attack. Tony stared at her a moment, feeling the bitter agony of coals of fire being heaped upon his head. His sister! To be found like
that! But he was thankful that she didn’t recognise him. “Shut up!” he snapped. “Get your dress on and get out of here before the cops come.”
“You murdered him!” she moaned. “Oh, you beast! You murdered him!”
The bitter irony of the situation cut Tony to the quick. Reviled by his own sister for having saved her from the rapacity of one of his gunmen! He wanted to take her in his arms, comfort, explain
everything, and warn her. But he didn’t dare. He realised that the knowledge that he was the notorious Tony Camonte would kill his mother. No, his family believed him dead; he must remain
dead so far as they knew. “Shut up!” he commanded with vicious emphasis. “And get out of here!” Sobbing hysterically, she wriggled into the dress and donned her hat and coat. He took her arm
but she flinched away from him and hurried to the doorway. There she paused and swayed unsteadily. Her horrified gaze had seen the bloody heap that was Mike. With a piercing scream shecollapsed across the body, frantically kissing the ghastly face. His own emotions stretched to the breaking point, Tony picked her up roughly and shoved her toward the elevator. “Get out!” he
gritted. “And stay out! And keep your mouth shut!”
She gazed back at him, deathly pale, wide-eyed with terror. “I hope they hang you!” she cried and began to run, sobbing in great choking gasps.
She passed the closed elevator door and continued on to the stairway. Tony heard her rapid clicking footsteps and breathless, catching sobs die away. Then he went back and stared down at
the body. “Too bad, Mike,” he said in a low tone, as if the inert figure of the dead gangster could hear. “But it had to be done.” He walked into the bedroom and picked up the telephone. “Mike just
died,” he said dully, when the clerk answered. “I’ll see about arrangements later. Tell all the boys that if some nosy dicks come around, they ain’t got the slightest idea what was the name of the
dame who came up here tonight with Mike, See? It’s curtains for the guy that squeals her name to anyone, hear?” he added viciously. “Tell them that, too.”
The sharp thud of the telephone as he set it down on the little table penetrated the fog that seemed to have come up around his perceptions since that hoodlum in the lobby had identified Mike’s
new girl. Well, she was gone now, anyway. If anything happened; she would be clear of it. He realised that the night’s events would kill his mother. But she wouldn’t know. What a blessing it was
that most people actually knew so little. He walked to the doorway and stared down at Mike’s body again. Suddenly his eyes snapped and he hurled the automatic down. It struck the body then
bounced away across the hall and lay still, an unerring instrument of death. The other killings that Tony had perpetrated had given him a thrill, a sharp, exhilarating sense of triumph, of having
outwitted and conquered enemies who would willingly have done the same to him. But he felt none of that now. He was dazed, shaky, and very tired. He felt suddenly old. It seemed as if he had
lived a century and yet. And yet, it must be less than fifteen minutes. He turned and went slowly upstairs to his private office. Sinking into the comfortable chair behind his big desk, he rested his
elbows on its polished walnut surface and let his head fall forward into his hands. How long he had been sitting there that way he didn’t know. But he realised suddenly that the spacious room
was filling with men. He looked up, to find Captain Flanagan, his revolver drawn, staring down at him with a grim little smile lurking around the corners of his hard mouth. “Well, Tony, I guess we
got you this time, with the goods,” said Flanagan with relish. “So you killed Mike Rinaldo over a dame.”
Tony stiffened and sat up straight, his eyes blazing as he stared at the crowd of officers. Who’d squealed?
“Take it easy, Tony,” growled Flanagan warningly, sensing the gang leader’s sudden arousal. “You’re coming to the DA’s office with us. Stick out your mitts!”
There was a metallic rattle as another detective stepped forward with a pair of handcuffs. Tony stared at them. Then an expression of disgust crossed his face and he looked up at Flanagan again
with his usual defiant pride flooding back into his face and manner. “You need no bracelets for me!” he snapped. “I’m no cheap second-story man. I’ll go with you anywhere you want to take me
but I’m going to call a mouthpiece to come down and see that I get my rights.”
He reached for the telephone but one of the officers snatched it away from him. Half a dozen others closed in on him, their attitude obviously menacing. And Flanagan had lifted the muzzle of his
revolver until it pointed at Tony’s chest. “Oh, you’re going, all right!” said the burly chief of detectives, seeming oddly elated. “And you’re going to wear the bracelets. We ain’t takin’ no chances.
Ain’t often we get a chance to pinch a big shot like you,” he added sarcastically with a nasty grin. “And you ain’t calling none till after you been to the DA’s office.”
“Listen, Flanagan, I’m due for all the breaks you guys can give me. The dough I’ve paid–”
“Don’t know a thing about it, Tony,” lied the chief of detectives glibly. “Anyway, I’ve heard that you haven’t been so liberal since you got to be so strong.”
Which was true. Now that he and his gang held undisputed sway over the booze racket and certain other underworld activities of the big city, he had trimmed the amounts that he paid out for
protection. No use throwing away any more dough than you had to. If there were no other gangs that the authorities could throw their allegiance to, they’d ride along for smaller bits. They
handcuffed him none too gently and led him downstairs. Tony had a glimpse of his gangsters congregating in the lobby staring at the party with amazed hate. And the realisation that his men had
seen their master led out by the police, trussed like a common small-time burglar, galled him much more than the trouble ahead. He was hurried outside and pushed into one of the three big
squad cars that had brought the party out from the detective bureau and which were now parked at the curb, guarded by half a dozen other officers, armed with small machine guns. The whole
crowd acted as if they were executing a coup as daring as kidnapping Napoleon from the midst of his army. The three big cars raced downtown, their shrieking sirens clearing a path and making
people turn to stare. Tony’s impenetrable silence masked a seething inward fury. Who had squealed? How had the dicks known about Mike’s death so soon and how had they known who to pinch
for it? It looked as if someone, seeing a chance to get him, had taken advantage of the opportunity with all speed. But who? Well, one thing certain, they’d pay. It would be curtains for the guilty
person. Moran, the first assistant district attorney, was awaiting them in the prosecutor’s offices on the second floor of the gloomy Criminal Courts building. And Tony grunted scornfully as he saw
him. Moran was a good prosecutor, all right, the best they had; but he was also the collector for his chief. Tony had paid him thousands. He was a tall, lean young man with icy blue eyes behind
horn-rimmed glasses and a nasty, cynical smile that held no mirth in it. “Well, Camonte, what have you to say for yourself?” he demanded.
“Nothing – here,” snapped Tony. “You must think I’m dumb.”
“Yes, I do.”
Tony’s face flamed and the chain of the handcuffs rattled as his hands clenched and writhed. “I want to talk to you alone, Moran,” he gritted in a low tone.
Moran surveyed him a moment then produced a revolver and laid it on the desk close at hand. “You fellows can wait in the outer office,” he said to the crowd of detectives. “I’ll call you when I
want you.” As they trooped out, he looked up at the gang leader with a deadly glance. “One false move, Camonte,” he said coldly, “and I’ll shoot you down like a dog.”
“Yes, I believe you’d like to get the chance,” agreed Tony bitterly.
“It would save the state the expense of trying and hanging you.”
Tony laughed harshly. “Don’t talk foolish! You couldn’t convict me!”
“No? Well, watch us. Or rather, watch me. The Chief says I’m to prosecute.”
“Where is he?”
“At home, of course. You’re not important enough to get him out of bed in the middle of the night to come down here and question you.”
“No? Well, I’m important enough to give him a nice big bit every month. And you, too. If anything happened to me, the gang would go to pieces and you wouldn’t get those bits any longer.”
“If your gang was broken up, there’d be room for two or three other gangs, and each one of them would be glad to kick in with as much as you do. Competition is the life of trade, you know,” he
added grimly.
“I could increase my bits,” suggested Tony shrewdly.
“Yes, but that wouldn’t interest us now. Three or four gangs spread around the city are a lot more help to a political machine than just one. And you’ve never shown any interest in helping us build
up the machine, anyway. No, Camonte, this is our chance to knock you off your throne and we’re not going to miss it.”
Tony’s face had frozen and his eyes glittered. “Listen, Moran,” he said, and his voice held a cold, deadly venom that made the assistant district attorney flinch, “if you bring me to trial, you and the
D.A. will both be mighty sorry, before it’s all over.”
“Are you threatening me?” blustered Moran.
“No. Just trying to keep you from making a fool of yourself.”
Moran laughed harshly, sarcastically. “Leave that to us! I’ll convict you all right. The girl’s testimony alone will–”
“What girl?” demanded Tony tensely.
“This Rosie Guarino, the one you killed Mike over. She’s the one that turned you up for the job and she’s volunteered to testify. Women! They’re the ruination of all you hoods. I guess you didn’t
know that this dame and Mike had been secretly married down at Crown Point a week ago.”
So that was what they thought, that he had killed Mike because of jealousy. No wonder Flanagan had looked at him with contempt. And she and Mike had been married. Good God! I’d had no
right to – but how’d he know with Mike’s past what it’s? Weary and bewildered, his mind a confused maze, Tony was led away to a cell.
CHAPTER XXIII
The murder trial of Tony Camonte, the famous gang leader, who had come to be considered beyond the reach of the law, was the sensation of the year. The newspapers found it a godsend
during a period when other news happened to be scarce, and devoted their front pages to little else. Public opinion as to Tony’s guilt and deserving of punishment was sharply divided. A certain
cross-section of the populace poured down maledictions upon his head and consigned him to the gallows, with sighs of relief. But another group, equally numerous, who through the papers, had
followed his daring exploits for years, had come to feel an admiration for this extraordinary man who had risen from vassal to czar. These people openly expressed sympathy for him and the hope
that he would be acquitted. For Tony himself, the period of the trial was a time of soul-wrecking terror. Not because of fear of punishment, for he did not fear it; but because of his overwhelming
fear that his real identity would be discovered. Moran prosecuted, assisted by one of the lesser-assistant DA’s, and it was obvious that they were fighting like tigers for a hanging verdict. Tony’s
defence consisted of two of the most brilliant criminal lawyers in the city, one a former assistant district attorney. And the fee they had already received would enable them to live in comfort for
two or three years. Rosie Guarino was the star witness for the state, of course, but only because Tony chose to allow her to be. His attorneys had relayed to him from his men various proposals
for eliminating her from the case, scaring her out of the city, by bombing the Guarino store and home. They even planned kidnapping. And finally they decided upon a cold-blooded plan for
shooting her on the witness stand from the window of an adjoining building. Tony had angrily vetoed them all, to the bewildered disgust of his lawyers and henchmen. He realised that he could
stop her instantly by revealing his identity as her brother, but he was more afraid of that fact coming out than he was of the gallows. He had consented, however, to an offer of £10267 being made
her to slip out of the city and remain away until he had been acquitted and the case forgotten. This offer she had spurned indignantly and promptly given the facts to the newspapers, thereby
furnishing them with another sensational headline. Tony secretly was rather proud of her; she was his own sister, all right. The whole Guarino family was in court the day Rosie testified. Tony
looked at them furtively from his position in the front of the courtroom before the judge. They were all well-dressed and they seemed well and happy. He felt a little thrill of satisfaction. His ill-gotten
gains had done them some good anyway; the generous monthly sum that he gave them secretly through an attorney had assured those luxuries and advantages that they never could have
enjoyed otherwise. He saw his mother, dowager-like in a glossy fur coat and a Parisian hat, look at him sharply. For a moment he thought she had recognised him and his heart sank, but he had
taken his place so that the throng of spectators could see only the left, the scarred, side of his face. He saw his mother’s keen glance turn to contempt and he felt relieved. At that moment he saw
himself as others must see him, as a bad boy who hadn’t grown up. He was pale and shaken when he turned his attention back to the witness stand. Rosie gave her testimony with proud defiance
and more than one venomous look at him. The prosecution, of course, did not bring out Mike Rinaldo’s desperate character, and Tony had forbidden his own attorneys to do so; he refused tostain further the memory of his sister’s dead husband. When the state had completed its direct examination of her, one of Tony’s attorneys rose for cross-examination. “Was Mr. Rinaldo completely
within your sight from the time he opened the door until you heard the shots and saw him fall?” asked the attorney.
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you see him suddenly reach for his right hip?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t that before you heard the shots?”
“Yes.”
“Then you didn’t actually see the defendant shoot Rinaldo?”
“No, but–”
“That’s all,” said the attorney brusquely.
He turned away then smiled slightly at the sudden stir that appeared at the prosecution’s counsel table; the lawyers there were obviously disconcerted by the extreme shortness of his cross-
examination of their star witness. It was plain that Rosie realised she had made admissions damaging to the state’s case. She remained in the witness chair, trying to qualify the statements she
had made. But a court attendant ushered her out. There were other spectators in the courtroom that interested Tony. His moll, for instance, Jane Conley, widely known by reputation to police and
the underworld as the Gun Girl but known by sight to practically none. He was a little puzzled about Jane. She hadn’t come near him during his period of incarceration. As she sat in the courtroom,
stylishly dressed and easily the most striking woman in the throng of spectators, she gave him no sign of recognition. He resented her air of detachment. Yet, wanting to find an excuse for her
seeming unfriendliness, he was able to find one. The fact that she was his moll had been kept a close secret and it was better that it remain so. The less that was known about the private affairs
of a man in his position, the fewer loopholes his enemies had to try to strike him through. His brother, Detective Lieutenant Ben Guarino, was a constant and interested spectator at the trial. He
was a little surprised at his brother’s appearance. Ben had taken on weight and his face looked bloated. He’d been hitting the high spots and it was beginning to tell on him. The last afternoon of
the trial, Tony saw his brother seated beside Jane in the first row of spectators. Occasionally they chatted in whispers and several times he saw them exchange a smile. Jealous rage flowed
through the gang leader like molten metal and his eyes blazed. With an effort he turned his attention back to the course of the trial. The climax was approaching rapidly. In their summation to the
jury, Moran and his assistant obviously did their utmost to induce the twelve men to bring in a verdict of murder in the first degree. As they verbally flayed him with all the biting vituperation and
sarcastic innuendo of which clever criminal lawyers are capable, Tony found it almost beyond his powers of self-control to remain in his chair. His strong hands gripped the chair arms until his
knuckles gleamed white with the effort. His swarthy face flushed to a deep purple and his fingers itched to get at the throats of these hypocrites who characterized him an incorrigible menace to
mankind. The automobiles in which they rode, had been paid for with his money. But he relaxed when his own attorneys had their inning. He even smiled slightly once or twice at some of their
cleverly sarcastic quips at the expense of the prosecution. They made the thing out so simply; showed the whole charge to be utterly ridiculous and unproved. They characterized a possible
conviction as the most monstrous miscarriage of justice that could ever blot the records of a state. But the jury seemed less interested in the vividly pictured horrors of guilty consciences for
convicting an innocent man than they did in the appearance of ten of Tony’s best gunmen seated in the first two rows of spectators. They were swarthy, well-dressed young men who surveyed
the jurors unsmilingly with cold, hard eyes. The judge had been paid £2054 to make his instructions to the jury as favourable as possible to Tony and he went as far as he dared, to earn his fee.
The jury required just fourteen minutes to bring in a verdict of “Not guilty.”
And everyone realised that those ten grimly silent young men had been the deciding factor. There had been instances where jurors convicting gangsters had been shot, their homes bombed or
their children kidnapped. Law and order and duty were all very well, but there was no appeal from a bomb or a bullet. And the law is notoriously lax in protecting its upholders, once their usefulness
has ceased. Tony shook hands with every juror. And some of them were as flustered as though meeting the President. The next day he sent each one a case of uncut whisky. Tony waited,
chatting with his lawyers, until the spectators had dispersed, then he walked out of the courtroom a free man but a man full of deep grievances that must be avenged. In the doorway lounged
Detective Lieutenant Ben Guarino, “You’ll get yours yet, Big Shot,” he rasped.
Tony hurried on without indicating that he had heard. In the hallway, his bodyguard awaited him. Quickly they surrounded him as they had been trained to do and escorted him downstairs and
outside to the big sedan with the bullet-proof glass. At a respectful distance watched a crowd that filled the street. The flutter and craning of necks that followed his appearance would have satisfied
the greatest celebrity. Near by a half-dozen newspapermen clamoured for an interview and innumerable photographers were frantically trying to snap pictures. Being slightly shorter than the
average, Tony purposely had chosen for his bodyguard the tallest men in his mob. Ordinarily they served to protect him from the bullets of ambitious assassins. Now the ring of men served equally
well to protect him from the almost as annoying camera lenses. But he spoke to the reporters for a moment. “I’m through with all the rackets, boys,” he announced. “I’ve enough money and I’m
done. Johnny Lovo had the right idea. I’m going into the real estate business.” He stepped into the sedan and the escort of three cars swept away. Tony Camonte was a czar again.
CHAPTER XXIV
Tony felt a trifle uncertain as he entered his luxurious Lake Shore Drive apartment half an hour later. And the cool, questioning way in which Jane surveyed him was not reassuring. “Jeez! I’m
tired!” he exclaimed wearily.
And he was. The strain of the trial had taken more out of him than he realised. “Listen, Tony,” said Jane and there was an edge in her voice, “just what’s this dame to you?”
“What dame?”
“This Rosie person, the one you killed Mike over.”
“She’s nothing to me.”
Jane laughed scornfully. “Do you expect me to believe that? Then why’d you bump off Mike for getting her?”
“I didn’t. It was about some p’m else.”
“Don’t try to kid me. You and Mike were the best of friends up to the night that happened. The boys say you turned absolutely green when you saw Mike come in with her. Right away you went
upstairs and five minutes later Mike was dead.”
“You’re crazy! I – I never saw her before. If she’d – meant anything to me, do you suppose she’d have turned me up the way she did?”
“A woman’s feelings can change.”
“So can a man’s.”
He looked at her narrowly; his tone was significant. “Yeah? Well, don’t worry, Big Shot, there’s plenty of men that’d be glad to have me.”
“Maybe. But you’d find it pretty hard to find one that could or would pay the price I do. For the amount I spend on you, I’d just about have my pick and don’t forget it!”
“Why don’t you?” she demanded furiously.
“Been too busy to think about it,” he retorted loftily. “But I may not be so busy later on … while we’re on the subject, I noticed you’re mighty chummy with that dick lieutenant in court?”
“Which one?”
“Were you chummy with more than one? I wouldn’t be surprised. But I only noticed one. Ben Guarino, the brother of this dame.”
“Oh? So you know all about the whole family, eh?”
“Shut up!” he snarled suddenly, advancing on her menacingly. “I’ve had all your lip I intend to take.” For a moment they gazed at each other with blazing eyes, their teeth gritted and their fists
clenched. “What’s the use of us fighting this way, baby as long as we been together?” said Tony finally and his voice was weary. “Honest to God, I never had nothing to do with that dame. And
there’s important things to be done now.”
“For instance?”
“Getting Flanagan and Moran, the damned dirty double-crossers. After all the dough I’ve paid them! Flanagan could give me a buzz and let me get out of sight that night. But did he do it? No, he
comes out himself and nabs me. And even puts the bracelets on me, like I was a common, cheap, petty larceny crook. And Moran, that dirty Irish–” the oaths crackled off Tony’s competent tongue.
“Him and that crooked DA boss of his. They knew they had a poor case and they knew that Mike’s being bumped off was a civic improvement. What they’d have done was forget it. But do they?
No, they do their damnedest to give me the rope because they know they could collect more if there was a lot of big shots in the racket instead of just me controlling the whole works. Well, I’ve
paid and what did I get? Tramped on, the minute they thought they had a chance to railroad me. Now, they’re going to pay and plenty.”
And so they forgot their personal jealousies and differences while Tony outlined his plans for vengeance against those who had betrayed him. But the rift between them had widened. Doubt, once
planted, is almost impossible to kill, and upon the slightest provocation can grow with appalling speed into conviction. Tony went out to his headquarters the next day. And his men greeted his
return with the curious silence and the grim, tight-lipped smiles of their kind. But he sensed an uneasiness in their bearing. Something was wrong; he wondered just what it was. He had not long
to wait. Within a few minutes half a dozen of his more prominent henchmen came up to his private office on the top floor of the hotel. One of them, a square-jawed, hard-eyed hoodlum named
Finaro, cleared his throat noisily. “We’re wondering about that piece in the papers, chief,” he began. “About you going to quit the racket and go in the real estate business. That was just talk,
wasn’t it?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” answered Tony coolly. “I have got enough dough to quit and enjoy life if I want to.”
“Yeah. But who helped you make it, chief? We’ve all had a hand in building’ up that pile you got. And you owe it to us to keep things moving and give us a chance to keep getting our bit. We’ve
stuck by you through some damn tight times and now when the sailing’s easy, you gotta stick by us. If you quit now, the mob’d go to pieces overnight. And then where’d we be? You just can’t quit
now and leave us in the lurch.”
The others nodded in hearty assent as he finished. The man’s tone and manner had been respectful enough but his eyes were hard. Tony, his own eyes glowing with inward anger at this first
sign of insubordination within the ranks, was about to dismiss them brusquely. But his better judgment told him not to. He sensed an air of menace in the attitude of the group. He realised suddenly
that in organising and perfecting this powerful gang that ruled the underworld activities of a great city, he had built a Frankenstein, a monster that, acting upon the principles he had instilled into
it, would feel justified in destroying him should he attempt to desert now. In one great vision, he saw that these men felt a loyalty to him only as long as his agile mind planned activities thatafforded them a handsome livelihood. The moment his value to them had ceased they would unhesitatingly turn upon him the assassin’s bullets that he now could command them to direct at his
enemies. He could never quit; they wouldn’t let him. “Forget it, boys,” he said, trying to make his tone pleasant. “I was just talking for the benefit of the cops. Carry on everything as usual.” Tony
lost no time in carrying out his vengeance upon those who had betrayed him. For five days he had Captain Flanagan shadowed day and night. Then, with the reports of his spies in hand, he spent
two days in working out the actual plan. At last all was ready. At eleven o’clock one night he had himself driven home to the fancy apartment building where he and Jane lived. He gave the
uniformed doorman a cigar and paused a moment to comment on the state of the weather. To the middle-aged, dignified elevator man he gave another cigar and, apparently doubtful of the
accuracy of his watch, checked it up with that of the older man. Thus he had impressed his arrival and the time of it upon the two attendants. His apartment was on the third floor and at the end
of the corridor was an iron fire escape that led both upward and downward: Carefully he opened the French doors that gave access to it, stepped out and closed the doors behind him. Then he
climbed rapidly but silently down to the ground. His rubber-soled shoes making no sound, he flitted through the dark alley and stepped into the sedan waiting in the deserted street beyond. The
big car sped smoothly away, preceded and followed by another just like it. At a quiet corner far out on the North Side the three cars paused. Then one proceeded easily through the tree-lined
residential street to the next corner. Then another moved slowly forward. In the middle of the block and across the street from a brick two-story house which was still brightly lighted, it stopped
against the curb. The four men in it crouched down so that the car appeared empty. Already one of the rear door windows was fully lowered, the cool night air fanning the flushed tense faces of
the four men. Tony waited a moment, then nudged one of his companions. The man lifted a police whistle to his lips and blew three shrill blasts. Almost immediately two shots rang out at the next
corner. Abruptly the front door of the house across the street flew open and a burly man emerged, a revolver glinting in his right hand. It was Flanagan! Another shot rang out at the corner.
Flanagan ran down the steps, his revolver ready for action. Slowly Tony lifted the ugly black snout of a sub-machine gun, resting it on the car door, and took careful aim. Then with a grim smile
he squeezed the trigger. The death rattle of the weapon deafened him and his companions but Flanagan crumpled to the ground, at least two-score bullets having found their mark in his body.
The cars roared away down the street. Tony went to bed with exultation welling strong within him. He had returned the same way he had departed and, he was positive, without being seen. When
the police questioned the attendants of the building as they were sure to do, the two men would earnestly and unknowingly furnish him with a perfect alibi, for there was no other available entrance
to the building save the one at which they were on duty. Flanagan was gone. A score that had been accumulating for years had finally been settled. Now for Moran!
CHAPTER XXV
The newspapers the following afternoon gave Tony a shock. The Police Commissioner, in a lengthy statement about Flanagan’s daring assassination, said that he felt that younger men were
necessary to cope with these modern gangsters, and announced the promotion of Lieutenant Ben Guarino to Captain and Chief of Detectives. The new Chief, in a statement of his own, announced
it as his opinion that the affair of the night before was the work of Tony Camonte and his gang, and promised to run Tony out of town or kill him in the attempt. Tony laughed at that; then he
frowned. It wasn’t a nice thought to know that your own brother had sworn publicly to hunt you to the death. God! This family mix-up in his affairs was beginning to get on his nerves. Then Tony’s
jaw set and his eyes flashed. If they ever met in a situation where only one could escape, Ben would be just another dick in his eyes. Tony went down to dinner in the dining room of his hotel that
evening feeling rather well pleased with himself. One of the waitresses came forward to serve him, her crisply-starched white uniform rustling stiffly. He gave his order without looking up. But
when she served his soup, her finely manicured hands caught his attention. From the hands, his glance strayed to her figure, the perfection of which drew his gaze upward to the face. Then he
almost jumped out of his chair. For the girl was his sister, Rosie. “You!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” she answered breathlessly in a low tone. “I hoped you wouldn’t notice. But I had to do something, now that Mike’s dead, and this was all I could find.”
She hurried away before he could comment or question her further. Tony dipped his spoon into the soup, then paused. That explanation of her presence here did not ring true. He knew that she
did not have to work; the monthly sum he had his attorney send to his family was more than sufficient to take care of them all in luxury. Then why was she here? Why, indeed, except to attempt
vengeance upon him? He gazed at the soup, his black eyes glittering with suspicion. But the clear liquid told him nothing. Surreptitiously he emptied the contents of his water glass upon the floor,
and poured some of the soup into the glass. Then he rose and, concealing the glass by his side, walked toward the door that led into the lobby of the small hotel. “I’ve been called to the telephone,”
he explained with a forced smile as he passed her. “Be back in a minute.” Out in the lobby, he called one of his henchmen and handed the glass to him. “Take that over to the drug store across
the street right away and have it analysed,” he ordered. “I’ll wait here till you get back.” His thoughts in a turmoil, he waited. But he was positive of the verdict even before his henchman returned
and breathlessly announced it! The soup contained enough poison to kill a mule, much less a man! Tony walked back into the dining room with his face an expressionless mask in which only the
eyes glittered with life. The nerve of the girl, to get a job in his own hotel so that she could have the opportunity of poisoning him, of exacting the toll for Mike’s death that the law had been unable
to collect. God! She was his own sister, all right. He stood beside his table and she came forward, only her flaming cheeks belying her outward coolness. “You get off at seven, don’t you?” he said
calmly.
“Yes. Why?”
“I’ve to go upstairs on business. When you get off, please bring the rest of my dinner up to my private office on the top floor of the hotel. There’ll be a big tip in it,” he added with an attempt at a
smile, “and I want to have a little talk with you anyway.” He went up to his office, wondering if she would come of her own free will or at the behest of the gunmen he had ordered to keep a close
watch upon her and bring her up in case she should try to get away without complying with his request. He hoped she would come by herself. She did, already attired in an attractive street
costume, and carrying a large tray with a number of covered dishes. She set the tray down on his desk. He looked up at her grimly. “Are these things poisoned, too?” he asked.
She jerked so violently that she almost dropped the tray and her eyes widened in terror. “I don’t know what–” she stammered.
“There’s enough poison in that soup you served me to kill a dozen men,” he continued smoothly. “And they don’t usually poison it in the kitchen. So you must have done it.”
“Yes, I did,” she snapped with sudden defiance. “I loved Mike and you murdered him. You cheated the law but I resolved that you shouldn’t cheat me. And I got this job so I could get you. But
you’ve found it out. Now, what are you going to do about it?”
The abrupt directness of her methods, so very like his own, disconcerted him for a moment. “I haven’t decided,” he admitted finally. “I ought to have you taken for a ride but I think you’re too brave
to be finished up by a stab in the back like that. Do you realise the danger you’re in?”
“Yes. I’ve known all the time what a long chance I was taking. But Mike’s dead; what difference did it make?”
“Mike was a hoodlum,” snapped Tony harshly. “A gunman and a thug. He’d killed a lot of people and was always ready to kill more whenever I said the word and was ready to pay the price.”
“I suppose you think you’re better,” sneered the girl.
“That’s not the question. We’re talking about Mike. He wasn’t worthy of any girl’s love. But I want you to know that I had no idea you two were married. I thought he was just going to take advantage
of you, as he had so many other girls. That’s why I – I bumped him off.” A tenderness had come into Tony’s voice. He caught himself as he saw her staring at him, wide-eyed. “What’s the matter?”
he demanded.
“N-n-nothing. For a minute, you seemed so much like – someone I – once knew.”
Tony breathed hoarsely for an instant and turned away so that she could see only the scarred side of his face. She had almost recognised him. “I’m sorry about Mike. But it just had to be,” he
said doggedly. “And you’ll be a lot better off. Someday you’ll thank me for what I did. So run along and forget Mike. And from now on, be careful of the guys you pick. You’re too nice a girl to be
chasing around with gunmen.”
“How would you like to mind your own business?” she blazed, her eyes glistening with incipient tears.
“Fine. You might do the same. And don’t try to poison any more gang leaders; some of them might not like it … If you need any money–”
“I don’t,” she snapped proudly. “And I won’t. We have plenty.”
Tony felt a thrill of satisfaction. They would never know, of course, that their prosperity was due to him. But he was glad that he had been able to make them comfortable. “All right then – girlie,”
he said slowly. “And just remember that you’re the only person that ever tried to kill Tony Camonte and lived to tell about it.” Still staring at him curiously, a perplexed frown wrinkling her brows,
she finally departed. Tony heaved a long sigh. Well, that was over. Abruptly he switched his agile, daring mind back to the matter which had become an obsession with him – the wreaking of
vengeance upon the officials to whom he had paid so much but who, in time of crisis, had betrayed him. And then he realised that there was something bigger to all this than venting his personal
spite upon these officials who had betrayed not only him but their trust. For the first time in his hectic life he felt the social impulse which is, at once, the cause and the result of civilisation – the
realisation that the welfare of mankind was more important than his own preservation, the realisation that he owed something to the world. In the grip of new emotions, of strange ideas and
convictions hitherto foreign to him, he wrote steadily for two hours. When he had finished he read through the pile of sheets with grim satisfaction, then folded and sealed them, together with a
small black leather-covered notebook, in a large envelope, across whose face he wrote:
To be delivered unopened to the Evening American the day after my death.
Then he locked it up in his desk. He realised, of course, the sensation that would follow its ultimate publication but he had no idea that he had just written, with amazing brevity and directness,
the most significantly damning indictment of American political machines ever composed. Yet that proved to be the case. Its publication, unknown to him, was to cause the suicide of half a dozen
prominent men, the ruination of innumerable others, a complete reorganisation of the government and police administration of not only that city but many others; and, by its revelation to the
common voter behind the scenes of activities of so-called public servants, and their close connection with the underworld, was to prove the most powerful weapon of modern times for the
restoration of decent, dependable government in the larger cities. But he would have laughed unbelievingly had anyone told him that now. And he wouldn’t have been particularly interested. This
social consciousness that had come over him for a time was too new a thing to him to be permanent. Already he was hungry again for action, for personal vengeance against those whom he felt
had it coming to them. His cunning mind leaped to the problem which was, momentarily, his main purpose in life – the killing of Moran, that ratty assistant district attorney. The telephone at his
elbow jangled loudly in the complete silence of the room. He lifted the receiver, growled a curt “Hello,” and listened to the voice that came rapidly to him with its report. When he hung up, his eyes
were sparkling. Five minutes later, he and four of his most trusted men – that is, best paid – drove away in a high-powered sedan. To the far South Side they drove rapidly, yet at a pace not
sufficiently rapid to attract attention. For they were in enemy territory there. If their presence was discovered, a dozen carloads of gangsters, representing the various small and always turbulent
south Side mobs – would be gunning for them. There was danger, too, from detective bureau squad cars. With the contents of his car what it was, Tony realised that it would be impossible for
him to give a satisfactory explanation of his presence in enemy territory. And if they should happen to be picked up by a squad that wouldn’t listen to reason, they should probably find themselves
in a nasty jam. Across the street from a saloon in a dark neighbourhood, they stopped. The engine of their car had been cut off a block away and they had coasted up to their objective, the carefulapplication of their well-greased brakes preventing any sound as they came to a halt. The chauffeur remained under the wheel, ready for the instant getaway that would be imperative, Tony and
the other three men slipped on masks that completely concealed their faces. Then, carrying machine guns, they hurried silently across the street. Noiselessly as ghosts they appeared in the
doorway, their weapons poised ready for instant destruction. A score of men were lined up at the bar. And at the end stood Moran, chatting chummily with four men who looked to be very improper
companions for an assistant district attorney. In fact, two of them were prominent Irish bootleggers of the far South Side jungles, whom he had prosecuted unsuccessfully for murder not many
months before. The bartender, facing the door, was the first to see the masked intruders as they stood silently side by side with ready weapons. The way he stiffened and stared attracted the
notice of the others because they began turning around to see what held his fascinated gaze. “Hands up, everyone!” barked Tony brusquely.
“My God! It’s–” cried Moran.
But the rest of the sentence was drowned in the vicious stuttering of Tony’s machine gun. Without so much as a gasp, Moran fell forward, almost cut in two by the hurtling stream of lead. Behind
his mask, Tony smiled grimly and swung the spouting black muzzle to include the two Irish bootleggers. Anyone that could stand being chummy with Moran was sure to be a rat and much better
out of the way, and these two were notorious bad eggs anyway. As he watched them drop, Tony felt that he had accomplished a civic improvement. And undoubtedly he had saved the state the
expense of trying to hang them again at some future time. Tony loosened the pressure of his forefinger on the machine gun’s trigger and the abrupt silence that followed the gun’s death rattle was
startling. “Any o’ you other guys want a dose of this?” he demanded. The men cowered back against the bar, their lifted hands trembling. “Well, don’t come outside for five minutes or you’ll get it.”
His henchman on the left turned and walked outside, on the lookout for danger from that direction. Tony followed, then the other two men backed out. During the hectic two minutes inside the
saloon, the chauffeur had turned the car around and it stood humming angrily at the curb. They all leaped in and it roared away. Tony was exultant. He had settled all his local scores now, except
that with the DA himself and the contents of that envelope he had sealed not long before would take care of him – and how! But there was that New York crowd that were trying to invade his
domain and who had tried to bump him off just before his trial. Tony frowned and gritted his teeth when he thought of them.
CHAPTER XXVI
Money will accomplish miracles anywhere, especially in the underworld and within twenty minutes from the time of Rosie Guarino’s departure from Tony’s private office, Jane Conley’s hired spy
had telephoned the information to her. He hadn’t been able to give her full details of what had transpired but he could testify that Tony had offered this girl money – which she had refused. Knowing
Tony, Jane felt able to fill in the gaps herself. And it all left her gasping with fury. The fact that she was entirely mistaken in her conclusions made her rage none the less violent. She’d show him
that he couldn’t two-time her and get away with it. She was fed up with Tony, anyway. Of late, she had felt an almost irresistible longing for the reckless doings and excitement of her former
activities as a gun girl. But Tony wouldn’t permit it. As long as she was his moll, she had to stay at home and behave herself. And home life, even in the luxurious abode he provided, had become
wearisome. She had been friendly with only one man. She had always had the retinue of admiring males that surround every beautiful woman, and she missed them now. She felt that she had
become entirely submerged to Tony, just another of his many expensive possessions. His supposed philandering was merely the match that set off the powder. For more than two hours she
brooded over it all, then she made up her mind. First she telephoned Captain Ben Guarino, and had a pleasant chat with him. It seemed reasonable to suppose that having the chief of detectives
for a boyfriend would be a valuable asset to a girl like her. And then she telephoned Tony at his office. “I’ve been very busy tonight,” he said defensively the moment he heard her voice.
“I’m sure you have,” she assented.
He missed the edge in her tone. “And say, baby, Moran had an accident.”
“Really? Were you there?”
“Yeah. Just got back.”
“That’s splendid. Listen, Tony, I got a real piece of dope for you. That New York outfit has called a big meeting at Jake’s Place for midnight tonight. Those big shots from the East are figuring on
organising all the local guys that don’t like you – it’ll save them the trouble of bringing out a lot of their own mugs from New York.”
“Jeez! Baby, where’d you hear that?”
“Never mind! You don’t doubt it, do you? Didn’t they try to bump you off–?”
“Yeah, sure,” asserted Tony eagerly. “And they’re all going to be at Jake’s Place tonight?”
“Yes. The New York crowd will be in dark blue Cadillacs – three or four carloads of them – and they’ll probably have the side curtains up. It’s only about eleven-thirty now,” she continued smoothly.
“If you hurry, you might be able to meet them on the way out.”
“Much obliged, baby. I’ll sure do it.” Jane hung up slowly, a grim smile playing about her rather hard lips. If things went right, there’d be a nice story in the morning papers. If it didn’t, she’d probably
wake up with a lily in her hand. Well, what the hell – a girl only lived once and she might as well get all the kick she could out of life. Tony’s headquarters was humming with activity. Quickly he
assembled four carloads of gunmen, gave them strict orders, and then climbed in with the group in his personal sedan and the cavalcade raced away. Jake’s Place was a large saloon and
gambling establishment catering largely to underworld customers. It was frowsy, sordid and dangerous. Located in a remote, still undeveloped neighbourhood almost at the city limits, it was an
ideal setting for gangland deviltry. And it had been the scene of plenty. Tony halted his crew a block away while he took stock of the situation. There were a number of cars parked around the
large, frame building but nothing unusual. And he could see no dark blue Cadillacs, either with or without drawn side curtains. Perhaps the boys hadn’t arrived yet; midnight was still ten minutes
away. Ah! There they were, a line of cars approaching along the other road that led from the city. In the darkness they looked black but they might be dark blue and they were Cadillacs, all right.
There could be no doubt of that. On they came, close together, four of them. Tony felt his heart leap and his, grasp on the machine gun resting in his lap tightened. This would be the biggest coup
of his whole career, proving to the world at large that his domain was his, and his alone, not to be invaded by others, no matter how strong they might be in their own regions. He snapped out
orders in a low, tense tone and sent a man to relay them to the other cars. Four on each side. One each! His plan was simple and direct. His column would move forward, swing into the road
beside the other, then rake the enemy with a terrific fire, annihilating them before they could recover from their surprise at the sudden attack. Each of his cars was to confine its murderous attention
to one of the others, the one nearest. Rapidly his column moved forward and swung into the other road. Tony lifted his machine gun and squeezed the trigger. The vicious rat-tat-tat deafened him
but he could hear the same stuttering sound coming from his other cars. Then from the cars of the supposed enemy, clear and sharp above the firing, came the clang! Clang! Clang of gongs.
“Jeez!” groaned Tony. “It’s cops!”
Instead of gangsters, those four cars contained squads of detectives from the bureau. What a horrible mistake! Not that he hated shooting cops, but because of the consequences that were bound
to fall upon himself and his men. Unless – Pandemonium reigned. Every one of the eight cars was flaming with gunfire. The banging roar was terrific. Tony tried to keep his head in the bedlam.
His forces were in a panic; killing officers was far different than killing enemy gangsters. But there was no backing out now. It was a fight to the death. His chauffeur, too busy to fight and mindful
of his own safety as well as his employer’s, tried to run for it. The big car leaped ahead, slewed around the first gang car and shot ahead. But one of the squad cars leaped after, like a spurred
horse. For more than a mile the chase lasted. The cars swayed, swerved, bounced. Spurts of fire leaped from gun muzzles in both cars. Two of Tony’s men were unconscious from wounds and
another, blood-covered, was raving incoherently, trying to climb out of the racing machine. Tony finally lifted a clenched fist and knocked him cold. He himself miraculously had not been hit. Nor
had the chauffeur, apparently. But that squad car was hanging doggedly to their trail. Gaining a little, too. Beside himself with fury, Tony smashed out the back window and cut loose with his
machine gun, the acrid smoke filling his nose and mouth and making his eyes smart until he could hardly see. The jolting and high speed made an accurate aim impossible but he knew that some
of his shots landed. And nothing happened. They must have a bullet-proof windshield. Well, their tires weren’t bullet-proof. He depressed the hot, blazing muzzle of the machine gun, aiming for
the tires. One of them blew out with a bang that sounded above the firing. The heavy car slewed around and toppled over into the ditch. Tony gave a hoarse, savage grunt of triumph. But it was
short-lived. For at that moment his own car turned over. The chauffeur had misjudged a turn. Tony was still conscious when the big car ploughed to a stop, resting on its side. But there was no
sound from the chauffeur. Tony vindictively hoped the fool was dead. His head whirling, his breath coming in short, harsh gasps that did not suffice, Tony untangled himself from among the heap
of dead and wounded. Abruptly he stepped back behind the shelter of the car and rested the machine-gun muzzle on a fender. Two men had climbed out of the squad car and were walking
cautiously toward him, revolvers glinting in their right hands. His teeth gritted, Tony squeezed the trigger. But nothing happened; it was empty. He drew his automatic, for so long his main
bodyguard. Taking careful aim, he fired. One of the men dropped. The other, warned by the shot, threw up his head and lifted his revolver. But Tony only stared, fascinated, while his nervous
fingers refused to obey the command that his numbed mind was trying to send. For the man was his brother, Captain Ben Guarino, the new chief of detectives. Tony saw the revolver flash, then
his head snapped back from the impact of the bullet. Anyway, he had always faced it. Two hours later, Captain Guarino sat in his office at the detective bureau receiving the admiring congratulations
of his colleagues and telling them the details of the furious battle which had accomplished the finish of the notorious Tony Camonte. “Tony’s old mole give me the tip,” he said complacently.
“Suppose they’d had a fuss and she wanted to get back at him. She ain’t a bad-looking dame, either; I met her at Tony’s trial. Bet she got a wad of dough and jewellery outa him, too. Anyhow,
she give me a buzz ’bout eleven-thirty tonight and said Tony and his mob was going to pull off a big killing out at Jake’s Place at midnight. And that was my chance to get him with the goods. I
could see that myself so I got some of the boys and went out. But you know, I can’t see what made Tony and his mob start after us the minute they seen us – But God! Wasn’t it lucky his gun
jammed? He was a dead shot, that guy; for a minute I thought sure I was going to wake up with a wreath on my chest. But you never can tell about an automatic.” But even an automatic cannot
jam when the trigger has not been pulled.
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historyLamin Bajinka is a very fortunate man, a history teacher in a country where the unemployment rate is sky high. Yet, his days are far from care free, and often he too dreams about a comfortable life in Europe or America. Originally from the rural part of the Gambia, he lives in an urban area during the academic year, and moves back with his extended family on a farm during holidays. There he ploughs the fields by hand and tries to assist his relatives. «We grow delicious watermelons», he boasts. A devout muslim, he often prays and finds comfort in simple things. In his spare time, he trains the local soccer team, and it is not without pride that he talks about their many achievements on the pitch.
Historyradio.org: Tell us a little about your background. Why did you decide to study history?
Lamin Bajinka: I began my education in a small village called Kiti. Then I went to the Gambia college campus in Brikama, which is five kilometres from my native land. Brikama has about 90 000 inhabitants. I sometimes live in a town called Brufut, on the Gambian coast, with my mum.
My grandfather inspired my interest in studying history. During my youth he narrated vivid stories to me, which inspired to know the history of this land and her people.
Historyradio.org: How many students do you have, how old are they and what do you teach them?
Lamin Bajinka: I teach classes of 35 to 40 students and we have 4 history classes in the school. The age of my students differ. They are between 15 and 20, but there is nobody older than 20. In the Gambia, the history syllabus is divided into two: National History and West Africa and the Wider World. We try to read more about our own country and West Africa.
Historyradio.org: What about your pay as a teacher, is it sufficient for a decent life?
Lamin Bajinka: No, my wages are not enough for decent life because I can’t even buy a bicycle or construct my own house.
Historyradio.org: And tuition, is it free for all Gambians?
Lamin Bajinka: Yes, today basic education is free for all Gambians. Girls were the first to get free tuition, in order to empower and encourage female education in the country.
Historyradio.org. What sort of methods do you apply in your classroom? Lectures? Group work?
Lamin Bajinka: I normally I put the child at the center of the class and allow them to express their own understanding of the subject or topics. Then we have group work while I guide them.
Historyradio.org: What are the greatest difficulties that a Gambian student faces in school?
Lamin Bajinka: Many have difficulties with the distance they travel to attend school. Not every village or community is blessed with a school. So, as a result, some students travel far in order to get a better education.
Historyradio.org: Once a student graduates, what are their chances of attending university?
Lamin Bajinka: The chances are very slim due to the student’s financial circumstances. I am a good example of this, I haven’t finished my university degree. Yes, there are scholarships, but it is not sufficient for the number of people who want to have a university education.
Historyradio.org: Do you think there is adequate focus on Gambian and west African history in the media?
Lamin Bajinka: There is not enough focus on west African history, particularly Gambian history. European countries don’t focus much on our history in their media, do they?
Historyradio.org: If you were to teach Gambian history to a European class for a day, what events and topics would you focus on?
Lamin Bajinka: I will focus on the ethnic groups of Gambia, that is the people of the country, their social and political structure, and our economy. Then you can see how we live.
Historyradio.org: If you were to recommend a book on Gambian history, what would it be?
Lamin Bajinka: If I am to recommend a history book for my region, it will be any history of the ethnic groups of the Gambia that you can find. Our diversity is so important.
Historyradio.org: What are your dreams for the future?
Lamin Bajinka: I pray to become a successful business man.
The Gambia:
There are 8 main ethnic groups in the Gambia: Mandinka, Wolofs, Akus, Jola, Fulanis, Serahule, Serer and Tukulor all living in relative peace.
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literatureLaura White is a renowned expert on Jane Austen. However, she has chosen a novel approach to this classic British icon. The Nebraska professor is an innovator in the emerging field of digital humanities, and studies literature by means of a computer. The rigid divide between human creativity and the world of binary computer code is quickly being bridged, according to Google. I had a few words with professor White about this new branch of study, and what it means for writing and literary studies.
Historyradio.org: You have studied Jane Austen, have you discovered something new about her, something we couldn’t have discovered without the use of a computer?
Professor White: Yes, I think so. What we did was identify (code) each and every word in the six major novels as to speaker. That’s easy to do for the narrator and character speech, but trickier with free indirect diction, when the narrator is “speaking for” a character, using his or her vocabulary and point of view. Such shared speech we coded as such, and weighted to reflect the depth of ventriloquism. The results are not yet fully known, because what we created is a public sandbox in which people can design their own searches about diction to use the coding we created—there is a lot waiting to be discovered. But at the very least we found that Austen’s use of free indirect discourse (and she was the first major novelist to exploit FID fully) was far more complex and varied than we (and all the scholars writing on the subject thus far) had suspected. We also have found some cute nuggets—for instance, the fact that no male character in Austen uses the word “wedding” and no female character uses the word “marriage”!
Historyradio.org: When you began your studies of Austen, did you have to create your own methodology?
Professor White: We had to create coding that would properly reflect the complexity of Austen’s speakers: was the speech spoken or written? How many levels of speaker are in a given phrase (in one letter, for instance, we have the string of Mrs.Younge-told-Darcy-told-Mr.Gardiner-told-Mrs.Gardiner-told-Elizabeth-told-reader). But the flexible marvel of .xml already existed, and even more importantly, the program TokenX, designed by our team member Brian Pytlik Zillig (Professor at UNL’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities), was at our service. TokenX determines unique frequencies of words and thus provides an easy-to-use interface for text analysis (especially through frequency tables) and visualization.
Historyradio.org: I have heard of similar studies on Agatha Christie, and that they were able to create a profile of her style. Is this your goal with Jane Austen?
Professor White: You can’t actually get to a full knowledge of Austen’s style, even by understanding her patterns of diction, because verbal irony (and its reverberations) can’t be caught mathematically—and her verbal irony is pervasive. But you can learn a lot about her use of free indirect diction, which is in turn important to understanding her style. One could make a profile about percentages of indirect diction, dialogue, and so on—but that would only be helpful to compare with other writers—or, using big data searches, comparing that data against the profile of such a thing as “the eighteenth-century British novel” or “Henry James” (the latter being an author who took Austen’s innovations with FID and ran with them about as far as they can be run). Our project may indeed do such things in the future—it’s the next obvious step.
Historyradio.org: If you had something resembling a profile, not only of her choice of words, but of the larger patterns in her plot construction, do you think a computer could emulate Austen? Could it produce a fake Austen, so to speak?
Professor White: You could perhaps create an Austen that could fool some people, but it wouldn’t be a good fake. Unless you can feed in her values (not possible) AND her education, including but not restricted to her reading (difficult) AND the operations of her irony (not possible), you’ll just get a partial simulacrum.
Historyradio.org: This new approach could be used to compare authors, and then detect larger patterns in literary and cultural history. Austen is of course a central figure in the development of the English novel. In the past, this has been studied by Ian Watt and others. Do you think we now could have a more empirical history of literature?
Professor White: I do think we can have more data that tells us interesting things about patterns of diction and clusters of tropes across large bodies of texts—a lot of people at UNL, such as my colleagues Steve Ramsay and Matt Jockers, do work on just that sort of thing. Matt for instance has very recently uncovered a lot of information about patterns among popular fiction, especially bestsellers. If we can design the right questions, we can find some interesting answers. But as I pointed out before, huge literary elements such as irony can’t be reckoned computationally, so a Theory of All Lit from digital humanities is impossible.
Historyradio.org: Gillian Beer, Arthur O. Lovejoy and others have specialized in detecting patterns from the history of ideas in fiction. Can a computer assist us in this type of study?
Professor White: This kind of work is my favorite kind of scholarship to read, that which finds the largest patterns in imaginative literature over the centuries. I’d recommend your readers go to Northrop Frye’s The Anatomy of Criticism (1957) for the best of such of work; Eric Auerbach’s Mimesis (1946) is also marvelous. For finding the largest patterns in the Bible, read Frye’s The Great Code (1982) (admittedly very demanding). And, yes, to some degree, computers can help with this kind of work, especially with discerning patterns of diction and plot (though in the latter case obviously the text won’t tell you its own plot—a human being has to schematize what happens and feed that information in).
Historyradio.org: Where do you see the field of digital humanities in 20 years or so?
Professor White: Moving upward and onwards. By the 90s, humanities had been somewhat exhausted following the usual roads of literary criticism—I don’t generally advise students to focus on Jane Austen, for instance, because it’s very hard to find room for an original thought. One way the humanities are being revitalized is with a much more stringent attention to history, and digital humanities plays a role here too by making it easy to read texts long forgotten, literary and otherwise. For instance, in my recent book on Carroll’s Alice books, I made much use of the texts in Carroll’s library of about 3,000 volumes. They were all auctioned off at his death, but catalogs of the library which have been produced by Jeffrey Stern and Charlie Lovett let one read his library cover to cover through Googlebooks, Hathitrust, and other such digitization initiatives. When read in detail, one finds this virtual library corrects many of the critical and biographical misperceptions about Carroll. And these resources are just a small part of how digital humanities is transforming literary studies: visualization, archives, data-mining all play a part.
Historyradio.org: Some people think that creativity is unique to us as humans, and may feel threatened by the fact that our “cultural soul” is gradually dissected by computers. What do you say to them?
Professor White: I’d agree that creativity is unique to humans, though some of the higher apes do seem to like to finger-paint. Computers can’t be creative—it isn’t possible. They can be programmed to make wild outputs, and we might think creative thoughts about those generated outputs, but there’s no creativity on the part of the computer involved. We are more threatened by computers in terms of surveillance; we are not at all private when we’re online, and big data (which doesn’t care about us as individuals) can nonetheless potentially be retrofitted to be small data, fingering us one by one. So people are right to worry about this—since human beings are in charge of computers, it is very unlikely that they will always be used for good (no other human invention has been).
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creative writing / literatureMaking it as a script writer in Hollywood is not easy. There is a whole support industry for creating stories, classes on almost every corner in Tinseltown. One of the more dedicated teachers of the craft is professor Ken Dancyger of New York University. We spoke to him about his work as a teacher of writing, and about the realities of the business.
Historyradio.org: When did this notion of a “script guru” become common? What sets such a person apart from, let’s say, a professor of literature?
Professor Dancyger: The “script guru ” for me started with Syd Field. I remember going to see him in Toronto along with 400 others and being outraged by his ideas about scripts. He made me define where I stand on the vital issues about how to write a strong script. At that point I myself had written, alone or with partners, 10 scripts. The first secured me a Hollywood agent, the second sold to Canadian television. I seemed on my way.
A script guru is very different from a Professor of Literature. A Professor of Literature is well-read and has an area of interest. He or she may or may not be a novelist. Script guru is much closer to the popular arts i.e. the media. Certainly the guru may borrow ideas from literary critics such as Northrop Frye but his or her knowledge base is strongly rooted in the hundred plus history of Film. The earliest writers about script were often playwrights and so ideas about plays, their structure, was much more likely to influence Script gurus than Academic Professors of Literature.
Historyradio.org: They must get their ideas from somewhere? Do you read a lot of academic literature, and then translate this into practical advice? Or have you done the empirical work yourself?
Professor Dancyger: I read a lot of history as well as literature and see many plays and of course I see every film I can, always with an eye to what makes the work compelling. The scripts I’ve written, the writers I’ve worked with, the classes I’ve taught are all laboratories where I define and refine my ideas about storytelling and what constitutes a strong screenplay.
Historyradio.org: If you were to give a little praise to one of your colleagues or competitors, who would that be, and why?
Professor Dancyger: I like David Howard from USC and Judith Weston who teaches acting for Film and Television. David is very good on character-driven stories and Judith is excellent on character arcs and their importance. Both have written strong books.
Historyradio.org: The late Syd Field was famous for his 3 act-theory. Robert McKee also presents a lot of rules about what constitutes a good script. What is your main dictum on how movie scripts should be constructed?
Professor Dancyger: My approach is as follows: In a feature length screenplay a character changes. What is the issue (crisis) when we meet the main character? How does the character change by the resolution or end of the screenplay? Who/what changes him (relationships and plot)? Next what will the dramatic arc (plot) be? Every genre has a different dramatic arc. What genre is your story? Genre is pliable in terms of how it is used. What tone will you use? (light, realistic,dark). Will you alter any genre expectations? (How you begin or end, the nature of relationships). Screenplay that succeed often surprise is in our expectations. Will your screenplay defy our expectations?
Historyradio.org: Can you really create a norm for what a good script is? If you look at prose, some writers excel on plot construction, like Agatha Christie, others on their poetic qualities? Wouldn’t the same thing be true for a movie script?
Professor Dancyger: There is a norm for expectations of what a script will be. This is based on how particular story forms have been used over time. Writers differ, some are strong on plot, others on character, yet others on dialogue. Robert Towne is very good on dialogue, David Rayfiel is very good at story construction, Francis Coppola is very good at tone. Each is unusually gifted in their area but few writers are good at every thing.
Historyradio.org: What is the best way of breaking into the hollywood script business? Do you just email your script to someone? Or do you need to know a lot of people in order to make it?
Professor Dancyger: Working in the business at all levels is the way into a career. Schools help as you can make a good short film that will get you attention. At that point the door may well open for you. Have a well written feature film script written. That too will help.
At the moment CONTENT is king in Film and Television. The opportunities are abundant. It remains tough but this is a good time for writers.
I have seen European writers and directors go from a nominated foreign film to a Hollywood opportunity. This is the competition students who graduate from Film Schools face.
Historyradio.org: When your script has been bought, it may be reworked by someone else, might it not? So the end result doesn’t really have to look anything like you originally intended? Isn’t this frustrating?
Professor Dancyger: The realities of the industry is that many voices will impact your script, in both Film and Television. It might be frustrating but my advice is get over it. Its the way of this world..
Historyradio.org: When I was a student, my professor told me a story about the Irish Nobel laureate, Samuel Beckett, and how he was rejected many times, only to become famous as a mature man. At what point should one give up, and simply accept the fact that perhaps one’s talent isn’t sufficient for a career in Hollywood?
Professor Dancyger: Persistence is more valuable a trait for a writer than in many fields. There is no one path. Everyone has talent, not everyone is persistent.
Historyradio.org: You must have read thousands of scripts, what would you say is the most common mistake that young or novice writers make?
Professor Dancyger: The most common mistakes early writers make are, in order:
Excessive reliance on dialogue.
Not understanding how much change in the main character has to take place in the Feature film and how many barriers to the main character’s goal need to be overcome in the course of the screen story.
That plot an external pressure on the main character, needs to be deployed and that it should have surprising twists and turns.
Tone is how your unique voice underlies the story.
Genre or story form matters and given its plasticity it can make your story seem fresher.
Historyradio.org: What is the best movie script of all time, and why?
Professor Dancyger: The best movie script of all time is a tough nut. I have many favorites:
Casey Robinson’ NOW VOYAGER for story construction
Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BOULEVARD for character and dialogue
Samuel Raphelson’s SHOP AROUND THE CORNER for sheer pleasure
Federico Fellini’s 8/1/2 for creativity
Elem Klimov’s COME AND SEE for daring and passion
I could go on but will stop…
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