THE STORY OF THE DERMOGRAPH ARTIST
You see, this ain’t my regular job. I’m working here because my profession is played out in San Francisco. I’m a dermograph artist. What’s that? Oh, it’s what most people call a tattooer. But don’t you think we’ve got as much right to be called artists as the fellows that slap paint on cloth with a brush? I think so. Is anything nicer than the human skin? Don’t you fix up your walls and your ceilings, and your floors that you wipe your feet on? Then what’s the matter with decorating yourself? That’s the line of talk I always gave people when they asked me why I called myself a dermograph artist.
It was the electric needle and the Jap tattooer that ran me out of business. With the electric needle, a man could put on a design in about a quarter of the time that it takes to do a real artistic job by hand. The blamed little Jap would pretty near pay to get a customer, he worked that cheap. I quit, and I never get out my needles now except for a design on some one in the baths.
My parlours were on the water-front, because most of my customers were sailors. Of course, once in a while some swells from Nob Hill would come in for a design or two. I used to do my best work for them, because, I thought, you never can tell when these society people will get next to the fact that a picture on the skin has it a mile on a painting. Why, the other day I read in the papers that a Frenchman got a hundred thousand dollars for a little, dinky canvas painting. The highest pay I ever knew a dermograph artist to get was five hundred for doing the Wells Brothers’ tattooed woman. Do you call that square?
After the Jap and the electric needle chump came to town, business fell off, as I was telling you. They’d have made me close up my shop and get out if it hadn’t been for Spotty Crigg. Ever hear of him? Well, you sure haven’t been in San Francisco long. In those days he kept a sailor boarding-house and saloon round the corner from my parlours, and he was sort of boss of the water-front—good any time to deliver five hundred votes. I ain’t saying that Spotty was a Sunday-school kind of man, but he stuck to his friends. I was one of the gang, so he sent me enough jobs to keep me going. Besides, I helped him once or twice on a shanghaing deal. You see, like most sailor boarding-house keepers in those days, he was a crimp—used to deliver a sailor or two when foremast hands were scarce and the pay was good. Spotty Crigg is dead now, or I wouldn’t be telling you about his last and biggest shanghaing scrape. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I learned about it afterward, part from Crigg and part from people on the other side of the little deal.
One of my society customers was young Tom Letterblair. Maybe you don’t know about him, either. He belonged to about the richest tribe of swells on Nob Hill. That fellow was as wild as a fish-hawk, a thoroughbred dead game sport. His being wild didn’t bother his people so much as the way he went about it—always doing something crazy. His people were strong on getting into the society columns of the papers, but he was eternally getting the family name on the news pages of the yellow journals, if not in the police reports. He wasn’t really what you would call bad, either; only wild and careless and brought up wrong, and stubborn about it when anyone tried to call him down. He’d never seem sorry if he got the family into trouble, but just laugh at his sisters when they roasted him. And instead of treating him quiet and easy, and gentling him into being good, they’d jaw him. That’s a bad scheme with a gilded youth like Tom Letterblair.
They were a bunch of orphans. That was half the trouble.
Finally, Tom Letterblair took up with a chorus girl and refused to drop her. The family tried to buy her off. Now she wasn’t a nice sort of girl, but she was true to Tom. She told him about it. For once, although he was such a careless fellow, he got mad and what does he do but come to me to have her name, “Dotty,” tattooed on his arm with the double snake border. Says he to me confidentially, “That’s the girl I’m going to marry when I come of age, which is only two months, and don’t you forget it.” Seems that he told other people the same thing, so that it came back to his family.
Now his sisters and the Eastern society swells that they were married to didn’t hanker any to have Dotty for a sister-in-law. But they knew by experience that if Tom Letterblair said he’d do it, all blazes wouldn’t hold him. J. Thrasher Sunderland, one of Tom’s brothers-in-law, had what he thought was a bright idea. It was to get the kid shanghaied on a sailing vessel off for a six months’ voyage.
That wasn’t such a bad scheme either. They could keep him away from Dotty and drink for six months, have him work hard, and make a man out of him. It’s been done before right in this port. That wild streak is a kind of disease that strikes young fellows with too much blood in their necks and money in their pockets. I know. I’ve had it myself, bar the money. By six months, what doctors call the crisis would have been over. The risky thing was the chance of raising a howl when he got back, but they were willing to take chances that the sense knocked into him with a belaying pin would make him see it their way. They were going to give it out to the papers and their friends that he was off for his health.
J. Thrasher Sunderland made his first break when he went to Captain Wynch of the bark Treasure Trove, instead of going straight to a crimp, as he ought to have done. Wynch promised to treat the kid well and try to brace him up. Never having seen Tom Letterblair he got a description of him, including the tattoo mark. Then the skipper went to Spotty Crigg and promised him a hundred dollars for doing the rough work of getting Tom on board the vessel.
Letterblair was such a big, careless fellow, he never suspected anything, and a lure note fetched him to Crigg’s saloon the night before the bark cleared. Tom had been drinking hard that day—showed up badly slewed. ’Twas a jolly drunk, and he was ready for a glass with anyone.
Now, Crigg hadn’t given much thought to this little transaction, for he was doing that sort of work almost every day in the week. But when that young swell, all dressed up to the nines, came into the “Bowsprit” saloon, the looks of him put a brand-new idea into Spotty’s noddle. It struck him that a hundred dollars was pretty small pay for catching a fish of that size and colour; there was evidently a big deal on somewhere. Like everyone else that read the papers, he knew considerable about Tom Letterblair, knew him for a young sport, free as water with his money. Putting two and two together, he saw that if he could save the kid instead of stealing him, there might be a good many times a hundred in the affair. Besides, there was a chance of finding out who was trying to get the shanghaing done, and then collecting blackmail. So he decided to play both ends. He would steal the wrong man, and hold on to the right one.
He ran his eye around the place and saw Harry Maidslow, a scene-shifter in the old Baldwin Theatre, who used to drop in, now and then, on his nights off. Man for man, Maidslow and Letterblair were modelled on the same lines—Maidslow wore a moustache, but that would come off easy enough—yellow hair, blue eyes, big and strong build. Maidslow hadn’t a relative this side of the Rockies; no one would miss him. Crigg knew that.
Spotty Crigg went so far in his mind before he thought of the tattoo mark. Captain Wynch had mentioned it as the proof that there was no mistake. And then, Crigg thought of me. I suppose lots of people would have stopped there, but Spotty Crigg had nerve, I’ll say that for him—nerve of a thousand.
He worked Letterblair to drink himself to sleep, and then had him packed upstairs and put to bed, dead to the world. The next move was easy. Crigg took Harry Maidslow into his office, fed him knockout drops, and carried him up into the same room with Letterblair. Side by side he laid them both, and stripped them to undershirts.
That was the way I found them when a hurry call brought me to the boarding-house. I thought at first they were both dead. It gave me the horrors to hear Crigg tell me that I was to copy that tattoo mark. ’Twas like working on a dead man. One drunk, the other drugged, lying on a little, cheap old bed and Spotty, who wasn’t a nice, clean-looking sort of person anyway, leaning over them with a candle.
When he told what he wanted, I kicked until he put on the screws. He could drive me off the water-front if he cared. I knew that, and he reminded me of it, besides offering me fifty dollars. So at last I went at it, he telling me all the time to hurry. I never worked so fast in my life. By two hours you couldn’t tell one mark from the other, except that Maidslow’s was new and Letterblair’s old. Next we shaved Maidslow’s mustache off, for Tom always wore a smooth face. Then we changed their clothes, putting the swell rig on Maidslow and the old clothes on Letterblair.
Next, Spotty Crigg took Maidslow, got him into a hack, drove him to a dory he had waiting, and rowed out to the Treasure Trove, which was in the stream waiting to sail next morning. Captain Wynch was cussing purple because Spotty had been so long. He went over the description, though, and looked at the right arm to make sure, just as Crigg expected him to do. It looked all right, because a tattoo mark don’t begin to swell until the day after; besides, Wynch was seeing it under a fo’castle lamp.
It was all right so far. But Crigg, who wasn’t so keen by a jugful as he thought he was, hadn’t figured on one thing. The Letterblairs had an aunt, Mrs. Burden, a widow without chick or child of her own. She was an old, religious lady, with oodles of money and a whopping temper—a regular holy terror. She didn’t cotton to the sisters at all; in fact, hated them, but she was soft over Tom Letterblair. Whenever she wasn’t turning loose her money, stringing hospitals and churches all the way to Sacramento, she was handing it over to the kid, who had only an allowance until he got to be twenty-one. He and the parsons were the only ones who got her to loosen up. She had no son and I rather guess that on the quiet she had a sneaking liking for the way he was carrying on. Sort of thrilled her. You know how some of those pious old girls like a man that’s real bad. She coddled him to death and fought the sisters for being hard on the boy.
Spotty’s luck turned so that she picked the very next morning for a show-down with the sisters over the way they were treating the kid. There must have been a regular hair-pulling. Anyway, before they got through, Mrs. Sunderland was so mad that she poured out the whole scheme in one mouthful. She said:
“You won’t have a chance to coddle him any more! He’s on the Treasure Trove, bound for China to get the foolishness taken out of him. He’s passed the Farralones by this time.”
The old lady was foxy. She would have made a pretty good sport herself. She shut up like a clam, went home, rushed for the telephone and called up the wharfinger. She found that the Treasure Trove was in the stream being towed for the heads, and belonged to Burke & Coleman, this port. She knew Burke. She got her carriage, made his office in two jumps, and wouldn’t leave until she had an order on Captain Wynch to deliver a sailor answering Letterblair’s description, tattooing and all. In a half-hour more she had a tug started, chasing the Treasure Trove with that order. She offered the crew two hundred dollars over regular pay if they got their man back safe and sound. She herself was afraid of the water, and stayed in the tug office to wait.
While this was going on, Tom Letterblair woke up. The man watching him tried to get him drunk again, and the jag turned out loud and nasty. Crigg saw he’d have to be doing something right off the bat.
He knew a little how the land lay between Tom and his people, but not enough. He was sure that some one of Tom’s relatives had done it. As far as that he was right. He struck the wrong lead when he picked Mrs. Burden as the one—she being a church member—that was most likely to be ashamed of the kid. He looked up her number in the directory, and made for the house hot-foot. She wasn’t in, so he held up a lamp-post, waiting.
The tug got back. They packed Harry Maidslow into the dock-house. He was still sound asleep from the knockout drops.
“My precious boy!” said the old lady, and fell on his neck. Then she screamed so you could hear her all over the water-front and began to jump on the captain. She said:
“You’re a pack of thieves! You’ve murdered my Tom and dressed another man in his clothes. Where is my boy? Give me back my boy!” she said, and a lot of other things.
Said the tug-boat captain: “You’re trying to get out of paying the two hundred. He’s on specifications, and a nice time we had making them pass him over. Look here.” He got the coat off Harry Maidslow. There was the tattoo mark, just beginning to swell up.
“It’s a new mark. You and those hussies have fooled me,” said the old lady. “I’ll have you all in jail for this,” she said. “I wish I could find him, I’d show them up. I’d take him right up to the big dance they’re going to have to-night. I’d shame them!” she said. And she drove home, laughing and crying out loud. At the doorstep Spotty Crigg braced her.
He began quiet and easy, working up her curiosity so that she would let him know how the land lay. That’s just where he went wrong again. In about a minute she put two and two together and saw pretty clearly through the whole scheme. She was just one point smarter than Spotty, and she wormed it out of him finally. He thought she wanted Tom put out of the way, sure. She played her hand by letting him think so. It was move and your turn, like a game of checkers, with the old lady one jump ahead. Said Spotty:
“Two thousand dollars, or I bring him back and give the story to the Observer.”
Which of course was exactly what she wanted. She pretended to be scared but mad.
“Not a cent. Do your worst,” she said.
“Then I’ll go that one better,” said Spotty. “I see by the papers there’s a dance at the Sunderland house to-night. Three thousand down or I dump him in the front door, drunk as a lord and dressed like a stevedore. I’ve got him where you can’t find him——” which was a bluff. “If you tell the police he’ll get worse than a drunk——” which was another.
“Not a red cent,” she said.
“Settles it!” said Crigg. He went away red-hot, mad enough to back up his bluff, just as the old lady thought he would.
When he got home he found that Tom couldn’t be kept much longer. There had been a deuce of a rough house. That clinched the matter with Spotty Crigg. About half-past eight he woke Tom, gave him some dinner with a cold bottle to get him started again, and spun him a yarn about finding him drunk and robbed. The deal went through on schedule. At half-past nine, Spotty drove up to the Letterblair house with the kid, rang the door-bell and pushed Tom right into the hall, nursing a loud, talkative drunk. They say it put that function on the bum. I heard afterward from Tom Letterblair that it was about the only time he ever really enjoyed himself at one of his sister’s parties.
Nobody ever told the police or the papers. Every man-jack in the deal was afraid to peach on the others, because he couldn’t afford to tell on himself. All except the old lady and Tom, of course, and they were too tickled with the way the things turned out to care about giving it away. Another funny thing: everybody quit a winner. You can see how Captain Wynch won. Tom paid Spotty Crigg a thousand for keeping him off the Treasure Trove, and I got fifty dollars for my job. And even the snob sisters won out. How? Well, sir, Tom Letterblair braced up from that time on. I suppose he took it that if he was far enough gone to the devil for his family to have to shanghai him, he must be a pretty bad egg. So he swore off, got on the water-wagon, and turned out pretty well, alongside of what they’d expected of him. His chorus girl, Dotty, ran away with another man, and that helped him some, too.
Finally, Tom got a case on a swell New York heiress, a dizzy blonde, who was just simply It in the Four Hundred. He married her, to the great and grand delight of Mr. and Mrs. J. Thrasher Sunderland.
And right there was where Tom had too much luck for any one man. I’ll be darned if that girl’s name wasn’t Dotty, and she always believed Tom had it pricked on his arm just on her account! What d’you think of that?
But perhaps you’re wondering how Maidslow got square. I’ll tell you.
He came to in the tug office, where the crew had passed him a few swift kicks and left him. Pretty stupid and dopy yet, he crawled home to his own room and slept some more of it off.
Then, when his head did finally clear out, he began to look himself over; to discover and explore, as you might say. When he looked in the glass he must have nearly fell dead. His yellow moustache was gone. Then, he’d gone to sleep in old clothes and he woke up in a swell high-class rig, silk-lined, and without a spot, patch, or sign of wear. He had on silk gauze underwear, patent leather shoes, diamonds in his shirt-front, cuff-links, and a pair of pretty hot socks. Feeling in his pockets, as a man will, he found a gold watch and chain, a gold cigarette case, a corkscrew mounted in rubies and three hundred and forty-two dollars in bills and coin. Every one in the deal had been too busy to touch him while he was drugged.
Long before he got his senses his arm began to feel funny. After he’d investigated the costume, he took off the Willy-boy coat and stripped up his shirt sleeve. There was a tattoo mark, smarting like sin, with the name “DOTTY” in beautiful capital letters! Well, when he saw that he went right up into the air. He was just like that old woman in the nursery rhyme—“Lawk-a-massy on us, this is none of I!”
The tattoo mark was his only clue. I was the only one he knew in the business, so he came down to me and wanted to know how, and when, and where, and why, and what-the-devil.
“Look here, my son,” says I, “what are you kicking about, anyway? You go to sleep with eight dollars on your back and two bits in your jeans. You wake up with about a seven hundred and fifty dollar rig on, and a wad in your pocket, more than you ever had in your life. The thing for you to do,” I says, “is to lose yourself before you’re called for, and to stay lost, good and hard! Next time you fade away on the water-front, you may wake up in a jumper and overalls, shovelling garbage! You can’t expect to draw a straight flush in diamonds every deal: next shuffle you may catch deuces. You take my advice and drop a part of that roll of yours for a ticket in the ’Owl’ train to-night, before you’re enchanted back again.”
“All right,” he says, “I’ll do it. But for heaven’s sake, tell me just one thing, and I’ll ask no more questions. Who in blazes is Dotty?”
“Aw,” I says, “she’s the fairy godmother of this pipe dream. She’s changed into a sea-gull by this time!”
“Well,” concluded the rubber, “he skipped, and I have never seen him since, from that day till to-night, when I found you scrapping with him, for this man is Harry Maidslow for sure. If you want to talk to him now, he’ll probably be all right. He’s had time to have a plunge, and you’ll find him sleeping upstairs. I’ve got to go home, so good-by. Come round again some time and tell me about him!”
Admeh Drake, after a swim in the tank himself, passed through the main salon and upstairs, acting upon the hint of the Dermograph Artist. The place was lined with cots, now filled with snoring occupants, and it was not until he had explored a second story that Admeh found him of the clay-yellow beard. He was alone in a secluded ward, sleeping peacefully. Admeh touched him, and Maidslow sat up suddenly with a terrified stare.
“What d’you want? What d’you want of me?” he cried.
Admeh was astonished at his fright, but hastened to relieve the man’s suspense. “Oh, nothing bad, I hope. Is your name—” here he hesitated, and the man’s face showed abject fear—“Maidslow?”—and the mouth relaxed its tensity.
“Yes,” said the man. “What d’you want?”
“I want to tell you that there’s fifteen thousand dollars coming to you!” said Drake.
The man stared now in bewilderment.
“Ever know old Max Miller, Swiss bell-ringer?” “A little,” said Maidslow. “Why?”
“He’s your rich uncle. He’s left you his fortune. You caught him when you stole Maxie from him!”
“See here,” said Maidslow, “what kind of a jolly are you giving me anyway? I haven’t seen Maxie—I suppose you mean my wife—for two years. If you know anything about her, tell me the whole thing, and tell it slow.”
For the second time that night Admeh Drake narrated his adventures, beginning at Coffee John’s, and ending with the news of Maxie and the legacy left to Harry Maidslow. But, when he mentioned Colonel Knowlton’s name as the trustee, Maidslow, who had listened so far in delight, gave an exclamation of despair.
“Oh, heavens!” he cried, “I can never get that money! Why couldn’t it have been given in charge of some one else? Colonel Knowlton, of all men in the world!”
“Why can’t you get it from him?” Drake asked.
“You listen to my story, and you’ll know,” replied Maidslow.