The Picaroons

by Gelett Burgess; Will Irwin

THE STORY OF THE QUADROON WOMAN

I reckon you don’t guess a coloured person can hate white folks as much as white folks hate niggers, but they do, sometimes, and I despise a white man more than if I were a sure-enough black woman.

My Daddy was born fairer than a good many white trash. Some folks never knew he was a mulatto. My ma died when I was born. Daddy wanted me to be educated, so I was sent to the Tuskegee Institute, where I learned nursing. After that we lived a little way out of Mobile, and we were right happy for a good while.

Well, about two years back, there was an awful crime committed near our place, and all the whites went pretty near crazy. You don’t have to be told what it was, and you know what law amounts to at such times. Any coloured man that is once suspected has no show at all. Daddy was innocent, of course, but if he’d been guilty, I’d have stood up for him just the same. He was put in jail, and they got up a mob to lynch him. I got wind of it just in time. There was a sheriff’s deputy who was fond of me, and he and I managed to get Daddy out and started West.

I had no idea just where Daddy had gone, till one day I was looking over the Mobile Register, and I come on a “Personal” that made me prick up my ears. It looked like it might have been written by my Daddy for me to see. It was addressed “Aber,” and when I turned the word backward, the way you do sometimes with funny-sounding words, I saw it made my own name, “Reba.” It read like this:

Aber: Shall answer no further requests, as nobody can identify. Sheriff called off.

Odod.

Now Odod was just Dodo backward; that was my pet name for Daddy when I was little. The word “sheriff” seemed likely, but I couldn’t understand that about “requests.” Then I thought to read the first letters of each word, like the acrostics Daddy and I used to work out together in the Youth’s Companion, and there it was, easy. Just “San Francisco.” Then I knew Daddy was safe in California and wanted me to come on.

I packed right up and bought a ticket, hoping to find him somehow when I got there. I didn’t think anybody would suspicion my leaving, but I had no idea how cruel white folks can be, till I had gone too far to come back. Just after we left New Orleans I thought I saw a man following me. I wasn’t quite certain till we changed cars at El Paso, but then I knew he was a sure-enough detective.

Talk about bloodhounds! That man never left me out of his sight for a minute. He sat in the corner with his hat pulled over his face, and I could just feel his eyes boring a hole in my back.

First thing I did after I got to the Golden West Hotel was to mail a personal to the Herald. It read like this:

Odod: Any money will assist the cause. Help earnestly desired. We are in trouble.

Aber.

I knew if he saw this message he’d see it meant “Am watched. Wait.”

Well, I can’t tell you half what I went through that first week, with the detective turning up everywhere I went, till I was afeared I’d die of the strain. Sometimes I just felt like murdering him to get him out of the way. I didn’t care so much for myself, but I was in mortal terror lest he’d catch sight of Daddy and arrest him. I watched my chance, and one night I went to bed early, leaving word at the office to be called at five next morning. Then, at two o’clock I got up and went out, leaving all my things in the hotel.

I took a room down on Third Street, near Minna, and for three weeks I was mighty careful where I went, waiting for the deputy to leave town. I got a few jobs of nursing, so I paid my way for a spell; then I just couldn’t stand it a day more, and I risked getting word to Daddy. So I put another personal in the paper, telling him, the same way as before, to meet me at the old Globe Hotel in Chinatown next night. You know the old Globe used to be right smart of a hotel in early days, but now there are hundreds of Chinamen living in it. It’s like an ant-hill, full of all sorts of ways and corners to get out.

I waited on the steps, keeping a sharp eye out for Daddy. But I hadn’t been there more than ten minutes before I saw—not my dear old Dodo—but the detective who had followed me all the way West. I ran down the steps and walked up Dupont Street as fast as I dared, never looking round once nor letting on I had seen him.

When I got to the corner of Washington Street, only a matter of a block away, I ran smack into a man. He grabbed me in his arms, and was crying over me before I recognised him by his voice as Daddy, for he had a light wig and a dyed mustache, and wore blue spectacles. I had no time to kiss him even. I just whispered to him, “The detective—run for your life!”

Daddy gave one glance over his shoulder, and ran up Washington Street. The detective saw him go, and dashed after him, and I followed them both. They turned up a flight of steps into a big doorway, a little piece up the block.

I saw by the sign over the door that it was a Chinese theatre they had gone into.

But I just had to find out what was going on inside, so I paid the man at the door fifty cents and went up the stairs. I had never been in such a place before, of course, and at first I had no idea what to do or where to go. There was no sign of Daddy or the detective anywhere, and the place was filled with a great crowd of Chinamen on the seats. The only white people I saw were a lady and two men sitting up on one side of the open stage. I was bewildered and frightened to death, for there was a horrible noise of big gongs and squeaking fiddles, and actors in queer costumes singing and talking in shrill voices.

A Chinaman came down the crowded aisle and took me up to a seat beside the tourists on the stage, and there I had to sit in front of that crowd of coolies while the play went on and on and on. I have seen Chinese plays enough since, but then it was all new and terrible, for the orchestra was right near me, making such a noise that I thought I’d go mad, and the actors kept coming in and going out past me reciting in a sing-song. I wanted to scream.

Away up over the stage was a break in the wall where the ceiling went up higher, and there was a little window almost above my head. There, once I saw a head stuck out and a Chinaman looked at me, long and hard. This made me more frightened than ever.

Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it a minute longer, I heard the voice of a white man swearing in the dressing-room behind the stage, and then the detective came through the curtain looking like he was mad enough to kill somebody. Frightened as I was at him, my heart was nigh ready to break with joy, for I knew that Daddy must have escaped from him somehow. He looked over the audience from the floor to the galleries where the women were, and finally went out.

As soon as he was out of sight a Chinaman came up to me and grinned. “You likee see actor dlessing-loom?” he said. Something told me that he was a friend and I got right up and followed him. We went into the dressing-room, where all the costumes were hung on the wall and the actors were putting on queer dresses and painting their faces, then up a flight of stairs. I kept my eyes open sharp, looking everywhere for Daddy. Above the stage was the joss-house room of the theatre with punks burning, but the place was empty. Above that was the kitchen.

Then we turned a corner, went down some steps and came to a padlocked door. My guide unlocked it, put me outside on a platform, whistled and left me, after saying, “You keep still; bimeby you catch him!” Then I heard his footsteps going back into the building.

I was alone on an outside balcony, looking down into a dark alley, three floors below.

After awhile a door opened, and a man beckoned to me. We went through a little hall with doors on each side and dark passages leading off every which way, and down these, in and out till I was more confused than ever, and then finally he knocked at a little door. It was opened, and I was pushed inside.

It was a tiny box of a room, low and narrow. On a broad bunk at one side, two Chinese actors in costumes were lying, smoking opium pipes. Leastways, I thought they were Chinamen, but as soon as the door was shut, one jumped up and took me in his arms. I screamed and fought to get away, but he called me Reba, and I knew it was Daddy. No wonder I didn’t recognise him before. He had on a wig with a long queue, and a gold embroidered costume, and his face was painted in a hideous fashion, with his nose all white and streaks under his eyes.

After I had kissed half the paint off his face he told me what had happened.

Daddy had been in San Francisco long enough to get pretty well acquainted with Chinatown. He had kept around there from the first, to escape notice, and he had got to be mighty good friends with one of the actors who spoke English fairly well. When he was chased by the detective he had made straight for Moy Kip’s room, and asked to hide out. The Chinese are used to fooling the police, and Kip just threw a gown over Daddy’s shoulders, painted his face, and put him on the opium bunk. When the officer went through the actors’ rooms, he looked in, but didn’t see any more than I saw at first. Then Moy Kip watched me through the little window over the stage, and as soon as the detective left the place they sent for me.

Daddy and I were taken to a room three stories under the sidewalk, where we hid for a week, going upstairs at meal-times. It was just like one big family of about eighty men, but only one or two women. The little rooms we had were dark and dirty and close, and the smell was something awful. I couldn’t have stood it alone, but Daddy was safe. That was enough for a while.

But living Chinese fashion, without sunlight or decent food, didn’t agree with Daddy at all, and he fell sick. It wasn’t only the air that was ailing him, it was the fear of capture, too, and with all the hardship and worry his fever got steadily worse. A Chinese doctor in big spectacles and a long white mustache came in to see him, and mixed him up some black, horrid, smelly stuff, made of sea-horses and lizards, and Moy Kip burned punks in the joss-house upstairs, but he didn’t get any better. He was always worrying about something when he was delirious, and I couldn’t make out quite what it was about till one day, just before the end, when his mind cleared and he told me. Moy Kip wanted to marry me! Daddy didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t bear to ask me to marry a Chinaman, and he didn’t like to refuse the man who had been right kind to him.

You can imagine how I felt about it. It would have been bad enough if Moy Kip had been an ordinary Chinaman, but, being an actor, he belonged to almost the lowest caste. Undertakers and barbers and boatmen are the only ones below. Actors can’t even mix equally with ordinary coolies. Besides, Kip being the principal “white-face” actor or comedian, the manager didn’t let him leave the theatre much, for fear he’d be kidnapped by highbinders and held for ransom. If I married him, the life would be something awful.

And now, to make it all worse, my poor old Dodo was taken away. He died in my arms after being sick a week.

I was alone in the city, without money or friends, except the Chinese actors. I was almost crazy for sunlight and fresh air, and the sight of decent people.

Moy Kip was the only one of the crowd of Chinamen in the building who could speak English very well, and he had also been my father’s friend. He was educated after a fashion, and, for a Chinaman, kind and gentlemanly.

One day, soon after Daddy was buried, Kip came to my room. I was crying on the bunk, and he stood there watching me; then he placed a roll of gold on the table. “I give you two hundled dollar,” he said. “You likee go away home? No good stay here. Chiny actor heap bad.”

I sat up in surprise. I wondered where I would ever find another man who, loving me and having me in his power, would give me the means to escape. Right away I began to like him.

“Oh, Moy Kip,” I said, “you have been so good to poor Daddy!”

He looked at me hard, and said, “You likee Moy Kip? You mally me, please?”

So, after a while, I ended by accepting him, and I have never been sorry since. We were married in the Chinese way. I wore a stiff dress of red silk my husband bought for me, and my hair was braided tight and greased, fastened with gold fila-gree and jade ornaments. I had my cheeks rouged and eyebrows painted, and all.

But it was not till the carriage took me from my old rooms and the slave woman had carried me on her back up the stairs and into Moy Kip’s home (so that I should not stumble on the threshold and bring bad luck), that I found out how much difference the marriage was going to make to my husband. For I wasn’t taken to the theatre at all, but to a little set of rooms in Spofford Alley. When he came in to meet me, dressed like a prince in his lilac blouse and green trousers, I asked him how it happened he hadn’t fitted up a room for me in the theatre.

Seems like he reckoned I had brought him luck, for he had paid the manager for the right to quit acting, and he was going to try and get into more respectable business. In China, of course, he would have had to go on being an actor, and his sons after him, but Chinatown here is different, and it’s getting to lose some of the old strictness.

What Moy Kip was going to do, was to smuggle opium. He’d been wanting to go into it for a long time, but he had nobody to help him at it, nobody he could trust, that is. With me to take hold, he reckoned he could make right smart of money.

We bought a naphtha launch and filled it with nets and truck, like we were fishing, if anybody wanted to inspect us; and Kip had fixed the stewards on about every China steamer coming into port. They bought the stuff in five-tael tins, and packed it in bales with lines and floats, dropping it overboard as the ship crossed the bar. Then all we had to do was to cruise around in the launch and pick up the floats and haul in the bale. It was my part of the business to dispose of the opium after we had got it into town. I sold it to a German who distributed it through Chinatown.

The first year I was perfectly happy with Moy Kip, and no white man could have treated me better than he did. He named me “Hak Chu”—the black pearl—and nothing was too good for me. But still we didn’t count for much in Chinatown, for Moy Kip was still considered an actor, and below the notice of merchants. It seemed to be as much a question of money as anywhere else in the world, and until we could save enough up to buy a share in some store, we were less than nobody, except at the theatre, where they were always glad to see us both. We often went to see the plays, until, with my husband’s explanations, I got so I could follow the acting pretty well.

It’s right interesting when you begin to understand, for everything in the theatre means something. Moy Kip explained to me how the carved and gilded dragon over the doors leading to the dressing-rooms meant a water-spout, and the sign beside it read, “Go out and change costume.”

They have lots of different kinds of plays, and some of them take weeks to go through, running night after night until all the doings of the hero are finished.

One night while we were sitting on the stage in the theatre watching a new Wae, or painted-face comedian, who had come from China to take Moy Kip’s place, a man came to my husband with a letter. You know, in Chinese theatres they have a special column where letters for anybody in the audience can be pinned up, and this one had been seen by some one who knew Kip was there. When he read it I could see that it had bad news. He got up right off, and told me we must go home.

When we were safe in our house, he told me what was the matter. The letter was from the president of a highbinder tong. They had discovered that we were making money some way, and now that if Moy Kip didn’t pay five thousand dollars right off, he would be murdered by their hatchet-men. Oh, I was scared! I tried to make my husband promise to pay the hush-money, but he just wouldn’t do it. He said he might as well die as be robbed of all he had earned at so much risk. He said he wasn’t afraid, but if he wasn’t, I was.

From this time on, I had the horrors every time he left me. While we were together on our trips on the launch, I didn’t care so much, for the excitement kept up my spirits, but as soon as I was left alone I burned punks in front of his little joss, just like I was a heathen myself.

All went on so quiet that I had begun to feel easier, when yesterday the City of Pekin was reported. It was after dark before we got out to our wharf and put off, and we passed the steamer at the Quarantine Station. It was cold and foggy, and we spent hours cruising out at the mouth of the harbor, in a rough swell, before we picked up the opium and steamed back to Hunter’s Point.

As we stopped the engines and shot up to the pier, I was steering in the bow, and Moy Kip was at the engine. Just then I saw two men rise up from behind a pile on the dock. I screamed to my husband to reverse the engine and back off at full speed, and he had just done it when the highbinders jumped into the boat. The shock nearly rolled her over, and I fell down on my face. Before I could get up, I saw the hatchet-men strike at Moy Kip two or three times. I drew my pistol and fired, but the launch was rolling, so I reckon I missed them. They jumped into the water and swam off. Then I called out to Moy Kip and ran aft to help him.

My husband didn’t answer. I stooped down to him and turned him over—oh, it was horrible!—and then I must have swooned away, for it’s the last thing I remember.

I know the ways of these hired hatchet-men. They’ve been sold out time after time by their own members, and so now when they go out for a murder they write down a confession with both names signed on the same paper. Then they tear it up and divide the pieces, each one having the other’s name to hold him by, if his partner tries to sell him out. Wong Yet’s confession is on this paper you found. He’ll die to-night—murderers can be bought cheap in Chinatown. Now, if I only had the other half of the paper I’d know who the second man was, and settle him, too.

By this time the dilapidated laundry wagon had threaded the Mission, crossed Market Street, and was rolling along the asphalt of Golden Gate Avenue on its way to the Chinese Quarter. The quadroon woman’s eyes were afire with hate, and Vango watched her in apprehension, mingled with a shrewd desire to work further upon her excitement.

“You see I was able to be of assistance, even when conditions was unfavorable,” he ventured. “The spirits is unfallible to instruct when a party approaches ’em right. If I could give you a regular sittin’ and get into perfect harmony with the vibrations of my control’s magnetism, I ain’t no doubt I could lead you to find the balance of that there paper.”

The wheel of the wagon caught in the street-car rail and the medium was jerked almost off his seat. Or, so an observer might have explained the sudden lurch and the way Vango’s face went white. But his imagination or mania, kindled again by the craft of his trickery, had conjured up the vision of his previous dupe, and Mrs. Higgins’s spirit arose before him in threatening attitude. He cowered and stared, exorcising the phantom, rubbing his hands in terror.

But the quadroon woman did not notice. Her mind, too, was full of horrors, and the desire for vengeance was an obsession. She only replied, “One thousand dollars if you find that piece of paper before night!”

CHAPTER VIII
THE HERO’S ADVENTURE: THE MYSTERY OF THE HAMMAM

“Ten cents!” Admeh Drake muttered to himself, as he felt the first shock of the cool breeze on Kearney Street, “what in Jericho can a man do with a dime, anyway? It won’t even buy a decent bed; it won’t pay the price of a drink at the Hoffman Bar. Coffee John is full of prunes!”

He walked up the cheap side of the street, looking aimlessly at the shop windows. “I figure it out about this way,” he thought, “I ain’t going to earn a million with two nickels; if I make a raise, it’ll be just by durn luck. So it don’t matter how I begin, nor what I do at all. I just got to go it blind, and trust to striking a trail that’ll lead to water. I’ll take up with the first idea I get, and ride for it as far as it goes.”

With this decision, he gave up the unnecessary strain of thought and floated with the human current, letting it carry him where it would. Now the main Gulf Stream of San Francisco life sets down Kearney and up Market Street; this is the Rialto, the promenade of cheap actors, rounders and men about town. It is the route of the amatory ogler and the grand tour of the demi-monde. Of a Saturday afternoon the course is given over to human peacocks and popinjays, fresh from the matinees, airing “the latest” in garb and finery; but there is a late guard abroad after the theatres close in the evening, when the relieving prospect of an idle morrow gives a merry license for late hours and convivial comradeship. Among these raglans and opera-cloaks, Admeh’s rusty brown jacket was carried along like an empty bottle floating down stream.

He turned into Market Street at Lotta’s Fountain, and had drifted a block northerly, when the brilliant letters of an electric sign across the way caught his eye: “Biograph Theatre. Admittance, ten cents.” The hint was patent and alluring; there seemed to be no gainsaying such a tip from Fate. Over he went with never a thought as to where he would spend the night without money, and in two minutes Coffee John’s dime slid under the window of the little ticket office in front. “Hurry up!” said the man in the box, “the performance is just about to begin.”

Admeh made his way upstairs, passed through a corridor lined with a cheap and unnecessary display of dried fishes in a long glass case, and came to the entrance of a dingy hall, dimly illuminated. At the far end of the sloping floor was a Lilliputian stage. A scant score of spectators were huddled together on the front seats and here Admeh took his place, between two soldiers in khaki uniform and a fat negress.

As he sat down, the curtain rose and two comedians entered, to go through a dreary specialty turn of the coarsest “knockabout” description. Admeh yawned. Even the negress was bored, and the two infantry corporals sneered openly. Next came a plump lady of uncertain age who carolled a popular song and did a frisky side-step to the chorus.

Admeh was gloomily disappointed. He turned his head to inspect the audience more closely, hoping for some livelier prompting of his destiny, when with a trill and a one—two—three accompaniment upon the wheezy piano at the side of the stage, a little soubrette ran down to the footlights, and with a mighty fetching seriousness, rolling her eyes to the ceiling, proclaimed: “Ladies and gentlemen, with your kind permission, I will now endeavor to entertain you with a few tricks of sleight-of-hand.”

She was a wee thing with wistful brown eyes under a curly blond wig, and seemingly a mere child. Her costume was a painful combination of blue and violet, home-made beyond a doubt. No one could help looking a guy in such a dress, but Maxie Morrow, as the placard on the proscenium announced her, had a childish ingenuousness that forfended criticism.

As she went through her foolish little performance, audibly coached by some one in the wings, Admeh’s eyes followed her with eager interest. He wondered how much older she was than she looked, and what she would be like off the stage. She had a piquant rather than a pretty face, in form that feline triangle depicted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. In her movements she was as graceful and as swiftly accurate as a kitten, and she had all a kitten’s endearing and alluring charm.

Admeh made a sudden resolve. If he were to meet with an adventure that night, what could possibly be more entertaining than to have for his heroine this little puss of a magician? He made a rapid study of the situation to discover its possibilities. It took but a few minutes for his wishes to work out a plan of action, and he was soon at the door urbanely addressing the ticket-taker.

“See here,” said Admeh, “I’m a reporter on the Wave—you know the paper, weekly illustrated—and I want an interview with Miss Morrow. I’ll give her a good write-up if you’ll let me go behind and talk to her.”

The Biograph Theatre did not often figure in the dramatic columns of the city papers, and such a free advertisement was not to be refused. The doorkeeper became on the instant effusively polite and, bustling with importance, took the young man down a side aisle to a door and up three stairs through a passage leading behind the wings. Admeh was shown into a tiny dressing-room whose scrawled plaster walls were half covered with skirts, waists, and properties of all kinds. The little magician was in front of her make-up table, dabbing at the rouge pot. The doorkeeper introduced the visitor, then discreetly withdrew, closing the door after him.

At her discovery by this audacious representative of the press, Maxie was all smiles and blushes. She was still but little more than a girl, although not quite so young as she had appeared in front of the footlights, and more naïve and embarrassed than one would have expected of such a determined little actress. She offered Admeh her own chair, the only one in the room, but he seated himself upon a trunk and began the conversation.

All his tact was necessary to put her at her ease and induce her to talk. The Hero of Pago Bridge was by no means too ready with his tongue, usually, in the presence of women, but there was something in the touching admiration she betrayed for him as a newspaper man that prevented him from being bashful. He thought the brotherly attitude to be the proper pose, under the circumstances, and he led her on, talking of the theatre, the weather, her costume and himself, while she sat awkwardly conscious of her violet tights, which she slapped nervously with a little whip. His careless, friendly way at last gave her confidence, for he asked her few questions and did not seem to expect clever replies. Before long she had thrown off all reserve and chatted freely to him.

The Biograph Theatre kept open, as a rule, as long as it could secure patronage. This night stragglers kept coming in, so that the four “artists” and the picture machine in the room below still went through their weary routine. As the conversation proceeded, Maxie left at times, went through her act and returned, finding Admeh always ready to put her upon the thread of her story.

So, by bits and snatches, by repetitions and parentheses, in an incident here and a confession there, this is about the way Admeh Drake heard, that night, in Maxie Morrow’s dressing-room