III. The Gambler.
“Where is my wandering boy to-night—
The boy of my tenderest care,
The boy that was once my joy and light,
The child of my love and prayer?”
In chapter III I shall portray one of the most remarkable of the Adonises that I met during my 18-months Rialto career, to which the present Part Three is devoted, and in chapter IV, the most remarkable youthful Hercules. Other Adonises of the Rialto are portrayed in my Riddle of the Underworld. The remainder of the present book, to the end of Part V, will describe some of the most remarkable ultra-androgynes (female-impersonators) that I met in the Rialto. For a description of my most noteworthy “fallen angel” confidants, I refer to my Riddle, and to my fourth book, now in preparation, Susa, which gives the entire life of the Queen of the Rialto of the middle of the last decade of the nineteenth century. As I was fated to become the most widely known female-impersonator of the Rialto, Susa was the most widely known vampire. Two detested and cordially loathed types, but actually not a hundredth as bad as they had the name of being!
Numerous Rialto pals were adolescent professional gamblers. Because of that, I have chosen to devote an entire chapter to a characterization of the type. More than that, the young blood forming the subject of the present chapter was my “No. 1” friend among the couple of hundred Lotharios with whom I |New York’s Beau Brummel.| mingled in the Rialto. He became my favorite because he was the most elegantly dressed—and close to the handsomest—adolescent I ever met. Above all, he possessed the most genial disposition.
Has the reader ever remarked that just that kind of disposition generally goes hand in hand with deceit and hypocrisy? Later—to my bitterest sorrow—the hero-boy now being described was discovered to be the greatest hypocrite I ever met. In January, 1895, I made his acquaintance. For half-a-year he manifested the greatest affection—all feigned as I later found. When he had wrung me dry, he—entirely unexpectedly—flourished a loaded revolver around my head, and cried: “If you ever speak to me again, or even come into the same room, I will put a bullet through your head!”[[29]]
This quondam soul-mate had such a craze for acquiring money—generally by foul means—as I have never witnessed in another. He made it a condition of our spending a couple of hours together that I put into his palm a five-dollar bill. But though I could get plenty of other company of his type gratis, I was so fascinated with him that I never gave a second thought to the self-sacrifice that such gifts demanded during my student days. While promenading the streets with him, I would, every other minute, glance into his face, reflecting: “The handsomest and best dressed young fellow of the Rialto is MINE.” While we were seated in a theatre together, I would often gaze into his face instead of at the players, reflecting: “New York’s Beau Brummel is MY SOULMATE.” For no soft hair, no rosebud cheeks in a |Apostrophe to Lost Soul-mate.| male, no arched eyebrows—ever surpassed those of the Adonis now being described. He was perfection in face, head, and body. He was perfection in dress. He was perfection in disposition—ONLY HE WAS ULTRA-DECEITFUL.
Buddie McDonald! Whom for over twenty-five years I have not seen or had news of! I am here addressing you because it is the only possible way to get through a message. If these lines should ever fall under your eyes, and you should, in this chapter, recognize yourself—somewhat covered in order to hide our identities—I wish to tell you that I have through the years always granted you first place in my heart after my mother alone, and if we could ever run across one another, I still stand ready to enslave myself to you, notwithstanding you doubtless have lost (because age deals no differently with you than with all other sons and daughters of Adam) nearly all your litheness and charm. But I still love you for what you were in your earlier twenties. Throughout a quarter of a century I have been longing and waiting for a chance encounter with you. Many times have I eyed every man passed in New York’s crowds hoping to recognize your face. Nothing would I like better than to spend my declining years knit to your genial personality and heroic, grand-aired spirit. I freely pardon your past treachery—though it almost drove me insane—if only you would condescend to let my soul be knit to yours until death do us part!
Buddie McDonald! The most precious of all names! If it were my idol’s legal name, I would not |The Gambler’s Antecedents.| disclose it. It was the alias he used in the Rialto and the only name I knew him by.
Buddie told me that he was born and brought up on a farm near Lake Ontario. His people were Methodists. He had always gone to Sunday school and Epworth league, because his parents required it. For he was a black sheep by birth—the only one in his little rural community. When nineteen, the seventeen-year daughter of a neighbor appeared with her parents before a justice of the peace. Buddie lived with his child-wife only three days and then stole away for parts unknown. What pangs the poor girl must have suffered thus to lose a genuine Adonis—in beauty one man out of a thousand—to the arms of the demimonde! She had doubtless been comforting herself and congratulating herself that she had won for life as her helpmeet the most bewitching young blood of the community. And after just three days to be forever left in the lurch!
“Buddie McDonald” immediately bobbed up in the Rialto under that alias. In the Rialto! At that time one of the two chief amusement and gambling centers of the Western Continent, the magnet for the black sheep of pious families all over the United States. He immediately adopted the profession of card sharper, being endowed with the peculiar mentality necessary.
While we were pals, he was twenty-two—just a year older than myself. From ten to midnight one evening each week, I dogged him in one of the half-dozen gambling joints among which he divided his “working” hours.
Fairie a Bachelor of Arts.
I was too much of a goody-goody ever to gamble myself. I would merely sit for hours as spectator. It was intense pleasure merely to have under my eyes the type of adolescent that sows wild oats.
Among my associates in the Rialto resorts were youthful actors playing at the several theatres, racetrack book-makers, wealthy adolescents who spent their evenings sipping gross pleasures, and highfliers of the feminine persuasion—at that date as thick in the Rialto as flies in summer around an open jug of molasses.
I was now in my third year of leading a double life. My every-day circle was without suspicion. Outside my one evening per week in the Rialto, I led a most industrious student life, even winning prizes. I had already been awarded the bachelor’s degree cum laude and was in my first year of graduate study. Of course I had never revealed to any Rialto associate that I was a university student. I was known there merely as “Jennie June,” while the few who took the trouble to inquire my legal name never questioned “Ralph Werther.” And my three most intimate Lothario friends of the Rialto were too busy evenings—Martin and Paul,[[30]] chasing chippies, and Buddie, victimizing youthful greenhorns—to investigate where I spent my time while not in the Rialto. They have each asked me where I lived. I gave a fictitious address, hoping they would not investigate. And they never did. And my three most intimate androgyne friends—Roland Reeves, Eunice, and Phyllis—were, like myself, living a double life incognito, and thus |“Things Are Not What They Seem.”| were the more inclined to respect my disinclination to refer to my every-day life.
To the university circle I thus continued the “innocent” from whose view Heaven had mercifully shut off the seamy side of life, particularly the Underworld. They declared they never saw any one with such weak sexuality! But I actually knew a thousand times as much about passion and crime as any one of them. Some complained because I “never associated with men and learned human nature”! But I secretly knew human nature far better than any of them. They thought that my feminine predilections and lack of worldly wisdom (seeming) were due to my being a recluse! And I was a recluse so far as concerned university social affairs. For I elected to take my diversions as a mademoiselle—not as a gallant.
But to return to Buddie: I have picked out for description that one of my numerous evenings spent in part with him which best illustrates his character and our relations. Afternoons and evenings he hung around fashionable hotel lobbies and exhibition halls to scrape acquaintance with moderately wealthy and sportily inclined Reubs making their first trip to New York. With his unmatched geniality and hypocrisy, he was decidedly successful in getting a line aboard some “sport” from upstate, and taking him in tow. For with Buddie, it was “Brother, this” and “Brother, that”. A large proportion of the Reubs whom Buddie condescended to buttonhole congratulated themselves doubtless on their good luck in happening on such a friendly New Yorker—a gentleman of leisure and a big roll of yellow backs (which Buddie always took pains to wave before the eyes of Reubs, a manoeuvre |Gambling a Master Passion.| tending to hypnotise them) who condescended to show them the sights of the metropolis, and, above all, take them where they could quadruple and quintuple their funds in a single evening. The passion for enrichment by a stroke of luck is, after woman and wine, the chief pitfall for “he-men.” An appeal to this craze in Reubs ambitious to be “sports” has good prospects of success for brainy metropolitan prestidigitators.
On Buddie’s and my entering into a solemn contract—very similar to a marriage bond—to be “best friends,” he agreed to reserve one entire evening each week for me alone. But it was only the fourth that I had to sit in a Fourteenth Street restaurant for two long hours waiting in vain. I was wiping my tear-bedimmed eyes four times a minute. Other diners probably thought I was experiencing some overwhelming bereavement.
At ten I made the rounds of the gambling joints frequented by my soul-mate. I finally caught sight of his wondrous blonde hair and peachlike cheeks in the very last—as always happens—of his half-dozen stamping grounds. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, it was pre-eminently New York’s Monte Carlo (which name I give it in this book). The walls were paneled in rosewood. Every six feet a heavy gilt-framed plate-glass mirror reached half-way to the 15-foot ceiling. The latter was painted with Cupids and Venuses, in all sorts of poses, amid fleecy clouds floating in such a blue sky as is actually beheld only in Italy. The myriads of crystal prisms pendent from the huge chandeliers emitted all the colors of the spectrum. The floor was mosaic—in such exquisite patterns that it seemed a sin to set foot on it. The |In New York’s Monte Carlo.| ebony furniture was inlaid with mother-of-pearl in floral patterns.
I rushed to Buddie’s side noiselessly because, with three other smartly dressed young bloods, he was absorbed in a game. I knelt beside my hero-boy with head against his arm.
When the hand was played out, Buddie, throwing at me the sweetest of smiles, addressed the only one of the four who was a stranger: “Mr. Myers, let me introduce Jennie June, the female-impersonator. I am used to her hanging around while we fellows are playing. Do not let her presence distract you. Jennie and I call each other ‘Best Friend.’ Perhaps you never before ran up against a person who is one-third man, one-third woman, and one-third infant. That explains why she nestles up against me so affectionately.”
But Mr. Myers appeared to be unutterably shocked. Particularly since I was in male attire. He appeared incredulous. He had never even dreamed that a third sex exists.
After an hour Buddie said: “Jennie, take my keys, go to my room, and wait for me there. Because I will not get home until long after midnight.”
On arrival he exclaimed: “Jennie, what do you think of your new friend, Mr. Abraham Myers, the Beau Brummel of Myersville upstate, who is enjoying his first visit to our village?”
“I think, Buddie, that before to-night he had never been in any place worse than a church social. His evening in the Monte Carlo must have been an eyeopener. |Crooks Are Boastful.| Whenever my gaze fell on the poor innocent, the words of the Bible went through my head: ‘He is led as a lamb to the slaughter! And as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth!’ I am sorry my hero-boy stoops to take advantage of an unsophisticated Reub!”
While we ate our midnight lunch, Buddie confided his evening’s adventure. I was always inquisitive about the ways and habits of the tremendously virile—how they looked upon the mystery we call “life”—and habitually put to my numerous soul-mates a long list of questions in case they did not spontaneously overflow. But it is an earmark of crooks to be garrulous with their soul-mates. The former are proud of their sharpwittedness and gloat in unburdening their minds to some one they think they can trust. Their characteristic bragging to confidants is one of the chief means by which many of them finally fall within the toils of the law.
Secondly, Buddie was my soul-mate. At that date, we felt ourselves husband and wife. For I am myself fundamentally a woman, though possessing the male primary determinants. The relationship of knit souls—amalgamation of two separate personalities of opposite sex into ONE human being—I have discovered tends to mutual confidences. I had already several times been in Buddie’s presence when he had an intended victim (always a Reub) in tow, and saw through everything even if he had not told me. If it be asked how I, pretending to be of high morals, could associate with sharpers, I answer: Love is blind. In my subsequent Bowery period, described in my Autobiography of an |Fairies Best Stool Pigeons.| Androgyne and The Riddle of the Underworld, I was knit into one being with youthful burglars, who, to whet my admiration for themselves, have entertained me with accounts of their burgling houses and demonstrated their truthfulness by exhibiting terrible scars from gunshot wounds suffered as they were fleeing from a burglary they had “made a mess of.” I would never have thought of contributing in any way to bring them to justice; first, because I slavishly adored them, and secondly, because I knew I would be murdered if they should ever entertain the least suspicion that I would “peach.”
Experience taught me, during my six years in New York’s Underworld, that crooks are particularly prone to confess to a fairie intimate. For they considered fairies (under the legal ban of ten years’ imprisonment in New York) far worse criminals and far worse defiers of the law than themselves. Fairies—they thought—would not dare “peach.”
Fairies would serve as the best stool pigeons for ferreting out thieves, just as keen filles de joie are employed as detectives.
Buddie McDonald had already received many proofs that I idolized him and would never do anything to his detriment. True: five months later he did “shake” me definitely and emphatically. But this was because he had discovered he had wrung out of me all the money he could; he had become financially independent beyond his wildest dreams; and I had come to be a terrible bore through hanging around his room several times a week and demonstrating myself insatiable.
The Abraham Myers Adventure.
I summarize, as nearly as I can recollect, Buddie’s account of the Abraham Myers adventure.
It was on account of my roping Abraham in, Jennie, that I had to cause you that terrible crying spell at the restaurant. But you will sure forgive me when you come to realize that it is not every afternoon that a fellow comes across a hundred-dollar wad on the floor of Madison Square Garden waiting for some bloke to pick her up.
While Abe and I were watching the poor devils spinning around the track, I slyly pumped out that he is the only son and hope of Jonathan Myers, owner of the knitting-mill that put Myersville on the map. Having once been a hayseed myself, Jennie, I know what pulls strong with them. So, to get a line aboard Abe, I first gave him an hour of soft soap. “Yes, brother, I spent the summer of 1892 up in Squeedunk in your part of the state. It sure is a garden of Eden.... How did this year’s potato crop pan out?... And I myself know everything from A to Z about breaking in a colt. I was raised on a farm up in New Hampshire.”
After Abe showed he thought I am the best fellow ever and I had found him to be an easy mark, it was time to discuss money. “Money, brother! You have a little and you love it. If only a fellow has money, he can go everywhere and have everything. Wouldn’t you like me to show where you can take your money, AND IN THE SHAKE OF A LAMB’S TAIL MAKE MORE MONEY OUT OF IT?”
Abraham right away bit hard. So I dropped the subject for an hour. I didn’t want him to smell a |Blarney Triumphant.| rat. And my silence would all the more make him hanker after the magic place where one could see his dough swell five-fold at a sitting.
After the first hour of blarney, I asked Abe to let me show him some of the sights of the Tenderloin, which all red-blooded Reubs hanker to see. “I swan!” he exclaimed. “I never believed such charming and handsome ladies existed!” I next took him to the Waldorf to dine. Of course I did not let him pay out a cent. Only one red-blooded hayseed out of a hundred will, at the last, balk at sitting down at the card table, where I can get every penny back with interest at 10,000 per cent. We sharpwitted fellows have to take those chances, Jennie.
As we swilled such grub as Abe had never even smelled of, he rubbernecked at the wonderful frescoes and stared at the polished marble columns which made the great dining-room like a forest. “This place is like what I have dreamed heaven to be!” he broke out over and over again. He was so soft! “You are awful good, Mr. McDonald, to bring me to see all these heavenly things. I never believed there lived such an awful good fellow!” ... Hah hah hah, Jennie! He was clean daft!
But, Jennie, I would never humbug a friend that way. Specially you, because you and I are “best friends.” You see, Jennie, Abe Myers was a stranger with a big wad. I was loading him with favors and pulling the wool over his eyes because my plan was to wring him dry before I let him get out of my hands. Such tricks are what we smarter straight men of Fourteenth Street are for. We have to live off the greenhorns....
How They Milk Cows on Fourteenth Street.
Don’t, don’t begin to chew the rag, Jennie! My only sorrow is that I haven’t enough dough. Abe Myers’ old man has barrels full. Abe will not suffer more than a few hours on account of the eighty-odd bucks I wrung out of him.
At nine we boarded a car for Fourteenth Street. We went into the bar-room of the Monte Carlo and sent a few glasses of champagne chasing after the many already swallowed. The poor innocent said his head swam! Hah-hah! He acted bashful-like as if he had never before tasted a drop. But he was too scart of being set down as a sissie to balk at another, and still another, glass while I waited for Pedro and Tracy. For I had phoned them to meet me at the Monte Carlo at nine to milk a cow. For they are my regular partners, Jennie. They haven’t the brains to get a line aboard a Reub, but know the ropes when I am at their elbow to give them their cue. We have an understanding that I will later make good their evening’s losses, or take my share of the winnings that I throw into their hands. I guarantee that they will each be to the good by one-tenth of the night’s clean-up; my share, for furnishing the brains and taking all the risk, being eight-tenths.
Of course we made it look as if Pedro and Tracy dropped in by chance. All three of us did our best to give Abraham the happiest hour of his life. When the time was ripe, I said: “Fellows, what do you say to a hand at cards?”
Pedro and Tracy seconded my motion. I watched Abe’s face to learn what I could count on and how far I dared go. It looked awful sheepish, as you said, Jennie. But I must say for Abraham that he is red-blooded |A “Reub” Seeing New York.| and would not back down in any manly undertaking. Like ninety-nine out of every hundred Reubs wanting to be sports, Abe Myers wouldn’t balk even though he felt in his bones he was being led down to hell. But he barely lagged after us into the card-room. But this was probably on account of his Methodist bringing up, like my own. He could not possibly have thought we were plotting to fleece him. As we swilled grub in the Waldorf, I had given his hand a hearty shake when he told me he was a member of the Epworth League. I said I also was, as really when I lived back home. Besides all three of us had patted him on the back and lionized him. There were aristocrats all about. And the Monte Carlo is such a high-class joint, decorated like Vanderbilt’s palace. Abe probably thought—like he said about the ceilings in the Waldorf: “Sure I ought not to mind the loss of a few bucks. It is worth that to see all this heavenly art, so much beyond anything I ever believed existed on earth. Besides Mr. McDonald has been awfully good! Spent a mint of money on me! He sure couldn’t let any harm befall me!”
For, Jennie, just that is the secret of getting the best of strangers. Treat them just lovely until the moment comes to pluck out their feathers.
We were soon buried in faro, as you saw while with us, Jennie. I played the banker and the others staked their money against me upon the order in which the cards would lie as dealt from the pack. The play ran on for over two hours. We spoke hardly a word. First along we each staked a dollar on each layout. But later five. For the first hour—while you were watching, Jennie—I turned things Abe’s way a little.
“Death to the Traitor.”
I wanted to get him awfully interested. When the time came to throw things in the other direction, I had to send you home, Jennie, for fear you would make some remark about my sleight-of-hand that would put everything in bad. Of course if Abe had not been awful green at cards, he would have got wise too.
And, Jennie, I remind you this once for all time. The saying is: “Death to the traitor!” And I know that you love life better than death. See how easy it would be for me to grab your throat and in a few minutes you would be a goner without being able even to make a whisper. But I know you could never do anything but help along your “hero-boy.”
After midnight, Jennie, there happened what I had been looking for. With trembling hands, Abe opened up his wallet to let us see the three one-dollar bills still lining it. He said awful plucky: “Fellows, I am almost at the end of my tether. I need this bit until I can get some dough from dad.” I felt sorry for the poor kid, patted him on the back, and handed him ten dollars from my own wad. I said we would play till he won back his losses. But at last he balked. So I said: “Let’s go to the bar-room and have a drink.”
Pedro, Tracy, and myself spit out soft soap over our drinks for a few minutes. For some time I had seen that Abraham was awful worried. He now hardly opened his mouth except to answer a question. He looked as if he were all the time saying to himself: “I’ll never get into another scrape like this again!” But he did not dare even breathe a whisper about us being sharpers. We were three against him alone, and even sweller dressed. Besides, being a stranger in New York, he lacked sense.
A Sadder, but Wiser “Reub.”
I judged it time to escort him to his hotel, because he needed some one to steady him. He looked a wreck. Because he was not used to champagne and all. We shook hands with Pedro and Tracy, and boarded a car for the Grand Union, where all the middle-class Reubs put up. Even when we were alone in front of his hotel, he did not have the nerve to call me down. I have fleeced Reubs who have given me a good punch in the mug when they got me alone. Abe must have thought I am straight.
I shook his hand good-night, patted him on the back for the last time, and said I would call this coming evening to give him a chance to win back his money. Of course I never expected to keep the engagement. I don’t suppose Abe did either. As soon as he got inside his hotel, I sneaked away as fast as my legs would carry me. For a week, I shall have to keep away from the Monte Carlo.
The Fairie Boy.