"There's only one thing I know about this, Arnold," he said when she had returned to her seat. "It's bringing me to life again. I don't think I had really laughed for months. I'd forgotten there was such a thing as amusement in the world. I never was very strong on play. Of one thing I'm sure. It's giving me a new insight—a new point of view—into lots of things. Only God knows how it will turn out."
VI
I can only guess how it would have turned out, if Nina had not fallen among thieves. The most insoluble mystery of life is the way in which the very highest human values sometimes spring out of the coarsest, most brutal wrongs.
Although to Nina, I had spoken of Blackie in a flippant tone, I knew that he might cause trouble. I had spoken seriously about it to Norman, advising him to avoid as much as possible, and especially after dark, those parts of town, where Blackie's gang was likely to be encountered. And together we had impressed on Nina and Guiseppe that she was never to go out alone. But as nothing was heard from him for some time, we all began to worry less.
Nina had been with us about three weeks when the storm broke. I came home from my work about five one afternoon—and found bedlam. Guiseppe's head was wrapped in a bloody bandage, Nina was sobbing wildly on the divan.
It took some minutes before I could get a connected explanation from them. After lunch they had gone out to pay the butcher's bill. Nina, having come from "his district" had won Giuseppe's heart and he allowed her the pleasure of playing at housewife. It pleased her especially to pay the bills, so she was carrying the money—about thirty dollars. At the corner of Second Avenue and First Street, they had been surrounded by Blackie's gang. Guiseppe had fought like a true Garibaldian until his head had been laid open with a knife and he had been thrown to the ground by the young toughs. As quickly as they had come, they ran away. When he picked himself up, Nina was nowhere to be seen. He had asked the aid of a policeman, but had been laughed at. Then he had come to the Teepee, not finding either Benson or me, he had bound up his head, and rallying some Garibaldian comrades, had set out on a search. This about three o'clock. A little after four they had found her sobbing desperately behind an ash can in an alley-way. He had had some trouble in persuading her to come back. She was afraid of Blackie's wrath—but more afraid that Norman would be angry on account of the money.
Her story came out brokenly between spells of crying. At the first attack, Blackie and another cadet had hustled her around the corner and up some stairs to a rented room. There they took away the money and beat her at leisure. The three who had manhandled Guiseppe came in shortly and kicked her about some more. There was nothing unusual in this—it is the well-established custom, by which the cadets keep their girls in slavery. I doubt if a day ever passes in this great metropolis of ours when the same scene is not enacted. They would probably have beaten her worse, if the windfall of money had not tempted them out to other pleasures. One after another the five men swore, emphasizing their words with blows, that if she ever threw down Blackie again, they would kill her. Their parting advice to her was that if she had not earned five dollars by ten o'clock next morning, she could expect a fresh beating.
Such stories had come to my knowledge before, they are the commonplaces of the police courts. But as Norman had said the first morning, such things must happen to someone near us, before we realize them. I took the handcuffs out of my desk, put fresh cartridges in my revolver. I had never set out after a man before in a like frame of mind....
When I think back to that evening's work, the Tombs and our convict prisons and all the bitter horror of our penal system, is no longer inexplicable. It is only crystallized anger. The electric chair is only a formal symbol of collective hate. I am not at all proud of that man-hunt. A friend of mine had been hurt. "A friend of mine"—how many of man's and nature's laws have been broken with that preface! The political bosses look after their "friends." More corrupt legislation has been passed because of "friendship" than for bribes. Well. A friend of mine had been touched. Everything by which I like to recognize myself as a civilized man dropped away. Suddenly I became an ally of the thing I was fighting against. As I rushed downstairs, with handcuffs in one pocket and a revolver in the other and murder in my heart, I was just adding my contribution to the maintenance of the system which seems to me—when not angry—the most despicable element in our civilization.
I left word for Benson to stay in when he came home, so that I could reach him by telephone. I had no definite plan when I left the Teepee—only somehow I was going to "get" Blackie. It was about an hour before I was able to locate him. The first fury of my anger had passed, it had had time to become cold and to harden.