Jackeen was not an imposing personality. But neither is the tarantula. He was five feet and an inch in stunted stature, and weighed a mean shadow under one hundred and ten pounds. Like the Doc—who had stolen his love away—Jackeen's hollow cheeks were of that pasty gray which speaks of opium. Also, from opium, the pupils of his vermin eyes had become as the points of two dull pins. Shrivelled, degenerate, a tattered rag of humanity, Jackeen was none the less a perilous spirit, and so the Doc—too late—would learn.
From that Eden at Nineteen Catherine Street, the fair Lulu had been put into the street. This was to make pleasant room for the visits of the fairer May. Jackeen was untroubled, knowing nothing about it. He was for the moment too wholly engaged, being in the throes of a campaign against the Savoy theatre safe, from which strongbox he looked forward to a harvest of thousands.
The desolate Lulu went everywhere seeking Jackeen, to tell him of his wrongs. Her search was vain; those plans touching the Savoy safe had withdrawn him from his accustomed haunts. One night, however, the safe was blown and plundered. Alas and alack! Jackeen's share, from those hoped-for thousands, dwindled to a paltry sixty dollars—not enough for a single spree!
In his resentment, Jackeen, with the aid of a bevy of friends, hastily stuck-up a wayfarer, whom he met in Division Street. The wayfarer's pockets proved empty. It was even more of a waterhaul than had been the Savoy safe. The double disappointment turned Jackeen's mood to gall and it was while his humor was thus bilious that he one day walked into the Chatham Club.
There was a distinguished company gathered at the Chatham Club. Nannie Miller, Blinky the Lob-bygow, Dago Angelo, Roxie, Jimida, Johnny Rice, Stagger, Jimmy Foy, and St. Louis Bill—all were there. And these were but a handful of what high examples sat about the Chatham Club, and with calls for beer, and still more beer, kept Nigger Mike and his assistants on the joyful jump.
When Jackeen came in, Mike greeted him warmly, and placed a chair next to that of Johnny Rice. Conversation broke out concerning the dead and departed Kid Twist. While Twist was an Eastman and an enemy of Roxie—himself of the Five Points—the latter was no less moved to speak in highest terms of him. He defended this softness by remarking:
“Twist's dead, see! An' once a guy's been put to bed wit' a shovel, if youse can't speak well of him youse had better can gabbin' about him altogether. Them's my sentiments.”
Dago Angelo, who had been a friend of the vanished Twist, applauded this, and ordered beer.
Twist—according to the veracious Roxie—had not been wanting in brilliancy as a Captain of Industry. He had showed himself ingenious when he took his poolroom into the Hatmakers' Union, as a safeguard against raids by the police.
Upon another occasion, strictly commercial—so said Roxie—Twist had displayed a generalship which would have glorified a Rockefeller. Baby Flax, named for the soft innocuousness of his countenance, kept a grogshop in Houston Street. One quiet afternoon Twist abruptly broke that cherubic publican's windows, mirrors, glasses, bottles.