At Gouverneur hospital, where he died, the register gave his name as “Samuel Wendell,” and let it go at that. The Central Office, which finds its profit in amplification, said, “Samuel Wendell, alias Kid Unger, alias the Ghost,” and further identified him as “brother to Johnny the Mock.”
Samuel Wendell, alias Kid Unger, alias the Ghost, brother to Johnny the Mock, was not the original Ghost. Until less than two years ago the title was honorably worn by Mashier, who got twenty spaces for a night trick he turned in Brooklyn. Since Mashier could not use the name in Sing Sing, Wendell, alias Kid Unger, brother to Johnny the Mock, adopted it for his own. It fitted well with his midnight methods and noiseless, gliding, skulking ways. Moreover, since it was upon his own sly rap to the bulls, who made the collar, that Mashier got pinched, he may have felt himself entitled to the name as part of his reward. The Indian scalps his victim, and upon a similar principle Wendell, alias Unger, brother to Johnny the Mock, when Mashier was handed that breath-taking twenty years, may have decided to call himself the Ghost.
It will never be precisely known how and why and by whose hand the Ghost was killed, although it is common opinion that Pretty Agnes had much to do with it. Also, common opinion is more often right than many might believe. In view of that possible connection with the bumping off of the Ghost, Pretty Agnes is worth a word. She could not have been called old. When upon a certain Saturday evening, not remote, she stepped into Jack Sirocco's in Chatham Square, her years counted fewer than nineteen. Still, she had seen a good deal—or a bad deal—whichever you prefer.
Pretty Agnes' father, a longshoreman, had found his bread along the docks. None better ever-shaped for a boss stevedore, or trotted up a gangplank with a 280-pound sack of sugar on his back. One day he fell between the side of a moored ship and the stringpiece of the wharf; and the ship, being at that moment ground against the wharf by the swell from a passing steamer, he was crushed. Those who looked on called him a fool for having been killed in so poor a way. He was too dead to resent the criticism, and after that his widow, the mother of Pretty Agnes, took in washing.
Her mother washed, and Pretty Agnes carried home the clothes. This went on for three years. One wind-blown afternoon, as the mother was hanging out clothes on the roof—a high one—and refreshing her energies with intermittent gin from the bottle of her neighbor, the generous Mrs. Callahan, she stepped backward down an airshaft. She struck the flags ten stories below, and left Pretty Agnes to look out for herself.
Looking out for herself, Pretty Agnes worked in a sweatshop in Division Street. Here she made three dollars a week and needed five. The sweatshop owner—for she was a dream of loveliness, with a fog of blue-black hair and deep brown eyes—offered to make up the lacking two, and was accepted.
Round, ripe, willowy, Pretty Agnes graduated from the Division Street sweatshop to a store in Twenty-third Street. There she served as a cloak model, making fourteen dollars a week while needing twenty. The manager of the cloak store was as generous as had been the owner of the sweatshop, and benevolently made up the absent six.
For Pretty Agnes was lovelier than ever.
All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy. Also, it has the same effect on Jill. Pretty Agnes—she had a trunkful of good clothes and yearned to show them—went three nights a week to one of those dancing academies wherewith the East Side was and is rife. As she danced she met Indian Louie, and lost no time in loving him.
Having advantage of her love, that seeker after doubtful dollars showed Pretty Agnes where and how she could make more money than would come to her as a cloak model in any Twenty-third Street store. Besides, he jealously disapproved of the benevolent manager, though, all things considered, it is hard to say why.