The Black Lion Inn

by Alfred Henry Lewis

Following my downfall of tobacco, I had given up my rich apartments in Twenty-second Street; and while I retained my membership, I went no more to the two or three clubs into which I’d been received. In truth, these Custom House days I seldom strolled as far northward as Twenty-third Street; but taking a couple of moderate rooms to the south of Washington Square, I stuck to them or to the park in front as much as ever I might; passing a lonely life and meeting none I’d known before.

One sun-filled September afternoon, being free at that hour, I was occupying a bench in Washington Square, amusing my idleness with the shadows chequered across the walk by an overspreading tree. A sound caught my ear; I looked up to be mildly amazed by the appearance of Betelnut Jack. It was seldom my chief was found so far from his eyrie in the Bowery; evidently he was seeking me. His first words averred as much.

“I was over to your rooms,” remarked Betelnut Jack; “they told me you were here.”

Then he gave me a pure Havana—for we of the Customs might smoke what cigars we would—lighted another and betook himself to a few moments of fragrant, wordless tranquility. I was aware, of course, that Betelnut Jack had a purpose in coming; but curiosity was never among my vices, and I did not ask his mission. With a feeling of indifference, I awaited its development in his own good way and time.

Betelnut Jack was more apt to listen than talk; but upon this Washington Square afternoon, he so far departed those habits of taciturnity commonly his own as to furnish the weight of conversation. He did not hurry to his business, but rambled among a score of topics. He even described to me by what accident he arrived at his by-name of Betelnut Jack. He said he was a sailor in his youth. Then he related how he went on deep water ships to India and to the China seas; how he learned to chew betel from the Orientals; how after he came ashore he was still addicted to betel; how a physician, ignorant of betel and its crimson consequences, fell into vast excitement over what he concevied to be a perilous hemorrhage; and how before Jack could explain, seized on him and hurried him into a near-by drug shop. When he understood his mistake, the physician took it in dudgeon, and was inclined to blame Jack for those sanguinary yet fraudulent symptoms. One result of the adventure was to re-christen him “Betelnut Jack,” the name still sticking, albeit he had for long abandoned betel as a taste outgrown.

Betelnut Jack continued touching his career in New York; always with caution, however, slurring some parts and jumping others; from which I argued that portions of my chief’s story were made better by not being divulged. It occurred, too, as a deduction drawn from his confidences that Betelnut Jack had been valorous as a Know-Nothing; and he spoke with rapture of the great prize-fighter, Tom Hyer, who beat Yankee Sullivan; and then of the fistic virtues of the brave Bill Poole, coming near to tears as he set forth the latter’s murder in Stanwix Hall.

Also, I gathered that Betelnut Jack had been no laggard at hurling stones and smashing windows in the Astor Place riot of 1849.

“And the soldiers killed one hundred and thirty-four,” sighed Betelnut Jack, when describing the battle; “and wounded four times as many more. And all, mind you! for a no-good English actor with an Irish name!” This last in accents of profound disgust.

In the end Betelnut Jack began to wax uneasy; it was apparent how he yearned for his nest in the familiar Bowery. With that he came bluntly to the purpose.

“To-morrow, early,” he said, “take one of the women inspectors and go down to quarantine. Some time in the course of the day, the steamship ‘Wolfgang,’ from Bremen, will arrive. Go aboard at once. In the second cabin you will find a tall, gray, old German; thin, with longish hair. He may have on dark goggles; if he hasn’t, you will observe that he is blind of the right eye. His daughter, a girl of twenty-three, will be with him. Her hair will be done up in that heavy roll which hair-dressers call the ‘waterfall,’ and hang in a silk close-meshed net low on her neck. Hidden in the girl’s hair are diamonds of a Berlin value of over one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. You will search the old man, and have the woman inspector search the girl. Don’t conduct yourselves as though you knew what you were looking for. Tell your assistant to find the girl’s diamonds naturally; let her work to them by degrees, not swoop on them.”