South Street had more to do with seafaring men than lawyers. It was a strange thoroughfare along which to have searched for a legal adviser. Enoch’s office, which we have already peeped into, and which so rarely saw its owner, lay tucked away as snug as a stowaway in the old building he owned, sandwiched in between two even older structures, two long-established ship-chandler’s warehouses, whose lofts were pungent with the odor of tarred rope, and whose iron-bound thresholds led to dark interiors, where one could be accommodated with anything from a giant anchor down to a vessel’s port and starboard lights.
A raw, cold street in the short winter days, taking the brunt of blizzards and cruel winds, whirling snow and biting cold, fog-swept, or shimmering in heat, greasy and roughly paved. A street to stand rough knocks from rough men, who owned the clothes they stood in, and little else; clothes in which they worked, drank, and quarrelled, joked, and swore, shipped on long voyages, and returned; men whose sentiment was indelibly vouched for by the ballet-girl tattooed on their brawny arms, and whose love of country was guaranteed by the Union Jack or the Stars and Stripes—often by both—pricked in indigo and vermilion on their solid chests and further embellished with hearts, true-lovers’ knots, and anchors.
It was an odoriferous, happy-go-lucky sort of street, where things had an odor all their own. Bundles of rawhides lay stacked on greasy platforms. Drafty interiors held stout casks of oil, gallons of the best spar varnish, sails, pulley-blocks, and tow for calking—scores of ship necessities in solid brass and galvanized iron made for rough usage in all kinds of weather—capstans, rudders, cleats, robust lanterns, reliable compasses, their needles steadily pointing north—and a saloon within reach of every reeling sailor.
It was the street of the stranger from far-off lands, of able seamen whose sturdy boots had knocked about the worst sections of Port Said, Marseilles, Singapore, or Bilbao—a street where honest ships poked their bowsprits up to its very edge, a long, floating barrier, a maze of masts, spars, and rigging, of vessels safe in port, whose big hulls lay still in the flotsam and jetsam and swill of the harbor, where the hungry, garrulous gulls wheeled, gossiped, and gorged themselves like scavengers.
There was an atmosphere of adventure, of the freedom of the sea along its length, that the staid old business streets back of it could not boast of; that charm, sordid as it was, that holds the sailor and his nickels in port, close to his quay, for he rarely ventures as far inland as the city’s midst. At night jewels of lights hung in the maze of rigging, others gleamed forth a broad welcome from the saloons. When these went out, only the jewels in the rigging remained, leaving the old, busy street of the day dark and deserted, save for an occasional prowler of the night—or a stray cat foraging for food.
There were women, too—fat ogresses in cheap finery, skeletons in rouge and rags, their ratlike eyes ever watchful for their prey—and now and then some shuffling human derelict, those who have no definite destination, neither friends nor home nor bed nor bunk to go to; worse off even than the poor sailor in port, robbed, cajoled, flattered, tempted, and always enticed, down to his last nickel.
None knew them better than Enoch. Many an empty pocket he brightened with a coin. Others he helped out of more serious difficulties. Had he accepted all the chattering monkeys and profane parrots he had been offered from time to time in grateful remembrance, he would have had enough to have started a bird-store.
It was along this street that Ebner Ford picked his way the next morning to Enoch’s office, eager for the interview, and never more confident of selling him enough of his laundry stock, to be rid of old Mrs. Miggs and her lawyer forever.
At five minutes to ten his lean figure might have been seen dodging among the trucking, slipping around crates and bales, and only stopping now and then to verify the address on Enoch’s note.
So elated was he over the prospect of the interview that he entered Enoch’s building whistling a lively tune, continued snatches of it up in the shaky elevator, insisted he had “an appointment at ten with Mr. Crane,” and was led half-way down the corridor by the Irish janitor to Enoch’s modest door, which he opened briskly with a breezy “Well, neighbor, ain’t a minute late, am I?” and with a laugh, ending in a broad, friendly grin, shot out his long hand in greeting.