“Story for story,” said the attendant.
“Story for story, swapped sight unseen,” agreed Admeh. “But let’s get him out of here first, because he’s in a pretty bad fix between his fight and his jag.” Together they carried him to a dressing-room, laid him on a bench, and closed the curtain. Here Admeh’s last spark of strength left him; he collapsed in a heap on the floor. With practised hands the attendant set about reviving them both. In ten minutes the man of mystery slept heavily, stupidly, on the bench, and Admeh was sitting against the wall breathing cool relief from the outer air. Briefly, he told of his singular errand, omitting, from some hazy idea of policy, the item about the legacy.
“Well,” said the rubber, after Admeh Drake had finished his tale, “your yarn certainly is curious, but I can beat it. What d’you think of this?—I tattooed that name and mark on this fellow’s arm, and I know the history of it, but he has no idea to this day how it ever come there, nor who ’Dotty’ is, nor why I did it, nor anything at all about it. He was the hero of as queer a yarn as I ever heard, and he knew no more about it all the time than a babe unborn!”
He rang an electric bell; a boy answered.
“Tell the boss to send for the extra man,” he said. “I’m done up for to-night, and I’m going to lay off for a while.”
So saying, he took Drake into an adjoining room, shared by the employees of the baths, and, after making himself comfortable on a lounge with a blanket wrapper, he told the following joyous romance:
THE STORY OF THE DERMOGRAPH ARTIST
You see, this ain’t my regular job. I’m working here because my profession is played out in San Francisco. I’m a dermograph artist. What’s that? Oh, it’s what most people call a tattooer. But don’t you think we’ve got as much right to be called artists as the fellows that slap paint on cloth with a brush? I think so. Is anything nicer than the human skin? Don’t you fix up your walls and your ceilings, and your floors that you wipe your feet on? Then what’s the matter with decorating yourself? That’s the line of talk I always gave people when they asked me why I called myself a dermograph artist.
It was the electric needle and the Jap tattooer that ran me out of business. With the electric needle, a man could put on a design in about a quarter of the time that it takes to do a real artistic job by hand. The blamed little Jap would pretty near pay to get a customer, he worked that cheap. I quit, and I never get out my needles now except for a design on some one in the baths.
My parlours were on the water-front, because most of my customers were sailors. Of course, once in a while some swells from Nob Hill would come in for a design or two. I used to do my best work for them, because, I thought, you never can tell when these society people will get next to the fact that a picture on the skin has it a mile on a painting. Why, the other day I read in the papers that a Frenchman got a hundred thousand dollars for a little, dinky canvas painting. The highest pay I ever knew a dermograph artist to get was five hundred for doing the Wells Brothers’ tattooed woman. Do you call that square?