From my position on the bench I could see every prisoner brought to the desk. About ten o’clock there was a stir in the hall and several policemen came in with Chinamen from a gambling-house raid. This was before they had cut off their queues, and instead of handcuffing their prisoners the cops came in driving the silent, stolid Chinese before them like charioteers. Each cop had the tails of three Chinamen’s queues in each hand. Ahead of the procession walked a white man with a heavy bag of gold in his hand which he put on the desk, and waited till the names of the prisoners had been taken. Then they all went back up the corridor out of my sight—the Chinamen back to Chinatown to their gambling, and the bag of gold into the bond-and-warrant clerk’s office to insure their appearance in court.
Several times during the night men were brought in, questioned at great length, searched thoroughly, and led away to another part of the prison—felony cases. About midnight two young fellows about my age were brought in by a copper and stood up before the desk.
“Vag these two ‘hypos,’” said the cop to the desk man. He searched them most carefully, finding a small package in the torn lining of one’s coat. The boy begged for it piteously. “I’ll croak, officer, if you take it away from me.” The cop gave him to the waiting trusty. “Throw him in.” He was put in with us. Nothing was found on the other hypo, and he was “thrown in” too.
They immediately began comparing notes and taking stock, walking up and down the center of the cell nervously. They were in rags and unwashed, their shoes were broken and had no laces, and the tops flapped open showing their bare ankles. They seemed utterly unconscious of their sad condition and walked and talked as briskly as two brokers on Montgomery Street discussing the markets.
“He got my plant, Georgie,” said the first one, “but you saved yours, didn’t you, Georgie? Gee, Georgie, but you’re a fox.” His tones were honey.
“Never mind that,” the other replied; “you don’t have to ‘Georgie’ me. You’re in with what ‘gow’ I’ve got. Let’s bang it up before they come in and take it away from us. See if you can hustle some matches.”
The match seeker glanced sharply around him. When his eye fell on me I produced some matches. “Got any smokes?” I handed him a pack of cigarettes. He took two, gave one to his partner, Georgie, and returned the pack. His mind seemed detached from the cell. He took the matches and cigarettes from me without a word, as if he had reached up to a mantel and taken them off it. Georgie fished about the front of his trousers and brought up a tobacco sack that had been hanging suspended from a button. The sack contained his “plant,” an eye dropper with a hypodermic needle soldered to it with sealing wax, and a small paper of morphine in a little tin box.
They went to a back corner of the cell and prepared their shot. About a spoonful of water and some of their meager store of “morph” were put in the tin box and matches were burned under it till it boiled, completely dissolving the morphine. It was then drawn up into the eye dropper, and Georgie injected his portion into his arm. The other boy did the same with his portion. Their outfit was carefully put away in the tobacco bag and suspended again from a button down inside the front of Georgie’s trousers. Nobody paid any attention to them. They took their shot as coolly as if they had been in their room, or under a sidewalk. They seemed a little more interested in their surroundings in a few minutes. The one I gave the cigarettes to came over to me rubbing his hands briskly, smiling.
“Give us a couple more of them smokes, young fellow.”
“I’d like to buy some,” I said, “if I could.”