Gilded Needles (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (25 page)

Chapter
36

On Saturday night, at ten o’clock, Benjamin Stallworth stood on the corner of King and MacDougal Streets, and had actually to hang on to a lamppost to protect himself from being carried away into the boisterous passing throng. Newsboys sniggered at him, prostitutes detained and solicited him, toughs facetiously threatened his life, and he had nearly made up his mind to leave, when Pet Margery pulled gently on the tail of his coat.

“I’m mightily glad you came,” she said with a smile that promised much.

“Oh yes,” he replied nervously, “word of a straight table would draw me to the ends of the earth.”

“My feet swolled up just thinking about you, Ben.”

“What!”

“My ma always said that love was in the feet, and every time she fell in love her feet started to swell up and she had to put on mustard plasters to draw out the infection of love. After I saw you last night, I went out this morning and laid in a supply of plasters, that’s just what I did!”

Benjamin blushed beneath the harsh glow of the lamp.

“And you dressed up for me, I can see it!” cried Pet Margery, and playfully jabbed Benjamin in the ribs. “Dressed to kill, and barberized to resuscitate, that’s what you are! You and Pet Margery will have one night tonight, I can tell you!”

Pet Margery slipped her arm through his, and led him down King Street. She carried herself beside him as if proud to be in the company of such a man as he. Benjamin was overcome with a mixture of pride that he had attracted the notice of so pretty a woman, who even if a prostitute, as surely she must be, had made no mention of money; of embarrassment, for she was after all a prostitute; and of excitement, thinking of the promised straight table and other pleasures too that might come to him this same night.

Pet Margery pulled him down King Street, led him across Varick, and then shoved him down a short flight of slippery steps and through a low wooden doorway, kept open despite the chill night air. Benjamin found himself in the heated yellow atmosphere of a groggery of some little pretension—at least in comparison with the rest of the places on that street. It had a mahogany bar with a brass footrail, and mirrors behind; little marble-topped tables and cane chairs for the customers—most of them women; and in the back a red velvet portiere that Pet Margery dramatically lifted to Benjamin.

The room behind—actually the cellar of the adjoining house—was entirely given over to gambling, half a dozen different tables and games, with single gas lights beneath red and green shades hanging over each. The croupiers and bankers were distinguished by their emaciation as much as by their green eyeshades.

“Oh!” cried Benjamin, “I know this area, but had no idea such a place existed. Very very pleasant,” he exclaimed, “especially if the tables are straight!”

He made immediately for the schuss table, but Pet Margery guided him instead to the far corner. “That’s my pa, running vanty-yune. It’s the only table that’s straight, and only reason it’s straight is that I told Pa I was bringing a friend tonight. You stick with Pa, Ben, and your fortune’s made.”

Pet Margery’s father was a gaunter man than those he hired, with a frame that was scarcely wide enough to hang a suit of clothes on and skin that was hard pressed to stretch bone over bone. His eyes were sunken and his cheek dabbed with a wispy yellow beard.

“Seat yourself, sir,” he whispered through a throat gnawed with a cancer, “and my daughter’ll change your cash.”

Benjamin drew forty dollars in gold from his pocket and handed it to Pet Margery, who skipped blithely away. After a moment, which Benjamin passed watching Pet Margery’s father deal out a game to the three men on the bench beside him, the young woman returned with a stack of white and red chips.

“Red’s eight bits, white’s a dollar, suppose you know that?” said Pet Margery’s father in a hoarse whisper.

“Yes, sir,” replied Benjamin, whisper for whisper.

The cards were dealt, Benjamin rested at eighteen, betting two dollars, and won from the bank.

The second and third hands he lost, but in the next three he was a large winner. Pet Margery had brought him a sloe gin sling, and insisted that he drink it quickly in celebration of his increasing pile of chips. The men beside Benjamin, as he continued to play, were of that sort whose livelihood depended upon their anonymity of appearance, and they alternated without his being able to distinguish them one from the other. They were alike too in that they all lost, and different from Benjamin also in that he was a consistent winner at the table.

Finally Benjamin, sipping his third gin sling, found himself embarrassed by the height of the stacks of his red, white—and now blue chips. “Perhaps I ought to try my fortune at one of the other tables. . . .” he suggested.

“No!” cried Pet Margery.

“Oh,” Pet Margery’s father warned him, “your fortune might not favor you so there.”

Benjamin shrugged, though he mightily suspected that even now the table was not straight, but that Pet Margery’s father allowed him to win time after time and sent all the others away depleted. He grew nervous as he heard the other players grumble, but Pet Margery’s father silenced them with a look.

Benjamin, through his alcoholic haze, tried to reason this out. The only conclusion he could draw however was that Pet Margery had taken a great fancy to him, and had persuaded her father to allow him to win at vingt-et-un. There was a pleasant and startling contrariness to this situation—that he was being given money by a prostitute. He must suppose that when her father had decided that he ought win no more, Pet Margery would drag him up to her room. Even if she demanded money of him afterward, for her own good name perhaps, he would be out nothing at all for the experience.

Benjamin Stallworth had never had connection with a woman before, and his suspicion that this was to be the culmination of the evening (as he had hardly dared hope before) grew stronger even than his love of the game. His attention to the jeweled white hand that was gently laid over his became greater than that to the fall of the cards from the gnarled talons of Pet Margery’s father. Benjamin grinned suddenly with the notion that the old man must be in certain difficulty to allow him, who was so distracted, to win at so many hands.

“Oh, perhaps I ought to stop now,” whispered Benjamin to Pet Margery, “I’m a little dizzy and can’t concentrate on the cards. . . .” She had just brought his fifth glass of sloe gin.

“You’ve won over two hundred dollars,” whispered her father. “I couldn’t keep long in business if you came very often, mister. No, sir, I swear I couldn’t.” And he laughed a shrill laugh that echoed in his ribs.

“Oh,” cried Pet Margery, “one more glass—”

“No!”

“One more glass,” she repeated cajolingly, “and while you’re drinking it, I’ll change your chips for you.”

Benjamin nodded dumbly and slouched back against the wall. He peered oddly at the man who sat beside him until the man took offense and retorted with an obscene epithet.

“No, no,” whispered Pet Margery’s father, “he’ll be leaving soon, just let him finish his glass. He won’t be bothering you, let him finish his glass, that’s all.”

Benjamin swallowed the remainder of the dark liquid and stood woozily. Pet Margery was suddenly there to support him. Gold chinked in her hands and she spilled it into his pocket—so much gold that he was tilted beneath its sudden weight on that side.

“Two hundred thirty-seven dollars,” she whispered. “You’re beholden to me, Ben. . . .”

“Oh yes,” he murmured, and smiled drunkenly. “Oh yes, what . . . what can I do . . . to . . . to discharge that debt, Pet? Tell me, Pet, what can . . . what can I do?”

He turned and clumsily attempted to embrace her in his gratitude and had some confused idea that if he returned to this place every night for the next six months he would emerge from that habitude a rich man.

He slipped on the worn floor, and would certainly have fallen on his face had not Pet Margery caught him up and steadied him.

“I should take you out of this place,” she said, “you’re not fit for the games anymore.”

“Where are we going?” he whispered, with a crooked smile.

“Oh I’ll just take you to my place and feed you some tea, that’s what I’ll do—boil water and feed you some tea.”

“Oh,” laughed Benjamin, as he was led through the door. “Your place. I’d like to see your place.”

“Shhh!” cried Pet Margery. “Act sober,” she said, “the ladies are watching.”

Benjamin made a valiant but entirely ineffectual attempt to appear uninebriated as they passed through the groggery. The ladies sitting at the little marble-topped tables nodded knowingly at Pet Margery, who returned their greetings with a bland smile.

“Oh! Which way?” cried Benjamin, as they emerged into the much cooler night air. It was nearly midnight. “What way is your room?”

“This way,” said Pet Margery, helping him back across Varick Street. “I live just a few houses down there. . . .”

“Oh,” cried Benjamin with almost weepy tenderness, “I won two hundred dollars tonight. I never got so much in all my life at the tables! It’s because of you, Pet, because . . . all because of you!”

“That’s right,” said Pet Margery, carefully guiding the drunken young man down the street. “You’ve a lot to thank me for.”

“Oh, Pet!” cried Benjamin, “do you have a bed?”

Chapter
37

“Oh, it’s a fine soft bed,” replied Pet Margery, “and it’s waiting for us right at the very top of the stairs.” She pushed him through the doorway of the small brick house at number
2
King Street. “Hush!” she cried, “all the way to the top, Benjamin.”

Benjamin stumblingly climbed the three narrow flights of stairs to the attic of the house. Pet Margery opened a door he could scarcely see and pushed him inside. Here darkness prevailed and he wobbled a little, waiting for Pet Margery to light a candle. The lack of light brought dizziness on, and he thrust out his hands to catch his balance; to his surprise they struck the low slanting beams of the room and came away painfully with splinters. “Oh!” he cried.

Pet Margery whispered, “Hush! Not so loudly, Benjamin, not so loudly!”

Benjamin reached out for Pet Margery, trying to drag her into his embrace, but his falling hand only slapped against her cheek. “Oh,” she cried sharply, “watch out, will you? It’s dark as a stack of black cats in here!”

She struck a match and lit the candle.

Benjamin was momentarily appalled, despite his drunkenness, by the poverty of the chamber. In the middle of the room, a couple of feet from where he stood, was an unpainted iron bed covered with a filthy sheet. Beneath the window, which was masked with a man’s shirt pinned up by the sleeves, was a rickety table with a couple of bottles of liquor and a wooden tumbler upon it.

This was all. Neither the roof nor the floor was painted nor improved with ornament.

“You live here?” cried Benjamin.

“No!” laughed Pet Margery. “I live downstairs. Nobody lives up here. Does it look it now?”

“No,” stammered Benjamin. “Why are we here then?”

“Don’t want anyone breaking in on us, you see?”

Benjamin nodded dully, and attempted a salacious smile.

“You lay on the bed there and I’ll bring another something.” She moved toward the window.

“Don’t need another. Had too many.”

“No, you haven’t. Just one more—to loosen your collar, Ben, you’ll take another with me, won’t you?”

“Yes, s’pose so, yes, I will,” he murmured, and lay back gratefully on the bed.

“Here,” said Pet Margery, slipping the tumbler carefully into his hand, “you sip at this, and you’ll feel a deal better.”

He propped himself up in the bed a little, sidling up so that his head was pressed against an iron rosette for support and brought the rough tumbler to his lips. Over the rim he smiled at Pet Margery, who sat on the edge of the bed and tenderly patted his knee. The candle on the floor beside the bed was the only illumination in the room, and it cast flattering light over the woman’s face.

“Oh,” he cried, reaching for her.

She playfully struck away his hand. “The gin first,” she laughed, “I won’t have naught to do with a sober man!”

Benjamin swallowed off the last of the liquor, which tasted to be of far inferior manufacture to that which he had been served at the gambling hall, which itself had been none of the best. There was a distinct undertaste of impurity in it, but he had swallowed so much he did not think that this much more would harm him. And even if he had imagined so, he would have drunk anyway as a requisite to the favors of Pet Margery.

He watched as she moved from the covered window back toward the bed—watched as her feet seemed to fly up in the air. “Pet!” he cried—but no more.

Pet Margery’s feet had not flown up into the air, but rather Benjamin himself slumped over into unconsciousness on top of the soiled sheet. The gold coins rolled out of his pocket and formed a little mound in a depression of the mattress.

Pet Margery shook Benjamin, at first gently, but then with increasing violence. Finding that he was beyond waking, and listening closely at his stertorous breathing which told of pressure on the heart, she retrieved the two bottles of liquor from beneath the window. Taking up the candle, she quietly descended the stairs, leaving Benjamin Stallworth alone in the dark attic room.

On the second story of the house she knocked at a door, which was immediately opened by a young hard-faced woman with dyed hair and wearing a crimson dress with a black apron. Pet Margery thrust the two bottles into her hand, nodded once in the direction of the attic, and hurriedly descended the last flight to the street door.

She peered up and down the street before stepping out, but at a moment when the attention of the several passersby seemed occupied elsewhere, she opened the door and slipped down to the walk. She proceeded with a measured tread down MacDougal to Spring Street, crossed over and came back up again. At last, when no one appeared to be watching, she entered the house that was directly across the way from the one where Benjamin Stallworth lay insensible.

There was a little girl in the hallway, plainly dressed in a black frock, and she whispered, “Pet, Pet, come up.”

Pet Margery followed Ella to the second floor and was admitted into the room occupied by Lena Shanks. The old woman sat in her wicker chair behind the curtain. Her mirror was trained on the house opposite. Louisa Shanks stood behind her mother in a position which afforded her the same view through the mirror. The room was dark.

Louisa drew the curtains at the same time that Ella lighted the lamp beside the bed.

“I saw you carry him in,” said Lena, nodding approval.

“Were we seen?” asked Pet Margery.

“No,” said Lena, “no one saw.” And Louisa shook her head in confirmation.

“It’s bad business to be seen going into strange houses with well-dressed gentlemen—especially if something’s going to happen to ’em later.”

“No one saw. . . .” repeated Lena with a smile. “And you told the girls?”

Pet nodded. “I knocked on their door. They won’t have any trouble with that one.”

“How much on him?” asked Lena.

“Two hundred and thirty-seven. That’s how much Pa ’lowed him to get at the table.”

“That’s
their
price. . . .” smiled Lena, turning toward Louisa. Louisa noted the figure in her tablets.

Pet Margery patted her powdered cheeks gently in an emotion that was somewhat between amusement and distress.

“Good work,” said Lena to Pet Margery. “What’s owed to you?”

“Two hundred and thirty-seven to pay back Pa, except for forty that went for his chips at the first, that’s one hundred ninety-seven. Four doses of chloral hydrate, one dollar, that’s one hundred ninety-eight. And make it two hundred fifty even for my time and the risk.”

Lena laughed. “No risk, no risk,” but Louisa was already counting out the two hundred fifty in eagles and double eagles. She dropped them one by one into Pet Margery’s outstretched hands.

When Pet Margery had pocketed them, Lena called her over, took her hand, and slipped two more double eagles into her palm. “Not a word, Pet, not a word. Tell your pa: not a word.”

“Oh no!” cried Pet Margery, “ ’course not. Who’s to tell, Lena? Who’s to tell?”

“That’s right, that’s right,” said Lena.

“What’s to tell?” cried Pet Margery. “Young man wins money at Pa’s table, asks to take me out for a walk. I go, he ’tices me up to a room, and then falls insensible ’cross the bed—what’s to tell? I don’t know what happens to him then, I don’t know nothing but that he falls insensible ’cross the bed!”

Two teaspoonsful of chloral hydrate had been poured into the glass of sloe gin that Benjamin Stallworth had drunk in the attic room on King Street. He consumed roughly eighty or ninety grains of the medicine, enough to stop the hearts of a small platoon of guardsmen and paralyze the lungs of a brace of trumpeters.

The woman in the crimson dress and black apron sat on the bed beside Benjamin and slapped his face. He did not respond, and she glanced up at her friend in the green gown who held a lamp. She slapped again, harder. Benjamin’s shoulder twitched.

He was not quite dead when the woman in the crimson dress and black apron slit his throat from ear to ear with a barber’s razor. She and her friend in the dark green gown jumped out of the way of the spurting blood, and when it had subsided, cursed one another for not having first gathered up the gold coins that had spilled from Benjamin’s pocket.

The lamp chimney was speckled with sizzling Stallworth blood, and the pile of gold coins upon the mattress lay a gleaming island in that crimson sea.