and now let us return to the newsboy, and trace his footsteps from the time he left his benefactor on the corner of broadway. he stood on the street corner watching with his small, sharp eyes the street car until it was out of sight, then he turned and trudged on to third avenue, where he swung himself on board another car and was carried down to the lower part of the city. he went direct to the lodging-house, and, as the superintendent had said, told what was regarded at the time as an invention of his own, about his mishap at the fire, and his experience in the hospital, and was finally allowed to become a lodger for a short time on credit. he said nothing about the four dollars and twenty-two cents that bruce had loaned him, and which he still had in his pocket. he had already determined to devote that sum to a special purpose, and to depend upon what he could pick up by selling newspapers or running errands to defray his expenses. he had often slept and eaten in the lodging 220house before, and, when the boys came trooping in just before supper time, there were many among them who knew him and came over to ask him where he had been. the general opinion among the boys, and it was shared by the superintendent also, was that skinny had been sent to blackwell’s island for some misdemeanor, and had simply invented the hospital and fire story to shield his good name.
“dat’s what happens to me fer goin’ ter work reg’lar,” said the boy to himself. “before i was in dat factory a day it took fire, an’ i hadn’t even had de time to learn de way out.” that night the boy sat down to supper with a hundred or more lads representing a dozen races and nationalities and innumerable callings, though the bulk of them made their living by selling newspapers and blacking boots. supper over, they repaired to a big schoolroom on the floor above, and there, with slates and pencils and spelling books, endeavored to master the rudiments of an education. skinny sat down at his desk with the others, and for an hour worked diligently. but every once in a while the remembrance of his friend, the fireman, would come into his mind. he knew intuitively that bruce was interested in the young girl who had come to see him, and the tall, 221dark man who must be, the boy reasoned, connected with her in some way. he would make it his business to seek out this man, and all that he could learn about him he would place at the service of his new friend.
born and brought up in the slums, having learned his trade in the streets and in the face of the sharp, juvenile competition which goes on there, skinny was well suited to prosecute a search of the kind that now engrossed his attention. the next morning he was up at daybreak with the rest of the boys, and after breakfast betook himself to the big newspaper buildings where the presses were turning out the damp, freshly printed sheets by the thousands. withdrawing from his hoarded capital half a dollar, skinny invested it in a stock of morning papers, and then stationed himself near the entrance to the bridge. by nine o’clock his stock was exhausted, and he had also secured about twenty papers which he had begged from passers-by who had read and were about to discard them. these he had also disposed of, and he was now more than half a dollar richer than he had been the night before. satisfied with his morning’s work, he returned to the lodging house and rested there until it was time to resume business with the 222afternoon papers as his stock in trade. the various editions of these kept him busy during the afternoon, and netted him half a dollar. then he went home, exhausted with his hard work, ate his supper, spent an hour in the schoolroom, and then went to bed.
for several weeks he labored industriously, and then beginning to tire of newspaper selling, he determined to find some other job.
early one morning he bent his steps in the direction of chatham square, whence he walked along the bowery till he came to grand street, and then, turning to the east, walked on until he found himself in the jewish quarter of the town. as he walked he cast furtive and suspicious glances about him from time to time, for the exigencies of his life had taught him to be sharp and cunning, and distrustful of other people. it was seven o’clock by this time, and the street was full of girls hurrying toward the factories in which they worked. turning into a side street the boy slunk along the pavement, and finally stopped and fixed his eyes on an old ramshackle building, the upper stories of which were occupied as a tenement house, while the ground floor was used as a sort of office. for some time the boy stood looking intently at this building from the opposite 223side of the street, and then seeing no sign of life in the office on the ground floor, he walked away, made a circuit of the neighborhood, and at the end of an hour returned once more; this time he found the office open and within it a small, dried up old man, who was writing in a big leather-bound book. to him the boy addressed himself:
“want any errands run to-day, boss?” he inquired.
“no!” replied the old man, shortly.
“hey, boss,” went on skinny, “i used ter do odd jobs for dat bloke wid de black whiskers dat wuz here before, and i always done right by him.” the old bookkeeper fixed his spectacles on his nose, and looked sharply down at the lad who stood before him with upturned face and with his hat on the back of his head.
“are you the boy that he used to send up town last winter?” demanded the clerk, suspiciously.
“yes, i used ter take letters fer him way up above de bridge,” replied the other.
“where have you been keeping yourself of late? if you’d been here a few days ago you might have earned a dollar or so, but you boys are never around when you are wanted,” continued the bookkeeper, speaking in sharp, stern tones.
224“well, ain’t dere no chance for me now, boss? i wuz burned out of a factory, carried down de ladder by a mug dat found me burnin’ up, and den dey took me to de hospital, and here i am. but where’s his nibs gone ter?”
“yes,” said the bookkeeper, scornfully, “you’ve been to the hospital, no doubt, but i guess it was a judge sent you there. but you come in here at twelve o’clock, and perhaps there’ll be a little work for you.”
“dat’s it all de time,” said skinny to himself, as he walked away. “wot’s de use of doin’ de right ting when nobody won’t believe yer, and tinks all de time yer been up to der island? dat’s wot comes of goin’ to work reg’lar,” he added, and he shook his head with a determination never to do any business in the future except on his own account.
twelve o’clock found him standing once more in the little office on the side street, and when he entered, the old bookkeeper, who was still making entries in the big leather-bound volume as if he had been at it without a second’s interruption all the morning, scarcely raised his eyes, while he said to him: “do you remember going up to a house above the harlem river, one day, to take a letter to an old gentleman who lived there?”
“so you’ve been in the hospital, have you?”—page 225.
225“a big, square house, wid evergreens around it? yes, i could find it again in de dark.”
“very well,” continued the bookkeeper, whose pen did not cease scratching for a single moment, “you’d better go up now and find it, for there’s a gentleman up there who may give you a job; but let me give you a bit of advice, young man. don’t remember too much or see too much when you’re sent on errands. it’s the boys who forget what they see, and the places that they’re sent to, who make the most money nowadays. here’s twenty-five cents for car fare, and now you go up there, and you’ll find the gentleman whom you politely refer to as ‘the bloke with the black whiskers’ waiting for you.”
skinny made haste to obey, and within an hour was entering the dark, shady grounds of mr. dexter’s house with the same furtive, cautious way of looking about him that he had shown further down town. his old acquaintance, the man with the black beard and the deeply-scarred face, was walking up and down the roadway in front of the house, smoking a cigar.
“so you’ve been in the hospital, have you?” was his salutation. “what sort of a hospital was it? one with bars to the window?”
226“naw, der wan’t no bars to de windows. i wuz in de new york hospital, and i’ll leave it to de nurse, a dinky lady wot sat up all night wid us, and wore a white cap. dat’s on de level, boss.”
the tall man regarded him suspiciously for a moment, and the boy squinted up at him with a defiant look in his sharp eyes that caused the other to smile and say to him in more conciliatory tones: “well, i’ve got one or two errands for you to do, and if you do them properly, you’ll be well paid for them. if not, you’ll come to grief. how would you like to take a little trip into the country, to be gone two or three days? i hope that you have no pressing business engagements in the city that will interfere with the project.”
skinny replied with perfect gravity that he had intended to take dinner with mr. vanderbilt that night, but that he would try and get him to excuse him, in which case he observed in his picturesque slang that it would be necessary for him to eat elsewhere, and at an early moment. the tall man was laughing broadly now—he always found a great deal of amusement in skinny—and so he bade him go into the kitchen and tell the cook to let him have something to eat. “when you are through, come into the library, i want to talk to you.”