Dribben and Blum picked him up – as a piece of work it did them credit – for what occurred in Mersher Miller’s place.
As all the world knows, Mersher Miller, or as he is called among his intimates, Mersher the Strong-Arm, conducts a beer house at 171 Norfolk Street. It was a placid April evening, and Mersher’s brother, as bottle-tosser, was busy behind the bar. Mersher himself was not in, which – for Mersher – may or may not have been greatly to the good.
Spanish came into the place. His hat was low-drawn over his black eyes. Mersher’s brother, wiping glasses, didn’t know him.
“Where’s Mersher?” asked Spanish.
“Not here,” quoth Mersher’s brother.
“You’ll do,” returned Spanish. “Give me ten dollars out of the damper.”
Mersher’s brother held this proposal in finance to be foolishly impossible, and was explicit on that head. He insisted, not without scorn, that he was the last man in the world to give a casual caller ten dollars out of the damper or anything else.
“I’ll be back,” replied Spanish, “an’ I bet then you’ll give me that ten-spot.”
“That’s Johnny Spanish,” declared a bystander, when Spanish, muttering his discontent, had gone his threatening way.
Mersher’s brother doubted it. He had heard of Spanish, but had never seen him. It was his understanding that Spanish was not in town at all, having lammistered some time before.
“He’s wanted be th’ cops,” Mersher’s brother argued. “You don’t suppose he’s sucker enough to walk into their mitts? He wouldn’t dare show up in town.”
“Don’t con yourself,” replied the bystander, who had a working knowledge of Gangland and its notables. “That’s Spanish, all right. He was out of town, but not because of the bulls. It’s the Dropper he’s leary of; an’ now th’ Dropper’s in hock he’s chased back. You heard what he said about comin’ ‘round ag’in? Take my tip an’ rib yourself up wit’ a rod. That Spanish is a tough kid!”
The evening wore on at Mersher’s; one hour, two hours, three went peaceably by. The clock pointed to eleven.
Without warning a lowering figure appeared at the door.
“There he is!” exclaimed the learned bystander. Then he added with a note of pride, albeit shaky as to voice: “What did I tell youse?”
The figure in the doorway strode forward. It was Spanish. A second figure – hat over eyes – . followed hard on his heels. With a flourish, possible only to the close student of Mr. Beadle’s dime literature, Spanish drew two Colt’s pistols.
“Come through wit’ that ten!” said he to Mersher’s brother.
Mersher’s brother came through, and came through swiftly.
“I thought so!” sneered Spanish, showing his side teeth like a dog whose feelings have been hurt. “Now come through wit’ th’ rest!”
Mersher’s brother eagerly gave him the contents of the cash drawer – about eighty dollars.
Spanish, having pocketed the money, wheeled upon the little knot of customers, who, after the New York manner when crime is afoot, had stood motionless with no thought of interfering.
“Hands up! Faces to the wall!” cried Spanish. “Everybody’s dough looks good to me to-night!”
The customers, acting in such concert that it seemed as though they’d been rehearsed, hands held high, turned their faces to the wall.
“You keep them covered,” said Spanish to his dark companion in arms, “while I go through ‘em.”
The dark companion leveled his own pistol in a way calculated to do the most harm, and Spanish reaped an assortment of cheap watches and a handful of bills.
Spanish came round on Mersher’s brother. The latter had stooped down until his eyes were on a par with the bar.
“Now,” said Spanish to Mersher’s brother, “I might as well cook you. I’ve no use for barkeeps, anyway, an’ besides you’re built like a pig an’ I don’t like your looks!”
Spanish began to shoot, and Mersher’s brother began to dodge. Ducking and dodging, the latter ran the length of the bar, Spanish faithfully following with his bullets. There were two in the ice box, two through the mirror, five in the top of the bar. Each and all, they had been too late for Mersher’s brother, who, pale as a candle, emerged from the bombardment breathing heavily but untouched.
“An’ this,” cried Ikey the pawnbroker, ten minutes after Spanish had disappeared – Ikey was out a red watch and sixty dollars – “an’ this iss vat Mayor Gaynor calls ‘outvard order an’ decency’!”
It was upon the identification of the learned bystander that Dribben and Blum went to work, and it was for that stick-up in Mersher’s the two made the collar.
“It’s lucky for you guys,” said Spanish, his eye sparkling venomously like the eye of a snake – “it’s lucky for you guys that you got me wit’out me guns. I’d have croaked one of you bulls sure, an’ maybe both, an’ then took th’ Dutch way out me-self.”
The Dutch way out, with Spanish and his immediate circle, means suicide, it being a belief among them that the Dutch are a melancholy brood, and favor suicide as a means of relief when the burdens of life become more than they can bear.
Spanish, however, did not have his gun when he was pinched, and therefore did not croak Dribben and Blum, and do the Dutch act for himself. Dribben and Blum are about their daily duties as thief takers, as this is read, while Spanish is considering nature from between the Sing Sing bars. Dribben and Blum say that, even if Spanish had had his guns, he would neither have croaked them nor come near it, and in what bluffs he put up to that lethal effect he was talking through his hat. For myself, I say nothing, neither one way nor the other, except that Dribben and Blum are bold and enterprising officers, and Spanish is the very heart of quenchless desperation.
By word of my Central Office informant, Spanish has seen twenty-two years and wasted most of them. His people dwell somewhere in the wilds of Long Island, and are as respectable as folk can be on two dollars a day. Spanish did not live with his people, preferring the city, where he cut a figure in Suffolk, Norfolk, Forsyth, Hester, Grand, and other East Side avenues.
At one time Spanish had a gallery number, and his picture held an important place in Central Office regard. It was taken out during what years the inadequate Bingham prevailed as Commissioner of Police. A row arose over a youth named Duffy, who was esteemed by an eminent Judge. Duffy’s picture was in the gallery, and the judge demanded its removal. It being inconvenient to refuse the judge, young Duffy’s picture was taken out; and since to make fish of one while making flesh of others might have invited invidious comment, some hundreds of pictures – among them that of Spanish – were removed at the same time.
It pleased Spanish vastly when his mug came out of the gallery. Not that its presence there was calculated to hurt his standing; not but what it was bound to go back as a certain incident of his method of life. Its removal was a wound to police vanity; and, hating the police, he found joy in whatsoever served to wring their azure withers.
When, according to the rules of Bertillon, Spanish was thumb-printed, mugged and measured, the police described
