The Crimp

The law as set down for sailing masters offers a fair measure of protection for seamen.

Captain Gully, of the steam whaler Bowhead, was familiar with this law. It prevented him from completing his crew. Men of any kind were scarce in San Francisco. Cargoes rotted in ships’ holds while the wages of ordinary seamen mounted to impossible heights.

The Bowhead was ready to steam for the Arctic and Bering Sea whaling grounds. Her boat-steerers, harpooners, mates, engineers, and twelve of a crew were aboard. Captain Gully dared not cat the anchor without eighteen men before the mast. He needed six more hands in the fo’c’s’le.

“Hansen,” he told his first mate, “lower the dingey and go to the Blubber Room on East Street. Ask for Abie Kelly. Bring Abie out with you.”

“The crimp?”

“You know him.”

“Ja! I dank I know him.”

“Bring him to me!”

Hansen returned at nightfall. He steadied the bosun’s ladder that hung from the taffrail and watched Abie Kelly climb to the deck.

Captain Gully greeted the crimp like a long-lost son. They descended to the whaler’s cabin while Hansen was hooking the dingey’s bow to a dangling fall.

“To be brief as possible,” said Gully after pouring out a generous portion of rum, “I want six men before midnight, when the tide turns.”

“What kind of men, cappin?”

“Any kind, so long as they are husky—Chinks, Kanakas, dock-rats, mission-stiffs.”

Abie the Crimp, as he was known along the Barbary Coast, upended the rum, wiped his mouth, and stared at the skipper of the Bowhead.

Captain Gully was tall, thin, and weather-beaten. Abie was slight. He had hawk eyes, black as beads; a hawk’s long nose and a disappearing chin. He had been born in San Francisco. His mother owned the dive known from the Golden Gate to Vladivostok as the Blubber Room.

“Cap,” said Abie, “I’d like to assist you, but you know the law.”

“Time was when you didn’t speak to me of any law.”

“That time is gone, cap. The Seamen’s Union is hostile to shanghaiin’. The crews of all ships going out must sign before the proper authorities.”

Captain Gully knew Abie’s former price.

“There’s a hundred dollars advance for every man you bring aboard who won’t care what he signs.”

“Blood money?”

“Yes. I’ll pay it to you out of hand.” Captain Gully touched his right breast, where a bulging pocket showed.

Abie the Crimp needed money. Six hundred dollars was a fair figure to pay for six men.

“There’s only one way to get them,” he said.

“What is that way, Abie?”

“Th’ same way I fixed up old Cappin Pike of th’ Norwhale, season before last. He went north with twenty-two good men. I furnished them all except three.”

There was pride in Abie’s voice. Captain Gully worked on this. He suggested:

“I only want six. Why, that ain’t many for a runner like you.”

“Not many? I should say it was, the way things are ashore—Seamen’s Union, Coaster Unions, Shipping Board paying eighty dollars a month for ordinary sailors. No, it isn’t many, but they are going to be hard to get. Make it one hundred and twenty-five dollars a man.”

“How are you going about getting them aboard, Abie?”

“A new idea with me. I’m a government detective, see. I know the hangouts and scatters of all the crooks in San Francisco. I know where they’re coinin’ the queer. I know of a few stills. I heard yesterday of two new hop joints right on Dupont Street.”

“You’ll represent yourself as an officer of the law?”

“I’ve got a gold badge. I’ll make the pinch, turn them over to an assistant detective who will bring them out to this ship, and you can do the rest. They’ll be glad enough for getaway when I get done with them.”

“I’ll make it one hundred and twenty-five, Abie, if you hurry.”

The crimp paused with one foot on the ladder which led to the quarter-deck of the Bowhead.

“There’s a detective in town, cap, nobody ever saw as far as I can find out. His name is James Keenon. They’re afraid as hell of him. I’ll be Keenon to-night. I’ll make six quiet pinches and send the men out to you.”

“But they might start trouble before they sign on for the voyage.”

Abie the Crimp laid his hand over his heart.

“Cap,” he declared, “there’s men ashore—Chinks and crooks—who would pay you five hundred dollars to get away from Keenon. See the point?”

Captain Gully nodded.

“All right, I’ll be waiting, Abie. Do you need a boat?”

“Lend me your dingey. Let me have that mate, Hansen. He’s got a pair of blue pants on—just the thing to imitate a copper’s.”

“Where will the boat be if I want it?”

“At the foot of Meigg’s wharf.”

“What time are you going to send out the first men?”

“God knows, cap; but it’s an awful crooked part of town where I’m going to make those phony pinches in.”

Captain Gully followed Abie up the ladder. Hansen took the skipper’s orders, touched his cap, pulled the dingey alongside the rudder-post, and motioned for the crimp to slide down.

The seaman hitched the painter to a pile at the foot of Meigg’s wharf after a swift row over the bay, and followed the gliding figure of Abie along East Street until the Blubber Room was reached.

“We’ll get some hardware,” explained Abie. “Come in the back room. Sit down. If you want a drink, tell my mother you’re with me.”

The crimp appeared within ten minutes. A black, soft-brimmed hat hid his sharp eyes. A long raincoat reached to his heels. He looked the part of a sleuth, except his weak chin.

“Where are you going, Abie?” asked his mother.

Abie the Crimp leaned over the bar and touched his lips to a muscular arm. He was a good son in many ways.

“We’ll try a place I heard of in Jackson Street,” he told Hansen after they had climbed the stairs from the Blubber Room. “Here, take these handcuffs and this badge. It’s a building inspector’s. Nobody will know the difference where we’re going.”

The seaman crammed two pairs of rusty handcuffs in the side pockets of his pea-jacket. He pinned the badge on his vest.

“I’m James Keenon,” explained Abie. “No crook or Chink knows Keenon in this town. He’s the man behind. He works up the case, scouts around, and lets somebody else do the pinching. He don’t testify at the trials. He’s the brains. The detectives you hear about are his tools.”

“I dank that’s a good way,” said Hansen.

“Of course it’s good—for me! All I have got to do is say I’m Keenon, flash my badge, and you make the arrest.”

Abie opened his raincoat. He ran a finger through an armhole of his vest. A gold insignia flashed beneath the shielding coat as the crimp pulled out a suspender strap.

“That’s where all the good ones wear it,” he explained. “But you want yours in sight. You’re the tool, to-night.”

The mate was a big man. He would have made two of Abie. He lacked the crimp’s energy and assurance. He dropped back one stride and followed Abie up a hill, through an alley and over a roof.

“Nothin’ doing,” said Abie after glancing at three windows. “This used to be a creepin’ joint where sailors were trimmed. The creepers have crawled away. Guess the police were wise.”

The crimp led Hansen through a maze of courts, covered arches and hallways. They started descending cellar steps. Musty bales loomed before them. It was the place of Wan Fat, dealer in li-she nuts.

Abie recalled a brief-caught conversation which he had overheard in the rear of the Blubber Room. Wan Fat, and his brother Sing Fat, observed the law. Next door, however, lived Hong Kee, who was known to have a supply of choice Victoria opium. The matter of the opium was common gossip along the Barbary Coast. Hong Kee did not know Abie.

The crimp’s pride had been awakened by Captain Gully. Here was a chance. He tiptoed between Wan Fat’s bales of nuts, drew Hansen to his side, and pointed to a low door.

“Bust through there,” he whispered. “You won’t need no gat. I’ll go all the way up-stairs. We’ll trap the rats.”

Hong Kee and two of his patrons were enjoying themselves around a layout tray when Abie, armed with a rusty revolver, dropped through a roof-scuttle and Hansen broke down the door.

The placid faces of the Chinamen underwent several changes after the crimp ripped open a chair’s cushion and pulled out five toys of opium. He had learned of the hiding-place while listening to the conversation of two hop fiends in his mother’s dive.

He convinced the Celestials that he meant business. He explained that he was the much-feared Keenon. The mere possession of five cans of hop called for years in prison. Hong Kee and two coolie friends were taken by a roundabout route to Meigg’s wharf. Hansen did not need to handcuff them.

Captain Gully, on watch, held up three fingers when Abie was rowed from the dingey whaler. The crimp had half filled the contract.

“I dank it will be easy to get the others,” said the mate, whose slow brain had finally grasped Abie’s big idea.

“We should have no trouble at all,” Abie answered. He relaxed into silence and was rowed ashore.

Rain fell athwart the city. A mist rested on top of Knob Hill. Abie, hidden beneath the slouch hat and raincoat, entered several opium dens in hopes of catching some one napping. He was recognized in one of these. This would not do. He was supposed to be Keenon, a detective.

“We’ll try for a big haul,” he told the faithful mate. “We’ll break in where men are making money.”

The method pursued by the crimp to find the location of the coiners he had in mind was an involved detour which took all of an hour of precious time.

Mother Kelly, on duty as barmaid at the Blubber Room, supplied the necessary information. The Yetsky Wop, who had fortunately tried to pass a smooth two-bit piece on Abie’s mother the day before, had never met Abie. His address was on Lower Mission Street, between a Chinese laundry and a ship’s outfitter.

The crimp acted energetically. He dragged the mate out from a crowd that surrounded a soap-box preacher at Mission and East Street. He crossed the sidewalk, loosened his revolver, and started mounting flights of stairs which were steep as the shrouds to a topmast.

The Yetsky Wop, a meek-eyed Italian and his assistant coiner, had a crucible on a stove and three plaster-of-Paris molds ready for filling. Both raised their arms when Abie, backed by the mate, came around by a fire-escape.

The crimp took no chances with the coiners. Yetsky’s brother was known in the city as Angel Face. He was credited with five murders.

Hansen securely handcuffed the prisoners. He waited while Abie searched the room. A plating outfit, a box of copper and zinc, and a double handful of smooth quarters were hidden beneath the floor.

“I’m Keenon of the Secret Service!” said Abie. “My man will take you out to the revenue cutter. You go to the Federal prison.”

Yetsky and his brother had feared Detective Keenon for over four years. They were plastic as their own plaster-of-Paris in the mate’s hands. They jumped to his proposal of letting them get away on a whaler. Had not they been caught red-handed? It was bad enough to have queer money in one’s possession, but double worse to have both the money and the molds. The sentence given by the Federal courts on similar charges had been five years for each offense.

Abie waited at the shore end of Meigg’s wharf for the mate to return from the whaler Bowhead. He had done remarkably well in the matter of getting Captain Gully a crew. There remained one more man to secure. The crimp had his pride. He had promised six.

The rain was a dampener to his hopes of getting this man. It would be useless to send out anybody except one who feared the law more than a whaling voyage.

Yetsky, Angel Face, Hong Kee and the two coolies would sign any paper at midnight. They did not need to be urged to leave San Francisco.

“Having put the fear of Keenon into their hearts,” Abie told Hansen, when the mate came ashore, “we’ll proceed to find the last man. What did Captain Gully say?”

“I dank he say nothin’. He is sitting on the booby-hatch holding down the crew.”

Abie led the mate toward Mission Street. The two men paused a moment in the shelter of an awning. The soap-box preacher had guided his flock of derelicts into the Beacon Room.

The Beacon Room was a long saloon made over into a mission hall. The windows were silvered with Rochelle salts. A tramp stood at the entrance. He shivered in the rain, opened the door, and went inside. The sound of voices came through the transom. They were pitched in many broken keys.

“Holy Joe’s Place,” was the name given to the Beacon Light by the denizens of the Barbary Coast. Holy Joe had long been a figure of prominence along the water-front. He took in seamen, runaway apprentices from British ships, and the flotsam of the West Coast. He fed them, prayed for them, and sent them forth strengthened in body and spirit.

Abie knew Holy Joe by sight. The missionary and preacher had frequently visited the Blubber Room. It was rumored that he was not averse to taking a drink.

There existed an antipathy between the crimp and the preacher. Abie Kelly believed Holy Joe to be a sickening fraud. He had told his mother so. The missionary’s visits to dives and saloons led the crimp to presume he was seeking whisky. Moreover, on one occasion, Abie had seen Holy Joe staggering.

“I’ve got my man!” said the crimp. “I won’t need you any more, Hansen. Go to the boat and wait for me.”

“I dank I better stay around.”

Abie drew himself up to his full height of five feet four inches. “I’ve my man located,” he said. “He’s the preacher—Holy Joe!”

The mate shook his blond head. “Did he break a law?”

“Break th’ law? He’s lucky to stay out of San Quentin—what I know about him.”

Abie knew nothing more about Holy Joe than the Barbary Coast gossip that the missionary was a gad-about and a nuisance. He was anxious to get rid of the mate. The time was short for him to supply Captain Gully with the sixth man.

“At the foot of Meigg’s Wharf.”

Hansen strode stiffly toward East Street. He vanished around the corner. Abie dived toward the Blubber Room. He went through the back door, reached under an old icebox, and pulled out a tiny vial. It was filled with a mixture of chloral-hydrate and morphia—two drugs which would produce a deep sleep if taken in quantity.

Mother Kelly supplied Abie with a half-pint of bar whisky. Into this the crimp poured a tablespoon of the drug. He estimated the knockout dose for an average man to be fifteen drops of chloral and morphia. He had some experience in that line. The flask he pocketed and carried back to the Beacon Light was known as a “shoo-fly.”

Abie’s new idea was to get rid of Holy Joe and satisfy Captain Gully at the same time. His professional pride had changed to the soul-pleasing belief that the skipper of the Bowhead should be handed something as a reminder of the old days of shanghaiing. It would not be good ethics to let him get off without a hot one. The hot one being Holy Joe, who most certainly would make trouble.

From Abie’s view-point all men were equal. He slipped into the Mission Hall like an eel. He took a shaky seat between a frowsled seafarer and a water-rat. He stared over the swaying heads of the congregation to where Holy Joe loomed upon a platform.

The preaching went on after a suggestive pause. The presence of Abie, the crimp, had almost brought forth a remark from the missionary. He recognized Mother Kelly’s unsavory son. He changed the text and spoke of prodigals.

Abie was all eyes. He pretended to be deeply interested. Back in his brain his plan took form. He reviewed exactly what he was going to say to Holy Joe. It would take finesse to land the last man on the deck of the whale-ship. The service closed with the hymn:

“Salvation, Salvation—” changed to “There’s a Light in the Window.”

The meeting began to disperse. Abie waited until Holy Joe descended the platform and started down the aisle.

“A minute, preacher,” he said. “You know me, don’t you?”

Holy Joe, so called along the water-front, dropped a lambent glance upon Abie’s glossy hair.

“How are you, boy?” he asked. “I’m glad you came to-night. I hope to—”

“Cut that,” said Abie, remembering his role. “You see, I came to you because you was the only man who could help.”

“Help what?”

Abie paused a suggestive minute. He stared around the rapidly emptying mission room.

“There’s a man dyin’ out in th’ fo’c’s’le of th’ whaler Bowhead, preacher. He ain’t got nobody to pray for him. His name is Yetsky. He was hit by a Chink. He’ll die and they’ll throw him overboard to th’ fishes.”

Holy Joe, as Abie the Crimp expected, became interested.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” he said, glancing at his flock going out the door.

“No! It’s life or death, preacher. The Yetsky Wop—”

“The Yetsky Wop?”

“Sure, preacher. D’ye know who I mean now?”

“Yes. I’ve been watching his progress for years. He’s one of my particular—converts.”

“He’s in bad now. Keenon, of the Secret Service, pinched him for makin’ queer money. The detective let him go when he promised to stay aboard the whaler until it went out.”

The lambent light in Holy Joe’s eyes died to a restrospective glitter. Abie, keenly alert, detected a resolute movement of the missionary’s lips. They closed in a straight line.

“I’ve heard of Keenon, Abie. So he arrested one of my converts? That is too bad!”

“Got him dead, bang right! Caught him with th’ goods—molds and copper an’ a platin’ outfit. Then this Keenon lets him go.”

“Were there any witnesses to the raid, Abie?”

“Sure! A mate of th’ Bowhead saw th’ whole thing.”

“What is the mate’s name?”

“Hansen.”

“How—did the Yetsky Wop get injured?” “A Chink hit him on th’ head. The Chink’s name is Hong Kee.”

Abie thought he might as well pile matters on thick enough to make sure of getting Holy Joe out in the dingey. Hong Kee was a well known Barbary Coast character. The crimp was not surprised when Holy Joe started buttoning up a long black coat and looking about for a hat.

“You’re comin’ with me, preacher?”

“Most certainly! I shall be of some service, I hope. You haven’t explained how Hong Kee came to go to the whaler.”

“Oh, Keenon caught him with five cans o’ hop. It was good hop. I saw it with my own eyes.”

Abie was the only man in San Francisco who knew where the five cans were hidden at that particular minute. He intended selling them when the Bowhead was well out from shore soundings.

“You get me,” he told Holy Joe after they left the mission hall. “You get me, preacher, when I tell you that I am Keenon. It’s not generally known.”

The missionary did show some surprise.

“Why, I never suspected that,” he said.

“Are you the government detective?”

Abie opened his coat, ran a thumb within the armhole of his checked vest, and showed the gold insignia that was pinned to his suspender strap.

“United States Secret Service,” whispered Holy Joe. “I never knew it, Abie.”

“Sure! I pinched those guys to-night, then I changed m’ mind an’ let ’em go—to th’ whaler. They started fightin’ among themselves—there’s some more out there—an’ Captain Gully sent word to me that Yetsky Wop was dyin’ an’ needed a preacher. I thought of you.”

Abie searched for sign of Hansen at the shore end of Meigg’s wharf. He whistled shrilly. The mate, sleepy and damp, emerged from the shelter of a shed.

“Right out to th’ Bowhead!” commanded the crimp. “I’ve kept my promise to Captain Gully. This is the man!”

The mate was a silent soul. He started rowing with long whalerman’s strokes.