O. Henry

                      Vanity and some Sables

WHEN `KID' BRADY was sent to the ropes by Molly McKeever's blue-black 
eyes he withdrew from the Stovepipe Gang. So much for the power of a 
colleen's blanderin' tongue and stubborn true-heartedness. If you are 
a man who read this, may such an influence be sent you before two 
o'clock to-morrow; if you are a woman, may your Pomeranian greet you 
this morning with a cold nose - a sign of dog-health and your 
happiness.
   The Stovepipe Gang borrowed its name from a subdistrict of the city 
called the `Stovepipe,' which is a narrow and natural extension of the 
familiar district known as `Hell's Kitchen.' The `Stovepipe' strip of 
town runs along Eleventh and Twelfth avenues on the river, and bends a 
hard and sooty elbow around little, lost, homeless DeWitt Clinton 
park. Consider that a stovepipe is an important factor in any kitchen 
and the situation is analysed. The chefs in `Hell's Kitchen' are many, 
and the Stovepipe Gang wears the cordon blue.
   The members of this unchartered but widely known brother-hood 
appeared to pass their time on street corners arrayed like the lilies 
of the conservatory and busy with nail files and penknives. Thus 
displayed as a guarantee of good faith, they carried on an innocuous 
conversation in a 200-word vocabulary, to the casual observer as 
innocent and immaterial as that heard in the clubs seven blocks to the 
east.
   But off exhibition the `Stovepipes' were not mere street-corner 
ornaments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious occupation 
was the separating of citizens from their coin and valuables. 
Preferably this was done by weird and singular tricks with-out noise 
or bloodshed; but whenever the citizen honoured by their attentions 
refused to impoverish himself gracefully his objections came to be 
spread finally upon some police-station blotter or hospital register.
   The police held the Stovepipe Gang in perpetual suspicion and 
respect. As the nightingale's liquid note is heard in the deepest 
shadows, so along the `Stovepipe's' dark and narrow confines the 
whistle for reserves punctures the dull ear of night. Whenever there 
was smoke in the `Stovepipe' the tasselled men in blue knew there was 
fire in `Hell's Kitchen.'
   `Kid' Brady promised Molly to be good. `Kid' was the vainest, the 
strongest, the wariest and the most successfal plotter in the gang. 
Therefore the boys were sorry to give him up.
   But they witnessed his fall to a virtuous life without protest. 
For, in the Kitchen it is considered neither unmanly nor improper for 
a guy to do as his girl advises.
   Black her eye for love's sake, if you will; but it is all-to-the-
good business to do a thing when she wants you to do it.
   `Turn off the hydrant,' said the Kid, one night when Molly, 
tearful, besought him to amend his ways. `I'm going to cut out the 
gang. You for mine, and the simple life on the side. I'll tell you 
Moll - I'll get work; and in a year we'll get married. I'll do it for 
you. We'll get a flat and a flute, and a sewing machine, and a rubber 
plant, and live as honest as we can.'
   `Oh, Kid,' sighed Molly; wiping the powder off his shoulder with 
her handkerchief, `I'd rather hear you say that than to own all of New 
York. And we can be happy on so little!'
   The Kid looked down at his speckless cuffs and shining patent 
leathers with a suspicion of melancholy.
   `It'll hurt hardest in the rags department,' said he. `I've kind of 
always liked to rig out swell when I could. You know how I hate cheap 
things, Moll. This suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in the 
wearing apparel line has got to be just so, or it's to the misfit 
parlours for it, for mine. If I work I won't have so much coin to hand 
over to the little man with the big shears.'
   `Never mind, Kid. I'll like you just as much in a blue jumper as I 
would in a red automobile.'
   Before the Kid had grown large enough to knock out his father he 
had been compelled to learn the plumber's art. So now back to this 
honourable and useful profession he returned. But it was as an 
assistant that he engaged himself; and it is the master plumber and 
not the assistant, who wears diamonds as large as hailstones and looks 
contemptuously upon the marble colonnades of Senator Clark's mansion.
   Eight months went by as smoothly and surely as though they had 
`elapsed' on a theatre programme. The Kid worked away at his pipes and 
solder with no sytnptoms of backsliding. The  Stovepipe Gang continued 
its piracy on the high avenues, cracked policemen's heads, held up 
late travellers, invented new methods of peaceful plundering, copied 
Fifth Avenue's cut of clothes and neckwear fancies and comported 
itself according to its lawless bylaws. But the Kid stood firm and 
faithful to his Molly, even though the polish was gone from his 
finger-nails and it took him fifteen minutes to tie his purple silk 
ascot so that the worn places would not show.
   One evening he brought a mysterious bundle with him to Molly's 
house.
   `Open that, Moll!' he said in his large, quiet way. `It's for you.'
   Molly's eager fingers tore off the wrappings. She shrieked aloud, 
and in rushed a sprinkling of little McKeevers, and Ma McKeever, 
dishwashy, but an undeniable relative of the late Mrs. Eve.
   Again Molly shrieked, and something dark and long and sinuous flew 
and enveloped her neck like an anaconda.
   `Russian sables,' said the Kid pridefully, enjoying the sight of 
Molly's round cheek against the clinging fur. `The real thing. They 
don't grow anything in Russia too good for you, Moll.'
   Molly plunged her hands into the muff, overturned a row of the 
family infants and flew to the mirror. Hint for the beauty column. To 
make bright eyes, rosy cheeks and a bewitching smile: Recipe - one set 
Russian sables. Apply.
   When they were alone Molly became aware of a small cake of the ice 
of common sense floating down the full tide of her happiness.
   `You're a bird, all right, Kid,' she admitted gratefally. `I never 
had any furs on before in my life. But ain't Russian sables awful 
expensive? Seems to me I've heard they were.'
   `Have I ever chucked any bargain-sale stuff at you, Moll?' asked 
the Kid, with calm dignity. `Did you ever notice me leaning on the 
remnant counter or peering in the window of the five-and-ten? Call 
that scarf $2S0 and the muff $17S and you won't make any mistake about 
the price of Russian sables. The swell goods for me. Say, they look 
fine on you, Moll.'
   Molly hugged the sables to her bosom in rapture. And then her - 
smile went away little by little, and she looked the Kid straight in 
the eye sadly and steadily.
   He knew what every look of hers meant; and he laughed with a faint 
flush upon his face.
   `Cut it out,' he said, with affectionate roughness. `I told you I 
was done with that. I bought 'em and paid for 'em all right, with my 
own money.'
   `Out of the money you worked for, Kid? Out of $75 a month?' 
   `Sure. I been saving up.'
   `Let's see - saved $42 5 in eight months, Kid?'
   `Ah, let up,' said the Kid, with some heat. `I had some money when 
I went to work. Do you think I've been holding 'em up again? I told 
you I'd quit. They're paid for on the square. Put 'em on and come out 
for a walk.'
   Molly calmed her doubts. Sables are soothing. Proud as a queen she 
went forth in the streets at the Kid's side. In all that region of 
low-lying streets Russian sables had never been seen before. The word 
sped, and doors and windows blossomed with heads eager to see the 
swell furs Kid Brady had given his girl. All down the street there 
were `Oh's' and `Ah's,' and the reported fabulous sum paid for the 
sables was passed from lip to lip, increasing as it went. At her right 
elbow sauntered the Kid with the air of princes. Work had not 
diminished his love of pomp and show, and his passion for the costly 
and genuine. On a corner they saw a group of the Stovepipe Gang 
loafing, immaculate. They raised their hats to the Kid's girl and went 
on with their calm, unaccented palaver.
   Three blocks behind the admired couple strolled Detective Ransom, 
of the Central Office. Ransom was the only detective on the force who 
could walk abroad with safety in the Stovepipe district. He was fair 
dealing and unafraid, and went there with the hypothesis that the 
inhabitants were human. Many liked him, and now and then one would tip 
off to him something that he was looking for.
   `What's the excitement down the street?' asked Ransom of a pale 
youth in a red sweater.
   `Dey're out rubberin' at a set of buffalo robes Kid Brady staked 
his girl to,' answered the youth. `Some say he paid $900 for de skins. 
Dey're swell all right enough.'
   `I hear Brady has been working at his old trade for nearly a year,' 
said the detective. `He doesn't travel with the gang any more, does 
he?'
   `He's workin', all right,' said the red sweater, `but - say, sport, 
are you trailin' anything in the fur line? A job in a plumbin' shop 
don't match wid dem skins de Kid's girl's got on.'
   Ransom overtook the strolling couple on an empty street near the 
river bank. He touched the Kid's arm from behind.
   `Let me see you a moment, Brady,' he said, quietly. His eye rested 
for a second on the long far scarf thrown stylishly back over Molly's 
left shoulder. The Kid, with his old-time police-hating frown on his 
face, stepped a yard or two aside with the detective.
   `Did you go to Mrs. Hethcote's on West 7th Street yesterday to fix 
a leaky waterpipe?' asked Ransom.
   `I did,' said the Kid. `What of it?'
   `The lady's $1,000 set of Russian sables went out of the house 
about the same time you did. The description fits the ones this lady 
has on.'
   `To h - Harlem with you,' cried the Kid angrily. `You know I've cut 
out that sort of thing, Ransom. I bought them sables yesterday at -'
   The Kid stopped short.
   `I know you've been working straight lately,' said Ransom. `I'll " 
give you every chance. I'll go with you where you bought the furs and 
investigate. The lady can wear 'em along with us and nobody'll be on. 
That's fair, Brady.'
   `Come on,' agreed the Kid hotly. And then he stopped suddenly in 
his tracks and looked with an odd smile at Molly's distressed and 
anxious face.
   `No use,' he said grimly. `They're the Hethcote sables, all right. 
You'll have to turn 'em over, Moll, but they ain't too good for you if 
they cost a million.'
   Molly, with anguish in her face, hung upon the Kid's arm.
   `Oh, Kiddy, you've broke my heart,' she said. `I was so proud of 
you - and now they'll do you - and where's our happiness gone?' `Go 
home,' said the Kid wildly. `Come on, Ransom - take the furs: Let's 
get away from here. Wait a minute - I've a good mind to - no, I'll be 
d - if I can do it - run along, Moll - I'm ready, Ransom.'
   Around the corner of a lumber-yard came Policeman Kohen on his way 
to his beat along the river. The detective signed to him for 
assistance. Kohen joined the group. Ransom explained.
   `Sure,' said Kohen. `I hear about those saples dat vas stole. You 
say you have dem here?'
   Policeman Kohen took the end of Molly's late scarf in his hands and 
looked at it closely.
   `Once,' he said, `I sold furs in Sixth Avenue: Yes, dese are 
saples. Dey come from Alaska. Dis scarf is vort $12 and dis muff -'
   `Biff!' came the palm of the Kid's powerful hand upon the 
policeman's mouth. Kohen staggered and rallied. Molly screamed. The 
detective threw himself upon Brady and with Kohen's aid got the 
nippers on his wrist.
   `The scarf is vort $12 and the muff is vort $9,' persisted the 
policeman. `Vot is dis talk about $1,000 saples?'
   The Kid sat upon a pile of lumber and his face turned dark red. 
`Correct, Solomonski!' he declared viciously. `I paid $21.50 for the 
set. I'd rather have got six months and not have told it. Me, the 
swell gay that wouldn't look at anything cheap! I'm a plain bluffer. 
Moll - my salary couldn't spell sables in Russian.'
   Molly cast herself upon his neck.
   `What do I care for all the sables and money in the world,' she 
cried. `It's my Kiddy I want. Oh, you dear, stuck-up, crazy 
blockhead!'
   `You can take dose nippers off,' said Kohen to the detective. 
`Before I leaf de station de report come in dat de lady vind her 
saples - hanging in her wardrobe. Young man, I excuse you dat punch in 
my face - dis von time.'
   Ransom handed Molly her furs. Her eyes were smiling upon the Kid. 
She wound the scarf and threw the end over her left shoulder with a 
duchess's grace.
   `A gouple of young vools,' said Policeman Kohen to Ransom: `come on 
away.'