home | authors | books | about

Home -> O. Henry -> The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







A Red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a
window. He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with
great satisfaction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of
blue, faded carpet-slippers. With the morbid thirst of the confirmed
daily news drinker, he awkwardly folded back the pages of an evening
paper, eagerly gulping down the strong, black headlines, to be
followed as a chaser by the milder details of the smaller type.

In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper. Odors from strong
bacon and boiling coffee contended against the cut-plug fumes from
the vespertine pipe.

Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which,
as twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty
host of children danced and ran and played in the street. Some in
rags, some in clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as
young hawks, some gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude
and sinful words, some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar,
to embrace--here were the children playing in the corridors of the
House of Sin. Above the playground forever hovered a great bird. The
bird was known to humorists as the stork. But the people of Chrystie
street were better ornithologists. They called it a vulture.

A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading and
resting by the window, and said:

"Papa, won't you play a game of checkers with me if you aren't too
tired?"

The red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sitting shoeless by the window
answered, with a frown.

"Checkers. No, I won't. Can't a man who works hard all day have a
little rest when he comes home? Why don't you go out and play with
the other kids on the sidewalk?"

The woman who was cooking came to the door.

"John," she said, "I don't like for Lizzie to play in the street.
They learn too much there that ain't good for 'em. She's been in the
house all day long. It seems that you might give up a little of your
time to amuse her when you come home."

"Let her go out and play like the rest of 'em if she wants to be
amused," said the red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, "and don't
bother me."

* * * * * * *

"You're on," said Kid Mullaly. "Fifty dollars to $25 I take Annie to
the dance. Put up."

The Kid's black eyes were snapping with the fire of the baited and
challenged. He drew out his "roll" and slapped five tens upon the
bar. The three or four young fellows who were thus "taken" more
slowly produced their stake. The bartender, ex-officio stakeholder,
took the money, laboriously wrapped it, recorded the bet with an
inch-long pencil and stuffed the whole into a corner of the cash
register.

"And, oh, what'll be done to you'll be a plenty," said a bettor,
with anticipatory glee.

"That's my lookout," said the "Kid," sternly. "Fill 'em up all
around, Mike."

After the round Burke, the "Kid's" sponge, sponge-holder, pal,
Mentor and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the
saloon corner where all the official and important matters of the
Small Hours Social Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tan
shoes of the club's President and Secretary for the fifth time that
day, Burke spake words of wisdom to his chief.

"Cut that blond out, 'Kid,'" was his advice, "or there'll be
trouble. What do you want to throw down that girl of yours for?
You'll never find one that'll freeze to you like Liz has. She's
worth a hallful of Annies."

"I'm no Annie admirer!" said the "Kid," dropping a cigarette ash
on his polished toe, and wiping it off on Tony's shoulder. "But I
want to teach Liz a lesson. She thinks I belong to her. She's been
bragging that I daren't speak to another girl. Liz is all right--in
some ways. She's drinking a little too much lately. And she uses
language that a lady oughtn't."

"You're engaged, ain't you?" asked Burke.

"Sure. We'll get married next year, maybe."

"I saw you make her drink her first glass of beer," said Burke.
"That was two years ago, when she used to came down to the corner of
Chrystie bare-headed to meet you after supper. She was a quiet sort
of a kid then, and couldn't speak without blushing."

"She's a little spitfire, sometimes, now," said the Kid. "I hate
jealousy. That's why I'm going to the dance with Annie. It'll teach
her some sense."

"Well, you better look a little out," were Burke's last words. "If
Liz was my girl and I was to sneak out to a dance coupled up with an
Annie, I'd want a suit of chain armor on under my gladsome rags, all
right."

Through the land of the stork-vulture wandered Liz. Her black eyes
searched the passing crowds fierily but vaguely. Now and then she
hummed bars of foolish little songs. Between times she set her
small, white teeth together, and spake crisp words that the east
side has added to language.

Liz's skirt was green silk. Her waist was a large brown-and-pink
plaid, well-fitting and not without style. She wore a cluster ring
of huge imitation rubies, and a locket that banged her knees at the
bottom of a silver chain. Her shoes were run down over twisted high
heels, and were strangers to polish. Her hat would scarcely have
passed into a flour barrel.

The "Family Entrance" of the Blue Jay Cafe received her. At a table
she sat, and punched the button with the air of milady ringing for
her carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced
manner of respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with
a satisfied wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could order
and be waited upon. It was all that her world offered her of the
prerogative of woman.

"Whiskey, Tommy," she said as her sisters further uptown murmur,
"Champagne, James."

"Sure, Miss Lizzie. What'll the chaser be?"

"Seltzer. And say, Tommy, has the Kid been around to-day?"

"Why, no, Miss Lizzie, I haven't saw him to-day."

Fluently came the "Miss Lizzie," for the Kid was known to be one who
required rigid upholdment of the dignity of his fiancee.

"I'm lookin' for 'm," said Liz, after the chaser had sputtered under
her nose. "It's got to me that he says he'll take Annie Karlson to
the dance. Let him. The pink-eyed white rat! I'm lookin' for 'm. You
know me, Tommy. Two years me and the Kid's been engaged. Look at
that ring. Five hundred, he said it cost. Let him take her to the
dance. What'll I do? I'll cut his heart out. Another whiskey,
Tommy."

"I wouldn't listen to no such reports, Miss Lizzie," said the waiter
smoothly, from the narrow opening above his chin. "Kid Mullaly's not
the guy to throw a lady like you down. Seltzer on the side?"

"Two years," repeated Liz, softening a little to sentiment under
the magic of the distiller's art. "I always used to play out on the
street of evenin's 'cause there was nothin' doin' for me at home.
For a long time I just sat on doorsteps and looked at the lights
and the people goin' by. And then the Kid came along one evenin'
and sized me up, and I was mashed on the spot for fair. The first
drink he made me take I cried all night at home, and got a lickin'
for makin' a noise. And now--say, Tommy, you ever see this Annie
Karlson? If it wasn't for peroxide the chloroform limit would have
put her out long ago. Oh, I'm lookin' for 'm. You tell the Kid if
he comes in. Me? I'll cut his heart out. Leave it to me. Another
whiskey, Tommy."

A little unsteadily, but with watchful and brilliant eyes, Liz
walked up the avenue. On the doorstep of a brick tenement a
curly-haired child sat, puzzling over the convolutions of a tangled
string. Liz flopped down beside her, with a crooked, shifting smile
on her flushed face. But her eyes had grown clear and artless of a
sudden.

"Let me show you how to make a cat's-cradle, kid," she said, tucking
her green silk skirt under her rusty shoes.

And while they sat there the lights were being turned on for the
dance in the hall of the Small Hours Social Club. It was the
bi-monthly dance, a dress affair in which the members took great
pride and bestirred themselves huskily to further and adorn.

At 9 o'clock the President, Kid Mullaly, paced upon the floor with a
lady on his arm. As the Loreley's was her hair golden. Her "yes" was
softened to a "yah," but its quality of assent was patent to the
most Milesian ears. She stepped upon her own train and blushed,
and--she smiled into the eyes of Kid Mullaly.

And then, as the two stood in the middle of the waxed floor, the
thing happened to prevent which many lamps are burning nightly in
many studies and libraries.

Out from the circle of spectators in the hall leaped Fate in a green
silk skirt, under the _nom de guerre_ of "Liz." Her eyes were hard
and blacker than jet. She did not scream or waver. Most unwomanly,
she cried out one oath--the Kid's own favorite oath--and in his
own deep voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club went
frantically to pieces, she made good her boast to Tommy, the
waiter--made good as far as the length of her knife blade and the
strength of her arm permitted.

And next came the primal instinct of self-preservation--or was it
self-annihilation, the instinct that society has grafted on the
natural branch?

Liz ran out and down the street swift and true as a woodcock flying
through a grove of saplings at dusk.

And then followed the big city's biggest shame, its most ancient
and rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blight
and perversion, its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreproved
and cherished, handed down from a long-ago century of the basest
barbarity--the Hue and Cry. Nowhere but in the big cities does it
survive, and here most of all, where the ultimate perfection of
culture, citizenship and alleged superiority joins, bawling, in the
chase.

They pursued--a shrieking mob of fathers, mothers, lovers and
maidens--howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood.
Well may the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well may
his heart, the gentler, falter at the siege.

Knowing her way, and hungry for her surcease, she darted down the
familiar ways until at last her feet struck the dull solidity of the
rotting pier. And then it was but a few more panting steps--and good
mother East River took Liz to her bosom, soothed her muddily but
quickly, and settled in five minutes the problem that keeps lights
burning o' nights in thousands of pastorates and colleges.

* * * * * * *

It's mighty funny what kind of dreams one has sometimes. Poets call
them visions, but a vision is only a dream in blank verse. I dreamed
the rest of this story.

I thought I was in the next world. I don't know how I got there; I
suppose I had been riding on the Ninth avenue elevated or taking
patent medicine or trying to pull Jim Jeffries's nose, or doing some
such little injudicious stunt. But, anyhow, there I was, and there
was a great crowd of us outside the courtroom where the judgments
were going on. And every now and then a very beautiful and imposing
court-officer angel would come outside the door and call another
case.

While I was considering my own worldly sins and wondering whether
there would be any use of my trying to prove an alibi by claiming
that I lived in New Jersey, the bailiff angel came to the door and
sang out:

"Case No. 99,852,743."

Up stepped a plain-clothes man--there were lots of 'em there,
dressed exactly like preachers and hustling us spirits around just
like cops do on earth--and by the arm he dragged--whom, do you
think? Why, Liz!

The court officer took her inside and closed the door. I went up to
Mr. Fly-Cop and inquired about the case.

"A very sad one," says he, laying the points of his manicured
fingers together. "An utterly incorrigible girl. I am Special
Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones. The case was assigned to
me. The girl murdered her fiance and committed suicide. She had no
defense. My report to the court relates the facts in detail, all of
which are substantiated by reliable witnesses. The wages of sin is
death. Praise the Lord."

The court officer opened the door and stepped out.

"Poor girl," said Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones,
with a tear in his eye. "It was one of the saddest cases that I ever
met with. Of course she was"--

"Discharged," said the court officer. "Come here, Jonesy. First
thing you know you'll be switched to the pot-pie squad. How
would you like to be on the missionary force in the South Sea
Islands--hey? Now, you quit making these false arrests, or you'll
be transferred--see? The guilty party you've not to look for in
this case is a red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, sitting by the
window reading, in his stocking feet, while his children play in
the streets. Get a move on you."

Now, wasn't that a silly dream?




© Art Branch Inc. | English Dictionary