It cannot be said, my friends, that I liked my position in that sink of evil, the New York Customs. I was on good terms with my comrades, but I founded no friendships among them. It has been and still is a belief of mine, and one formed at an early age, that everybody wears suggestive resemblance to some bird or fish or beast. I’ve seen a human serpent’s face, triangular, poisonous, menacing with ophidian eyes; I’ve seen a dove’s face, soft, gentle, harmless, and with lips that cooed as they framed and uttered words. And there are faces to remind one of dogs, of sheep, of apes, of swine, of eagles, of pike—ravenous, wide-mouthed, swift. I’ve even encountered a bear’s face on Broadway—one full of a window-peering curiosity, yet showing a contented, sluggish sagacity withal. And every face about me in the Customs would carry out my theory. As I glanced from Lorns to Quin, and from Quin to another, and so to the last upon the list, I beheld reflected as in a glass, a hawk, or an owl, or a wolf, or a fox, or a ferret, or even a cat. But each rapacious; each stamped with the instinct of predation as though the word “Wolf” were written across his forehead. Even Betelnut Jack gave one the impression that belongs with some old, rusty black-eagle with worn and tumbled plumage. I took no joy of my comrades; saw no more of them than I might; despised my trade of land-pirate—for what better could it be called?—and following that warning from “Josephus” was ever haunted of a weird fear of what might come. Still, I remained and claimed my loot with the rest. And you ask why? When all is said, I was as voracious as the others; I clinked the coins in my pocket, and consoled myself against the foul character of such profits with that thought of Vespasian: “The smell of all money is sweet.”

Following my downfall of tobacco, I had given up my rich apartments in Twenty-second Street; and while I retained my membership, I went no more to the two or three clubs into which I’d been received. In truth, these Custom House days I seldom strolled as far northward as Twenty-third Street; but taking a couple of moderate rooms to the south of Washington Square, I stuck to them or to the park in front as much as ever I might; passing a lonely life and meeting none I’d known before.

One sun-filled September afternoon, being free at that hour, I was occupying a bench in Washington Square, amusing my idleness with the shadows chequered across the walk by an overspreading tree. A sound caught my ear; I looked up to be mildly amazed by the appearance of Betelnut Jack. It was seldom my chief was found so far from his eyrie in the Bowery; evidently he was seeking me. His first words averred as much.

“I was over to your rooms,” remarked Betelnut Jack; “they told me you were here.”

Then he gave me a pure Havana—for we of the Customs might smoke what cigars we would—lighted another and betook himself to a few moments of fragrant, wordless tranquility. I was aware, of course, that Betelnut Jack had a purpose in coming; but curiosity was never among my vices, and I did not ask his mission. With a feeling of indifference, I awaited its development in his own good way and time.

Betelnut Jack was more apt to listen than talk; but upon this Washington Square afternoon, he so far departed those habits of taciturnity commonly his own as to furnish the weight of conversation. He did not hurry to his business, but rambled among a score of topics. He even described to me by what accident he arrived at his by-name of Betelnut Jack. He said he was a sailor in his youth. Then he related how he went on deep water ships to India and to the China seas; how he learned to chew betel from the Orientals; how after he came ashore he was still addicted to betel; how a physician, ignorant of betel and its crimson consequences, fell into vast excitement over what he concevied to be a perilous hemorrhage; and how before Jack could explain, seized on him and hurried him into a near-by drug shop. When he understood his mistake, the physician took it in dudgeon, and was inclined to blame Jack for those sanguinary yet fraudulent symptoms. One result of the adventure was to re-christen him “Betelnut Jack,” the name still sticking, albeit he had for long abandoned betel as a taste outgrown.

Betelnut Jack continued touching his career in New York; always with caution, however, slurring some parts and jumping others; from which I argued that portions of my chief’s story were made better by not being divulged. It occurred, too, as a deduction drawn from his confidences that Betelnut Jack had been valorous as a Know-Nothing; and he spoke with rapture of the great prize-fighter, Tom Hyer, who beat Yankee Sullivan; and then of the fistic virtues of the brave Bill Poole, coming near to tears as he set forth the latter’s murder in Stanwix Hall.

Also, I gathered that Betelnut Jack had been no laggard at hurling stones and smashing windows in the Astor Place riot of 1849.

“And the soldiers killed one hundred and thirty-four,” sighed Betelnut Jack, when describing the battle; “and wounded four times as many more. And all, mind you! for a no-good English actor with an Irish name!” This last in accents of profound disgust.

In the end Betelnut Jack began to wax uneasy; it was apparent how he yearned for his nest in the familiar Bowery. With that he came bluntly to the purpose.

“To-morrow, early,” he said, “take one of the women inspectors and go down to quarantine. Some time in the course of the day, the steamship ‘Wolfgang,’ from Bremen, will arrive. Go aboard at once. In the second cabin you will find a tall, gray, old German; thin, with longish hair. He may have on dark goggles; if he hasn’t, you will observe that he is blind of the right eye. His daughter, a girl of twenty-three, will be with him. Her hair will be done up in that heavy roll which hair-dressers call the ‘waterfall,’ and hang in a silk close-meshed net low on her neck. Hidden in the girl’s hair are diamonds of a Berlin value of over one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. You will search the old man, and have the woman inspector search the girl. Don’t conduct yourselves as though you knew what you were looking for. Tell your assistant to find the girl’s diamonds naturally; let her work to them by degrees, not swoop on them.”

Then Betelnut Jack disposed himself for homeward flight. I asked how he became aware of the jewels and the place of their concealment.

“Never mind that now,” was his reply; “you’ll know later. But get the diamonds; they’re there and you must not fail. I’ve come for you, as you’re more capable of doing the gentleman than some of the others, and this is a case where a dash of refinement won’t hurt the trick.”

With that Betelnut Jack lounged over to Fourth Street and disappeared towards Broadway and the Bowery further east.

Following my chief’s departure, I continued in idle contemplation of the shadows. This occupation did not forbid a mental looking up and down of what would be my next day’s work. The prospect was far from refreshing. When one is under thirty, a proposal to plunder a girl—a beautiful girl, doubtless—of her diamonds, does not appeal to one. There would be woe, tears, lamentations, misery with much wringing of hands. I began to call myself a villain.

Then, as against her, and defensive of myself, I argued the outlaw character of the girl’s work. Be she beautiful or be she favored ill, still she is breaking the law. It was our oath to seize the gems; whatever of later wrong was acted, at best or worst, it was no wrong done her. In truth! when she was at last left free and at liberty, she would be favored beyond her deserts; for those Customs laws which she was cheating spoke of grates and keys and bars and bolts.

In this wise, and as much as might be, I comforted myself against the disgrace of an enterprise from which I naturally recoiled, hardening myself as to the poor girl marked to be our prey. I confess I gained no great success; say what I might, I contemned myself.

While thus ruminating that dishonor into which I conceived myself to have fallen, I recalled a story written by Edgar Allen Poe. It is a sketch wherein a wicked man is ever followed and thwarted by one who lives his exact semblance in each line of face and form. This doppel-ganger, as the Germans name him, while the same with himself in appearance and dress, is his precise opposite in moral nature. This struggle between the haunted one and his weird, begins in boyhood and continues till middle age. At the last, frantic under a final opposition, the haunted one draws sword and slays his enemy. Too late, as he wipes the blood from his blade, he finds that he has killed his better self; too late he sees that from that time to the end, the present will have no hope, the future hold no heaven; that he must sink and sink and sink, until he is grasped by those hands outstretched of hell to forever have him for their horrid own. I wondered if I were not like that man unhappy; I asked if I did not, by these various defenses and apologies which I made ever for my wickedness, work towards the death of my better nature whose destruction when it did come would mean the departure forever of my soul’s chance.

I stood up and shook myself in a canine way. Decidedly, loneliness was making me morbid! However that may have been, I passed a far from happy afternoon.

Fairly speaking, these contentions shook me somewhat in my resolves. There were moments when I determined to refuse my diamond-hunting commission and resign my place. I even settled the style of my resignation; it should be full of sarcasm.

But alas! these white dreams............