He is tantalized by the knowledge that all about him there are big
doings, but, so far as he is concerned, he might just as well be
attending a Sunday-school cantata. Unless he be suitably introduced
he will have never a chance to shake a foot with anybody or buy a
drink for somebody in the inner circles of Viennese night life.
He is emphatically on the outside, denied even the poor satisfaction
of looking in. At that I have a suspicion, born of casual observation
among other races, that the Viennese really has a better time when
he is not trying than when he is trying.
Chapter XIII
Our Friend, the Assassin
No taste of the night life of Paris is regarded as complete without
a visit to an Apache resort at the fag-end of it. For orderly and
law-abiding people the disorderly and lawbreaking people always
have an immense fascination anyhow. The average person, though
inclined to blink at whatever prevalence of the criminal classes
may exist in his own community, desires above all things to know
at firsthand about the criminals of other communities. In these
matters charity begins at home.
Every New Yorker who journeys to the West wants to see a few
roadagents; conversely the Westerner sojourning in New York pesters
his New York friends to lead him to the haunts of the gangsters.
It makes no difference that in a Western town the prize hold-up
man is more apt than not to be a real-estate dealer; that in New
York the average run of citizens know no more of the gangs than
they know of the Metropolitan Museum of Art - which is to say,
nothing at all. Human nature comes to the surface just the same.
In Paris they order this thing differently; they exhibit the same
spirit of enterprise that in a lesser degree characterized certain
promoters of rubberneck tours who some years ago fitted up
make-believe opium dens in New York's Chinatown for the awed
delectation of out-of-town spectators. Knowing from experience
that every other American who lands in Paris will crave to observe
the Apache while the Apache is in the act of Apaching round, the
canny Parisians have provided a line of up-to-date Apache dens
within easy walking distance of Montmartre; and thither the guides
lead the round-eyed tourist and there introduce him to well-drilled,
carefully made-up Apaches and Apachesses engaged in their customary
sports and pastimes for as long as he is willing to pay out money
for the privilege.
Being forewarned of this I naturally desired to see the genuine
article. I took steps to achieve that end. Suitably chaperoned
by a trio of transplanted Americans who knew a good bit about the
Paris underworld I rode over miles of bumpy cobblestones until,
along about four o'clock in the morning, our taxicab turned into
a dim back street opening off one of the big public markets and
drew up in front of a grimy establishment rejoicing in the happy
and we1l-chosen name of the Cave of the Innocents.
