they call them demi mondaines and nymphs du pave in paris, and it doesn’t sound so bad, but here a spade is called a spade with coarse brutality and vice doesn’t receive even a very thin coating of veneer.
take a walk any night along the streets where women congregate—you know the kind of women i mean—and study the faces. look for weakness, and strength, and character. look for good and evil. you don’t have to be a mind reader, just a plain, ordinary, everyday sort of a man with average intelligence.
if you look for the outward signs of degradation in the uptown districts you’ll be disappointed; you’ll have to turn your face and your steps batteryward to find that. vice has a degrading and demoralizing influence and its victim, in following that unwritten law of nature that governs the universe, is ever on the downward path. in some cases it is a gentle descent, while in others it is simply a series of steps each one lower than the other, and at the last there is nothing but pity for the poor devils of women to whom no man lifts his hat or bows his head, and who cease to live in merely existing.
and for eight out of every ten there are eight men somewhere whose hands gave the push that sent them on the downhill road.
but once in a while—once in a very great while—justice
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comes to a man as it did in this case, and that’s the story.
she had such a superb figure that she once posed for a sculptor
locked up securely in the city prison like a rat is locked in a trap, or a dangerous beast is fastened behind iron bars, is a pretty little black-eyed french girl.
julie, her name is, and those who see and talk to her find in her a great charm; a charm, that had she been placed in a different atmosphere or had the lines of her life been cast in different places, would have been so far-reaching as to make her a power. she had such a charming figure that she once posed for a sculptor. many a woman’s hand has shaped the course of destiny in this world of ours, and the power behind the throne usually wears petticoats.
this julie takes her imprisonment calmly, because she is a philosopher by force of circumstances. she knows the metal bars can resist her, consequently she doesn’t throw herself against them and there are no tears in her eyes because she can never cry again. she doesn’t know what they will eventually do to her and she doesn’t care. if it is decreed that she shall go forth free, good; then she will go. if it is decreed that for the rest of her life she shall be doomed to wear that narrow blue prison stripe, she will at least be fed and housed and cared for, and on rainy, stormy days she will be under shelter and not compelled to walk the streets with dripping skirts until the gray morning comes over the roof tops.
you see, she has the comforting creed of a fatalist—that what is to be will be, and that one thought is to her like a narcotic—she sleeps at nights.
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because of that she doesn’t hear the moans and sobs of the woman in the next cell, who has the feathery crime of petit larceny hanging over her head instead of murder. a mere trifle which means nothing more than a few weeks—or months at the most—in jail. a rest like the going away from the hot city streets when july comes, as the rich people do, or to the south when winter winds blow. a place where the thermometer always registers about the same and the meals come regularly, which is not a thing to be despised by anyone, much less a woman of the lower half.
if the life of this julie were to be told year by year it would take a book of many thousands of pages, and the pathos, comedy and tragedy would be about evenly divided. you would have the tale of how she once asked a man if he had change of a $50 bill. then when he pulled out his money she grabbed the roll, cried out: “here comes the police,” and dashed into a hallway in the twinkling of an eye. it was a good joke and she spent the proceeds for a new dress, for she was of the kind who make even jokes profitable.
that she was saved from arrest many times was due to the fact that she stood in with the police, and she was considered to be one of the most successful stool pigeons in the business. she was born with the instinct of the hunter, and hunter she was. in her own inner circle, however, she was known as the slasher, and was feared accordingly.
it came about in this way.
she and another woman of the streets were rivals in many ways. when they first met they took an instinctive dislike to each other. the other one was a blonde, tall and stately—the kind you read about in
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cheap novels. she was an english girl, and when it came to a knockdown and drag-out argument she was able to deliver the goods in fine shape. their first quarrel was over nothing, and before it was finished the lady with the golden tresses had taken her french sister by the shoulders and flung her down an area bruising her badly.
the latin blood in the black-eyed one boiled, and she cried out for revenge, which she proceeded to work up in a truly latin manner. she made friends with her former enemy, said that she was in the wrong and was sorry for what had happened, and that she wanted to be forgiven. the blonde fell like a farmer before hungry joe, and they both went off to celebrate. the celebration consisted in tucking away many cocktails and highballs, and inside of two hours the british lady was a sodden wreck, and so helpless that she had to be carried to her room on the second floor rear of a house of no reputation.
julie stayed with her long enough to pull out a razor and cut three gashes from the bridge of her nose across one cheek. then she slipped out and went on her way as though nothing had ever happened to give her a moment’s worry.
that little stunt put the blonde out of business, in that section of the city, at least. it is said she went further downtown, where there is less of a premium on beauty and style.
like other women of her caste julie found it necessary to have a protector, and when she first appeared in the role of hunter she cast about for one who would suit—one who would fight her battles and upon whom
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she could lavish the affection that was not bought, or that still remained unsold.
being a good looking girl, educated up to a certain point, and with pleasant ways—the kind of ways a man would look for in a girl if he was selecting a wife—she had no trouble in attaching to herself a young fellow who was a good mate for her. she let it be understood at the start that he was to belong to her and that he was to be at her beck and call. she wanted to revel in the joys of complete ownership.
he was willing enough, and in fact it rather suited him, because he came into immediate possession of a wife, a home and income.
it is to be supposed there was some affection in the case, for it wasn’t a cold business proposition. it was bad enough, even from the best side, but she liked him in a way—you can put the word love in here if you like—but i am of the opinion that her feeling was that of a dog-like devotion, and his was one of knowing a good thing when he saw it.
but she was jealous, too.
“if i see you speaking to any of the other girls,” she said to him once, “i will leave you right away.”
that was in the early stages, and now notice how a woman’s affection shifts.
“if you flirt with any of those girls i will kill myself,” she said six months later.
first she would leave him and then she would kill herself.
that brings the tragedy to the last stage.
“i will kill you.”
there are no peaceful lives cast in such a groove as that.
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he began to grow a bit tired of her, even though the money did come to him regularly. you see, he had no occupation, and he had to do something with his time, and that something wasn’t good.
then it was that the quarrels began, a few words at first, but gradually increasing in bitterness until one night he came in half drunk and taking her by the throat almost strangled her. she said afterward that she thought she was gone, because red lights danced before her eyes.
but she was game and didn’t whimper, not even when he struck her in the face with his clinched fist and threw her to the floor. she took her medicine gamely, for she realized intuitively that it was her medicine, and it was a part of the life she was leading.
the strange part of it all was that she never shed a tear.
her neck hurt her, and when she looked in the mirror she saw the marks of his strong fingers and in that instant she was a changed woman. the flickering flame of her affection turned to a steady glow of hate and from that moment she began to figure on revenge. she stood still and white and cold, and every tick of the clock on the mantel was a stroke of doom for him. there was nothing melodramatic about her at this stage of the game, for her street training served to make her calm at times.
woman-like, she at once took up with another champion and this time she picked out a man who was peculiarly fitted by force of circumstances to help her. he was to be not so much a companion as stepping-stone, and in that she simply followed out the natural instinct of the average woman who purrs and
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strikes indiscriminately and who makes merchandise and capital of her favors.
“he beat me,” she told this new one in talking of the one who had been supplanted, “and i want you to help me get even.”
the promise was made on this tainted honeymoon and for one hour every night they went out together looking for their prey in all of the places where he had been known to go.
for two weeks it was a fruitless search, and then the news came to her in an indirect way that he had been seen in the old haunts.
the good pot-hunter never really hunts—he lures the game to the decoy—and because she had been years upon the trail she at once corrected her first mistake and sent a letter as bait—a tender missive full of regrets and endearing terms; such a letter as only a woman could write—a letter like a silken bandage to blind the eyes and shut out the real view of things.
it came to his hand as she had expected it would, and when the time arrived he hurried to the rendezvous to heal the breach and once more place himself on friendly terms with his income.
there are enough facts in this story to carry it, but it is not an absolutely correct recital. there are reasons why it should be changed and so i have changed it, but not enough to destroy its identity.
on that street at night, with people hurrying to and fro, they came face to face, but before he could speak to her, the other man stepped out and seized him.
“come with me, i want you,” he said roughly, and he wheeled him around with a deft movement. there
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was no other word spoken and only for an instant was there a brief struggle.
all the while the woman had been fumbling at her bosom before she drew out a pistol.
her time had arrived.
she levelled it at the retreating back of the held man and pulled the trigger. a child couldn’t have missed a shot like that, and the bullet bored into his back, throwing him forward slightly.
it had been her intention to shoot but once and make that one shot do the work, but when she saw that he was hit the lust of blood came on her and she pulled the trigger twice more, each bullet finding its mark, before a policeman ran up and threw one arm around her neck and with the free hand took hold of the still smoking weapon. it was the old trick of the force taught to probationers before they are considered fit to go forth and guard the public interests.
while her victim was slipping slowly downward to the pavement she screamed, with as clear an intonation as if she wanted to be sure it would be a matter of record:
“and now he will never beat me again.”
half a dozen men carried the limp dead body into a store and she was taken there, too, and such was her ferocity that she tried to kick the corpse of her quarry.
“he beat me, he beat me,” she shouted, “and now he will never beat me again. if i had not killed him he would have killed me.”
