one of the greatest schools in the world is little old new york, where anyone can learn anything and anyone can do anything—or do anybody if they should happen to have but a modicum of brains and native shrewdness.
it is the haunt as well as the home of the crook; the respectable trickster; the lady who works and the lady who doesn’t. the amalgamation of many races and many creeds has tended to produce cleverness and wit to a high degree.
one of the greatest of financiers comes from russian peasant blood on one side and poverty-stricken french on the other. in the blood of a tenderloin queen there is irish and spanish, and it is hard to tell which side has contributed the most beauty. the combination of races is the chrysalis—the female product is the moth.
in the squalid tenements of the east side there is beauty in embryo and the figures of venus are barely hidden by cheap calico wrappers.
where the poles are settled, voluptuous women are wedded to weak, undersized men, and the result is either very good or very bad, according to the domination of the sex. very beautiful flowers often grow and bloom in loathsome places, and many a handsome woman who rides in state along the avenue wouldn’t care to have her antecedents known to the world.
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there is such a thing as pre-natal influence, and a throwback, taking on the good or bad characteristics of a previous generation, is an accepted fact.
and now we will introduce the lady as she sits in the courtroom, smiling as though she hadn’t a care or responsibility in the world. she has the innocent face of a child and the manner of a cherub, if you know what that is. if an artist were to paint her portrait in one of her moments of relaxation he might be justified if he called it “innocence.”
“she’s a peach, all right,” remarks a court officer, and that means a lot when it comes from such a source.
she has the blonde hair and the fair complexion of the teuton, and the black eyes of the slav—a rare combination, if you’ll take my word for it. she’s coy, and winning and demure, but with a brain so active that nothing to her is impossible.
two generations ago a dashing, handsome young lieutenant of the german army fell in love with a sloe-eyed girl who had been born of slav blood.
he was brilliant but discreditable.
his romances and intrigues were many, and his expenses were about four times what his income warranted. one day he forged a check, and when he skipped over the border to escape arrest he left the woman and a baby girl in a cheap room with not enough money to keep them a week. he forgot them as utterly as if they had never existed, so in the course of time she who gave up honor added to that her life.
she died in the hospital of a disease that is not mentioned in the medical books, and the youngster was shipped to a charitable institution. at the age of nineteen this waif, orphaned, and stolid of character, with
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not even good looks to recommend her, had by dint of hard work and frugal living, saved up enough money to take a ship for america, the land of gold, where fortunes were made by simply wishing for them.
half way across the sea she came to the notice of an irish sailor, and by some strange turn in the inexorable wheel of fate, they fell in love with each other; he with his brogue, and she with knowledge of no language except that of the fatherland.
their courtship was over a rugged road, but it came to a happy conclusion, for before the ship sailed on her return voyage they were married with the aid of an obliging minister assisted by a castle garden interpreter, and connell—that was the sailor’s name—was looking for a job alongshore.
two scantily furnished rooms was the best they ever knew, and in those two rooms the wife who talked broken english with a limerick accent died, but not until she had left a blonde baby girl with the fair complexion of that dashing lieutenant.
as she grew up, the public school gave her an education, and when she was old enough she got work in an office. she was the belle of the ward, and that old longshoreman father was very proud of her. but before that she had one little adventure that is really worth a story by itself, and it shows the kind of a girl she is. she had a little love affair with a sailor on one of uncle sam’s warships, and when he was ordered to cuba she took it into her head to go along. it was arranged that she was to take the name and place of a fellow who was about to desert. she came near getting away with the trick, and as it was she lasted for ten days before she was found. then, after
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a brief interview with the commanding officer, she was put ashore when harbor was reached, and enough money was given her to get back to new york.
it was a clean case of throwback to the army ancestor, and the resemblance was so great that she might have been his sister. she held her head high, as became that one strain of good blood, good enough to stiffen her pride, but not good enough to shape her morals, for the taint was there in its full strength.
the elderly business man who employed her began flirting with her mildly, and he wound up by falling desperately in love, and so hard was he hit that at the end of six months she was installed in a handsome apartment at which he was a constant visitor. he took the one step that always leads to another, so that by the time twelve months had been rolled off on the calendar he had made her home his home, much to the detriment of his own respected domicile.
so great was the fascination of those black eyes that this sedate old gentleman forgot he ever had a home other than the one she was in; a wife, or even children. she became so necessary to his existence that she became a part of his life.
she might have walked this primrose path to the end had he not died. if he had lived there would have been no need for this story.
when he took that long, last journey her income came to an abrupt end and she was cast on her own resources with not even her longshoreman daddy to stand by and encourage her.
all this, you understand, is not a matter of fancy. it is, for the most part, court and police records.
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she took up with a young fellow of about her own age who had about as little prospects as she had, and with the rent paid for three months in advance and just enough ready money to keep them going that long, they cast care to the winds and proceeded to enjoy themselves. one night, when the funds were getting to a low ebb, she, while ransacking a desk for a mislaid letter, found a half-used check-book which had belonged to her elderly protector.
“i could sign his name better than he could himself,” she remarked, “and i’ve done it, too.”
“do you think we could swing one of them now?” said the man, sitting up straight as the inspiration came to him.
“why, that’s absurd; he’s dead.”
“i know he’s dead all right. but fill one out for $75 and i’ll see what i can do with it.”
it was an easy trick for her, and in a moment she had handed him the paper.
“if i lay this, little girl,” he remarked as he went out, “we’re on the sunny side of easy street for the rest of our lives.”
that heritage of brain stood her in good stead while he was away, and before he had returned she evolved a scheme that was worthy of a better cause.
it was this:
she would send him out to rob a letter box; they would open the mail thus stolen and search it for checks. she would copy the signature, make note of the bank, get blank checks of that institution and then commit the forgery.
it was almost too easy and the keynote of its success lay in its simplicity.
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of course, the laying of the spurious paper required nerve, but of what use is a man if he hasn’t nerve? when he came back unsuccessful, she explained her scheme, and they at once proceeded to put it in operation. with wire, to which was fastened an adhesive mixture, he prepared for the robbery of the mail boxes while she awaited results.
it has been told time and again how it worked and they themselves have admitted that their income rarely fell below $100 a day when they cared to work.
but at the end of every ready-money proposition of that kind there is a trap. sometimes the road is very long and the final tragedy is averted for a considerable period, but whether long or short it is bound to come sooner or later.
the girl had grown to be a pastmaster of the art of forging signatures and success in getting the money had made the man bold. he began to be less cautious and the finish came so sure and sudden that it almost stunned him.
he was cleverly harvested by the police, who at once set out to get more than enough evidence to convict, for they looked upon him as the most dangerous of criminals. a spotter was sent out with instructions to ingratiate himself with the girl and, if possible, get a line on just the kind of work that had been done, and their second interview was very interesting.
“you take billy’s place for a while,” she said to him, “and we’ll get enough money to get him out.”
“how?” asked the man.
“how? are you stupid? billy didn’t do anything but lay the paper. i filled out the checks every time. didn’t you know that? it’s all my scheme. billy only
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helped me and did as i told him. but he’s too nice a fellow to go up the river for a thing like this.”
it seems strange that with all her astuteness she should have given her hand away to a comparative stranger, but you must bear in mind that her side partner and confederate had been snatched away from her and she felt the need of some one to whom she could talk and in whom she could confide.
there is where she made a mistake, but it happened that it wasn’t a fatal one.
bear in mind that she gave her hand away and told all she knew, and in that telling there was enough to convict her half a dozen times over. but she was game to the last ditch.
“i’m very sorry,” remarked her supposed confederate to her one evening, “but i’ll have to arrest you. i’m an officer, you know.”
“i always ought to be guided by my first impressions,” she retorted. “i had an idea you were wrong when i first met you and if i had stuck to that you would have known nothing.”
“that’s right; but as it is i’ll have to take you down to headquarters.”
he acted as if it was a job he didn’t relish very much, and if the truth were told he would have let her make a getaway of it if he had dared.
in the prison she was popular as soon as she stepped inside the gates, and there was no one who would believe that a girl with a face like that would be guilty of harming anyone, much less being a confirmed and expert forger.
so the trial was called.
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she treated it as a joke, and was by far the most composed person in the room. her partner, to his credit, swore that he was the one who had done all of the robbing of the mail boxes, and all of the forging of checks, and he even went so far as to imitate several signatures, but that was offset by the evidence of the detective.
it was an easy matter to convict him, and he stood facing a term in prison.
her trial was merely a bit of comedy in which she played the star part, and when the last scene had dropped she was bowing her thanks to the judge, the jury, the lawyers and the spectators, and smiling all the while like a girl with a new doll on christmas morning. the red was in her cheeks and there was a look of roguery in her black eyes, and she sailed out of the courtroom amid a perfect shower of congratulations.
and it was all for one strain of blood.
father an irish stevedore, mother a slav peasant whom centuries of oppression had made apathetic, grandmother also a slav, and grandfather a german noble. she had gone back one generation to get that criminal taint, and she may have gone back further than that to get the good strain that made the whole world smile with her when she smiled and turn enemies into friends.
