"Jim wanted me to tell you to put the gang 'wise,'" said he.
The girl looked at him sharply and contracted her brows.
"Gang?" she exclaimed. "What gang? Oh, perhaps he meant 'Dutch' and
'Sweeney.'"
Peabody bit his lip. He had had a close call.
"Don't know," he replied, "he didn't say who they were--just to put them
'wise.'"
A second time the detective had made a lucky hit, for Mrs. Parker
suddenly laid aside all pretense and asked:
"Do you want to make a lot of money?"
Peabody allowed that he did.
"Do you know what they have got Jim for?" asked the girl.
"'Phoney' paper, wasn't it?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Parker, "but Jim didn't write those checks. I wrote
them myself. If you want to go in with me, we can earn enough money to
get Jim out and you can do a good turn for yourself besides."
The detective's blood leaped in his veins but he held himself under
control as well as he could and answered indifferently.
"I guess not. I never met a woman that was very good at that sort of
game."
"Oh, you don't know _me_," she persisted. "Why, I can copy anything in a
few moments--really I can."
"Too dangerous," remarked Peabody. "I might get settled for ten years."
"No, you wouldn't," she continued. "It's the easiest thing in the world.
All you have to do is to pick the mail out of some box on a corner. I
can show you how with a copper wire and a little piece of wax--and you
are sure to find among the letters somebody's check in payment of a
bill. There at once you have the bank, and the signature. Then all you
have to do is to write a letter to the bank asking for a new check book,
saying yours is used up, and sign the name that appears on the check. If
you can fool the cashier into giving your messenger a check book you can
gamble pretty safely on his paying a check signed with the same name. In
that way, you see, you can get all the blank checks you need and test
the cashier's watchfulness at the same time. It's too easy. The only
thing you have to look out for is not to overdraw the account. Still,
you find so many checks in the mail that you can usually choose
somebody's account that will stand the strain. Do you know, I have made
_hundreds_ of checks and the banks have certified every single one!"
Peabody laughed good naturedly. Things were looking up a bit.
"What do you think I am, anyhow?" he asked. "I must look like a
'come-on.'"
"I'm giving it to you straight," she said simply. "After you have made
out a good fat check, then you go to a store, buy something, tell them
to forward the check to the bank for certification, and that you'll send
for the goods and the change the next day. The bank always certifies the
check, and you get the money."
"Not always," said Peabody with a grin.
"No, not always," acquiesced Mrs. Parker. "But Jim and I have been
averaging over a hundred dollars a day for months."
"Good graft, all right," assented the detective. "But how does the one
who lays down the check identify himself? For instance, suppose I go
into Tiffany's and pick out a diamond, and say I'm Mr. John Smith, of
100 West One Hundredth Street, and the floorwalker says, 'Sorry, Mr.
Smith, but we don't know you,' what then?"
"Just flash a few letters on him," said the girl. "Letters and
envelopes."
"Where do you get 'em?" asked Peabody.
"Just write them, silly, and send them to yourself through the mail."
"That's all right," retorted the "second story man." "But how can I mail
myself a letter to 100 West One Hundredth Street _when I don't live
there_?"
Mrs. Parker smiled in a superior manner.
"I'm glad I can put you wise to a new game, I invented it myself. You
want letters of identification? In different names and addresses on
different days? Very good. Buy a bundle of stamped envelopes and write
your own name and address on them _in pencil_. When they arrive rub off
the pencil address. Then if you want to be John Smith of 100 West One
Hundredth Street, or anybody else, just address the cancelled envelope
_in ink_."
"Mabel," said Peabody with admiration, "you've got the 'gray matter' all
right. You can have _me_, if you can deliver the rest of the goods."
[Illustration: FIG.3.--A letter-head frill of Mabel Parker's.]
"There's still another little frill," she continued, pleased at his
compliment, "if you want to do the thing in style. Maybe you will find a
letter or bill head in the mail at the same time that you get your
sample check. If you do, you can have it copied and write your request
for the check book and your order for the goods on paper printed
exactly like it. That gives a sort of final touch, you know. I remember
we did that with a dentist named Budd, at 137 West Twenty-second
Street." (Fig. 3.)
"You've got all the rest whipped to a standstill," cried Peabody.
"Well, just come over to the room and I'll show you something worth
while," exclaimed the girl, getting up and paying their bill.
"Now," said she, when they were safely at 110 West Thirty-eighth Street,
and she had closed the door of the room and drawn Peabody to a desk in
the bay window. "Here's my regular handwriting."
She pulled towards her a pad which lay open upon the desk and wrote in a
fair, round hand:
"Mrs. James D. Singley." (Fig. 4.)
"This," she continued, changing her slant and dashing off a queer
feminine scrawl, "is the signature we fooled the Lincoln National Bank
with--Miss Kauser's, you know. And this," she added a moment later,
adopting a stiff, shaky, hump-backed orthography, "is the signature that
got poor Jim into all this trouble," and she inscribed twice upon the
paper the name "E. Bierstadt." "Poor Jim!" she added to herself.
"By George, Mabel," remarked the detective, "you're a wonder! See if
you can copy _my_ name." And Peabody wrote the assumed name of William
Hickey, first with a stub and then with a fine point, both of which
signatures she copied like a flash, in each case, however, being guilty
of the lapse of spelling the word Willia_m_ "Willia_n_."
The pad now contained more than enough evidence to convict twenty women,
and Peabody, with the remark, "You don't want to leave this kind of
thing lying around, Mabel," pretended to tear the page up, but
substituted a blank sheet in its place and smuggled the precious bit of
paper into his pocket.
"Yes, I'll go into business with you,--sure I will!" said Peabody.
"And we'll get enough money to set Jim free!" exclaimed the girl.
They were now fast friends, and it was agreed that "Hickey" should go
and make himself presentable, after which they would dine at some
restaurant and then sample a convenient mail box. Meantime Peabody
telephoned to Headquarters, and when the two set out for dinner at six
o'clock the supposed "Hickey" was stopped on Broadway by Detective
Sergeant Clark.
"What are you doing here in New York?" demanded Clark. "Didn't I give
you six hours to fly the coop? And who's this woman?"
[Illustration: Fig. 4--The upper signature is an example of Mabel
Parker's regular penmanship; the next two are forgeries from memory; and
the last is a dashing imitation of her companion's handwriting.]
"I was going, Clark, honest I was," whined "Hickey," "and this lady's
all right--she hasn't done a thing."
"Well, I guess I'll have to lock you up at Headquarters for the night,"
said Clark roughly. "The girl can go."
"Oh, Mr. Clark, do come and have dinner with us first!" exclaimed Mrs.
Parker. "Mr. Hickey has been very good to me, and he hasn't had anything
to eat for ever so long."
"Don't care if I do," said Clark. "I guess I can put up with the company
if the board is good."
The three entered the Raleigh Hotel and ordered a substantial meal. With
the arrival of dessert, however, the girl became uneasy, and apparently
fearing arrest herself, slipped a roll of bills under the table to
"Hickey" and whispered to him to keep it for her. The detective,
thinking that the farce had gone far enough, threw the money on the
table and asked Clark to count it, at the same tune telling Mrs. Parker
that she was in custody. The girl turned white, uttered a little scream,
and then, regaining her self-possession, remarked as nonchalently as you
please:
"Well, clever as you think you are, you have destroyed the only evidence
against me--my handwriting."
"Not much," remarked Peabody, producing the sheet of paper.
The girl saw that the game was up and made a mock bow to the two
detectives.
"I take off my hat to the New York police," said she.
At this time, apparently, no thought of denying her guilt had entered
her mind, and at the station house she talked freely to the sergeant,
the matron and the various newspaper men who were present, even drawing
pictures of herself upon loose sheets of paper and signing her name,
apparently rather enjoying the notoriety which her arrest had
occasioned. A thorough search of her apartment was now made with the
result that several sheets of paper were found there bearing what were
evidently practice signatures of the name of Alice Kauser. (Fig. 5.)
Evidence was also obtained showing that, on the day following her
husband's arrest, she had destroyed large quantities of blank check
books and blank checks.
Upon the trial of Mrs. Parker the hand-writing experts testified that
the Bierstadt and Kauser signatures were so perfect that it would be
difficult to state that they were not originals. The Parker woman was
what is sometimes known as a "free hand" forger; she never traced
anything, and as her forgeries were written by a muscular imitation of
the pen movement of the writer of the genuine signature they were almost
impossible of detection. When Albert T. Patrick forged the signature of
old Mr. Rice to the spurious will of 1900 and to the checks for $25,000,
$65,000 and $135,000 upon Swenson's bank and the Fifth Avenue Trust Co.,
the forgeries were easily detected from the fact that as Patrick had
_traced_ them they were _all almost exactly alike and practically could
be superimposed one upon another, line for line, dot for dot_.[1]
[Footnote 1: See _Infra_, p. 304.]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Practice signatures of the name of Alice
Kauser.]
Mabel Parker's early history is shrouded in a certain amount of
obscurity, but there is reason to believe that she was the offspring of
respectable laboring people who turned her over, while she was still an
infant, to a Mr. and Mrs. Prentice, instructors in physical culture in
the public schools, first of St. Louis and later of St. Paul, Minnesota.
As a child, and afterwards as a young girl, she exhibited great
precocity and a considerable amount of real ability in drawing and in
English composition, but her very cleverness and versatility were the
means of her becoming much more sophisticated than most young women of
her age, with the result that while still in her teens she gave her
adopted parents ground for considerable uneasiness. Accordingly they
decided to place her for the next few years in a convent near New York.
By this time she had attained a high degree of proficiency in writing
short stories and miscellaneous articles, which she illustrated herself,
for the papers and inferior magazines. Convent life proved very dull for
this young lady, and accordingly one dark evening, she made her exit
from the cloister by means of a conveniently located window.
Waiting for her in the grounds below was James Parker, twenty-seven
years old, already of a large criminal experience, although never yet
convicted of crime. The two made their way to New York, were married,
and the girl entered upon her career. Her husband, whose real name was
James D. Singley, was a professional Tenderloin crook, ready to turn his
hand to any sort of cheap crime to satisfy his appetites and support
life; the money easily secured was easily spent, and Singley, at the
time of his marriage, was addicted to most of the vices common to the
habitués of the under world. His worst enemy was the morphine habit and
from her husband Mrs. Singley speedily learned the use of the drug. At
this time Mabel Prentice-Parker-Singley was about five feet two inches
in height, weighing not more than 105 or 110 pounds, slender to
girlishness and showing no maturity save in her face, which, with its
high color, brilliant blue eyes, and her yellow hair, often led those
who glanced at her casually to think her good looking. Further
inspection, however, revealed a fox-like expression, an irregularity in
the position of the eyes, a hardness in the lines of the mouth and a
flatness of the nose which belied the first impression. This was
particularly true when, after being deprived of morphine in the Tombs,
her ordinary high color gave way at her second trial to a waxy paleness
of complexion. But the story of her career in the Tenderloin would
prove neither profitable nor attractive.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--The check on which the indictment for forgery
was brought.]
The subsequent history of the Parker case is a startling example of the
credulity of the ordinary jury. The evidence secured was absolutely
conclusive, but unfortunately juries are generally unwilling to take the
uncorroborated word of a policeman against that of a
defendant--particularly if the defendant be a young and pretty woman.
Here at the very outset was a complete confession on the part of Mrs.
Parker, supplemented by illustrations from her own pen of what she could
do. Comparison showed that the signatures she had written without a
model upon the Peabody sheet were identical with those upon the forged
checks (Fig. 6) and with Mr. Bierstadt's and Miss Kauser's handwriting.
When Mrs. Parker's case, therefore, came on for pleading, her counsel,
probably because they could think of nothing else to do, entered a plea
of _insanity_. It was also intimated that the young woman would probably
plead guilty, and the case was therefore placed upon the calendar and
moved for trial without much preparation on the part of the prosecution.
Instead of this young person confessing her guilt, however, she amused
herself by ogling the jury and drawing pictures of the Court, the
District Attorney and the various witnesses.
Probably no more extraordinary scene was ever beheld in a court of law
than that exhibited by Part II of the General Sessions upon Mabel
Parker's first trial for forgery. Attired in a sky blue dress and
picture hat, with new white gloves, she sat jauntily by the side of her
counsel throughout the proceedings toying with her pen and pencil and in
the very presence of the jury copying handwriting which was given her
for that purpose by various members of the yellow press who crowded
close behind the rail. From time to time she would dash off an aphorism
or a paragraph in regard to the trial which she handed to a reporter. If
satisfactory this was elaborated and sometimes even illustrated by her
for the evening edition of his paper.
The Assistant District Attorney complained that this was clearly a
contempt of court, particularly as the defendant had drawn a picture
not only of himself, but of the presiding justice and a witness, which
had appeared in one of the evening papers. The Court, however, did not
see that anything could be done about it and the girl openly continued
her literary and artistic recreation. The Court itself was not a little
amused at the actions of the defendant, and when Detective Peabody was
called to the stand the general hilarity had reached such a pitch that
he was unable to give his testimony without smiling. The natural result,
therefore, at the first trial, was that the detective succeeded in
giving the unqualified impression that he was drawing the long bow in a
most preposterous fashion.
At the conclusion of the People's case the evidence that Mrs. Parker had
forged the checks amounted simply to this: That an officer who was
greatly interested in her conviction had sworn to a most astonishing
series of facts from which the jury must infer that this exceedingly
astute young person had not only been entirely and completely deceived
by a detective, but also that at almost their first meeting she had
confessed to him in detail the history of her crimes. Practically the
only other evidence tending to corroborate his story were a few
admissions of a similar character made by her to newspaper men, matrons
and officers at the police station. Unless the jury were to believe that
Mrs. Parker had actually written the signatures on "the Peabody sheet"
there was no evidence that she was the actual forger; hence upon
Peabody's word alone depended the verdict of the jury. The trouble with
the case was that it was _too_ strong, _too_ good, to be entirely
credible, and had there been no defense it is exceedingly probable that
the trial would have resulted in an acquittal, since the prosecution had
elected to go to the jury upon the question of whether or not the
defendant had actually signed the checks herself.
Mrs. Parker, however, had withdrawn her plea of insanity and determined
to put in a defense, which proved in its turn to be even more
extraordinary than the case against her. This, in brief, was to the
effect that she had known Peabody to be a police officer all along, but
that it had occurred to her that if she could deceive him into believing
that it was she _herself_ who had committed the forgeries her husband
might get off, and that later she might in turn establish her own
innocence. She had therefore hastily scratched her name on the top of a
sheet already containing her husband's handwriting and had told Peabody
that the signatures had been written by herself. That the sheet had been
written in the officer's presence she declared to be a pure invention
on his part to secure her conviction. She told her extremely illogical
story with a certain winsome naïveté which carried an air of
semi-probability with it. From her deportment on the stand one would
have taken her for a boarding school miss who in some inconsequent
fashion had got mixed up in a frolic for which no really logical
explanation could be given.
Then the door in the back of the court room opened and James Parker was
led to the bar, where in the presence of the jury he pleaded guilty to
the forgery of the very signature for which his wife was standing trial.
(Kauser check, Fig. 6.) He was then sworn as a witness, took the stand
and testified that _he_ had written all the forged signatures to the
checks, including the signatures upon "the Peabody sheet."
The District Attorney found himself in an embarrassing position. If
Parker was the forger, why not challenge him to write the forged
signatures upon the witness stand and thus to prove his alleged capacity
for so doing? The obvious objection to this was that Parker, in
anticipation of this test, had probably been practicing the signature in
the Tombs for months. On the other hand if the District Attorney did not
challenge him to write the signatures, the defense would argue that he
was afraid to do so, and that as Parker had sworn himself to be the
forger it was not incumbent upon the defense to prove it further--that
that was a matter for cross examination.
With considerable hesitation the prosecuting attorney asked Parker to
write the Kauser signature, which was the one set forth in the
indictment charging the forgery, and after much backing and filling on
the part of the witness, who ingeniously complained that he was in a bad
nervous condition owing to lack of morphine, in consequence of which his
hand trembled and he was in no condition to write forgeries, the latter
took his pen and managed to make a very fair copy of the Kauser
signature from memory, good enough in fact to warrant a jury in forming
the conclusion that he was in fact the forger. (Fig. 7.) This closed the
case.
The defense claimed that it was clear that James Parker was the forger,
since he had admitted it in open court, pleaded guilty to the indictment
and proved that he had the capacity. The prosecution, upon the other
hand, argued that the evidence was conclusive that the defendant herself
was the writer of the check. The whole thing boiled down to whether or
not the jury was going to believe that Mrs. Parker had written "the
Peabody sheet" in the presence of the detective, when her husband
claimed that, with the exception of Mabel's signature, he had done it
himself and carelessly left the paper in his desk in the room.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Parker's copy of the signature of Alice Kauser,
made in court in an attempt to shield his wife.]
The prosecuting attorney was at his wits' end for an argument to meet
the fact that Parker had written a sample forgery of the Kauser
signature before the very eyes of the jury. He found it at last in an
offer on his own part in open court during his "summing up" to write for
the jury from memory a better forgery of the Kauser signature than that
written by Parker himself, and thus to show how simple a matter it was
to learn to do so. He had taken up his pen and was about to give a
sample of his handiwork in this respect when the defendant grasped her
counsel's arm and whispered: "For God's sake, don't let him do it!"
whereupon the lawyer arose and objected, saying that such evidence was
improper, as the case was closed. As might have been expected under the
circumstances, considering the blunders of the prosecution and the
ingenuous appearance of the defendant, the trial ended in a
disagreement, the jury standing eight to four for acquittal.
The District Attorney's office now took up a thorough investigation of
the case, with the result that on a second prosecution Mrs. Parker was
confronted with a mass of evidence which it was impossible for her to
refute. A boy named Wallace Sweeney, sentenced to the Elmira
Reformatory, was found to have been an active accomplice of the Parkers
for several years, and he was accordingly brought down to New York,
where he gave a complete history of his relations with them. His story
proved beyond any doubt that Mrs. Parker was the forger of the checks in
the possession of the District Attorney, and of many others beside, some
of them for very large amounts. The evidence of Sweeney was of itself
quite sufficient to warrant a conviction. To make assurance doubly sure,
however, the District Attorney upon the second trial moved a new
indictment, setting forth as the forgery a check signed "E. Bierstadt,"
so that when Parker took the stand, as he had done in the former trial
and testified that he was the forger, he found himself unable to write
this new signature, and hence his testimony went for nothing.
But even the testimony of Sweeney was that of an accomplice, requiring
corroboration, while that of Peabody remained the evidence of "a mere
policeman," eager to convict the defendant and "add another scalp to his
official belt." With an extraordinary accumulation of evidence the case
hinged on the veracity of these two men, to which was opposed the denial
of the defendant and her husband. It is an interesting fact that in the
final analysis of the case the jury were compelled to determine the
issue by evidence entirely documentary in character. It is also an
illustration of what tiny facts stamp whole masses of testimony as true
or false.
On her examination Mrs. Parker had sworn among other things: (1) That
she had no knowledge of the envelope, the back of which had been used by
Parker for the purpose of directing Rogers, Peet & Co. to deliver the
clothes and money to his messenger--and, of course, that the words "Mr.
Geo. B. Lang" were not in her handwriting. This was one of the envelopes
claimed by the prosecution to have been originally addressed in pencil
and sent to themselves by the Parkers through the mail for this precise
purpose. (2) That she had never seen the "Kauser practice sheets," and
that the words "Alice Kauser," repeated hundreds of times thereon, were
not in her handwriting. For some reason unknown to the District
Attorney, however, she admitted having written the words "I am upstairs
in the bath-room" upon a similar sheet, but claimed that at the time
this was done the reverse of the paper was entirely blank.
Microscopic examination showed that among the words "Alice" and "Kauser"
on the practice sheets some one had written a capital "M." One of the
legs of the "M" crossed and was superimposed upon a letter in the word
"Alice." Hence, whoever wrote the "M" knew what was on the practice
sheet. An enlargement of this "M" and a comparison of it with the "M" in
the defendant's signature to her formal examination in the police court,
with the "M" in "_Mr._" in the address on the envelope and with that in
the "Mrs." on the "Peabody sheet," rendered it obvious that they were
all written by one and the same hand. Therefore it was clear that the
defendant was familiar with the contents of the practice sheets (Fig.
8.), even if she had not written them herself and had not told the truth
in this regard.
Moreover, it was fairly easy to see that the same hand that had written
the words "I am upstairs in the bath-room" upon the second practice
sheet had at the same time and with the same pen written the rest of the
sheet. This was clearly perceptible on examining the "e's" and "a's."
A comparison of the address "Mr. Geo. B. Lang" (on Fig. 1) with the name
Mrs. James D. Singley (on Fig. 4) also shows clearly that one and the
same person wrote them both. And to the accuracy of all these
self-evident propositions a leading handwriting expert in New York added
his unqualified opinion.
Thus, but for a little carelessness in failing to destroy odd scraps of
paper and to disguise her penmanship which it seemed to her quite
unnecessary to do, as in the address of the "Lang" envelope, Mrs. Parker
might well have gone free after all.
It is impossible to describe all the varied dramatic features of this
interesting case. No one who was present is likely to forget the
impression made by the defendant at her second trial, when in defiance
of overwhelming proof she still struggled to vindicate herself.
Her counsel contended throughout the trial that she was a hitherto
innocent young woman led astray and started upon a criminal career by a
rascally husband, whom she still loved devotedly and for whose sake
she had prepared to confess herself a criminal. That James Parker
introduced his wife to a life of crime there can be no doubt, but that
she had a natural predilection for it must be equally obvious. It is
probably true that Mabel Parker's affection for her convict husband was
unfeigned and deep. The natural repugnance of the American jury for
convicting a woman was shown when in spite of the overwhelming proof
upon the Parker woman's second trial the jury remained out eight hours
and then found her guilty of "uttering only," with a strong
recommendation for mercy. She was sentenced to the Bedford Reformatory.
[Illustration: Fig. 8--One of the loose sheets upon which Mabel Parker
illustrated her methods and her skill as a penman to the supposed
ex-convict "Hickey."]