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 comes to a
man as it did in this case, and that’s the story.
[Illustration: 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.
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
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 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.
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 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 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.”
[Illustration: Disguised as a sailor boy she shipped on one of Uncle
Sam’s ships]
THE THROWBACK
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
[Illustration]
FROM THE WOODS TO BROADWAY
Jane her name was--plain Jane--but she wasn’t plain by any means. She
was far from that. She could smoke a cigarette, drink a bottle of
wine, and wear a Paquin gown with grace, and in these three things
a woman has a chance to show what she is and what she can do. For
my part I would consider them a test, just the same as performing
certain mathematical calculations, and showing a proficiency in
geography are tests in civil service examinations. There is nothing
that gives a woman so much poise and self-confidence as smoking a
cigarette daintily. It gives her a chance to think, you see, and appear
unconcerned, and it is an ambush behind which she may hide in time of
trouble.
This particular Jane had all the vices and charms that a young woman
who is known to the crowd by her first name ought to have, or might
be supposed to have. Men who were introduced to her found themselves
calling her Jane inside of the hour, and that was because of her
genius, for there are a lot of women in this world whose baptismal name
no man would ever dare to use, even though they had been acquainted for
years.