"But what awful linen!" she exclaimed, holding it out to Dr. Zeller as
she sat in a ward with twenty other women inmates regarded as among
the hardest to watch and control among the 1,900 inmates of the great
institution. "I'm surprised at you! Can't you buy better linen than
that?"
But while she talked and the doctor smiled, a small key fitting
nothing in particular was laid by Dr. Zeller close at hand and it
disappeared in ten seconds. Likewise a pencil from the doctor's pocket
found its way almost unnoticed into "Fainting Bertha's" blonde hair.
Her smiling face all turned to frowns when finally, one at a time, he
took the key from her waist and the pencil from its hiding place in
her hair.
"Did you ever know a man named Gunther?" asked Dr. Zeller suddenly.
"Yes--what of it?" she asked quickly, with a show of nervousness.
"He is in the penitentiary."
"Good! Good!" exclaimed the girl. "I'm delighted to hear it. He ought
to have been there long ago, and he ought to stay there the rest of
his life!"
This was the man whom Bertha charged with responsibility for her
first wrong step as a girl, sending her first to the Glenwood (Ia.)
Home for the Feebleminded. Later she charges that this man taught
her the fainting trick, by which she faints in the arms of a man or
woman wearing jewelry or carrying money and in the confusion biting
the stone from a pin and swallowing it, or with small, supple hand
taking a purse from a pocket or a watch from its fob, perhaps with
innocent eyes and dimpled face assisting the loser in the search for
the missing valuable.