(Copyright, 1908, by the New York Herald Co. All Rights Reserved.)

PART I.

I  AM thirty-eight years old and I have a criminal record of twelve years. My face is in the Rogues' Gallery in New York. Scotland Yard gave me a weary chase, and for years the police of Paris and Berlin were nightmares to me. I have tasted the bitterness of prison life, having been tried and convicted for forgery in Chicago.

      I make this bald statement neither in a spirit of bravado nor as a seeker after sympathy. As I would tell a father confessor the story of those blackened years, truly and as simply as their complexity will permit, I here set forth the narrative.

      Scoffers there be in plenty to cry that such a tale of woman's degradation will serve no good purpose. But living as I have, through almost every phase of life, as you will presently see, I have learned that even the most sordid story can point a moral.

      My reformation comes through no religious enthusiasm. I know no creed, and since I was ten years old have never attended a religious service except while I was in prison. Nor am I a would-be reformer, I am Just a woman whose veneer of crime did not stifle that longing for a woman's birthright, the love of an honest man, home and children.

      Sometimes it was mighty hard to keep that little flicker alive, but it was the one human thing in my life, and I felt that if I let that go I would go down to the lowest dregs. I told the prison chaplain about it one day, and the way he took my band in his and the things he told me were sweeter than water to the thirsty traveller. From that day I got a fresh grip on my little shred of hope, and though I had hard running and stumbled more than once after the prison gates were opened, I won my birthright. I have a husband who knows my past but loves me devotedly; I have a home, and, joy of joys, I have a son! To you women who have always been good these three things may seem commonplace, but to me their possession is a blessed miracle for which I lift up my heart daily in joy and gratitude.

      Before I turn back the years to what to me was the beginning of things the story of my mirror must have a place, as my face has played no inconsiderable part in my career. I have been called beautiful; at twenty I passed for sixteen, at thirty-eight my most severe critic would tax me with only thirty years. My gay little French mother bestowed upon me great, dark eyes, a laughter loving mouth filled with small white teeth, and a spirit of unquenchable youth. I am slender but not tall, have small hands and feet, and my father's gentle blood has etched rosy features into lines of refinement.

      My mother was a dancer in the Kiralfy ballets, my father was a young man who belonged to a wealthy old family. They had neglected the formality of a wedding ceremony and my arrival was doubtless far from welcome. These details I learned in after years, though I have never been quite clear as to who tided me over the period of my early infancy. Certain it is that my mother did not burden herself with the cares of the nursery. My father I only knew from a little faded photograph given to me after my mother's death.

      My first memory dates back to a convent, where I was one of many blue aproned children. The ringing of a bell and the marching in line ordered our days in ceaseless monotony. In the morning a great clanging ended our dreams and we hurried into our clothes, standing in line while the monitors washed our faces, braided our hair and fastened refractory buttons. Another clang and we marched to prayers, then on to breakfast of bread and milk, on to the schoolroom and on and on to the various tasks of the day, the bell ringing out at every interval until bedtime found the silent, joyless line with measured step headed for the dormitory.

      When I was in prison, robed in the garb of shame and forever marching from one task to another, I harked me back to those blue clad days of childhood so far away and yet so like in the sickening routine. Now when I think of those sad faced little ones a surging pity fills my heart and I toss my boy until he crows and gurgles and register a vow that one child at least shall have his full portion of laughter and sunshine.

      One day a wonderful little lady came to the convent and took me away. She was young, and I was so awed by her beauty and the gay ribbons and feathers that bedecked her that I could not remember to call her mother. I know now that the home my mother took me to was untidy and tawdry, but in it I learned to laugh and to play and blossomed out amid the gay chatter of mother's visitors, who came in and out at all hours with an entire absence of ceremony.

      I lived with mother for five years. When I was almost ten she died, and one of mother's visitors, whom I had been taught to call "Uncle Jock," took me home with him and my education began.

      That no fault of the grievous years shall be laid upon my mother, I must pause to tell you the impress she made upon my life. I have thought it all out since, and I look upon the few years with her as the leaven of my maturity. Although she did not lavish upon me any great amount of affection, and certainly did not discipline me or teach me any of the things mothers usually impart to their children, she did teach me to meet the buffets of fate with a brave front and smiling lips.

      I have often heard her say, "Laugh at trouble; the world does not like sad people." That she lived up to that precept I know, for often we were hungry and cold, especially when mother became ill and could not dance any more. Her face grew white and pinched and her eyes looked very big and bright, but even to the end she would try to sit up and laugh and chatter with the dancing girls and queer looking men who came to our tiny room. When I saw her after her eyes had closed for the last time the smile still hovered about her lips.

      I have known a lot of ballet girls since, and they all seem possessed of that generous quality that prompted those Kiralfy girls to share their slender purses with mother and me. If their moral standard is more lax than the accepted one it is because they have never been taught to think beyond their toes. Their lives are frightful grinds and the reaction turns them into irresponsible children, so my first impression of women was that to live from day to day, heedless of the future, and to follow the guidance of any one who was kind enough to do the thinking, was a very satisfactory programme for a woman's life.

      And so we come to "Uncle Jock." Jacques Lutreau is the name he went by at that time. I am going to give Jacques Lutreau the benefit of the doubt when I say that he took me home with hint without any definite plans for my future. Sometimes in bitterness of spirit I have been tempted to think otherwise, but in my life there has been no time for hatred, malice or recriminations born of an uncharitable spirit. In any event, no one else wanted me or would take me, so of the two evils left to choose from, a home with Jacques Lutreau or a charity institution — well, possibly I drew the long end after all.

      Lutreau's home, after our one small, poorly furnished room, seemed a luxurious affair. As a matter of fact it was a fairly comfortable flat, three flights up, over a grocery store. A. living room, with an alcove, where Lutreau slept, a bathroom and a combination kitchen and dining room held out before me a vista of comfort of which I had never dreamed. But I was too heartbroken to care about the new things. I cried my lonely little heart out, as only a child cast out alone into the world can cry. My poor little butterfly mother, whose wings were broken so soon, was a dear and beautiful reality to me after those negative days in the convent.

      It will give you a glimpse into the contradictions of Lutreau's character when I tell you he gathered up all of mother's trinkets and poor little souvenirs and arranged them in my room; even her dancing shoes and frock of tinselled gauze were carefully put in a box and laid on my dresser. He also told me of my father and gave me the worn photograph. For a little while he left me alone with my grief. He was very quiet and walked the floor unceasingly, but one night a lot of men came in. Next morning when I awoke they were still playing cards, and after that Lutreau grew more like his former self.

      He was disgusted beyond measure and gave way to a volcanic explosion of French imprecations when he discovered that I could only read by spelling out the words, and could not write at all! Lutreau was highly educated, master of several languages and an omnivorous reader. He took me in hand and taught me daily to such good purpose that at fifteen I was reading Balzac and De Maupassant in the original. But I must not go ahead of my story.

      The lessons followed the vagaries of Lutreau's moods rather than a set course of study. Reading, writing, bits of philosophy and classic lore were jumbled together for me to assimilate as best I could. And when Lutreau found that I was ambidextrous he taught me sleight of hand tricks, at which he was very clever. I wonder yet if this freak of nature was responsible for my subsequent career.

LUTREAU MADE ME COPY SIGNATURES OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

      Lutreau had good reason to keep his knowledge of this tricky art a secret. I found our "magic séances," as he called them, great fun and worked hard to perfect myself. My one talent is drawing. This interested Lutreau greatly and he obtained a good teacher for me. I liked the drawing better than the writing, though I developed great facility with pen work. But Lutreau made me copy signatures over and over until I could practically duplicate them, and it was very tiresome.

      All the while I was leaving my scrawny, childish looks behind. Lutreau fed and clothed me well, and I am sure that he never spoke one harsh word to me; but I do not think that I ever was troubled to feel grateful, and certainly I never felt for him the least bit of affection. Just why I cannot explain, unless it was intuition, for the keenest craving of my life has always been to love and be loved.

      No woman ever came to the flat and I soon lost sight of mother's friends. The only woman I knew at that time was the one who came to us twice a week to wash and clean. Ignorant as she was, I took comfort in her presence and looked forward to her days of work.

      The gambling became a nightly occurrence. I could hear the whir of the roulette wheel and the clink of coin, and sometimes angry words, but I soon became accustomed to these sounds and slept as peacefully as if I were in the convent. I acquired the habit of not asking questions, and Lutreau never spoke of his affairs. Naturally of a gay temperament, my youth rose paramount, and I made the most of the impersonal life we led, and as Lutreau was my only companion I took up his pursuits for pastime. I learned to juggle the roulette wheel — I say juggle advisedly, and I could go him one better on the tricks that had made him the most noted card sharp on the Continent. But my star performance, and one that Lutreau gloried in, was to hold a cigarette in my right hand, blowing the smoke into myriad rings, while with my left band I could manipulate the secret springs under the roulette table or go through my neighbor's pocket with equal ease.

      At fifteen I had become a sleight of hand artist and Lutreau never tired of putting me through my paces.

      About this time Lutreau brought home a facsimile of a signature, "James Henry Brown" — I could write it now blindfolded! Over and over I copied this autograph until a perfect signature came from my pen; then I wrote the name on a blank check, and James Henry Brown himself would have sworn that his hand, not mine, had written it. Strange as it may seem, I had been kept in complete ignorance of business dealing and knew nothing of crime; therefore I did not associate the signature with anything; in fact, I did not know the yellow slip was a check.

      Three days later we made an abrupt departure from the flat and sailed for Cherbourg. For the first time in my life I was moved to wonder. Lutreau started on the journey disguised as a feeble old man with a white beard. We were booked as father and daughter under the name of Janvier. Long afterward I discovered that Lutreau had obtained $5,000 on that signature, "James Henry Brown."

      But before this discovery my eyes had been opened to Lutreau's game, and I was no longer an unsuspecting tool or lay figure. I cannot explain even to myself the thing in me that took me, acquiescent and unprotesting, from one job to another. Psychologists have pointed out to me that my reasoning powers at that time were entirely dormant and that my faculties other than those developed by Lutreau for his own purposes were undeveloped. They also insist that Lutreau worked out a clever scheme of his own in my education. From other quarters has come the suggestion that I was hypnotized. But that theory is exploded by the fact that I kept right on in my criminal career after Lutreau and I had parted company.

      Nature gives short shrift between girlhood and womanhood. I left New York an undeveloped girl, after two weeks in Paris I saw things through a woman's eyes.

      Lutreau kept to his disguise, but he bad me fitted out with lots of pretty clothes and had me taught to do my hair and hands and how to wear my clothes until I shone forth as a young woman of fashion.

      Our quarters were much more pretentious than our flat over the grocer's, but the roulette layout and card tables gave a familiar air to the place. Women as well as men came in and out, drinking much absinthe and smoking many cigarettes. Lutreau had discarded the feeble carriage, but retained the white hair and close white beard, dressing immaculately in the latest fashion. We prospered, he presiding with dignity over the roulette table, I blowing smoke rings and answering his signals, or — but it is hard to write — it hurts now to think of those terrible days.

      Between times there were gay parties at the cafés, in which Lutreau never joined. Some of my new friends were kind and Jolly, and I saw Paris, and Paris went to my head, and I quivered with youth and the joy of life. A great many people came to our apartment, and we took some more rooms. Everything was bright and gay and going beautifully until Count Zika began coming. From the first I thought him abominable, but be lost his money with good grace, and so I tried to stand his attentions as best I could.

      The night finally came when for the first time I came face to face with the penalty to be exacted if we were discovered. Even now I turn sick when I think of it. Zika was known to carry a pocket case containing some valuable jewels and Lutreau planned to pull off the job before he should stop frequenting our place. I usually took up my end of the job with a lightness of spirit only equalled by that of my fingers. I hated the prospect of this Job in proportion to my dislike of Zika, but I took my cue and — well, I cannot tell you just how it happened. Zika drank absinthe and waxed ardent, I smoked my cigarette and watched the smoke rings, and — presto, change! — I felt the case slip into my blouse against my heart, which was thumping like mad.

      Nothing out of the usual occurred for almost an hour, and the play grew heavier as time went on. I had gone back to the table opposite Lutreau, when Zika's voice, very calm and very clear, broke in.

      "No one is to leave the room; I have been robbed;" and looking up we found Zika guarding the door with revolver in hand to emphasize his words. For a moment my heart stood still, but I did not move, and in a Bash the slide under the table giving access to the secret workings of Lutreau's wheel came to me. Another quick change, the springs worked silently, the case was shut in the table. But it was a close shave, and for days I was too nervous and too sick at heart to work.

      Zika, despite indignant protests, compelled every one in the room to undergo a thorough searching. When he left I felt sure that he was only partially convinced that he had lost the jewels elsewhere. That night's work put our place under suspicion and was the beginning of the end of our sojourn in Paris.

      Zika came but once after that. The same night two strangers joined in the play. Lutreau gave me a look which signified that I was to drop out of the game, and I knew that something was up. Zika was a little beast; the bold look in his ferret eyes always made me shiver.

      I had never been confronted with the sex problem. Lutreau had made me his partner in crime, but he had sheltered me from contact with what be called the "filth" of his fellow creatures. Of the awful barter and exchange between men and women I was absolutely innocent at that time. I am not sure but that the awakening, when it did come, was not all the harder for this ignorance.

      I have matured very slowly, mentally and physically. My youthful looks are the outward sign of very slow inward growth. Doubtless if I had been with women or girls of my own age I would have known more of men and their morals.

      Lutreau wits a queer chap. I had always known that he was not related to me in any way, but he never referred either to his past or family. That he was born a gentleman is beyond question. In his habits and dress he was refined to the point of fastidiousness. Never, even in the little New York flat, did he appear before me in négligé, and my first lesson from him was that I must not come out of my room in the morning in my night dress. In fact, I remember that when he provided me with a dressing gown I thought this article of apparel was a very remarkable and unnecessary addition to my wardrobe. I never saw Lutreau give even an admiring look to a woman; he showed impartially, to men and women, a charming, suave cordiality. I do not think women cared for him. He was too impersonal.

      If in the gambling rooms a man came too close to me or attempted any familiarity, Lutreau had a fashion of looking at him long and slowly, a steely light in his eyes, until the man read his meaning. This look flared up to a danger signal on that last visit of Zika's.

      The little beast — I cannot call him anything else — laid his hand on my bare shoulder and leaned over my chair until his hot breath was on my cheek. He had no time for words. Lutreau's face grew fairly black with anger, though his voice. was steady enough as he bade me say goodnight to the company.

      After I left the room words were passed, provoked by a sneering remark from Zika. Just what was said I never knew, but, though the incident raised no uproar, the affair did not tend to help our position.

      The two strange men alternated with other strangers in dropping in, but Lutreau was on and took no chances, playing a straight game and keeping me idle. But there was little money in that, and he began to absent himself more frequently and for longer periods. What his occupation was while away I did not know, but I was not allowed to see any one during his absence.

      We had an old French woman who was maid of all work and chaperon as well. How she could lie! I have heard her swear by all the saints to tales that could only be evolved by a perfervid imagination. Lutreau would never let me scold her for this incorrigible untruthfulness; he insisted that she was too fine an article to be spoiled; besides he believed in every one working out his own salvation.

      "Non-interference with others," he would say, "is the basic principle front which is evolved the only satisfactory form of existence."

      I have found this bit of Lutreau's idle philosophy to be a very good precept. At all events, I did not interfere with Marie, and her glib tongue stood me in good stead.

      I affixed many signatures to various notes and checks during those last days in Paris, and I felt instinctively that some change was at hand.

      Lutreau woke me one morning at two o'clock; we got a few things together and were out of Paris before sunrise. We left Marie at the apartment, with instructions to remain a week longer; she was then to join us at a small resort in the Alps. This, of course, was a ruse; we did not see Marie again. If she ever went to the rendezvous she found only her return fare to Paris, which Lutreau was careful to mail in Paris, so that there would be no telltale postmark.

      When we left our apartment we drove rapidly to a small house in a dingy quarter of the city. Lutreau paused, after dismissing the cab, and peered about him before he approached the house, the door of which silently opened to us. There were a few hurried words with some one, I could not see whether it was a man or a woman, the ban was in such total darkness. Lutreau led me to a shabby room and told me to don the clothes that were lying on the bed. In twenty minutes we left the house by a back entrance that took us through a long, dark alley into another street. Lutreau was garbed as a priest, I as a Sister of Charity. In this disguise we went to Brussels, doubled back and in a week's time were in London, installed in comfortable lodgings. But, alas for the vanity begot of my pretty Paris frocks!

      I was introduced to London as a curly beaded boy in trousers, Eton coat and broad white collar!

      Lutreau wore his own black hair, which was lightly sprinkled with gray; a black mustache, and hideous side whiskers that changed the entire expression of his face. Smart, English cut clothes well padded out gave him additional size, and lifts in his shoes made him taller.

      He looked like a prosperous business man, and as his English was perfect there seemed little chance of our being recognized.

      Those boyhood days of mine often come back to me. I felt horribly awkward at first but soon grew to like the freedom from skirts. I looked ridiculously childish, and the mother old soul who attended to our needs would not believe that I was the fourteen years that Lutreau claimed for me. In reality I was almost eighteen.

      Lutreau had left the name of Janvier in Paris; we were now Middleton, father and son, and our first few months in London were uneventful. We lived quietly, Lutreau took me sight seeing and sometimes to the theatre, but the greater part of the time I gave to reading and drawing. Lutreau brought home a lot of topographical maps and had me copy them, and afterward draw them from memory. He also had me familiarize myself with some rough sketches of buildings that looked like prisons. I began to wonder what was in his mind.

      He received long letters with foreign postmarks, which he answered at length, and then he began to go out alone a great deal. One night a queer looking man, with bushy beard and hair, came to see him, and the two sat up all night poring over papers and maps and making copious notes.

      Blessed be that lacking quality in me that prevented my realizing what a miserably lonely life this was for a girl of eighteen! At the time other girls are just on the threshold of all that woman holds most dear I was alone through the long days, and many nights, in a London lodging house, disguised as a boy, with not one friend in the world, save Lutreau. In his absence I had not a soul to speak to but the serving woman. Happily, I was ignorant I knew nothing but the niche I was accustomed to occupy, so I had no fretting soul to darken my days. I did chafe a bit at the constant confinement, and, as I began to show it in my looks, Lutreau struck upon the plan of having a visiting governess. A sturdy fräulein was engaged. In the mornings I studied German and drawing and in the afternoons we took long walks or rides on top of the 'bus, and I felt like a happy boy. Those were very good days. Fräulein was phlegmatic to an appalling degree, but she was some one to talk to, even if I was forced to stumble over the gutturals.

      There began to be many letters, written in what I supposed to be Polish, for me to sign. Lutreau would sometimes bring in two or three at a time, with either a written or photographic copy of the signature to be forged. He was mightily engrossed, and I knew that some big job was brewing.

      I had never helped him on an outside job, and when one night he informed me of a new line of work that I was to take up I must confess that I was scared. I was to go as a page to the Russian Embassy.

      I cannot tell you very clearly what the job in its entirety was, or whether or not it was of international importance. Lutreau never vouchsafed any whys or wherefores. I was only an integral part in his schemes, and from his point of view it was not necessary for me to know anything but the part I was to play. All that he told me was that I was to go to the embassy next day: was, ostensibly, to know but one language and was to perform the duties of a page according to instructions. But I must keep my ears open for every bit of French conversation, must memorize it and make notes of it.

      The important thing was to gain entrance to a certain room. Lutreau gave me explicit directions as to its location and contents. On a large table I would find charts; among them were three blue ones interlined with red, which I must endeavor to make miniature copies of in the rough. In a secret drawer of a cabinet in the room (Lutreau gave me a diagram of the cabinet and a key which he said would unlock it) was a bundle of letters tied together and fastened with a large black seal.

      Had it occurred to me to object to such a tremendous undertaking Lutreau's matter of fact manner of giving me my orders would have precluded any such rebellion on my part. But it was a very frightened small boy who went to the embassy next day, in company with a smooth faced young Russian, who met us in Trafalgar square.

      This part of my story may sound rather melodramatic, but crooks, especially the educated class, do not go in for that sort of thing. They lay out their plans as carefully as a man who is following the ordinary business pursuits; it is all business to them and they work accordingly. The lay of this job was fairly safe and undoubtedly clever. There were two men, the young Russian, who was an under secretary, and his pal, an older man, who was working as a butler. They could not do the work cut out for me, but they could make opportunities and screen me while I pulled it off. It was safe that a pretty boy of such obvious youth and innocence would be beyond the pale of suspicion. I was to go home at night, so there was no danger that my sex would be discovered.

      I had wondered how Lutreau had got me into the embassy; that was explained when I found that the butler had engaged me and was to give me my orders.

      While my position was safe enough, for the first week the job looked hopeless to me. No one was allowed in the room but a middle aged man who worked over the chart table all day, carefully locking the door if he left the room for a moment. The responsibility of planning was spared me. I reported each night to Lutreau, and though he made no comment, all the while plans were materializing for me to accomplish the task.

      The guardian of the room was called away. I afterward found that a decoy letter had taken him to Paris. On the day of his departure I reported an hour earlier than usual, and with the aid of the butler I gained entrance to the chart room. The butler made pretence of having some occupation in the adjoining library, and arranged a signal to notify me of danger. It was only a minute's work to get the letters, but before I had time to more than glance at the charts, the sharp tap agreed upon warned me to get out as quickly as possible. I paid two other visits to the room that day, under similar conditions, but made little headway. The charts were complicated and the rough, hurried outline I could make seemed to convey little meaning of the original.

      We got the letters and my sketches out of the house as quickly as possible. In assisting the young Secretary into his topcoat it was a simple matter for me to slip the documents into his pocket without being observed. We planned another visit for the next morning, at an earlier hour. I did not have any nerves at that time, so went about my duties of fetching and carrying, in undisturbed spirits.

      Of course, there was a chance that the robbery of the letters might be discovered, but that was not for me to worry about. Lutreau had never been seen, either with me or in the vicinity. Fräulein called every night at nine to take me home, waiting for me in the servants' hall.

      There was a banquet at the embassy that night, and during its progress it became necessary for me to carry a message in to the First Secretary. The beautiful jewels and gowns of the women were dazzling and I enjoyed the scene as I stood, salver in hand, waiting for a reply. Suddenly a voice that fairly froze my blood rose above the hum of the gay conversation:—

      "What a pretty boy?" The drawling tone focused every eye upon me, and looking up I met the level gaze of Zika. There was no mistaking his expression. He knew me.

(To Be Concluded.)

READ PART II HERE.