GOOD DEEDS WHICH CRIMINALS DO AND WHICH SHOW THAT EVEN THE WORST THIEF IS NEVER WHOLLY BAD  
A life of crime is a life of hard work, great risk, and, comparatively speaking, small pay. Anyone who has followed these articles will agree at once that whatever the criminal gets out of his existence he pays very dearly for. Not only is he constantly running great physical dangers—the risk of being shot or otherwise injured and of being caught and imprisoned—but many of his most carefully planned criminal enterprises are doomed to failure and he has only his labor for his pains.
 
Quite frequently bank burglars devote as much as three or four months of hard labor in preparing for an important robbery and, in a large percentage of cases, they find that, after all their patience and industry, it is impossible for them to execute the robbery they have so carefully planned and all their work goes for nought. Sometimes, too, they are interrupted in their work and have to flee, leaving behind their kits of valuable tools. Watchmen's bullets are ever threatening their lives and prison walls constantly loom up before them.
 
In view of these facts one would imagine that the money which the professional criminal makes at such great risk and expense and with so much difficulty would have an enhanced value in his eyes. But this[Pg 251] is not so. Not only is the professional criminal an inveterate gambler, as I have repeatedly pointed out, but the great majority of them are generous to a fault.
 
While this generosity is almost universal in the underworld, those unfamiliar with the workings of the criminal heart would give it very little credit for such impulses.
 
My experience in the underworld has thoroughly convinced me that no criminal is wholly bad. I know that beneath the rough exterior of many of the desperate criminals with whom I came in contact beat hearts that were tender. To-day I shall relate some of the more striking incidents which come back to me and which illustrate some of the good qualities possessed by the notorious criminals with whom I associated.
 
I am reminded of an experience I had with Dan Nugent, the bank burglar. I may say incidentally that this man Nugent was absolutely fearless and would resort to any measure, however desperate, to accomplish his purpose. He was a man to be feared and it was dangerous to cross him. But that this criminal had some very excellent qualities will appear from the following incident, now told for the first time.
 
While in Kansas City I robbed a bank, securing some four thousand dollars. As I was leaving the bank—it was in the day time—I saw Nugent going in. Evidently he had planned to rob the bank himself. We did not speak.
 
[Pg 252]
 
Within a few minutes after my departure the robbery was discovered. The doors were at once closed and no one was allowed to leave without first undergoing the scrutiny of the detectives who had been summoned by telephone. Poor Dan was caught in the trap and his identity being established he was at once arrested on suspicion of having been implicated in the robbery, if not the actual perpetrator of it, although the only evidence against him was the fact of being on the premises.
 
Dan was kept in custody for some hours, but at length the police were compelled to let him go, being unable to strengthen their case against him.
 
Later that day I happened to run into him.
 
"Sophie," he said threateningly, "you owe me two thousand dollars!"
 
"How do you make that out?" I asked quite innocently, not knowing to what he was referring. I didn't know then that the robbery I had committed had been discovered and that Nugent had been arrested for it.
 
"You got four thousand dollars in the bank this morning," he replied bitterly, "and I got arrested for it."
 
He seemed to be in a very ugly frame of mind and I knew he was not a man to be trifled with. I asked him to step into a café and talk it over. We entered the back room of a nearby saloon and Nugent ordered some drinks.
 
There were various persons seated at other tables in the place, but we attracted no particular [Pg 253]attention. After the waiter had served us and left the room, Nugent took off his hat, held it across the table as though he were handing it to me, and beneath the shelter it afforded pointed a gun at me.
 
SOPHIE, IF YOU DON'T HAND ME $2,000, I'LL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF
"SOPHIE, IF YOU DON'T HAND ME $2,000, I'LL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF"
 
"Sophie, if you don't divide up on that job, I will blow your head off!" he threatened in a low voice.
 
I admit I was frightened, but I did not lose my head. Instead I began to cry copiously.
 
"Dan," I sobbed, "I declare by all I hold holy I didn't get any money in the bank this morning. I've just gotten out of jail and I'm dead broke. My poor children need lots of things I can't buy them. I wish I had got that money at the bank this[Pg 254] morning, but I didn't. It must have been some one else who made a safe get-away, and I think it's pretty mean of you to treat me this way," and I began to cry more strenuously than ever.
 
Dan looked at me a moment searchingly and then, deciding that my grief was genuine, put up his gun.
 
"Don't cry, Sophie. I thought you got the money, and I wanted my bit, that's all. I'm sorry to have scared you. Forget it, old girl, and cheer up."
 
Nugent then asked me what the kids at home needed, and I told him everything I could think of. He took me by the arm and marched me into a dry goods store and made a number of purchases of the things he thought the children would want, and gave them to me, along with a little money for myself. We then parted, Nugent wishing me all kinds of luck and firmly believing in my fairy tale.
 
I really ought to have shared the money with Nugent because I had stolen a march on him in robbing the bank before he got a chance, and he got into trouble through me. But I knew he had made a big haul in a bank a month previous, and I was practically without funds, so he could more easily afford the loss of the two thousand than I could. But, like most criminals, Nugent had a kind heart, and, when his finer nature was appealed to, he could not help being noble and generous.
 
As another illustration of the kindness of heart of some criminals, let me tell of a letter I received from a world-renowned criminal, whose name I will[Pg 255] not now disclose. This unfortunate man is now serving a term in a foreign prison for a daring bank robbery in which he was caught through his anxiety to help a pal—although if he had thought only of himself he would have been free. I will quote from his letter to me and you will see the kindness that dwells in his big heart:
 
"My dear Pal:—Now, I want you to do me a little favor. Don't send me any money or presents at Christmas, but take the money that you would use on me, and go out and buy some turkeys and give them to some of the poor people who live around your place. It will make them feel good, and it will be a better way to use the money than to waste it by sending it over to me."
 
A man who can write such a thoughtful letter as the above and can sympathize with others in distress is not entirely a bad man, even though he is a convicted criminal. It is sad, indeed, to think that such a large hearted man should have to spend most of his days behind prison bars instead of being at some kind of labor where he could be of service to mankind and do all the decent things which his kindly thoughts of others would prompt him to do.
 
Not because I want to convey the impression that I am better than any of the other criminals whose exploits I am narrating, but, on the contrary, because the incident I am about to relate is typical of what notorious criminals are doing every day, I[Pg 256] am going to tell of another experience in which I figured.
 
It was when I was in New York. One day, while loitering in a bank in the vicinity of Broadway and Chambers street, I observed a woman draw some money. She put it in a handkerchief and then placed the handkerchief in her pocket. I was in need of money pretty badly just then and decided to follow the woman and get the money.
 
After she came out of the bank I got close to her and had no trouble in taking out the handkerchief and the money. She was walking down toward the river front and, having started in that direction, too, I had to continue for a block or so in order not to excite suspicion by turning back. I walked a little behind the woman, and, when we reached the middle of the block, she stopped and spoke to me:
 
"I beg your pardon, madame, but can you tell me where the French line steamboats dock?"
 
I directed her to the proper place and we got into conversation. She told me that she was going home to her mother in France in order to die there. She had been given up by the doctors here as an incurable consumptive and had sold all her goods for a few hundred dollars with which she was to pay her fare and give the rest to her mother. I became interested in this, for it seemed to me that I had robbed a woman in distress of her last ............