One has not space at command to cite all the methods by which the unwary are fleeced out of their wealth. Besides, new and treacherous schemes are constantly being invented. It is impossible to tell what plot the genius of the confidence man will strike next. These shrewd geniuses have even gone so far as the selling of banana stalks to farmers for seed. It must not be supposed by this that all Chicagoans are dishonest, although many foolish people who contrive to get fleeced generally go home uttering loud cries at the greed and dishonesty of the big city by the lake. But as long as there are geese to be plucked there will be rascals looking out for the chance to do the plucking. Take reasonable precautions and you stand in no danger. But make merry with chance companions in questionable resorts, and, unless Providence has taken you under its especial charge, you will go home a sadder, wiser and poorer man.
CHAPTER IX.
AS TO ADVENTURESSES.
This should perhaps have been included under the head of the preceding chapter, for if there are any pitfalls and perils more dangerous than those laid by fair and unscrupulous members of the fairer sex we have yet to be made aware of them. The adventuresses of Chicago, however, deserve a brief and exclusive chapter, inasmuch as they constitute a separate class which might, with very great propriety, be asked to go about labeled with the initials D. F. (signifying “Dangerous Females”). Even then, however, it is safe to say, they would not want for victims, for there are some men who would run after a pretty woman if they were morally certain that the pastime would lead to their everlasting damnation.
The term adventuress is applied to women of careless reputation who, being much too smart to endure the ignominious career of professional demi-mondaines, resort to various shrewd schemes to fleece the unwary. Some of their class work in concert with male partners and in such cases the selected victim generally becomes an easy prey. The confidence man may be dangerous; the confidence woman, if she be well educated and bright, as well as pretty, is irresistible except with the most hardened and unsusceptible customers. The shrewdest old granger of them all, who steers safely through the shoals and traps set for him by male sharpers, will go down like the clover before the scythe under a roguish glance, as it were, from a “white wench’s black eye,” as Mercutio said.
There is no mortal man in this universe of ours, be he never so homely or ill-favored, who does not cherish in his heart of hearts the impression that there is a woman or two somewhere whom he could charm if he wished to. It is the spirit of masculine vanity that forms the material upon which the adventuress may work. With the art of an expert she sizes up the dimensions of her victim’s vanity the instant she has made his acquaintance, and plays upon it to just the extent she deems expedient and profitable. If it were not for masculine vanity the American adventuress could not exist.
Suppose, for instance, that Mr. John Smith, who is a merchant in comfortable circumstances at home and quite a great man in his town, is taking a stroll down State street in the bright afternoon sunshine. He has just gotten outside of a good dinner at his hotel, prior to which he had a good shave and a cocktail—just the combination to make a well-to-do traveler with a little time on his hands feel literally “out of sight,” as the slang phrase goes. Suppose then, as John passes Marshall Field’s, he observes a magnificent creature, a royal blonde, mayhap, or a plump brunette (either will do for the sake of illustration) peeping shyly at him from beneath long silken lashes and smiling ever so slightly. Now John may be a deacon in the church at home; he may even be the father of a large family, but if he is human, and animated by the latent vanity that is the paramount trait of his sex, he will instantly experience a sensation of pleasure and attribute the strange beauty’s attention to his own long-dormant power to fascinate.
That splendid creature with her fine clothes, her exquisite complexion and her graceful bearing, an adventuress? Impossible! At least so John Smith thinks. She may even have a carriage at the curbstone into which she steps daintily, with her eyes still slyly following the amorous John. There is a delicate invitation in the glance, and if John is courageous he will—pshaw! Let us hope he won’t, for it is a dead certainty that the coy beauty is an adventuress of the deadliest and most conscienceless sort. John, who in his confiding soul has set her down as a duchess or a society queen at least, fondly imagines that it is his person of which she is enamored. We, who are better posted, know that it is his worldly wealth that she is after and that even as she gives him an attack of palpitation of the heart by her warm glance she is figuring on how she may most easily possess herself of that wealth.
The schemes of the city’s adventuresses are quite as numerous as those of the confidence man, but blackmail is their great card and the one that they play most successfully. As a rule a prosperous citizen of good reputation and standing in his own town, who misconducts himself when away from home, would rather pay any sum in reason than have his friends at home know of that dereliction. That is where the skilled adventuress makes her strong play. If she has the power to lure her victim into a liaison she has surely had the tact to draw from him in the two or three days they have spent together all the particulars she needs as to his relations in his own town. What a disheartening shock it must be, must it not, to have this splendid creature, who has vowed a thousand times to the doting John Smith that she loves him for himself alone, strike him on the morning of his projected departure for home for a cool thousand dollars in cash? Of course he demurs, but when she pleasantly hints at the trip she intends to make to his town and the exposure that must necessarily follow what is to be done? Poor John Smith! He is not such a gay dog now. It gradually ends in a compromise of some sort, for the lady is seldom too exacting, and if John is inclined to be docile—to the extent of four or five hundred, maybe—she will probably be very good-natured and let it go at that.
This is the highest type of adventuress—the aristocrat of her profession. From her the types descend in grades, down to the very lowest of all, the birds of the night who prowl the streets in search of victims whom they may lure to the dens of their male accomplices, there to be vulgarly drugged or “slugged” and robbed of their portable valuables.