There is an old maxim in criminology: “Once a criminal, always a criminal.� We do not indorse that theory, by any means, not even in the abstract; but it is certain that we would indorse it if it were written to read: “Once a criminal, frequently a criminal again.�
Madge Babbington, as she was addressed by her intimates, was the type of woman who could never be classed with criminals, but Nick Carter, as he watched her during the trial, came to believe that she had developed traits during that interval in Scotland when the Lynne millions were the lure, and during the interval of her arrest and the weeks consumed in her trial, which, though dormant till now, would shape her whole future life.
Criminal traits are sometimes inherited, and when they appear suddenly, as in the case of the Babbington woman, inheritance is the most logical explanation of their presence; and, although they may have been dormant, and never once suspected, even by the possessor of them, for years, once inherited criminal tendencies obtain the upper hand in a character, they are there to stay.
And this was the manner in which Nick Carter read the character of Madge Babbington.
He had been at some pains, before the trial, to look up her antecedents, and he had found that Madge Morton-Hurd-Babbington had had a checkered and none too pleasant career.
Her father had once been an officer in the British army in India, where she was born. He had been handsome and skillful—more skillful with cards than with arms, as it proved. He had gone wrong; had been cashiered and dismissed from the service; had become an adventurer, traveling over Europe as a professional gambler, and had dragged with him his young daughter, then a mere child, whose mother had long ago deserted them both.
There you have it.
When Madge Morton’s father finally shot himself rather than stand trial for a forgery he had committed, the daughter had taken to singing in music halls, and from there had drifted into the “legitimate,� and her talents had quickly taken her to the top.
She became a star, and accepted a season’s engagement in New York, where she met Hurd, and married him. A divorce followed, and she married Babbington, who died very soon afterward.
But her two marriages had brought her a competence, although not wealth. But both of them had given her something that was quite as dear to her soul as money, and that was an entrance to and an assured position in the very cream of society.