In Paris Bullard opened a gambling house, and there Raymond lived when the criminal ventures from which he was amassing his first fortune permitted.
And now there entered into Raymond's life a very remarkable romance, which almost caused him to reform.
In one of the big Parisian hotels at this time was an Irish barmaid named Kate Kelley. She was an unusually beautiful girl—a plump, dashing blonde of much the same type Lillian Russell was years ago. Bullard and Raymond both fell madly in love with her.
The race for her favor was a close one, despite the fact that Bullard was an accomplished musician, spoke several languages fluently, and was in other ways Raymond's superior. The scales, however, were surely turning in Raymond's favor when the rumor that he was a bank robber reached Kate's ears.
Raymond admitted this was the truth. But he never attempted to take advantage of his friend Bullard by telling Kate that he also was a thief. That was characteristic of the man. Criminal though he was, he never stooped to anything mean or underhanded, and would stand by his friends through thick and thin. Instead of trying to drag Bullard to disappointment with him, he pleaded with Kate to forgive his past and to help him make a fresh start.
"Marry me," he urged, "and I'll never commit another crime. We'll go to some distant land and I'll start all over again in some decent, honorable business."
But Kate would not be persuaded. She could not marry a self-confessed thief—no, never! A month later she married Bullard, little dreaming how glad the American police would be to lay their hands on him. Raymond was best man at the wedding, and to his credit it should be said that the bridal couple had no sincerer well-wisher than he.
RAYMOND'S GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT
Kate never realized how she had been deceived until several years later, when Bullard was given a prison sentence for running a crooked gambling house. She got an inkling of the facts then and her husband confessed the rest. By this time, however, she had two little children, and her anxiety for them impelled her to become reconciled to the situation and stick to her husband. After his release they left the children in a French school, returned to this country, and took a brown-stone house at the corner of Cumberland Street and De Kalb Avenue, in Brooklyn. Here they installed all the costly furniture, bric-à-brac, and paintings which had made Bullard's gambling house one of the show places of Paris.
Soon afterward Raymond also came to America, although there was a price on his head for his share in the Boylston Bank robbery. He lived with Kate and Bullard until the latter's jealousy caused a quarrel. Then he went to London and laid the foundations for the international clearing house of crime which for years had its headquarters in his luxurious apartment in Piccadilly.