Ellen Peck conceived a very simple scheme of piano swindling, and I was in partnership with her in it. She had been working this swindle alone until she had become known to all the piano dealers. Then she invited me to join her. Here is how we managed it:
I would go to a store and buy a piano on the installment plan, paying five or ten dollars down. The instrument would be delivered at some one of the twenty furnished rooms which Ellen had engaged for just this purpose in various parts of the city.
As soon as the piano was installed at one of these rooms we would promptly advertise it for sale at a greatly reduced price. If the first purchaser did not move the piano at once we would sometimes be able to sell the same instrument to five or six different persons. When we had squeezed as much money as we could out of a piano we would disappear—only to repeat the same trick at another furnished room and with a piano from another store.
It sometimes happened that, when the several persons to whom we had sold a single piano came to claim it, the merchant from whom we had secured it and to whom it still belonged would also put in an appearance. Then there would be the liveliest kind of a squabble, which would have to be settled in the courts.
Crafty Ellen Peck supplied the brains for this enterprise but made me do most of the hard work and gave me only a meager share of the profits. It was a despicable swindle, for the loss did not fall on the dealer, but on the poor families to whom we sold the pianos and who could ill afford the money we took from them. I am thankful to say that I did not long make my living in this mean way.
I hope that Ellen Peck may be alive to read these lines. In her declining years wisdom and charity have doubtless come to her just as they have to me. I feel sure that she shares my sincere repentance for past errors, and that she will give me her hearty indorsement when I say, as I constantly do, that under no circumstances does crime pay.
CHAPTER V
HOW I FACED DEATH, HOW MY HUSBAND WAS SHOT, AND SOME NARROW ESCAPES OF MY COMPANIONS