Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/149

Rh and, I was knit into one being with youthful burglars, who, to whet my admiration for themselves, have entertained me with accounts of their burgling houses and demonstrated their truthfulness by exhibiting terrible scars from gunshot wounds suffered as they were fleeing from a burglary they had "made a mess of."

I would never have thought of contributing in any way to bring them to justice; first, because I slavishly adored them, and secondly, because I knew I would be murdered if they should ever entertain the least suspicion that I would "peach."

Experience taught me, during my six years in New York's Underworld, that crooks are particularly prone to confess to a fairie intimate. For they considered fairies (under the legal ban of ten years' imprisonment in New York) far worse criminals and far worse defiers of the law than themselves. Fairies—they thought—would not dare "peach."

Fairies would serve as the best stool pigeons for ferreting out thieves, just as keen filles de joie are employed as detectives.

Buddie McDonald had already received many proofs that I idolized him and would never do anything to his detriment. True: five months later he did "shake" me definitely and emphatically. But this was because he had discovered he had wrung out of me all the money he could; he had become financially independent beyond his wildest dreams; and I had come to be a terrible bore through hanging around his room several times a week and demonstrating myself insatiable.