My first few months in the county jail were put in hard enough. About all I did was hate Irish Annie, and plan ways and means to revenge myself on her. I kept close track of her through friends and learned that her punishment began the day she got back to Canada. Her girls left her establishment when they saw her turn copper; her friends in the Tenderloin shunned her as if she had the leprosy. Finding herself cast out by these outcasts, she gathered up what she could and joined the gold rush to Alaska. Then, just when my bankroll had melted away under the heavy expense of two attorneys’ fees and incidentals, and I was beginning to wonder if I would finish by having to eat the jail fare, a number of mysterious money orders came to me from Nome and Skagway. I couldn’t but think this was conscience money from Annie. This took the edge off my hatred and I began making excuses for her. After I had several hundred dollars, the money orders stopped coming. No letter or explanation came, and I remained mystified. At last a prisoner who was brought into the jail en route to San Quentin from Alaska put an end to my guessing. Irish Annie was dead. My informant was very discreet and mentioned no names. “Certain people,” he said, “and good people, too, found out that she had a bunch of dough. They went into her crib, tied her up, and took it. When they went out, one of them said to the others: ‘Black is in the county jail in San Francisco. He ought to have one end of this money. That woman put him there.’ “They didn’t know she had snitched on you and objected to splitting you in with the coin. The first party, your friend, went back into the crib, and croaked her. When he came out he said: ‘I’ve done that for Black. Now, does he get his end?’ “You got it, didn’t you?” I acknowledged the money and asked no questions. My attorney learned later, and told me, that when she was found dead and her body identified, the police began a search for me, and the only thing that saved me was my jail alibi, the only alibi that ever convinced anybody. With Annie off my mind I then began hating the pawnbroker. But before I went to Folsom he was charged with perjury in another case and went broke saving himself from a prison sentence, and I put him out of my mind. I didn’t worry about the coppers framing me in. I started it. It was their business to put me away if they could, and if they hadn’t played my game I would have beaten the case on them. It has always been a question with me where this framing and jobbing started; whether the defense originally began it and forced the prosecutor and police to do it in self-defense, or whether it was the other way around. I never could find the answer; long ago I gave it up and filed it away with that other old question about the hen and the egg.