Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison Part 13

All the details of events leading through the long Summer and Autumn days of 1872 up to the hour when the golden shower began to fall on us are of intense, almost dramatic, interest. I will not, however, lengthen the narrative by giving here any further account of them, but will merely relate the story of the last five days before the actual presentation of our home-brewed acceptances.

The bank had been discounting for weeks comparatively large sums for me.

Many thousand pounds of the genuine article discounted had matured and been paid, and more thousands were still in the vaults, awaiting maturity, and would fall due, while our home-manufactured bills would be laid away in the vaults, there to remain for four or five months until due. Of course a full month or two months before that we could pack our baggage and be on the other side of the world; I on some hacienda in Mexico, George and Mac at some fas.h.i.+onable resort in Florida. They soon to knock at the gates of the Four Hundred, I to spend a year or two in Mexico, playing "grand senor," until, under the skillful management of our friends, Irving, Stanley and White, at Police Headquarters in New York, the affair had blown over, and they invited me to return.

But, as the sequel will show, the reality took on a different complexion from the ideal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOW STREET POLICE STATION.]

My credit at the bank was solid as a rock. That means I had gone through the red-tape routine. It only behooved us to use circ.u.mspection enough to avoid making mistakes in our papers, and fortune was ours. I knew everything was all right, but George, being a thorough business man himself, could not comprehend that it could be quite right, and he insisted upon one supreme test. Any single bill of exchange is seldom drawn for more than 1,000, rarely for 2,000, and one of 6,000 is almost unheard of. If a party in Bombay wanted exchange on London for 100,000, his broker would probably furnish him with one hundred bills for 1,000 each. But George had made up his mind that as a test, and to make an impression upon the bank manager, I should go to Paris and get a bill on London from Rothschilds drawn to the order of F. A. Warren direct. Could this be done it would, of course, make it appear that I had intimate relations with the Rothschilds, and as a minor consideration we could use the Rothschild acceptance--a pretty nervy thing to do, as Sir Anthony de Rothschild, the head of the London house, whose name we proposed to offer, was a director of the Bank of England, and would have to pa.s.s his own paper for discount--that is, paper bearing his name, manufactured by ourselves.

We tried to talk George out of this notion, which Mac and I regarded as a freak, unnecessary in the first place, and impossible anyhow. But he was persistent, and I had to start out and try. I expected an expense of $1,000 and a delay of two weeks, but fortune or the devil favored us.

So, purchasing at the exchange broker's in London 200,000 francs in French paper money, once more I left Victoria Station for Paris. Once more, an unwilling victim, I heard the "wild, fantastic, fitful note of Triton's breathing sh.e.l.l." At Calais I took my place in what the French call a coupe; that is, the end compartment on a car, which, by paying ten francs extra, you can occupy alone. It is unlike the other compartments in that there are no arms dividing it into seats; so one can lie full length on the cus.h.i.+on.

Before this night I speak of I had cherished a theory as to what I should do in the event of an accident happening to any train whereon I was a pa.s.senger. In such a case I proposed to catch on to some object and hold on, leaving my body and limbs to swing freely. My theory ever since that night has been that I will go just wherever the breaking timbers and flying furniture send me. I had fallen into a sound sleep before the train started, and was aroused from it to find myself hurled about the compartment much as a stout boy would shake a mouse in a cage, and quite as helpless.

Our train was off the track. My carriage was near the engine, and the momentum of the long train forced the car in the rear of mine up on end, and it appeared as if it would fall over and crush me. I thought my hour had come, and I cried out, "At last!" There was no fear or terror in it, but merely the thought that after many months of almost incessant travel, and necessarily of peril, "at last" my fate had come. It had not. How good heaven would have been if it had sent me to my doom then and there!

The accident had occurred at Marquise, a small town sixteen miles from Calais and four from Boulogne, the first stopping place of the express.

It was a very long train, but the carriages were all empty except two. A heavy excursion train had left Paris, and the cars were going back empty. What lessened the number of pa.s.sengers was the fact that it was Sunday night. The English do not travel on Sundays as a rule. So, fortunately, a great loss of life was prevented. However, two were killed and half of the remaining pa.s.sengers injured. My own injuries were slight and consisted of trifling cuts on the face and hands from flying gla.s.s. But, far worse than that, I had received a nervous shock, which took some weeks to wear off, and during the rest of my journey to Paris and return to London I was as nervous as a timid woman. I stayed at Marquise until noon, when the express pa.s.sing at that hour made a special stop to pick me up.

In our glorious and free country the killing or mangling of a few persons more or less is of no particular concern to any one beyond the friends of the victims, least of all to the railway magnate or to his servant. But in France an accident which results even in the wounding of a pa.s.senger is a very serious matter to the road where it occurs and to its officials. They always hasten to take the fullest responsibility, and if attention or the more solid matter--cash--can comfort the sufferer, he will have no occasion to mourn long. If one life be lost--even a servant of the road--a strict judicial inquiry takes place upon the scene of the accident, by a high official of the State, advised by experts, not as in this country, by some drunken country loafer or ward heeler, who, all ignorant of the law, has been "elected" county coroner, and one who is more anxious to procure free pa.s.ses on the road than he is concerned for the victim murdered by the neglect or parsimony of inefficient railway officials.

The road from Paris to Calais is known as the Chemin de Fer du Nord, and Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, head of the Paris Rothschilds, is the president of the road. This fact occurred to me within a few minutes of the accident, and I thought I might make use of the affair as a means to help me in my business at Paris. I arrived about dark, went to the Grand Hotel, and to bed at once. My nerves were so shaken that I was timid, even when in the elevator, but I slept well and awoke at daylight feeling better.

At 10 o'clock, limping badly and leaning on a cane, I entered a carriage and drove to the Maison Rothschild, Rue Lafitte. The banking house might well be called a palace. The various offices open upon a courtyard, while the whole architecture of the building would suggest the residence of an officer of State or n.o.bleman rather than a building devoted to finance. But the currents which centre there are potent and far-reaching, and come richly laden with tribute from the four quarters of the world. To win that tribute slaves toil, and, toiling, die, in Brazilian diamond mines, and thousands of coolies, entrapped by agents in China and India, enter into perfidious contracts which commit them to hopeless slavery and send them to wear out their lives in despairing toil amid the pungent and murderous ammoniacal fumes of the guano islands of Chili and Peru. The Rothschilds, too, own the Almaden quicksilver mine and others.

They control the quicksilver industries of the world, and to swell their abnormal h.o.a.rd, portentous in its vastness, other poor wretches, condemned under form of law, are doomed to days of wearing toil, and, their bones rotting from quicksilver absorption, to nights of racking pains. So, too, far Siberia contributes its quota of human misery that the golden stream of interest on century-old loans may have no interruption, but pour on unceasingly into the vaults of the Rothschilds.

Alighting from the carriage and mounting the steps with difficulty, I entered the English Department, and, seating myself, awaited the manager's presence. He came, and expressing great concern when he learned I was a victim of the Marquise disaster, asked what he could do for me. I replied I wanted to see the Baron. He disappeared into a range of offices, and no doubt told Baron Alphonse I was some important personage, doubly important because injured on his road.

Soon a slight, sallow man of about 43 appeared, wearing an old-fas.h.i.+oned stovepipe hat and a shabby suit of snuff-colored garments. The look of the attendants testified that the deity was before me. Taking off his antiquated chapeau he began a profuse apology for the accident, explaining that accidents were most unusual events in France; that he would order his own physician to attend me, that I should have every attention without the slightest charge or expense to myself, etc., etc., and ended by saying I was to command him if he could serve me. In return I told him since he was so distressed over the accident and my plight, I should say no more about either, but as I was too badly shaken to complete the business on which I had come to Paris I should request him to instruct his subordinates to aid me in transmitting the funds I had brought from London back again. He called the manager and told him to accommodate me in anything, then, shaking hands and with many expressions of regret, he withdrew.

I told the manager I wanted a three months' bill on London for 6,000.

He informed me that the house of Rothschild was not issuing time bills, but since the Baron's order suspended the rule in my case, he would procure me six bills for 1,000 each. These really were just as good for our purpose as one bill for 6,000, but I had come to Paris on George's demand that I should procure one bill for this unusual amount, so perforce I had to say "No," that I wanted one bill only.

The manager began to remonstrate, saying it was unusual, and wanted to explain the nature of a bill of exchange, but I cut him short, bidding him recall the Baron at once. The thought of recalling that Jupiter to repeat an order was enough to send a thrill through the entire staff, and he instantly said: "Oh, sir, if you wish the 6,000 in one bill, you shall have it, but it will involve some delay." So paying him 150,000 francs on account, I ordered the bill sent to me at 2 o'clock precisely at the Grand Hotel, and drove off to the Louvre, where I spent two hours in the picture galleries. At 2 o'clock I was at the hotel, and an attendant came with the bill, and, pointing to a signature on it, informed me it was that of a Cabinet Minister, equivalent to our Secretary of the Treasury, certifying that the tax due the government on the bill was paid. He explained the revenue stamp required upon a bill of exchange was one-eighth of 1 per cent. of the face of the bill, making the tax on my single bill 187 francs, or about $37. All bills are stamped in a registering machine, which presses the stamp into the paper; but there were no registering machines for a stamp of so high a denomination as 187 francs either in the branch revenue office in the Rothschild bank or at the Treasury, so the Baron had taken the bill to the Treasury himself and got the Cabinet Minister to put his autograph on it--probably the first and only time in history that such a thing had been done. I wanted very much indeed to keep that bill as a curiosity, but then the necessity of the time was on me, and I was not then a collector of curios.

I had been only eighteen hours in Paris, and by a happy fluke the business was done over which I had counted upon spending a good part of the month.

When I left London I was all at sea as to how I should carry out the objects of my visit to Paris. One plan was to procure an interview by strategy with the Baron Alphonse and try to cajole him, but without reference, and devoid of all business relations or acquaintance in Paris, it was at best a questionable expedient, and I probably would have had a take-down. But the accident at Marquise came and smoothed the apparently insuperable difficulties in my way. But I have found that something unusual does come to help a man on his way to the devil when he is anxious to get there, which he is pretty sure to do, if he is only diligent and careful to improve his opportunities.

What diligence and strict attention to business do men exhibit when they start out to wreck their own lives and break the hearts of those near to them! In a play by a modern writer, one scene presents Satan flying at midnight over one of our cities, while the drunken songs and joyous shouts of some gilded revelers rise in the night. The merry songs and laughter are music to the ears of Lucifer. He pauses in his flight to listen, and as the songs and shouts increase in volume he looks down on the revelers and with a bitter sneer soliloquizes thus of them:

"Ye are my bondsmen and my thralls, Your lives I fill with bitter pain."

And that sums it up pretty well; but we must look straight away from the entrance of the Primrose Way to the exit.

Well, I had successfully played my trump card on the Rothschilds, and, not seeing the end, thought I had won, and cleverly won; so before sitting down to dinner I went to the telegraph office and telegraphed to my partners:

"The Egyptians all pa.s.sed over the Red Sea. But the Hebrews are drowned therein."

Thinking this rather witty, I went to dinner well satisfied. An hour past midnight the moon looked from behind a cloud and saw me, one of many miserables, leaning over the bulwark of that wretched Dover steamer, again paying tribute to Neptune.

CHAPTER XXII.

"ACCEPTED. LIONEL ROTHSCHILD."

When George and Mac received my telegram they, knowing the difficulties of my mission, deemed it incredible that I had succeeded within a day, so when my telegram came they thought I was attempting some jest. Upon my arrival in London, walking into Mac's room--he being still in bed--I announced that I had in my pocket Rothschild's bill for 6,000, drawn on the London house. He flatly refused to believe me, but when he, and later George, saw the bill, they were forced to believe. I at once took it down to St. Swithin's lane, and, leaving it for acceptance, called the next day, when I found scrawled across it in thin, pale ink the mystic words "Accepted. Lionel Rothschild."

The bill itself was drawn on cheap, blue paper, on the same form as the blank bills to be had at the Paris stationers', where I had bought some.

From Rothschilds' I went direct to the hotel where we had our rendezvous, and the acceptance was so simple and easy that Mac had it copied on another bill in ten minutes. The business methods of the bank were so loose that there was no necessity for imitating signatures, but as a precaution this was done to some extent. I then proceeded to the Bank of England for my last personal interview with the manager. I must halt here for a brief s.p.a.ce in the narrative, in order to enlighten my reader upon some new developments, also to introduce the new member we at this time brought into our firm.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "NOYES ESCORTED BY AN ANGRY MOB TO NEWGATE."--Page 379]

There was a friend, a very old friend, of mine residing in Hartford, Edwin Noyes by name. We had known each other from our schoolboy days, and there was a warm friends.h.i.+p between us. Our paths in life had been wide apart, but we maintained a frequent correspondence and often met.

He knew nothing of my primrose life, but supposed, of course, from the style of my living that I was the possessor of a handsome income from my business, which lay, as he imagined, in that mysterious precinct known as "The Street," which, of course, meant Wall street, and that my business was speculating in stocks.

He was a trifle older than myself, of a steady, reserved nature, and a discreet and safe friend. This was the new member of our firm. How he came to be so I must explain. Up to this time, as the reader will have noticed, I was the only one of the party known at the bank, and, of course, was the only one who seemed to be taking any risk. Even in the event of discovery it would apparently be necessary for me only to take flight. George and Mac, not being known in connection with the fraud, could remain in London until such time as they chose to go home. To make matters absolutely safe for me as well we got up this scheme.

I told the manager of the bank that I had bought an immense plant and shops in Birmingham to manufacture railway material, and that I should be there superintending the work a good deal; therefore I might occasionally send any bills I had for discount from there by mail. I had sent two or three lots of the genuine bills in that way. If I could send the imitation bills the same way, Mac and George could carry on the business through the mail in my name and I could be at the other side of the world while the actual operation was going on, so that, far from my ever being proved guilty, there would be proof of my innocence, for how could I be guilty of a crime committed in England at the very time I was on a pleasure jaunt in the West Indies and Mexico? Thus it was arranged. Mac and George could do everything and remain in the background themselves, provided we had a safe man whom I could introduce at the bank as my clerk or messenger, also to represent me in different places where I could introduce him as my messenger before I left England.

The reader will see the extreme artfulness of the plot, but in all wrongdoing there is sooner or later a slip up. Be the plot ever so artful, or however safe the wrongdoing may appear, the unforeseen something will happen.

Of course, Mac and George not being known at the bank need not care, but it might easily be serious for me.

When the explosion came, fifty people in and about the bank would remember my face. But if I brought Noyes on the scene to act as my clerk I need only introduce him to the paying teller of the bank, and to Jay Cooke & Co., the American banking house, where I proposed to buy enormous quant.i.ties of United States bonds, paying for them in checks on the Bank of England. Of course, the bonds being all bearer bonds, would, with our knowledge of finance, be as good as so much cash.

So, knowing Noyes, if he would embark in the enterprise, had plenty of nerve and could never be bribed or bought into betraying us should he by any failure of our plans happen to be arrested, we determined to send for him. A short time before we arrived at this conclusion I had sent this precautionary letter to him:

"Grosvenor Hotel, "London, Nov. 8, 1872.

"My Dear Noyes: You will be surprised to hear from me from London, but the fact is I have been here with George and a friend of ours for a year, and have made a lot of money from several speculations we have embarked in. In fact, we have been so successful that we have determined to make you a present of a thousand dollars, which find inclosed. Please accept the same with our best wishes.

"We may be able to give you a chance to make a few thousands, if you would care to venture across the ocean. Perhaps we can make use of you.

If so, I will send you a cable. If I do, come any way, as we will pay all your expenses should you determine not to go in with us on the deal.

Be cautious and preserve absolute secrecy when you leave home as to your destination. Will explain the reason for this when we meet. Keep your weather eye open for the cable. It may come any hour after you have this.

"Hoping you are quite well, I remain," etc., etc.

A few days later we sent him this cable (it was afterward produced in court in evidence against him): "Edwin Noyes, New York. Come by Atlantic on Wednesday; wire on arrival at Liverpool; meet at Langham."