Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison Part 14

He arrived ten days later, and at a little dinner given in his honor we told him our plot. He was astounded, and for the remainder of the dinner, and for the day, too, for the matter of that, he acted like a man in a dream, and we three were amazed that he did not instantly fall into our plan.

Here was the dramatic representation of the poisonous effect of wrongdoing. We three had by degrees become accustomed to look upon a fraud committed by ourselves with equanimity. I say by degrees.

Insensibly we had been sinking deeper and deeper, until, our moral senses blunted, we found excuses to our own consciences. But here was my companion and friend; he was no Puritan, but, like ourselves but a few brief months before, regarded crime with detestation, and now, when the men he trusted proposed he should become a party to a crime, his mind revolted in horror. Well for him had he yielded to the prompting of his own conscience and fled from us and the fearful temptation of sudden wealth. At last he said he would consider it. After a day or two of silence he began to question us as to our mode of operation, then his mind became more and more familiarized to the thought, until at last, fascinated by our a.s.sociation, he acquiesced, saying: "I will do it. I want money badly. The Bank of England, after all, will not miss it. So I'll go in for this once."

By our direction he went to an obscure hotel in Manchester square, and then purchased clothes more suitable for his new position than the fas.h.i.+onable tailor-cut suit he wore from New York.

On several occasions I had gone to Jay Cooke & Co. in Lombard street and purchased bonds under the name of F. A. Warren and giving checks in payment upon the Bank of England. So one day I went there with Noyes and purchased $20,000 in bonds, giving my check for them. I then introduced Noyes as my clerk, directing them to deliver any bonds I bought to him at any time. The next day he called and they gave him the bonds which I had given my check for the day before, so there was no necessity any longer for me to come in person to make purchases. Noyes could appear there any day, give an order for bonds, secure a bill for them, and in half an hour bring a Warren check for the amount of the bill, pretending, of course, that he had got it from me, but really getting it from Mac, leaving the check for collection and to call the next day for the bonds.

The same day that I introduced him to Jay Cooke & Co. I took him to the Bank of England at a busy time of day, and while drawing 2,000, I casually introduced him to the paying teller as my clerk, requesting the teller to pay him any checks I sent. Then for the next few days I had Noyes take checks to the bank and had him order two or three small lots of bonds from Jay Cooke & Co., so that they became familiarized with seeing him come on my business.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I DEMAND A GUARD AND SHELTER FOR MY WIFE, THE d.u.c.h.eSS."--Page 282.]

The plan was complete at last. Everything was ready to carry out our scheme in perfect safety to all, and, as related in the beginning of the chapter, I was now on my way to the bank for my last visit, with the Rothschild bill in my hand. Many accounts were given of this famous interview in the English press just after the discovery of the fraud and prior to my arrest, also when the details transpired at the trial.

The facts were simply these: I presented myself at the bank, and, sending in my card to the manager, was ushered at once into his parlor.

After a few remarks upon the money and stock market, I produced the bill, remarking that I had a curiosity to show him which had been sent me by a correspondent in Paris. It was certainly a curiosity; it was a thing entirely unknown in the history of the bank to have a bill of exchange bearing the signature of a Cabinet Minister certifying that the internal revenue tax had been paid on it. This, along with the circ.u.mstance that the bill was made payable to myself, evidently made considerable impression on the manager and confirmed him in his good opinion of his customer. The unusual features of this bill of exchange led him to relate some of the inner events of the bank's history, during which I asked him what precaution the bank took against forgery. He told me a forgery on the bank was impossible. But I asked: "Why impossible?

Other banks get hit sometimes, and why not the Bank of England?" To that question he gave a long reply, ending with the a.s.sertion that "our wise forefathers have bequeathed us a system which is perfect." "Do you wish me to understand you have not changed your system since your forefathers' time?" I said. To which he emphatically replied: "Not in the slightest particular for a hundred years." In conclusion I told him I should be fully occupied looking after my different business interests, but would give him a call if I found time. I also said I would have the bill discounted and take the cash away with me, instead of having it placed to my credit. He called an attendant, gave the necessary order, and the cash was handed me. Bidding the manager good-bye, I repaired to our meeting place and showed the notes for the discounted bill. Even George was satisfied that my credit at the bank was good for any amount of discounts on any sort of paper.

Everything now was ready for my departure from England. For some weeks my partners had been busy preparing for the completion of the operation.

The first lot of bogus bills were ready to go into the mail at Birmingham as soon as I was out of the way--it having been decided that I should then be out of the country. So one Monday late in November I packed my baggage, and, after many warm hand shakings, I bade my friends adieu. We had had many talks about the happy future. We had planned pleasant things in the future, and spoken confidently of our four-in-hands, our Summer cottages at Saratoga and Newport, of our town house, fine suppers and our boxes at the opera. After that I saw them for a brief hour on the coast of France and once more said adieu. When we met again it was in Newgate. I need hardly say that for the next twenty years we had no boxes at the grand opera, no four-in-hands, nor yet any fine suppers, but all that which was merely external pa.s.sed away, consumed in that fierce flame, but all that was manly and true remained; that is, our devotion and courage and our high resolve to conquer fate and live for better things.

Before leaving London we had squared up our cash account. It was something to make one stare to see how our money had melted away. It was arranged to send in the first lot of bogus bills on Thursday, giving me two full days out of the country. Here I made a fatal mistake in determining to go to the West Indies, then on to Mexico. As George had planned I should have gone at once to New York, stopped at the best hotel in the city and registered in my right name. By taking this course I should have been safe and could have laughed at any attempt of the bank authorities to extradite me, for the first lot of bogus bills could have been held back until I had actually arrived in America. Then there could not have been found a single particle of evidence against me.

I say "if I had come to New York." But there is some mysterious spell over men embarked in crime that blinds their eyes to the plainest dictates of common sense or prudence. This has been proved in a thousand dramatic instances, but never more forcibly than in our own. It would seem as if clever, daring men do almost impossible things with ease, but there is a Nemesis which blinds them to trifles, fatal if overlooked, causing them to make mistakes of which a schoolboy would be ashamed.

When we first got our combination together I thought we had found a short cut to fortune, and never doubted of our success to the very end, and amid many mishaps, that either crippled or ruined our schemes and lengthened this short cut to fortune, I maintained my confidence until on that day down in blazing Rio, when the letter "c" in lieu of the "s"

in indorse came to the front to crumble our "sure thing" into ruin. I remember that in the stupefaction which for a few minutes settled down on us, I felt we were really fighting against fate. A fate that like the fiat of Deity says "Thou shalt not," to all wrongdoing.

For some time after that "indorce" takedown a feeling took possession of me that such short cuts to fortune were risky, and that if success did come the success would in the end prove a failure. But there is so much in companions.h.i.+p and such magnetism in human a.s.sociation that when we all three met in Paris and went in and out together, then, under the stimulus of our union, I forgot all my forebodings and began to think the unforeseen fatal something would not happen, and that we could conquer fortune whether she would or no, and by any method on which we chose to enter. But, as will be seen in the sequel, when reveling in an unheard-of success, literally loaded down with wealth, Nemesis appeared and by means even more simple than our error in Rio stripped us of our wealth and dignity and left us naked to every storm that blew.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SHOWERS OF GOLD FALL--AND THEN?

I shall try and condense into a single chapter the narrative of events in London from the time of my departure until the day, some months later, when our scheme exploded and all took to flight when Noyes was arrested.

Our expenses had been so enormous that we were anxious to make enough to recoup them, so it had been agreed that the first batch of bogus bills should not exceed the amount paid out since leaving Rio.

I left for Paris on Monday. On Wednesday, Noyes went to the bank and drew out all the money to my credit, except three hundred pounds. The same day he went to Birmingham and mailed lot number one of home-manufacture bills representing 8,000.

The next twenty-four hours was an anxious time for my friends. The bills would be delivered by the early mail on Thursday, and if all went right the proceeds would be placed to my credit by 12 o'clock, and the bills themselves would be stowed away in the vaults until they were due some months ahead. George and Mac waited with the greatest anxiety until 2 o'clock. They had everything packed for instant flight, when at that hour they sallied out of Mac's lodging and started for the bank to make the test. They had filled out two Warren checks, one for 2,300 payable to Warren, another for 4 10s., payable to bearer.

Noyes went on ahead, the others following, and took his stand on the steps of a hotel in a side street not far from the bank. Keeping his eye out for a suitable appearing party he finally stopped a uniformed messenger, and, telling him to take the 4 10s. check to the bank, bring the money to him there, and he would be paid for his trouble.

Of course, as soon as the messenger had turned his back Noyes bolted around the corner to a place agreed upon, while Mac followed the messenger to the bank and saw he was paid without question. He gave the pre-arranged signal to George, who went with all haste to notify Noyes, and when the messenger arrived with the cash, he found him standing on the steps as cool and unconcerned as possible. Paying the messenger, all three started to the bank, Mac on the way giving Noyes the 2,300 check, which he presented. Nodding good day to the cas.h.i.+er he asked for 2,000 in gold and the remainder in notes, which were handed him at once, and three very happy men sat down that evening to dinner, because the day's operations had conclusively proved that the Bank of England methods were fallible.

The next morning Noyes went to Jay Cooke & Co. and ordered $75,000 in United States bonds, giving a check for them on the bank. The same afternoon he went to Birmingham and mailed another letter, this one containing 15,000 in bills, and later drew 2,000 in gold from the bank. On Monday he went after the bonds, and the $75,000 was handed over to him without questions. The whole operation was a repet.i.tion of these tactics, but with an ever-increasing volume in the amounts of the bills.

On some days the mail brought to the bank letters with bills for $100,000, sometimes for more, sometimes for less. So November and December pa.s.sed away, and the bank continued day by day and week by week laying away in its vaults the worthless collateral of Mr. F. A. Warren in exchange for its gold.

But why not be satisfied and stop while it was all right? That is the question of a wise man, but who ever knew any man who wanted to do a thing, whether he did it or not, who could not find half a hundred good reasons why he should do it. But as Christmas came near Mac began to long for home. He had repaid his father every penny of the large sum he was owing him; there had been a reconciliation by mail, and each steamer that came bore many long letters from parents and sisters, all speaking of their joy over the happy turn of events that was going to bring the absent member of the flock home within its walls again. The father's heart, long estranged, grew very tender toward his boy, and with pride he thought his eldest had thrown off the follies of his youth, and in manful strength was making ample atonements for the thoughtlessness and the wanderings of his youth. He and they were all destined to a terrible awakening. For soon the press of the world was to teem with accounts of his son's arrest and incarceration for partic.i.p.ation in a gigantic fraud. When the blow fell it came with crus.h.i.+ng force on that home, and a shadow deep as night settled down on the household; all joyousness and even hope itself fled when the cable bore the news that their boy had been condemned to life imprisonment in a foreign dungeon. And one by one the members of that family pa.s.sed away from a world that held no more for them since their good name had been tarnished.

In London the boys talked of spending Christmas at home, but the argument to stay--and it prevailed--was that since the money came in so easily and in such amounts it was a pity to run away from it. Then, again, by obtaining an enormous sum and putting it in a place of absolute security, the bank would be glad to compromise the matter in consideration of receiving a million or two back again.

So they spent a pretty merry and an exceedingly expensive Christmas in London, but later in February they determined to pack up and leave.

Everything smiled upon them. The gold and bonds they had, meant fortunes for all. I was away in tropic islands leading an idle life with my bride amid the cocoanut and palm trees. Mac and George had never appeared in the transaction, and as for Noyes, not a soul in all America knew he was in Europe, and in all Europe only three or four people had seen him, and knew him as representing Warren.

The business was finished. All three laden with money were going to leave England, leaving the bank to slumber on for weeks until the first bills became due before there could be a discovery. By that time the cash would have been safely stowed, and how or where or to whom could anything be traced?

So in council they had decided to be content with the enormous amount they had. The last batch of bills was in the mail. Only one day more and the strain on the nerves would be over. That day Noyes bought bonds and drew cash for more than $150,000. At 3 o'clock they sat down to lunch, their last in London, and then went direct to Mac's apartments in St.

James' place. All the material for making fraudulent bills was there, and what could be burned was to be thrown into the grate, and the rest to first be filed into blank nothings and then thrown into the Thames.

The three were there and they were happy. They had engineered a gigantic scheme, had struck for wealth and won. The short cut to fortune in defiance of fate had been traversed and now they set about a grateful task--that of getting themselves and their rich argosy out of England.

Mac being the artist of the party, and having executed the actual writing, drew the sealed box containing the unused bills up to the fire and began throwing them in one by one. In doing so he occasionally would throw some bill more elaborate than the common run on the floor beside his chair. He had finished his task and took from the floor those he had thrown there, looked at them for a moment, then crumbling them together, raised his hand to throw them in the fire, but as the devil always forsakes his friends at the critical moment, he stopped, smoothed out the bills and turning to the others, said: "Boys, these are perfect works of art; it is a pity to destroy them." From our point of view it was, since it was only necessary to drop them into the mail and they would coin us thousands. Then George said: "Suppose we send them in."

The others said "All right," and our doom was sealed.

There were in the lot nineteen bills of exchange for 26,000. A date had been left off one of them! They failed to note it! Poor fools, we had sold ourselves.

Was this an accident? No, it was Nemesis; it was anything you want to call it, but it was not an accident.

So a letter was written, the bills, with memorandum, inclosed, the envelope directed and stamped, and the three fools went to Birmingham, mailed the letter, and then laughed over their success in the fight against society, facilitated themselves that they had discovered the undiscoverable, that they had safely traversed the short cut to fortune.

There is no short cut by wrongdoing to fortune, Boss Tweed and the long list of robber barons to the contrary!

The bills were mailed on Monday. As that fatal letter slipped from their fingers into the mail-box the last act of the deadly tragedy began. When it ended the curtain fell upon us descending from the dock into the chill dungeons of Newgate, never, so far as the sentence was concerned, to emerge again.

On Tuesday morning the letter with the bills arrived at the bank.

Following the routine, they went to the discount department, were discounted and placed to my credit. As I had a balance of 20,000, when the proceeds of the bills were added to it, it brought up the whole to the handsome sum of 46,000.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE DAY OF MY DESTINY IS OVER."--Page 304.]

When the bills arrived at the bank a strange thing occurred. The fatal omission was made on an acceptance of Blydenstein & Co., a great banking firm in London. The discount clerk noticed the omission of the date of acceptance, but this being a mere formality, he thought it a clerical error on the part of the bookkeeper of Blydenstein & Co. He made no report of the matter, and it was discounted along with the other eighteen, which were put away in the vaults with the batches that had preceded it, while he laid this one aside until the next day, which was Wednesday. At half past ten he gave it to the bank messenger, telling him when he went his regular rounds to take the bill to Blydenstein's and request them to correct the omission.

At 2 p.m. on Tuesday Noyes went to Jay Cooke & Co. and ordered $100,000 in United States bonds, and gave them a check on the Bank of England for the amount. He was to call for the bonds next day, of course, after the check had gone through the Clearing House and had been paid.

As soon as the bank opened on Wednesday, in order to test if everything was all right, Noyes sent in a messenger with a small check, and the money was thrown out as at all other times without remark. And that was a complete demonstration that everything was all right. So it was then, but within thirty minutes from that second the messenger was going to start with the bill to Blydenstein's for correction.

This was 10 o'clock Wednesday. The bills had been twenty-five hours in the possession of the bank, had been discounted and the proceeds placed to my credit for twenty-four hours.

Who with intellect less than an archangel's could have divined the true combination? First of all, that men brilliant and clever, gambling with their lives, could have made such an omission, d.a.m.ning, fatal. Second, if made, that the great Bank of England, thought absolutely infallible by the whole world, conservative, supposedly cautious, would have discounted a bill for 20,00 with the date out of the acceptance, and having done so, hold the bill well on into the second day, without a discovery, and that, too, when the firm whose acceptance was a forgery was not 100 yards away! So when at 10 o'clock on Wednesday Mac saw the small check paid without question to the messenger it seemed he had an a.s.surance doubly sure and a bond of fate that all was well, and that the last batch of bills was packed safely away for another three months in the vaults of the bank.

So Noyes went at once to Jay Cooke & Co., and as the check had been paid at the bank they handed over, as in so many other occasions, the $100,000 in bonds to him.

Mac and George were outside. George took the bonds and gave Noyes a 10,000 check, and one minute from his leaving Jay Cooke & Co., Noyes was at the counter of the bank. The cas.h.i.+er counted out the $50,000 to him. He walked out of the bank with a lighter heart and more buoyant step than ever before, for was not the danger all over and the long strain on the nerves at an end, the transaction complete and fortune won? He was never going to the bank again.

They had arranged to meet at Garraway's Coffee House in Exchange alley.

This is the Garraway's that became so famous at the time of the South Sea Bubble, and its fame continued down to the end of the wars of Napoleon. Then its glory departed as a centre of speculations, but its renown as an old-fas.h.i.+oned chophouse remained till 1873. Everywhere in contemporary English literature, from Swift and Addison to Goldsmith and Johnson, one meets references to Garraway's.