GREAT
THE
BANK ROBBERY
INSPECTOR BYRN.
JUJAN HAWTHORI


150
CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

ORNELL
CORNELL
BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT
FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY
HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE


9-2213
Cornell University Library
PS 1847.47
The great bank robbery from the diary of
3 1924 022 055 077
olin


LO
Letisi
PS








hxg2 :
13
4,791815
COPYRIGHT,
1887
By O. M. DUNHAM. ,
Press W. L. Morshon & Co.,
Rahway, N. J.
- , , 3 .3
> 59
* * * * *


CONTENTS.
PAGE
I
.
7
20
29
CHAPTER I.
Å JOURNALIST,
CHAPTER II.
THE ROGUES' GALLERY,
CHAPTER III
A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN,
CHAPTER IV.
THE DIAMOND DEALER,
CHAPTER V.
INSPECTOR BYRNES,
CHAPTER VI.
THE BANK ROBBERY,
CHAPTER VII.
A NIGHT WATCHMAN,
CHAPTER VIII.
A MAN WITH EYES,
CHAPTER IX.
EVIDENCE,
CHAPTER X.
A GRADUATE OF THE CITY,
43
53
61
70
.
84
93


iv
CONTENTS.
.
109
125
CHAPTER XI.
A SECRET MEETING,
CHAPTER XII.
AN AMATEUR SUGGESTER,
CHAPTER XIII.
A MYSTERIOUS PURCHASE,
CHAPTER XIV.
AN ACCIDENT,
CHAPTER XV.
STOLEN MILLIONS
138
149
167
CHAPTER XVI.
184
.
.
192
DISAPPOINTMENT,
CHAPTER XVII.
A FINAL INTERVIEW,
CHAPTER XVIII.
SHEVELIN,
CHAPTER XIX.
THE INSIDE,
208
.
.: 223
-


THE GREAT BANK ROBBERY.
CHAPTER I.
A
JOURNALIST.
NE day last autumn-it was an afternoon in
One ctober, as thinkum was walking apteewon mana
had just passed the Lotos Club, on Fifth Avenue,
when I overtook a newspaper man with whom I had
an acquaintance: His connection with journalism
was of long standing, and his professional familiar-
ity with affairs was augmented by strong natural
powers of observation, and a retentive memory.
He had lived in New York for nearly twenty years,
had mingled much in society, and knew not only
every body who was any body, but also a great
many persons who did not belong to that favored
class; yet who, in their own way, were perhaps not
too interesting. Inasmuch as he possessed, in addi-
tion to these attractions, a sympathetic tempera-
ment and a genial address, it need not be said that
he was an agreeable companion.
The sun, dropping toward the west, sen its
broad luster up the avenue, casting our shadows
before us on the pavement, and shining in the faces


2
A JOURNALIST.
of those who met us. It was a Saturday; the side-
walks were well-filled, and numbers of carriages
were rattling up and down the roadway, with here
and there an express wagon or a hansom. Ever
and anon, too, one of the new Fifth Avenue stages
would rumble past with an austere-looking driver
on the box, and a beardless youth in uniform loll.
ing on his seat by the door. Fashionable people
had begun to return from the seaside and the
mountains, or from England and the continent;
and the fine weather had brought them out to
breathe once more the metropolitan air, in which
there always seems to abide an element, more or
less noticeable, of vivacity and excitement. As
this was my first day in town, after months of the
profound serenity of a remote sea-port, I was
peculiarly sensible of this remote stimulus.
“How are you ?" said my journalistic friend.
“You're looking about right. Come to stay?
Look here, if you've nothing better to do, drop
into the St. James's with me at six o'clock. We'll
have a bird and a bottle, and afterward find out
what there is in this new play. Eh? How does
that find you?”
I said that the bird-and-bottle proposition pleased
me; but I was not so sure about the play. I could
recollect having seen several new plays that had not
been satisfactory. Could he suggest nothing else?
“I know what ails you !" returned my friend,
glancing at me with a grin of penetration. “You
don't want the trouble of hunting up your swallow-
tail. Oh, well, I'm not so dead-set on the play,


A JOURNALIST.
3
either. I'll tell you what we'll do ; we'll have a
look at this horse-taming chap. I was up there
last week, and got my money's worth. You never
know what's going to turn up.
You can wear any
thing you like : and it isn't a beer garden either ;
the best sort of people go there—ladies and all.
Eh?”
“ By all means !” said I. “ I saw Rarey when I
was a boy, and I'd like to see whether this man
can do what he could."
“He'll give you your money's worth,” repeated
the journalist, with confidence, “especially as it's
my treat! That's fixed, then. Now, will you come
up and smoke a cigar in my room while I write a
letter!"
I replied that I would walk up to the park for an
appetite, and rejoin him later. At this juncture
we were standing on the east side of the avenue,
at its intersection with Broadway, and were prepar-
ing to make the diagonal crossing to the Fifth
Avenue Hotel. There was a considerable throng
of vehicles ; but eventually the gigantic guardian
of the peace who bears sway in this vexed region
raised his arm ; the tide of traffic stopped as if by
magic, and the squad of pedestrians hastened
across, we among them. My friend was in front
of me; and as he approached a small, elegant
brougham, driven by a dignified coachmarf, I saw
him glance at its occupant, raise his hat and bow.
The occupant, who returned his salute with a
slight smile and inclination of the head, was in such
a position that I had a very good view of her. She


4
A JOURNALIST.
was a woman apparently thirty years of age, but
still of remarkable beauty. She was dressed in
some dark material, with bonnet to match, and her
face was pale, with delicate and expressive features.
Her expression was grave and cold; and yet I fan-
cied there was a capacity for strong passions in this
beautiful patrician countenance. But either the
passions had never found vent, and therefore had
gradually subsided into the depths of her nature,
or else they had flamed up and burned themselves
out in some strong crisis of circumstance. Be that
as it might, the face was an impressive one, and the
slight gesture she had made in recognizing my
friend had an indefinable grace and charm. It
seemed to me that the history of this woman, who
evidently belonged to the most refined and wealthy
class, could not fail to be interesting. When I re-
joined my companion on the other side of the
street, I ventured to make some remark about his
unknown acquaintance.
“Oh, that ?” said he. “Yes, I know her, slightly.
You haven't met her before, eh? So much the
worse for you!”
“If you had been abroad twelve years, you
wouldn't have known her either.”
“Well, no, that's a fact. I first came across her
sometime in 1878. Yes, I could tell you something
about her-something that not five living people
know. But you're a novelist, and I won't trust you!'
"If she trusted you, you certainly might trust
me," I replied.
“Who said she did trust me ? Maybe she couldn't


A JOURNALIST.
5
help herself. Well, if you must have some consti-
tutional à bien tốt! And don't forget to be on hand
again at six sharp: the bird and the bottle wait for
no man !
So saying he plunged through the swing-door of
his hotel, and I continued on my way up the avenue.
The pale face of the lady in the brougham still
dwelt in my memory; she seemed to have photo-
graphed herself permanently on my retina. I won-
dered who she was, what her experience had been,
how my journalistic friend had become acquainted
with her, and what were the curious facts, the knowl-
edge of which he shared with so few. Was it an
elopement, a divorce suit, or what ? As I had
nothing better to do for the time being, I specu-
lated freely on the subject, but without, of course,
coming to any satisfactory conclusion. I made up
my mind to make further inquiries; and then I re-
flected that the truth would probably dispel what-
ever romance I had imaginatively invested her with,
and that I had better let well alone. Presently,
however, I began to examine the carriages as they
passed, thinking that I might perhaps catch another
glimpse of the little brougham. But though there
were several that nearly resembled it, that particu-
lar one did not reappear; possibly the owner lived
in the lower part of the avenue, where some of the
older families still hold on, in defiance of the great
tradesmen's invasion. But, at all events, I so sel-
dom found my way into New York society, that it
was a thousand to one I never saw the mysterious
beauty again.


6
A JOURNALIST.
I reached the boundaries of the park in due time,
and, facing about, set out on my return journey.
The west was now crimson, and the figures of those
who passed me appeared dark against the light.
People were alighting at their doors, or turning
down the side streets. Wealthy and fashionable
New York was going home to dress for dinner.
How prosperous and brilliant they seemed--those
wealthy people! But at the same time, in other
quarters of the city, another class of human beings
was awakening to activity, whose whole life was one
of secret war against these favorites of fortune. It
was a war that had lasted as long as history, and it
was still in full vigo Sometimes numbers of the
attacking party had forced their way into the ranks
of their opponents, and had (outwardly at least)
become one with them; sometimes those born to
ease and honor had descended to the level of the
children of night. The line was not a hard and
fast one, after all. Who can tell whether the man
with whom we daily associate may not have a mur-
der or a robbery on his soul? At this point I found
myself on the corner of Twenty-sixth Street ; and
the clock struck six as I ascended the steps of the
hotel.


CHAPTER II.
THE ROGUES' GALLERY.
MY
Y friend was waiting in the lobby ; we entered
the dining-saloon, and the head waiter, with
a gesture of professional grace, at once welcomed
us, and waived us on to a table by the window.
Here another attendant took off our hats and coats
for us and laid them in the third chair, while we
seated ourselves opposite each other, and unfolded
our napkins. After a little private conversation with
the Ganymede in evening dress, my companion
turned to me with a hospitable smile.
“ To sit down to a nice dinner with a good appe-
tite and a clear conscience," said he,"is, as this
world goes, to be one man picked out of ten thou-
sand. If there be one class of the community more
likely than another to belong to that enviable cate-
gory, I flatter myself it is the journalists. Next to
the journalists I should place
“ The novelists?” said I.
“Well, not exactly : at least, courtesy prevents
my saying so; I was about to say, professional
criminals.”
“ The novelist is not necessarily a professional
criminal,” I returned, “ though I have often thought
ihat a professional criminal might, if he chose, write


8
THE ROGUES' GALLERY.
a very interesting novel-a realistic novel, of course.
I can imagine, too, that he might often have an un-
commonly good appetite: but when you include a
clear conscience
“I see : like so many others, you are the victim
of a hoary superstition : you approach the matter
a priori, instead of by practical induction. You have
yourself suffered the torments of remorse, (yes, I
have seen your last book), and on that and other
grounds you hastily conclude that the professional
criminal must live in a state of constant interior
torture. Well, sir, you couldn't make a bigger mis-
take. Mind you, I'm not talking about the amateur
or occasional criminal,- I'm talking about the pro-
fessional. Ever see the Rogues' Gallery?"
“ Never."
“I thought not. Now, consider for a moment
under what circumstances those photographs are
taken. You have committed a forgery, say : this
is your second offense ; and if you are convicted,
you are jugged for life. You are arrested, and
lugged to headquarters. You are taken into an
apartment furnished, to say the best of it, with
extreme simplicity, and are put in a hard-bottomed
chair in front of a camera. You are about to be
made a member of the Rogues' Gallery ; that is,
your countenance is to be preserved forever for the
contempt, suspicion and hostility of mankind. In
short, the situation is not one to call out your most
engaging expression-eh?"
“I have not found that photography does that,
even under the best conditions."


THE ROGUES' GALLERY.
9
“ Quite so! Very well, then. The next time
you go down town, stop in at Mulberry Street, and
ask Byrnes to let you have a look at his collection
of portraits. And then tell me what you think of
it!”
Here my friend lifted his glass, which contained
a transparent liquid of a fine crimson hue, held it
up for a moment to the light, passed it under his
nose, nodded to me, and ingulfed about a third
part of it. I followed his example.
“In the meantime," I then said, “suppose you
tell me what you expect me to think of it.”
“ You will think,” he replied, “that you have
seldom seen an equal number of intelligent, respec-
table, self-satisfied persons. Nothing diabolic,
nothing brutal, no sigrs of corroding anxiety or
secret agony. No, sir! You will find unwrinkled
brows, unfurrowed cheeks, untroubled eyes, com-
placent mouths. Here are people who enjoy their
eight or nine hours good sleep every right-or day,
to be accurate : who live in a state of constant mental
and physical activity ; who forget the past, enjoy the
present, and hope in the future. The humdrum rou-
tine, the stale repetitions, the circumscribed sphere
of thought and action, the wearing burden of duties
and responsibilities that plow up the souls and faces
of other men, are all unknown to your professional
criminal. His responsibilities begin and end with
himself. There's nothing else to hamper him. My
dear fellow, just fancy for one moment the state of
a man who feels that he owes nothing to society !
No fear of social opinion-no obligation—no slay-
..


10
THE ROGUES GALLERY.
ery to it! Why, it must be to the mind what an-
nulling the attraction of gravitation would be to the
body! How many things have you done in your
life that you didn't in the least want to do—that
you'd sooner be shot than do-simply because
society expected it of you? How many calls have
you made, how many fools have you been civil to,
how often have you made a fool of yourself, from
sheer abject deference to this empty-headed and
cold-hearted Mrs. Grundy? And her tyranny
doesn't end there, by any means. Take another
view of it-"
“Will you drink the same with the entrée, sir ?”
interposed the obsequious Ganymede, “or will I
open the champagne, sir?"
“Eh? Yes. Just a drop, to whet my whistle.
Where was I? Take, I say_look at the other side
of it. Here's a man, come of a good family, and
all that, and married to a pretty woman with a lik-
ing for fine clothes and jewelry. He's in business
down town, and he makes a lot of money; but she
manages to spend more than he makes. Mrs. Van
Pigster and Mrs. Ten Uxter have such and such
things; she is every bit as good as they are, and
she must have 'em too. So she has 'em; and the
bills come in, and what does poor Jones do? Why,
he pays 'em, of course ; but in order to do that, he
has to—well, sometimes he takes a flyer on the
street; sometimes he gets a loan from old Mc-
Screwby; sometimes—well, you know how it is.
Sooner or later he gets caught, and then it's Can-
ada or the devil. And all for what? All because
;


THE ROGUES' GALLERY.
11
Mrs. Grundy expects every man to do his duty,
whether he can or not, on pain of social pains and
penalties. His duty! Why, a galley-slave is a
king to him! And as for the professional criminal
—but look here. I thought you had an appetite.
Pass your plate.”
“My soul is feasting as well as my stomach.
Yes, I grant all you say about the exactions of
society. But there are objections on the other
side, too. Your happy criminal is liable to arrest
at any moment; he is apt to spend at least a third
of his life in jail ; and he carries his life in his hand
at all times. His whole existence when at large is
an effort to dodge the police. There can never be
a moment when he can sit down and know he's
safe. How is that compatible with the ease of mind
that
you
credit him with ?”
My dear boy,” returned the journalist, after
wiping his mouth and carefully twisting up his
mustaches, “ I'll tell you just what I think. I
think that the criminal profession would not be
nearly so well-filled and popular as it is, if the objec-
tions you have stated were done away with. If
there were no law to defy, half the fun of outlawry
would be gone. What men want is excitement,
peril, conflict, variety, freedom!"
“Ah! Freedom !”
“Exactly-freedom! Must I quote Lovelace to
you u ? "Stone-walls do not a prison make, nor iron
bars a cage !' Handcuffs and a cell imprison a
man's body, but our poor supposititious Jones, before
he went to Canada, had felt the gyves on his soul.


I 2
THE ROGUES' GALLERY.
You must excuse me, but I can't help being elo.
quent on this theme. Now, the soul of a criminal
(don't forget it's the professional I am talking
about), never gets handcuffed. He always means
to get off, and half the time he does.
He never
stops hoping, for there are too many reasons for
hope. But poor Jones doesn't hope ; he knows the
crash is bound to come sooner or later; and when
he falls, he falls like Lucifer ; it isn't simply a ques-
tion of physical inconvenience. Which would you
rather do—spend ten years in Jones's shoes, or in
Sing Sing--with two and a half years commutation
for good behavior, and the chance of escaping to-
morrow? Being a professional, the dread of social ob-
loquy can not touch you. You not only don't care for
it, you're proud of it ; for the more they hate you,
the greater is the compliment to your power and ca-
pacity. You are no hypocrite-except in so far as
you may call an actor a hypocrite-and all you have
to do is to plot and contrive, and, when the time
comes, to act.
You are constantly matching your
wit and resources against those of law and society :
you attack, you parry, you retreat, you out-fraud.
There's no time for ennui—your blood is always
on the jump! From the first of January until the
first of July your successful merchant travels from
his home on the avenue to his shop on Broadway,
sits there all day, and comes home at night. Per-
haps he looks in at the club or at the theater, per-
haps not ; but that's his life, year in and year out-
a human shuttle moving backward and forward in
a fixed line between two rows of brick and mortar,


THE ROGUES GALLERY.
13
In summer he runs down to Long Branch or up
to Saratoga, drinks gin, smokes a cigar and sits on
the veranda. That is what he does and he imag-
ines it to be life ! Now look at your criminal. He
is here to-day, in Chicago to morrow, in New
Orleans on Saturday, in California or Europe next
week. He never does the same thing twice over,
he never looks at things from the conventional
standpoint, he seldom runs a year that does not
bring him from the height of luxury to the depths
of want or vice versâ. Now he's lurking down blind
alleys in a ragged overcoat and a pair of trowsers,
with a hole in his hat, no sole to his shoe, and his
imagination for a supper : the next moment, as it
were, he's living on the fat of the land, dressing in
silk and cambric and broadcloth and diamonds,
driving fast horses and smiling to himself over the
newspaper stories of the last big burglary. You
may call that what you will, but it's life, whatever
else it may be !”
“ Almost thou persuadest me to be a profes-
sional,” said I, meditatively absorbing the Roman
punch. “But of course it's all humbug. You are
talking—that's all. You don't mean a word of it.
You are an eloquent man, no doubt; but all your
eloquence wouldn't suffice you to paint the horror
and misery of the least miserable and horrible crim-
inal career. Life, indeed ! The life of a hunted
wolf-of a rat chased by a terrier! Why the
absence of one element alone—of social happiness,
of the comfort and consolation of the marriage re-
lation-is enough to damn it beyond redemption.


14
THE ROGUES' GALLERY.
Sociai obligations may be irksome ; but they don't
deny us that."
“You are ignorant-abysmally ignorant—that's
the only trouble with you,” retorted my friend, with
a gaze of pitying contempt. “You are also shallow
and disingenuous to the last degree, but that was
to be expected. So you must go to society to get
the benefit of the marriage relation, must you?
Now, fix your eye on me! Out of every thousand
professional criminals you will find nine hundred
married men, and when I say married I mean mar-
ried. They have wives and children, and they are
fond of 'em, too. And good reason for it. When
a society man marries he marries for money or
social position or policy of some kind ; if also from
affection, so much the better, and more remarka-
ble! But there's no inoney or social position or
policy to lure a thief into matrimony; there's noth-
ing to make him marry a woman except a liking for
her."
“But how about domestic peace and comfort,” I
interposed.
“Well," replied he, stabbing an orange idly
with a toothpick, “ I'm not cynical, but I can some-
times see things as they are. And I have noticed
that it ain't always the married couples that see the
most of each other, and lead the most uneventful
lives, that agree the best. The man who doesn't
know whether he'll see his wife again for a week or
a year is apt to appreciate his opportunities when
he has 'em. There was a law among the Cauca-
sian mountaineers that a husband may visit his wife


THE ROGUES' GALLERY.
15
only by stealth; he must climb in by way of the
pantry window, and if he's detected he's disgraced.
What is a law with them is a necessity with crim-
inals ; and it has its advantages. There's no chance
to get rusty—to become indifferent. Human
nature mustn't be taxed too hard ; and there are
few things tax it harder than monotony."
“And do you mean to say that a man and woman
who live a life of crime can be free from vice as re-
gards each other ?”
“I say nothing about that. I don't draw any
hard and fast lines for any body. But look here :
it isn't always the case that one thief marries
another. Often the woman has no suspicion of the
real profession of the man who marries her, and
will not find it out for years. He takes every means
to keep her ignorant of it, and though he may play
the very divel everywhere else, at home he is only
the good husband and the kind father. That's no
fancy picture—it's the fact. Nothing else may be
sacred to him, but his wife will be."
“ But if she does find him out-what then?"
Then, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred,
and probably oftener, she sticks to him, and accepts
the situation. She doesn't try to reform him; she
knows it would be no use, so she backs him up.
Yes, it's strange : but that's women !
And even
then, they often keep the children in ignorance,
especially the girls. I know of a burglar who edu-
cated his two daughters in a convent in Canada,
and they don't know to this day that their father
isn't an honest man."


16
THE ROGUES' GALLERY.
“ It isn't always that way, though. In most cases
they must understand each other from the start ?”
“Oh, no doubt : and perhaps that's the wisest
plan, after all. It's an offensive and defensive
alliance; they have a common cause and interest :
and the woman as well as the man contributes to
the support of the menage. They will always have
something to talk about, something to plan or
debate : above all, their common enemy and com-
mon danger bring them together. Bill Sykes and
his Nancy may have been a fair picture at the time
when and in the place where it was painted : but it
has no application to the higher grade of criminals
nowadays in this country. Now and then they fall
out, of course-jealousy, on one side or the other,
seldom or never treachery ; but, unless murder be
done then and there, they generally make it up
somehow. At the worst, they are pretty sure to say
what they mean to each other, and that is always
something. Jones and his wife don't do that a
dozen times in their lives."
“ You are a new kind of criminal advocate," I
remarked. “Have you got to the end of your argu-
ment?”
“My argument, as you call it, was simply under-
taken to explain how it is that professional criminals
have such smooth faces. And since you've finished
your coffee, I will only add that the true burden
of sin consists in feeling it to be such. In our
Puritan forefathers, the conscience was abnormally
developed, and to sleep in church or to smile on
Sunday was deadly sin. Among the Sandwich


THE ROGUES' GALLERY.
17
Islanders, on the other hand, it was a point of piety
to eat your grandmother when she had reached a
certain age. Now, thanks to my peculiar education,
it will go against my conscience to steal your watch
or cut your throat; but if I had passed all my life
among professional criminals, and still more if I
were the descendant of such, I should consider it
quite in the ordinary day's work to perform either
of those services for you, and I should sleep not a
jot the worse for it. In other words, what to you
or me is crime, to the genuine criminal is business,
and his mood after committing it is not remorse,
but satisfaction. That accounts for a great deal ;
but it isn't every body that realizes it.”
At this point Ganymede brought the finger-
glasses, and my friend asked him for the bill, and
in the enthusiasm of the moment, paid it without
looking at the amount. Then we threw our over-
coats over our arms, put on our hats, shook out our
legs, and sauntered into the lobby, where we lighted
cigars.
“Half-past seven," said the journalist : “ lots of
time! The place is only three-quarters of a mile up,
and as you're so fond of walking, we can toddle
over on foot—they don't let you smoke in the
place. Eh ? come on!”
The evening was cool and pleasant, the stars
made out to twinkle in spite of the electric lights,
and the streets were lively with people bound on
errands similar to ours. We advanced slowly along
Broadway, passing Daly's on one side, and Wal-
lack's on the other, crossed safely the concurrence


18
THE ROGUES' GALLERY.
of ways at Thirty-third Street, and soon came in
sight of the lofty yellow walls of the Metropolitan
Opera House. Not far from this was our destina-
tion.
Entering a lobby, where we bought tickets, we
passed with a throng of persons through a passage-
way, and emerged in a huge oblong room, with
seats and galleries surrounding three sides of an
arena perhaps a hundred feet long by eighty broad.
It was thickly laid down with earth and sawdust.
Along its boundaries was erected a light wooden
railing ; but the protection it would have afforded
to the occupants of the ground-floor benches, had a
vicious horse taken it into his head to bolt among
them, was more imaginary than real. Nevertheless,
ihese seats were well-filled, as were also the gal-
series; and, although the audience included plenty
of horsey men, there was also an abundance of the
ordinary class of spectators, and not a few people
of fashion.
Our seats were next the fence at the head of the
hall. As we sat down, a man with a wh in his
hand advanced to the center of the arena and made
a bow. He was tall, broad-shouldered and athletic,
and his movements were light and graceful. His
small but handsome head was bare, showing blonde
curly hair ; he had clear eyes, a somewhat aquiline
nose, and a long mustache. After delivering a
short harangue about horse-taming and training, he
turned to his assistant and ordered the first horse
to be brought out.
Just here there was a slight stir in the aisle at the


THE ROGUES' GALLERY.
19
left side of the hall, near the top. A lady in a dark
dress was coming down it, followed by a young
man in immaculate costume. In a moment they
took their places in the front row, next the railing.
The lady wore a light veil, but I recognized her
immediately. It was the lady of the brougham-
my friend the journalist's mysterious acquaintance.


CHAPTER III.
A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.
MY
Y companion caught' sight of her at the same
time, and lifted his eyebrows.
“There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-
hew them how we will,” said he.
“ It is evidently fore-ordained,” replied I, “that
you should tell me who she is and all about her.
So go ahead-I am all attention."
“One thing at a time, if you please ; or, rather,
you may take your choice. If you want to know
who she is, I will present you to her, and you can
follow your own fortune. But if you want to know
all about her, I will enlighten you on one condition
-but that is absolute."
“ What is it?"
“You are to engage not to ask her real name, or
to seek her acquaintance. My conscience again,
you perceive! You can have until the intermission
to decide ; and meanwhile don't bother me; I want
to see him tackle this mare."
The mare was a beautiful animal, but, according
to her owner, useless for practical purposes, on ac-
count of her inveterate habit of shying. The
tamer, whose patience and determination were only
equaled by his imperturbable good-temper, began


A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.
21
by stepping in front of the mare, and staring into
her eyes : after a few moments he retreated back-
wards, still keeping his gaze fixed upon her, and
she followed him like a dog wherever he went.
Then a surcingle and rope were produced. The
animal's off fore leg was caught and strapped up,
and after a short struggle she was thrown on her
side, and the tamer, seating himself upon her,
explained to the audience the philosophy of what
they had just witnessed. Presently she was allowed
to regain her feet, and her new master drove her
round the arena, walking behind her with the reins
in one hand and the rope and whip in the other.
The assistants, meanwhile, flaunted scraps of paper
and other fearful objects before her ; but as often as
she attempted to shy a jerk on the rope would bring
her floundering to her knees. Finally drums, tin-
pans, fish-horns, and even revolvers were beaten,
jingled, blown and exploded on all sides of her ;
and after a few gallant struggles, she succumbed,
and refused to be frightened any more. At last
she was harnessed to a wagon, and driven straight
into and through a combined pandemonium of ter-
rors, enough to paralyze the bronze steed that is
bestridden by General Washington in Union
Square. But she proceeded on her way with unim-
paired serenity, and was led off amid the applause
of the audience.
To all this I lent but a divided attention; my
eyes were always turning toward the lady in the
dark dress. She sat quiet, with her gloved hands
folded in her lap, in an attitude of indolent grace.


22
A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.
She seemed to observe what was occurring in the
arena without being particularly interested in it,
any more than by the fluent, but doubtless vapid,
prattle of the elaborately attired youth at her side.
I judged her to be a woman not easily stirred; one
for whom life held few novelties and fewer illusions,
and who, perhaps, was pursuing that most dreary
quest which has for its object the discovery of a
genuine sensation. It was that quest which had
brought her here; and, to judge by her manner,
she was once more to meet with disappointment.
In fact, she appeared partly disposed to retire even
thus early ; but some anticipation held out to her
by her escort seemed to cause 'her to modify this
impulse, and she settled herself once more in her
chair with a little gesture of resignation.
The next animal brought up for judgment was a
mountainous creature some seventeen hands high,
whose peculiarity was stated to be that he could
not be induced to “back.” His owner affirmed
that he had once driven him to church in the coun-
try, and had put him up in an adjoining carriage
shed. But when service was over, and he attempted
to back him out, nothing would induce him to budge,
and as there was not space to turn him round it
was finally found necessary to tear down i be back
of the shed and lead him out through the aperture.
The tamer labored over this equine problem for
twenty minutes, and when, after incredible efforts,
he succeeded in making the beast back, nothing
would thereafter persuade him to go forward. “I
don't see,” exclaimed the athlete, wiping his brow


A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.
23
and gazing sadly at his antagonist, “how the owner
of this horse ever got to church in the first
place !” At this sally the audience laughed, and
I fancied that the lady turned her face toward the
speaker with, for the first time, a faint dawning of
interest. In ten minutes more he had the animal
in tolerable subjection, and then they brought out
the attraction of the evening-a desperate and irre-
claimable runaway.
This horse drew forth a murmur of admiration
as soon as he appeared. He was perfectly black
and his coat glistened like satin. Though not
large, he seemed faultless at all points, and there
was a sort of coquetry in his action and in the
movement of his head as if he were conscious of
nis own beauty. There were no signs of vicious-
ness about him as he was led round the ring; on
the contrary he appeared both amiable and self-
possessed. And when the tamer finally met him
face to face in the center of the arena and looked
him in the eye he returned the look with a kind of
courteous interest, as if to indicate that he was
glad to make the gentleman's acquaintance, and
trusted that their relations would be friendly.
Nor did he exhibit any signs of restiveness while
the bridle and straps were being applied to him ;
on the contrary he stood like a statue, with his head
up, glancing intelligently at the audience and evi-
dently pleased to be the cynosure of all eyes. But
it began to look as if his desperate and irreclaim-
able character had been exaggerated, and we were
'to get no fun out of him after all. Thus far, at


24
A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.
any rate, he had shown himself as gentle as a
kitten.
When the attempt was made to throw him, how-
ever, he showed, if not temper, at any rate spirit;
he resisted most gallantly, and played his part like
an accomplished wrestler. Again and again the
tamer threw his weight against him, and as often
the horse, by skillful shifting of his position, met
and parried the attack. Nevertheless, it could only
be a question of time; and finally over he went, and
lay very quiet.
“I have decided !" said I to my companion.
“ Eh? We shall have a lark out of that fellow,
yet !”
"Never mind the horse. I'm talking about your
friend in the dark bonnet."
“Well, what about her ?”
“I have decided that you shall tell me all about
her, instead of introducing me to her."
“Ah! Well, your curiosity exceeds your gal-
lantry. But you'll have to wait till after this is
over. That chap had better keep his eye open-
Ha! What did I tell you !”
While we had been talking, a pair of stout driv-
ing-reins had been put on the horse, and he was
being driven slowly round the arena. His off-fore-
foot was attached to the rope which passed through
a ring in the bottom of the surcingle, and so was
carried to the driver's hands. After making about
half the circuit, and while nearly abreast of where
we were sitting, the lash of the whip caught in a
crevice of the wooden railing, and jerked the


A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.
25
handle from the driver's grasp. In trying to re-
cover it, he dropped the end of the rope.
Instantly, as if he had been waiting for this mo-
ment, the horse gave a spring. The driver flung
himself back, digging his heels into the loam, and
stiffening his body while he grappled the reins with
the strength of a tiger. But, powerful as he was,
he could not control the horse by the reins alone.
The animal gave another spring, and then a short
rush diagonally, which threw the tamer off his bal.
ance, and he fell on his right shoulder. But he
had twisted the reins round his hands, and did not
let them go. The horse plunged once more, drag-
ging him feet foremost, and striving furiously to
shake him off.
The audience had not at first realized the gravity
of the predicament, but now that they saw the man
dragged helpless at the horse's heels, there was a
general terrified outcry, and most of those on the
floor of the house sprang to their feet, oversetting
the benches as they did so.
The noise and con-
fusion seemed to madden the animal. The two
assistants had meanwhile run up, and attempted
to seize the horse by the head; but he had
knocked one down, and struck the other a severe
blow in the thigh with his hoof. There was now
no hope of controlling him, unless the prostrate
driver should succeed in regaining his hold of the
rope. He had retained his presence of mind, and
was perfectly aware of what was needed : but he
could not catch the rope without losing his grasp
of the reins, and that was too much to risk.


26
A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.
All this had taken place in less time than a min-
ute ; but some serious catastrophe was plainly
imminent. The frail barrier which was all that
separated the horse from the audience would be
broken down, and then nothing would prevent a
fatal accident ; in fact the crowd had already in-
flicted injuries upon itself while stumbling and
surging over the fallen benches. The most prudent
thing for them to have done would have been to
leave the hall; but those who wished to do this
could not get out; and the others were as much
held by curiosity as they were driven by fear.
The horse was now at the lower right-hand corner
of the arena.
Suddenly he wheeled round on his
hind feet, leaped directly over the driver, but with-
out apparently injuring him, and then made a bolt
straight for the left side of the hall. All eyes were
turned in that direction ; and it was at once evi-
dent to the journalist and myself that his course
would bring him into collision with the lady in the
dark dress. As we looked at her, she rose to her feet,
and threw back her veil. Her escort had also sprung
up, in manifest panic, and turned to flee, but in-
stead, tripped over somebody else's foot and fell
headlong into the aisle. A strange hissing noise
ran through the house as the mad horse approached
the railing, for it seemed as if the lady must cer-
tainly be killed the next moment.
Why did she not get out of the way? Was she
paralyzed with fright ? By no means !
I saw her
great, weary eyes brighten, and her pale cheeks
flush to the temples. In that instant of time she


A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.
27
stood tingling with life, and the trace of years van-
ished from her face, till she looked like a rejoicing
girl of twenty. She had met with her sensation at
last, and felt it to have been worth waiting for.
How it happened that death did not come in the
same breath with this grim delight of hers was not
at first apparent. But certain it was, that as the
black horse rose to leap the parapet, his fore feet
nearly smiting her slender figure, which did not
flinch, he wavered and fell, his head breaking the
railing. Then we saw that the man who held the
reins had at last succeeded in getting a grip upon
the rope also, and with a final desperate pull had
thrown the horse and saved the woman's life. He
now regained his feet for the first time, and stood
panting, covered with dirt, but with no bones
broken. The crowd cheered him, as well they
might. He did not notice it, but said to the lady,
in his western drawl :
“I was gettin' kind of nervous about you,
ma'am,
just at the last. You're none the worse,
I
hope ?"
“On the contrary, you have given me a great
pleasure," I heard her say in reply ; for by this
time we had moved so as to be quite near her.
The tall athlete gazed admiringly at her a
moment, and then answered, with a broad smile,
"Well, ma'am, you're easily pleased !” Then he
spoke sharply to the horse, who lay with heaving
sides and distended nostrils. “Get up!” he said ;
“You've had your little joke, and now school begins
again. Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen ; in


28
A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.
five minutes more I'll have this horse so as a child
can drive him.”
The audience laughed and murmured, and most
of them resumed their places. Meanwhile the im-
maculate young gentleman had picked himself up
from amongst the benches, ghastly pale and quite
unstrung, with a contusion over his eyebrow. He
was the only person in the hall who had not realized
what had happened. He stared at the lady in
pathetic bewilderment. A cold little smile passed
over her beautiful mouth; she took him by the
arm and led him up the aisle, pulling down her
veil as she did so. They passed out, and the jour-
nalist and I followed. In the passage - way I
picked up a glove which she had dropped, and I
have kept it ever since.


CHAPTER IV.
THE DIAMOND DEALER.
AFI
FTER getting into the open air my friend and
I walked along for some time in silence, which
I at length broke by the remark, "She was ready
to be killed-or to commit suicide, rather.”
Well," returned he, “it did look a little like it.
Women are odd fish. When they begin the world,
they are tickled with a straw; but after a few years
of social dissipation, they can feel nothing less
pointed than a dagger run through the heart-and
that only makes 'em smile! We men are never
blasé like that."
“She must be pretty miserable.”
“ Oh, not necessarily—not in the ordinary way,
at any rate. She's just blasé, I tell you ; that's all.
She will give her life at any time to feel the thrill
of an emotion, no matter what.
The same way, an
old soaker will drink fusel oil or broken glass, be-
cause nothing else will make his throat feel right.
It isn't that she wants to die; she wants to feel
that she's alive. When a woman gets frozen over
like that, nothing cooler than the devil's furnace
will thaw her out.”
" But what ails her ?"
Well, she married one of the best fellows in


30
THE DIAMOND DEALER.
New York, though he was about twenty years older
than she was.
She never had
any
children. She
was a reigning belle up to ten years ago; and so
far as mental and physical qualifications go, she
could be still. She and her husband started in
with plenty of money ; but his partner in business
cheated him, and he lost about three-fourths of it.
However, they had three or four thousand a year
left, and that's enough for two clever people. And
now she's got it all back again, and more too, for
aught I know."
“ The husband worked round again, did he?"
“Not exactly-no. But his sister, a maiden
lady, died in 1882, and left him her fortune ; and
six months later he followed his sister to a better
world, and the fortune stayed behind with his
wife.”
“ And she is still a rich widow ?”
“She hasn't married since, that I've heard of.”
“Is there any thing out of the way in her mode
of living ?”
“On the contrary, she's exceptionally circum-
spect. She seldom goes anywhere without another
That young dude who was with her to.
night is the son of a cousin of hers; she is bring-
ing him out, and finds him useful occasionally, I
suppose. Oh, no; she's all right; she knows the
best people."
“Then I go back to what I began with—what
ails her?”
“Well, the only thing that ever is said against
her is, that it has been surmised that there is a
woman.


32
THE DIAMOND DEALER.
was twenty-one, good-looking, and all that. Well,
sir, he jilted her. She was a beauty, but had little
money ; he was the son of a steamboat man; he
went to Liverpool on business, stayed longer than
he expected, and married an English girl, a daugh-
ter of one of the English owners, and probably a
fool. No doubt she served him right.
“ It knocked the American girl higher than a
kite, at first. I suppose she had never conceived
that there was such a thing as human frailty. But
by and by she got her face straight, and reap-
peared. Every body thought her improved. So she
was—in the way of the world. When a woman of
her caliber gets knocked out on the love-question,
she is apt to take to ambition for a living. The
girl's ambition was of a first-class brand; she made
up her mind to lead New York society, and to lead
it not only in fashion, but in intellect. I believe
the combination had never before been attempted ;
but she had the gall to succeed in it, if any body
could. And, by the way, a few such successes would
regenerate American social life, and make it the
envy of the world, instead of—well, you know !
“By the time she was twenty, she had decided
on her man, and so far as one can see, she couldn't
have chosen better. Nelson (as we'll call him) was
good from his shoes to his hat; a great, big, genial,
clever fellow, with lots of brains and a heart like a
child. He had a splendid business, lots of money,
and forty-two years. He was dead in love ; and
as he'd worked hard for twenty-five years, he con-
cluded to take a back seat in the firm and let the


THE DIAMOND DEALER.
33
other fellow do the running; while he put in all
his time worshiping his wife. Of course, he
thought she loved him ; and if it hadn't been for
the failure, I dare say she would have kept him in
that delusion to the day he died.
“ But it was hard lines for her, too. She had
just about got things into running order ; people
had begun to catch on to her idea, and to take their
cue from her. In five years she would have had as
good a salon as any of the famous ones we read
about. It was all knocked into a cocked hat in a
day, and she knew that they were all making faces
at her behind her back-and not always behind her
back, either! She couldn't help thinking that her
husband ought to have kept a better look-out; and
I can't altogether blame her if she gave him a piece
of her mind. If she had only given him the whole
of her heart, in the first place, it would all have
worked round right in time.
“ But she hadn't, and I expect Nelson learned it
then for the first time, and it floored him. So there
they were, and what was to be done ?
“ A woman like that couldn't sit still and do noth-
ing. All her steam was at full pressure, and had
to be let off somehow. She had been hard-hit, but
she wasn't beaten : she hadn't begun to fight! She
knew it would take a dozen years for Nelson to get
back all he had lost, and a dozen years might as
well be a thousand in a case like that. If she
couldn't have her fortune and her position again at
once, it would be no use having it at all. On the
other hand, the idea of retiring to a cheap city flat,


34
THE DIAMOND DEALER.
or to the country, and living on three thousand a
year and mutual endearments (which would have
suited Nelson perfectly, poor devil !) that was
utterly out of the question for her. It was a tough
nut, however you took it."
At this point the narrator paused so long that I
became restive, and reminded him that he had not
touched on the kernel of the story yet. He shook
his head moodily, and thereby caused the ash of
his cigar, which had attained a length of two inches,
to fall off and pulverize itself on his trowsers.
“The fact is,” he declared at length, “ I don't
know how to spin this yarn. If you had never seen
the woman, it would have been different ; but now
you might meet her to morrow, and then I should
appear in the light of having given you an unfair
advantage over her. I guess we'd better draw the
line right here, and call it square, eh?"
“If you stop here,” returned I, “I shall under-
stand that you mean me to believe that she is a
bigamist and a murderess, and that after dark she
practices as a vampyre. And I shall make a point
of getting acquainted with her, and asking her
whether it's true.”
“ It isn't a laughing matter, you know, my boy,”
said the journalist : "I'm giving you a picture of real
life. She was driven into a corner and was bound
to do the best she could for herself. She knew she
couldn't count on her husband for any thing that
wasn't straight, so she had to make her plans
secretly. They had about fifty or sixty thousand
dollars left, after all the debts were paid, and of


THE DIAMOND DEALER.
35
course she could only touch the interest of that.
But she wanted at least ten thousand a year more,
to keep the thing going. You understand that
nobody knew exactly how serious the smash had
been, because there had been no assignment : and
as the affair had taken place about the end of the
season, there were four or five months to fetch
around in. If she could contrive somehow to start
fresh again the next winter, people would conclude
that it had been only a trifling set-back after all.”
“ It strikes me,” remarked I, “ that her difficulty
would be, not to deceive the public, but her hus-
band. Whatever they might suppose, he would
know what money there was ; and if he found her
spending more than could be honestly accounted
for, he would want to know about it.”
“ I shouldn't wonder if it struck her that way,
too," returned the journalist, dryly. “Now, mind
you, we needn't suppose that she intended any thing
actually crooked at first. One slips into that sort
of thing by degrees. I don't pretend to say what
was in her mind : one can only draw inferences from
what she did. I imagine she may have contemplated
speculating a little on the street. She knew a num-
ber of solid men down there, who could give her
tips; and she was the sort of woman who could
get most men to do any thing. But her husband
must know nothing of that either. She must devise
some reasonable explanation of whatever money
might come in. And I consider the expedient she
hit upon was a clever one. She made up her mind
to write a novel.”


36
THE DIAMOND DEALER.
“ A novel! What is the name of it?"
“ No matter about the name. She buckled down
to her work, and in less than two months she had
it written and in the press. She didn't put her
name on the title-page, but she took care that Nel-
son should know all about it. You see it bolstered
her up in two ways. In the first place, it might
really succeed and bring in money, which would be
so much to the good. In the second place, whether it
did succeed or not, she would be able to ascribe all
her receipts from whatever source to the novel :
and as she would transact all the business connected
with it herself, and as her husband knew nothing
about novels any way, he would naturally accept
whatever she told him.
“I read that novel," continued the journalist,
narrowing his eyes and peering up at the cornice.
“I was doing some reviewing work then, and I
spoke well of it. It was an odd book-striking-
faults enough, but had power and charm. If she
had given her life to the business, she might have
been a writer by this time. The book, such as it
was, had a run, and she got some money out of it,
how much or how little, I don't know. But I know
that, with some of it, she started an account with
a big Savings Institution on Broadway ; and that
fact had a bearing on what happened later."
“ What about her Wall Street scheme?"
“She probably dabbled in that, but not, I guess,
to any important extent. As luck or the devil
would have it, something turned up about this time
that modified her plans essentially. It began like


THE DIAMOND DEALER.
37
this : Just before Nelson's smash-up, she had or-
dered a seven-thousand-dollar set of diamonds
from the principal jeweler here, and of course the
order had to be countermanded. Now, she was no
fool—far from it-but all women are fools at times,
and in some things ; and she had got a kink in her
head that diamonds she must have. To pay seven
thousand dollars was out of the question ; but
couldn't diamonds be got cheaper ? She made some
inquiries, and the upshot of it was that she heard
of a man who did business in a quiet way, and
sometimes had wonderfully good bargains. He
never sold bad stones, and whatever he promised
could be relied on; and as to how he could afford
to sell at a third or a quarter the Union Square
price, that was his own business and not his cus-
tomer's. When she learned his address, she recol-
lected the place well enough, for it was on the oppo-
site corner to the Savings Institution where she
was keeping an account.
“Now, as I told you, there are not five persons
living who know what were the dealings between
this diamond merchant and Mrs. Nelson ; and
what evidence they have is circumstantial, not direct.
Bear in mind that she was a beautiful woman, and,
in a sense, a desperate one; the iron had been in
her soul, and she was prepared to take the world as
she found it. She had lots of imagination, too, as
her novel proves, and a love of danger and mystery
for their own sake. You saw a bit of that yourself
this evening. Women have done wild things before


38
THE DIAMOND DEALER.
his way.
now with less natural aptitude and less provocation
than she had.
" This diamond dealer was a queer fellow, too, in
He was believed to have a good deal of
money, but nobody could tell exactly how he got
it or where he kept it. There was nothing wealthy
about his personal appearance, or in his way of liv.
ing. There are plenty of costermongers more
ostentatious than he was. He was known to buy
and sell precious stones, but you couldn't suppose
that that was his only occupation. You would be
safe in surmising that he had a good many irons in
the fire ; but you couldn't safely attempt to specify
what they were. He understood acting through
third parties, and holding his tongue. He was
satisfied to control things, but had no ambition to
be known as controlling them. He was familiar
with the affairs of other people, but avoided having
other people familiar with his. He was an enter-
prising fellow, and daring when he saw his way ;
but he was as hard as steel in business matters,
listened to no arguments but practical ones, and
would have seen his own brother starve, sooner
than act soft in money matters. You could deal
with him up to a certain point ; after that it was
like butting against the wall of China.
“But every man has his weak side ; and on that
side they give the lie to all the rest of their charac-
ter. When he's made his money and gratified his
ambition, there's always something else he wants to
have or to do—and generally it'll be just the one
solitary thing that he's least fit for or capable of,


THE DIAMOND DEALER.
39
women.
..
A railroad king wants to write a poem ; a poet
wants to build a suspension bridge ; an engineer
wants to compose one oratorio ; and this hard-
headed diamond-dealer wanted to be admired by
That was his weak point ; and it cost him
more than all the bad speculations he ever got into.
A woman who knew how to play her cards right
could do about what she liked with him—of course,
until he found her out.
“ But all the women he ever met were as harm-
less as doves alongside of Mrs. Nelson. It wasn't
merely that she was a queenly beauty, or that she
was a lady and an aristocrat, or that she had brains
and resources and variety : The worst of her was,
that her aims and motives were so mixed. She
wanted money, of course ; but that wasn't half of
it. The diamond dealer represented to her an en-
tirely novel vision of life-something she had
scarcely so much as conceived of before then. It
was all untrodden ground and forbidden fruit to
her. She was accustomed to men in society, their
compliments and homage and all that ; but this
quiet, self-centered, uncultivated chap was quite
another story. She comprehended with half a
glance that he belonged to the night side of life ;
that through him she could come into contact with
all those mysterious undercurrents of the world-
those enemies of the social state,with whom her own
calamities had already half allied her in spirit.
make a subject of such a man was something worth
trying, apart from any pecuniary advantages. It's
my belief that if she fascinated him, as there's no
To


.10
THE DIAMOND DEALER
doubt she did, it was partly at least because he fas-
cinated her as well, and she was bound to play the
sensation for all it was worth.
“And then, mind you, it wasn't a game of
wheedling on one side and infatuation on the other.
Her scheme wasn't to rob him ; it was to get him
to help her make money ; and for his part, he per-
ceived plainly enough that she could be of use to
him in a way that none of his regular pals could.
She could give him information from the inside ;
she could put things in his way, by a turn of her
finger, that he might work in vain for without her :
under the cover of her social position and honored
name, he could overhear the conversation of mil-
lionaires, study their bank-books and use the keys
of their safes. It was a stunning outlook, such as
doesn't come once in generations. He and she
made a team that could collar millions as easily as
an ordinary thief picks up ten cents.
“ That's the way it must have appeared to him,
and no wonder if his head was a little turned by it ;
and then, in addition to all that, she was a woman
-and such a woman ! She was to furnish oppor-
tunities and suggestions ; he was to provide capital
and instruments; and together they would laugh
in their sleeves at the world, and caress each other.
“ A grand scheme, wasn't it? but it had two
flaws in it, one of which he could perceive, but the
other (and much the more dangerous one) he
couldn't. The first, of course, was that something
might miscarry, or the secret leak out : the other
was Mrs. Nelson's own character and temperament,


THE DIAMOND DEALER.
41
By just as much as she was fascinated by the nov-
elty and strangeness of the situation, at first, would
she be certain to weary of it and drop it when it
had become familiar to her. Princesses have
indulged caprices ever since the world began ; but
sooner or later the caprices are abandoned and the
princess returns to herself. Their gratitude never
outlasts their interest, and their mercy disappears
along with their gratitude. But our innocent
diamond dealer knew nothing of all that-until he
made the discovery for himself."
Well, go on,” said I, as my entertainer rose
from his chair and tossed the butt of his cigar into
the pewter cuspidore in the corner of the fireplace.
“ I've gone the length of my tether,” he replied,
thrusting his hands in his pockets and resting his
shoulders against the mantelpiece. “If you have
the imagination of a mud-turtle you can figure out
any thing else you want to know better than I could
tell it to you. You have your motif, as the dra-
matists say: now go ahead and work out your
scenes.”
“If you can't tell me any more, you shouldn't
have told me so much," answered I. “ You have
carried me just beyond the point where I might
have finished the story to suit myself. You have
put my invention in fetters, and then leave me in the
lurch.”
“I have talked enough this evening to stand me
in a month's income, if I had written it out and
printed it," returned my friend, gruffly, “and all I
get for it is abuse. Another time I shall know bet-


42
THE DIAMOND DEALER.
ter how to choose my audience. However, as I am
the soul of good-nature, and anxious to get rid of
you, I will give you two or three hints more, on
condition that you leave me in peace. Number
one—there is nothing to show that Mrs. Nelson
was ever in straits for money during her acquaint-
ance with the diamond dealer. Number two-she
never attempted to re-establish her salon. Number
three—the diamond dealer died about six years ago,
with less than a tenth of what he was known to have
had four years earlier: and, number four-at the pe-
riod when the intimacy between Mrs. Nelson and the
diamond dealer was at its height, the biggest rob-
bery that ever has occurred in this country was
successfully carried out within twenty yards of his
shop! So now, good-night!"
“What robbery was that?" I inquired.
“I shan't tell you," replied my host.
“I know where I can find out," I remarked.
" Then take my advice, and a hansom, and drive
down there at once," retorted he. “If you start
now, you'll be in time for breakfast.''
"And mark my words,” I continued, “I shall
probe this affair to the bottom !” But the journal-
ist had already removed his coat, vest and necktie,
and showed such evident symptoms of a determ-
ination to proceed to extremities, that I was com-
pelled to take my departure. And I am convinced
that he was sound asleep before I reached the
sidewalk.


CHAPTER V.
INSPECTOR
BYRNES.
REMEMBER thinking, as I went home that
night, that the adventures of Mrs. Nelson
would make a capital novel, and that I would im-
prove the earliest opportunity of dropping into the
Central Detective Office, and asking Inspector
Byrnes about the great robbery. If a connection
could really be established between her and it (as
my friend the journalist had distinctly implied), it
would be very interesting to trace it out. I even flat-
tered myself that, by acting upon this idea, I might
be enabled to throw light upon some features of
the robbery story-whatever that might turn out
to be-which had hitherto remained partially ob-
scure to the police themselves. For, if the beautiful
Mrs. Nelson had really had any thing to do with the
robbery at all, it must evidently have been in such
a way as not to bring her into overt contact with the
law. Had there existed any available evidence
against her-or, at any rate, had it been found
expedient to bring such evidence to the light-it
was certain that she could not have retained her
position in society. In all great crimes, it is gener-
ally only the active participants that can be brought
to justice. Those who remain in the background


44
INSPECTOR BYRNES.
no.
I may as well ad
may not be less, or they may be even more, morally
guilty ; but their guilt can not be technically estab-
lished before a jury. When you go into the wit-
ness-box, you must be prepared to answer yes and
But the restrictions of legal testimony do not
obtain in a narrative, where speculations and infer-
ences are often quite as useful as proved facts.
And it was easy to imagine that Mrs. Nelson might
have exercised an important influence upon events,
without the facts having hitherto been recognized.
For practical purposes, it is generally enough to
know that a thing happens, without investigating
the original why and wherefore.
at once that I am unable to
state whether or not Inspector Byrnes has ever
heard of the existence of such a person as Mrs.
Nelson. Nothing that he has imparted to me sug-
gests his possessing any knowledge of her. And
yet he would be a rash man who should venture to
assert that there is any thing in New York that
the inspector does not know. But, in his public
capacity, he recognizes but two classes in the com-
munity-those who have been convicted of offenses
against law and order, and those who have not.
Of the former he is ready to speak as freely as is
consistent with official prudence and etiquette ; of
the latter he can not be induced to say any thing,
save in the way of ordinary comment and remark.
So much is this the case that I am persuaded, if
Inspector Byrnes were morally certain that his best
friend had been murdered by a certain man, but
were also convinced that it was impossible to con-


INSPECTOR BYRNES.
45
..
vict the murderer of the crime that he would
never allow himself to say one word against him.
On the other hand, the individual is not to be
envied who, having lapsed from civic integrity, and
omitted to destroy so much as the ghost of the
shadow of any incriminating scrap of evidence,
finds the chief of the detectives on his track.
“Don't shoot, captain : I'm coming down !” repre-
sents his best line of conduct under such circum-
stances. Sound common-sense and unfathomable
subtlety have seldom been more effectively com-
bined than they are in the person of the New York
inspector. Mentally and temperamentally, as well
as physically and by experience, he is the right man
in the right place.
Unforeseen events so ordered it, that several
months had elapsed before I found myself in the
comfortable office in Mulberry Street. A thick
soft carpet makes the tread noiseless; the lower
panes of the window, which opens upon an inner
court, are rendered opaque with white paint. There
are pictures on the walls; the room has several
doors, two or three comfortable chairs, and a large
writing-table in front of the window, at which the
inspector sits, with his back to the light. He is a
powerfully built man, moving quickly and de-
cisively when he does move, and also capable of
remaining perfectly motionless. His face shows
intelligence, keen power of observation, and re-
markable seif-command-a man who can do with
himself what he chooses. For the rest, he evi-
dently enjoys capital health and a sound digestion,


46
INSPECTOR BYRNES.
and his manner is quiet and (so far as I had occa.
sion to observe) extremely genial.
Doubtless, had I been a secret malefactor, in-
stead of an inoffensive person in quest of informa-
tion, I should have regarded this geniality with
serious misgiving. A chief of detectives does not
need to frown in order to be formidable ; on the
contrary, were I ever to join the ranks of the
"professionals," I should never be so keenly on my
guard as when I detected a smile wreathing the
inspectorial visage. As this step, however, still
remains for me to take, I maintained my equanim-
ity sufficiently to convey a general idea of the
object of my visit: and concluded by asking what
was the biggest robbery that ever occurred in New
York.
The inspector considered a little while, not with
the manner of a man exploring his memory for a
desired fact, but as one who deliberates whether it
be advisable to say any thing at all. At length he
seemed to come to a favorable determination : and
he informed me that the largest theft that had ever
been successfully accomplished in New York, or,
for that matter, in the world of modern times, was
that of a certain well-known banking institution
(whose name he mentioned) in the lower part of
Broadway. It was also, at the outset, en wrapped
in such impenetrable mystery, that any efforts to
identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice
seemed hopeless. Great bank robberies, the in-
spector further remarked, had, up to that time,
seldom been followed by the conviction of the


INSPECTOR BYRNES.
47
thieves. The obstacles in the way were too
great. The plot had generally been laid with great
care, and frequently was hatching for a year or
more before the fitting moment arrived to put it
in execution. Thanks to this precaution, few or no
traces were left by which the guilty persons could
be known, or, if suspected, have their guilt brought
home to them. And then, the thieves had the
money ; and the bank, rather than lose it, com-
monly agreed to a compromise.
“But why should the thieves desire a com-
promise?" I inquired.
The inspector explained that the money stolen
was seldom or never entirely in the form of cash.
The greater part of it would generally be repre-
sented by bonds and other securities which, being
registered and liable to identification, were danger-
ous things to handle. The thieves, therefore, would
rather sell them to the bank for half their face
value than attempt to dispose of them on ordinary
terms and thereby run the risk of ten or fifteen
years in State's Prison. The rascals would have
all the advantage on their side since, after all, they
could afford to hide away or destroy the securities,
while the bank could not afford to do without them.
Doubtless a high abstract morality would demand
that the bank should become insolvent rather than
have dealings with outlaws; but human nature is
frail, and it usually happens that the bank, after
holding out for awhile, finally capitulates on more
or less favorable terms.
As my aim was to discover whether the big rob-


48
INSPECTOR BYRNES.
bery to which the inspector had particularly re-
ferred was the same as that alluded to by the jour-
nalist, I ventured to inquire whether any person
connected with it had been engaged in the diamond
trade. The head detective looked up at me, and
probably perceiving that my question was asked on
the basis of some collateral information, replied
that there had been such a person on whom suspi-
cion rested, but that he had never been apprehended,
owing, as I feared, to the old stumbling-block, that
justice often knows a great deal more than she can
prove. This confirmation assured me that I was
not on the wrong tack, but, in order to make assur-
ance doubly sure, I let fall something about a rumor
that some mysterious personage of the female sex
had been implicated in the matter.
The inspector did not seem to entertain this sug-
gestion with much favor. Stories of that kind were
always sure to get in circulation, but it was gener-
ally safe to dismiss them as fabrications. People
were only too apt, as it was, to build up wonder-
stories when the actual facts themselves were won-
derful enough, if you only looked at them in the
right way. Nevertheless, the inspector did not ex-
plicitly deny that there were circumstances in this
famous case which had always remained more or
less in obscurity, and he even went so far as to
admit that the diamond dealer in question had had
transactions with people well-placed in New York
society, and that these people would, naturally, be
more often of the feminine than of the masculine
gender. When a pretty woman wants diamonds


INSPECTOR BYRNES.
49
and hears of a source whence they can be obtained
at half their current value, she would be either
more or less than a woman if she neglected to take
advantage of the opportunity. But that such a
person should go on to interest herself in the doings
of thieves, much more take any share in such
doings herself—this, the inspector pointed out, was
an altogether different question, and one which, in
this instance at least, he entirely declined to enter-
tain.
For my own part, I am free to confess that what
I had heard did not make me feel it necessary to
dismiss my hypothesis, though I was not moved to
say any thing more about it at that time. But it
had occurred. to me that the story of the robbery
would be a very good story to tell, and I asked the
inspector whether there would be any objection to
my doing so, and whether, if there were none, he
could furnish me with any memoranda or other
documents bearing upon it, which I should be at
liberty to use.
To my great satisfaction, he immediately granted
my request and sent for his diary and the papers
in the case-quite a voluminous package. In plac-
ing it in my hands, he advised me to tell the story as
it happened, putting in as little fanciful matter as
possible. As this fell in with my own view of the
matter, I had no hesitation in assuring the inspector
that his counsel should be followed as closely as
possible ; and I soon afterward took my leave, feel-
ing that my mission had been successful beyond
anticipation, and with a vague impression that the


50
INSPECTOR BYRNES.
active man with the observant eyes and quiet man-
ner probably knew every feature of my own past
career and had formed a very plausible concep-
tion of my personal character. Doubtless the
traditional divinity that doth hedge men of his
profession had a good deal to do with this idea,
but one who has had a life-long training in percep-
tion can not blunt himsell at a moment's notice.
I lost no time in examining the documents that
had been furnished me ; and a very curious tale
they told. To the artistic sense, certainly, they
left much to be desired, at the first glance ; but I
was not long in finding out that this appearance was
due mainly to the fact that every thing was put down,
not in the order of its occurrence, but of the legal
procedure. Thus not only was all grouping and
shading ruthlessly dispensed with, but it would often
happen that the culmination of an incident preceded
the incident itself; and the biographical record of
a character would come in after the subject of the
biography had played his part and gone off the
stage. The police have many accomplishments, but
a knowledge of the laws of dramatic construction
is not among them. They will murder the effect of
a fine situation with as little compunction as they
would run in a pickpocket, or report a breach of
the Sunday liquor law.
When I had mastered the details of the narrative,
and, holding them in solution, as it were, in my
mind, proceeded to reconceive the affair from its
first entrance into the thoughts of the robbers to its
practical developments and final upshot, I found


INSPECTOR BYRNES.
51
there was nothing to complain of in the way of cul-
minating interest. It is a real-life drama ; but
though the life is very real indeed, the drama is all
there, and is strong enough to exercise its proper
function. These people are not inventions of fancy ;
they actually did what is described; they lived, and
are most of them living still. Their adventures and
destinies are not in the writer's hands, to be molded
as he pleases ; they have run their course, and are
unalterable and irrevocable. History and story are
two very different things, however closely the latter
may ape the former—nay, even when, as sometimes
happens, it seems more like the truth than truth
itself.
A novelist becomes so accustomed to establishing
give-and-take relations between his characters and
his plot-making the first help out and interpret
the other and vice-versa—that he feels some embar-
rassment on finding himself constrained to conform
to the rigidity of the actual. Nevertheless, this
rigidity is external merely; things become plastic as
soon as you get beneath the surface. The boldest
succession of events appears poetic if your compre-
hension of it be profound enough. It is only when
we forget the correlation of forces and things that
they appear harsh and crude. But these reflections
scarcely belong here, and need not be noticed by
the general reader. To him I will only say, that if
in the ensuing pages he finds passages introduced
which his reason tells him must have their source in
the imagination of the writer, he need not on that
account condemn them as untrustworthy. He must


52
INSPECTOR BYRNES.
judge by the context, and accept as true that which
embodies (more or less imperfectly) what must have
been the truth. Imagination may be as trustworthy
as observation, if it be based upon adequate data.
And I am concerned only to avoid imparting any
thing which shall confuse or belie the impression
created by admitted and established facts.
Here follows, then, the story of the greatest rob-
bery of modern times, which is commended to the
attention of all those who are interested in the spec-
tacle of human nature and life.


CHAPTER VI.
THE BANK ROBBERY.
On 27
N
rose clear and shone along the avenues of
New York city. It was between half-past six and
seven o'clock when the light first struck the pave-
ments and few people were abroad. On Saturday
night the week's work is done, the wage-workers
are paid off, and such of them as can afford it (or
think they can) proceed to relax themselves with
whatever species of amusement is best suited to
their several tastes. The theaters are more crowded
than on any other night during the week, and so,
likewise, are the music halls and dives in the lower
quarters of the city. The liquor saloons do a
roaring trade, and their customers, boisterous with
beer and whisky, are more apt than at other times
to take an airing beyond the bounds of propriety.
The police who patrol the streets prepare them-
selves for extra work on Saturday nights, and the
police stations as a rule are more than usually
crowded by the next morning. The minor class
of pickpockets and highwaymen, who ply their
trade in the city thoroughfares, do their most re-
munerative work among the Saturday night merry-
makers; for then every pocket has money in it,


54
THE BANK ROBBERY.
and a large proportion of brains are more or less
thrown off their guard by liquor. In short, there
is a general Saturnalia--or Saturday-nalia, it might
be termed—the reaction from the six days' strain
of business, with the prospect of a thirty-six hours'
vacation.
But on Sunday morning the scene is very differ-
erat. The carousers are sleeping off the effect of
their night's excesses, and even those who have no
such cause for lying abed are in no hurry to get
up; for the shops and offices are all closed, and
there is nothing in prospect more pleasing than an
hour in church or a saunter in the park. The thieves
have gone to their dens to count over their gains,
or make plans for the evening work, and even the
police abate the sharpness of their outlook a little,
and dandle their clubs with a dégagé air, as being
merely ornamental appendages. They have the
streets pretty much to themselves until long after
dawn. Here and there Bridget or Polly hurries
along in her holiday costume to early mass, or
Hans and Gretchen, with the early habits of the
Vaterland, stroll side by side, phlegmatic and phi-
landering. And there is an aristocratic-looking
gentleman, his evening dress showing through the
open front of his overcoat, his face pale and his
eyes heavy; he stops at the entrance of one of the
fashionable bachelor apartment-houses, and stabs
at the lock with his pass-key. You will not see
him at church to-day, nor in the park either. There
is no one else about now except the private Sunday
watchman, whose duty it is to stand guard during the


THE BANK ROBBERY.
55
day over the banks and business buildings in the
lower part of the city. The employment of these
men might seem almost a superfluous precaution :
surely, those massive and impenetrable - looking
buildings would be no less secure without their
presence than with it—at least during the daytime.
The night between the 26th and 27th, in the year
named, had passed off more quietly than usual, and
there was nothing to indicate that there would be
any alteration in this agreeable state of things
during the day. At half-past six Broadway, from
the Battery to Fourteenth Street, was about as
empty as the corridor of a summer hotel in Decem-
ber. At about that hour, however, an Italian
pea-nut vender came down Bleecker Street, pushing
before him a two-wheeled hand-cart containing his
stock in trade. On reaching the south-east corner
of Bleecker Street and Broadway he halted, uncov-
ered his wares, and made his preparations for the
day's business. The corner was a good one for
trade, and the Italian had not seldom netted as
much as five dollars during a day. But he could
scarcely expect business to begin quite so soon.
Meanwhile, he leaned his shoulders against the
corner building behind him, and stared idly across
the way to the large old-fashioned edifice which
confronted him on the other side of the street.
Let us turn our attention for a moment in the
same direction. The edifice in question was built
of brick overlaid with plaster, painted a dark red-
dish-brown hue ; it was six stories in height, and
entirely free from any architectural ornament,


THE BANK ROBBERY.
57
within less than three feet of the floor. Other win-
dows succeed one another along the Bleecker
Street side, so that the whole interior of the bank-
ing-room is open to the light of day, and can be
commanded at a glance by every passenger on the
sidewalk. It is true that the vault itself is partly
concealed by the screen or partition which also
incloses the space occupied by the desks of the
clerks, but he would be a bold burglar who should
venture to operate upon those massive doors, sub-
ject to the fatal risk of detection at any moment,
either of the day or night. Indeed, such an idea
is scarcely worth thinking about.
Besides the main or Broadway portal, the bank
is provided with a side-entrance on Bleecker Street,
a comparatively small and narrow affair, having a
wooden structure, technically known as a storm-
door, built over it. Further on there is still another
door, leading not into the banking-rooms, but to
the staircase communicating with the five upper
floors. The latter are not used by the bank, and
have no communication with it ; they are rented to
responsible business firms of various kinds. Here,
too, though indistinguishable from where we stand,
are the rooms occupied by the janitor of the build-
ing, and his family. A worthy man is that janitor,
and he is intrusted with a responsibility, and with
secrets, which many men would give a fortune to
possess, and which many more would be unwilling
to be saddled with at any price. The guardian of
millions, unless he have design on them himself,
has reason to fear those who have.


THE BANK ROBBERY.
59
wearing a light linen duster, busily engaged in pol-
ishing the wood-work of the large fixed screen
which surrounds the desk-room and vault. The
man--the janitor, of course-glanced up and met
the officer's gaze, nodded familiarly to him, and
went on with his work, while the officer, weary with
his night's vigil, pursued his way to headquarters.
If this “janitor " had been more closely scrutinized,
perhaps New York would have missed the experi-
ence of a very startling sensation.
The hands of the clock moved slowly on, mark-
ing minute after minute and hour after hour. Its
low ticking echoed regularly through the vacant
apartment--for vacant it was, to all appearance.
No other sound was audible there ; at least, no one
has ever been found who could say that he had
heard any other. Nor was a witness ever produced
to swear that he saw any person enter or leave the
bank on that Sunday morning. Every thing within
seemed silent, still and orderly; and yet, during
those quiet Sabbath hours, something very unusual
and interesting was taking place directly beneath
that self-same decorous and non-committal time-
piece.
Was the sleep of the directors of the Manhattan
Savings Institution visited by uneasy dreams that
inorning ? Were the thousands of poor depositors,
the sum of whose earnings was collected in the
great safe, harassed by any premonition of calam.
ity ? Did no specter of crime flit through the cham-
bers of that great police hive round the corner ?
No; everywhere brooded security and peace;


60
THE BANK ROBBERY.
everywhere—save only in that narrow space within
the screen, where a desperate effort was being made
in terrible silence to realize the hopes and schemes
which had been cherished and concocted for years.
Vast stakes were being won and lost in those short
hours; and yet no sign showed on the surface to
give any indication of the convulsion going on be-
low.
By nine o'clock Broadway and the adjoining
streets were beginning to look fairly alive with a
holiday crowd, thronging forth in constantly-in-
creasing numbers to enjoy the pure October air and
sunshine.
Every thing was orderly, quiet, and common-
place. Ten-fifteen-twenty minutes more: and
then, all of a sudden, the respectable crowd of pe-
destrians were treated to a spectacle that startled
them out of their propriety.


CHAPTER VII.
A NIGHT WATCHMAN,
THE mecanicating with the upper floors of the
THE second door on Bleecker Street-the one
Man hattan Bank Building — was suddenly burst
open, and a fantastic apparition bolted forth on the
sidewalk. It was an elderly, undersized man, his
gray hair and beard all in disorder ; he was clad
only in a torn shirt, destitute of a collar, a pair of
trowsers, and with stockings on his feet, but no
shoes. His features, otherwise insignificant, were
rendered noticeable by the scared and half-frenzied
expression which was stamped upon them; and his
aspect was further rendered interesting by the cir-
cumstance, conspicuously apparent, that his wrists
were manacled together by a pair of heavy steel
handcuffs. Altogether, he had the look of an es-
caped lunatic; and, inasmuch as the desperate fit
was manifestly upon him, the startled spectators
prudently gave him a wide berth.
Down toward Broadway scurried this wild-look-
ing figure; and turning the corner sharply, he
plunged down the steps of Kohlman's tonsorial
saloon. · The worthy artist, who had been sharpen-
ing all his razors, in anticipation of a customer, was
not a little amazed by so headlong and unheralded


62
A NIGHT WATCHMAN.
an irruption. But when he recognized in the per-
son of his abrupt and unkempt visitor, no less an
individual than his old friend and gossip, Louis
Werkle, the amiable and excellent janitor of the
Manhattan Savings Institution, his astonishment
knew no bounds.
It so happened that a gentleman of perhaps forty
years of age, fashionably dressed, with an amethyst
ring on his finger, and a fine gold watch-chain lying
across his waistcoat, was strolling past the bank at
the moment of the janitor's appearance; and when
the latter plunged down Kohlman's steps, the gen-
tleman, drawn by curiosity, followed him. Osten-
sibly, he came to get a shave ; but as Kohlman was
thrown far too much off his balance to allow of his
paying ordinary attention to customers, the gentle-
man very amiably stood by and listened to the
curious story which Werkle, in answer to the bar-
ber's urgent interrogatories, was beginning to de-
liver himself of.
A very curious story it certainly was. According
to the janitor's account, he had gone to bed quietly
the night before, leaving the bank in charge of the
regular watchman, Daniel Keely. Keely had held
his position for a number of years past, and was
looked upon as a thoroughly trustworthy man. He
was assisted on Sundays by a supplementary watch-
man, Patrick Shevelin by name, who, however, was
only on duty in the daytime, and the hour for whose
appearance had not yet arrived. Keely, then, had
kept a look-out from eleven o'clock on Saturday
night until six that morning.


A NIGHT WATCHMAN.
63
At that hour it was his custom to go up to the
janitor's rooms (entering the building by the
Bleecker Street door, which was locked, and which
he opened with a key that he carried about him);
and awaken him : after which he was at liberty to
go home; the responsibility of the bank being
thenceforth shifted to Werkle's shoulders.
At six o'clock, accordingly, Werkle had been
aroused by a knock at the door, and the voice of
Keely, admonishing that it was time to arise. Up
he got immediately, thanks to the force of habit,
and began to put on his clothes, yawning dismally
the while, for he was less than half awake. But
before his toilet was completed, his wife, who was
still in bed, remarked to him that she fancied she
had heard a singular noise in the next room. This
room was occupied by Mrs. Werkle's mother, an
old and bed-ridden woman, of somewhat shaky
mental constitution. Werkle was on the point of
going into the room to investigate the matter when
suddenly, quietly and without warning, the docr
into the passage was opened, and half a dozen or
more strange figures crowded into the little apart-
ment.
Strange they were, and appalling likewise ; for
every one of them was furnished with a hideous
black mask which completely concealed his features.
For the rest, their attire was devoid of any notice-
able feature ; but they were all armed, and their
demeanor showed that their revolvers were not in.
tended for show merely. All wore rubber shoes
on their feet to render their tread noiseless. The


64
A NIGHT WATCHMAN.
janitor and liis wife stared at them in voiceless
consternation : nor did the intruders speak for a
few moments.
But presently one among them pushed his way to
the front.
He was
a trifle under the average
height, but of broad and massive build. His eyes
sparkled through the holes cut in his black mask.
He addressed the janitor in a low but peremptory
voice, demanded the instant production of the keys
of the bank.
The unhappy janitor tried to evade the demand,
and his wife emitted a feeble scream. Instantly
the muzzles of the revolvers were planted against
their heads, and they were sternly assured that the
slightest attempt to cry out or resist would be
punished by instant death. At the same time two
of the masked men bound and gagged Mrs. Werkle,
and two others went into the inner room to perform
a like office for her mother. It was plain from all
their movements that they were perfectly familiar
with all the janitor's domestic arrangements and
habits. It was plain, too, that they were in deadly
earnest, and would put up with no trilling.
This was a situation to be faced by a hero, but
not by such a person as Louis Werkle ; and when
the cold muzzle of the revolver touched his temple,
he succumbed, and indicated where the keys might
be found. But he ventured to observe that the
key would be of no avail without a knowledge of
the way the knob should be turned, which was
something that could not be imparted by descrip-
tion.


A NIGHT WATCHMAN.
65
The leader replied curtly that the turning of the
knob need give Mr. Werkle no uneasiness, for that
was a detail which had already been mastered : but
he added that he must require the janitor to repeat
to him the combination. Upon Werkle's protesting
that he did not have it, he was told that he was
known to open the vault with it every morning;
and was further reminded that delay or prevarica-
tion meant death.
In a faltering voice, the janitor gave the three
numbers of the combination.
The leader did not seem satisfied. He made his
.victim repeat the numbers, and then told him that
there must be one more, as the lock was a four-
wheel one. Werkle assured him that he had given
him all there was; and the poor creature's obvious
terror and ghastly apprehension were more
vincing than any words that he was telling the truth.
The man departed finally, therefore, after assuring
Werkle that his life depended upon his having
given the numbers correctly, and directing the two
guards whom he left in the room to kill the whole
family at the slightest symptom of any attempt to
make a noise. The two guards, still masked,
gagged the janitor and handcuffed him, and then
waited grimly, with their revolvers in their hands,
for what seemed to the victims an interminably long
time. In fact, it was about two hours and a half ;
but during that period, Werkle, in addition to his
physical discomfort, which was not small, and the
sight of the black masks and the gleaming revol-
con-


66
A NIGHT WATCHMAN.
vers, which was not reassuring, was given the
choice of but two subjects of thought: the first being
that he might suffer a violent death at any moment,
and the other that, in case he escaped, the bank
which it was his duty to guard would have been
rifled, and he himself would be among the first to
be suspected of collusion.
At length, however, the long suspense, which was
perhaps the worst thing to endure of all, came to
an end, and the guards withdrew, with a parting
caution of a very blood-curdling kind. The
Werkle family were once more left to themselves.
For several minutes they were afraid to stir lest the
terrible masked gang should return; but finally the
janitor succeeded in getting the stifling gag out of his
mouth, and then, with the manacles still on his
wrists, he made his way down stairs and round to his
friend Kohlman's shop, as
have already
we
seen,
Such was Werkle's story as listened to by Kohlman
and the unknown gentleman who had dropped in
by accident. It was not, in itself, an altogether
probable tale, and the gentleman's countenance,
when it had been told, seemed to express as much.
As for Kohlman, he was too much bewildered to
have any opinion at all ; and he accepted the gen-
tleman's suggestion, that the police had better be
sent for; with alacrity. It was desirable to make it
clear that, at all events, the barber had nothing to do
with the affair, or was in any way concerned to shield
the janitor, It is all very well to be friendly with a


68
A NIGHT WATCHMAN.
they remained trying to look over one another's
heads to see what would happen next.
The officer in charge of the police disposea some
of his men outside the bank, to keep off persons
whose curiosity was too pressing ; and sent others,
in plain clothes, among the crowd, to collect what-
ever evidence or information might be floating
about.
He then entered the bank with one companion,
availing himself of the side-door on Bleecker Street,
which the burglars had left open. A glance was
sufficient to show that the worst that could be feared
had happened. The vault had been opened, evi-
dently by a proper manipulation of the combination
lock. The space within the vault was about eight
feet square, and contained a safe on either side, and
a third at the back. Two of these had been forced,
and an attempt had been made on the third, but this,
for some reason, had been given up. Evidently,
however, enough had been taken from the other two
safes to repay the burglars amply for their labor.
But though they had taken much, thay had left
little or nothing to indicate who they were. They
had been there, and they had gone away again : so
much was certain, but no more than so much. This,
at all events, was the view of the matter taken by
the police after a cursory inspection of the ground:
and the reports of the officers in plain clothes who
had been sent to collect news amongst the crowd,
was to the effect that no suspicious characters had
been seen about the place that morning. The whole


A NIGHT WATCHMAN.
69
thing seemed almost like magic. The janitor's
story was the only tangible point connected with it;
but even that might be an invention. As the police
officer in charge contemplated the scene, he could
not repress a reluctant admission that the rogues
had done their work well.
“ There's only one man in New York," he re-
marked to his companion, “who has the eyes to see
through this millstone, and the sooner he gets to
work on it, the better. And even he will find it the
toughest job he has ever tackled.”
The personage thus alluded to was already on his
way to the bank, having been apprised of the catas-
trophe some minutes before. Meanwhile, telegrams
were sent to the officers and directors of the bank,
telling them what had happened, and requesting
their immediate attendance, with a view to their
throwing whatever light they could upon the mat-
ter, And here, for the time being, all action neces-
sarily paused ; and the crowd, finding that no new
developments were to be looked for, gradually dis-
persed, until the street resumed somewhat its
wonted aspect.


CHAPTER VIII.
A MAN
WITH EYES.
BETW
ETWEEN ten and eleven o'clock, a new fig-
ure arrived on the scene. This was a tall and
well built man of perhaps thirty-five years of age,
with a face expressive of quiet but penetrating in-
telligence, and a bearing that denoted power, self-
confidence and reserve. He was neatly and unob-
trusively dressed, and looked like a prosperous man
of business of the higher class.
His appearance was not specially noted by the
bystanders ; but the police officers on duty greeted
him with manifest satisfaction. And well they
might; for if any man could find his way through
the labyrinth of mysteries presented for solution, it
was he. Unassuming as he seemed, this was
New York's greatest detective-Inspector Byrnes.
The inspector held a few moments private con-
versation with the officer-in-charge, with a view to
putting himself in possession of whatever was thus
far known of the affair. Then, after asking whether
everything in the bank was in the same condition
as when first discovered, and receiving an affirm-
ative reply, he began his investigation. In this, he
was assisted by no one; he preferred to depend
upon himself, and grappled with the problem
alone,


A MAN WITH EYES.
71
As already stated, there were two doors on the
Bleecker Street side of the building, and nine plate-
glass windows, admitting a view both of the bank-
room and of the apartments of the directors. The
detective's first attention was given to the doors :
but there were no marks on the locks of either of
them to show that they had been tampered with.
It was evident, therefore, that they had been
opened either with the true keys made for them, or
with imitations of identical pattern. Further in-
quiry must show which of these alternatives was
the more likely to be correct. The inspector now
opened the bank door, and stood on the tesselated
stone pavement of the main office.
Everything here appeared in its usual condition.
Standing with his back to the windows, the detect-
ive found himself facing the long screen or par-
tition which separated the clerks from the depos-
itors. This partition was of panneled and polished
wood, surmounted by framed sheets of plate-
glass. The whole was rather higher than a man's
head. It extended in a direction parallel with
Bleecker Street, from the partition wall of the
directors' apartments, at the eastern end of the
building, to within a few yards of the front or
Broadway end. Here it made a rectangular turn,
which carried it to the main partition-wall on the
north. Midway in this portion was the doorway
giving access to the clerks' desk-room.
There was nothing in this outer region in the
least unusual. Ą þroom stood in a corner near the


72
A MAN WITH EVES.
door, with a small heap of dust beside it ; a feather
duster and a cloth lay on the window-sill hard by.
These objects attracted the attention of the detect-
ive, whose eyes nothing escaped, and he made a
mental note of them; for the evidence of the
patrolman, who had seen a supposed janitor clean-
ing up the office in the early morning, had not as
yet been made known.
The detective now turned to the right, and
entered the rooms reserved for the president and
directors. Nothing had been disturbed there.
The apartments were in precisely the same state
in which they had been left when the bank was
closed on the Saturday afternoon previous. Hav-
ing satisfied himself of this, he retraced his steps
to the outer office.
The burglars must have entered the building by
the side door, and proceeded westward towards
Broadway, gaining access to the clerks' room by the
opening in the Broadway end of the screen. How
they had contrived to do this without being seen
from the street, was of course a matter of conject-
ure. They had doubtless timed the patrolman
whose beat carried him past the bank ; and, at that
early hour on Sunday morning, there would be
very few other persons on the street. Moreover,
the glare of the light reflected from the plate-glass
surfaces would to some extent conceal them from
passers by.
The detective here pushed open the door of the
clerks' room and went in,


A MAN WITH EYES.
73
Directly facing him, as he stood, was the vault;
and now the first indications of the work that had
been done appeared. The ponderous doors of the
vault would ordinarily be closed out of business
hours ; but these now stood open, revealing the
interior. He advanced, and subjected the elaborate
combination lock to the most searching scrutiny.
There was not a scratch upon it; it had been
opened by some one familiar with its workings and
with the secret numbers which controlled it. But
inside the vault, the aspect of affairs was very dif-
ferent.
The small chamber, scarcely three paces in length
and breadth, was surrounded by massive steel safes,
each of them furnished with heavy doors, bolts, and
combination locks. The floor of this chamber was
of hard wood, and it was littered over with papers,
empty cash boxes, and a quantity of burglars' im-
plements, constituting a complete and costly "kit,"
made according to the latest and most improved
designs. There were three powerful sectional
jimmies, ten small drills, a sledge hammer weigh-
ing sixteen pounds, an ingenious contrivance
known as a "puller," drags, bolts, and other para-
phernalia, calculated to overcome the stoutest
fastenings.
These instruments had been employed by hands
supremely skillful in their use. The evidence of
this was only too conspicuous. The interior of the
vault was a wholesale wreck. The smaller safes
had been broken open; and the door of the larger


74
A MAN WITH EYES.
safe, wnich stood at the end of the inclosure, had
been completely unhinged, and now lay upon a heap
of ledgers. Wedges had been driven into the crev-
ices of a safe in the right-hand corner of the vault ;
and they still remained there ; the burglars had
been interrupted, or they had already secured
enough. How much they had secured could not
yet be known ; but there could be little doubt that
the amount was very great.
The detective's business was not with this ques-
tion, however. It was his present duty to study the
confusion which the thieves had left behind them,
and endeavor to deduce from it some traces of
their identity. To accomplish this might seem a
hopeless task to any one unaccustomed to it, but
Inspector Byrnes, by nature and training, was fitted
for it to an extraordinary degree. As a critic
familiar with the various styles and methods of
work of contemporary writers can guess, from a
page of their composition, who was the probable
author of it: or as a picture dealer can name the
artist who painted any particular canvas :
an efficient detective divine, from the manner in
which a safe has been attacked, and the charac-
ter of the marks left upon it, something pointing
to the identity of the operators. There is only a
limited number of first-class bank burglars in
existence at any given, time, and they and their
methods are all more or less familiar to the police.
When a really first-class job has been done, therefore,
it is reasonable to suppose that one or other of these
So can


A MAN WITH EYES.
77
would be an excessively difficult undertaking, and
was likely to be an indefinitely prolonged one.
On the other hand, the fact that the safes within
the vault were broken open, instead of being worked
by their combinations, tended to show that the
inside source of information (if such there was) had
failed at this point. It was not to be forgotten, how-
ever, that the breaking-open might itself be a blind,
intended to dissipate the inside-accomplice theory.
But, again, it could hardly be deemed probable that
so much valuable time should have been sacrificed
merely to attain so problematical a result. To the
thieving fraternity, money is money, and there are
very few things to take precedence of it. It was
better to suppose, provisionally, that they had used
all the information they could get, and had then
depended upon their mechanical implements and
skill.
The investigation of the vault occupied the
inspector more than an hour. When he came out he
felt that he knew all that there was to be learned
from it. It did not amount to a great deal, but it
was something. The next thing in order was to ex-
amine witnesses, and find out how far their stories
agreed with or contradicted the theories he had
formed.
By this time, however, the officers of the bank
had begun to arrive, and it was desirable to have
a preliminary interview with them without delay.
They were assembled in the president's room when
the inspector entered, and exchanged greetings


78
A MAN WITH EYES.
with them. He briefly acquainted them with the
state of affairs, and then asked whether they had
reason to think that any employé of the bank
would be capable of participating in the crime.
After a pause, one of the directors replied that
they were unable to fasten suspicion on any one.
All their employés had been in the service of the
bank a number of years, and had never been found
untrustworthy.
To this the inspector answered that the worst
way to treat a trustworthy man was to trust him
too much. There was a double risk : first, that he
himself might abuse their confidence; and sec-
ondly, that evil-disposed persons, finding him to
be possessed of certain secrets or other valuables,
might be tempted to abstract them from him, either
by guile or by violence, the consequence to the
bank being the same in both cases.
“So far as you may refer to Louis Werkle," re-
turned the director, we can only say that we are
convinced of the man's personal integrity. It is
true that an important trust was confided to him ;
but though he had the vault combination, in order
that he might get at the books which were kept in
it, and place them on the clerks' desks in the
morning, this did not give him access to the interior
safes in which the money was kept. Where money
is concerned, however, it must always be necessary to
trust somebody. There is not a bank in this country
that could not be wrecked if the tellers or other of
the officials were to combine in a dishonest act,


A MAN WITH EYES.
79
Our bank has been very carefully conducted, and
the funds invested in registered securities. But
there is no forecasting misfortunes of this kind.
What one holds to be a chief element of strength
may develop into a special danger. It can not be
prevented."
“This may all be, gentlemen," the detective re-
plied, “ but it does not alter the fact that a banker
ought to be nine-tenths suspicion to one-tenth of
all other qualities. He should know not only his
employés, but their friends and associates. Such
knowledge may cost money to get, but it will
repay its cost a thousand fold. And his vigilance
should never be relaxed,-a man who has been
twenty years in an office should be watched just as
sharply as the man who came in last week. Temp-
tation prevails at the close of a career as often as
at the beginning.”
“ Then you are seriously of opinion that some
one in the bank is involved ?”
“Such a thing is always possible, and must be
considered. Have none of you noticed any thing
strange in the conduct of any clerk or employé
during the last few months ? Has any depositor
or acquaintance shown any curiosity about the
structure of the vault or the routine of business?
Has the vault itself ever been tampered with ?”
The latter question elicited an important and
unexpected fact. It appeared that, some six
months previous, the cashier, on attempting to
open the safe in the morning, found that the com.


80
A MAN WITH EYES.
bination would not work. As he was certain he
had the numbers right, it was plain that something
must be wrong with the lock itself. A locksmith
was sent for, but he could do nothing with it ; and
at length an expert was summoned, who proceeded
systematically, and at last got the door open. In
the course of these operations, he made a curious
discovery, to which, however, little weight was
attached at the time. Underneath the combination-
plate he found a small hole, drilled in such a way
as to come in contact with the tumblers of the lock.
The mouth of the hole had been filled with putty of
the same color as the surface of the door, so that
it was only noticeable when the interior of the lock
was laid bare.
Such a revelation might well have aroused the
suspicions of a bank manager, and it did lead to
some speculation, which, however, resulted in noth-
ing. The expert, whose time was too much occu-
pied to allow of his spending any of it in surmises,
probably thought that the bank was aware of the
existence of the hole, and that it was made in some
former attempt to correct a disorder in the mechan-
ism. The bank, on the other hand, failed to real-
ize the real gravity of the revelation, owing to its
having been so indifferently referred to by the
expert. It was afterwards remembered that
portly gentleman, about forty years of age, wearing
an amethyst ring on his finger, had happened to
enter the bank at the time the expert was at work,
to get change for a one-hundred-dollar bill; and
a


A MAN WITH EYES.
81
that he remained, an interested spectator of the
proceedings, for a couple of hours.
“ It is at least a reasonable conjecture," observed
the detective, “that the money you have lost found
its way out through the hole drilled under the com-
bination-plate, small though it was; that hole was
drilled by burglars ; and in order to make it, it
seems certain that they must have had some accom-
plice inside. It is true that they carried off noth-
ing ; but that is neither here nor there. They may
have been disturbed at their work, or they may
have only wished to look over the ground before
going at it in earnest. At all events, it supports
the theory that this robbery has been planned for
some time past. And if that's so, it renders the
task of unraveling the affair much more difficult.
Had every one who has any thing to do with the
doors of the bank or of the vault been shadowed,
we might by this time have been in a position to act.'
“We can, however, begin to shadow them now,”
remarked a director.
"There is a great difference in the situation
now," was the reply. “Before, the money was
here, and the thieves were not far off. Now, the
money is gone, and the thieves are naturally gone
with it; and your guilty employé, whoever he may
be, will be on his good behavior for a long while to
come.
And even could we fix upon any persons of
whose guilt we were morally certain, it would by no
means follow that we could establish their guilt to
the satisfaction of a jury.”


82
A MAN WITH EYES.
“How is that ?" inquired the director.
“Because, next to their plans for accomplishing
the robbery itself, bank-burglars bestow their chief
pains upon schemes for escaping conviction and
arrest. That is as much a part of their regular
business as wrecking a safe. For one witness that
we could bring forward to iuentify a man, there will
be half a dozen to prove his alibi. However, we
will do our best.”
“We place entire reliance in your energy and
sagacity," was the reply. " Much of the stolen
property must have been in the form of registered
securities, and these, I presume, can be traced.”
“No doubt, if an attempt is made to negotiate
them. But that is at least doubtful. These bur-
glars are probably old hands, and know what they
are about. The usual course, in such matters, is
for the thieves to open negotiations with a view to
effecting a compromise. They will offer to return
the securities on condition of receiving a certain
percentage of their face value. And I may as well
ask you, right here, whether you would be disposed
to entertain any such proposal ?”
The directors consulted together a few moments.
“We are unanimously against any form of com-
promise,” said the director who had previously
spoken, turning to the detective. “ Our wish is
that the thieves should be vigorously pursued and, if
possible, brought to justice. Meanwhile, we are
very much pleased at the conclusion you have
arrived at."


A MAN WITH EYES.
83
The detective bowed an acknowledgement. “I
will take my measures at once,” he said, rising.
“ Meanwhile, I should advise your obtaining a cor-
rect schedule of your losses, printing them in
the form of a circular, and sending copies to
every banking institution and police station in the
country. By the way, have you an approximate
idea of what your losses are ?"
“The clerks have been at work examining the
books," was the answer. They should have
nearly finished by this time. The amount stolen
must be considerable--not far short of a million, I
should say."
At this moment there was a knock at the door,
and the cashier entered. He had a sheet of
paper in his hand, and his face was pale and grave.
“What is it, Osborne ?” the director demanded.
“A summary of the amount stolen," replied the
cashier, in a low voice.
“Well, what is it? As much as a million ?”
The man's lips trembled, and his voice faltered,
as he read these words from his paper :-"Amount
stolen in securities and bonds, two million eight
hundred thousand dollars. In cash, forty thousand
dollars. Total, two million eight hundred and forty
thousand dollars."
The directors looked at one another in dismay,
This meant suspension,


CHAPTER IX.
EVIDENCE.
WHEN
THEN the magnitude of the sum taken from
the Manhattan Savings Institution by the
mysterious burglars became known, the sensation
created was profound and widespread. The great
robbery was the talk of New York, and indeed of
the whole country. That so vast an amount of
money should have been abstracted from the vault
of one of the oldest and best-guarded banks of the
city, in broad daylight, and practically in full view of
the entire population : that this should have been
done, and no trace of any of the perpetrators
remain, was a fact appalling enough to frighten the
boldest. Bankers, brokers, merchants, jewelers
and tradesmen asked themselves seriously whether
any security were possible against the diabolical
cunning and ingenuity of trained burglars. The
strongest doors gave way before them like magic.
They seemed to possess the faculty of rendering
themselves invisible at will. Where and how was
security to be found ? Under these circumstances,
the efforts of the police to capture the unknown
criminals were watched with no ordinary or tran-
sient interest.


86
EVIDENCE.
;
rent probability than any that could be substituted
for it. Nevertheless, the keenest judge of character
may sometimes be misled ; and the inspector did not
allow his opinion as to the Werkles to appear on
the surface. He impressed upon them the gravity of
their situation; and they departed in the belief that
the law had its eye upon them, and might have some-
thing further to say to them later on.
Kohlman, the barber, was the next witness; and
his evidence brought to light one or two noteworthy
points. One of these was the fact that he was
always in his shop by a quarter before seven ; and
that this Sunday morning had been no exception
to the rule. Now, as his shop was directly under-
neath the bank, any noise made above was audible
to him ; he was even able to distinguish the sound
of the janitor's footsteps moving about in his daily
morning avocations. But on this occasion he had
heard nothing at all, or, at all events, nothing un-
usual ; and since the process of breaking into a
safe is something from which noise, and noise of a
very noticeable kind, is inseparable, it would seem
to follow (assuming his story to be true) that the
heavy part of the robbery at least must have been
accomplished before he entered his shop. Werkle's
testimony proved, however, that the robbers could
not have got to work before a quarter past six at the
earliest; and this left no more than half an hour,
or possibly forty minutes for the operation.
If the burglary had shown evidence of rare pro-
fessional skill on the burglars' part, the discovery


88
EVIDENCE.
terious as the present; and the inspector made a
note of the man with the amethyst ring. He might
be useful, if for nothing else, as a witness to con-
firm the testimony of Werkle and the barber.
The latter was now dismissed, and a couple of
police officers were admitted who had been in the
neighborhood of the bank at the time of the rob-
bery. One of these was the man who had seen a
person whom he took for the janitor, dusting the
furniture in the outer office at about half-past six
in the morning. This established the fact that the
burglars had provided themselves with a "look-
out"; but inasmuch as the look-out in question
was undoubtedly disguised-he was described as
wearing a long pair of whiskers, resembling those
of the real janitor-it was unlikely that the testi-
mony would prove to be of much practical use.
The other policeman could only say that a young
woman had accosted him, opposite the bank, and
asked him what time it was; and that he had glanced
at the clock over the bank vault, and taken the hour
from that. While doing so, he had noticed nothing
out of the way in the bank.
Another witness was a milkman, who was in the
habit of supplying the Werkle family, and who had
driven up to the Bleecker Street door a few minutes
before half-past six, and given his professional call.
He stated that while he was in the act of filling the
small can for delivery to the janitor, the storm-door
had been partly opened, and a man, whose face he
did not see, had told him that the family had gone


90
EVIDENCE.
Street door, and gone up to Werkle's rooms to
awaken him.
“Did you find the Bleecker Street door locked
when you went in ?" the inspector asked.
Keely replied that he had. The lock was a spring
lock, and could only be opened with a pass key.
During the daytime it was fastened back by a
catch. He had unlocked the door and had closed
it behind him, when, of course, it relocked itself.
After awakening Werkle, he at once returned down
stairs, opened the door by pushing back the spring,
and went home and to bed. He was positive that
no one could have entered this part of the building
while he was in it.
“And yet,” thought the inspector to himself,
"the six men must have been in Werkle's room
before Keely got back to the street ; unless he is
lying, therefore, they must have spent the night in
the building. We must look into that !” After
cross-examining Keely severely, without causing
him to vary from his story, he allowed him to go,
but gave directions that he should be carefully
watched until further orders. He then sent an
officer in plain clothes to investigate the upper
floors of the bank building, and report upon any
traces of unauthorized occupation that he might
find there. The officer brought back word that the
two upper floors were not rented ; and that in a
room on one of these he had come upon plain evi-
dence that several persons had spent the night
there : though the evidence was not of a character


EVIDENCE.
91
that could lead to an identification of the persons.
The inference was, therefore, that the six burglars
had made their way into the upper part of the build-
ing just before the door was locked for the night,
and had thus been able to pounce upon Werkle the
moment Keely had left him. But neither this cir-
cumstance, nor any thing else that had come to
light, gave promise of dispersing the obscurity
which enveloped every feature of this unparalleled
crime.
The only remaining witness was one Patrick
Shevelin, a brother-in-law of Keely, and a supple-
mentary watchman at the bank. His hours of duty
were generally during the daytime on Sundays.
He was not so intelligent-looking a man as Keely ;
his aspect was of dull good-nature; he answered
all questions readily and, so far as could be judged,
ingenuously. There were certainly fewer obvious
grounds of suspicion against him than against
Keely; and such information regarding his past
career as happened to be at hand showed nothing
to his discredit. Nevertheless, since no chance,
however remote, must be neglected, it was neces-
sary not only to examine Shevelin, but to hold him
in suspicion. His statement that he knew nothing
whatever about the affair was probably true ; but
at the same time it was possibly false.
In his con-
versation with this man, the inspector, whether
inadvertently or of design, adopted an easier and
more affable demeanor than with the others, as if to
indicate to him that the examination was more a


94
A GRADUATE OF THE CITY.
neck was short and thick, and his dark face was
round and smoothly shaven, with bright, quick eyes,
and an expression of mingled shrewdness and good
humor. You would have noticed that he wore a plain
tweed suit, with a rather low-cut waistcoat, reveal-
ing a triangular expanse of white shirt-front. But
the shirt was collarless; instead of that customary
but perhaps useless appendage, Mr. Grady wore
at his throat a diamond collar-button, and a dia-
mond stud lower down. Such was his invariable
costume, save that, when he went abroad he some-
times put on a roundabout double-breasted coat of
blue pilot cloth. For the rest, his manners were
undemonstrative, his voice deep and low-toned, his
hearing quiet and composed, but guarded. He
never spoke in haste; he had the air of a man
thoroughly at home in his business, and caring for
nothing beyond. At times, glancing up at him sud-
denly, you might have detected a look of deep siy-
ness on his face; but this would instantly disappear,
and the frank expression which took its place would
leave you in doubt whether you had not been mis-
taken.
Mr. Grady began life as a small boy running
about the streets of New York. Regular education,
he had none; but he contrived to pick up a good
deal of useful, if promiscuous information. His
parents were Irish, and by no means in affluent cir-
cumstances; they were unable to give their son a
start in life ; but, as compensation, they had en-
dowed him conjointly with the faculty of making a


A GRADUATE OF THE CITY..
97
John parried it, and rose promptly to his feet.
“Now, boys," exclaimed the bar-tender, who had
been in the ring himself, and whose command was
law, “you stop right there ! There ain't goin' to
be no more fightin' in this bar-room. If you want
to have a quiet turn-up, there's the backyard.
Nobody won't interfere with you there ; and,” he
added, after a moment's pause, “ if you're in earn-
est, I'll put a fiver on the little 'un, with any man
here, and stand by and see fair play!”
“ Jim,” said John, thrusting his hand in his
trowser pocket, “I'll bet you ten dollars myself
that I can lick you, and there's the money!” and
he laid the bills on the counter.
At this there was much rejoicing and uproar
among the spectators, who at once took sides in the
matter, and hurried the combatants into the back-
yard. A heap of empty beer kegs and other rub-
bish was quickly moved out of the way, and a ring
formed. Jim, who did not happen to have
ten dollars about him, borrowed that sum of a
backer, secretly wondering whether he should be
able to pay him back. John was quiet, but appar-
ently confident. The bar-tender took him aside,
and asked him whether he knew how to use his
hands ? John's reply not being entirely satisfactory,
his friend proceeded rapidly to instil into him a
few fundamental principles, adding, “I'll give you
a knee : and if you do as I tell you, you'll win your
money and mine too."
Every thing being in readiness, the men faced
:


98
A GRADUATE OF THE CITY.
each other and sparred for an opening. After a
moment, Jim led with his right, and got home
lightly on his opponent's forehead. John at almost
the same instant delivered a swinging blow at the
other's ribs, which, though partly parried, made him
wince. Jim then rushed to close quarters; but
here John's superior weight and compactness gave
him the advantage. Perceiving this, Jim stepped
back and landed a smart hit on the eye, and John's
counter fell short. He attempted to close again,
when time was called, and the men went to their
corners. Although Jim had technically had the
best of the round, John seemed much the fresher
of the two, as well as the more eager to get to work
again.
“ Hit straight, and hit for his body ; keep yer
head down, an' he can't hurt you,” said the bar-
tender, in John's ear. “You've got twice his wind;
keep cool, and you'll have him.”
Round 2. Jim forced the fighting, and got home
repeatedly, but could hit nothing but John's shoul-
ders and the top of his head. John, on the other
hand, made scarcely any attempt to protect him-
self, but kept steadily shooting out first one arm
and then the other at his antagonist's chest, ribs
and stomach. Many of these blows fell short, but
those that landed did execution. At last Jim made
a desperate rush with his head down, intending to
catch the other round the waist and Aling him over
his head. John, at a loss for an instant, instinct-
ively drew up his right knee; it caught Jim under


A GRADUATE OF THE CITY.
99
his chin, making his teeth rattle like a dice-box,
and throwing his head backward ; seeing which,
and having his left fist ready, John let it out with
his whole force and weight. It found its mark on
Jim's right temple with a noise like the sharp col-
lision of two blocks of wood. Jim went down like
a bag of bones, and no efforts could bring him to.
John was the victor almost before he had begun to
fight.
“ By G-! that was a neat trick !” exclaimed
the delighted bar-tender. “If he'd had his tongue
out, you'd have chopped it off as slick as a cu-
cumber! Where did you pick up that dodge, young
feller ? Why, you're a stem-winder, you are ! Just
give me the trainin' of you, and I'll stake my bar
I'll win you more money in a night than you can
pick up with a paint brush in a year
r!”
When Jim recovered his senses, which he did in
the back parlor of the saloon, he found himself con-
siderably damaged in reputation as well as pocket;
and he was also confronted by the gloomy features
of his backer, who wanted to know what he was
going to do about that ten dollars. To this ques-
tion Jim was able to frame no plausible reply; and he
was feeling sadly embarrassed when relief came
from a most unexpected quarter.
"I'll lend you ten dollars," said John, taking his
newly-won money from his pocket with the air of a
capitalist ; “I'll lend it you on that diamond pin
your
necktie. Ą month from now you
you wear in


A GRADUATE OF THE CITY.
IOI
ture of the eighth commandment. But he also
reflected that the lawful owner of the property
would be no worse off for its having been trans-
ferred to him ; and that every one else concerned
would be benefited thereby. He never did any
“conveying” himself, though whether on moral
grounds, or for reasons of prudence and expedi-
ency, we need not inquire. But by degrees he
became a sort of walking pawnshop, his habit of
restricting his transactions to diamonds and other
precious stones enabling him to carry all his stock-
in-trade about his person; and later, he relegated
pawnbroking to the second place in his business,
and let it be understood that whosoever had good
stones to sell would be sure to find an easy and
trustworthy customer in him : he bought them out-
right, and afterwards sold them again, sometimes
to the same persons, on the instalment plan. If the
instalments were not paid regularly, he foreclosed.
Yet he was not a Shylock ; though he had the rep-
utation of being a keen and resolute man of busi-
ness, he was also held to be kindly at bottom, and
even generous upon occasion. Thus he was the
most popular man in his peculiar line of industry ;
and as he was uniformly fortunate in his transac-
tions, he presently found himself growing rich.
It was then that he made up his mind to modify
his roving life so far as to rent a shop and spend
the greater part of the day in it. But at dusk, when
other men of business went home to rest, John D.
Grady would issue from his door with a well-worn


102
A GRADUATE OF THE CITY.
black satchel in his hand, and pursue his way to
the shady quarters of the town; or, occasionally,
and with certain precautions, to more fashionable
neighborhoods. Whichever way he went, and
although he received a fair number of boná-fide cus-
tomers at his shop, it was on these nocturnal expe-
ditions that by far the larger portion of Grady's
transactions were effected. It was then that his
most important sales, as well as his heaviest pur-
chases, were made ; and it was then, doubtless, that
the arrangements were entered into which involved
further speculations.
There was no good reason, so far as any one
knew, why Grady should have preferred to tramp
about in this manner instead of sitting quietly and
safely at home, and letting the world come to him.
On the other hand, there were plenty of excellent
reasons why he should pursue the latter course.
Every night of his life he ran risks to which, prob-
ably, no other man in New York would have
dreamed of exposing himself. With scores of thou-
sands of dollars' worth of diamonds in his satchel
and pockets, he would penetrate fearlessly and
alone into the very worst quarters of the city. How
he escaped murder, or robbery at the least, was a
standing marvel. True, he was known as a friend
- at any rate as a convenience—to the crooked por-
tion of the community; and also as a man of nerve
and brawn, willing and able to take his own part.
But in a great city 'there are always desperadoes
enough to commit any crime for the benefit or on


A GRADUATE OF THE CITY.
103
the temptation of the moment, and without thinking
or caring about ultimate results. Nor would the
impulsiveness of such persons be lessened by the
well-known fact that Grady carried no other
weapon than a broad-bladed knife, which he kept
up his right sleeve.
Probably Grady could have given no better
explanation of his foolhardy conduct than that it
was his humor to do so, and that the vagabond
habits of his early life were too strongly fixed upon
him to be cast aside. His confidence was so far
justified, that he never, so far as is known, came to
grief but once, when he was garotted by a couple
of footpads belonging to the “Swamp-Angels'"
gang, and thirteen thousand dollars worth of
diamonds were taken from his satchel. But he
took his mishap philosophically, admitting that he
had brought it upon himself, and remarking that it
worth what it cost him." Nor, though he
would have had no difficulty in identifying them,
did he ever prosecute the thieves. He knew the
frailty of human nature, and did not expect too
much from it.
But the episode did not cause him to relinquish
his night-prowling, and his short, sturdy figure,
with the broad ruddy face, collarless neck and sharp
eyes was familiar to hundreds of people in New
York. The police knew him well, and it was an
open secret to them that his business was used as
a cover for less legitimate proceedings. But he was
too shrewd and far-sighted ever to stray within the
was


A GRADUATE OF THE CITY.
105
this lay in the fact that the back of the vault was
protected by a granite wall three feet thick, through
which it was indispensable to drive a hole large
enough to admit a man's body.
Saturday, the 27th of June, 1874, was a holiday,
and, as this would give the burglars from Friday
night till Monday morning for their work, the
enterprise was set for that date. The engine was
placed in the basement of the Eighth Avenue oyster
saloon, and was set in motion soon after closing
hours. All was going well, and there was every
prospect that the job would be finished in ample
season, when a most annoying contretemps occurred.
A policeman with an acute sense of hearing and an
inquiring mind happened to stroll past the bank,
and was attracted by a singular humming or buz-
zing noise, proceeding from the bowels of the earth.
He paused, listened, speculated, and finally located
the mystery as somewhere in the depths of the
fashionable saloon. With a lack of delicacy, which
can not be too strongly reprobated this man knocked
at the door of the saloon and demanded admittance;
and failing to obtain it, he had the bad taste to
raise such a commotion, that the operators of the
engine felt it due to their self-respect to leave the
building by way of a door in the rear.
away but two, who were overtaken and persuaded
to accompany the officers to the station. It is said
that the bank never made any offer to reimburse
Mr. Grady for the outlay which had thus been ren-
dered abortive, and which is believed to have
All got


106
A GRADUATE OF THE CITY.
amounted to between forty and fifty thousand doi-
lars. Bank directors, like other corporations, have
no souls.
In spite of losses and vicissitudes, however, John
D. Grady grew to be a wealthy man, and a power
in his own circle. The most eminent operators in
the profession were his henchmen and supporters ;
they made him the confidant of the most secret
meditations of their hearts, deferred to him, bor-
rowed of him, and swore by him. He knew all
other men's counsels, but no other man knew his ;
his was the agency whereby all undertakings were
rendered possible, but it was as invisible as it was
effective. It was estimated that he might, had he
been so minded, have filled an entire wing of the pub-
lic establishment at Sing Sing with involuntary occu-
pants. It is interesting to note, by the way, that,
by a quaint coincidence, Big Jim (who was no
other than the Jim Brady who played the subordi-
nate part in the little drama recently alluded to)
again came into collision with his old opponent
and came near being betrayed into a serious breach
of good manners. The two gentlemen disagreed
a business question. Mr. Brady had taken a
fancy to the contents of an out-of-town banking
concern, and Mr. Grady had advanced him seven-
teen thousand dollars towards carrying out his
designs. But unexpected complications occurred,
and three thousand dollars more were needed to
put the scheme on a paying basis. Mr. Grady, how-
ever, had begun to lose faith in the enterprise, and
on


A GRIDUATE OF THE CITY.
IO
flatly refused to advance another cent. Mr. Brady's
chagrin at this disappointment was so keen that, in
the effervescence of the moment, he drew a revolver
from his pocket, and, pointing at it his interlocutor's
forehead, proposed to him the alternative of either
advancing the cash or dispensing with his brains.
As Mr. Grady had no wish to be considered pig-
headed, he embraced the former horn of the
dilemma; but the incident caused both parties to
feel hurt, and Mr. Brady's subsequent withdrawal
from public life, after attempting to rid the com-
munity of a policeman, prevented their former
cordial relations from ever being resumed.
That the diamond merchant had a weakness-a
tender foible_has been already intimated in a
former part of this narrative; but from the major-
ity of these romances it is unnecessary to with.
draw the veil. Grady had warm blood in his veins,
and it circulated vigorously; he had a hearty appe-
tite, sound sleep and a bright eye. In addition to
these traits, it is probable that this man, who was
known in the cold world of affairs as
« Old Supers
and Slangs "--recondite figurative expressions,
having reference to his trade,-that genial John, I
say, felt a yearning in his nature for those tender
Alatteries and soft cajolements, those sweet glances
and that rippling laughter which were all that
could compensate him for the stern career of duty
and self-denial to which he was too exclusively
committed. In the latter, his intellect and his


108
A GRADUATE OF THE CITY.
harsher traits were alone involved; there remained
that large, tropic region of his character which
cried aloud for sympathy, and which protested
against the stunting and hardening influences of
merely mundane avocations. It is pathetic to
reflect that lovely woman should so inadequately
have appreciated her privileges and opportunities
as to use them and him for the gratification of low
and selfish cravings. But such is the ironic per-
versity of life; and John, whose strong social apti-
tudes and broad tolerance would have sufficed to
make any woman a happy wife, was condemned to
a lonely existence, the brilliant outward success of
which only served to render more poignant its
deficiencies on the domestic side.
Still, he clung to the sex with a touching per-
sistence. He must have known that they were
deceivers ; but he chose rather to be deceived than
starved. And at length an experience came to him
new, absorbing, unprecedented, which bade fair to
repay a thousand-fold all previous disappointments.
Perhaps, he ſancied, he had been reserved all those
years for this; his sufferings had been blessings in
disguise. No human being knew of the intrigue
save the two who were concerned in it; and as John
sat, one evening in the autumn of 1878, in the little
back room of his dingy shop, awaiting the pre-
concerted signal of her appearance, he yielded to
a fond dream of untold felicity to come.


CHAPTER XI.
A SECRET MEETING.
AT
T half-past nine that evening the lower
stretches of Broadway were comparatively
free from traffic, and the rattle of a single wagon,
or even the footsteps of a pedestrian, could be
plainly distinguished. For fully two hours Grady
had been sitting quite motionless in his chair, with
his broad, strong hands resting on his knees, his
thick lips slightly compressed, and his eyes half
closed. He was not asleep, however ; far from it;
or, if he were dreaming, it was a waking dream.
And it was a dream, not of the past, but of the
future. Grady had, what few people gave him credit
for, a romantic and powerful imagination. This
faculty is not seldom the accompaniment of execu-
tive ability and a capacity for affairs. Its ostensi-
ble effect is chiefly to deepen and enrich the other
qualities ; but it also has a sphere and seasons of
its own, when, and in which, it carries its owner on
flights to fairyland.
Presently a slight shock seemed to pass through
the compact frame of the man, and he sat erect
in his chair, with all his senses on the stretch.
There was a faint noise, as if the other side


A SECRET MEETING.
III
swift and supple fingers. Then, with a sinuous
turn of her body, she unhusked herself, as it were,
and appeared in a demi-toilette, with a triangular
opening at the neck, and sleeves which left her
white arms bare from the elbows down. Next she
stripped off her gloves, looking at him the while
with laughing eyes. Throwing them on the table,
she stepped forward and put her two warm delicate
hands on either side of his broad dark face.
“You ugly, black old villain !" she said, in her
low muffled voice. “ You sweet little monster !
You were thinking about me, were you? Well, I
want you to think about me. Let me catch you
doing any thing else! You wicked, hideous old
darling! Oh, how I — hate you !
What a great
coarse mouth you've got! And what sharp wicked
eyes you've got! And what horrid big ears you've
got I-Do you love me?"
The last words were spoken with a complete
change of manner, from mocking banter to musical
tenderness. The blood rushed to Grady's face ;
he threw his arms round her and drew her up to
him. But she pressed her hands against his broad
chest, and, bending back, turned her lovely face
aside.
“Give me a kiss, won't you?" said Grady between
his teeth.
“Let me go !” she returned, in so cold and
imperious a tone that the man's arms insensibly
relaxed their hold. “Let me go, or you shall never
see me again !” His arms dropped to his sides,


II2
A SECRET MEETING.
and he pressed his teeth against his lip. “You
furget that I am a lady,” she continued. “You
can take no liberties with me—but what I grant !”
“You drive a man mad," muttered Grady husk-
ily.
“You know perfectly well the conditions on which
I visit you. If they do not suit you, say so, and I
will come no more.” She paused, with a sort of
interrogative look. He shook his thick shoulders
with a short, forcible growl. “Ah, Jack !" she
said, after a moment, changing again, "you
must let me go my own way. This is like
nothing else. If you can not keep yourself
down, I dare not be with you. You know I love
you; and you must let me woo you—not woo
me! You must let me take each step myself,
and not hurry me.
You will not lose any thing
in the end. If I take my own way, I shall
never go
but if you force me you lose me.
I can't help it—I am made that way. Will you be
good ?"
“I'll cut my throat for you,
you take the
fancy," said he, doggedly.
Hereupon this grand lady, whose slender foot was
too fastidious to tread on common earth, put her
arms softly round his neck, bent forwards, and
kissed him on the lips. As the dull candle-light
fell on this strange group-the woman all aristo-
cratic loveliness and refinement, the man coarse,
rugged, plebeian-it might have well been taken as
a living type of Beauty and the Beast. But Beau-
back;


A SECRET MEETING.
113
ty's caress did not, in this case, transform the
Beast into a prince. If she had expected it
to do so, perhaps she would not have kissed him.
Whatever else he was, it was plain enough that he
was her slave.
There was a stuffy and dilapidated little sofa in
the room : its springs had been springless for a
dozen years, its covering was soiled and ragged, it
had broken down and been propped up in various
places, and was altogether disreputable. Grady's
visitor seated herself upon it with as much apparent
satisfaction as if it had been upholstered in
embroidered satin and stuffed with swan's-down ;
and having settled herself there, she motioned
Grady, with a gesture of her hand, to take his place
at her knee. Accordingly, the man squatted down
on the floor like a great bear, with his shoulder rest-
ing against the corner of the sofa at her side ; and
she let one arm slip round his big head, patting his
face with her hand, and running her fingers through
his thick short hair, just as she might have fundled
an animal, or as Titania is famed to have caressed
the ass's nodule.
“ What makes me care for you-can you tell me
that ? ” she exclaimed, bending forward to glance a
moment in his face. “ Is it because you are the
combination of every thing that I abominate? I
like a tall man, and you are not that : I like fair
man,
and you are not that : I like a haughty man,
and you are not that : I like a young man, and you
are not that : I like a man to dress in the pink of


114
A SECRET MEETING.
fashion, and you dress like a costermonger : I like
him to live in a palace, and you live in a rat-hole :
I like him to be in the best society, and you are
the crony of thieves and murderers : I like him to
be cultured, and artistic, and literary, and you are
illiterate, and you don't even know what I'm talk-
ing about!”
“I know this much, though," returned Grady;
“the worse I am, the more you fancy me: and you
wouldn't take all the swells in New York to-day,
for the black of my finger nail !”
She brought up her hands to each side of her
face, and gave a little laugh and shudder. “I
don't care!” she said ; " I'm happy! Yes, I'd rather
be in this den with you, than Empress of Russia
in the Winter Palace. And I've known it ever since I
was a little girl—that I hated refinement and good
manners, and envied the hogs in their sty! There
is a brute beast in me somewhere, and it would
never give me any peace till I met you, and you-
I don't know !-somehow you explained me to my-
self. You are the wickedest man in New York-
at least I hope you are !-and I am the finest lady
in society : but we are alike and belong together,
and we are happy nowhere else—are we?”
“I'd go to perdition for you !" said Grady, in a
deep guttural; expressing in this simple way, what
it has taken poets and romancers a vast deal of
language and ingenuity to convey. What is the
mode, compared with the meaning?
“I'll tell you what I am !” said she.
“ Did you


116
A SECRET MEETING.
Mechanically, as it were, she shrank from him ;
then, recollecting herself, she stole her arm round
his neck again. “I don't know what to think
about that," she said. “Do you really expect to
make half a million out of this affair?"
“ That's if there don't come no hitch—"
“I know : and then you will have a million
altogether. But if I came to you—think what fun,
Jack, you and I eloping together! imagine the
things about it in the papers !-how could we
manage ? It's very nice to have a million ; but if
we lived together, I don't see how you could live
as you are doing now. And yet what I most want
is, that there should be no change in your ways.
You see, I'm a lady, and you're a ruffian ; and it's
the contrast that is the charm; but if we came
together, either I'd have to be like you, or you'd
have to be like me—that is, wear a collar and pre-
tend you were a gentleman ; and either way the
contrast would be gone."
“You're a little idiot, that's what you are !
John's comment upon this delicate casuistry.
“We'll stay what we are fast enough, never fear !
and there'll be diff'rence enough betwixt us, too,
if you keep the flesh on you that you've got now."
“ Jack, Jack, you're not half as much a devil as
I am !" she whispered suddenly in his ear. She
brought her hands together under his chin, and
with a quick exertion of nervous strength, buried
her slender fingers in his throat. Grady gasped
and choked ; but, beyond a spasmodic movement
was


A SECRET MEETING.
117
of the hands, he made not the slightest attempt to
free himself, or to resist. After a few seconds, she
relaxed her grasp, bent over him, and laughed in
his flushed face.
“I would like to strangle you once in a while, if I
could be sure of bringing you to life again," she
said. “Murder is just another way of loving.
Which do you like best?” As she spoke, she
stooped, and kissed him again, with a touch as
light as a butterfly's wing; but Grady, who had not
minded the strangling, now jumped to his feet with
a sort of snarl, like a wild beast sniffing food. She
drew herself together on the sofa, and looked fix-
edly up at him, holding his eyes with her own. If she
had wavered or faltered by a hair's-breadth, all would
have been over ; he knew this as well as she did.
But her glance was as steady and unyielding as a
Grady had more to lose than she. At
all events, the silent struggle did not last long; and
she prevailed.
“ Come now,” she said, sitting erect and address-
ing him in the friendliest but most unsentimental
tone imaginable ; " sit down here by me, old man,
and let's talk business. Perhaps you are not aware
that I am spending the evening at a quiet small
and early' in Washington Square, and that I'm
due at home by eleven-thirty !”
Grady emitted a perfunctory little chuckle, shook
himself, and sat down. “Well, what's the business
going to be ?” he inquired.
“ You know what I want to know. You have
steel spear.


118
A SECRET MEETING.
kept it from me all this time for fear of accidents,
as you said : but now that the thing is done, I want
to know how it was done and who did it."
“Well, it's done, and that's all about it," Grady
replied, after some hesitation. “The boys got
clear off with the boodle, and nobody seen 'em."
“Of course, every body knows that, who can
read, or who isn't deaf. But what you must tell me
is, who the boys are.”
Grady shook his head. “ There ain't no use in
calling no names,” he said.
* Now, listen to me, Jack," said his companion,
with emphasis. “Who was it that made this job
possible ? How could any thing have been done
if I hadn't been acquainted with the people inside,
and got you a plan of the inside of the vault, and
found out all their arrangements for you? You
know the risk I ran, and that I am in as much dan-
ger at this moment as you or any body else in the
affair. I have a right to know their names, and if
you care any thing about me, you will tell me.”
“Look here, lovey,” returned Grady, persua-
sively, “ you ain't no ordinary fool of a woman, and
you can catch on as quick as any body. The boys
don't know nothin' about you, and it ain't the
square thing that you should know them. This 'ere
ain't no jokin' matter : if they was to get nabbed,
it's twenty years and no less for all of 'em. What's
secret, is secret ; and them as don't know it, can't
blab it. I ain't sayin' as you'd squeal ; 'tain't likely
I would ; and you knows enough about me to send


A SECRET MEETING.
119
)
me up whenever you've a mind to. But as for
the other boys, it ain't my business to give 'em
away, and I can't do it. And there ain't no call for
you to know, 'cept just that you want to."
While he was speaking, she had sat with her
elbow on her knee, and her chin supported on her
hand. When he had done, she remained for a few
moments silent and motionless.
His intimation that her motive in asking him to
reveal the names of the burglars was mere idle
curiosity, perhaps did her less than justice. She
was an ambitious woman, and, if her ambition were
depraved, it was ambition none the less. What was
the exact nature of this ambition can, of course,
only be surmised ; but the surmise can be hazarded
with some confidence.
In whatever society she found herself, it was her
wish and purpose to be first—to be the leader : and
whether she was surrounded by the wealth and cul-
ture of the foremost circles of New York, or
whether she descended to the slums, this purpose
held good. To be a queen among thieves,-a des-
potic sovereign,-holding their lives and freedom in
her hand, -directing and controlling their opera-
tions,-forming combinations and accomplishing
crimes which should appal and paralyze society,--
these
may
have been among
the schemes that were
generating in her brain. That a colder judgment
might pronounce such schemes wildly impractica-
ble, would not move her : it was the unprecedented,
the impossible, that she craved. By knowing the
:


120
A SECRET MEETING.
secrets of the leaders of the criminal class, she
could control them on the side of their fears : by
her beauty and charm of sex, she could rule them
on another side. The advantages which she would
be able to afford them would be enormous; and
together they might do more to demoralize civili-
zation than all the nihilists and anarchists of recent
times had been able to accomplish. And destruc-
tion is the delight of those whose hearts are turned
to evil.
But we may imagine that there was also another
current in her thoughts. She knew, better than any
one else could know it, the profound fickleness of
her nature, strangely though it was mingled with
tenacity of purpose and constancy to mischief. She
knew that although, for the present, her humor led
her to caress this Caliban, and mingle her thoughts
and sympathies with his, yet an hour might come
when she would weary of him, and wish him re-
moved from her path forever. But the power to
effect this riddance, should it become desirable,
must be insured by acquiring complete knowledge
of every thing that, if communicated to the author-
ities, would bring about the annihilation of him and
his. So long as she was kept in ignorance, she was
helpless.
This was not the first time she had made the
attempt to enlighten that ignorance ; and every
attempt had met with failure. A woman of less
caliber would have lost her temper, quarreled with
Grady, and thereby have allowed the whole matter


A SECRET MEETING.
121
to slip through her fingers ; but she would not
allow herself to admit defeat. Moreover, Grady's
persistent refusal to accede to her wishes in this
respect, so far froin alienating her from him, had
the effect of augmenting the singular species of in-
fatuation which she had conceived for him. Had
he yielded, it was quite on the cards that she would
have ceased to feel any interest in him ; and yet she
would bide her time, and leave no stone unturned,
to compass her own disenchantment.
She raised her eyes, and regarded Grady with a
smile.
“ You don't care for me as much as I do for you,
Jack,” she said ; “but perhaps you will when you
know me better. I will show you that I deserve to
be trusted ; and when you are satisfied of that-
well, I shall be happy, that's all ! But I can wait ;
because I know it will come in time. We'll say no
more about it now. But may I know whether the
money has been divided, and you have your
share?”
“ There ain't but about forty thousand of it in
cash,” said Grady, greatly relieved at her apparent
surrender, " and I let the boys divide that up
among themselves : I don't want nothin' to say to
it. The bonds and securities is my business ; once
they gets worked off, we're all solid.”
“Have you got them here?"
Grady shook his head. “No good runnin' risks ;
and this place is a bit too near the place the stuff
come from. Me and the boys talked it over ; and


122
A SECRET MEETING.
it's been put where it's safe. We'll mebbe send
some of it to London, for it ain't healthy passing
registered stuff around here : but the best scheme
is to lie low for a bit, and then those chumps at the
bank will buy it back themselves."
“ Can I do any thing more?" asked she, after a
pause.
“ You might smell around and find what they're
doin' about it : you can always get the tip from the
inside. There ain't nobody goin' to suspect you !”
“No, Jack, they won't suspect me," she answered,
looking in his face with a peculiar smile. “ It would
be harder for me to make them believe me what I
am, than for your Jimmy Hope, if he were caught
in the vault, putting the securities in his pocket, to
make them believe that he was innocent. I wish
you could see me receiving my friends in a draw-
ing-room, or making calls, and conversing about
fashions and the opera; or attending Divine ser-
vice at Grace Church, and making the responses."
“ Sort o' sick of it, ain't yer ?" said Grady, sym-
pathetically.
She thought a moment, and then shook her
head.
“No; I used to be ; but now I enjoy it, because
it's all such a joke on them! If I were really what
I seem to them, it would be intolerable ; but since
I am what you—and nobody but you-know I am,
it's fun !”
Well, it takes a woman for straight-out devil-
try!" remarked Grady, with a grin. “We pro-


A SECRET MEETING.
123
fess'nal chaps goes in for business; but you are on
just for the hell of it! Did you fetch them bills o'
yours along with you?"
“Oh, it's no matter about those," she returned
carelessly. “You haven't got what you expected yet,
and I don't want you to pay any thing more your-
self.”
“Come now, none of that !” exclaimed Grady,
reddening. “I'm running you, and I want you
should know it! All the money that goes into
your pocket comes out of mine, and don't you for-
get it ! By G-! if I hear of any of them bloody
swells stumpin' up for you, I'll tear their guts out
of 'em ! You may play off with me about kissin'
and huggin' and all that, as much as you like ;
but I want you should know that you're my woman
and there don't nobody else come betwixt us!
Give me them bills, or I'll take 'em from you!"
His face had darkened, and his eyes sparkled.
He had worked himself into a passion. She gazed
at him intently ; he thrilled her, and she loved to
be so thrilled. She put her hand in the pocket of
her dress, and pulled out a little bundle of papers,
which she handed to him. He took them and
glanced them over.
“ On'y thirteen hundred dollars !” said he, “and
you been goin' on over six weeks ! Look here ! are
you keepin' any thin' back ?”
“No, indeed, Jack, that's every bit I'm in debt."


124
A SECRET MEETING.
“You'll spend more than that when I get hold of
you !” muttered he. “I'll make you wallow in
diamonds, and wipe your feet on lace at fifty
dollars a yard. Come here !" he added, rising and
going to the safe. She followed him submissively.
He threw open the heavy door, and opening a
drawer within, took out a roll of bank notes, which
he counted over. “There's two thousand," he said,
shoving the money into her hands; “ and here's
your bills. Pay 'em, and keep the change. And if
ever you
want
any
thin' that's on this earth, you ask
Jack Grady, and he'll get it for you."
If she rejoiced in her degradation, she should
have been near the acme of happiness at that
moment. The big safe cast its shadow over them
as she turned her face to him to bid him good-by.


CHAPTER XII.
AN AMATEUR SUGGESTION.
A
FEW days after the robbery, Inspector Byrnes
was sitting in his office, considering the reports
of some of his detectives which had just been handed
in,when a gentleman was announced whose acquaint-
ance the reader has already made, and whose pro-
fession was journalism. To the inspector he had
been known for a number of years. After the first
greetings, the conversation turned on the robbery,
“ Have you any thing for publication ?” inquired
the visitor.
“ Nothing that would be worth your printing.
Nothing of importance has turned up. I dare say
that you, as a man of imagination, could make sug-
gestions regarding the matter as valuable as any
you would be likely to pick up here."
The journalist felt a glow of complacent pleasure.
In truth, he was in the habit of priding himself, to
some extent, on his faculty of placing himself
imaginatively in a foreign position, and thence
reasoning out motives and probabilities,-after the
manner of Edgar Allan Poe, in his " Mystery of
Marie Roget.” He had thought a good deal about
the Manhattan robbery, and had arrived at certain


126
AN AMATEUR SUGGESTION.
" How
did you
conclusions which he fancied might have some im-
portance.
“Well, inspector," he said, with a modest wave
of the hand, "every body has his theory, and all
theories are equally good or bad until the right one
is hit upon. I make no pretensions, but I have my
ideas, of course. Now, for instance, I don't know
whether it has occurred to you that this crime may
not have been in all respects a professional job?"
“ That is an interesting idea," the inspector re-
plied, with an engaging air of attention.
arrive at it?"
“By reasoning, simply,-assisted, perhaps, by a
little observation here and there. Mind you,
I
abstain strictly from any personal applications ; I
have no particular individual in my mind. But it
is at least conceivable-is it not ?—that persons of
good social position should also be deficient on the
moral side—that reputation for virtue should not
always involve the possession of it ?”
“Now that you mention it, I can see that such
might be the case," replied the inspector, qui-
etly.
“Very well. Now, having assumed that such a
person may exist, and even abide within the con-
fines of this municipality, let us go a step further
and imagine that, for some cause or other, he finds
his expenses are becoming larger than his receipts.
It would then be natural for him to desire to reverse
the situation, and make the receipts exceed the
expenditures. Am I right so far?"


AN AMATEUR SUGGESTION.
131
speak to her about literature, or art, or philosophy,
or something of that kind.”
“You are probably right,” returned the inspector,
indifferently. Meanwhile he had written down a
word on a strip of paper, and now, opening a
drawer, he dropped the slip into it.
“What you have noticed at Grady’s may be of
use to us, when the time comes,” the other replied,
smiling. “When all the pieces are fitted together,
a bit of evidence that seems nothing in itself may
turn out to be the keystone of the arch. Still, I
have my doubts as to the possibility of proving
any thing on Grady."
"By the way," said the journalist, “what is that
story I hear about a hole having been drilled under
the combination plate ?”
“ A hole had been drilled there some time ago.
That's all I know.”
“How did any body get into the bank to drill it?"
“I can not tell you.”.
“I have heard it suggested that somebody inside
the bank-or a favored depositor, perhaps-gave
the thieves information which enabled them to bore
the hole in the right spot."
“ So far as I have heard, the bank officials sus-
pect no one."
“It is certainly a mysterious case, inspector, and
I wish you all success,” remarked the journalist,
rising to depart.
The inspector shrugged his shoulders and laugh-
ingly said, " If you should have occasion to buy


132
AN AMATEUR SUGGESTION.
any more diamonds, I would advise you to be care-
ful where you buy them, as under some circum-
stances they could be identified.”
The journalist looked a little crestfallen, and said
to the inspector, “I understand you thoroughly,”
and then departed.
When the inspector was once more alone, he
touched a bell and one of his most trusted lieuten-
ants entered the room. “ It may be as well,” the
inspector said, “ to continue to keep an eye on the
gentleman who has just gone out ; for, whether by
coincidence or otherwise, he has happened upon an
idea that has lately been presented to me in a
definite and more or less authoritative form. I want
you to take hold of this matter, and follow it up for
all it is worth, which may be much or little. And
meanwhile, take care that this journalistic gentle-
man does not meddle. If he is on the scent, turn
him off.”
“What! Have you something new, inspector ?"
“Yes! There is a gentleman of wealth and
position in this city-to prevent confusion I will call
him Mr. Smith. He is a man of about forty years
of age, and the son of an extensive coal-mine
owner of the last generation. He is reputed to be
worth anywhere up to four or five million dollars.
“ He is a single man, and lives alone in a hand-
some house just off the avenue. He owns some
good horses, and you may see him driving in the
park any fine day. He is a member of one of the
big clubs, but is very seldom seen there. He might


AN AMATEUR SUGGESTION.
133
go in the best society, if he chose ; but as a matter
of fact, there is scarcely a family of distinction in
town that has him on its visiting list. He isn't a
student, either, or a book collector, or an art con-
noisseur, or any thing of that kind. He never in.
vites any body to his house; and how he contrives
to amuse himself is more than any body can say.
Altogether, quite an eccentric person.
“ He doesn't conform to the usual habits and
customs of the fashionable world, but lives exactly
as his humor suits him. Often in the midst of the
season he will be out of town; and when every
body is at Newport and Saratoga, you will find him
walking up and down Fifth Avenue, or wandering
about in other quite different quarters of the city.
He is a man you will easily notice,-over five feet
ten in height, weighs about one hundred and eighty
pounds, high bald forehead, long dark mustache,
aquiline nose, small chin, dresses well, with a big
watch chain and an amethyst ring on his left hand.
“As to his property, there is reason to believe
that it is nearly all invested in government securi-
ties; but it is impossible to be entirely certain on
this point, and, therefore, we are also unable to fix
the amount of it. But from what can be learned of
his late father's fortune, and inferred from his own
manner of iving, it must be, if not so large as I
have mentioned at any rate sufficient to render him
quite indiferent as to what he spends. He has
never been engaged in any business, and has never
interested himself in any political transaction.”


AN AMATEUR SUGGESTION.
137
and asked a few apparently casual and unpremed-
itated questions. The little excursion occupied
scarcely more than an hour in all, and he was back
in his office by three o'clock. · If things go on as
they have begun," he said to himself, as he
resumed his place at his desk, “this affair won't be
so unlike a serial romance, after all !"


140
A MYSTERIOUS PURCHASE.
down over it ; the door was paneled in the upper
part with ground glass, but a fragment of the glass
had been knocked out, and through the aperture
the interior of the saloon could be seen. But it
was impossible, without danger of being discovered
to get near enough to hear what was said inside ;
while to enter would have been sure to excite sus-
picion, inasmuch as the two detectives, who had
not anticipated being led to so uncivilized a spot,
had not provided themselves with such attire as
would enable them to pass there without remark.
The only thing to be done, therefore, was to keep
watch outside, and be guided by circumstances,
and their own judgment.
When Mr. Smith entered the saloon, he was the
only customer present ; but in the course of ten or
fifteen minutes a tall, rough-looking fellow, with a
greasy cap pulled down to his nose, and a ten days'
growth of black beard on his face, came shambling
up to the door, pushed it open, and, un seeing Mr.
Smith, exchanged a sign of recognition with him,
and went and sat beside him. Mr. Smith then
apparently gave an order to the bartender, who
brought a glass of liquor, and put it in front of the
new-comer. The two men then fell into conversa-
tion, Mr. Smith evidently asking questions, to
which the other replied at some length. In the
midst of the dialogue, four other men turned into
the street and entered the saloon; and the detect-
ives recognized two of them as desperate characters,
who had been implicated in several river thefts.


142
A MYSTERIOUS PURCHASE.
their only chance was to keep along the bulkheads
in the hope of meeting him and his companions
when they landed. But, as they were stumbling
over the rubbish on the pier, they suddenly became
aware of a tall dark figure advancing toward them.
As it drew near, they were astonished to recog-
nize no less a person than Mr. Smith himself.
He started on seeing them, and paused for a mo-
ment as if in doubt; then he advanced, passing on
the upper-side of the pier, and turning northwards.
At that moment the jingle of a horse-car was heard
approaching in the distance, on its way up-town.
Anticipating that Mr. Smith might take the car, the
detectives went back to meet it, and waited on the
front platform. In due time they came up with
their man, standing by the track ; he sprang aboard,
and took a seat inside, without betraying any signs
of uneasiness. He kept his seat past Twenty-third
Street, and only alighted at the corner of Fifty-
ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. Thence he walked
down the avenue to his own street, and the detect-
ives saw him mount the steps of his house, open
the door with a pass-key, and go quietly in. Noth-
ing more was seen of him that night.
The whole adventure was queer and perplexing,
but it was difficult to establish from it any con-
nection between Mr. Smith and the Manhattan
Bank robbery. The men whom he had met in the
river-side saloon were not of the stamp that usually
takes part in bank burglaries-enterprises which
demand for their successful accomplishment not


A MYSTERIOUS PURCHASE.
143
was
only ingenity and daring, but considerable mechani-
cal skill and knowledge as well. Bank burglars are
generally men of some education, and take the first
rank in the criminal profession. But these men
belonged to a much lower order. It was perhaps
conceivable that Mr. Smith
himself the
mechanical genius and operator, and that he had
merely used the others to assist or protect him.
But such an hypothesis, if conceivable, was in the
highest degree improbable. Why should he run
the risk of doing a thing which he could get some
one else to do as well or better for him! For that
matter, however, why should he have had any thing
to do with the affair at all ? Every thing contra-
dicted the theory that he was in any straits
for money ; and there was no case on record of a
wealthy man helping thieves to perpetrate a bank-
burglary merely from a motive of friendly good-will
to them.
And yet, again, if he were not in league with out-
laws, how was the undoubted fact of his associa-
tion with them to be explained ? Could any inno-
cent motive have impelled him to keep a rendez-
vous with such men in one of the lowest slums of
the city ?
The watch upon him was kept up, but for a long
while it resulted in nothing else of any significance.
Mr. Smith's life seemed absolutely uneventful. He
was seldom out later than eleven o'clock at night, nor
did he reappear much before that hour in the
morning. Some efforts that were made to fathom


144
A MYSTERIOUS PURCHASE.
the mystery by approaching the servants in the
house, met with no success. The servants were
three in number, all women. The difficulty with
them evidently was, not that they were indisposed
to talk, but that they had nothing to say. They
knew nothing about their master that could be
considered peculiar or stimulating. Their wages
were punctually paid ; they were allowed their full
complement of evenings out and holidays, and no
restrictions were placed upon their entertaining
friends below stairs. Very few people ever called to
see Mr. Smith, and those few were apparently busi-
ness men, who conversed with him in the sitting-
room, and remained but a short time. Mr. Smith,
for a bachelor, was regular in his habits.
always breakfasted at home, and generally dined
there. He drank wine at his meals, but seldom
more than a bottle. It was his custom to lunch
abroad, however, and to go out in the evening.
On the occasions when he went out of town, their
wages ran on, and they were left in charge of the
house. It was rare for him to be absent more
than two or three weeks at a time, and oftener he
was away for a few days only. When he was at
home indoors, he spent his time partly in smoking,
and reading the newspapers, and partly in writing.
But whether what he wrote were letters or some-
thing else, they could not tell.
In the midst of these rather profitless proceed-
ings, Mr. Smith all at once bought a ticket to


A MYSTERIOUS PURCHASE.
145
Chicago by the limited express, and started for that
city the same afternoon.
The significance of this circumstance lay in the
fact that, a day or two previous, a man who was
known to be a professional thief, and who was sus-
pected of having a hand in the Manhattan job, had
appeared in Chicago, and his presence there had
been telegraphed to the authorities in New York.
That Mr. Smith should happen to take a fancy to
visit that city at the same time looked like some-
thing more than a coincidence, and his movements
were observed with no small interest.
Mr. Smith took a hack to the Palmer House,
where he registered his real name, took a bath, and
changed his clothes. Towards evening he issued
forth and promenaded down the principal streets, .
with the shadows in full pursuit. In the neighbor-
hood of the post-office he met the professional
gentleman already mentioned, and they walked
along together till they came to a certain large
oyster saloon in a corner basement. Here they
took their seats at a table in an alcove, and Mr.
Smith ordered a broil and a bottle of champagne.
One of the detectives sauntered in a minute
later, glanced carelessly around and, after some
apparent hesitation, took the table in the adjoining
alcove, which was separated from the other by a
board partition. The first comers
scious of his proximity. The waiter brought the
gentlemen their order, and, while discussing it,
they entered into a confidential conversation, carried
were
uncon-


146
A MYSTERIOUS PURCHASE.
on for the most part in an undertone ; but occasion-
ally such words as “bank," " vault," "securities,"
and so forth, were heard, and caused the detective
to sharpen his ears to the utmost.
The first bottle of champagne was finished, and
the waiter was dispatched for another. Mean-
while the detective, under cover of getting a bottle
of sauce from a table on the opposite side of the
saloon, was able to get into a position where he saw
the professional hand to Mr. Smith a folded paper
that bore a strong resemblance to a United States
bond. Mr. Smith put the bond in his pocket, and
then, taking out a note book opened it at a certain
page, and ran his finger down a column of figures.
The detective was by this time returning with the
sauce, and he perceived that the figures were
nothing less than a list of bonds and other securities.
In a moment Mr. Smith said, “ I don't find it here."
“ It's right, all the same," replied the other.
“ You made a mistake in copying.”
“I guess not,” said Mr. Smith ; “I was extra
careful.”
“Well, I'll tell you what'll settle it," answered his
companion, pulling what must have been a handful
of letters and small papers out of his pocket, " and
that's the printed circular-leastways, if I've got a
copy of it here. Ah, here it is, sure enough !” he
exclaimed the next moment.
“ You are right, after all,” remarked Mr. Smith,
after examining the paper, “though it's rather
queer that I should have made the mistake on just


A MYSTERIOUS PURCHASE.
147
that number. Well, then, I'll give you face value
for it."
“Not if I know it, you won't !” returned the
other. “It's a thousand or nothing !”
“A thousand ? Nonsense! Where else could
you get the five hundred, except from me ? "
“Just as you like ; only give me back my stuff.
I didn't come here to dicker ; it ain't in my line.
Hand it back!” And then, summoning the waiter,
he told him to go and get half a dozen of the best
cigars.
“ Will you take seven hundred and fifty ? " asked
Mr. Smith.
“I've said my last word. A thousand, or no
deal.”
“It's an out-and-out swindle, but here you are !”
Mr. Smith replied, and as the detective once more
emerged from his box, with his hat on, and paused
for a moment to scratch a match on the sole of his
boot and light a cigar, he saw Mr. Smith hand over
to his companion a roll of bills, of which the top
was of the denomination of one hundred
dollars.
Soon after, the two left the saloon, parted at the
street corner, and Mr. Smith returned to his hotel.
What did it mean, and what was to be done about
it ? For all that the detective knew, the transaction
he had witnessed was an entirely legitimate one.
The professional gentleman had apparently sold to
Mr. Smith a United States 5–20 bond of five hun-
dred dollars. It was true that a thousand dollars
one


148
A MYSTERIOUS PURCHASE.
had been paid for it, but that did not make the sale
illegal. There was no law against paying a hun-
dred times the face value, if the purchaser, with
his eyes open, chose to do so.
The question was, had the bond in question been
honestly come by? If not, then there had been a
purchase and sale of stolen goods, and the parties
could be arrested. Now, the probability of the
bond having been stolen was strong. In the first
place, it was in the possession of a known crook,
and crooks are not in the habit of investing in gov-
ernment securities in the usual way. Secondly,
this particular crook was regarded as a possible
accomplice in the Manhattan robbery. Thirdly,
twenty-six 5–20 bonds of five hundred dollars each
were among the securities stolen from the Manhat-
tan bank. Fourthly, the printed paper or circular
which Mr. Smith's friend had shown him, must
have been the announcement disseminated by the
bank on the day after the robbery. Fifthly, why
should Mr. Smith have given double its value for
the bond, had he wanted it for its normal purpose ?
And what other reason could he have than a desire
to protect himself against some mischief which the
bond might be used to inflict upon him ? These
were cogent arguments; and yet the case for the
other side was not to be ignored.


CHAPTER XIV.
AN ACCIDENT.
'HE case for the other side stood somewhat as fol-
THEcase for beginheight, the detective has node
actually seen the bond, and perhaps there was no
bond there. In the next place, supposing there was
a bond, it may not have been stolen. Again, as
regarded the paper that resembled the bank cir.
cular, it may have been something else ; and finally,
the fact that Mr. Smith paid a thousand dollars
instead of five hundred, may have been merely in
settlement of some former transaction of which the
detectives knew nothing.
Moreover, there were, in this instance, valid
objections against making an arrest on the chance
that an investigation of Mr. Smith's pockets would
justify it. If the bond proved to be one of the
stolen ones, then, indeed, it would be all right; but
if not, then the authorities would be much worse
off than if they had done nothing. For they were
proceeding against Mr. Smith upon the assumption
that he was guilty ; and if this arrest failed to prove
him so, he would thenceforth enjoy the immense
advantage of having been put on his guard, and
would devote all his means and ingenuity to parry-


152
AN ACCIDENT.
night, and five minutes later was snoring with peace-
ful regularity.
Meanwhile the detective lay on his back, won-
dering whether the stolen bond were in the valise
or the coat pocket.
The other passengers turned in one after the
other, until at length all the curtains were drawn,
and every body seemed to be asleep, except the
night porter, who was huddled up in his
corner, at
the far end of the car, reading a Seaside-library
copy of " Jules Verne's Voyage to the Moon." The
detective turned over on his side, opened a crevice
of the curtain, and fixed his eyes meditatively upon
the handle of Mr. Smith's valise, which protruded
from under the bed.
The next moment a heavy jolt of the car nearly
threw him out of his berth. This was immediately
followed by a number of indescribable leaps, jars
and plungings, as if the heavy vehicle had suddenly
gone mad and were attempting to dance a horn-
pipe ; at the same time a general confused outcry
of terror arose from the rudely-awakened passen-
gers. Finally, the floor of the
floor of the car somehow
appeared overhead for a moment, then there was a
crash of glass and timbers, another sidelong lurch,
and after that, complete immobility.
"I guess there has been an accident," said the
detective to himself.
No one heard the observation ; the chorus of
shouts, groans and frenzied outcries, hushed for an
instant as the car was hustling down the embank-


154
AN ACCIDENT.
inches long, and would burn for two minutes. He
lit one and hunted for the number of the section,
which he presently discovered. No, it was not his
number. It was an uneven number, and therefore
on the side of the car opposite to his own. “ And
by the way,” he exclaimed suddenly, “it's Mr.
Smith's number ! I've fallen into his berth!"
This discovery affected him oddly, as if he were
the chosen instrument of fate.
A coat was dangling from a hook in front of him.
He thrust his hand into the inside breast-pocket,
and pulled out a wallet and a quantity of papers.
Some of the latter bore Mr. Smith's name upon
them. Sitting down on the broken window, he
rapidly looked them over. The United States bond
was not among them ; nor was it in the wallet.
He
put
the things back in the pocket and reflected.
His reflections were cut short by the flame of the
vesta, which had burned down to his fingers. He
blew it out, and drawing himself up by the parti-
tion, looked down the aisle of the car.
There was
darkness, tumult and confusion everywhere, and
no signs of Mr. Smith. It occurred to the detect-
ive that this gentleman might have been killed ;
but the idea gave him no pleasure, either person-
ally or professionally. Mr. Smith had shown him-
self an agreeable fellow, and he probably possessed
some knowledge which the detective would have
liked to share.
Sitting on the edge of the partition, the detective
lit another vesta, and looked about him. At length


AN ACCIDENT.
155
he cast his eyes directly in front of him, and there,
still wedged underneath the bed, was the valise,
probably the only article in the car which had not
been dislodged during the smash-up. He reached
forwards, and with a vigorous jerk succeeded in
getting it out. The key was still in the lock : Mr.
Smith, after taking out his night-gown, having for-
gotten to replace it in his pocket.
The detective clambered down again to his
former position, sat down, and opened the valise.
It contained a change of linen, a pair of trowsers, a
pair of slippers, and other odds and ends of a gen-
tleman's traveling wardrobe. There was not a
scrap of paper of any kind in it. The detective
closed the bag, locked it, and sighed. What was
the use of a railway accident, and of his falling into
Mr. Smith's section, if he were not to find the bond
after all ?
He was just about to start on an expedition in
search of Mr. Smith, when the voice of that gentle-
man himself saluted his ears, and looking up, he
saw a head peering round the corner of the adjoin-
ing section.
“Can you tell me, sir," the head inquired,
" where I can find section number nine ?”
“ This is number nine. Do you belong here?"
“I believe so.
I got a bump on my head when
I fell out, and I don't know what happened after
that. I'm a little mixed. Are my clothes there?”
“ There are some clothes hanging to a peg ; and
there's a valise."


158
AN ACCIDENT.
to do this without his knowledge was a problem.
The probabilities all pointed to its being there,
unless he had destroyed it; for if he valued it so
highly as the circumstances seemed to show, he
would not be likely to trust it out of his hands, even
to a safe deposit company. On the other hand, if
he had wished to destroy it, he would have done it
immediately upon getting possession of it, instead
of going through the process of posting it in a reg-
istered letter addressed to himself in New York.
While various plans to prosecute the investiga-
tion were being discussed, and before any had been
determined on, an event occurred which seemed to
be quite as providential as the railroad accident.
This was the appearance in a morning paper of an
advertisement for a private secretary, directing the
applicant to call at the street and number where
Mr. Smith lived. A suitable officer having been
selected, he was at once dispatched to that gentle-
man's address. Mr. Smith had an interview with
him ; and after a period of uncertainty, he had the
distinction of being selected from among a consid-
erable number of candidates.
The new secretary lost no time in entering upon
his duties—both those enjoined by Mr. Smith, and
those in the interest of the central office. The
former were of a somewhat singular character. Mr.
Smith, it appeared, was a collector, and his collec-
tion certainly had the merit of being an odd one.
One part of it--that with which the new secretary
was directly concerned—was a series of scrap-books,


160
AN ACCIDENT.
“ Decade." Mr. Smith had more than the usual
vanity of authors, but, as the secretary did not fall
into the memorable error committed by GilBlas, their
relations soon became cordial. The secretary's em-
ployer showed a really surprising familiarity both
with the crimes and criminals of New York; and
after a few days' conversation on the subject, and as
a mark of special favor, he introduced him to a hith-
erto unsuspected feature of his collection.
This was contained in a couple of huge chests of
drawers, such as naturalists sometimes use for the
preservation of their specimens. The drawers were
shallow, and were divided into numerous compart-
ments, in each of which was an “ object ” with a
descriptive label attached. These objects were
nothing less than an assortment of what may be
termed criminal relics. Here was the revolver or
the knife with which a murder was committed ; a
bit of the rope with which the murderer was
hanged ; a pair of handcuffs used at the arrest of a
noted thief ; a blackmailing letter sent to a distin-
guished public man; a check signed with a forged
signature; a phial which had contained prussic acid
used by a suicide ; a watch stolen from the
pocket of a judge of the Supreme Court; a dia-
mond breast-pin filched from the bosom of a well-
known belle in New York society ; an anarchist
infernal machine (with the explosive extracted); a
counterfeit ten-dollar bill ; and so on without end.
Each specimen was identified with its proper crime;
and Mr. Smith observed that he proposed to have


AN ACCIDENT.
161
engravings made of many of them, to be used as
illustrations for the “ Decade."
After examining this strange assemblage of arti-
cles, the secretary expressed curiosity as to how
Mr. Smith had become possessed of them. Some
of them, such as the watch and pin, being stolen
articles, were really not legally obtainable.
“Well,” replied Mr. Smith, with a smile, “it is
said that collectors have no consciences, and I sup-
pose I am not much better than the others. In the
first place, I have gradually acquired a very exten-
sive acquaintance among professional criminals ; I
know about all that there are in New York, from
the poorest pick-pocket up to the highest-class
bank-burglar ; and they know me and what I am
after. The way it first came about was this. There
was a robbery committed in this city about a dozen
years ago that was particularly bold and ingenious;
and when they caught the thief, I went to see him
in the Tombs ; found him an amusing fellow, paid
for a lawyer to defend him, and got him acquitted.
He seemed to feel gratified by my interest, and we
have been friends ever since, though just at pres-
ent he is in strict retirement in another part of the
country. That acquaintance led to others ; I'm on
friendly terms with all of them, as I said, and every
once in a while I get an addition from one of them
to my collection. If they get hold of any thing
they think I would like, they drop me word, and I
go round and look at it, and, if it suits me, I buy
it, and pay what they ask for it-I can afford to. I


166
AN ACCIDENT.
“I am,
“I was about to tell you who I am, Mr. Smith,”
replied the other, handing him his card.
as you see, one of Inspector Byrnes's detectives
and you have occasioned us a good deal of trouble
and expense by this foolish whim of yours ; but,
fortunately for you, I am inclined to believe that it
is a foolish whim and nothing worse, and that you
are only a harmless crank—at least, that you
intended to do no harm. But if you will take a
piece of friendly advice, you will let your collection
stop where it is, and attempt to add nothing more
to it.
You are not the man to deal with criminals ;
you will find it safer on all accounts to let them
alone. If this bond had been what you supposed
it to be, it would have been my duty to arrest you,
and you might have found it very difficult to prove
your innocence. Another time you may not come
off so well. But let this be a warning to you. As
for the salary you have paid me, we might claim it
to defray our expenses in your case ; but, as we
are disposed to overlook your conduct on this occa-
sion, you can get it back by applying at the office."
But the secretary's salary remains unclaimed to
this day.


168
STOLEN MILLIONS.
suspicious, and a report, emanating, none knew
whence, gained currency in
some
quarters
that the bank directors had opened negotiations
with the thieves, which negotiations, of course,
would result in the loss of from ten to fifty per
cent. of the value of the deposits. The directors,
when questioned as to the truth of these rumors,
denied them absolutely ; but very little is gained
by denying any thing which the inquiring party has
previously made up his mind to believe true.
Our old friend Mr. John D. Grady, ever since the
occurrence of the robbery, in such embarrassing
proximity to his own virtuous abode, had been
pursuing the artless routine of his daily affairs
with undisturbed equanimity. If, once in a while,
he happened to run across Inspector Byrnes, in the
course of his nocturnal peregrinations, he would
greet him with friendly words, and inquire with
kindly interest whether he were not yet prepared
to draw the net on the first victim.
He was
inclined to doubt, he said, whether the robbery
could have been committed by an ordinary or pro-
fessional gang of burglars; for although certain
of the indications were such as to suggest such an
idea, yet there were others which pointed in a much
more elevated and less commonplace direction. In
short, Mr. Grady was of opinion--and here he sank
his voice to a mysterious whisper--that it might
prove worth the inspector's while to make a quiet but
searching investigation into the financial condition
of certain of the officers of the bank, as they were,


STOLEN MILLIONS.
169
immediately before and immediately after the
burglary. As a result, Mr. Grady felt assured,
the inspector would light upon information that
might be of the last importance. “But as to them
other poor fellows that you maybe have in your
eye,” he added, with winning frankness, “well, you
know, inspector, I don't pretend for to say that
there's not friends of mine own amongst 'em. Bless
you, they tell me all the thoughts of their hearts !
And what makes me feel particular sure that none
of them boys had to do with this job, inspector, is
just that, if they had, they'd have come to me with
the whole story! But not a word did I ever hear
from one of 'em ; but you may say what you like,
I'll never believe that they knows the first thing
about it!”
“Well, you may be right, Grady," the inspector
replied, with an air of being impressed by the
diamond dealer's statement. “It's mighty little I
can find out about it, any way. Of course, you
understand, as an officer, I'm obliged to keep up
appearances ; but we can't convict without evi-
dence, and, if there's no evidence, there'll be no
convictions."
With this the two gentlemen bade each other
good-night and parted.
It was a few days after this conversation that a
handsomely dressed lady, with large dark eyes, and
a pale but beautifully molded face, crossed the
Hudson by the Cortlandt Street Ferry, and, passing
through the waiting-room, where she bought a


170
STOLEN MILLIONS.
paper-covered novel, took her seat in the drawing-
room car of the Washington Express. The chair
immediately in front of her being vacant, she
placed her traveling-bag, gloves and seal-skin
jacket upon it ; and had settled herself for the
undisturbed perusal of her book, when, just as the
train started, an agreeable-looking gentleman of
perhaps thirty-five years of age entered the car, and
advanced in her direction, noting the numbers of the
chairs as he advanced. When he arrived at the
chair which had her things upon it, he paused, and
seemed to hesitate, while an expression of apolo-
getic embarrassment dwelt upon his courteous and
good-humored countenance.
She looked up with some traces of annoyance ;
but when she saw how entirely unobjectionable her
involuntary neighbor seemed to be, her brow
cleared a little, and she said politely, “ I beg your
pardon : is this chair yours?"
“ It's not a bit of matter," he replied: “ I'm very
sorry : I was—I was just on my way to the smoking
compartment at the other end.”
“You have just come out of the smoking com-
partment—it is behind you,” she said, with a little
smile. “No-I must insist, please-It's my fault.
I shall take my things away, whether you sit down
or not.”
“I wish you wouldn't let me disturb you," he
returned, in a troubled tone. But she began to
remove her jacket, so he put down her valise, and
hung up the garment for her on the hook by the
• •


STOLEN MILLIONS.
171
said,
window, and the traveling-bag over it. The gloves
she put in her pocket.
“I really am going to the smoking-room,” he
then said. “I just came in to hang up my
hat. I hope you'll make yourself comfortable, you
know.” So saying, he changed his tall hat for a
black silk skull-cap, took a cigar from a cigar-case
in his pocket, and, after moving up a stool so that
she could put her feet upon it, bowed slightly, and
retired.
He did not reappear till they were within a few
miles of Philadelphia. Then he came back and
“Do you get out here ?"
“ No; I go through to Washington. Aren't
you going to sit down ? See_I haven't touched
your chair since you went out."
“ It was awfully stupid of me,” he returned.
“You're very kind. I see you've finished your
book. I've got one here-perhaps you might
like it. I don't know whether you care for that
sort of thing. It's about a robbery, or something
of that kind.”
She took the book and glanced over some of the
pages.
“ I don't believe I do care much for that
sort of books,” she said after a moment.
“ Things
don't happen like that in real life. One reads
stranger things in the newspapers.”
“Oh, yes, of course," he answered, embarrassed.
He sat down, and there was a little pause.
should think they might get good real stories-
novelists, I mean," he presently went on, apparently
“ I


172
STOLEN MILLIONS.
thinking it was incumbent on him to say something.
“I've come across quite a lot of queer things,
myself.”
The lady seemed amused at the evident bashful-
ness of this good-looking gentleman, and determ-
ined to make him talk. “What do you call queer
things?" she demanded.
“Oh, I don't know. Well, now, there was that
robbery of that bank in New York five or six weeks
ago. I know a fellow--he's one of the directors-
he's told me a lot of funny things about that. And
then some of the things about the way the munici-
pal government is carried on,-I think they're
very queer. But of course I'm not in the way
of knowing half so many things as a great many
other people. But I beg your pardon-I didn't
mean to take up your time.”
“ Not at all! It's a long time before we get to
Washington. What robbery was that you were speak-
ing of ?"
“Oh, that was that bank down on Broadway
somewhere—the Manhattan they call it -
some
fellows got in there and stole a whole lot of stuff-
two or three millions, my friend said.
remember it?"
“ Yes—I suppose every body remembers that-it
was such a little while ago," the lady replied, in an
indifferent tone. They had already entered the
Philadelphia station, and the gentleman turned to
look out of the window. His interlocutor improved
the opportunity to examine him carefully. He was
Don't you


STOLEN MILLIONS.
173
evidently a club man, one of those Americans who
live on an income inherited from a merchant pro-
genitor, who have been well brought up, whose
broad shoulders and strong hands are the result of
amateur athletics, and who pass through life without
any idea of its more serious aims and experiences,
and with little occasion to use whatever brains
Providence may have gifted them with. Assuredly,
there could be no possible harm in such a person-
age.
When the train started again she resumed the
conversation.
“ That Manhattan robbery seems to be as much
a mystery as almost all great bank robberies have
been,” she remarked. “ The police don't seem able
to do any thing. I suppose they must have some
secret understanding with the thieves."
“Oh! do you think so ?”
“Well, that is what a good many people say.
Why, don't you think so ?”
Well, you see, it isn't what I think—I mean,
that's of no consequence, and I dare say you're
right. I was only going by what my friend said.”
“ He believes in the police, then ?"
" What he told me was, that no arrests had been
made yet, because they didn't want to begin until
they had every thing ready. But they have been
working quietly all the while, and they know every
one who had a part in the robbery, and just where
to put their hands on them. There's a lot of queer
details about it that I don't remember, I've got


174
STOLEN MILLIONS.
such an awfully bad memory ; but I remember i
thought it was very clever of the police, and
there didn't seem to be any chance of the thieves
escaping. Oh, one of the things he said was, that
the thieves never would have got into the bank,
if they hadn't been helped by some of the bank's
own people. There was—I can't think of his name,
but that's no matter-well, they have been following
him round ever since the robbery-shadowing, they
call it—and they found out that he was — but I
beg your pardon! am I boring you ? "
“ No indeed! It is very kind of you to talk to
me.”
“Oh, I'm sure I like to, if you don't mind. But
that wasn't the funniest part. You know, the
thieves got a complete plan of the inside of the
vault, and a description of the lock,- one of those
combination locks you know,- and it wasn't the
employé that got that, it was somebody else. This
is an awfully funny part ; you'd never imagine who
it was!”
“ Do tell me," said the lady, languidly.
“Well, it was a lady — that is, I mean she holds
the position of a lady in New York, and her hus-
band is a good man. He made a fortune in
business, but his partner turned out a scamp, and-
however, that isn't what I was going to tell. This
lady_"
“ What is the lady's name? This is quite inter-
esting, you know."
“Well, I don't know as I ought to tell her name ;


176
STOLEN MILLIONS.
;
her there, and one day she got one of the bank offi-
cials to take her inside, and that was one of the
ways that the thieves got information about the
vault, etc.; she gave it to Grady, and Grady gave
it to them; and Grady paid her a lot of money for
it; in fact--it's a horrid thing to say—but really,
you know, Grady used to pay all her bills and keep
her in pin-money; and she would leave home
in her carriage, as if to go to a reception or some-
thing, you know, and then she'd slip off to Grady's
shop, at all hours of the night. Awful scandalous
thing, wasn't it?"
“How did you—who invented-who told you
this story?"
“Well, do you know, I thought it must be an
invention myself ; but my friend had the reports of
the detectives—the fellows who did the shadowing
--in his desk; and the reports showed that she
had been followed and watched everywhere she
went, night and day, and things she said were writ-
ten down, and every cent of money she spent re-
corded, and all the details you can imagine. Why,
they couldn't have known more about her if she'd
lived in a glass-house with a lot of electric lights
in it."
“ How very stupid she must have been not to
have suspected any thing! Well, go on."
“ I'm sure I'm boring you; and it's a nasty
subject; and I'm doing all the talking, and I'm
an awful bad talker. Let's talk of something
else."


STOLEN MILLIONS.
179
cash proceeds of the robbery. They talked over
the matter, and made it out that even if the thieves
taxed themselves all they had, it wouldn't be enough
nearly to balance Grady's advance. So finally he
agreed to give double what he had first proposed,
to add to whatever they could raise among them-
seives, on condition that, if the lobby were suc-
cessful, he was to receive half of whatever sum they
could get by compromise with the bank on the
bonds. So, you see, if the compromise was for fifty
per cent. of the face value, for instance, the thieves
would get upwards of a million of dollars, and
Grady would get upwards of half a million all to
himself.
Well, now, to go back to last night. Of course
you can see without my telling you, that the person
whom Grady had decided to send to Washington
to do the lobbying for the thieves, was this lady.
She knew two or three lobbyists, men who would be
likely to accept the kind of inducements she was
able to offer—and a woman like her, clever and
beautiful and with plenty of money, would be
enough to tempt any man-and she was to start this
morning, on this very train, by the way, and
There, now, Mrs. Nelson !” exclaimed the gentle-
man, suddenly breaking off, and changing his tone,
“ I was sure I was boring you! Why didn't you
tell me before ? Aren't you feeling well ? Shall I
send for a glass of water ?"
The lady had leaned back in her chair, half
closing her eyes, and with a whiteness spreading


180
STOLEN MILLIONS.
your time-
round her lips, which were sticky and tremulous.
But she was a very courageous woman, and in less
than a minute she had regained command of her-
self, and sat erect again.
“ You—you
called mera name—” she said, and
paused, looking at him.
“ Did I? Only a slip of the tongue, I assure
you. I don't know you from Adam—if
you
don't
want to be known! There, now,
take
don't be worried. Think it all over, and then tell
me what you'd like to do."
He rose from his chair, put his silk skull-cap
in the pocket of his overcoat, resumed his other
hat and his rubbers, and took a look out of the
window.
“We shall be at Wilmington in about ten min-
utes more," he remarked, sitting down again. “I
have a great mind—if nothing should occur to pre-
vent it—to get out there, and take the next train
back to New York. It will depend upon what
news I receive before the train stops." He took
out his watch. “ Just ten minutes !” he repeated.
“What are they going to do to-this lady?" she
inquired.
“ They don't want to do any thing. If possible,
they would prefer to overlook what she has already
done. She helped to steal the money, but she has
as yet done nothing to prevent its being recovered.
Of course, though, if she were to attempt that lob-
bying business, they would be compelled to arrest
her. On the other hand, she would be expected,


STOLEN MILLIONS.
181
in consideration of not being molested, to cease act-
ing any longer, in any way, in the interest of the
thieves. And possibly, in case it should be indis-
pensable, she might be asked to give a little assist-
ance on the other side. That's reasonable, don't
you think so ?”
As the lady made no reply, he took a Russia-
leather wallet from his pocket, extracted a folded
paper from it, and continued :
“Now, the way they thought of arranging the
matter was this. This paper, as you see, contains
a summary, in the form of a personal statement, of
what I have just been telling you. They will ask
the person whom it concerns to read it over, and,
if she thinks advisable, to write underneath 'I
have read the above and do hereby acknowledge it
to be true' and sign her name. For their part,
they will pass their word not to use the document,
unless the person who signs it, hereafter attempts to
do any of the things which I have indicated as
inexpedient; above all, not to allow John D. Grady
to suspect any thing of what has happened. Just
look it over yourself.”
She took the paper in her hands, and read it
steadily through from beginning to end. Then she
looked up and said, “ I think she would sign it.”
“If you are sure of that, I dare say it would
answer as well if you signed for her. Of course
you would put her name, you know-not your own.
Ah ! here's Wilmington, now. I believe we stop a
few minutes for lunch. If I could get this thing off


182
STOLEN MILLIONS.
my hands, I wouldn't be obliged to go on to Wash-
ington. Of course, the signature will have to be
witnessed, by myself and another person ; and, by
the by, there happens to be a gentleman I know
in the smoking compartment. With your permis-
sion, I'll call him."
“ No-no-not another ! she exclaimed in a
husky voice, growing rigid and white again.
“ It won't make any difference, you know, so far
as the lady is concerned. He is a very discreet
man ; but he knows every thing already. But just
as you please!”
“Well !” she said, after a moment, bending her
face down, while a spot of red crept into her
cheeks.
The gentleman stepped into the smoking com-
partment, and immediately returned, followed by a
tall, lean personage of middle age, with a very
sharp pair of eyes. The gentleman said something
to him in a low tone ; he bowed to the lady, and
produced from his pocket a fountain pen, which he
handed to her. She took it, and, resting the paper
on the book on her knee, wrote a few words, then
returned the pen and leaned back.
The tall, lean personage took the pen, and wrote,
in the left hand lower corner of the paper, “ Wit-
ness, Timothy Naxon.” Then he handed pen and
paper to the other, and he wrote, just beneath,
“Thomas Byrnes, Inspector of Police."
The lady's eye caught this signature ; her dark
eyes met those of her late companion, and a slight


STOLEN MILLIONS.
183
shudder passed over her. But he said, kindly,
Make your mind easy.
I have never broken a
promise, and I shan't begin now. You are safer
than
you have been any time the last six months.
Good-day.”


188
DISAPPOINTMENT.
As it appeared impossible to produce any further
impression on him that evening, Jack Cannon took
his departure, intending to renew the talk the next
day. Cannon was perhaps the cleverest and most
successful negotiator of crooked bonds and securi-
ties of his time ; and, having been obliged to leave
England owing to the miscarriage of a gigan-
tic scheme concocted by other clever forgers and
himself to swindle the European banks and bank-
ers, he found himself in New York with
very
little
money in his pockets. It occurred to him, therefore,
to attempt to pass off some of the stolen material
which he supposed to be in Grady's keeping ; but
the latter's unappeasable ill-humor stood him off,
and, as it happened, he and Grady never met again.
Cannon, later on, was convicted and sentenced to
fifteen years in the penitentiary for attempting to
negotiate one of the stolen bonds. But Grady's
fate was different, and mysterious. Not much is
certainly known of the details of his last day on
earth : but, from various sources, and at different
times circumstances came to light, explaining and
developing each other, until it becomes compara-
tively easy to build up the complete record. And
yet some of the inferences are so strange, that one
hesitates to do more than say, “ so it may have
been.”
At the time Grady relinquished his Broadway
shop, he had in great measure ceased to maintain
active business-habits : he had a partner or agent,
Langbein, who was supposed to be his intermedi-


DISAPPOINTMENT.
189
ary in most transactions. The old diamond-dealer
now secluded himself much more than he had pre-
viously done ; his venturous nocturnal rambles
were given up; and yet there seemed to be nothing
to take their place. He had never read books, and
he did not care to begin at this late day; he was
apparently destitute of what are called internal
resources ; the men who had been his friends or
associates were gone, and he did not concern him-
self to acquire any new ones. He spent hours and
hours, entirely alone, seated in the room behind the
little office in Sixth Avenue, doing nothing, and per-
haps thinking of nothing ; though this I take leave
to doubt. His eyes would wander slowly from one
part of the room to the other ; once in a while they
would become fixed in a gaze of extraordinary intent-
ness and fixedness : yet there would be nothing but
a blank wall, or a cane-bottomed chair to look at.
Once in a while, too, at irregular intervals of a week
or more, Grady would appear to be suffering from
strong though suppressed excitement ; his eyes
would become unnaturally brilliant, and he would
continually moisten his dry lips. No one cared to
address the man at such times, or to be in his way
if it were possible to avoid it ; for he was then
liable to outbreaks of savage passion, without dis-
coverable cause. These singular moods, however,
seldom lasted more than a day; when he would
relapse into the ruminating and inert state, sitting
and staring at nothing.
All this time there were rumors of something


CHAPTER XVII.
A FINAL INTERVIEW.
A
FTER all, Jack, it is absurdly dangerous,"
the woman said, when they were inside the
house. She had wrapped a dark knit shawl round
her head, which she now threw aside, as she faced
him. She was as beautiful as ever : Grady saw
that: but he also saw, or imagined, that the expres-
sion with which she regarded him lacked a certain
quality which he remembered in times gone by.
“ That ain't goin' to make any difference now,"
he replied. “This hide-an' seek game is goin' to
stop. I've packed up, and I shall leave New York
to-morrow."
“ To-morrow! where are you going ?"
“You'll know that soon enough; for you're
going with me.”
She sat down, and looked at him attentively.
He avoided meeting her eyes. But she knew him
well, and understood the humor he was in.
“ You
must tell me about this,” she said at length.
any thing new happened?"
“ Nothin' newer than that I'm goin' to clear out,
and take you with me," he repeated. “You know
what I mean. Ever since that day Byrnes upset
" Has


A FINAL INTERVIEW.
193
;
our Washington scheme, I haven't felt safe a mo-
ment, with you coming here, and I have another
reason too! I've waited for you just long enough ;
and I know I ain't goin' to get you as long as I
keep on waitin'. And I don't want you in snips
and slices, neither ; I want the whole of you, body
an' soul, night an' day, all the time ! If I let
you play off and on this way any longer, you'd be
takin' me for a fool ; maybe you do now !"
“I take you for better for worse, you dear old
devil!" she said suddenly, leaning towards him with
a penetrating smile.
The words and look dispersed his sullenness and
kindled his massive nature like fire. He stretched
out his arm, and drew her to his knee ; she scarcely
resisted. He drew her face down to his and kissed
her, clumsily but fiercely. At intervals she gave a
little laugh, and glanced in his eyes, but said noth-
ing. He put his great hand up to her head, and
touched her delicate ear, and thrust his fingers into
her soft dark hair. She had never been so yield-
ing: she bewildered him. He stared in her face,
gritting his teeth together. Her breath touched
him : then she swiftly kissed his lips, and slipped
out of his arms, laughing her low laugh again, and
pinning up the disordered braids of her hair, as she
looked down on him.
Aren't you going to tell me where you mean to
carry me to?" she said.
“ Then you'll come ?” he said, in a thick voice.
“Come ? Did you think I would stay here with.


196
A FINAL INTERVIEW.
Whether or not she was in earnest is a much
more difficult question. But women seldom make
any inflexible plans; and a woman who, like this
one, had thoroughly corrupted her moral and intel.
lectual principles, was likely to adhere to a course
no longer than suited her caprice. It is quite pos
sible that Grady, had he taken her in the mood and
known how to work her, might have carried her off
with him to Brazil, or anywhere else. She was ready
for any thing, if only it were tempting enough. But
her feeling for Grady was an absolutely depraved
feeling, as unnatural as the fabled passion of Pasi-
phäe ; while his for her had developed from mere
animal desire into the purest and most elevated
sentiment that had ever entered into his heart.
Thus they had been moving in opposite directions,
and could never again get into sympathy. Grady
did not realize this ; and perhaps the woman had
not fully realized it until now. The novelty of her
experience with him had begun to wear off some-
time since ; and it was characteristic of her that
much of the fascination with which the man had
inspired her had been dissipated by the discovery
of their relations by the inspector of detectives.
The secrecy had been a great part of the charm.
But she was still capable of recovering her earlier
feeling, had he known how to stimulate it afresh.
When he announced his projected reformation, he
probably drove the last nail into the coffin of his
hopes. The noblest office of woman is to redeem
sinners from evil; therefore it was the office most


A FINAL INTERVIEW.
197
abhorrent to this woman's nature. She loved only
to be corrupt, and to generate and foster corrup-
tion.
“As long as we stick together,” said Grady,
“it'll be good enough for me.”
She had made up her mind, within the last few
moments, to have nothing more to do with him
from this time forth.
“You're not giving me much time to get ready,
pet,” she remarked.
“ You've got no gettin' ready to do. Just take
what I gave you,--and don't you take nothin' else!
You've got diamonds enough already to live ten
years on, and high livin', too! With what I've got
in that box, we won't need no more.”
“I think I must have a good deal, still, of what
you gave me to go to Washington with. I can
draw that out to-morrow morning. I've cost you
pretty dear, altogether, haven't I, Jack ?"
“Never you mind what you cost me! I lend money,
but I get the worth of it back, and mean to now.
I've let you have your way a good spell; but
I'll have mine for longer !" "He was gazing at her
with gloating eyes, a sort of intermittent grin
broadening the lower part of his face. .“ Look
here,” he added, “ didn't you never wonder, when
we was alone together so often, and nothin' to
interfere, that I kept so quiet! I know women
and I guess you're one of 'em, for all there's
none like you ! But I'll tell you what it is, I'd have
stuck a knife in myself sooner than have done it!


198
A FINAL INTERVIEW.
Yes, by G-!" he exclaimed, with the intense,
though repressed energy of manner that sometimes
characterized him, “I preferred to keep you just as
you was—no hands laid on you—till we was ready
to come together for good and all. And now I'll
marry you, that's what I'll do ; I'll marry you, the
first chance we gets at a parson !"
“Well, that would be bigamy, at any rate," she
answered, laughing. “I suppose it wouldn't mat-
ter in Brazil."
“ Bigamy be damned ! you'd be livin' with me
and not with the other fellow, wouldn't you? They
don't call it bigamy when they go and pay a hun-
dred dollars for a divorce, as they call it ; it's all
square then!
But I don't go by names : I go by
what is! And if I marry you and live with you,
it'll be a marriage, if all the lawyers and parsons
goin' was to get up and say it wasn't!”
She sat still for a minute and contemplated the
picture that he presented. To live with him as his
wife ; a humdrum, honest life; associating with
him day and night, year in and year out, for, say,
twenty or thirty years ! Bearing him children
(what children those would be !), listening to his
coarse talk, knowing that he could never see an
inch into her nature, or comprehend the least of
her thoughts! The idea made her feel stifled. In
this cold, passive moment, her other self-her
vicious, diabolic self,—was a total enigma to her.
What! had this Caliban ever kissed her ! Had she
admitted this beast to intimacy! Had she allowed


A FINAL INTERVIEW.
199
nim to look forward to possessing her-her, who
was the flower of patrician and cultured woman.
hood ! No, it was not she who had done this, but
some infernal imp of the pit, who had crept with
stealthy guile into her brain, and betrayed it to his
insane ends. What was there in common between
her, and this creature of earth and ignorance?
This perception of the incongruity, or rather
unreality, of what are nevertheless accomplished
and irrevocable facts, is not an uncommon experi-
ence of persons who, with high intellectual powers,
have become morally depraved. It is as though
the nature, although possessed by hellish influences,
itself remained pure; and at times, when the
diabolic crew slumbered, returned partially to its
normal consciousness. The disgust and anguish of
these fleeting self-recognitions must be acute : it is
not remorse, for it is never followed by any effort
at improvement; but it is the only kind of pun-
ishment which such natures are capable of feel-
ing
Her gorge had risen against him several times
before this: but she had never until now actually
loathed and hated him. This was probably because
she had never until now foreseen the definite end of
her relations with him. But to-night matters were
at the crisis. He must be prevented from ever
reaching her or swaying her again. He had, dur-
ing the last few months, been growing suspicious
of her ; but she had laid his suspicions to rest for
to-night. They must never awake again : they


2.0
A FINAL INTERVIEW.
must sleep forever: and to insure that, the only
way was to make him sleep forever, too.
As that thought settled darkly in her mind, her
cheeks became warm again, and her eyes brilliant.
She looked at him with a new interest. There was
a fresh stimulus in her secret knowledge of what
was in store for him. He could afford her one
more pleasure, the last! While he was thinking of
Brazil, she was thinking of a lump of senseless
clay, which had once been a human being,—which
now lived and breathed before her !
She must have foreseen this solution of the prob-
lem; for, as she slipped her white hand into the
pocket of her dress, she felt there a smooth, slender
object, about two inches long, but containing all
the potency for deadly harm of a rifle or a dagger.
It was so easy that she stopped to reflect. Was
it certain that she was protected at all points? Yes :
no trace of her presence or agency would remain.
No one knew where she was that night: no one
would discover the result of her handiwork for two
days at least ; and the instrument of death would
leave no trace. She might be suspected ; indeed,
she knew that there was one man who would cer-
tainly suspect her ; but it would be a suspicion
that never could be verified. On the whole, she did
not regret this. It would be piquant to have some
one know what she had done, and yet be powerless
to call her to account for it. For their crimes, as
well as for their virtues, women crave some sort of
an audience.


A FINAL INTERVIEW.
201
While within she had been debating thus, exter-
nally she had been carrying on the conversation
with Grady. How pleased he was! Well, she
could afford to please him. She entered into all
his schemes, and flattered him, and petted him ;
and every once in a while her hand came back to
that pocket. How could the man gaze so intently
into her eyes, which offered themselves to him, and
not see the purpose lurking there ? Perhaps he
did see it, and mistook it for love. It was love,-
but not for him !
Occasionally, she let her glance travel round the
room, noting its every feature. What a dingy place
to die in! There was not a single agreeable object in
it. In one corner, on a three-cornered shelf, stood
a water-cooler. The box in which the treasure was
packed rested on a chair in front of the window.
The paper upon the walls was ugly and shabby.
Every thing was commonplace and repulsive, like
its owner. But he could die, and that was some-
thing!
When should she begin? There was a cheap
clock on the mantelpiece, thet ticked loudly. It
marked seven minutes of eleven. She would wait
until eleven. The man, who was looking forward
to a lifetime of gratified passion with her, was
already within a few inches, as it were, of the eter-
nal precipice. The power and the knowledge were
hers. She was Fate, with the shears in her hand,
It was an intoxicating sensation, and she laughed
out, with a musical gurgle of sound. Then she


A FINAL INTERVIEW.
205
“What's that got to do with it? I don't like the
looks of you !” Grady rejoined. He was eyeing
her intently. “Is any thing wrong with the stuff!"
he demanded suddenly, in a rough voice.
She blenched, but, by a desperate effort, recovered
her composure.
" I don't know what you mean,"
she said. “I left a kiss on the glass for you-
that's all !”
Grady took the glass in his hand with a slow
movement, not removing his eyes from her face.
He raised it half way to his mouth; then paused
again. The strain was too much for her. She
uttered a stifled cry, and pressed her hands over
her eyes. At the same instant, Grady dashed the
glass to the ground, smashing it to fragments.
“You wanted a murder, did you ?" she heard him
say, in a low growl. “Well, you shall have one :
but I'll do the murdering instead of you !” He
made a quick movement, and seized her arm with
his hand, just below the elbow. There was a hor-
rible stare in his eyes; it was death looking her in
the face.
She screamed once ; and with the supple move-
ment of a snake, twisted her arm out of his grasp,
leaving half of her sleeve behind. She sprang
behind the table, every nerve tense with the agony
of fear. But he was between her and the door.
There was no hope of escape. He raised the table
in his arms and flung it to one side ; it broke as it
fell, and lay a heap of fragments on the floor. She
retreated to the further corner of the room. She


210
SHEVELIN.
glanced at him in a suspicious way. He was just
about giving up the enterprise, when a customer,
with a basket on his arm, entered the shop and
began to cheapen some pork chops. The butcher's
back was turned : it was now or never ! Patrick
walked quickly up to the ham, tucked it under his
arm, and walked away, fear making his legs feel
encased in lead. Had he escaped ? In a moment
he heard an angry shout behind him : he started to
run, but the street was crowded, and everybody
seemed to get in his way. Before he had made
twenty yards there was a heavy hand on his coat-col-
lar, he was shaken, cuffed, kicked, and dragged
through a jeering crowd back to the shop; and
then there was a confusion of figures and voices,
amidst which he stood dull and motionless, until he
caught a glimpse of the face of one of his companions
in the crowd. He shouted and tried to spring towards
him, perhaps imagining that he could protect or
justify him ; but he saw his face contract forbid-
dingly, and his figure shrink back into the crowd ;
and then he knew that he was deserted. He be.
came mute and passive once more ; and after a
series of more or less discomforting preliminaries,
he found himself an inmate of the House of Refuge.
This institution was described as reformatory,-a
fine flight of ironic humor in the way of nomencla-
ture. It was notoriously a carefully perfected
machine for the transformation of young vaga-
bonds into scientific rogues. Patrick was, to be
sure, incapable of becoming a finished any thing.


SHEVELIN.
211
But it may be assumed that his years of seclusion in
the Refuge were not years of seclusion from the
knowledge of evil. At last he was turned out
again, after such a boyhood, to begin his career as
a man,
;
Much to the disappointment, doubtless, of his
kind instructors, he failed to achieve that brilliant
distinction which they had probably anticipated
for him. He slouched about here and there, too
pigeon-livered to be at war with society, and yet
prone to get food and drink, whenever he could,
without working for them. He was never his own
man ; some one or other was always making use
of him. There was in him a vein of weak, good-
humored sociability ; he hated to be alone, and
no companions were too low for him ; there were
none at whose jokes he would not giggle, or whose
snubbings he would resent. He was often made
a cat’s-paw of, and never got any thing like a
fair share of the chestnuts. At this period he
drove a truck, and that was as near as he ever
came to having a profession. His truck was occa-
sionally of service to his light-fingered friends, and
in one way or another he managed to rub along.
At last he fell in love.
Men of his boneless sort easily and quickly adapt
themselves to circumstances, and would never do
wrong, were there no such thing as temptation.
Mary Keely was a nice, decent, capable girl, and
her brother was an honest, efficient young fellow;
and when Patrick made their acquaintance, he


212
SHEVELIN.
imitated their ways and manners as accurately as
he could, and, as they knew nothing to his dis-
credit, and were well-disposed people, they soon
began to feel a kindness toward him. He could
gossip amusingly, and he flattered the object of
his affections with no little tact. She suspected
him of a taste for whisky, but of nothing worse ;
and she fancied she could soon cure' him of that.
At all events, she finally agreed to marry him; and
married to him she was.
Of Patrick's domestic career the records are
meager; most likely his wife had the larger snare
of the domesticity to herself. Patrick was affable,
plausible, and, so long as he was under her eye, tract-
able also; but not even a smart wife can make any
thing of a man who is at the beck and call of the
first acquaintance he meets, and whose constitution
demands alcohol. Patrick seldom got drunk ; but
he was often well-loaded ; and, drunk or sober, he
was a fluent and accomplished liar. He always
made out the best case possible for himself at home ;
and his wife, after detecting him once or twice, came
to the conclusion that it was no good asking ques-
tions ; she let him go and come as he pleased, and
only insisted upon having money enough to keep
the fire going and a gown on her back. She had
not made a brilliant marriage ; but there were many
who had done worse.
Daniel Keely, Patrick's brother-in-law, had for
several years been serving as a bank watchman,
with another man to relieve him on Sundays ; the


SHEVELIN.
213
latter resigned his position, and Keely immediately
recommended Pat for the job. The directors of
the bank accepted him mainly on this recommend-
ation. To act as watchman of a bank is a very
simple matter—from one point of view. This was
the point of view taken by the directors ; Patrick
was appointed, and no further thought was bestowed
upon him. He received a salary of a dollar and a
quarter a day.
Now, this was the first position of trust and
importance that Patrick had ever held, and he was
proud of it. He determined to discharge his
duties faithfully, and await the promotion which,
he fancied, was certain to come in due time. The
thought that he was the guardian of millions
exalted him in his own esteem, and, as he was
endowed with a keen love of approbation, he
was fond of conversing on the subject with his
friends. It was all very well to be a laborer, a
huckster or a regular tradesman; but what about
the personage who held in the hollow of his hand,
as it were, wealth beyond the dreams of avarice?
His friends agreed with him that it was a big thing ;
to his vast satisfaction, they began to treat him
with a certain deference, which he absorbed as the
parched earth soaks up the rain ; he had been
hankering after that sort of tribute for forty years,
and had never till now got a drop of it.
Meanwhile Inspector Byrnes, ever since his first
interview with this man on the day of the Manhat-
tan robbery, had never taken his eyes off him.


214
SHEVELIN,
;
Patrick Shevelin was not, at first, considered to be
so important an object of suspicion as some others;
but that he was not entirely innocent seemed more
than probable. Moreover, he was the only employé
of the bank whose past history and antecedents did
not improve upon investigation. The others, one
after one, were relieved from suspicion and super-
vision ; but the more of Shevelin's record that came
to light, the more cause there seemed to be to regard
him with mistrust. His steps were constantly fol-
lowed, and his every act and utterance, so far as
was possible, noted and considered.
But though Shevelin's was a feeble nature, he
had the compensation belonging to most feeble
creatures,--subtlety and cunning. For the first few
weeks after the robbery he was sedulously on his
guard. He looked askance at any unfamiliar face,
no matter in how plausible or friendly a manner it
presented itself ; the course of his daily life was
orderly and regular, and he avoided association
with all suspicious characters. The detective
ingenuity which might have succeeded with much
more able men, was for a long time employed in
vain against Shevelin. He was inveterately sus-
picious of both men and women. And yet, as the
weeks went by, and grew into months, the patient
officer at the head of the Detective Bureau became
more and more firmly convinced that this sham-
bling and insignificant creature carried about with
him the whole secret of the great robbery; and
--


216
SHEVELIN.
Where did this money (which could not have
amounted to less than several hundred dollars)
come from, and how did Shevelin, with his few
dollars a week salary, come into possession of it?
There seemed to be no answer to these questions
consistent with the fellow's honesty. The inspector
decided upon taking a new step.
The bank officials had been some time before
apprised of the true character of their Sunday
watchman, and of the reasons for regarding him
with distrust; and they had naturally been anxious
to get rid of him forth with. But they were
requested, in order not to awaken his suspicions, to
defer dismissing him until some time had passed,
when they might do so on some pretext not con-
nected with the robbery. He was therefore per-
mitted to continue his duties, though his movements
were always under supervision ; but the period had
now arrived when he might be turned away with-
out prejudice to the aims of the police.
called up, accordingly, his wages were paid, and
he was informed that the bank had made arrange-
ments which would compel them to dispense with
his services.
This proceeding had the effect which the
inspector had looked for. Without putting Sheve-
lin on his guard (for he had by this time become
persuaded that he was safe from pursuit) it dis-
turbed and angered him, and by way of easing
his mind, he began to drink to excess.
Every other device of “shadowing" having been
He was


SHEVELIN.
217
was
employed with indifferent results, a new experi-
ment now tried, with successful results.
The law followed Shevelin's footsteps in the shape
of the ubiquitous urchin of the streets,—the small
boy, with his careless whistle, his omnivorous curi-
osity, his roving disposition, his whip-top, his
marbles, and his untrammeled habits. This scrap
of humanity was instructed never to lose sight of
the ex-watchman, and to report where he went,
whom he met, and what he said. The commission
was accepted with alacrity and discharged with
good results.
Even the most depraved persons retain some
instinctive confidence in the guilelessness of child-
hood, and disarm themselves in its presence ; and
it might seem a pity to employ one of the best im-
pulses remaining in a criminal, to convict him of
his worst ones. But the operations of the detect-
ive police do not give much rein to sentiment.
The boy brought in daily reports, and every day
the net of evidence around the unconscious man
was drawn a little closer. In his drunken seasons he
had a perilous habit of muttering and talking to
himself. From these mutterings it appeared that
he considered himself wronged by some person or
persons in a pecuniary matter. He had not been
treated aright; he had done much for them and
they had rewarded him but shabbily : they were
“playing him for a sucker"; but he would have
his rights. Evidently the time was ripe for the
arrest.


222
SHEVELIN.
plete revelation, and there was no drawing back
In a broken voice he began his story, and,
prompted now and then by a question or suggestion
from the inspector, he unfolded the inner history of
the great Manhattan Bank Robbery.


THE INSIDE.
227
practice, an incident happened which once more
postponed the execution of the job.
Howard had, for some time previous, been on
ill terms with certain of his comrades, the cause
whereof was obscure, but it was understood that
there was a woman at the bottom of it. A few
days after he had solved the lock problem, he
received a letter requesting his immediate presence
at a place near Brooklyn, on a matter of “business.”
He went, and was not again seen alive. The fol-
lowing week his body was found lying beside
Tramp's Rock, in Yonkers woods, with a pistol
near its hand and a bullet in its heart. It was
thought that he had wandered out there and shot
himself, until he was lifted up and another bullet
wound discovered in the back of his head, which
evidently had been the cause of death. Then it
was remembered that a wagon, driven by two men,
and containing a heap of something covered with
sacking, had been seen driving along a road leading
to those woods, and that soon after the wagon had
returned empty. Doubtless the man had been
murdered in Harlem, and the corpse then trans-
ported to Yonkers and left there with a pistol to
suggest that Howard had killed himself. Dobbs
was suspected of having had a hand in this tragedy ;
but nothing was ever certainly known about it, nor
probably ever will be.
At all events, Howard was gone ; though not
until he had, as it were, opened the door for the
others to enter ; and shortly afterwards, Shevelin


THE INSIDE.
229
not attach so much importance to the unexplained
hole under the combination plate as the burglars
had imagined they would ; and after an interval of
less than a year, Shevelin once more found himself
the object of flattering solicitations. As he was
taking a quiet glass at a table in a Third Avenue
lager beer saloon one evening, he was accosted by
Jimmy Hope, and the old topic was reopened.
Jimmy Hope was then at the height of his
reputation and activity. He devoted himself ex.
clusively to bank burglary, and now that Howard
was dead he was the admitted head of the pro-
fession. He was a rather short man, compactly
built, and having the appearance of a prosperous
merchant. Like most thieves, he was leading a
double life, having a wife and children in one part
of the city, while he occupied a fashionable apart-
ment flat in another, and was known there to a
circle of admiring friends as Mr. Hopely, a retired
capitalist.
Hope informed Shevelin that the hour and the
men were at hand to actually accomplish the great
robbery. The dramatis persona, in this instance,
were to be Hope himself, and his son, a college-
bred youth of twenty-three, with a fine future before
him ; Billy Kelly, a personal friend of Shevelin's, a
brisk and genial young fellow, who alternated the
vocation of bartender with that of highway robbery;
Pete Emmerson, otherwise “Banjo Pete,” formerly
the star of a nigger-minstrel troupe, but now pro-
moted to the brevet rank of safe burglar; Ed


232
THE INSIDE.
bulk. And Pete Emmerson, with his revolver in
his hand, waited within the vault doors, prepared to
confront whatever desperate emergency might arise.
For the space of half an hour or more, money
came in at the rate of one hundred thousand
dollars a minute : and then Coakley conveyed the
unwelcome intelligence that the barber, Kohlman,
was entering his shop. Hope and Goodie laid
down their tools, wiped the sweat from their faces,
and put on their coats. Nugent stuffed the last of
the securities under his waistcoat, and buttoned
up his surtout. Emmerson returned his revolver
to his pocket; Coakley resumed his wonted
appearance, and, watching their opportunity, the
whole gang passed noiselessly round to the side
door, and emerged into the Sabbath quietude of
the sunny street. Dispersing in different directions,
a couple of minutes took them beyond the reach
of pursuit.
Such were the plans and execution of this
unparalleled burglary. But the inspector in listen-
ing to Shevelin's story, had noticed the absence of
all allusion to John D. Grady, and interrogated the
informer as to whether he had never heard any
thing of that personage in connection with the job.
Shevelin promptly replied in the negative. Inti-
mately as he had been involved in the crime, no men-
tion of old “Supers and Slangs” had ever reached
his ears-a remarkable proof of how well Grady
had kept himself in the background, and been
screened by his accomplices,


234
THE INSIDE.
watchman was levied upon for six hundred dollars
to defray the expenses of a lobby at Washington,
to defeat the Duplicate-Securities Bill-and this
was all he ever saw of the plunder.
Meanwhile, John D. Grady and Jimmy Hope
had quarreled about the disposition of the stolen
securities, which Grady claimed the right to hold,
but which Hope carried away to parts unknown.
Internal dissensions spread, and divided the gang ;
and the passage of the Duplicate-Securities Bill
completed their discomfiture. Some malevolent
influence appeared to be in the air : misfortune
pursued every participator in the great robbery. It
almost seemed as if some personal enemy were pur-
suing them-some one quite distinct from the rep-
resentatives of the law..
Whether or not this impression were a fancy, the
reader may possibly be able, from his knowledge of
some of the hidden features of this memorable
affair, to determine. But as to the action of the
authorities in the matter, there is no room for
speculation. The result of Shevelin's confession was
that the perpetrators of the robbery were arrested
and convicted, and most of them are in state prison
to this day.
Inspector Byrnes has had the professional sat-
isfaction of seeing realized the purpose which
he formed after his first review of the circum-
stances of the crime—of placing upon the wrists of
the guilty parties the steel bracelets with which
they had fettered the janitor on that famous Sun.


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