Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
he orders a broker to buy for him bills on London to the amount of the
cost of the rails. He purchases the Russell bills, and these bills of
exchange he sends in payment to the steel rail manufacturers in England,
so, as a matter of fact, the president of the Georgia Central pays
Russell for his thousand bales of cotton, but has the bills of exchange.
So, in place of L10,000 in gold being freighted twice across the ocean,
the ten pieces of paper cross only once. These ten bills for L1,000
each, drawn on the Union Bank of London at six months, in due time are
presented, duly accepted and paid at maturity by the bank.
Instead of commercial notes or bills they are now known as acceptances,
and are just as good as a bank note. Therefore, if the owner--no matter
who it is--wants the money at once, any bank will discount all or either
for the face value less the interest. In every commercial centre of the
world these accepted bills are being discounted by banks and moneyed
corporations for enormous sums, but by no bank in the world in such huge
amounts as by the Bank of England. Their daily discounts run into the
millions.
What our plan was will be made clear later.
The evening of the day of my arrival in Paris found me on the express
speeding to Paris. Two hours past midnight I was on the miserable little
passenger steamer that plies across the chopping channel, and which I
suppose has seen more of human misery than all the fleets that sail the
Atlantic, for the channel has stronger counter currents, and wind,
tide and currents seem ever to be in violent opposition, and here
"E'er across the main doth float
A sad and solemn swell,
The wild, fantastic, fitful note
Of Triton's breathing shell."
And Triton (old Neptune's t'other name) makes all passers over this part
of his realm pay ample tribute for "his fantastic, fitful notes."
The Paris night express lands one at early dawn in London, nearly always
weak on the legs, however. I breakfasted with Mac, and after that took
the bills to the various banks on which they were drawn, and leaving
them for their acceptance, I called again the next day and received them
back, bearing across the face, the magic words:
"London, Aug. 14, 1872.
"Accepted for the Union Bank of London.
"E. Barclay, Manager.
"J. Wayland, Assistant Manager."
Then I hurried to the Grosvenor, and we all looked at them with
curiosity, for it was upon the imitation of just such acceptances that
our whole plan was based. I intended to present this and many more
batches of genuine bills for discount at the bank until the officials
should become accustomed to discounting for me. In the mean time, as
fast as I got genuine acceptances and bills, we kept on making
imitations of them for future use, only leaving out the date until such
time as we should be ready to put them in for discount. Of course, the
success or failure of our whole plan turned upon this point. Is it the
custom of the Bank of England (in 1873) to send acceptances offered for
discount to the acceptors for verification of signatures?
This is always done in America, and had this very requisite precaution
been used by the Bank of England our plan would have been fruitless and
we should have been a few thousands out of pocket; but, if not, then we
could throw into the hopper enough acceptances of home manufacture so
that through the red tape routine of the bank millions of sovereigns
would be ground out into our pockets.
Taking my deposit book and the genuine bills, I went to the bank and
left the bills for discount. This was at once done and the amount placed
to my credit. I drew L10,000, and that night found me once more one of
500 unfortunates paying tribute to Neptune. This time I landed at Ostend
and took the train for Amsterdam. There I repeated the Paris operation,
securing L10,000 in genuine bills. I returned to London, and as before
left them for acceptance. Then my companion manufactured a lot of
imitations and put them away with those previously manufactured, to be
all ready when the day came to use them. The genuine bills were then
discounted. Again and again I went to the Continent, repeating the
operation, until at last my credit at the bank was firm as a rock, and
we were ready to reap our harvest. But these operations, simple as they
seem, lasted over a period of six months, and had been made at heavy
cost. Our ordinary living expenses were not less than $25 a day for the
three, while our extraordinary expenses were enormous. I probably
traveled 10,000 miles over the Continent in my bill-buying expeditions
to Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfort and Vienna.
Another source of expense was the commissions paid to brokers for buying
bills on the exchange. Then we had many expenses purely personal, and,
enormous as it seems, the sum total from the day of our return from
Brazil until the day of our operations against the bank began to bring
us in cash were quite $500 a week, so that we had invested $15,000 in
preparation, not to speak of our hard work--and it was hard work, and
trying, too, for there were a multitude of details to be worked out.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE EGYPTIANS PASS OVER THE RED SEA AND THE HEBREWS ARE DROWNED THEREIN.
All the details of events leading through the long Summer and Autumn
days of 1872 up to the hour when the golden shower began to fall on us
are of intense, almost dramatic, interest. I will not, however, lengthen
the narrative by giving here any further account of them, but will
merely relate the story of the last five days before the actual
presentation of our home-brewed acceptances.
The bank had been discounting for weeks comparatively large sums for me.
Many thousand pounds of the genuine article discounted had matured and
been paid, and more thousands were still in the vaults, awaiting
maturity, and would fall due, while our home-manufactured bills would be
laid away in the vaults, there to remain for four or five months until
due. Of course a full month or two months before that we could pack our
baggage and be on the other side of the world; I on some hacienda in
Mexico, George and Mac at some fashionable resort in Florida. They soon
to knock at the gates of the Four Hundred, I to spend a year or two in
Mexico, playing "grand senor," until, under the skillful management of
our friends, Irving, Stanley and White, at Police Headquarters in New
York, the affair had blown over, and they invited me to return.
But, as the sequel will show, the reality took on a different complexion
from the ideal.
My credit at the bank was solid as a rock. That means I had gone through
the red-tape routine. It only behooved us to use circumspection enough
to avoid making mistakes in our papers, and fortune was ours. I knew
everything was all right, but George, being a thorough business man
himself, could not comprehend that it could be quite right, and he
insisted upon one supreme test. Any single bill of exchange is seldom
drawn for more than L1,000, rarely for L2,000, and one of L6,000 is
almost unheard of. If a party in Bombay wanted exchange on London for
L100,000, his broker would probably furnish him with one hundred bills
for L1,000 each. But George had made up his mind that as a test, and to
make an impression upon the bank manager, I should go to Paris and get a
bill on London from Rothschilds drawn to the order of F. A. Warren
direct. Could this be done it would, of course, make it appear that I
had intimate relations with the Rothschilds, and as a minor
consideration we could use the Rothschild acceptance--a pretty nervy
thing to do, as Sir Anthony de Rothschild, the head of the London house,
whose name we proposed to offer, was a director of the Bank of England,
and would have to pass his own paper for discount--that is, paper
bearing his name, manufactured by ourselves.
We tried to talk George out of this notion, which Mac and I regarded as
a freak, unnecessary in the first place, and impossible anyhow. But he
was persistent, and I had to start out and try. I expected an expense of
$1,000 and a delay of two weeks, but fortune or the devil favored us.
So, purchasing at the exchange broker's in London 200,000 francs in
French paper money, once more I left Victoria Station for Paris. Once
more, an unwilling victim, I heard the "wild, fantastic, fitful note of
Triton's breathing shell." At Calais I took my place in what the French
call a coupe; that is, the end compartment on a car, which, by paying
ten francs extra, you can occupy alone. It is unlike the other
compartments in that there are no arms dividing it into seats; so one
can lie full length on the cushion.
Before this night I speak of I had cherished a theory as to what I
should do in the event of an accident happening to any train whereon I
was a passenger. In such a case I proposed to catch on to some object
and hold on, leaving my body and limbs to swing freely. My theory ever
since that night has been that I will go just wherever the breaking
timbers and flying furniture send me. I had fallen into a sound sleep
before the train started, and was aroused from it to find myself hurled
about the compartment much as a stout boy would shake a mouse in a cage,
and quite as helpless.
Our train was off the track. My carriage was near the engine, and the
momentum of the long train forced the car in the rear of mine up on end,
and it appeared as if it would fall over and crush me. I thought my hour
had come, and I cried out, "At last!" There was no fear or terror in it,
but merely the thought that after many months of almost incessant
travel, and necessarily of peril, "at last" my fate had come. It had
not. How good heaven would have been if it had sent me to my doom then
and there!
The accident had occurred at Marquise, a small town sixteen miles from
Calais and four from Boulogne, the first stopping place of the express.
It was a very long train, but the carriages were all empty except two. A
heavy excursion train had left Paris, and the cars were going back
empty. What lessened the number of passengers was the fact that it was
Sunday night. The English do not travel on Sundays as a rule. So,
fortunately, a great loss of life was prevented. However, two were
killed and half of the remaining passengers injured. My own injuries
were slight and consisted of trifling cuts on the face and hands from
flying glass. But, far worse than that, I had received a nervous shock,
which took some weeks to wear off, and during the rest of my journey to
Paris and return to London I was as nervous as a timid woman. I stayed
at Marquise until noon, when the express passing at that hour made a
special stop to pick me up.
In our glorious and free country the killing or mangling of a few
persons more or less is of no particular concern to any one beyond the
friends of the victims, least of all to the railway magnate or to his
servant. But in France an accident which results even in the wounding of
a passenger is a very serious matter to the road where it occurs and to
its officials. They always hasten to take the fullest responsibility,
and if attention or the more solid matter--cash--can comfort the
sufferer, he will have no occasion to mourn long. If one life be
lost--even a servant of the road--a strict judicial inquiry takes place
upon the scene of the accident, by a high official of the State, advised
by experts, not as in this country, by some drunken country loafer or
ward heeler, who, all ignorant of the law, has been "elected" county
coroner, and one who is more anxious to procure free passes on the road
than he is concerned for the victim murdered by the neglect or parsimony
of inefficient railway officials.