Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
The road from Paris to Calais is known as the Chemin de Fer du Nord, and
Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, head of the Paris Rothschilds, is the
president of the road. This fact occurred to me within a few minutes of
the accident, and I thought I might make use of the affair as a means to
help me in my business at Paris. I arrived about dark, went to the Grand
Hotel, and to bed at once. My nerves were so shaken that I was timid,
even when in the elevator, but I slept well and awoke at daylight
feeling better.
At 10 o'clock, limping badly and leaning on a cane, I entered a carriage
and drove to the Maison Rothschild, Rue Lafitte. The banking house might
well be called a palace. The various offices open upon a courtyard,
while the whole architecture of the building would suggest the residence
of an officer of State or nobleman rather than a building devoted to
finance. But the currents which centre there are potent and
far-reaching, and come richly laden with tribute from the four quarters
of the world. To win that tribute slaves toil, and, toiling, die, in
Brazilian diamond mines, and thousands of coolies, entrapped by agents
in China and India, enter into perfidious contracts which commit them to
hopeless slavery and send them to wear out their lives in despairing
toil amid the pungent and murderous ammoniacal fumes of the guano
islands of Chili and Peru. The Rothschilds, too, own the Almaden
quicksilver mine and others.
They control the quicksilver industries of the world, and to swell their
abnormal hoard, portentous in its vastness, other poor wretches,
condemned under form of law, are doomed to days of wearing toil, and,
their bones rotting from quicksilver absorption, to nights of racking
pains. So, too, far Siberia contributes its quota of human misery that
the golden stream of interest on century-old loans may have no
interruption, but pour on unceasingly into the vaults of the
Rothschilds.
Alighting from the carriage and mounting the steps with difficulty, I
entered the English Department, and, seating myself, awaited the
manager's presence. He came, and expressing great concern when he
learned I was a victim of the Marquise disaster, asked what he could do
for me. I replied I wanted to see the Baron. He disappeared into a range
of offices, and no doubt told Baron Alphonse I was some important
personage, doubly important because injured on his road.
Soon a slight, sallow man of about 43 appeared, wearing an old-fashioned
stovepipe hat and a shabby suit of snuff-colored garments. The look of
the attendants testified that the deity was before me. Taking off his
antiquated chapeau he began a profuse apology for the accident,
explaining that accidents were most unusual events in France; that he
would order his own physician to attend me, that I should have every
attention without the slightest charge or expense to myself, etc., etc.,
and ended by saying I was to command him if he could serve me. In return
I told him since he was so distressed over the accident and my plight, I
should say no more about either, but as I was too badly shaken to
complete the business on which I had come to Paris I should request him
to instruct his subordinates to aid me in transmitting the funds I had
brought from London back again. He called the manager and told him to
accommodate me in anything, then, shaking hands and with many
expressions of regret, he withdrew.
I told the manager I wanted a three months' bill on London for L6,000.
He informed me that the house of Rothschild was not issuing time bills,
but since the Baron's order suspended the rule in my case, he would
procure me six bills for L1,000 each. These really were just as good for
our purpose as one bill for L6,000, but I had come to Paris on George's
demand that I should procure one bill for this unusual amount, so
perforce I had to say "No," that I wanted one bill only.
The manager began to remonstrate, saying it was unusual, and wanted to
explain the nature of a bill of exchange, but I cut him short, bidding
him recall the Baron at once. The thought of recalling that Jupiter to
repeat an order was enough to send a thrill through the entire staff,
and he instantly said: "Oh, sir, if you wish the L6,000 in one bill, you
shall have it, but it will involve some delay." So paying him 150,000
francs on account, I ordered the bill sent to me at 2 o'clock precisely
at the Grand Hotel, and drove off to the Louvre, where I spent two hours
in the picture galleries. At 2 o'clock I was at the hotel, and an
attendant came with the bill, and, pointing to a signature on it,
informed me it was that of a Cabinet Minister, equivalent to our
Secretary of the Treasury, certifying that the tax due the government
on the bill was paid. He explained the revenue stamp required upon a
bill of exchange was one-eighth of 1 per cent. of the face of the bill,
making the tax on my single bill 187 francs, or about $37. All bills are
stamped in a registering machine, which presses the stamp into the
paper; but there were no registering machines for a stamp of so high a
denomination as 187 francs either in the branch revenue office in the
Rothschild bank or at the Treasury, so the Baron had taken the bill to
the Treasury himself and got the Cabinet Minister to put his autograph
on it--probably the first and only time in history that such a thing had
been done. I wanted very much indeed to keep that bill as a curiosity,
but then the necessity of the time was on me, and I was not then a
collector of curios.
I had been only eighteen hours in Paris, and by a happy fluke the
business was done over which I had counted upon spending a good part of
the month.
When I left London I was all at sea as to how I should carry out the
objects of my visit to Paris. One plan was to procure an interview by
strategy with the Baron Alphonse and try to cajole him, but without
reference, and devoid of all business relations or acquaintance in
Paris, it was at best a questionable expedient, and I probably would
have had a take-down. But the accident at Marquise came and smoothed the
apparently insuperable difficulties in my way. But I have found that
something unusual does come to help a man on his way to the devil when
he is anxious to get there, which he is pretty sure to do, if he is only
diligent and careful to improve his opportunities.
What diligence and strict attention to business do men exhibit when they
start out to wreck their own lives and break the hearts of those near to
them! In a play by a modern writer, one scene presents Satan flying at
midnight over one of our cities, while the drunken songs and joyous
shouts of some gilded revelers rise in the night. The merry songs and
laughter are music to the ears of Lucifer. He pauses in his flight to
listen, and as the songs and shouts increase in volume he looks down on
the revelers and with a bitter sneer soliloquizes thus of them:
"Ye are my bondsmen and my thralls,
Your lives I fill with bitter pain."
And that sums it up pretty well; but we must look straight away from the
entrance of the Primrose Way to the exit.
Well, I had successfully played my trump card on the Rothschilds, and,
not seeing the end, thought I had won, and cleverly won; so before
sitting down to dinner I went to the telegraph office and telegraphed to
my partners:
"The Egyptians all passed over the Red Sea. But the Hebrews are
drowned therein."
Thinking this rather witty, I went to dinner well satisfied. An hour
past midnight the moon looked from behind a cloud and saw me, one of
many miserables, leaning over the bulwark of that wretched Dover
steamer, again paying tribute to Neptune.
CHAPTER XXII.
"ACCEPTED. LIONEL ROTHSCHILD."
When George and Mac received my telegram they, knowing the difficulties
of my mission, deemed it incredible that I had succeeded within a day,
so when my telegram came they thought I was attempting some jest. Upon
my arrival in London, walking into Mac's room--he being still in bed--I
announced that I had in my pocket Rothschild's bill for L6,000, drawn on
the London house. He flatly refused to believe me, but when he, and
later George, saw the bill, they were forced to believe. I at once took
it down to St. Swithin's lane, and, leaving it for acceptance, called
the next day, when I found scrawled across it in thin, pale ink the
mystic words "Accepted. Lionel Rothschild."
The bill itself was drawn on cheap, blue paper, on the same form as the
blank bills to be had at the Paris stationers', where I had bought some.
From Rothschilds' I went direct to the hotel where we had our
rendezvous, and the acceptance was so simple and easy that Mac had it
copied on another bill in ten minutes. The business methods of the bank
were so loose that there was no necessity for imitating signatures, but
as a precaution this was done to some extent. I then proceeded to the
Bank of England for my last personal interview with the manager. I must
halt here for a brief space in the narrative, in order to enlighten my
reader upon some new developments, also to introduce the new member we
at this time brought into our firm.
There was a friend, a very old friend, of mine residing in Hartford,
Edwin Noyes by name. We had known each other from our schoolboy days,
and there was a warm friendship between us. Our paths in life had been
wide apart, but we maintained a frequent correspondence and often met.
He knew nothing of my primrose life, but supposed, of course, from the
style of my living that I was the possessor of a handsome income from my
business, which lay, as he imagined, in that mysterious precinct known
as "The Street," which, of course, meant Wall street, and that my
business was speculating in stocks.
He was a trifle older than myself, of a steady, reserved nature, and a
discreet and safe friend. This was the new member of our firm. How he
came to be so I must explain. Up to this time, as the reader will have
noticed, I was the only one of the party known at the bank, and, of
course, was the only one who seemed to be taking any risk. Even in the
event of discovery it would apparently be necessary for me only to take
flight. George and Mac, not being known in connection with the fraud,
could remain in London until such time as they chose to go home. To make
matters absolutely safe for me as well we got up this scheme.
I told the manager of the bank that I had bought an immense plant and
shops in Birmingham to manufacture railway material, and that I should
be there superintending the work a good deal; therefore I might
occasionally send any bills I had for discount from there by mail. I had
sent two or three lots of the genuine bills in that way. If I could send
the imitation bills the same way, Mac and George could carry on the
business through the mail in my name and I could be at the other side of
the world while the actual operation was going on, so that, far from my
ever being proved guilty, there would be proof of my innocence, for how
could I be guilty of a crime committed in England at the very time I was
on a pleasure jaunt in the West Indies and Mexico? Thus it was
arranged. Mac and George could do everything and remain in the
background themselves, provided we had a safe man whom I could introduce
at the bank as my clerk or messenger, also to represent me in different
places where I could introduce him as my messenger before I left
England.
The reader will see the extreme artfulness of the plot, but in all
wrongdoing there is sooner or later a slip up. Be the plot ever so
artful, or however safe the wrongdoing may appear, the unforeseen
something will happen.