Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
recoup them, so it had been agreed that the first batch of bogus bills
should not exceed the amount paid out since leaving Rio.
I left for Paris on Monday. On Wednesday, Noyes went to the bank and
drew out all the money to my credit, except three hundred pounds. The
same day he went to Birmingham and mailed lot number one of
home-manufacture bills representing L8,000.
The next twenty-four hours was an anxious time for my friends. The bills
would be delivered by the early mail on Thursday, and if all went right
the proceeds would be placed to my credit by 12 o'clock, and the bills
themselves would be stowed away in the vaults until they were due some
months ahead. George and Mac waited with the greatest anxiety until 2
o'clock. They had everything packed for instant flight, when at that
hour they sallied out of Mac's lodging and started for the bank to make
the test. They had filled out two Warren checks, one for L2,300 payable
to Warren, another for L4 10s., payable to bearer.
Noyes went on ahead, the others following, and took his stand on the
steps of a hotel in a side street not far from the bank. Keeping his
eye out for a suitable appearing party he finally stopped a uniformed
messenger, and, telling him to take the L4 10s. check to the bank, bring
the money to him there, and he would be paid for his trouble.
Of course, as soon as the messenger had turned his back Noyes bolted
around the corner to a place agreed upon, while Mac followed the
messenger to the bank and saw he was paid without question. He gave the
pre-arranged signal to George, who went with all haste to notify Noyes,
and when the messenger arrived with the cash, he found him standing on
the steps as cool and unconcerned as possible. Paying the messenger, all
three started to the bank, Mac on the way giving Noyes the L2,300 check,
which he presented. Nodding good day to the cashier he asked for L2,000
in gold and the remainder in notes, which were handed him at once, and
three very happy men sat down that evening to dinner, because the day's
operations had conclusively proved that the Bank of England methods were
fallible.
The next morning Noyes went to Jay Cooke & Co. and ordered $75,000 in
United States bonds, giving a check for them on the bank. The same
afternoon he went to Birmingham and mailed another letter, this one
containing L15,000 in bills, and later drew L2,000 in gold from the
bank. On Monday he went after the bonds, and the $75,000 was handed over
to him without questions. The whole operation was a repetition of these
tactics, but with an ever-increasing volume in the amounts of the bills.
On some days the mail brought to the bank letters with bills for
$100,000, sometimes for more, sometimes for less. So November and
December passed away, and the bank continued day by day and week by week
laying away in its vaults the worthless collateral of Mr. F. A. Warren in
exchange for its gold.
But why not be satisfied and stop while it was all right? That is the
question of a wise man, but who ever knew any man who wanted to do a
thing, whether he did it or not, who could not find half a hundred good
reasons why he should do it. But as Christmas came near Mac began to
long for home. He had repaid his father every penny of the large sum he
was owing him; there had been a reconciliation by mail, and each steamer
that came bore many long letters from parents and sisters, all speaking
of their joy over the happy turn of events that was going to bring the
absent member of the flock home within its walls again. The father's
heart, long estranged, grew very tender toward his boy, and with pride
he thought his eldest had thrown off the follies of his youth, and in
manful strength was making ample atonements for the thoughtlessness and
the wanderings of his youth. He and they were all destined to a terrible
awakening. For soon the press of the world was to teem with accounts of
his son's arrest and incarceration for participation in a gigantic
fraud. When the blow fell it came with crushing force on that home, and
a shadow deep as night settled down on the household; all joyousness and
even hope itself fled when the cable bore the news that their boy had
been condemned to life imprisonment in a foreign dungeon. And one by one
the members of that family passed away from a world that held no more
for them since their good name had been tarnished.
In London the boys talked of spending Christmas at home, but the
argument to stay--and it prevailed--was that since the money came in so
easily and in such amounts it was a pity to run away from it. Then,
again, by obtaining an enormous sum and putting it in a place of
absolute security, the bank would be glad to compromise the matter in
consideration of receiving a million or two back again.
So they spent a pretty merry and an exceedingly expensive Christmas in
London, but later in February they determined to pack up and leave.
Everything smiled upon them. The gold and bonds they had, meant fortunes
for all. I was away in tropic islands leading an idle life with my
bride amid the cocoanut and palm trees. Mac and George had never
appeared in the transaction, and as for Noyes, not a soul in all America
knew he was in Europe, and in all Europe only three or four people had
seen him, and knew him as representing Warren.
The business was finished. All three laden with money were going to
leave England, leaving the bank to slumber on for weeks until the first
bills became due before there could be a discovery. By that time the
cash would have been safely stowed, and how or where or to whom could
anything be traced?
So in council they had decided to be content with the enormous amount
they had. The last batch of bills was in the mail. Only one day more and
the strain on the nerves would be over. That day Noyes bought bonds and
drew cash for more than $150,000. At 3 o'clock they sat down to lunch,
their last in London, and then went direct to Mac's apartments in St.
James' place. All the material for making fraudulent bills was there,
and what could be burned was to be thrown into the grate, and the rest
to first be filed into blank nothings and then thrown into the Thames.
The three were there and they were happy. They had engineered a gigantic
scheme, had struck for wealth and won. The short cut to fortune in
defiance of fate had been traversed and now they set about a grateful
task--that of getting themselves and their rich argosy out of England.
Mac being the artist of the party, and having executed the actual
writing, drew the sealed box containing the unused bills up to the fire
and began throwing them in one by one. In doing so he occasionally would
throw some bill more elaborate than the common run on the floor beside
his chair. He had finished his task and took from the floor those he had
thrown there, looked at them for a moment, then crumbling them together,
raised his hand to throw them in the fire, but as the devil always
forsakes his friends at the critical moment, he stopped, smoothed out
the bills and turning to the others, said: "Boys, these are perfect
works of art; it is a pity to destroy them." From our point of view it
was, since it was only necessary to drop them into the mail and they
would coin us thousands. Then George said: "Suppose we send them in."
The others said "All right," and our doom was sealed.
There were in the lot nineteen bills of exchange for L26,000. A date had
been left off one of them! They failed to note it! Poor fools, we had
sold ourselves.
Was this an accident? No, it was Nemesis; it was anything you want to
call it, but it was not an accident.
So a letter was written, the bills, with memorandum, inclosed, the
envelope directed and stamped, and the three fools went to Birmingham,
mailed the letter, and then laughed over their success in the fight
against society, facilitated themselves that they had discovered the
undiscoverable, that they had safely traversed the short cut to fortune.
There is no short cut by wrongdoing to fortune, Boss Tweed and the long
list of robber barons to the contrary!
The bills were mailed on Monday. As that fatal letter slipped from their
fingers into the mail-box the last act of the deadly tragedy began. When
it ended the curtain fell upon us descending from the dock into the
chill dungeons of Newgate, never, so far as the sentence was concerned,
to emerge again.
On Tuesday morning the letter with the bills arrived at the bank.
Following the routine, they went to the discount department, were
discounted and placed to my credit. As I had a balance of L20,000, when
the proceeds of the bills were added to it, it brought up the whole to
the handsome sum of L46,000.
When the bills arrived at the bank a strange thing occurred. The fatal
omission was made on an acceptance of Blydenstein & Co., a great banking
firm in London. The discount clerk noticed the omission of the date of
acceptance, but this being a mere formality, he thought it a clerical
error on the part of the bookkeeper of Blydenstein & Co. He made no
report of the matter, and it was discounted along with the other
eighteen, which were put away in the vaults with the batches that had
preceded it, while he laid this one aside until the next day, which was
Wednesday. At half past ten he gave it to the bank messenger, telling
him when he went his regular rounds to take the bill to Blydenstein's
and request them to correct the omission.
At 2 p.m. on Tuesday Noyes went to Jay Cooke & Co. and ordered $100,000
in United States bonds, and gave them a check on the Bank of England for
the amount. He was to call for the bonds next day, of course, after the
check had gone through the Clearing House and had been paid.
As soon as the bank opened on Wednesday, in order to test if everything
was all right, Noyes sent in a messenger with a small check, and the
money was thrown out as at all other times without remark. And that was
a complete demonstration that everything was all right. So it was then,
but within thirty minutes from that second the messenger was going to
start with the bill to Blydenstein's for correction.
This was 10 o'clock Wednesday. The bills had been twenty-five hours in
the possession of the bank, had been discounted and the proceeds placed
to my credit for twenty-four hours.
Who with intellect less than an archangel's could have divined the true
combination? First of all, that men brilliant and clever, gambling with
their lives, could have made such an omission, damning, fatal. Second,
if made, that the great Bank of England, thought absolutely infallible
by the whole world, conservative, supposedly cautious, would have
discounted a bill for L20,00 with the date out of the acceptance, and
having done so, hold the bill well on into the second day, without a
discovery, and that, too, when the firm whose acceptance was a forgery
was not 100 yards away! So when at 10 o'clock on Wednesday Mac saw the
small check paid without question to the messenger it seemed he had an
assurance doubly sure and a bond of fate that all was well, and that the
last batch of bills was packed safely away for another three months in
the vaults of the bank.
So Noyes went at once to Jay Cooke & Co., and as the check had been paid
at the bank they handed over, as in so many other occasions, the
$100,000 in bonds to him.
Mac and George were outside. George took the bonds and gave Noyes a
L10,000 check, and one minute from his leaving Jay Cooke & Co., Noyes
was at the counter of the bank. The cashier counted out the $50,000 to
him. He walked out of the bank with a lighter heart and more buoyant
step than ever before, for was not the danger all over and the long