Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison Part 3

n.o.body is going to inquire about a workman who can do his work. The employer requires nothing more than that the work be done, and if it be done he neither thinks nor cares anything more about either it or the worker.

With the educated man the case is different. The sentiments of the cla.s.s he belongs to are less yielding, the fineness of his own feelings has been too deeply wounded, and when he has stabbed his reputation, he is apt, foolishly, of course, to fling the rest of his respectability after it.

With qualities and advantages which might have fitted him for a useful and honorable position in life, s.h.i.+nburne was at less than 30 years of age the companion of outcasts. But whatever his moral failings, his knowledge remained, and it was for him, at least, to be valuable.

To get rid of the bonds in America was impossible, except by sacrificing them to a stolen goods receiver, who would have given but a small percentage of their value.

A steamer was to sail for Europe that day, and it was agreed that s.h.i.+nburne should go by her, with one of the other robbers as company, sell the bonds before the news of the robbery could get across the ocean, then return and fairly divide the proceeds.

This was the arrangement, but s.h.i.+nburne had already begun to have other dreams and other ambitions. He saw a chance to restore himself, or, at least, to s.n.a.t.c.h at a position which would give him weight to crush down sinister reports or envious whisperings, and he determined forthwith to seize it. What the bank president had done to save himself from infamy, s.h.i.+nburne would do to recover himself from infamy. It can be, therefore, easily understood that he accepted without hesitation the other's proposal.

The steamer did not sail until noon. There was, therefore, plenty of time to make preparations, and, besides, he had a little private business to attend to. Leaving the securities in Irving's charge, with a promise to meet the party at 11, he took his share of the cash and departed.

Some time before this, with a skill and forethought rarely to be found in the cla.s.s he then belonged to, he had bought some building lots near the park. Fortunate, indeed, the speculation eventually proved to be. In the mean time, placing his lots in the hands of a responsible agent, and taking drafts on Europe for his money, he rapidly made the little preparation he needed, and at 11 joined his party, there to receive nearly $200,000 in bonds, and to set out with Mike Hurley for the steamer.

After hurried parting injunctions from the Headquarters men, the two travelers, accompanied by Conroy, to see them off, were rapidly driven to the steamer. Punctually to the hour the hawsers were cast off, and with barely time to say good-bye the cronies parted. A moment after the screw began to turn, and the Cunarder's bow pointed toward England.

Arrived in Liverpool, the pair proceeded at once to London. Hurley, who was as ignorant of foreign travel as of everything else, was easily tricked by some tale of no evening trains for the Continent. s.h.i.+nburne plied him well with liquor, taking care to mix the bottles, and when he had got him helplessly drunk he took the bonds and with his little luggage slipped quietly off to the Continent, never to see his dupe or his New York friends again.

He went to Germany, called himself "Count" s.h.i.+nburne, bought an estate and began to exercise large hospitality toward his neighbors.

No man on all the length of the Rhine was so popular as he. No man's house and table, horses and gardens were so praised as his. In the eyes of the beggar n.o.bles of the Fatherland the man who could give such dinners and in such succession, must belong to the choice members of the human race. Day by day Max's position grew more solid. No breath was ever whispered against him, and with a little prudence he might have kept up his state and died in the odor of sanct.i.ty. But the taste of grandeur was too sweet, the incense of his little world's flattery too precious to run the smallest risk of losing it. His display exceeded his means, but for nothing in the world would he have curtailed it.

Matters were in this way until he awoke one day to find his account overdrawn on his bankers. Then it was that he began to remember his operation in Greenwich street, and he seems to have thought that if he succeeded in New York, surely nothing could stand in his way in some sleepy town in Europe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WITH HORROR THE SISTERS SAW THE COUNTESS AIRING THE HISTORIC BRACELET."--Page 68.]

He went to Brussels prospecting, and soon pitched upon an establishment which he thought likely to reward his industry. But the result showed that to walk into a bank when the way was left open, with the authorities anxious to see him there, and to force his way in when the entrance was jealously barred with the guardians determined he should stay out, were two very different things. He made the attempt, was arrested and sentenced to sixteen years' imprisonment. His German friends heard of his mishap, and his glory faded like the early dew.

Naturally, every one thought that the count's career had closed, that the star of his fate had declined, that the bars of his prison house were about him forever. They were greatly mistaken. After some twelve or thirteen years he succeeded in getting a pardon and managed to make his way to America. His first visit was to the agents in whose hands he had left the management of his park lots. He went into their office, not knowing whether or not he was a pauper. He came out knowing himself to be nearly a millionaire.

During the almost twenty years of his absence his lots had increased enormously in value. Once more he was a rich man, once more he might emerge from his eclipse and become a power of a certain kind in the cla.s.s of society he could get access to, but his experience had taught him something. His advancing years had left him but little desire for display. He came back to a world which knew him not: and few of those who notice a benevolent-looking old gentleman, who often pa.s.ses an afternoon in upper Broadway, suspect that under an a.s.sumed name he hides the ident.i.ty of Max s.h.i.+nburne, the bank burglar.

When Hurley awoke from his drunken fit in London and recognized that his partner had both robbed and deserted him, he felt that his mission was over, and that nothing remained but to return at once to America. Loud and long and wrathful were the complaints over s.h.i.+nburne's treachery.

Whatever he did to others, all felt that his dealings with them ought to have been "on the square," but there was no help for it. He had disappeared, and faint, indeed, was the chance that they would ever see him again. The success of the crime, so far as they were concerned, had, after all, been a failure. Vanished hopes and cheated visions were their share, instead of the wealth they had antic.i.p.ated, and in their devouring rage they tried to console themselves with the thought of what they would do to him if they ever met s.h.i.+nburne.

The only man who had any real success from the scheme was the president.

Exposure had become impossible. He had taken good care not to leave too much in the safes for his accomplices, and he was henceforth a wealthy man. The bank, desperately shaken by the robbery, fell so greatly in the esteem of the public that not long after it failed. The president gave up banking, and began to speculate in real estate. He increased in riches and prospered in the world. He called his lands after his own name. He thought his house would continue forever, and men praised him, because he did well to himself. He settled his children comfortably in life, and when he died, not so very long ago, all felt that the world was better because he had lived in it, and that, although their loss when he was taken was heavy, it was, nevertheless, his great gain.

CHAPTER VII.

GILDED SIRS WHO ARE NOT WISE.

After a pleasant voyage the Russia arrived, and one May morning I walked into the Northwestern Railway station in Liverpool to take the train for London. The bonds were in a little handbag, and I was free to look around. Everything was novel and strange, and all things told me I was in a foreign land. I had, like most young people, a particularly good opinion of myself and something of an idea as to my own importance.

We arrived in London amid a drizzling rain, and I was much impressed with the mighty roar of the traffic in the streets. We drove to Langham place, where I had a regular English tea, and liked it immensely, too.

The next night I left Victoria Station for Dover, and crossing the Channel to Ostend, went through to Brussels and stopped there, having wanted, ever since boyhood, to visit the field of Waterloo. I looked through the city that day, visiting the famous City Hall and one of the art galleries. Retiring early I arose early and drove out to the plain immortalized by the giant struggle of those valiant hosts, but did not purchase any of the relics which were freely offered. These have been sold by s.h.i.+ploads to two generations of visitors. Returning to Brussels, I paid my bill at the Hotel de Paris, and was amused over the inventiveness of the proprietor in making charges--towels, candles, soap, attendance, paper, envelopes, being among them.

Going to the station I bought my ticket for Frankfort--that old town I was destined to see so much of during the next few years. On my journey I would pa.s.s through Cologne, and from there the railway skirts the bank of the Rhine. This being my first visit to Europe, I was intensely curious to see everything, especially the Cathedral at Cologne, and was eager to linger a few days along the banks of the Rhine. But I was more eager to complete the bond negotiations, and wisely resolved to go direct to Frankfort, sell the bonds, then, with the money in my pocket and all anxiety over, I would be in a state of mind to enjoy a short holiday.

I traveled through Belgium and some parts of Germany by daylight, and was, as most Americans are who travel on the Continent, shocked to see the employment of women. Soon after leaving Brussels I saw the, to me, novel sight of a number of women shoveling coal, handling the shovel like men. In other places I saw them laboring in the brick yards, digging and wheeling clay, and everywhere they were to be seen working at men's work in the fields.

A traveler in my compartment proved a most entertaining companion. He described himself to me as one who "went about pottering over a lot of antiquities and fooling around generally."

But my friend, the pottering old antiquary, gave me something of a surprise. At Chalours all of our fellow travelers in the compartment left us. Two of them were voluble French women, and they kept it up with amazing energy for the six hours from Brussels to Chalours. At every unusual swaying of the car there would be a volley of "Mon Dieus!" and ear-piercing exclamations, and it was certainly a relief when they left.

Bringing out a box of cigars, and my companion producing a flask of wine, we soon became confidential. Presently, to my great amus.e.m.e.nt, my Old Antiquary, warmed by the wine, confided to me that he was a detective police officer and chief of the secret service at Antwerp, that he was then working on a famous case, and had been shadowing one of the ladies who had journeyed with us from Brussels. Before leaving Brussels, he had discovered his quarry was to quit the train, and as he had to go on to Mayence, he had turned the business over to a confederate.

I was young, and no doubt he thought me innocent; certainly he did not withhold his confidence. This is the case he was investigating:

There was a wealthy gentleman by the name of Van Tromp living in Antwerp, a widower, 70 years of age, the father of a grown-up family, and many times a grandfather. It had been his custom to go to Baden-Baden every Summer, spending money freely both in pleasure and in the famous gambling resorts there. The last time he had met a woman, the Countess Winzerode, one of the many adventuresses to be found there, and speedily became infatuated. This Van Tromp was a descendant of old Admiral Van Tromp, who, in the mighty life-and-death struggle between Holland and Spain, and in the two wars with England, the first when Cromwell ruled, the second when the Second Charles was on the throne, held up the fame and glory of Holland. In one case he swept the proud navies of Spain from the seas and carried the Dutch flag around the world. In the other, he was only vanquished after stubborn sea-fights lasting for days, and only ended then because the stout admiral lay on his deck with an English bullet in his heart. This Van Tromp was the heir of the fame and the wealth of all the Van Tromps, and both had gone on acc.u.mulating for 300 years.

The self-styled Countess knew all this, and, as the sequel shows, knew her man. She was 40, had been beautiful, was still comely, with good figure, fair-haired, but with steel-blue eyes. She spoke many languages and had dwelt in every land from Petersburg to Paris. It is needless to tell how they first met or of the intimacy that sprang up between them, but I will merely say in pa.s.sing that within five days of their first meeting he had given her a magnificent diamond bracelet, which had been in his family more than a century. This alarmed his two daughters, who were terrified at the mere suspicion that their father was in earnest, and might possibly present them with a stepmother, above all, a comparatively young stepmother, and, so far as physique went, a magnificent animal, with promise of a long life--so long that her rights of dower would make a cut in the Van Tromp estates and treasures, which might well cause the old Admiral to rouse himself from his three-century sleep in Dordrecht Church and once more walk these glimpses of the moon in protest of the sacrilege. Then the scandal of a Countess-adventuress becoming a Van Tromp--head of that family, too! They knew of his penchant for the Countess, and cared nothing for it, until, with a feeling akin to horror they observed at the dress ball one night the Countess airing the historic bracelet. It would require a volume to relate the scenes that followed in the Van Tromp domicile on this paralyzing discovery; but prayers, tears and histrionic touches were all met by the stolid reply of Van Tromp: "I please myself."

As a last resort the daughters appealed to the Countess, offering all their ready cash and a pension if she would only disappear. But visions of the Van Tromp diamonds and of the Van Tromp bank account were in her head and she was deaf to every appeal. In fact, she despised these heavy, matter-of-fact Dutch ladies, and rather gloried to think that she would soon be the female head of the Van Tromp house and stepmother to these two highly respectable dames, who would perforce have to live in her shadow. But then, of course, the Countess was a woman, and it is to be feared that even good women love to triumph over others. She, of course, could have no love for this portly old gentleman of seventy.

But it is pitiful to think he was madly infatuated. The poor old man, in spite of his unromantic appearance, had warm blood in his veins and plenty of romance in his heart. At last, in spite of gossip and opposition, they were married, and then, instead of settling down, as the happy groom had hoped, to a life of wedded bliss in one of his country houses at Dordrecht, Lady Van Tromp insisted on spending her honeymoon in Paris. There they went, and the very day of their arrival the bride resumed a liaison with a beggarly count, who, not being an actual criminal, yet was written black enough in the books of the Paris police, and for whom the Countess had as warm an admiration as one of her cold, calculating nature was capable of feeling.

Van Tromp speedily found his dream of bliss blown to the winds, but he was not so blind as not to see that his wife not only did not love him, but was false to him as well. Poor old Van Tromp felt he had made his last throw for happiness, and hoping against hope, dreamed she in time would learn to appreciate his devotion and would love him, and so tried to persuade himself of her truth. The first anniversary of the marriage found them at Baden-Baden, and there the unhappy husband, thinking to give his wife a pleasant surprise, entered her chamber at an unusual hour bearing a diamond necklace for a present, and found her in a position which could no longer leave any doubt as to her faithlessness.

Seizing a chair he felled her companion, who never stirred again; but the shock was too great for the husband, who himself fell to the floor and instantly expired--the doctors said of heart disease, and I think they were right. This event was only a few weeks old. The will had been read, and it was found that he had literally left everything "to my wife, Elizabeth."

Here my friend, the chief of police and a distant relative of Van Tromp, came to the front, determined quietly on his own account to investigate Lady Van Tromp. He found this last was at least her third venture on the stormy sea of matrimony. He had a fancy that some one of her husbands might still be living and undiscovered. If this could be proved, then her marriage to Van Tromp was no marriage, and the ducats, dollars and diamonds bequeathed by Van Tromp to "my wife, Elizabeth,"

would instantly melt into air--into very thin air, so far as the Countess was concerned; provided, of course, they had not actually pa.s.sed into her clutches. In fact, they were legally hers, for the will had been admitted to probate. Those of the family objecting could offer no valid opposition, and she had been put in possession, but, by a strange neglect on her part, left everything intact, save a deposit of 300,000 gulden in the Bank of Amsterdam, which she secured and set out for Naples with a new lover.

The detective--whom I will call Amstel--discovered that she had first been married when only 15 years old to a young Swiss in Geneva, who soon left her and fled to America. He had subsequently returned to Europe, but Amstel was unable to discover his whereabouts or if he was living.

He suspected that the Swiss was not only alive but in communication with the Countess, and that she, in fact, might be his legal wife. He had followed the Countess from Naples to Paris. There she left her lover and was now on her way to Nuremberg, as Amstel believed, to meet her first husband, but she had arranged to remain a few days with some old friends of hers. Every movement she made there would be watched, while Amstel, going on to Cologne to look up some clues, intended to wait there until informed that she had departed, and when the train arrived at Cologne he proposed to enter it and follow my lady on, hoping to witness a meeting between her and the much hoped-for husband. Happily we had arrived at Cologne at this point in the story, and as Amstel was to remain here we had to say good-bye; but for the whole twenty minutes of my stay we walked up and down the platform talking eagerly of the case. I had become much interested, so deeply, indeed, that had I had leisure I certainly should have turned amateur detective and joined Amstel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LONDON POLICEMAN.--ST. PAUL'S IN DISTANCE.]

The train started, and, promising to write me in New York the outcome of the case, we shook hands warmly and parted. He wrote me twice, and the following year I returned to Europe and met Amstel at Brussels. We had a very delightful time together, during which he told me the sequel of the Van Tromp episode. Instead of one, the Countess had two husbands living; but the Van Tromps preferred to buy off the woman at a good round sum rather than have a public scandal.

Amstel interviewed the Countess, and gave her the choice between arrest and a full release of all claims on the Van Tromp property for the sum of 100,000 gulden. She made a hard fight, but at last gave in gracefully. But my chapter has grown too long already, and I will close it with the remark that I myself met the lady at Wiesbaden in 1871, and became acquainted with the brilliant adventuress. She will appear again in the sequel.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MERRY SUMMER OVER AND NO HARVEST STORED.

From Cologne to Frankfort is about 140 miles, and swiftly our train sped along up the Rhine--the lovely stream about which poets have raved for twenty generations. What cla.s.sic ground! What scenes have its waters reflected, its mountains looked upon! In the old days its rolling floods made a deep impression on the stout Roman heart. More than one army, carrying with it the hearts of the Roman world, had crossed that river and plunged into the unknown forests beyond, only to go down in the shock of conflict with the brave but barbarian foe, leaving not one solitary survivor to carry back tidings to Rome of the fate of her army.

And down through all the linked centuries the history of the Rhine has been the history of giant armies marching against each other, and of brothers slaughtering brothers. To-day the plains of Germany and France bear a million of armed men, ranged face to face, with only the Rhine between, eagerly awaiting the signal to pour a deadly rain on each other. And for what?

The last face that I saw at the Cologne station was that of Amstel, lit up with smiles as he waved his hand in adieu. Sitting cozily in the corner of the carriage, eager to see all that was to be seen, I found, as all tourists do, much to charm and delight. But my thoughts were on the bonds I had to sell, and I was glad enough when at 5 o'clock our train drew into the depot at Frankfort.