Part 12

"Probably that would not be the best way," I replied, "for it is doubtless as a detective that you need me, and we might meet somebody who knows me as such, and who might be the very last person whom I should like to have see us together," I replied.

"You are right, sir," said he, smiling. "Your caution shows me that you understand your business; but it is too late to go far up town to my house.--I have it. I'll call at the Howard House, take a private room, and you follow, in half an hour, say, and finding this name on the register with my room, come up. Here's my card. Come directly to the room, and say nothing."

"That's a good plan, sir. I will be there;" and he left, and I, having finished my business at the Carleton, wandered slowly up Broadway to kill time, wondering what such a stately, dignified, cool-headed sort of a looking man as he--a real estate holder to large amount, a man whom everybody knew by reputation as one of the most quiet in the city--could have for me to do. I suspected forgery, arson, or some attempt at it, and a dozen other things. But I drove them all out of mind in a few minutes, for it is never well for a detective to indulge in anticipations in such a juncture of affairs; and meeting just then an old friend, beguiled a few minutes with him along Broadway, and finally taking out my watch, saw I had only ample time to get to the Howard at the time appointed, and so "suddenly recollected" an appointment, excused myself to my friend, sought the Howard and the gentleman there, whom I readily found in waiting for me.

"You are here on the moment," said he, as he closed and locked the door on my entry. "Take this seat, if you please, and I'll try to be short with my story."

"Go on, sir," said I; "but please don't be in too much haste. I have plenty of time; but tell me all your story as you would, and probably did, to Mr. Brady."

"Well, sir, day before yesterday morning I missed from my safe, at my house, seven thousand two hundred and fifty-five dollars, which I placed there the night before, having received most of it that day, at an hour too late to make deposit of it in bank;" and here he paused.

"Well, sir," said I, "who took it? That's the question, I presume, which you wish to solve."

"Yes, that, of course, is the point; but I can't fix my suspicions upon anybody."

"You say that most of this money was received after banking hours. Suppose you tell me next where and of whom you received it, and in what amounts, for I infer that you did not receive it in a lump."

"No; I collected it partly from rentals due, and some came to me from the country,--notes due,--and some from the sale of a cargo of pressed hay over at Jersey City, and I did not get around in time to put it in bank, such as I had, before closing hours," looking at memoranda.

"Well, I am glad you have memoranda of the amounts. Now tell me where you received these, each one;" and he went on to tell me, in detail, where, and who was near by, if anybody, in each case where a tenant or other debtor paid him money. I listened intently, and could get at nothing worthy of note till he came to the hay transaction at Jersey City. It appeared that there were several persons standing about at the time of the payment of the money to my client (call him Latimer, for further convenience), mostly working-men, some dealers, loafers, and two or three well-dressed, but rather dashily-dressed, young men. Mr. Latimer had been obliged to take out considerable money from his own purse, in order the better to arrange it to put in the amount then received; and feeling that he had quite an amount of money, even at that time, and he added some before he reached home, put his purse in his inner vest pocket, thinking of nothing worse than possibly encountering pickpockets, or losing his money by accident on the way. In his vest pocket he thought it secure, and secure it was to take home, but not secure for keeping.

The result of our conference was that evening, that I should be obliged to go with Mr. Latimer to his home the next morning, when he would call at my office for me. I could not go that night, and perhaps it was as well; for I had a business appointment which led me, not an hour after parting with Mr. Latimer, into certain haunts where I fancied,--it was mere imagination, if it were not instinctive perception, in which I do not much believe, although many mysterious things have occurred in my life which seemed to be governed or directed by some subtle law, which the human brain is not yet strong enough to discover,--where I fancied, I say, that I saw some of the money which Mr. Latimer had lost, displayed, and distributed in dissipation. In short, I imagined that I had stumbled upon the thief, and had I known the character of the bills, which Mr. Latimer, however, could not tell me much about, I might have seized my man then and there.

But the next morning I visited Mr. Latimer's house in an up-town street, which was not then, as now, compactly builded; at least, in the portion of it where he dwelt. I examined everything about the premises, concluded where a thief might have gotten into the house without much trouble, and finally commenced questioning Mr. Latimer about his family, the servants, etc. None of Mr. L.'s family, except his wife, were at home. Two boys, or young men, were at school, rather at college one of them, and both far away, and the daughters were at the female seminary in Cazenovia. As to the servants, in whose honesty Mr. Latimer had the utmost confidence, I had them called into my presence, and questioned them about the condition of the house on the night of the robbery. One of them heard some slight noise, at some time between twelve o'clock and four in the morning; was not definite. The others slept soundly; heard nothing. They did not seem to me likely to be connected with anybody, or to have lovers who would be apt to be of the class who might have robbed the safe. Besides, nobody, not even Mrs. Latimer, knew that Mr. L. had deposited any amount of money in his safe that night. He was of the order of men who attend strictly to "their own business," too strictly, sometimes, when evidence is wanted especially. His bedroom adjoined the room in which the safe stood, and was so situated in regard to a pair of "back stairs," that if the robber had come in from the back (on the theory of his possible complicity with the servants), he could have hardly gotten into the room without disturbing Mr. and Mrs. Latimer, unless on that night, which was probably the case, they slept with unusual soundness. I concluded that the robber must be an expert one, and somehow I constantly referred in mind to the fellow whom I have alluded to before as having been seen liberally dispensing money. He seemed to me competent for the business; but there was one thing which I left to the last, which arose in my mind at first on my interview with Mr. Latimer at the Howard; but I said nothing of it then, for I had learned that the best way is to approach the most serious troubles softly; as often the "course of things," as they take shape in an interview, will better point out how this or that mystery occurred than all the attempted solutions which one might, _a priori_, project for a week, and that one thing which perplexed me was, How did the robber unlock that safe? He must either have been familiar with the house and the safe, and perhaps had a key to it, or he must have carried about him, probably, several safe keys, one of which happened to fit (and the key to this safe was a small one, fifty of the like size of which would not much trouble a burglar to carry), or he must have gotten possession of Mr. Latimer's key. But his key was in his vest pocket, and his clothes were on a chair at the head of his bed, he said, on my inquiring,--there's where he left them, and there was where he found them in the morning,--and he was sure he locked his safe securely after putting the money in. I finally, as the concluding portion of my examination, asked Mr. Latimer to let me see the inside of his safe, and to show me where he deposited the money. He unlocked and opened the safe,--a simple lock concern, proof really against nothing but fire, perhaps; for although it was supposed that the keyhole was so small, and the safe so constructed, that burglars could not get sufficient powder into it to blow it up, yet it would not have stood a minute against the skill and power of professional burglars; but to open it, as they would have done, would have necessitated noise enough to have awakened Mr. Latimer, especially as the bedroom door was open. Mr. Latimer had put the money into a little drawer in the safe, and turned the key of that, which key, however, remained in the drawer lock. But the drawer was tight, and we tried a dozen times to pull it out without making a creaking noise, without avail; so I concluded that, on the whole, Mr. Latimer and his wife _had_ slept that night pretty soundly.

We were about closing the safe again,--I having made due examination, and asked all necessary questions,--when Mr. Latimer, thinking to arrange a half dozen or so papers which had been thrown loosely upon the bottom of the safe, took them up in one grasp of the hand, and commenced to put them in file, when out of his hand dropped a little white card with figures on it, which arrested his attention. He picked it up, looked at it with astonishment, and said, "That's a curious thing to be here," handing it to me. "You will perhaps think me a sporting man, a devotee of the Goddess of Luck; but I don't know who put that here." "Who has access to your safe besides yourself?" "My wife; she has a key." "O," said I, "perhaps she's put it here then." "Not she," said he. "She'd turn pale with horror if she had found that here, in fear that I might be trifling with lotteries. A brother of hers spent a good-sized fortune in lottery tickets, and died of disappointment and chagrin over his course. Not she!" "Yes, I know," said I; "still she may have put it there, if not for herself, for one of the servants, perhaps; for you know many servants have a mania for 'trying their luck.'" So Mrs. Latimer was called, and asked about the lottery ticket. There was no mistaking her seriousness when she said that if one of the servants had asked her to lock up the ticket for safety, she would have taken it and torn it to pieces before her eyes. I was satisfied. But how came the ticket there. "No. 1710, Great Havana Consolidated Lottery," to be drawn on such a day, through the house of Henry Colton & Co., Baltimore. This is as near as the notes of my diary of those days, much worn, permit me to recount the words and figures of the ticket as I took them down in pencil. I studied the ticket, and saw from a note at the bottom that some days would elapse before the drawing was to come off. It was a fresh ticket then, evidently. But how did it get there? Mr. and Mrs. Latimer knew nothing about it--that was clear. It had not been there long--that was equally clear. I questioned Mr. Latimer about the condition of the loose papers in the bottom of the safe. It appeared he did not observe much order in them, so I could learn nothing by that query. Finally, I concluded that perhaps in pulling out the drawer the robber experienced considerable trouble, and that if he had the ticket in his vest pocket at the time, in bending over, and exerting some force to pull out the drawer, he might have dropped it on the floor, and perhaps his curiosity led him to pull out the papers too, some of which fell from his hand, and he picked them up, the ticket along with them. I settled upon this, and there was a clew to the robber, if nothing more. But how did he unlock the safe? This question remained unanswered. Perhaps with a false key, as I have before suggested; but this lock was one supposed to need a special key, none other exactly like it in the whole world. After we had finished our examination, Mr. Latimer closed the safe door, gave a turn to the knob, and jerked out the key. I do not know what led me to think of it, but I asked, "Have you locked it?" "Yes," said he, "that's all you have to do to lock one of these safes," at the same time taking hold of the knob, and pulling it, to show me how securely and simply it was fastened; when, lo, open came the door! Mr. Latimer was confounded, and I confess I was greatly surprised. It might have been that the robber that night found as easy access to the drawer as Mr. Latimer then. We examined the working of the lock as well as we could, and found that something must be deranged, for although it would, on turning the knob, give a "thud," as if the bolts were driven home, it did not always put them in place. Mr. Latimer had his safe repaired after that, and found some "slide" in the lock-work a little out of place.

But I had gotten the ticket, and I told Mr. Latimer that we must work out the problem with that, or fail; and I sent Mr. Latimer about to his debtors, who had paid him the stolen money, to see if any of them could remember the denominations of the bills, and by what banks issued, which they had given him. He found something in his search which seemed likely to serve me. I gave Mr. Latimer my theory of the case, and pointed out to him the course I should pursue, and we concluded that a week would probably bring us to the determination to try longer, or would put us on the clear track of the robber or robbers, for there might have been more than one. Mr. Latimer authorized me, in case I saw fit, to offer a reward of five hundred or a thousand dollars for the robbers, or double these sums for the robbers and the money.

My first step was to go to Baltimore, where I learned that the ticket was genuine, but I could not learn the name of the person to whom it was issued. I had obtained it, I represented, of a man who never bought tickets, and was curious to know of whom he got it: but it was of no use to inquire. They kept faith with their customers. I could have inquired, with perhaps more success, of the agent in New York, but I dared not venture to see him. Some special friend of his might have bought that number,--"1710,"--and he would tell him of the inquiry, and the robber might suspect that he had lost it on Mr. Latimer's premises. The New York agent had fortunately made his report to the "general office" in Baltimore a day or two before. I left the lottery office, baffled for a moment, but I soon laid a plan. If this ticket wins,--and I shall know by the drawn numbers as published in the papers immediately after the drawing,--then I will "lay in" with the ticket agent, with the bribe or "reward" of five hundred or a thousand dollars, to help me detect the robber; and if the ticket fails to win, I will make the ticket agent my confidant, and have him despatch a note to the person to whom this ticket was sold, saying that "1710" has drawn a prize, to be paid on presentation of the ticket; and in this way get the man into my clutches. So thinking to myself, I concluded to stop in Baltimore till after the drawing, which occurred three days from that time.

As fortune had it, the ticket--"1710"--was lucky, and drew a prize of three thousand dollars. I went to the agent, and putting him under the seal of secrecy, with the prospect of five hundred dollars, and one half of the money drawn by the ticket besides, we arranged to catch the robber, if possible. The New York agency would claim the privilege of paying the three thousand dollars itself, for this would help to give it the reputation of selling lucky numbers, and increase its sales, and consequently its profits. Of course the New York agency was alive to its interests; but where was the ticket? The man to whom it was sold was expected to present it at once at the New York agency; but it didn't come, and he was advised of its having drawn a prize. But it was lost, he said; and the New York agency, desirous of making capital for itself, ordered the payment of the prize money through it, advised with the home office. It was finally concluded that the buyer might make affidavit, before a notary public, of the fact that he purchased the ticket No. 1710; that he had not transferred it to anybody else; that he had lost it, and when. And it was suggested that, as possibly the ticket might yet be presented by somebody who might have found it, it would be well for the buyer to state whether he had given it any private mark--his initials, or something else,--which is often done. This was done to excite the robber's memory about it, and drew forth from him a statement that he had not marked the ticket, but remembered that it was "clipped" in a certain way, cutting into the terminal letter of a line across the end; which was just what we wanted, as it identified him, beyond a doubt, as the real purchaser. He swore he had not transferred the ticket, but had lost it somewhere, as he alleged that he believed, on such a day (which chanced to be the very day on the night of which the robbery occurred), somewhere between the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway (where was located then a day gambling-saloon) and Union Square. This was indefinite enough for his conscience, I presume. Of course a name was signed to the affidavit, but how could we know that it was correct? Together with this came the agent's affidavit that he sold to such a person the ticket. We arranged that payment should be made to the affiant if the ticket was not presented by somebody else within a month; and if it were presented before that time, he should be informed, and the proper steps taken to secure him his money. This was communicated to the New York agency, and I left for New York to find out who was this "Charles F. Worden," the purported purchaser of the ticket; and the Baltimore agent came on to see the New York agent, and adroitly draw out of him a personal description of this "Worden," for we suspected that the agent and he were special friends. The Baltimore agent had no difficulty in executing his part of the work, and indeed effected an interview with Worden, whom, with the New York agent, he treated to a superb supper at the Astor House. When he came to give me a detailed account of the fellow's personal appearance, I recognized him, especially by a curious bald spot on the left side of the head, and which he took some pains to cover by pulling his long hair over it,--which, however, did not incline to stay there,--as the young man whom I had seen in the gambling saloon on the night that Mr. Latimer first consulted me at the Howard.

I now felt quite sure of my game; but was confident enough that I should find that the young man bore some other name than "Worden." Suffice it that it was the work of a couple of days only before I had my man in tow, knew all about him, his antecedents, etc. His family was good. He had been prepared for college, at the Columbia College Grammar School; was a young man of fair average capacity, but by his dissipations managed to make himself an eyesore to his family. His father, who was a well-to-do, if not rich merchant, doing business in Maiden Lane, had, in order to "reform" him, "given him up," and ordered him to shirk for himself, something like a year before this. He went into a grocery store, being unable to get work elsewhere, and had done very well for three or four months; but there was a private room in the back of the store where liquor was sold by the glass--one of those places which are now known by the felicitous name, "Sample Rooms," the disgusting frequency of which all over New York, and in many other cities, is so remarkable; places which are really worse than the open bars of hotels, or the regular "gin mills" (if I may be permitted to use the vulgar phrase), because in these sly, half-private places is it that most young men learn to drink, and here it is, too, where many a man, too respectable to be seen frequenting the open liquor stores of his vicinity, steals in and guzzles his potations, on the sure road to a drunkard's fate--failure in business, ruined constitution, and final poverty and disgrace. Here the young man, "Worden," as he now called himself, had fallen in with genial company, who came to his employers to "buy groceries," and to drink, and among them had made the acquaintance, in particular, of a down-town "banker," who boarded in the vicinity of the grocery, which was on the corner of Bleecker Street and ----. This banker was a fascinating fellow, and young Worden soon fell in love with him. By and by he found out what sort of a "banker" was his new-made friend--the same who kept the day gambling-rooms on the corner of Fulton and Broadway. It is astonishing how little one may know of the business of his neighbors whom he meets every day in New York, unless he takes special pains to find out. The "solitude of a great city" is no mere Byronic fancy. One could hardly be more solitary in the dense woods than a man may be in the midst of the throngs of men and women he may meet in New York. He sees them--that is all. His heart is closed to them, and theirs to him, as much as if they were in China, and he the "lone man" on some island of the West Indies. So that "banker" passed for a rich, active, business man, in the vicinity of Bleecker Street and ----, within less than a mile, perhaps, of this nefarious den. Young Worden was easily led on till he got to neglecting his business when sent out on errands, or down town to the wholesale grocers; and finally the grocer discharged him for neglect of business; and how he had lived since then was a mystery to his old companions, who found him afterwards always better dressed. The secrets of his history, from the time of his discharge up to the time of the robbery, as I finally learned them, would form an interesting chapter by themselves, but are out of place here. An incident in his career, however, may yet find place in these papers, because it was interlinked with an extraordinary case which at another time I worked up, and of which I have made note, in order, if my space permit, to recite it in this work. It must suffice now, that despair, resulting from the loss of money at the gambling-table, and which he was not for some days able to win back, though he hazarded his last dollar, drove the young man to commit a small robbery, or theft, from the purse of one of his fellow-boarders, when the latter was asleep one night. The full success of this hardened him, and led him on. If detection could always follow the first offence, the number of criminals would be far less. But few will "persevere" beyond a detection, if it comes early enough in their career.