Part 29

I did not credit his story, to be sure; but still I was there duly, and found Williams, who pretended surprise as he came in with an officer (into whose keeping I had given him,--having called him before we left the shop,--on a charge of forgery, not telling him I knew the real state of the case), at not finding Ellsworth up to his appointment. But my story is running into too much detail. Suffice it that we got back to the hotel as speedily as we could, and a more delighted man than was Mr. Purvis, on the recovery of so much of his money, can hardly be imagined. He gave the watch, of course, into my keeping, and in spite of all my protestations, compelled me to receive a much larger sum than would have amply satisfied me.

I pursued Ellsworth somewhat afterwards, visiting his "family" in Williamsburg, but I could not get track of him for a long while, when he turned up in another city, and I chanced to make him available in the detection of sundry other rogues. But that story is _sui generis_, and I must not mar it by a recital of a part here.

As for the brave medical student (whose name I have purposely withheld), he became a fast friend of mine, and afterwards we had several adventures together, some of which I purpose to relate, should I at some other time feel more in the spirit to do so.

Enough to know now, that he is, for his years, an eminent physician, with a large practice, in a district in the South, and married to a most beautiful woman, whose acquaintance he made while once playing the amateur detective. In some of these papers, perhaps, his name, if he permits, will be disclosed. Had he given himself to the business, I conceive that he could not have had a successful rival, as a detective, in the world. The same knowledge of human nature which the detective needs, cannot but serve the physician to great advantage.

Mr. Purvis said that if he had wholly lost the thousand dollars, the lesson he had learned would have been cheaply bought.

THE WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING.

THE ANTIQUITY OF THAT SHEEP'S SKIN AND ITS PIOUS USEFULNESS--A LARGE LOSS OF SILKS, SATINS, LACES, AND OTHER GOODS--A CONSULTATION--A LONG STUDY--THE VARIOUS CHARACTERS OF SEVERAL CLERKS, WHAT THEY DID, AND HOW THEY KILLED "SPARE TIME"--INFLUENCE OF THE CITY ON MORALS--NEW YORK CENTRAL PARK--A MOST WONDERFUL SERIES OF THEFTS--THE MATTER INEXPLICABLE AT FIRST, GROWS MORE SUBTLE--A GLEAM OF LIGHT AT LAST--A BRIGHT ITALIAN BOY PLAYS A PART--A LADY FOLLOWED--MORE LIGHT--AN EXTEMPORIZED SERVANT OF THE CROTON WATER BOARD GETS INSIDE A CERTAIN HOUSE--SARAH CROGAN AND I--HOW A HOUSE IN NINETEENTH STREET DELIVERED UP ITS TREASURES--"WILLIAM BRUCE," ALIAS CHARLES PHILLIPS--A VERY STRANGE DENOUEMENT--A MEEK MAN TRANSFORMED; HIS RAGE--A DELIVERY UP, WITH ACCOMPANYING JEWELS--A "WIDOW" NOT A WIDOW REMOVES--WHAT SARAH CROGAN THOUGHT.

It is an astonishing thing to a detective, and ought to be to every person of sense, it seems to me, that after the experiences of ages "the-wolf-in-sheep's-clothing" still keeps on deluding people. Everybody ought by this time to know the animal, and everybody does, in a sense; but everybody has heard of him, and seen him somewhere along the path of life, and either been bitten by him, or sorely frightened, or something of the sort. Yet forever he is playing his wiles with success with everybody; and his sheep skin is the same one he has used ever since historic time began, and perhaps long before that. But I did not take my pen to descant upon the blunders and stupidities of my fellow-mortals, or to adorn this page with a lecture on morals and hypocrisies, but to tell a tale in which, perchance, a "moral" will be better "painted" by the facts it discloses than by my discursive pen.

I was called upon one day by the confidential clerk of a large mercantile house in this city, and informed by him that he had been sent by one of the partners of the house,--the other partners being abroad, one in Europe, and one in the South,--in regard to the matter of extensive robberies from their store; and it had been thought best that I should be made acquainted with the chief facts before visiting the house--as they supposed, of course, he said, I should wish to. I told him (and here, for sake of brevity, let me give him a name, which is correct only in the initial letters--Charles Phillips)--I told Mr. Phillips that his policy was quite right, and that I would listen then and there to his story. He went on to recount that, probably for a long while, the house had been robbed of various kinds of goods, but that of late, particularly, they had been greatly annoyed by missing large quantities of the highest priced goods: their best silks, satins, laces, etc., which, being costly goods, amounted, as nearly as they could calculate,--in one month's loss, too,--to some eighteen hundred dollars; "and of course," said he, "the loss may be more, for perhaps we do not know all we have lost." He told me of plans which he and the partner at home had devised to find out the thief or thieves, and the watch that had been set, all to no avail. He had a different opinion about it, he said, from the partner, who thought some of the clerks must be the guilty parties; and it did seem so, sometimes, he said, for the store was well watched nights by a trusty watchman, whom he himself had watched as well, and felt confident that he could have no confederates; and, besides, the things taken were not usually in reach of customers--only the clerks could get at them. So he thought his employer excusable, perfectly, for his suspicion that some of the clerks must be the thief. Yet for his part he could not believe it, inasmuch as he had known all the clerks so long,--five years, a majority of them, and the rest of them, save three, who had been but from two to six months in the house, for from one year up to three and four; and he thought he knew all about them, and could not allow himself to suspect any one of them. But, nevertheless, his employer, who could not in his own mind fasten suspicion upon any specific person, had fully made up his mind that some of the clerks were guilty, and they were now going to wake up the matter, if possible, and "bring things to a focus," as he expressed it.

I listened to what Mr. Phillips had to say, and inquired how many clerks there were in the establishment, when he informed me that, aside from himself, there were thirty-seven.

"Thirty-seven?" said I; "and you are not able to say that any one of these is more innocent or less guilty than another, eh?"

"No."

"Well, then, we've a job on hand which may last for a good while, and require not only time, but patience, and a good deal of money to work out; for we might hit on the thief the first thing, but we might not be able to identify him till we had been through with all the rest, and satisfied ourselves of their innocence, you see, and it may cost your house more than it would to suffer the losses, and let accident, perhaps, hereafter disclose the guilty party."

"I have talked this very point over with Mr. Redding," (the partner), said he, "and he says the firm must go to any necessary cost to find the thief, and put a stop to peculations; that the house cannot, in fact, long do business at this rate of loss, and he's made up his mind to go into the matter thoroughly, and when he gets _his_ head set, there's no moving him. The house must go ahead in this business, and let you have your way about it."

I learned from Mr. Phillips that many of the goods taken were of a peculiar kind, but after all, not to be readily identified, if the private marks of the house were removed; "and any thief," said he, "shrewd enough to steal from our store, at the rate the thefts have been going on for the last few weeks, is wise enough, I dare say, to leave nothing of a story-telling nature on the goods. He's probably removed our private marks at his earliest convenience."

After our conference was over, and I had agreed to call at the store the next day, in the capacity of a wholesale customer "from Buffalo," and Mr. Phillips was gone, I set myself to work at some theory in the case, and found myself quite baffled at every point. I had not facts enough yet in my possession to form an opinion; and as I prided myself in those days, more than I do now, on my unerring skill in detecting a thief by his countenance, I resolved to theorize no more till I had gone through the house, and scrutinized each clerk's face. But that night I talked the matter over with certain of my brother detectives, for it was evident that there was work enough to be done, if we wished to save time, for several of them. Each of my men thought the matter could be easily solved. Some of the clerks were, of course, the thieves, and they only needed to be "spotted" for a few nights at once, and sure as fate the guilty one would be brought to light 'twas agreed; but it didn't prove so easy a job, after all.

The next day I called upon Mr. Redding, it having been understood between me and Mr. Phillips that he was not to recognize me before the clerks, until after I might have been presented to him by Mr. Redding, and then only cursorily. I handed Mr. Redding a note which I had prepared, and as he did not know me personally, and was a little taken aback at what I said in the note, I giving him sundry orders and directions therein, his strangership to me was quite evident to the clerks who chanced to be about when we met. Mr. Redding showed me all the distinction that I required, and himself showed me through the establishment. It was a long list of goods, indeed, that which I prized, in every department; and we took our time, in order that I might have the amplest opportunity to study each clerk's face, which I did to my satisfaction, but to no certainty as to which one if any was the thief. I thought that either my usual sagacity had fled me, or else that the clerks were a singularly honest set of young men, and withal exceedingly well chosen and clever.

I was at times tempted to suspect one or two of them; but I could not tell why, and came to the conclusion at last that this temptation resulted rather from my anxiety to "spot" some one, than from good judgment; and I concluded that part of the business without having arrived at any conclusion whatever as to the guilty parties. After this Mr. Redding called his chief confidential clerk, Mr. Phillips, into the counting-room, and we quietly talked over the matter. At Mr. Redding's request, Mr. Phillips produced such a list as they had been able to make of the goods lost, which amounted in all to quite an astonishing sum; but of these things they could inform me of nothing which was very peculiar in its nature--nothing the like of which other stores had not. But I finally requested to see some of the richest silks, such as those they had lost, and was taken by Mr. Redding to see them. I have a pretty accurate eye for forms and colors, and I paid special attention to a piece of silk, the like of which I had never seen, and the cost of which was more than that of any other piece in the store. It was a heavy silk--would stand alone, and had in it "ribs," after the fashion somewhat of a twisted column, the pattern of which was perhaps borrowed from a column in the court of some old convent, such as I had often seen in Italy, where for a year I was occupied in that country ferreting out some scamps who had fled there from Philadelphia, and who were badly wanted to settle sundry accounts. With the association of the "ribs" and the column, I was not likely to forget that piece of silk. But other houses had the like, and I might not be able to identify the piece as coming from Mr. Redding's store, if I should chance to come across it in some retail store, at the pawnbroker's, or anywhere else. Yet it might prove a clew, and I put my faith in it; with what result, will be seen further on, for I cannot mar my narrative by introducing it here.

It was quite evident to me that the thief must be some one or more of the clerks; and I could not, on inquiry into the habits of the clerks, so far as Mr. Redding understood them, or in any way, fix upon any one of the clerks as more likely than another to be the thief. These young men had been well selected; were smart fellows, each in his way. Indeed, Mr. Redding thought that, on the whole, his house had the best set of clerks of all the houses in the city, and although he was convinced that some one or more of them (and he as well as I inclined to the notion that there must be two at least) were guilty, yet he said he would gladly give a thousand dollars if the guilt could be fastened upon somebody without the store; for the house had always treated its clerks as if they were the partners' own children in many respects, and given the clerks rather better wages than they could get anywhere else, and some unusual privileges. They had nearly all been long with the house, and I thought that Mr. Redding seemed to suffer as much from the fear that some of the clerks would prove to be the guilty party, as from the loss of the goods themselves. In fact, he confessed that he felt "chicken-hearted" about the matter, as he expressed it; but his partners' interests as well as his own must be looked to, and so he was resolute.

I returned to my office, and set about immediate preparations on the work. I was going at it that night, and I saw that there was no other way than to take matters coolly, and work systematically. I sent for some of my men, having apprised Mr. Redding that it would "cost something" to work up the case, and that to do it within any conscionable time I must set several men at work. He had given me quite a wide range for expenses, saying that it would not do to be guilty of any laches in the business for want of means; because, at the rate they were losing property, with all their eyes open at that, they would soon have to give up business.

I set my men to keeping their eyes on certain of the clerks whose places of residence and names Mr. Redding had given me. He had not procured the streets and numbers of all of them, but was to do so next day. The clerks designated were carefully watched and followed, to find out how and where they spent their nights, for it was my conjecture, that whoever stole the goods was under the influence of some demon passion; that he either gambled, and was deeply in debt, and stole the goods and sold them, or that some wily woman had him in her power, or some fiend of a man was driving him on in crime; and it was necessary first to find out all about where these young men spent their time out of the store.

I took my own place in the work, and having been so much about the store that day, it was necessary that I disguise myself, as I did; and I took my station on Broadway, near the store, and waited for the young men to sally forth, directing my men to the boarding-places of some of the clerks, with as accurate descriptions of them as I could give.

I had not long to wait before some of the clerks passed me, and I selected two, whom I followed. Darkness was just coming on. They stopped on a corner to lay out their programme for the evening, and concluded to not go home to tea, but to go to a restaurant, where I followed them, and remained there till they left; and when they came out they went up Broadway, and stopping before a billiard saloon, seemed to be debating the question whether they would go up or not; but finally they went up the stairs, and I remained behind a few minutes, and then followed them. Somehow, as I entered the room, and my eye fell upon the face of one of them, something seemed to tell me that he was the guilty fellow. The young men had already commenced a game, and were busy with the bewitching balls. I lounged about, and finally got a partner for a single game. The young men did not bet--only played for sport, and at a seasonable hour left, not however, till I, having observed that they would soon depart, had gotten down on to the pavement before them. When they came down, they set off together, walked some distance together, turned down a side street, and on the corner of it and another street bade each other good night. One of them went on to his boarding-house, and so I suppose did the other.

The next night I gave my particular attentions to those same young men. They went over to the Bowery Theatre, and like sensible fellows, too, had seats in the pit, in which part of the house I also secured a place. They seemed to enjoy the play greatly, and one of them threw a quarter of a dollar on the stage in lieu of a bouquet, in testimony of his appreciation of the splendid representation of a mock Richard the Third by the leading actor, and I fancied that perhaps I had found out the young man's leading passion--his besetting sin.

When they left the theatre they proceeded to an alehouse, and after taking a mug apiece of somebody's "best pale ale," sallied out, and wended their way together homeward, till they came to the parting-place again; and I followed the one whom I did not pursue the night before, only to be led on a long distance up into Hudson Street, when the young man applying his night-key to the door of a very respectable-looking house, entered and vanished. I had begun to make up my mind that this sort of work would not do; that these clerks were but like ten thousand others, who, wearied by their day's work, sought recuperation in slight dissipations, and, perhaps, questionable pleasures, such as billiards, and comedies, and ales give. But I followed up some other of the clerks, reporting every day to Mr. Redding or to Mr. Phillips very ill success. The latter was particularly anxious to have me "go on, and make thorough work of it;" and as the days went on I became much attached to him.

My men, too, brought me their accounts daily, with as little success towards the desired end as I myself had, and we were frequently on the point of giving up the job. We concluded that perhaps several of the clerks were engaged in this robbery; that they might have formed a secret society among themselves, and that they probably had a safe place to send their goods to, and a skilful "receiver," who would pay them perhaps half price for the goods, but we could find nothing to sustain this hypothesis. Two or three of the clerks were quite literary in their tastes, and belonged to some debating club, I forget the name now, but it was quite an institution at the time, and thither my men had followed them, and quite fallen in love with the spirited manner and eloquent speech-making of one of the clerks. Of course they followed these wherever they went, and nothing could convince them that these young men were guilty. One of the clerks was an inveterate theatre-goer. He went every night to one theatre or another; but my men found out that he usually had passes, and was, to some extent, a dramatic critic, furnishing the reporters of sundry papers with notes, and that in this way he probably got his passes, and so did not in this way waste much of his slender salary. He neither smoked nor drank liquor, and seemed to be always alone, careless of companionship; so he was dropped as "not the man." Another of the clerks had, it was found, a strange fancy for old books and antique engravings. He spent, evidently, as little money on his person as would suffice to dress neatly and well enough for his position, and put all he could have into old books and engravings; and we found that he was well known by all those strange men, who in these days mostly collect in Nassau Street, and live among the rubbish and dirt of old, and for most part, worthless books, driving keen bargains, giving little, and asking much for some rare old folly of a book, or some worthless volume in which some lord of the blood, or some royal sovereign of literature, like Johnson or Addison, had chanced to write his name. The young clerk had a business man's as well as an artist's eye for these things, we found, and was said, by the old book-men, to make such excellent assortments of engravings, etc., which he bound together, as to be able to realize in their sale quite an advance on the original purchase. And so we found merit instead of crime in him, and felt very sure that he could be "counted out." But we had some singular experiences. One of the clerks, as did indeed three of them, boarded in Brooklyn. This one was a Sunday-school teacher, but he came over to New York one Sunday night to attend a religious meeting, and being particularly followed that night, he was found going into a disreputable "ladies' boarding-house." Some of the clerks were Sunday-school teachers, especially certain of them who were middle-aged, and married; but we discovered, in our scrutiny of these clerks, that these older ones especially, had a habit of taking their country customers and friends to see the sights of the city at night, and that in order to beguile these persons, in other words, to "show them proper attentions," they were not scrupulous about forgetting their Sunday-school teachings, and taking these customers into the most questionable dens in the city. In those days the vulgar phrase "seeing the elephant" was more common than now, and included participation in all sorts of small and impure vices. In my opinion, this greed for trade, which impells the competing clerks of different houses to show every possible attention of this kind to the young men (as well as old, for often the old are worse than the young) who come to the city to buy goods, has led to the downfall, the moral and financial ruin, of thousands who would otherwise have led honorable, and perhaps noble lives. But things in this respect are better now a days than they were many years ago in New York. The great advance which the fine arts have made in this country, even within the last ten years, has had much to do with this improvement. The theatre is "a thing of beauty" and attractive in comparison to what it used to be; and everywhere scattered throughout the city are many matters of the higher arts to attract and interest the stranger or frequent visitor even, and so in a measure keep him out of harm's way. The Central Park has been a great educator of the city people out of vices, and has an elevating influence upon country people coming to the city, many of whom "luxuriate" in a visit to it, instead of "dissipate," as in years ago, in the dens of the crowded city; for in winter even, when the cold is intense enough to make ice, joyous nights are spent in skating on the Park pond, or in beholding the witching gayeties of the accomplished skaters.