Part 39

"There!" exclaimed the lawyer, "there are unmistakable marks; and they tell, of themselves, how they got there--cut with hatchel teeth."

And John, alias Frederic, roared out, with a well-feigned laugh, "Yes, hatchel teeth, in Bill Currier's coach-dog's mouth, down to Mobile!"

The lawyer looked confounded--and he put "John" through a severe re-examination; all to no avail, except to force John into some rather _bold_ species of story-telling.

The landlord decided the case in my favor, according to the contract between the lawyer and me, and gave me the five hundred dollars on our return to his hotel. I got Frederic Hague to St. Louis as soon as I could, and we proceeded to New York. I let my friend there into the joke by letter, and told him to make the most of the story for a month, when I would return the lawyer all his money, except what it had cost me--the matter of forty-five dollars--to play the joke on him, saying that he ought to be willing to pay for his fun; and at the end of a month, after the story had gone far and near, how the lawyer had set his bait to fish out an estate for a client, and had lost five hundred dollars himself, the money was duly returned to him through draft on a St. Louis bank; and that was not the last I heard of him. But I cannot stop to tell the full story here.

Mr. Frederic Hague, neatly dressed, and apparently in excellent health, though by no means strong,--his nervous system having been shattered by his rough western life,--and Mr. Rogers, after a trip to Montreal and Boston, took steamer from New York for Liverpool.

Mr. Rogers was one of the most victorious, haughty-looking men I ever saw, as he stepped on to the steamer's deck, with Frederic Hague by his side. Up to within one or two of my last interviews with him, he always vaunted himself as struggling in the cause of justice only; but at last he allowed some remarks to escape him about Mr. Edward Hague, and how chopfallen he would feel when Frederic should appear on the tapis. And my curiosity being awakened, I sounded him considerably, the rest I learned in England afterwards.

Mr. Rogers was very liberal with me, paid me very handsomely, and treated me most hospitably when I visited him at home. But the poor man was destined to lose his almost won, but foolish, triumph. Four days out, Frederic, meeting on board a couple of men whom he had known, the one in New Orleans, and the other at Louisville, Kentucky, he had served in the care of horses,--these men were cousins, it appeared,--must needs tell them of his vast estates in prospect, which he was just going over to claim. These men were high livers, and took along their own wines and liquors, and of these, with them, Mr. Hague partook very liberally, got ravingly intoxicated, and howling about the deck one night, while something of a breeze was blowing; and the ship ploughing a little, he was toppled over the rail, as she suddenly lurched, into the unquiet waters. Every effort was made to save him. The steam was shut off, the life-boats lowered, and search made for a whole hour, without avail. The darkness was too great to permit him to be easily found, if he had not drowned at once.

Of course, Mr. Rogers went home a wiser, and perhaps better man. He had, unfortunately for his pride, written a triumphant letter home, stating that he had found the veritable Frederic, and that he should bring him by the next, or the second steamer thereafter, and would then teach Edward Hague good manners. But it was difficult to learn anything from him, I was told, after he arrived at home.

The terms of the will were such, that the property went to Mr. Edward Hague; and when I met him, he was living in most comfortable style, but without any attempt at vain show. He was satisfied with his possessions, and was not a little amused when I told him of Mr. Rogers's personal exertions in America "in the cause of justice and truth;" but said he was sorry Frederic had not lived to enjoy something of life, and that he had no doubt Frederic would have been kind to him. In fact, I found Mr. Edward Hague one of the most lovable of men, and I confess that I think the property in his hands was made more useful to a larger number than it probably would have been in Frederic's hands, for he had learned some bad habits in America, among which was the inveterate one of gambling.

I never think of Mr. Rogers without laughing; and so, with a laugh, I leave him now, and the fortune, and the "private mark."

WILLIAM ROBERTS AND HIS FORGERIES.

A MAN OF THE OLDEN TYPE--HIS SAD STORY ABOUT HIS WIFE AND HIMSELF--THEY ADOPT A BRIGHT BOY--THE WIFE'S PROPHET SPECULATIONS ABOUT THE BOY--THE BOY GROWS UP, AND GOES TO COLLEGE--A PLEASANT YEAR--HE LEARNS CERTAIN MYSTERIES OF LIFE--STUDENTS' PITCHED BATTLE WITH THE FACULTY OF THE COLLEGE--OF THE "WHITE HORSE"--A WHILE IN A LAWYER'S OFFICE--BECOMES A MERCHANT--MAKING MONEY TOO FAST--A FATAL HOUR--THE VORTEX OF WALL STREET--SUNDRY FORGERIES--A STRANGE CAREER--AN IMPORTANT WITNESS LOST, AND FOUND IN THE INSANE RETREAT, HARTFORD, CONN.--A TERRIBLE COMPLICATION OF AFFAIRS; LAWYERS AND ALL BAFFLED--I AM CALLED IN TO WORK UP THE CASE--DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED--FATE INTERPOSES--WENTWORTH, THE INSANE WITNESS, RECOVERS--A VAST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BLACK INK AND BLUE INK--DYING OF GRIEF--AN UNHAPPY HOUSEHOLD.

I was sitting one day in my office, about noon, in July, 1858, with windows up, coat off, my legs sprawled upon the table, and fanning myself for a breath of living air out of the sweltering atmosphere. I had tried to enjoy my position (but there was no joy for me on that day) only a few minutes, when I heard a strong tap at the open door, and without looking around, I called out, "Come in!" with what I suspect was a peculiar emphasis, for presently an old man stood before me aghast, as if he knew not what to think.

"You are Mr. ----?"

"Yes, sir, the same."

"Mr. ----, the detective officer?"

"Yes, sir, the detective officer. But pray, sir, take a seat," said I, seeing that the man meant business, doubtless; and I pointed him to a seat near the window.

"What can I do for you, sir?" I asked.

"That's just what I've come to see," said he.

I scanned the man. He was evidently from the country. His manner and dress showed this; but there was something remarkably intelligent about his well-cut, smoothly-shaven face, which was square at the base, with those wide cheeks, which distinguished so many of the rare men of revolutionary days. Jefferson's face will give one a good notion of what I mean. This style of face has gone almost "out of fashion" in these days, only one here and there having been transmitted by the sires of the republic. I am always attracted to these faces, and although they denote firmness, amounting to obstinacy sometimes, I have never found one not belonging to a man of unquestioned respectability and probity.

"It's a warm day, sir," said I, as he took his seat; "and you must pardon me for my being in undress, sir; but, really, I can't endure a coat to-day. Wouldn't you like to pull off your own? Make yourself perfectly at home, sir."

"O, no, sir; thank you. _I_ am not warm; on the other hand, I am cold," and the old man buttoned his coat about him.

I was surprised, for I saw that he was evidently healthy, and then I conjectured that his frigidity on that hot day must proceed from intense mental suffering, and I asked him,--

"Did you call to see me professionally?"

"Yes, sir; I have been recommended by my attorney, Judge Hoffman, to call upon you and lay a case before you, which he says you may possibly be able to work out; and if _you_ can't, he tells me to give up trying further. He has exhausted his powers upon it, and my all depends upon it," and the old man's voice discovered a slight tremor as he uttered the last words, and excited my interest intensely.

"Tell me your story in detail, leaving out nothing that you can remember, however trivial, and I will listen patiently; take your time."

The old gentleman, taking me at my word, and beginning with a "You must know," recited his own early history, which had no bearing on the case in issue, as I soon saw; but I let him go on; so much had his real trouble weighed upon his mind that he seemed to think the line which led to it ran through his whole life.

He was a farmer and a country merchant, who had, at the age of twenty-two, succeeded to the estate of his father, who was also a farmer and a merchant; that is, he "kept store" in a respectable country farming town, and "carried on farming" besides, with the aid of "hired men," whom he supervised. He was a man--that is, my visitor--of more than ordinary information, probably a great reader, and at one time the leading "Whig" of his place--the village oracle, in fact, at whose "store" the country people gathered of nights to hear him talk politics, and doubtless to debate among themselves the issues of those days when Clay was the idol of the great, respectable Whig party of the land. The old man was able to narrate a story with great fidelity, and showed a mind well disciplined. I had but few questions to ask him, as he went on in his narrative, and when he had concluded, I had already conceived a theory of the case, which in due time I proceeded to verify in practice.

He was then seventy-eight years old, he said; was married at thirty-four, his wife still living. They had had one child, a son, born in his father's thirty-seventh year, but who died at the age of four years, just when he had begun to be most interesting, the delight, of course, of his parents. The old man descanted, in pathetic terms, upon his desolation over the loss of that dear child, and said it came near bringing his mother to her grave; that she had never since been the same woman as before; that she never laughed aloud now, as she used to when they were first married, being then a woman of very jocular habits, and full of boisterous fun. "Since then," said he, "she has only faintly smiled, now and then, over something which pleased her fancy or met her hearty approval. No ordinary occurrence can bring a smile or a tear to her eye. But she is a dear, dear woman; and now that a great grief is upon us, I suffer more for her sake than my own."

The old man's voice grew husky as he proceeded, and I confess that, accustomed though I was to tales of horror, and feeling always that nothing of a wretched nature could ever surprise or move me to deep emotions, I felt for him nevertheless, and entered into the spirit of his soul before I knew what were its griefs.

The old gentleman continued his tale.

"For some years after the death of our child my wife was disconsolate beyond my power to give her any relief. She used to keep to the house constantly; never went abroad among the neighbors, but treated them all kindly when they called at the house, and with no diversion except her household duties, led almost a hermit's life, avoiding seeing whomsoever she decently could. I fitted up a little private room for her, and beguiling her time with reading and with her devotions she spent most of her days. I sought every means to comfort her; called children to the house to play. She was very fond of children, and would chat and chaffer with them to make them happy, as if she too enjoyed it; but there was always a sadness mingled with her smiles upon them even. But I must not stop to tell you too much of this. And now, sir, in our old age has come a grief which weighs her down as did the loss of our blessed, only child.

"I must tell you that, after years had passed, I finally induced my wife to consent to my adopting a bright boy--a cheerful, handsome lad of eight years of age, whose father was a good, honest laborer on my farm, but had been killed some months before by the falling upon him of a tree which he had cut. He having lost his life in my employ, I felt a particular interest in his family, and having aided the mother to get situations for her five other children, had defrayed her expenses back (with an infant in arms) to her native place in Rhode Island, according to her desire, and took the boy, of whom I spoke, to bring up, educate, and establish in business.

"At first my wife, though she admired the boy's beauty and his manners, which were very gentle, did not open all her heart to him, and had misgivings that in her state of mind she should be able to do by the boy as she ought. And one day, after he had been with us a few weeks, she said to me, 'What if William should not grow up a good man? Sometimes I feel, I know not why, that he will not. He is very "deep," and if his talents, as he grows up, should chance to take a wrong course, he might be a very bad man, and it would break my heart to think that we had brought him up in the place of our angel who is in heaven,' and she burst into tears, and I consoled her; but, sir, the terrible day which she seemed to then anticipate, has come, and her heart _is_ broken indeed.

"I know, sir, you must lose your patience to hear me talk of these things, but though I am old in years in comparison with you, yet it is not years that makes me so weak to-day. I feel as if I were a hundred years old, and you must pardon my imbecilities."

I assured the old man that I was far from being impatient with his story, for I knew full well that he could never make me an intelligent narrative of the facts I should need to know, if his business proved of real importance, until he had delivered his mind of these special burdens; and so I waited patiently to the end of his story, which it took far more time to reach than I can afford in this narrative.

The young, adopted lad, William, it seems, enjoyed all the advantages of the village school, and of the preparatory academy in the shire town of the county in which the old man resided, and whither, at a distance of some twelve miles from his own home, the old man (taking his wife often) visited the lad at least once a week, and sometimes twice, especially if by any means the old gentleman could contrive to have a "business" excuse for going there, during the boy's whole course at the preparatory school, so great was his affection for him; and, finally, being well prepared, and giving high promise of becoming a great scholar, and a great man, the lad, or now well-grown young man, was sent off to college. During his first collegiate year he bore himself faultlessly, and achieved a high position in his class, in some branches of study being at the head. The old gentleman said that his own pride was never so flattered in all his life as when the boy came home at the end of the year and all the village was talking of the honors he had won. He said he felt a relief then, as if he had a staff well grown, and to grow still stronger and stronger in the coming years, upon which to lean in his own declining years--a young counsellor, whose judgment already good, would grow better and better.

The boy had always been good, courteous, and obliging to the old man and his wife; but now, at the end of his first collegiate year, he seemed to have grown still better, if possible. Vacation being passed in perfect happiness for that household, the old gentleman accompanied William back to college, the wife bidding them God-speed on their journey, with copious tears flooding her face. "Come back, William, just as good a boy as you now are, and I will try to be better to you than I have ever been," said she; and William bade her dry her tears (while his own blinded his eyes), told her that she had always been more than a mother to him, and assured her that he thought of her and his happy home a hundred times a day, and could not, he hoped, but grow better himself every time he thought of home.

"We thought," said the old man, "then, that that was the happiest day of our lives; and when I returned home, after seeing William back again in the college, we talked over, day after day, the happiness of the parting hour, and every letter we got from William, who always wrote once a week at least, prompted us to remember that 'holy day,' as we called it, and we talked it over and over.

"But the next collegiate year brought William home, with a different report about him. He was still forward in his classes, but during the winter term had begun to grow a little wild; had attended a dancing-school privately, against the rules of the college, and had begun to feel himself 'man enough to control his own conduct,' etc. Indeed, on account of the expression of a great degree of obstinacy and self-will, with not a little defiance of the professors on a certain occasion, when they had thought best to gently hint a sort of reproval of some act of his, William had come near being 'suspended,' as the phrase is, for a while; that is, dismissed from the college for a season, to return on conditions. But he was not suspended finally, and had come home still a member of the college. But he had had a taste of certain liberties, had learned to look upon some things, such as 'card-playing for fun,' and which he had been used to look upon with horror, as a foolish, sinful way of spending time, as not, after all, so very bad. But I need not recite these things; for his career was from the good, gently at first, and by slow steps to the bad--much like that of everybody else who has followed the like path. William did not finish his junior years, finding it convenient to withdraw from the college during the spring term (as he was, by the grace of the faculty, permitted to do, instead of being expelled, in consideration of the entreaties of his adopted father, the good old man, who had been sent for to confer with the faculty). William had been engaged, with a score of other students, in some mischief, which, though not seriously bad at first, led to a terrible fight between these students and the authorities of the college-town, or city, rather, in which William had drawn a pistol, and attempted to make use of it (as he always claimed, however, in strict defence of his life), against some of the opposing party. But the pistol, being fortunately snatched from his hands, no blood was shed. William would not acknowledge to the faculty that he had been wrong in drawing his pistol with the purpose of making bloody use of it, but, on the other hand, insisted that, under like circumstances, he would do the same again, in self-defence, as he claimed. The faculty would not yield, and permitted him, in conclusion, to withdraw. And William went home, a somewhat altered young man, but beloved by all the villagers about him, some of whom, however, sometimes said, there was 'a great deal of the "wild-horse" in him which has got to come out in some way, some time;' but they little thought what lay in the line of William's career."

Having thus left college, the question arose, what William should do, what profession or business he should pursue? First, he was inclined to take up the study of the law, and entered the office of Mr. Mills, the only lawyer of the village; but Mr. Mills was far from being a profound or scholarly man, had but a meagre practice, and, on the whole, William, who had read over Blackstone, Chitty's Contracts, and some other works whose names the old man had forgot, and of which I know as little, came to the conclusion, that though he liked to read law, he should not like to practise it, and that course was abandoned; and William, thinking he would become a business man, entered the old man's little store. After a while he was intrusted to go to the city and make the little periodical replenishing purchases, and developed great taste and sagacity in his purchases. In fact, he had rare talents as a merchant, and it was not long before a place was found for him in New York, with a then ruling firm, where he speedily advanced, so as to be offered an interest in the concern. He had managed to lay up a little money for himself, but the old gentleman furnished him ten thousand dollars more,--a large sum, it was then thought,--the villagers thinking that the old gentleman was almost wild to part with that sum, which would then have bought two or three good farms in the vicinity of the village. Thus provided, William went into the partnership, and his business went on flourishing till, at the end of five years, he became the second member in importance in the concern; and though not married, had built a very fine summer residence in the outskirts of the old village, and filled and surrounded it with every comfort.

"I fear William Roberts is living too fast," some old villager would say. "He'll make money easy and spend it as easy. Easy comes, easy goes, you know."

"O, no, he won't. He knows the value of money," another would say. "The old man's taught him that. He knows how to hold on to a dollar."

"You see," said the old man, with a curious look in his eye, as he related what he used to hear (and sometimes overhear), that his neighbors said, "that they always thought me, up there, a little _too_ economical."

But William Roberts had made money too fast, as the sequel showed; he lived too high, contracted expensive habits, and, eventually, it got to be rumored that he indulged sometimes "in cards for fun;" but now the "fun" meant, the excitement of gambling for money. His business house knew nothing of this, and were unsuspicious of it for a long while, though William made large drafts upon it; but these not being more than he was entitled to, nothing was said about it. But finally he insisted on drawing at one time--when the house really needed the money to help carry on its business--the sum of five thousand dollars, and was rather curt and severe upon his partners on their remonstrating; and they began to look about them, and came to learn of Mr. Roberts's gambling habits; and, fearful of him, arranged, after a long while, to buy him out, accepting his figures on demand. This was the most fatal hour in his life.

With some fifty thousand dollars, cash in hand, Mr. Roberts could not control himself, and, with the spirit of gambling upon him, rushed deeper into dissipation--more deeply than ever. Together with his gambling pursuits at night, Mr. Roberts went into Wall Street by day, drawn there by the allurements of certain acquaintances, who presented to him visions of stupendous wealth to be early won. Mr. Roberts was, withal, a self-reliant man, and believed he could take his part among the bold and fiery contestants of the street; and went into that vortex, where so many brave souls have been wrecked, with greatest confidence, only to find himself, at the end of six months, penniless and poor, save in the country residence, which has been before alluded to. He applied to his adopted father now; told him the whole story; and evidently penitent over his wanderings and rashness, was again aided into business in a comparatively small way. But his talents were good, and for a while he pursued a line of success. But the old gambling mania came over him again, and he fell; and this time deeper than before.