But the Lapierres and Tessiers, while not for an instant distrusting the
honesty of the General, had become extremely weary of sending him
money. Each heir felt that he had contributed enough toward the
General's "expenses and invitations." Even the one hundred and fifty
millions within easy reach did not prompt immediate response.
About the same time an extraordinary messenger arrived at the Lapierre
farm, purporting to come from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and
instructing Lapierre to repair immediately to Paris. The messenger
explained that the presence of Lapierre was desired at the Ministry in
connection with some investigation then in progress into the affairs of
one Jean Tessier. Then the messenger departed as mysteriously as he had
arrived.
Good M. Lapierre was highly excited. Here was indubitable evidence of
the truth of the General's assertions. But, just as the latter had
intended, perhaps, the worthy farmer jumped to the conclusion that
probably the messenger from Paris had been sent by the conspirators.
"At the last moment," wrote Lapierre to Moreno, "I received from Paris a
letter commanding me to go to the Ministry, and at the same time a
telegram recommending that I leave at once. I shall write you from Paris
all that I learn to your interest. If this letter should not reach you
sealed in red wax, with small indentations made with a sewing thimble
and my initials, which I always sign, it is that our correspondence is
seized and read."
Events followed in rapid succession. Lapierre, the Tessiers, including
the little blacksmith, became almost hysterical with excitement. A
gentleman, by name "Mr. Francis Delas," called upon Lapierre and offered
him twenty-five million dollars spot cash for his wife's share in the
Tessier inheritance. This person also claimed that he had a power of
attorney from all the other heirs, with the exception of Pettit and
Rozier, and asserted that he was on the point of embarking for New York
in their interest. He urged Lapierre to substitute him for Moreno. But
Lapierre, now convinced that everything was as the General had claimed
it to be, indignantly rejected any such proposition aimed at his old
friend, and sent Mr. Francis Delas packing about his business.
"This is what my answer has been to him: 'Sir, we have already an
agent with whom we can only have cause to be satisfied, so that your
services are not acceptable or needed.' He left me most dissatisfied
and scolding."
The sending of this confederate on the part of the wily General had
precisely the effect hoped for. Lapierre and his friends were now
convinced that the inheritance Tessier was a reality, and that powerful
personages were not only exerting their influence to prevent the
rightful heirs from obtaining their property, but had also in some way
secured the cooperation of government officials. It was agreed, on all
hands, that the worthy landowner, accompanied by Madame Reddon, had
better proceed at once to the scene of operations and unite with the
General in their common purpose. Once on the ground Lapierre could
assume direction of his own campaign.
Lapierre and Madame Reddon accordingly sailed for America and arrived in
New York on the fourth of December, 1904, where they were met on the
dock by the General, who, freshly barbered, and with a rose in his
buttonhole, invited them, as soon as they had recovered from the fatigue
of landing, to make a personal inspection of their properties.
These heirs to hundreds of millions of dollars were conducted by the
"Marquis de la d'Essa and Count de Tinoco" to the Battery, where he
gallantly seated them in an electric surface car, and proceeded to show
them the inheritance. He pointed out successively Number 100 Broadway,
the "Flatiron" Building, the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the Holland House,
the Waldorf-Astoria, the Vanderbilt mansion at Fifty-seventh Street and
Fifth Avenue, the Hotel Savoy and the Hotel Netherland, incidentally
taking a cross-town trip to the ferry station at East Twenty-third
Street, and to Bellevue Hospital. A public omnibus conveyed them around
Central Park--also their own. And, in spite of the cold weather, the
General insisted on showing them the "Tessier mansion and estate at Fort
George"--visible from the Washington Bridge--"a beautiful property in
the centre of a wood." Returning, he took them to the Museum of Natural
History and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contained
"Tessier's collections."
Having thus given them a bird's-eye view of the promised land, the
General escorted them to his apartments and allowed them to see the Ark
of the Covenant in the shape of a somewhat dilapidated leather trunk,
which contained a paper alleged to be the will of Jean Tessier, made in
Bellevue Hospital (one of his possessions), and unlawfully seized by the
Lespinasse family. It was only, Moreno alleged, through the powerful
influence of the Jesuits that he had been able to secure and keep a copy
of this will.
Although the Marquis de la d'Essa must have known that his days were
numbered, he was as gay and as entertaining as ever. Then, suddenly, the
scales began to fall from Madame Reddon's eyes. The promised meeting
with Marie Louise Lespinasse and her mysterious representative, "Mr.
Benedict-Smith," was constantly adjourned; the "police agents," whom it
had been so necessary to entertain and invite to saloons and cafés, were
strangely absent, and so were the counsellors, Jesuit Fathers, bankers,
and others who had crowded the General's antechambers. A slatternly
Hibernian woman appeared, claiming the hero as her husband; his landlady
caused him to be evicted from her premises; and his trunk containing the
famous "_dossier_" was thrown into the street, where it lay until the
General himself, placing it upon his princely shoulders, bore it to a
fifteen-cent lodging-house.
"And now, M'sieu'," said little Madame Reddon, raising her hands and
clasping them entreatingly before her, "we have come to seek vengeance
upon this _misérable_! This _villain m'sieu_! He has taken our money and
made fools of us. Surely you will give us justice!"
"Yes," echoed Lapierre stubbornly, "and the money was my own money,
which I had made from the products of my farming."
A month later Don Pedro Suarez de Moreno, Count de Tinoco, Marquis de la
d'Essa, and Brigadier-General of the Royal Armies of the Philippines and
of Spain, sat at the bar of the General Sessions, twirling his mustache
and uttering loud snorts of contempt while Lapierre and Madame Reddon
told their story to an almost incredulous yet sympathetic jury.
But the real trial began only when he arose to take the witness chair in
his own behalf. Apparently racked with pain, and laboring under the most
frightful physical infirmities, the General, through an interpreter,
introduced himself to the jury by all his titles, asserting that he had
inherited his patents of nobility from the "Prince of Arras," from whom
he was descended, and that he was in very truth "General-in-Chief of the
Armies of the King of Spain, General Secretary of War, and Custodian of
the Royal Seal." He admitted telling the Lapierres that they were the
heirs of five hundred million dollars, but he had himself honestly
believed it. When he and the rest of them had discovered their common
error they had turned upon him and were now hounding him out of revenge.
The courtly General was as _distingué_ as ever as he addressed the
hard-headed jury of tradesmen before him. As what _canaille_ he must
have regarded them! What a position for the "Count de Tinoco"!
Then two officers entered the courtroom bearing the famous trunk of the
General between them. The top tray proved to contain thousands of
railroad tickets. The prosecutor requested the defendant to explain
their possession.
"Ah!" exclaimed Moreno, twirling his mustaches, "when I was General
under my King Don Carlos, in the Seven Years' War of '75 and also in
Catalonia in '80, I issued these tickets to wounded soldiers for their
return home. At the boundaries the Spanish tickets were exchanged for
French tickets." He looked as if he really meant it.
Then the prosecutor called his attention to the fact that most of them
bore the date of 1891 and were printed in French--not in Spanish. The
prisoner seemed greatly surprised and muttered under his breath vaguely
about "plots" and "conspiracies." Then he suddenly remembered that the
tickets were a "collection," made by his little son.
Beneath the tickets were found sheaves of blank orders of nobility and
blank commissions in the army of Spain, bearing what appeared to be the
royal seal. These the General asserted that he had the right to confer,
by proxy, for his "King Don Carlos." Hundreds of other documents bearing
various arms and crests lay interspersed among them. The prisoner drew
himself up magnificently.
"I was the General Secretary of War of my King," said he. "When I had to
give orders to the generals under me, of whom I was the chief, I had the
right to put thereon the royal imprint of Don Carlos. I was given all
the papers incident to the granting of orders and grades in the army,
and I had the seal of the King--the seal of the Royal King."
But, unfortunately for the prisoner, the seals upon the papers turned
out to be the legitimate arms of Spain and not those of Don Carlos, and
as a finale he ingenuously identified the seal of the Mayor of Madrid as
that of his "Royal King."
Next came a selection of letters of nobility, sealed and signed in the
name of Pope Leo the Thirteenth. These, he asserted, must have been
placed there by his enemies. "I am a soldier and a general of honor, and
I never did any such trafficking," he cried grandly, when charged with
selling bogus patents of nobility.
He explained some of his correspondence with the Lapierres and his
famous bill for twelve thousand dollars by saying that when he found out
that the inheritance Tessier did not exist he had conceived the idea of
making a novel of the story--a "fantastic history"--to be published "in
four languages simultaneously," and asserted solemnly that he had
intended printing the whole sixteen feet of bill as part of the romance.
Then, to the undisguised horror of the unfortunate General, at a summons
from the prosecutor an elderly French woman arose in the audience and
came to the bar. The General turned first pale, then purple. He hotly
denied that he had married this lady in France twenty-three years ago.
"Name of a name! He had known her! Yes--certainly! But she was no wife
of his--she had been only his servant. The other lady--the
Hibernian--was his only wife." But the chickens had begun to come home
to roost. The pointed mustaches drooped with an unmistakable look of
dejection, and as he marched back to his seat his shoulders no longer
had the air of military distinction that one would expect in a general
of a "Royal King." His head sank on his chest as his deserted wife took
the stand against him--the wife whom, he had imagined, he would never
see again.
Any one could have seen that Elizabeth de Moreno was a good woman. Her
father's name, she said, was Nichaud, and she had first met the prisoner
twenty-three years ago in the village of Dalk, in the Department of the
Tarne, where, in 1883, he had been convicted and sentenced for stealing
bed linen from the Hôtel Kassam. She had remained faithful to him in
spite of his disgrace, and had visited him daily in prison, bringing him
milk and tobacco. On his liberation she had married him and they had
gone to live in Bordeaux. For years they had lived in comfort, and she
had borne him eight children. He had never been to any war and was
neither a general nor, so far as she had known, a friend of Don Carlos.
She had supposed that her husband held some position in connection with
the inspection of railroads, but, in 1902, it had come out that he was
in the business of selling counterfeit railroad tickets, and had
employed a printer named Paul Casignol to print great numbers of
third-class tickets for the purpose of selling them to ignorant soldiers
and artisans. Moreno had fled to America. She had then discovered that
he had also made a practice of checking worthless baggage, _stealing it
himself_ and then presenting claims therefor against the railroad
companies. She had been left without a sou, and the rascal had taken
everything she had away with him, including even the locket containing
the hair of her children. By the time she had finished her story
Moreno's courage had deserted him, the jury without hesitation returned
a verdict of guilty, and the judge then and there sentenced the prisoner
to a term at hard labor in State's prison.
* * * * *
"_Mais oui_," grunts Lapierre, as the crow, with a final caw of
contempt, alights in a poplar farther down the road, "I don't blame the
bird for laughing at me. But, after all, there is nothing to be ashamed
of. Is one to be blamed that one is fooled? _Hein_! We are all made
fools of once and again, and, as I said before, he would have deceived
the devil himself. But perhaps things are better as they are. Money is
the root of all evil. If I had an automobile I should probably be thrown
out and have my neck broken. But if M'sieu' intends to take the next
train for Bordeaux it is as well that he should be starting."