THE LURE OF SOMETHING FOR NOTHING
The great business of transferring the contents of your neighbour’s
pocket to your own is what more than nine-tenths of the world live
upon. Society draws the line between what is legitimate and what
is dishonest rather low down in the scale. A grocer may rob you by
high prices but not by giving you short weight; a money-lender may
fleece you by usury but not by picking your pocket; but I confess
to a sneaking preference for the rogue who, without any pretence of
respectability, preys upon your vanity or your cupidity and cheats you
quite openly.
The Spanish prisoner fraud has flourished for nearly half a century. It
has the advantage over all other frauds in costing practically nothing
for stock-in-trade, and incurring no risk whatever to the practitioner.
All he needs is a little stationery, a few postage stamps, and the
names and addresses of farmers in Scotland and England. The farmer
receives a letter with the Valencia postmark from a Spanish colonel
now languishing in prison on account of the part he played in a
revolutionary conspiracy.
‘MY DEAR SIR AND RELATIVE’ (it begins),--‘Having not the honour to
know you personally but only for the good references my deceased
mother Mary Harris, your relative, did me about your family, I apply
myself to you for the first and perhaps last time to implore your
protection for my only daughter Amelia, child 12 years age.’
Here the writer is banking on the fact that very few of us are in a
position positively to say that no one of the sisters or cousins of
our parents was called Mary, and that no one of that name married a
Spaniard. The letter, which is beautifully written in halting English,
goes on to say that the writer, a colonel named Alvaro de Espinosa,
at the direction of the revolutionary committee, went to Berlin to
buy arms, was betrayed and went to England, but that while in London
he heard of the death of his wife. In the first shock of grief he
converted all his property into English and French bank-notes, and with
the proceeds cunningly concealed in the lining of his trunk he set out
for Valencia.
‘Well disguised, I went out to Spain, arrived in this city. Arranged
secretly some private business, took my leave from the martyr as was
my noble wife, and when I was very near coming in England again with
my daughter but with my heart contrite by grief I was arrested. A
wretch enemy had recognised and accused me. They proceeded me and
after in a War-Court I was condemned by desertion and rebellion
delinquency at one indemnification at 12 gaol years and at the
payment of the process outlays, a sentence I am undergoing now in
these military gaols, deprived of any intercourse.
‘When I was arrested my equipage which is a trunk and two
portmanteaux, was seized and sealed and folded before me and
delivering me its keys without might be discovered the so well artful
secret in which I hidden the said sum, and it remained laid down in
the same Court as a warranty for the outlays of process payment in
the event of being condemned, and as I am already unhappily sentenced
it is indispensable to pay the Court the amount of the expenses to
be able to recover the luggage. Thereby necessary sum to pay the
tribunal by the process outlays since I would not see me in the
debasing and shameful case to have to resort to my fellow-countrymen;
then I would be wretchedly betrayed again.’
That is why he writes to Harris. But what is Harris to get out of all
this? You shall hear. When the trunk reaches him--
‘you will see in its interior part and in its left side of Spain
shield in its centre you will set upon your forefinger so that when
an electric bell is pushed and quickly the secret will appear in full
view in which you will find my fortune.... I will name you as tutor
of my daughter and her fortune trustee until her full age and as a
right reward for your noble aid I leave you the fourth part of all my
fortune.’
So there you have it--something for nothing--the bait which so few can
resist; least of all when the something is £6250 and a beautiful young
Spanish ward.
The poor old revolutionary colonel is in a dying state, as you learn
from a letter from the chaplain, the Reverend Adrian Rosado, which is
enclosed. This devoted priest has letter paper headed with a cross,
and has a markedly feminine handwriting. He is not in the secret, as
the cautious old colonel has been careful to warn you. He ‘befriends
me by his vocation and good feelings: he is a venerable priest and
honest man, and I do not think it necessary he knows the secret very
extensively.’ The honest man regrets very much--
‘that on the first time I write to you I may be herald of bad news,
but the case so requires it and the truth must be said though it may
be painful. Your relative’s health state is very bad.’
indeed, so bad that--
‘we must have patience to suffer with resignation what God dispose
and beg his help to accomplish the last will of the unfortunate Sr.
Alvaro de Espinosa.’
The honest priest goes on to say that in a little while he will deposit
Miss Amelia and the trunk at your door, always provided that the
necessary expenses are defrayed.
‘By your relative charge I think convenient to beg your aid for
getting out the seized equipage to which end I am making steps in
order that the Tribunal tell me the exactly amount to pay the cost
and process expenses.
‘Awaiting anxiously your reply to accomplish the sacred mission your
relative has commissioned me.--I am, dear sir, your most affected
servant and Chaplain,
ADRIAN ROGADO.’
Strange that this holy and disinterested man should have a delicacy
about receiving letters at his presbytery. He, no less than the poor
prisoner, adds in a postscript:
‘By greater security please answer to my brother-in-law name and here
as following:
Mr. Arturo Rivier,
Maldonado 19,
Entremets,
Valencia, Spain.’
Is it because a letter addressed to the presbytery would be returned
through the Dead Letter Office marked that no such person as Rogado
exists?
[Illustration: THE PROCEEDS OF A RAID ON A RECEIVER, THE RESULTS OF
OVER SIXTY BURGLARIES.]
The world may be divided into two classes--those who would reply to
such letters and those who would consign them to the fire. In spite of
the picture drawn of Englishmen by envious foreigners, the Britisher
is by nature an imaginative and romantic person. That is why you find
him in every part of the globe: he goes abroad for adventure, to escape
from the humdrum routine of his home surroundings. And the farther
you go north the more romantic he becomes. That is why there are so
few Scots left in Scotland. To judge from the correspondence filed by
the police, nine out of every ten reply, and because the Britisher is
practical as well as romantic, the reply invariably asks how much money
is required to pay the ‘process outlays.’ On this the dying Espinosa,
whose handwriting is unusually firm for a stricken man so near his end,
rises to fresh flights of eloquence:
‘I will die peaceful,’ he says, ‘thinking of the good future welfare
of my dear daughter near you.’
His ‘health state is becoming grievous,’ and so he makes his will:
‘Here is my last will.
‘I name heiress of the ¾ parts of my fortune my alone daughter
Amelia de Espinosa.
‘I name you heir of the fourth part of my fortune and Tutor of my
daughter and Manager of it until this one may reach her full age.
‘As soon as the equipage may be in the Chaplain’s hands he shall go
out to your home with my daughter and equipage in order that you
may take away the money of my trunk secret to come immediately in
possession of the sum.
‘From the part belonging to my daughter you will deliver to the
Chaplain £200, for I will make a present to him. I beseech you to
grant all your assistance to the Chaplain since he is poor and he
does not reckon upon any resource to pay these outlays.
‘The equipage must be recovered immediately, for in the trunk is all
my fortune.
‘You will place my daughter in a college until her full age.... I
shall die peaceful thinking of her being happy near you, and she will
find on you some warm-hearted parents and brothers.--Your unfortunate
relative,
ALVARO DE ESPINOSA.’
And still no mention of money: that was because the recipient was
more than usually cautious and was, in fact, a wary fish that must
be played. So wary was he that he took the letter to the police for
advice. But I remember a case where a farmer in Norfolk was so much
touched by the misfortunes of his Spanish cousin, and so conscious of
the sensation that would be caused among his neighbours when it became
known that he was guardian to a beautiful young Spanish heiress, to
say nothing of the things that might be bought with £6250, that he sent
£200 to the address indicated by Espinosa and sat down to wait. He
waited so long that he became anxious about the safety of the chaplain
and his ward, and it was on their account, and not from any doubt
about the story, that he came to the police. He indignantly refused
to believe that he had been a victim to the familiar Spanish prisoner
fraud.
The War was unkind to Espinosa, who had been lingering upon his
death-bed for over forty years, and I hoped that it had killed him, but
the ink was scarcely dry upon the Treaty of Versailles before he broke
out again. From time to time the Spanish Government has been furnished
with the address to which victims are invited to reply, but hitherto to
no purpose: the game is too profitable to be easily killed.
I can understand succumbing to the wiles of Espinosa better than I
can understand the perennial success of the Confidence Trick, which
is practised generally by Australians on American visitors to London.
There are several variants because the tricksters are artists, and are
not above improving with practice. Here again the bait is ‘Something
for Nothing.’ Though the commonest form has been described in the
Police Court it may be well to repeat it here. An American walking in
Hyde Park sees an elderly man drop a pocket-book. He overtakes him
and restores it. The old man, whom we will call Ryan, is effusively
grateful. He would not have lost that pocket-book for the world: it
contained the evidence of his fortune: his benefactor must come and
have a drink. He holds him with his glittering eye, and while they
imbibe whisky he tells his story--how an uncle of fabulous wealth but
eccentric habits has left him a couple of million dollars on condition
that he can find a really trustworthy person to distribute one-eighth
of the sum among the poor of London. The dupe mentions the fact that he
has a return ticket to New York, and hails from Denver. So, as it now
appears, does Ryan, who takes from his pocket-book a newspaper cutting
setting forth the virtues and the enormous fortune of the uncle, and
at that very moment a third man, Ryan’s confederate, drops in. Hearing
the word ‘Denver,’ he joins in the conversation, for he, too, is from
Denver--George T. Davis, at their service. So there they are--three
exiles from Denver--a little oasis in the vast waste of London. To
George T. Davis Ryan relates his good fortune and the strange condition
in the will.
‘I know no one in this city. How am I to find a man in whom I have
confidence to distribute all this money? Now I like your face, Mr.
Davis, but I don’t know you--never saw you till this afternoon--how can
I say I’ve confidence in you?’
‘Confidence for confidence,’ replies Davis. ‘I’ve confidence in you
anyway. I’d trust you with all I’ve got, and I’ve got more than what
I stand up in. Why, see here! Here’s what I drew from the bank this
morning’--he thrusts a roll of bank (of engraving) notes into Ryan’s
unwilling hand--‘and here’s my watch and chain! Take them all and just
walk through that door. I know you’ll bring them back because I’ve
confidence in you.’ But Ryan still looks doubtful. ‘No good,’ whispers
Davis, ‘he don’t take to me. Why don’t you have a shot at the money? He
takes to you.’
[Illustration: THE CONTENTS OF A RECEIVER’S SHOP, SHOWING THE TOOLS FOR
MELTING DOWN THE PROCEEDS OF ROBBERIES.]
And so by appeals to the vanity of the man from Denver, by playing on
his cupidity, under the softening influences of liquid refreshment, by
the force of example, Davis succeeds at last. Into the still apparently
unwilling hand of Ryan the victim presses all the money and
valuables he possesses, and out goes Ryan into the street. The two men
continue drinking: George T. Davis is the first to betray anxiety.
‘The old man ought to be back by now. Can’t understand it--man I’d have
trusted anywhere. Couldn’t have been run over by a taxi? You stop here:
I’ll just step out and see where he’s got to.’ And that is the last
that the victim sees of either of the rogues.
Before the War most of the confidence men lived in Ealing. Each pair
have their own pitch, and there was a tacit understanding that neither
should poach on the ground of the other. Northumberland Avenue belonged
to one; the Mall to another; a third worked Hyde Park. The essence of
the trick is that the victim should be a bird of passage, for as soon
as the trick is played the actors leave for Rome. Why Rome was chosen I
never understood. There they stayed until a confederate reported that
the victim had sailed for home and the coast was clear. During the
War the poor confidence man fell on evil days: there were no American
tourists to prey upon, and if there had been any, one could not fly to
Rome. The passport people saw to that. The absence of a prosecutor is a
bar to police action, but occasionally one or other of the fraternity
is run to ground.
I have sometimes doubted whether the police should be called upon to
protect people so simple that they ought not to be allowed abroad
without a nurse. I remember a prisoner making the same complaint to
me. ‘It’s cruel hard on us chaps,’ he said, ‘when mugs like them are
at large. It’s a temptation: that’s what it is.’ But he was not doing
his profession justice. Like all artistic callings--like the stage
for instance--the reward lies not in the emoluments, but in the
satisfaction of playing on the feelings of your audience until you hold
them.
Given impudence and the artistic sense and a man may remove
mountains--at any rate he may remove houses. At Dartmoor there was
a man who boasted that he was ‘the lad that stole a row of houses,’
and it was no idle boast. In the City there was a row of derelict
eighteenth-century cottages which in these days would have been
condemned as unfit for human habitation. Tenants must have come
to a similar conclusion about them, for an agent’s board, already
weather-worn, announced that they were to let. One morning a young man
called at the house-agent’s and got into conversation with the clerk.
‘So those houses in Paradise Row are to let. I’d like to have a look
at them, and see whether it would suit my governor to make an offer.’
‘Right,’ said the clerk, ‘come to-morrow and I’ll take you round. I
can’t come now, I’m alone in the office.’
‘Don’t you worry, old man. Lend me the key and I’ll be back with it in
half an hour.’ The clerk was glad to be rid of him on such easy terms.
A week later an old client happened to look in. ‘I see you’re pulling
down those old death traps in Paradise Row. It was about time you did.’
‘Pulling them down? What do you mean?’
‘I mean what I say. I passed there just now, and there’s not much left.’
The clerk glanced hastily at the nail where the key was wont to hang.
The key was gone, and then he remembered how he came to part with it.
He tore out of the office without his hat, risked a hundred deaths
from motor-’buses, and reached his goal breathless. He would have been
breathless in any case at what he saw. The housebreakers had done
their work thoroughly, and at the moment were dealing with the ground
floor. The lead, the guttering, tiles, cisterns, woodwork, and bricks
had all been carted away and sold to the order of the man ‘who stole a
row of houses.’ He considered the months he had to spend in prison a
cheap price to pay for the prestige he won in the only circles whose
opinion he respected.
But his impudence paled beside that of the bogus doctor whose only
claim to medical knowledge was the possession of a stethoscope. His
method was to select a little artisan’s house in a quiet street in
South London on a Sunday morning, ring the bell, and when the tenant
opened the door ask for Mr. Smith.
‘I’m not Mr. Smith. My name’s Brown.’
‘Then I must have got the number wrong. So sorry. You don’t happen to
know which is Mr. Smith’s house? Never heard of him? Well, well!’ and
then, with great concern in his manner, ‘Stop, don’t shut the door. Do
you know you are very ill.’
‘Never felt better in my life,’ growled Mr. Brown.
‘Excuse me, I’m a doctor, and I know better. Phantasmagoria is a
dreadful illness, and you’ve got it badly. I can tell it from your
eyes. Now, look here (pulling out a stethoscope and looking at his
watch), I can just spare ten minutes. I’ll examine you and it won’t
cost you a penny, and if I’m wrong no one will be more pleased than I
shall.’
Still talking, he would edge the now frightened Brown into the parlour,
saying, ‘Don’t make any sudden movement, my dear fellow. Just slip off
your coat and trousers as gently as you can. Let me help you. That’s
right! Now lie down on that sofa. Gently now. That’s right. Th--a--t’s
right. Now say “A--a.” Now say “O--o--o.” It’s just what I thought.
It’s the worst case of phantasmagoria that I ever came across. Not a
word now. Move once, and you may never move again. Now lie quite still
while I run round to the chemist. I’ll bring you round something that
will put you right in two ticks. Not a word now: there’s nothing to
thank me for.’
In this he was quite right. He clapped on his hat and ran out into the
street, and it was not by inadvertence that he carried over his arm all
Mr. Brown’s Sunday clothes and whatever the pockets contained. And when
it dawned upon Brown that he had been victimised, how was he to take up
the pursuit on a Sunday morning in nothing but his shirt?