_Big incomes that do not exist--Visit to a gambling club--A deep-laid
plot--Heavy blackmail--A masterly stroke--Two biters bitten_
|EVERY now and then the world is startled by the story of a woman who
has succeeded in obtaining thousands of pounds from men of the world
and men of business who have believed in her completely, and have fallen
victims to the oldest form of the confidence dodge--a clever woman's own
representation that she is entitled to a large fortune, or in possession
of property which for the moment she is unable to realize.
You have only to talk "big" enough to find plenty of people prepared
to take you at your own valuation. The adventurer who wants to live
luxuriously on his wits does not proceed on quite the same lines as the
adventuress. In some respects his is a harder task, in others it is an
easier one.
London swarms with men and women of all grades, whose sole means
of livelihood is the credulity of the people with whom they come in
contact.
The footman who persuades the lady of rank that he is a prince, and
the loafer who engages himself to half a dozen servant girls a month in
order to get money and their bits of jewellery, pursue practically the
same methods. They go through a process which in the sporting circles is
known as "telling the tale." Given a certain amount of tact and a veneer
of culture, and men or women who set out deliberately to do so can
assume any rank or position they consider best for the particular fraud
they have in hand.
There are plenty of people in London to-day whose legitimate income is
under £100 a year, and who yet live in well-appointed houses in good
neighbourhoods, keep servants, and entertain on a lavish scale. In the
great London hotels there are always a number of guests who are nothing
but adventurers and adventuresses.
The well-dressed, well-mannered "dangerous class" has increased rapidly
of late years. The conditions of modern life are wholly favourable to
its development. The breaking down of social barriers which has marked
the new century has opened up new and profitable fields of enterprise.
In a day when millionaires spring up like mushrooms, and anybody with an
American accent or a Jewish name is accepted as fabulously rich "without
further inquiry," it is the easiest thing in the world for the skilful
adventurer to work himself into any society--even to obtain the entrée
to houses where, once having been seen, his reputation is hall-marked.
No one, as a rule--except a tradesman swindled out of his goods--seeks
to pry into the mystery of these people's means. The source of the
incomes of so many who live luxuriously today is a mystery, that
suspicion has been lulled, and anyone with a few pounds and a
portmanteau or a Saratoga trunk has only to put up a well-frequented
London hotel to start making a useful circle of acquaintances at once.
Some of these people are known to the police. Their record is at
Scotland Yard. It is this fact that occasionally leads to the occupant
of an elegant apartment being presented with his or her bill by the
management, and at the same time a polite intimation that their room is
required for another guest who has secured it for that date. Sometimes
the person so treated argues the matter out with a show of indignation.
But, as a rule, discretion is considered the best part of valour, and
the agreeable Mr. So-and-So or the charming Mrs. So-and-So is missed
from the lounge or the smoking-room or the drawingroom, and the
departure regretted. For these people are always "nice." If they were
not, they would make no friends, and it is by the making of friends they
live.
But more frequently the hotel adventurer and adventuress have not come
under the official notice of the detective police. The men of position
who are swindled by women, the women of good social standing who are
duped by men, do not care to advertise their simplicity to the world.
It is on this distaste for publicity on the part of their victims that
high-class adventurers and adventuresses rely.
At a fashionable London hotel some time ago a young American arrived. He
bore a well-known name, and was a partner in his father's business. The
wealth and position of his family were discussed in the smoking-room,
one or two Americans present volunteering information to an Englishman
who had started the topic of conversation.
This Englishman, satisfied as to the _bona fides_ of the newcomer, lost
no time in making his acquaintance, and very obligingly "showed him
London"--the side of it which is not in the guide-books. One night the
young American was taken by his friend to a club in a side street in
Soho, which he was told was a gambling club. He need not play, but the
company were worth seeing. The young fellow did not want to play, but
was quite willing to look on. All of a sudden a dispute arose among the
players--there were about a dozen, among them some foreigners--there
was a scuffle, one of the foreigners whipped out a dagger and plunged it
into the breast of a man with whom he was quarrelling, his victim fell
to the ground, the lights were turned down, and as the company made a
rush to the door the police entered.
"This way," said the Englishman to his friend, and dragged him through a
little door in the back of the room into a kitchen, out into a passage,
and up a court into the main street, where they hailed a hansom and
drove back to the hotel.
"We've had a narrow escape," said the Englishman. "It would have been
pretty hard if we had been walked off to the station and charged. Of
course, that club's illegal, and this stabbing business will be bad for
everybody who was there." The young American was very thankful to have
escaped the unpleasantness.
In an evening paper the next day appeared a mysterious paragraph. A
man had been found stabbed in a gambling houses The police had arrested
several persons present, but it was stated by the victim, who was in
a precarious condition, that he believed his assailant was a young
American, who managed to escape after the police had entered. The
proprietor of the establishment, who was in custody, had given
information which, it was hoped, would lead to the identification of the
assassin. The American was horrified.
"But you know this is absurd," he said to his English friend, who gave
him the paper to read. "You saw the foreigner do it." The Englishman
shook his head. "It's a nasty business," he said, "and unpleasant for
both of us. It's evident that the proprietor and the other people are in
league to save the real culprit."
"But the man who was stabbed--he must know who did it?"
"He thinks he'll get well, I suppose, and he's afraid of accusing the
real man. Some of these people belong to the most dangerous gang in
London. They'll put the thing on you because they think you're not
likely to come forward and deny it."
"Say," said the American, "I don't like this--it looks bad.
I shall leave here and go to Paris. I wouldn't get mixed up in this
business for a thousand. It would be in all the American papers."
The Englishman said he thought the plan a wise one. He himself should go
to some friends in the North of England, and keep out of the way for a
bit. But the plan was not quite so easily carried out. The friends had
been talking together in the courtyard. As they turned to enter the
hotel a man came up and touched the American on the shoulder.
"You'll excuse me," he said, "but I saw you two gentlemen at that club
where the man was stabbed last night." The two friends looked at each
other. Neither knew what to say.
"I was a waiter there," said the man. "I got away just after you by the
back door, and followed you up the court. I saw you get into a cab, and
I heard you tell the man to drive to this hotel. I thought I'd come and
see if I could find you."
The Englishman had recovered himself.
"Look here," he said, "you'd better come up to my friend's room and talk
the matter over."
The result of the discussion was that the young American gave the man
£300 to keep quiet. He explained that he was a stranger seeing London.
He was absolutely innocent of any share in the quarrel, but he didn't
want to be detained in London to answer a charge which, absurd as it
was, would be a very unpleasant public ordeal.
The Englishman also drew a cheque for £300, and gave it to the man not
to drag him into the affair.
The American left London, thinking he had heard the last of the affair.
But when he got back to his home in the States he found a letter
waiting for him. That waiter had found out who he was, and wanted more
hush-money. He wanted $5000. The victim of the attack at the gaming
house had died, the writer said, and unless he received the amount named
he should communicate with the police. Even if the young-man evaded
arrest, the story would be in all the English papers, and copied into
the American ones.
The young American read the letter carefully two or three times, and
then went to a solicitor, telling him the whole story. The solicitor
advised him not to reply, but to let him communicate with an agent in
London, who would inquire into the whole affair. The investigation made
by the London agent revealed the fact that the police of London were
totally ignorant of any such affair, that no one had been found stabbed
in a gambling house, and that no police raid on a gambling house in Soho
had taken place at that date.
The American visitor to London had been marked down by one of the
gang of bad characters who infest hotels for the purpose of swindling
strangers. The agreeable Englishman was the concocter of the whole
scheme.
The only thing that was a mystery now was the stabbing. The American had
seen the dagger plunged into the man's breast.
The stabbing was a comedy, though it had looked like a tragedy at the
time. The dagger was a stage dagger, which appears to penetrate the body
of the victim, but really goes up the handle. The two policemen who
came in were probably made up on the premises for the occasion, and
the "gamblers" were members of the gang of blackmailers to which the
Englishman staying at the hotel belonged.
It is not likely that this sensational little scene was arranged for
the occasion only. It had doubtless been effectually played many times
before on unsuspecting visitors to the metropolis. Without the stabbing'
it is common enough. One of the commonest tricks of a well-known gang
is to lure a visitor anxious to see life to some questionable haunt, and
make him the victim of a bogus police raid. The staid and sober citizens
of good repute will generally pay handsomely to avoid publicity.
In the case of the young American, a deliberate scheme of lifelong
blackmail was planned. The report in the evening newspaper was a master
stroke. But there are means of getting a sensational statement that has
not a word of truth in it past the most vigilant of sub-editors.
* * * * *
Some of the most dangerous female swindlers in the world are to be found
in fashionable hotels. They frequently have foreign titles. Princesses,
marchionesses, countesses, and baronesses there are who are well known
to the international police, and who yet continue to live luxuriously
year in, year out, on a methodical system of fraud.
Few of them are young--many of them are middle-aged, and some are
elderly. But they rarely fail to pay their expenses, though they may
fail to pay the tradespeople they honour with their patronage. Even in
this matter, however, they are careful, and avoid, if they possibly can,
any transaction with a shopkeeper which might lead to the publicity of
the police court A charge of swindling would be inconvenient. It would
necessitate the adoption of a new title, and that would be awkward,
because the majority of these adventuresses are too well known to
certain people in fashionable resorts to be able to change a title
without exciting suspicion.
One of the most brilliant adventuresses of recent years posed as a
philanthropist, and visited town after town in furtherance of her
philanthropic scheme. She was received with open arms by clergymen, and
on two occasions was entertained by local mayors. She might have gone
on posing as a philanthropist looking about for a deserving charity on
which to bestow a vast sum of money, if she had not allowed herself the
indiscretion of falling in love with and marrying a young man who was
supposed to be the son of an English nobleman. It was when the police
got on the track of the Hon. Mr. Dash, eldest son of Lord Fourstars, and
made a descent upon his rooms at a fashionable hotel, that one of the
detectives was struck by the resemblance the Hon. Mrs. Dash bore to a
woman who had been through his hands some years previously.
The astonishment of the newly married couple, who were on their
honeymoon, was not so much at the arrest as at the discovery that they
had both deceived each other. In the lady's case the force of the blow
was somewhat mitigated by the fact that she had not really lost a title.
She had a previous husband somewhere in the colonies.
Both these swindlers met each other first at a fashionable hotel in
London. There was some excuse for the man being taken in. When he met
the lady she was in the company of a colonial bishop and his wife, with
whom she had established quite a friendly intimacy.
With one dangerous type of hotel adventuress--the lady with a husband
who arrives unexpectedly and late at night from America--I need not
deal. But good round sums have been parted with again and again by
quite innocent victims to avoid a scandal. It is at the hotel that the
wonderful tale is frequently told which never seems to fail to find
victims. It is the story of the fortune that is coming. The idea of
great expectations appeals at once to the cupidity of certain natures.
I know at the present moment a simple-minded couple who have as their
guest in their pretty country home a young lady who came to stay a week,
and has already stayed three months. The parties met at a London
hotel. The young lady made the acquaintance of the country couple, and
gradually took them into her confidence. She was the niece of a wealthy
Australian, an elderly widower, who had died in London without a will.
Her mother was the Australian's only sister, and he had no other
relatives. Something like a million of money was involved. On the news
of his death reaching Melbourne, the young lady--her mother being in
ill-health--had come to London to claim the fortune.
The reader will guess the end of the story. It is as old as the hills.
Every now and then it is told in the police court, but as a rule it
continues to impose upon its dupes until the impostor has got all that
is to be had, and conveniently disappears.
The plot is simple. There are trouble and expense. The available funds
have run low, and unless a remittance arrives from somewhere a very long
way off, the legal process of claiming the fortune will be delayed. The
delay is dangerous. Another claimant who has no earthly right has turned
up, and, having money, is forging ahead. A million may be lost for
a hundred pounds or so of ready money. The dupes, encouraged by the
promise of a bounteous gift when the fortune has been secured, find that
hundred or so.
Then a further difficulty occurs. Lawyers' letters, sometimes deeds, are
shown, and the victims are bled afresh. To save the loss of the hundred
pounds parted with, hundreds more are advanced. Sometimes the bubble
bursts in a few weeks. Sometimes it remains floating gracefully for a
couple of years.
The people I know have advanced five hundred pounds, and the young lady
is still their honoured guest. They refuse to have their faith shaken
in her, or to request her to find hospitality elsewhere. They cling to
their belief in the plausible adventuress. To acknowledge to themselves
that they had been duped would mean to recognize that they had lost five
hundred pounds. Human nature is always human nature, and hope springs
eternal in the human breast. It is the hope of ultimate success that
causes millions of good money to be flung after bad, and keeps the
Bankruptcy Court busy.
*****
A mystery that still remains unravelled had its first scene in a London
hotel. A young man of fortune, an inebriate, was staying in one. There
he met two young men of apparently good social position who were just
starting for a European trip.
These men fired the imagination of their new acquaintance. He had better
come with them.
The young man consented, informed his friends and his solicitor of his
intention, and started, taking with him letters of credit for a large
amount.
Two or three communications were received from him from various parts of
the Continent. The last letter was from a small Spanish town. After that
he only telegraphed when he wanted more money sent out.
He telegraphed from a Spanish sea-coast town for such a large sum of
money to be sent, that the solicitor who had charge of his affairs
felt it his duty to consult a relative with whom the young man was not
friendly, but who was his next-of-kin.
A suspicion seems to have crossed the minds of both that something was
wrong, and the British Consul in the town was communicated with. He went
to the hotel to which the money was to be sent, and having been supplied
with a photograph of Mr. ------ by the solicitor, asked to see him.
The proprietor of the hotel recognized the portrait, said
Mr. ------ was staying there, but was out with two friends.
That evening when the consul called again he saw the two friends. They
appeared to be very distressed. They stated that Mr. ------ had been
drinking heavily. While out together walking by the shore he had
suddenly left them and disappeared. They had made every effort to find
him, but had failed, and they feared he must have made his way to a
lonely part of the coast and drowned himself.
That was the last that was ever heard of the missing young man who went
travelling with two strangers he met at a London hotel.
Whether they would have taken possession of the money had it been sent
it was impossible to say. And there was no proof forthcoming that they
had anything to do with the disappearance of Mr. ------, though there
is very little doubt they had the bulk of the large sum of money he took
with him.
* * * * *
There is one feature of the fashionable hotel which is not strictly
confined to those who live in it. That is the use made by swindlers of
the stamped hotel paper. Thomas, the man who committed the crimes for
which the unfortunate Mr. Beck suffered so cruelly, wrote nearly all his
letters on the note-paper of fashionable hotels. He simply walked in,
sat down at a writing-table, and had at once a good address with which
to inspire his victims with confidence.
On the strength of that hotel note-paper he was accepted by experienced
women of the world as an English nobleman of vast fortune. The
fashionable hotel is the happy hunting ground of the most dangerous
criminals known and unknown to the police.