Second thoughts in a counting-house at Lombard Street ran in the same direction as in the solicitors’ office. It was determined to prosecute Mr. Crapp, in the prospect of his conviction for the good of society.
Within a few hours of the formation of this opinion Mr. Crapp fled from his house, and as a living man was never again heard of. The body of a man resembling him was ten days afterwards washed ashore at Barking Creek.
I suspect that Mr. Undertail’s partner was led by his excessive generosity to warn the wretch of his peril, that he fled in consequence, and that, dreading capture, shame, and punishment, he committed suicide by drowning.
Does the reader wish me to answer the question at the head of this narrative? He is welcome to my opinion, and at liberty to differ from it if it does not please him. I think Mr. Crapp was worse than his clerk; I think that Mr. Croak was a greater criminal than either; but I consider that the vilest knave of the lot was Mr. Snayke.
A GRAND RAILWAY “PLANT.”
DOES the reader know that all the money taken at a railway station is sent up to head-quarters every night? Such is the arrangement. The money is put into a box, constructed as well as may be to render peculation or robbery on the way difficult, if not impossible, and off it is sent. An “advice” is of course also sent by the station-master or cashier from the particular station to the head-office. The money for paying salaries and wages is also sent in a like manner in a reverse course from head-quarters to the tributaries from which it originally came. The chief station, terminus, or office, is in fact the centre of an arterial monetary system. Every thing in the form of cash comes in there and goes from there.
The mode of paying wages, or at least of conveying the wages from head-quarters, is this. In order to guard against robbery or fraud, a list of all the porters, engine-drivers, guards, and other servants who belong to or are allotted to each station for payment, is sent up to head-quarters. On a given day—say Friday or Saturday—this list is taken back to the station by a clerk from the cashier or secretary’s office, who also takes with him the sum required to pay all these servants their wages. The clerk makes a journey from one end of the line to the other, depositing, as he goes along, a parcel of money packed up with the wages-list. These parcels are received from the hands of the clerk by some one who is always on the lookout at each place of deposit, with that eagerness or care men usually betray when they expect to obtain the reward of their industry. The arrival of the cash-bearer is always either known by fixed arrangement or by a special telegram which is sent down the line.
The reader is, I dare say, also quite unaware of the fact that, until a year or two ago, there existed a gang of the vilest scoundrels, who derived enormous gains by the systematic plunder of railway companies. Their modes of operation were as various as the devices of wicked ingenuity could possibly make them, and their ramifications were astonishing to the most practised detectives. Their subterfuges, plans, and arrangements furnished me with many a long and lucrative job; and very many cases, it is fair to suppose, went undiscovered, or even unsuspected. They brought actions for injuries never received, by persons who were never present at collisions or smashes; they made demands for lost parcels which, as an Irishman might be excused for saying, had never been lost; they stole passengers’ luggage; they appropriated goods in course of transit; and they had other schemes of plunder. So widely ramified was their machinery, that in nearly every large station there would be a confederate ostensibly doing the company’s work, receiving the company’s pay, and ranked among the company’s faithful servants. On every ninth or tenth train there was a guard who had a connexion, either as principal or agent, with the plunderers. At the head-quarters of many lines of railway throughout the kingdom—in the secretary’s, chief cashier’s, and manager’s offices of several lines—they had their spies, informers, and associates.
The usefulness of these spies at head-quarters was enormous. Take the case of a pretended accident by way of an example. An action was once brought against a company having its chief station in the metropolis. The plaintiff asked damages or compensation for the injuries sustained through a collision. The company did not see its way to resist the claim entirely, but as they considered the amount wanted by the plaintiff to be excessive, they thought it could be reduced by negotiation. Two thousand pounds was the sum originally asked. The plaintiff, however, in the course of the negotiation, reduced his expectations to 1000l. This was, his attorney said, the very lowest he would accept. The company’s solicitors reported this one day, and were authorised to settle by payment of 800l. and costs. The company’s solicitors thereupon offered 700l. as their very highest figure. If this was declined, they must, they said, fight to the end, and see what a jury would give. It was of course their intention to spring 100l. at the last moment, rather than let the negotiation break down. The plaintiff’s attorney, however, in reply to the offer of 700l., wrote back to say that he had seen his unfortunate client, who, in order to put an end to dispute and litigation, would take 800l., but not 1s. less; and added, that it was useless to negotiate further if that concession were not met at once by an assent. It did not appear, nor was it at all remarkable, that the negotiation should be thus conducted up to the very point at which the company’s solicitors were empowered to settle; but the real cause of the plaintiff’s agreement to accept 800l. was the information he had received that that sum was the most he could hope to get without passing through the ordeal of a public investigation—a test the gang would always yield much to avoid.
It happened, by a singularly fortuitous combination of circumstances, that I had under my vigilant eye at that time a man who was concerned in getting up a forgery. In the course of my watch I saw letters passing to and from the secretary’s office of an important railway. It was no part of my business to report the circumstance. To have done so might have spoiled the game I was playing; so I took no notice, or rather made no sign. In less than a week after the delivery of the last letter, about six o’clock in the evening, my plot was ripe, and I seized my man. Extraordinary inadvertence, and wonderful care! He had destroyed one link in the chain I was constructing with his own unconscious aid, but he had preserved one link in another chain of equal value and utility to his other foes. On his person I found a note, in cipher it is true, but written on paper which had an impression of one of the company’s seals.