Mr. Sutherland had an extensive circle of acquaintances, and, strange as it may appear, he did, by some means or another, contrive to push himself into certain coteries of respectable society, one reason for this being attributable to the fact that he belonged to one or more gambling clubs in the metropolis.
At these he picked up all sorts of acquaintances, good, bad, and indifferent. He picked up also a vast amount of information at these establishments which he made serve his purpose in many ways.
He occasionally lost large sums of money at the gaming table, which had a certain amount of fascination for him, so that he was a frequent visitor to these “hells.” The term is an old one, but it is remarkably expressive.
In the course of play he became possessed of cheques for both large and small amounts, and was, as a natural consequence, in a short space of time very well acquainted with the signatures of persons of wealth and position.
When aground for money, Mr. Sutherland sought the assistance of the Smoucher.
That worthy performed the secret of removing the handwriting on the body of the cheque by some chemicals.
He also removed one or more of the figures, and then wrote in figures to perhaps ten times the amount for which the cheque had been originally drawn.
Mr. Sutherland paid his confederate handsomely for this little favour, and then changed the cheque.
He had done this on very many occasions, and, strange to say, had escaped detection. But the game was a risky one, and it was only under pressing circumstances that he had recourse to this species of fraud; but he was so extravagant, so reckless in respect to money matters, that despite the large sums he gained by his robberies, he was, like most of his compeers, continually in need of a fresh supply of coin.
It was on one of those occasions that Sutherland or Purvis endeavoured to put into practice a robbery on a much more extensive scale than he had as yet attempted. He was not aware at this time that suspicion had been aroused, and that the detectives were at work to run him to earth.