True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office

by Arthur Cheney Train

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.