The fraud was entirely successful and in due course the letter from Finistère enclosing bank notes for four thousand francs was delivered to the washerwoman and from her passed into the hands of the sharpers whose deep laid plan and transcendent inventive powers were thus crowned with full success. M. Armand Carron heard no more of his orphaned relative.
The most astonishing feature in the "Spanish Swindle," as it is commonly and almost universally known, is the extent to which it is practised and in countries far remote from those in which the trick originates. In one case a resident in the Argentine Republic received a letter from Madrid which he communicated to the press stating that he could not conceive how his name and address had become known. But it was clear that the Argentine and many other directories were possessed by the swindler, for similar letters all conveying the usual rosy stories of hidden treasure had come into the country wholesale. The fraudulent agent had long discovered that the credulity and cupidity on which he trades are universal weaknesses and that he is likely to find victims in every civilised part of the world. At another time Germany was inundated with typewritten letters from the Spanish prisoner, and the correspondent cleverly accounted for his use of the machine by stating that he was employed as a convict clerk in the office of the governor of the prison.
An attempt of the same kind was tried on a Swiss gentleman of Geneva, but it failed signally. The swindler in Barcelona thought he had beguiled his correspondent into purchasing certain papers at the price of twelve thousand francs by which a treasure was to be found, and sent a young woman to Geneva to receive the cash. But the Swiss police, having been informed of the transaction, were on the alert, and when she kept her appointment with the proposed dupe she was taken into custody. An individual staying at the same hotel and said to have been in communication with her was also arrested. The emissary denied all complicity in the intended fraud protesting that she had been commissioned by a stranger she met in Barcelona to convey a letter to Geneva and bring back another in return.
The ubiquity of the swindle is proved by the adventures of a certain M. Elked, a restaurateur of Buda-Pest, who was lured into making a journey to Madrid, carrying with him a sum of ten thousand francs in cash. The money was to be used in securing possession of a fortune of three hundred thousand francs, part of which was lying in a trunk deposited in the cloak room of a French railway station and part in the strong room of a Berlin bank. Elked was to get the half in return for his advance. On arrival in Madrid he met the representative of his correspondent and was shown bogus receipts from the railway and bank. To remove all possible doubt it was suggested that telegrams should be sent to the railway station and to the bank and in due course what purported to be replies were brought to Elked by a pretended telegraph messenger. The sham telegrams finally convinced him of the genuineness of the business and he arranged to meet the swindler in a certain café to hand over the ten thousand francs.
All this time an eye was kept upon Elked by a brother Hungarian named Isray, a commercial traveller, who had come to Madrid by the same train and who on hearing the purpose of the restaurateur's visit had vainly tried to persuade him that the affair was a fraud. Isray followed his infatuated compatriot to the café in a very low quarter of Madrid and arrived just in time to see three men attempting to hustle Elked into a carriage. He had apparently hesitated to hand over the money at the last moment and the ruffians were attempting to get him away to a spot where he could be conveniently searched and robbed. Isray drew his revolver and fired two or three shots at Elked's assailants, but did not succeed in hitting any one. He contrived however to injure the horse and the struggle ended in the three bandits running away, leaving Elked still in possession of his money. No passers-by offered the Hungarians any assistance during the fight, nor did any police appear on the scene. When Elked subsequently complained to the police authorities they simply laughed at him for displaying so much credulity. The victims of the "Spanish Swindle" are certainly not entitled to much sympathy. Although arrests are occasionally made, the Spanish police have never been able to cope very successfully with the ancient and ever flourishing fraud.
Some of the Spanish prisoner's lies are the crudest and most transparent attempts at fraud, but a few are really very fine works of art. An English country gentleman once received the following letter:
"Dear Sir and Relative: Not having the honour to know you but for the reference which my dead wife, Mary—your relative—gave me, who in detailing the various individuals of our family warmly praised the honest and good qualities which distinguished you, I now address myself to you for the first time and perhaps for the last one considering the grave state of my health, explaining my sad position and requesting your protection for my only daughter, a child of fourteen years old whom I keep as a pensioner in a college—"
This is the prelude to a really clever and picturesque story of the writer's adventures in Cuba, where, after having been secretary and treasurer to Martinez Campos, he had subsequently been driven by General Weyler to join the insurgents, and was eventually forced to flee the country taking with him his fortune of thirty-seven thousand pounds. Subsequently being summoned to Spain by the illness of his "only daughter child" he deposited the money in a London bank under the form of "security document." After this we are introduced to the old mechanism of this venerable swindle. The deposited note was concealed in a secret drawer of the prisoner's portmanteau. The prisoner had been arrested on his arrival in Spain, but a trusty friend at large was willing to assist him in recovering the money for the benefit of his child, if only the dear relative in England "would advance the necessary funds for expenses." It is possible to imagine that anyone who had never heard of these ingenious frauds might be taken in by such a plausible narrative, but it is difficult to understand such ignorance. A letter was received from the Castle of Montjuich in Barcelona by a man in Dublin, who showed it to several friends in the city explaining the process. It was new to them all, and arrests of persons who had all but succeeded in completing this well-worn confidence trick are constantly made in London. The boldness of these attempts may be seen in the case of the swindlers who despatched three letters identically the same, to three persons who were near neighbours, residing at North Berwick near Edinburgh. The letter dated from Madrid and said:—
"Sir, Detained here as a bankrupt, I ask if you would help me to withdraw the sum of fr. 925,000 (£37,000) at present lodged in a secure place in France. It would be necessary for you to visit Madrid and obtain possession of my baggage by paying a lien on it. In one valise concealed in a secret niche is the document which must be produced as a warrant for the delivery of the above mentioned sum. I propose to hand you over a third of the whole in return for your outlay and trouble."
The rest of the letter simply contained instructions as to telegraphing an answer to Madrid. The whole was a very stupid and clumsy attempt to deceive, lacking all the emotional appeals, the motherless child, the persecuted political adherent of a failing cause. Worse yet it openly invited co-operation with a bankrupt seeking to defraud his creditors. Nor is there any effort to explain the selection of these three particular persons in the same small town as parties to the fraud, and the only conclusion is that dupes had been found even under such circumstances who were afterward reluctant to reveal their own foolishness.