On his second trip in the early winter of 1872, Arnold went direct to London, and there, while the conspiracy was at the most ticklish point, he threw all caution to the winds. One of the largest dealers in the great metropolis gave the story to the press how one afternoon a rather rough-looking American appeared at his place of business and asked to be shown what they had in the way of undergrade or rather refuse diamonds. He was shown a large stock of South African stones of the quality known as “niggerheads,” handsome enough, but of very small commercial value. The American pawed over them apparently without the least regard for size or quality until he had collected a great pile. Then he asked indifferently, “How much for the lot?”
The trader hadn’t the least conception that his customer meant business. However, he made a rapid appraisement of the stones and gave the price at £3000, or $15,000. To his amazement, the American produced a huge bank roll, counted off the money, had the diamonds packed in small sacks, which he deposited in the capacious pockets of an overcoat and elsewhere, said good-day and departed. In the photograph of Arnold, the English trader recognized his customer at once.
As near as anyone could estimate, about $35,000 was invested in “salting” the claims. To this should be added something for traveling expenses, etc. The men received approximately $660,000. That left a little over $600,000 net profit.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Principal in Diamond Swindle Goes Back to His Old Home in Kentucky to Enjoy Hard-Earned Riches.
Victims Bring Suit for $350,000, But Arnold Is Popular With Neighbors and Forces Compromise.
After Arnold received his final payment of $300,000 he retired to his old home at Elizabethtown in Hardin county, Kentucky, bought a fine piece of land and also a safe, which he kept in his house under strong guard. In this he deposited nearly all his spoils, although he also had a tidy balance in the local bank, which added greatly to his repute among his neighbors. He had a host of relatives in Hardin county, which borders on the primitive section of Kentucky. It was there that the most capable of Morgan’s guerrillas were recruited and there most of them returned. Anyone hunting trouble in that locality was almost sure to find it. Arnold settled down quietly among his friends and relatives to enjoy the fruits of a toilsome life.
His place of residence was well known. In fact, the Kentucky papers gave some prominence to the return of this famous discoverer of diamond fields to the home of his ancestors. When the bubble burst, Mr. Lent hurried to Kentucky, hired eminent counsel—Judge Harlan, later a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Benjamin Bristow, a lawyer of equal standing—brought suit against Arnold for $350,000 on his personal account and levied an attachment on his property. All of these proceedings are set forth in the Louisville Journal of December 18, 1872. Two days later the same paper published a long statement from Arnold, in which he denounced in unmeasured terms the outrage that had been committed on his rights. He scored “Bill” Lent in language of scant courtesy, but of picturesque Western expressiveness, and declared he neither owed him $350,000 nor the like number of cents, or any other sum, for the matter of that.
Arnold went on to say that his safe contained $550,000, the result of arduous labor as a prospector and miner in the Far West, not to mention his bank account and real estate. The sequestration of the same by a shark or an aggregation of sharks from California he looked upon as an outrage unparalleled in history. He went into the diamond field story in detail, denied that he had ever “salted” it or that it had ever been “salted” at all. He appended Janin’s report, the Tiffany appraisement and a long extract from the San Francisco Chronicle to prove that he had turned over an absolutely valid diamond property to the San Francisco and New York Mining and Commercial Company, and that if anyone “salted” it, the diabolical act must have been done after the experts’ examination and by some of the “California scamps.”
Did Arnold suffer any in the estimation of his compatriots by reason of the grave accusations preferred against him? Rather the reverse. They gloried in what they were pleased to call his “spunk.” The old Morgan raiders and thousands of their way of thinking looked with pride, almost with reverence, on one of their kind with nerve and wit enough to make a foray into Yankeedom and bring away more than half a million in spoils. To tell the truth, Arnold was the very hero of the hour, for the old war feeling was still rampant.