Some time before this, with a skill and forethought rarely to be found in the class he then belonged to, he had bought some building lots near the park. Fortunate, indeed, the speculation eventually proved to be. In the mean time, placing his lots in the hands of a responsible agent, and taking drafts on Europe for his money, he rapidly made the little preparation he needed, and at 11 joined his party, there to receive nearly $200,000 in bonds, and to set out with Mike Hurley for the steamer.
After hurried parting injunctions from the Headquarters men, the two travelers, accompanied by Conroy, to see them off, were rapidly driven to the steamer. Punctually to the hour the hawsers were cast off, and with barely time to say good-bye the cronies parted. A moment after the screw began to turn, and the Cunarder's bow pointed toward England.
Arrived in Liverpool, the pair proceeded at once to London. Hurley, who was as ignorant of foreign travel as of everything else, was easily tricked by some tale of no evening trains for the Continent. Shinburne plied him well with liquor, taking care to mix the bottles, and when he had got him helplessly drunk he took the bonds and with his little luggage slipped quietly off to the Continent, never to see his dupe or his New York friends again.
He went to Germany, called himself "Count" Shinburne, bought an estate and began to exercise large hospitality toward his neighbors.
No man on all the length of the Rhine was so popular as he. No man's house and table, horses and gardens were so praised as his. In the eyes of the beggar nobles of the Fatherland the man who could give such dinners and in such succession, must belong to the choice members of the human race. Day by day Max's position grew more solid. No breath was ever whispered against him, and with a little prudence he might have kept up his state and died in the odor of sanctity. But the taste of grandeur was too sweet, the incense of his little world's flattery too precious to run the smallest risk of losing it. His display exceeded his means, but for nothing in the world would he have curtailed it.
Matters were in this way until he awoke one day to find his account overdrawn on his bankers. Then it was that he began to remember his operation in Greenwich street, and he seems to have thought that if he succeeded in New York, surely nothing could stand in his way in some sleepy town in Europe.
"WITH HORROR THE SISTERS SAW THE COUNTESS AIRING THE HISTORIC BRACELET."—Page [68].
He went to Brussels prospecting, and soon pitched upon an establishment which he thought likely to reward his industry. But the result showed that to walk into a bank when the way was left open, with the authorities anxious to see him there, and to force his way in when the entrance was jealously barred with the guardians determined he should stay out, were two very different things. He made the attempt, was arrested and sentenced to sixteen years' imprisonment. His German friends heard of his mishap, and his glory faded like the early dew.
Naturally, every one thought that the count's career had closed, that the star of his fate had declined, that the bars of his prison house were about him forever. They were greatly mistaken. After some twelve or thirteen years he succeeded in getting a pardon and managed to make his way to America. His first visit was to the agents in whose hands he had left the management of his park lots. He went into their office, not knowing whether or not he was a pauper. He came out knowing himself to be nearly a millionaire.