CHAPTER X.
A NINETEENTH CENTURY PRODIGAL.
Let no man who may be tempted to commit a crime ever fancy that if he takes the first step down hill he will stop until he reaches the bottom. If one of my readers flatters himself he can go one step, with no more to follow, on the downward road, let such an one read this story to the end and then forever abandon such an idea as a fancy born of inexperience. For this history is as a handwriting on the wall, full of warning to all and every one who may be tempted to take one step in any other path than the path of honor.
In 1865 there lived in London a famous Queen's Counsel, Edwin James. Fame and fortune were his. A born orator, a talented scholar, he rapidly pushed his way from the very bottom of the legal profession to all but its topmost height. At 40 he found himself facile princeps of the English Bar, and public opinion, that potent factor in popular government, had already singled him out for the high position of Attorney-General. That secured, only one step remained to place him in the seat of the Lord Chancellor. Truly, an imperial position—one that satisfied the proud ambition of a Wolsey and fitted the genius of a Thomas a Becket. It carries with it the position of keeper of the conscience of Her Majesty, giving the possessor precedence in all official functions over the English aristocracy, next to royalty itself.
But about this time dark whispers began to fly about through the clubs of London. Soon it became known that Edwin James, the Lord Chancellor to be, was in the toils, and it shortly transpired that, in spite of the fact that his income from his profession was nearer twenty than ten thousand pounds per annum, it had proved insufficient and he was heavily in debt, and worse.
It would seem he was keeping up what in the polite language of society are known as dual houses. A woman of brilliant beauty presided over one, and the marvelous beauty of its mistress was only equaled by her extravagance. He also had a fondness for associating with younger men than himself, and had got into a particularly fast set of young lords and army men. At his club he had lost large sums at baccarat and loo, and, in an unhappy hour for himself and his, he stooped from his high position and—miserable to think of—committed a crime. This, in the expectation that he would relieve himself from some of the more crushing obligations he had heaped upon himself, either through the extravagant vagaries of his imperious mistress, or by his own rashness in trying his luck among a lot of titled sharpers. He had among his clients one fast, even madly extravagant youth, heir of an historic name and of a lordly estate. To supply his extravagance "my lord" had applied to the money lenders—those sharks that in London, as elsewhere, fatten on such game. These gentry were eager to lend the young blood money upon what are known in English law as post-obits, which loans in this particular case carried the trifling interest of about 100 per cent. per annum. James was cognizant of his friend's excursions among the money lenders, and no doubt he thought the young spendthrift, when he came into his fortune, would never know within a good many thousands how much he had borrowed, nor even the number of post-obits he had given.
I will just explain that a post-obit is a form of note or due bill given by the heir of an estate (usually of an entailed estate), which matures the moment the drawer of the document enters into that estate. That is to say, the tender-hearted son discounts his father's death to provide fuel to feed his flame. So Edwin James, driven to his own destruction, stooped from his imperial position into what one might call ankle-depth of crime.
How little he dreamed there was a beyond—a huge, seething sea of crime; an ocean whose billows are of ink, and which would soon sweep him from his high place into the black waters, there to be buffeted until, honor and hope all gone, he would, throwing his hands to heaven, with one despairing cry, sink into its inky depths, adding one more ruined life to the millions already engulfed. In that long, sad catalogue of the dead there is probably not one, who, when taking the first step into crime, ever thought a second would follow the first.
But to come back to our gilded sir. He made out two post-obits for £5,000, wrote his client's name at the bottom of each, gave them to the money lenders, who, never doubting that the prodigal son had signed and given them to his counsel, made no question, but gave James the money for them at once. But James had reckoned without his host, for this nineteenth century prodigal was made of keener metal than he of the first. Strange to say, and utterly unexpected as it was to all who knew him and had looked upon his riotous living, he kept his books straight, and knew to a single guinea how much and to whom he was owing.
His discovery of the forgery was accelerated by the sudden and most unexpected death of his father, his return home and stepping into his estate.