Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude

by Austin Bidwell

Edwin James and Brea had dropped out of our lives for good, but as my readers will be curious to know of their fate in after times, I will relate it in this chapter.

The morning our scheme on Jay Cooke & Co. fell to pieces, as soon as the manager left the office, telling Brea he was to pay cash for the bonds in place of the check, it was recognized at once that the game was up, and the only thing remaining was to shield James as much as possible. So Brea left the office, but first instructed the clerk to tell the messenger when he came that he had gone for the money, and would call for the bonds. This was done, the messenger arrived, being accompanied by Detective Elder all the time, and took the bonds back again.

At 2 o'clock James went down to the bankers, where he was well known, and inquired for Mr. Newman. Being told he was not in, he said he had made an appointment to meet him there. Invited into the inner office, the manager asked him if he had any personal knowledge of this Mr. Newman, and James said no further than that he had called and given him a retaining fee of $250, and had engaged him as legal adviser, etc. Then the manager produced a telegram he had received in answer to one he had sent to the Philadelphia house, inquiring about Newman, and asking if his letter of introduction was genuine or not. James read the reply; it said the letter was genuine, but that they knew absolutely nothing about the man, and warned him to be cautious. James pretended astonishment, and feigned to be very indignant, declaring that if Mr. Newman did not put in an appearance within half an hour he should begin to fear a fraud had been attempted. When the closing hour came at 3 o'clock, the manager announced to James that he should give the whole matter to the press, but would keep his name out of it.

So they parted with warm congratulations over their escape, the manager pretending to believe James was an innocent tool, but no doubt with a shrewd suspicion that he intended to have a finger in this pie, had the pie ever been baked and divided. Had the bankers been victimized they would have striven with all their power to keep the fact a secret and forbidden their employees to breathe a word about it to any one. But now the case was different. All the morning papers had long accounts of the transaction. They were absurdly inaccurate, but all agreed as to the extreme cleverness of the manager, and noticed how he had suspected, etc., while poor Elder, who both expected and really deserved all the glory, was not even mentioned in the newspaper accounts. However, his feelings were soon after solaced, as Irving informed us that Elder had stood in on a deal that paid him well.

The $5,000 we gave James eased up matters for a time. Practice he had none, but managed to hold on in the hope of realizing on the Brea will matter, but getting deeper and deeper in debt. One night, four years later, the old lady, Brea's mother-in-law, had a more than usually furious outbreak of temper, and fell to beating the three daughters still living with her. Before it was over she had attacked and seriously injured the eldest, and then flew to her room in a passion. Not appearing at breakfast the next morning her daughter went to her room, but she was not there, and the bed was undisturbed. Going to the room that served for office and library, they found the door, as usual, locked. Bursting it open the poor old maids found their mother huddled in a corner of the room dead.

Truly a happy relief for the daughters. Poor girls, theirs had been a hard life. Every suitor who tried to cultivate their acquaintance had been driven from the door by the mother, who never spent a dollar on their education, and her death found them all unused to the ways of the world. The result was that all became victims of fortune-hunters, and the unhappy ladies only changed the tyranny of an unnatural mother for the tyranny of a husband, who in each case wedded for wealth alone, and all three husbands were uncultured men. What an experience! Two of the three still live. How sweet the rest of the grave will be to them!

The genuine will was destroyed and the "family lawyer," James, immediately after the funeral, produced and read "the last will and testament" of the dead woman. The four sisters and a host of poor relations were present at the reading. When Sarah, Brea's wife, heard her name read as chief heir of the vast estate, she was stunned, but if she was stunned, the rest of the family were paralyzed. Legacies were left to many, small in amount, save in the case of the other three sisters, who were to have a certain tenement and land in Harlem and three thousand a year for life out of the estate. None of those present thought for a moment of questioning either the genuineness of the will or the validity of the testaments, save only a poor relation, a nephew, whose name was down for $500. He was indignant with the old lady and loudly declared that he would not put up with it. The next day he employed a briefless lawyer, one that had wit and brass enough and who had his way to make in the world, and was determined to make it.

Without waiting for the will to be probated or having legal authority to do so, Brea and his wife, the very day of the funeral, moved into the house and took possession. But before the week was out he had persuaded the three old maids that they would be happier if away from the scene of their parent's death, so he had them installed in their own house at Harlem, he remaining in undisturbed possession, waiting only for the will to be probated in order to take possession of upward of $200,000 in cash and bonds still in the custody of the old lady's bank. He had full possession of the house, and with entire confidence waited to be put in legal possession of all. But little did he dream that at that moment there was one poor torn sheet of foolscap in the library, casually thrust in a book, lying completely at his mercy to destroy, if he could only have known it, which was going to tear all his wealth from his grasp and drive him forth a foiled plotter, to become an adventurer and ultimately to perish a miserable outcast.

The executors of the will (the same in the forged will as in the genuine) were two simple shopkeepers living near. Eagan was the name of the nephew, and to the surprise of the executors his attorney notified them he should contest the will on behalf of his client, and warned them to dispossess Brea of the house until such time as the law decreed it to be his wife's property. The attorney knew the standing of James in his profession, and, being capable of pretty sharp practice himself, he, by some extraordinary intuition, boldly asserted his belief that the will was a forgery. The three sisters declared they would not contest the will, and had Brea acted wisely by fixing it up to give the attorney a liberal fee, and Eagan a paltry thousand dollars, it would have ended there. But, feeling perfectly secure, no doubt he thought an appearance of firmness would strengthen his position still more, and he was so rash as to denounce the attorney as a shyster and blackmailer.

The attorney's blood was up; he frightened the sisters into supporting him in disputing the will, and had Brea and his wife ousted from the house and the sisters reinstalled. Brea then attempted negotiations with the attorney. Cautious as he was, he said enough to convince the lawyer that for some reason he did not want the case to come before the courts; still the attorney was half inclined to join hands with Brea. In the mean time Ezra (this was the name of the man of law) had acquired great power over the sisters, and they all looked to him both as champion and protector. He resolved to be protector to one, at least, paying assiduous court to Jane, the youngest. Although past 30 and without education or accomplishments, she was warm-hearted and extremely sentimental, and a thrill went through her tender heart when it became evident that Ezra's attention pointed at her. She quickly made him a hero, and invested the thin-shanked, narrow-chested, waspish attorney with a thousand tender attributes, and when, after one month's acquaintance, she found herself alone with him in the poky little parlor and he asking her to be his wife, her woman's heart overflowed, and telling him she had loved him from the first hour they met she threw herself into his arms, crying she was the happiest and most favored woman in the world. In the midst of the happy lovers' talk she ran to the shelf, took down a book, and, opening it, revealed a soiled sheet of paper and asked her lover what it was. His love had given him a gift, indeed. His trained eye recognized it at once as a draft of a new will, in the handwriting of the deceased mother, and dated the very night of her death. It was a rough draft, but across the bottom was drawn the bold, masculine signature of the old lady. There were no signatures of witnesses, but Ezra was lawyer enough to know it would stand and that it revoked all previous wills. Calling in the two elder sisters he read the will to their amazed ears, and then and there wrote out a full statement as to the circumstance under which it was found. All four attached their signatures to the document, and when Ezra kissed his love a tender good night and went home, he hardly felt the paving stones under his feet, for he had carefully tucked away in the inside pocket of his vest, just over his heart, the little soiled piece of paper which told him in unmistakable terms that his fortune was made, and the wedding ceremony once over, that it was beyond all chance of change.