Here they were getting matters down pretty fine, and cabled all the facts to America with orders to look Mac up, also his friends. This information was the fruit of hard work—many blind trails had been followed that ran nowhere.
In the mean time George and Mac had determined to return to America. The last thing Mac did before leaving his lodgings in St. James' place was to roll up in three rolls $254,000 in United States bonds and send the trunk containing them by express to Major George Mathews, New York. He wrapped them in a nightshirt belonging to me, which in some way had got into his baggage. Then he bought a ticket to Paris and sent his baggage over, waiting in London a day or two longer before going himself.
George determined to go to Ireland, and to Ireland he went, and I shall let him in a later chapter tell in his own language the stirring events in Ireland and Scotland that finally ended in his arrest in Edinburgh some weeks later. Mac, before sending his baggage away, had intended to sail from Liverpool by the Java of the Cunard line, and he cabled Irving at Police Headquarters to meet him on the arrival of the steamer. Mac went to Paris, stopping at the Hotel Richmond, Rue du Helder, under his right name, never for a moment thinking he could possibly come under suspicion.
In the mean time the Pinkerton men continued their house-to-house visitation of the fashionable lodging houses to hunt out Mac. This, in huge London, was a Titanic task, but they exhibited a marvelous activity in tracing out clues. In a lucky moment for the Pinkertons, a subordinate inquiring at every number in St. James' place if an American gentleman was lodging or had lodged there was informed by one landlady that Mac had been a lodger, but had left a few days before. As soon as this important report arrived they flew to St. James' place and found the landlady a warm friend of the man they were looking for. The detectives were forced to tell her their business. She was indignant that any one should so wrong Mac, and ordered them out of the house.
They brought the bank solicitors and other important people to see her before she would consent to be questioned; when she did, her information was important indeed. She had seen very little of George, but much of me, though she had never heard my name, but still the detectives knew from her description that the man she described was the F. A. Warren they wanted, and whom to get meant fame and comparative fortune for them.
The rooms had been unoccupied since Mac left and a careful search was made for clues, but nothing was found until she was asked for the waste-paper basket. The basket proved to be a bag, and when turned out some pieces of blotting paper appeared, which, held in front of a mirror, of course would reflect the writing the same as on the written sheet, and on holding the last of the lot to the glass they were thrilled through when the Pinkertons saw reflected there:
Ten Thousand......................Pounds Sterling.
F. A. WARREN.
which, when compared with a canceled check of mine, then in the possession of the bank, exactly fitted it. Here was a piece of evidence, which, if it could be brought home to Mac, was a chain to bind him fast and sure.
Pinkerton and his man started at once for Paris, and going to the American bankers, where most Americans register on arrival, they found Mac's name as large as life, registered at Andrews & Co.'s as stopping at the Hotel de Richmond.
Pinkerton was not long in reaching Rue du Helder, and learned that Mac had left for Brest the night before. In short order he was at the Paris agency of the steamship company, and found that Mac had purchased a ticket to New York by the Thuringia, which was due to sail that very hour from Brest. He did not let the grass grow under his feet between the ticket and telegraph offices, and there he telegraphed the authorities to arrest Mac, but he had a speedy reply that the Thuringia had sailed half an hour before his telegram came. On second thought he quite possibly was not sorry Mac had got off to New York, as it would lengthen out the bill and scatter some of the bank's money in New York.