CHAPTER VII
SOME DISAPPEARANCES
In the last week of April, 1908, a notice was posted on the doors of the London, Manhattan, and Jersey Syndicate, in Moorgate Street. It was brief, but it was to the point:
"Owing to the disappearance of Mr. George T. Baggin, the L. M. and J. Syndicate has suspended operations."
With Mr. Baggin had disappeared the sum of £247,000. An examination of the books of the firm revealed the fact that the London, Manhattan, and Jersey Syndicate was—Mr. Baggin; that its imposing title thinly disguised the operations of a bucket-shop, and the vanished bullion had been most systematically collected in gold and foreign notes.
Mr. Baggin had disappeared as though the earth had swallowed him up. He was traced to Liverpool. A ticket to New York had been purchased by a man answering to his description, and he had embarked on the Lucania. The liner called at Queenstown, and the night she left, Mr. "Coleman" was missing. His clothing and trunks were found intact in his cabin. The ship was searched from stem to stern, but no trace of the unfortunate man could be discovered.
The evening newspapers flared forth with, "Tragic End of a Defaulting Banker," but Scotland Yard, ever sceptical, set on foot certain enquiries and learnt that a stranger had been seen in Queenstown after the ship sailed. A stranger who left for Dublin, and who doubled back to Heysham; who came, via Manchester, back to London again. In London he had vanished completely. Whether or not this was the redoubtable George T. Baggin, was a matter for conjecture.
T. B. Smith, of Scotland Yard, into whose hands the case was put, had no doubt at all. He believed that Baggin was alive.
Most artistic of all was the passing of Lucas Damant, the Company Promoter. Damant's defalcations were the heaviest, for his opportunities were greater. He dealt in millions and stole in millions. Taking his holiday in Switzerland, Mr. Damant foolishly essayed the ascent of the Matterhorn without a guide. His alpenstock was picked up at the edge of a deep crevasse, and another Alpine disaster was added to the alarming list of mountaineering tragedies. What time four expert guides were endeavouring to extricate the lost man from a bottomless pit, sixteen chartered accountants were engaged in extracting from the chaos of his documentary remains the true position of Mr. Damant's affairs, but the sixteen accountants, had they been sixteen hundred, an the space of time occupied in their investigation, in a thousand years, would never have been able to balance the Company Promoter's estate to the satisfaction of all concerned, for between debit and credit yawned an unfathomable chasm that close on a million pounds could not have spanned.
In the course of time a fickle public forgot the sensational disappearance of these men; in course of time their victims died or sought admission to the workhouse. There were spasmodic discussions that arose in smoke-rooms and tap-rooms, and the question, as to whether they were dead or whether they had merely bolted, was hotly debated, but it may be truthfully said that they were forgotten; but not by Scotland Yard, which neither forgets nor forgives.