I insisted that we were doing just what we ought to do, but he persisted in telling me a plan he’d mapped out in his cell, which would take us some forty miles back in the country, and in the very worst direction we could possibly go. Not unlike most men in prison, he was tiptop in building air-castles. He kept arguing until he was about ready to shed tears of disappointment. But I wouldn’t give in an inch. At last I could stand his whining no longer and determined to show my authority. It required just thirty seconds to squelch him and his pet scheme. He never again talked about it.
“See here, Jim,” I said, in a voice that he knew had a business ring in it; “I didn’t come away out here in Ohio to make a blind ‘get-away,’ so there’s two things for you to do—lay aside your advice, or—” and I produced a secret service shield, a United States warrant for John Doe or Richard Roe, and a glistening pair of handcuffs. Amazed at the completeness of my scheme to make certain his escape, Jim “took a tumble to himself,” as the language of the crook has it, and subsided.
When we reached Delaware, the good citizens there who took any notice of us at all, saw, as they believed, a bona-fide officer of the law, stoutly handcuffed to a desperate criminal. We left the team with a liveryman there and money to pay all the bills for its use. He agreed to return it to Columbus, and we, boarding a train, in due time arrived in New York without mishap. Tall Jim was free.
Four days later, to our astonishment, Charlie Osborn appeared in New York, with the expressed determination to remain. He was a good sort of a fellow, faithful and greatly to be depended upon, so I gave him a bookkeeping job in the Brevoort Stables, where he remained until his health, which was not of the best when I first saw him, failed, and he had to seek another and more favorable climate. In relating this story of Jim’s escape, I must not fail to say that I have not given Charlie Osborn’s real name. I did not think it just to him, and again, why should I harrow the feelings of his father, who was a most esteemed citizen of Columbus.
Charlie had great nerve. Not only did he cast Tall Jim from the prison’s interior, but he actually awaited Jim’s coming to the storeroom, packed him in the barrel, put the head in the latter, and personally ordered the teamster to do the loading. Tall Jim easily found an excuse for leaving the shop where he was employed on state contracts.
We saw no possible chance of obtaining the freedom of George Wilson and Big Bill, so they served out their sentences. As for Jack Utley, his father had him pardoned. Two years after Jim escaped, he was rearrested in one of my enterprises and sent to a Pennsylvania prison. After serving his time there, he was taken back to Columbus to finish his unexpired term, but luckily was soon pardoned by Governor Foster.
I well remember how Tall Jim looked, though many years have passed since I set eyes on him. He was of medium height, being a trifle under six feet; of sandy complexion, blue eyes, and usually wore a well-trimmed beard. His pleasing address and ready flow of language made him wonderfully useful in our work of canvassing for lootable banks in Ohio. The only son of wealthy parents in New York, he had been given a thorough business training; but he early developed expensive habits and fast companions, the outcome of which was a twenty-year sentence in Clinton prison, New York. Five years later his father secured his pardon from Governor Fenton, and obtained him a position with Thompson & Company, at Broadway and Wall Street, New York, as a solicitor for their Bank-note Reporter, a publication devoted to the suppression of counterfeit money. This, with a magnifying glass, which he sold on the representation that it was the best detector of the counterfeiter’s art ever devised, was bringing him in plenty of money, and he was on a fair road to financial success, when he met George Wilson, whose acquaintance he’d made in Clinton prison. His good father’s advice went to the winds, and back he fell into the old ways. Finally, he entered into a partnership with Wilson, Mark Shinburn, and Big Bill. They robbed a bank near Rochester, New York, which netted them three thousand dollars. Not long after this I met Billy Matthews and was introduced to Wilson, Tall Jim, and the other members of the Ohio bank looting enterprise.
CHAPTER XXI
JIM BURNS AND HIS CONGRESSMAN PAL
Late in May of 1870, I was driving up Fifth Avenue in one of my finest carriages, for an afternoon spin in Central Park. My name was called, and, glancing toward the sidewalk, I saw Jim Burns, a pal of Hub Frank and Boston Jack, three of the most successful sneak thieves of their day. As an inkling to their right to this credit—from the professional standpoint—I will say that in the fourteen years they conspired together, Hub Frank and Boston Jack were never arrested, and Burns only once. During that time they stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, and spent nearly as much.