Jim and his accomplice met in the former’s room at the hotel soon after, and the package was opened. There were in it two thousand ten-dollar treasury notes, twenty thousand dollars in all; but an unbeliever ought to have been within ear-shot to have heard the congressman swear! He about made the room crackle with electricity.
“Why, my share won’t buy my cigars!” he cried, in angry disappointment. “Sometimes those packages, the clerk told me, contained a million dollars, in one-thousand-dollar bills.” Burns considered it a pretty good day’s work, however, and, having paid the disgruntled congressman forty-five hundred dollars, divided with his associates, and left for New York.
Jim’s selection of the larger package was the most natural thing to do under the conditions, but, as I was informed some months afterward, his eagerness to get the most he could out of the job lost him a fortune. The smaller package contained a thousand one-thousand-dollar notes. Just think! A cool million to be had for the plucking, as easily as was the twenty-thousand-dollar package! But Jim took the matter philosophically. The congressman, however, was quite ready to tear his hair.
I met Burns at the Sinclair House the next morning as we’d agreed, and that night I paid him nine thousand dollars for the two thousand ten-dollar notes. Two days later I gave two thousand dollars to my stable partner, Charles Meriam, with instructions to liquidate some personal notes that were about due. He deposited the money to the stable account in the Stuyvesant Bank at Broadway and Astor Place, where I was a large depositor, and with which I had had many cash transactions. In fact, the cashier, James Van Orden, was my friend and debtor. I considered he would do about anything in reason that I asked. Two days after that I made a deposit of ten thousand dollars, seventy-five hundred of which were the new ten-dollar notes. I passed the money to the teller and went back in Van Orden’s office and told him what I had done. I didn’t say anything of the deposit Meriam had made. The Stuyvesant Bank cleared through the Mechanics and Traders’, farther down Broadway, so I requested the cashier not to send the new bills when he made the day’s clearance. He didn’t know why I asked this, but no doubt believed there was something not altogether right. However, as he was a reckless speculator in Wall Street, and I had loaned him money at times when he was much in need of it, and in fact he was indebted to me about five thousand dollars, he said it would be all right.
“Mr. Miles,” exclaimed my second foreman, John McGurk, as I walked into the stable a few days after my talk with Van Orden, “Charley Meriam has been arrested by Colonel Whiteley, chief of the Secret Service men.”
I knew what that meant, and that there would have to be some pretty tall hustling if I didn’t find myself in the same boat. No doubt Washington had discovered Jim Burns’s steal, and had telegraphed on the numbers of the missing bank-notes and a description of the series. How the clew had led up to me so soon, or rather Meriam, I could not tell. Warning McGurk to keep a close tongue, I hurried to my residence, then at 206 West Twenty-first Street, took from the safe five hundred dollars’ worth of the ten-dollar notes,—all I had left,—put them in my pocket, packed my satchel, told the servant-girl not to admit any one from heaven or hades, and went to a hotel. From there I made a visit to a close friend in Thirty-fourth Street, where I found I could hide, and did for more than two weeks. In the meantime I was kept well informed as to what was transpiring outside. Frank Houghtaling, then a clerk in Jefferson Market Police Court with Justice Cox, daily visited my stables and residence, always returning to the court, thence to my hiding-place in the evening. In this way I furnished bail for Meriam, and laid my plans for getting out of the city on an ocean steamer. I had determined to make a dash for Scotland, where my wife at the time was visiting her mother. The good Scottish people had often invited me to come to them, and I had always promised to. I had to smile when I thought what a mighty excellent opportunity had come to help me keep my word. In fact, I was being almost forced to. Among other things Houghtaling did for me was to purchase a ticket on the Hamburg-American Line steamer Alimania, which sailed from her Hoboken pier on the 5th of July. I was listed as a first-class cabin passenger, under the name of Edward Whittle.
In the meantime Colonel Whiteley of the Secret Service and a safe expert had broken through the iron gate at the basement of my home, having been refused admittance by the servant-girl, and, driving in the rivets in the hinges of the safe, went through all my papers. Owing to my care, Whiteley gained nothing for his pains.
As the time drew near for my sailing I had my Police Headquarters friends clear the way. Jack McCord and George Radford agreed to be at the pier an hour ahead of the steamer’s departure, and on the arrival of my carriage I was to get a certain signal if everything was all right. When the day came, I drove to Hoboken, not, however, without some misgiving that Whiteley or some of his agents would be laying for me. But McCord and Radford were faithful, and when the latter tipped his hat that all was well, I went aboard and, safely in my stateroom, was joined by them. They remained until the steamer sailed, wishing me a safe voyage.
The trip was a fine one, so far as the weather and passengers could make it. Of course I had no way of knowing what the Atlantic cable, that great intercepter of criminals, would do in the way of providing a warm reception for me on the other side; which naturally bothered me considerably. The passengers were for the most part Germans, but there was a sprinkling of Americans and less of Frenchmen, all of whom went to make up a very convivial party, there being scarcely any illness aboard. Next to my state-room was that of an exceedingly fat German lady and her pretty daughter. They furnished me many pleasant hours, the mother being a most amusing old soul and the daughter a veritable young, but accomplished, chatterbox. Both could speak excellent English, so I gathered that they were making a visit to the “Faderland,” after prosperous years in America.
Well, we arrived in the English Channel, and I began to be more on the watch for trouble. Not far off Plymouth a tug was sighted, and, our vessel slacking headway, several officers in uniform climbed aboard and went to the captain’s cabin. I was unable to tell whether or not they were police officials. Presently they departed, when I learned that some of them were customs officers, and others were officials of the Hamburg-American Line.