The next I heard from Macdonnell was that his sister had gone to the custom-house, and, posing as “the wife of George Matthews,”—the name tagged on the trunk,—put in a claim for it. The unsuspecting inspectors examined the trunk in a perfunctory way and were about to pass it, when some soiled linen tumbled apart and out rolled cash and bonds. Of course “Mrs. Matthews” didn’t get the trunk. The Pinkertons stepped in, claimed the property for the Bank of England, and it was turned over to the latter. Poor Macdonnell was disconsolate enough. He made another fruitless attempt to get bonds from Irving, and as a last resort wrote to his old father in Canada. I told Wilkes what I could have done—that Whiteley would have sent the trunk, unopened, at my request, to any address that Macdonnell had given me, and that I was sorry over what had happened.
“He ought to have trusted me,” I said.
“It wasn’t that, George, be sure; Mac was simply knocked out, beaten to jelly, by Irving’s treatment. What a crooked crook that fellow is!” said Wilkes.
“Now that you speak of it,” I remarked, “Irving wanted me to sell the bonds for him—his share; they—he and Phil Farley—divided them—something more than eighty thousand dollars’ worth.”
“And you wouldn’t help him out?” asked Wilkes.
“The devil, no,” replied I. “When I told him that it was Macdonnell’s bonds he wanted me to sell, he denied it. I knew he was lying.”
“The sneak,” said Wilkes, at parting with me. “Of all crooks, Bliss, the crooked cop is the crookedest.”
“Right, Wilkes; good-by. Wait one moment,” I called; “if I can help Mac, I will, but I am afraid he won’t get out unless he can raise the ‘dust.’”
In the meanwhile Mr. Somerville had been doing his best to aid Macdonnell, but Colonel Whiteley seemed to lose heart when no money was in sight for the Washington attorney, and all together the prisoner’s case took a most hopeless phase. Macdonnell was able to give a little information about missing government plates, but it was so immaterial and meant to be so, that, had Colonel Whiteley been disposed to ask for his release on bail, he wouldn’t have dared to do it. When this disheartening state of affairs had been communicated to the prisoner, it was quickly followed by a tearful letter from his father, telling how the old place in Canada had been mortgaged, and that the amount realized, together with every dollar that could be scraped up among relatives and friends, would not make half the sum asked for. Macdonnell actually wept with disappointment. Not because he was in sight of an English prison, for that didn’t frighten him; it was over the perfidy of Jim Irving, his miserable betrayal by the man to whom he had so implicitly trusted the bonds and his liberty. He resolved once more to appeal to the chief of detectives, and wrote:—
“Jim, I appeal to your manhood, your past friendship for me, to give me enough of the bonds to help myself out of this mess. If you must keep more than your share, do so, but send me the twelve bonds I asked for. Again I appeal to your manhood.”