John Taylor drained a glass of champagne and said his companions talked as though they were Jay Goulds and Jim Fisks.
“What is the deal, anyway?” he added. “If there’s money around, the devil knows I need it! Unless things take a lightning change soon, I’ll have to,” and he lurched unsteadily to his feet.
Chelsea gently pushed the young man back in his chair, and filled the wine-glasses once more. Then he said:—
“I’ve got five thousand dollars’ worth of United States five-twenty bonds I want to sell, Mr. Taylor, and I think you can do it for me! I’d do it myself, only I got ’em in a queer way, old chap, and I want to get rid of ’em on the cautious. They’ll sell easy, and there’s twenty-five per cent in the deal for you.”
“And you know the Wall Street game a long sight better ’n my friend,” put in English.
“I know something about the game in the Street,” said Taylor, with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders. “I might negotiate the bonds if I could see my way clear!”
“Here, fill ’em up again, Mr. Wales!” said Chelsea George, and once more the trio drained their glasses. But the game had been played. Chelsea had brought the bonds with him, and Taylor carried them home. The next day he sold them, and that night he met the two Georges. When he left them, twelve hundred dollars were in his pocket. It occurred to him that there must have been something illegal about the transaction, but to him, then, it made no difference. He must have money. Now that he had it, he was seized with a spirit of exultation. Two-thirds of the snug sum in his pocket would pay off the old scores. These done away with, he would start anew. And, too, the ease with which he had made the money fascinated him. He began to wonder whether or not he would have another opportunity. If the bonds had come into the possession of the Englishmen by fraud, he didn’t know it, so why should he care; he was not supposed to inquire where they came from. He had offered them to a broker of a fine business reputation, and no questions had been asked. Of course the bonds were all right!
As a matter of fact, they had been stolen, and were what is known in the crook parlance as “crooked.” English George met Taylor a few days later, and told him what the bonds were, but did not tell him where they came from. The young clerk, in a measure, was now in the power of the men, whose true character he began to realize; but his craving for money, and their reasoning that he would not fall into the hands of the police, led him to further venture into “crooked bond” selling. Several more deals, of more or less size, were put through without a hitch, and “easy money,” as he termed it, came in his way. But, as is usually the case, it went out as fast, Morrissey’s getting the most of it. There came a time when he was again out of funds, and the Englishmen had no bonds to be negotiated. In this emergency, the evil in Taylor, once aroused, asserted itself with a power not easily resisted. Mad for the want of that which would supply his craving for gambling, the young bank clerk was at the point where he would not stop at anything, short of a great peril that could be seen.
About one year later, Taylor, in a talk with Chelsea George, said, with a laugh that left his listener in no doubt as to his meaning, “What if a box of securities were left in a position in our bank to be carried off without detection?”
Chelsea eyed Taylor in astonishment. He thought there had been a mighty rapid transition from selling “crooked bonds” to putting up a job to rob a bank.