“Just the man,” agreed ex-Judge Stuart, “and we’d better get to him without delay.” I thought so, too.
Judge McCunn was soon found, comfortably reposing in his bed, but was turned out and enlightened as to what we wanted. With much good-natured talk about the audacity of some people hammering at a decent, law-abiding man’s house long after midnight, he issued a writ of habeas corpus as strong as the law would allow, and we were soon ready for the next move. In the meantime a letter to Governor Hoffman at Albany had been given us by Thurlow Weed, another most accommodating gentleman to those in distress. This letter was in the form of a command, so to speak, that the governor hear our side of the case, in the event that the New York police should ask for requisition papers for Shinburn and our sales agent. Now that we had the material with which to go to the capital, the next thing was how to get there, for it was learned that the first train in the morning left too late for us.
“What can be done?” I asked of the judge.
“One thing—get a special train,” was his answer. And a special train we chartered. Not long after two o’clock in the morning, T. P. Somerville, a law partner of the judge, was aboard the special, and, in extraordinarily quick time for those days, was knocking at Governor Hoffman’s door. He, much to his relief, was informed that no requisition papers had been applied for, and that, as a matter of fact, no one from the New York police force had been at the executive mansion or communicated with the governor in any way. However, Thurlow Weed’s letter was what we wanted to fix things with the governor, who effusively promised that requisition papers would not be issued unless ex-Judge Stuart was afforded an opportunity to present our side of the case. And we had a right to be heard, legally, for Mr. Somerville had proof to show the executive that one of the prisoners was in New York when the New Windsor Bank was robbed. So far we had been successful.
There was another trick that Captain John Young was capable of playing, and against which we must play winning cards. Prisoners had been known to be shanghaied out of the state,—practically kidnapped from the protection of the law,—by him. The formalities of requisition proceedings had been disregarded as so much useless red tape made to adorn law books. Young wasn’t the offender in the instance I will cite. It was Captain John Jourdan.
Eddie McGuire, alias Fairy, Rory Simms, and Dave Bartlett “turned off” the Bowdoinham Bank, of Maine, in June, 1866, and got something like eighty thousand dollars in cash and United States five-twenty bonds. Bartlett hired the team used in the “get-away.” They buried the loot in a wood, and in the wagon drove forty miles to Portland, where, scattering, the looters went by rail to New York.
Prior to this the gang had robbed Cooper’s silverware manufacturing establishment in Waverly Place in New York City, and sold the silver to a “fence” kept by one Morrison. For some reason, the latter tipped off Captain Jourdan, who arrested McGuire and the others at the corner of Hudson and King streets. Fairy pleaded poverty to the captain, and having turned over to him what silver they had taken, all hands were released. But there was a string on them. Jourdan forced a promise that there would be a division made the very first “trick” the gang “turned off.” Later they did the Maine “trick.” Having given the job a chance to cool down, Fairy McGuire went to Maine and dug up the treasure, and he and Bartlett asked me to sell the bonds. I bought them outright, and, as was my custom, paid the police the usual percentage, which amounted to forty-two hundred dollars. At the same time I told them that there was more “rake-off” due them, declining, however, to mention any names.
“When they get ready, no doubt you’ll hear from them,” I said reassuringly. Perhaps a week or more had gone by, during which time I presumed the lads had paid the police the remainder of the “rake-off,” but it turned out not to be so. Detective Radford came to me with a tip.
“Fairy McGuire and his pals will be pinched to-morrow by Captain Jourdan,” said he, “and you’d better tell them so. The old man was promised a ‘rake-off’ on the next job after the silver racket, and nothing has been doing. You see he knows who did the Bowdoinham ‘trick,’ for a sheriff was down here with the description of the man that hired the team for the ‘get-away,’ and it fits Dave Bartlett. Jourdan wouldn’t have known it, only in riding in a Fifth Avenue stage the other day he saw McGuire, Simms, and Bartlett in the same stage. They were loaded down with diamonds and heavy gold watch-chains. Worse than all, they never looked at the old man. He got thinking of what had been done in the crooked line to buy all this stuff, and the Bowdoinham job flashes across him. Then came the description of Bartlett from the Maine sheriff. That settled it. So the gang will be pinched to-morrow evening.”
I recollected what McGuire had told me about the meeting with Captain Jourdan in the stage, and at the time I had protested loudly against the boys’ wearing the diamonds and watches.