In this manner he made himself acquainted with the new grafters, and they believed in him, and many of them never regretted the understanding. If a crook failed to keep his promise, why, McCord was merciless; no less so was Captain Jourdan. Both were counted as good friends and bad enemies. In another chapter I’ve referred to these police officials in a manner to bear out what I say. To me Jim Irving was as “square” as any crooked copper could be, though I will have shown, before I complete this history, wherein he displayed a trait of which I deemed him happily lacking.
With the patent safety switch working splendidly, the crooked fraternity knew just what to expect from 300 Mulberry Street; knew that it was, “walk up to the captain’s office and square it—get out of town and stay out for a while, or run the risk of being railroaded to Sing Sing prison.” It was a marvel. It gave the inventors and the promoters the master-key of the situation. Its intricate details earned golden gain for the Ring and prosperity for the Under World fraternity. The safety switch was unlimited in its power, it seemed. With it a subservient Police Board assisted in keeping the per cent of “rake-off” regulated, and policemen favorable to our pocket-lining were promoted at its bidding. It did heroic service for many years, and brought in Standard Oil profits, was proof against honest investigators who tried hard to break through and put its inventors and promoters in jeopardy, and was practically the only Ring to pull out of the breakers so disastrously contrived by Samuel J. Tilden, New York State’s famous governor and corrupt-ring smasher, and his fellow-reformers. The Bank Ring was indeed fortunate in escaping the dire consequences of Mr. Tilden’s efforts to clean out the cesspool of corruption then underlying the government of New York City.
Those were palmy days, those days of the safety switch, when men without visible means of support flourished about town like green bay trees, and certain police officials of 300 Mulberry Street with “pulls” kept fast horses and elaborate carriages, and dined and wined themselves and friends at Delmonico’s, and sported diamonds in their shirt-fronts the size of English walnuts. How well I remember them! It was all possible while the Under World fraternity was feeding on the public and the police grafters were taking percentages from them—the larceny thief and the bank burglar. The legitimate income of these officials was a mere drop in the ocean in comparison with their private, illegitimate income,—that ever-flowing golden stream, let in at the back door of 300 Mulberry Street; that golden stream flowing from the army of crooks operating in this country from New York Bay to the Golden Gate, from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, not considering a fat goose occasionally plucked from a foreign shore.
To show to what extent Captain Irving would carry out his part of the contract with the Under World men I will mention a personal recollection of the apprehension of Roberts and Gleason for the colossal Wall Street bond forgeries in the summer of 1873. Nearly a million dollars was involved in this job. The story not only came to me from Irving, but I also had it from the lips of Henry C. Allen, the assistant district attorney who had charge of the case. Captain Irving had been asked to arrest the forgers, who were said to be in New York. And what was the result? For three weeks he fed taffy to the district attorney’s office,—one day saying the fugitives had been seen in New Orleans, a few days later that they had been traced to Portland on the Pacific coast; and ere two weeks had passed, clews had been picked up in about every large city on the map of the United States. While this sop was being given the district attorney, Roberts and Gleason were in the city, comfortably living at their homes, or visiting their usual haunts under the very noses of Captain Irving and his sleuths, who, of course, didn’t want to find them. One of the men, to my knowledge, was in a house not more than a stone’s throw from Twenty-first Street and Seventh Avenue. But that is going more into detail than is necessary. Of course, Assistant District Attorney Allen became, not only weary, but disgusted, over this delay, and, half suspecting the reason for Irving’s inactivity, employed a few Pinkerton detectives. In the meantime Irving was unconscious of Mr. Allen’s activity. For once the doings of the agency detectives failed to reach him, and he continued to make an occasional report to the district attorney’s office. One day he came in and said: “I’ve located Roberts and Gleason. I think they’re on the way to Europe. Guess I’ll be able to stop ’em on the arrival of the ship on the other side.”
“Don’t distress yourself, captain,” said the assistant district attorney, quietly. There was something in Mr. Allen’s manner that caused the chief of detectives to cast a searching look at him.
“And why?” asked Irving.
“Because it will be useless,” continued Mr. Allen, with an attempt to suppress a smile; “Roberts and Gleason have been under arrest in this city for twelve hours.”
“Oh,” blurted Irving, while his face flushed a deep red and then paled. I had it from Mr. Allen that the detective chief fairly ran from the office, and didn’t put in an appearance there for many days. Hitherto he had been a frequent visitor.
I have given a bird’s-eye view, so to speak, of the Bank Ring or my patent safety switch, along with which I introduced Captain Irving. To relate all my personal experiences with the Ring would be too exhausting, not only to my patient reader, but to myself. It flourished until Thomas Byrnes became the head of the Detective Bureau, with the rank of Inspector of Police, when a complete transformation of affairs took place. Byrnes grasped the headquarters situation with a mighty grip and administered a crushing blow to the patent safety switch. A member of the Bank Ring said to me one day, while discussing old times, “Inspector Byrnes keeps close tabs on us men these days. A few months ago I took a hundred dollar bill from Walter Brown, a pickpocket, and within forty-eight hours Byrnes called me in his office and said, ‘Two days ago you took a hundred from Brown, didn’t you?’ There was no use denying it, and I owned the corn—I just had to, you know. I knew I was up against it. Well, he looked at me, and said, without roaring at me as he does sometimes, ‘Turn that money in the Pension Fund, and if anything like this happens again, I’ll ask for your shield.’”
It was with this kind of force that Byrnes began his reorganization of the Detective Bureau. Whether in later years he stood true to those principles, I do not know. Never in my days, when he was in charge of the Detective Bureau, did I have knowledge that he was other than honest. I heard rumors of Wall Street deals, but whether they were true or not, I can’t say. He had some very influential friends in the financial district, and I have no doubt they gave him many a hint as to the lay of the market.