Twenty-five years in the Secret Service: The recollections of a spy

by Henri Le Caron

The career of Cross would supply material for a most exciting novel. He always went in for “big things,” as he phrased it. Nothing troubled him more than the fact that he was then undergoing punishment for a small affair which he contemptuously referred to as being too paltry altogether for association with him. Perhaps the “biggest thing” he ever did was the forgery of a cheque for £80,000 in Liverpool, and his escape with the booty. Like many other talented criminals, if he had but turned his ability to proper account, he would undoubtedly have won a place and name in the foremost ranks of honest men to-day. He planned his enterprises with the most consummate care, and worked them out for months before reaching the final stage. An illustration of his method was very well afforded by his forgery on the Park National Bank of New York.

Determining to commit a forgery on this bank, he set to work to obtain the needful introduction and guarantee for his accomplice, who should eventually present the forged cheque. He, by the way, never presented a forged cheque himself—this was always the work of an accomplice. In order, therefore, to obtain the introduction to the bank, he opened some business with a certain firm of brokers in Wall Street who happened to “deposit” at the particular bank in question. In this way he ran up an account for a respectable sum, to obtain the repayment for which he one day went to the office in Wall Street accompanied by one Simmons, the accomplice in the future forgery. The cheque—a draft for twelve hundred dollars—was duly drawn, when Cross asked his friend Simmons to go to the bank to cash it, requesting in a free-and-easy way that the broker might send one of his clerks with him to identify Simmons, he being a stranger. No suspicion was indulged in—there was no ground for such, and the request was willingly complied with. Simmons, coached by Cross beforehand, had a hundred-dollar bill in his pocket, the use for which will be apparent in a moment. When the clerk and he reached the bank, the necessary introduction took place; and in reply to the usual question how he wished the money, Simmons replied, “In hundred-dollar bills.” As the clerk counted the notes, Simmons drew his bill out of his pocket, and mixing all up as he stood aside to check his payment, he recalled the clerk’s attention by the announcement that he had given him thirteen instead of twelve bills. The clerk indignantly protested he had made no mistake. Simmons, playing the rôle of honest man, became distressed, the manager was appealed to, one of the notes eventually received back, and Simmons retired, the recipient of most fulsome thanks, his character and reputation fully established in the minds of the banking officials. Of course the clerk was one hundred dollars to the good at the end of the day, but Simmons’ claim to honesty in no way suffered by the fact, as no one for a moment thought of a plot.

Content to lose the hundred-dollar bill, in the promise of things to come, Cross continued his legitimate traffic with the brokers, Simmons, on the most friendly terms at the bank, cashing the cheques, which increased in amount as the time passed. Months had passed, and nothing of an illegal nature had been attempted, when at the end of the fifth month a genuine cheque for thirty dollars was by Cross changed to 30,000, and cashed by Simmons without the slightest hesitation or suspicion at the bank, both Cross and he escaping with the booty.

Many and varied as were Cross’s tricks with his pen, none was more daring or successful than that which led to his escape from Sing-Sing Prison, that famous home of criminals in New York. Obtaining through outside agency a printed and properly headed sheet of note-paper and envelope from the Governor of the States’ Office at Albany, he actually forged the order for his own release, had it posted formally from Albany, and, on its receipt, obtained his freedom without provoking the slightest suspicion or inquiry.

I am glad to say that Colonel Cross still lives, and is now working out an honest existence under another name in the north-west of America.

My life at the Illinois Penitentiary was crowded with incidents, and little leisure was left me. Where real sickness did not exist, shamming and malingering in their most ingenious phases were resorted to. I was amazed at the talent brought to bear upon their attempts to escape work by those with whom I had to deal. Some of the methods adopted were simply marvellous in their conception and execution. A more quick-witted lot of men it has never been my fate to meet. Every twist and turn of daily life was subordinated to the needs of the trickster, and not one single daily incident seemed to be without its possibility of application, either to assist in the attempt to shirk work or to escape from imprisonment altogether. Nothing in this way impressed me more than the case of a man known as Joe Devine, an eminent hotel sneak thief, some two-and-thirty years of age, and of very distinguished appearance.

It happened that one afternoon about five o’clock a negro prisoner died of consumption. It was the practice to bury the dead immediately the coffin was made ready; but, owing to the fact that the coffin in this case was not ready till after the prison gates had been locked for the night, the burial had to be postponed till the following morning.

Under the circumstances, I arranged that the coffin with the body enclosed should remain for the night in the prison bath-room. This Joe Devine of whom I speak happened to be in charge of the bath-room at this period, and it therefore became his duty to see that proper arrangements were made for the disposal of the coffin for the night. Early the next morning, as was customary, Devine and some of his fellow-prisoners were allowed out of their cells some little time before the others, in order to prepare the bath-room and other places for their use. With assistance Devine unscrewed the coffin, took the dead negro out, and concealed himself in his place, not, however, before he had worn down the thread of the screws in the lid, so that they could be thrust out with a heavy push from the inside. The time for the funeral arrived in due course, and the coffin was removed in a little cart accompanied by two prisoners whose time was nearly expired, and who were therefore trusted outside the gates of the prison (being known by the name of “trusties”), together with the clergyman of the jail.

Nothing happened till the grave was reached, when Devine, presumably concluding that it would be dangerous to remain longer where he was, burst the lid of the coffin and jumped out, immediately starting off at a run. The clergyman and “trusties” being too horrified to offer any resistance, he escaped without molestation. The first I heard of the matter was on the return of the clergyman and the “trusties” with the news that the man had come to life; but, as they explained in their horrified way, he was white, not a nigger! The roll was called, and Devine was missing; so we concluded he was the white man in question. We then set to work to find the corpse of the poor negro. For two hours the prisoners searched up and down without any result. Eventually, however, the body was discovered underneath a pile of towels in one of the box-seats of the bath-room, the corpse being doubled up in two, the head and feet meeting, in order to permit of its being concealed in its narrow hiding-place.

Another escape equally effective, for the moment at least, was that of a man known as Bill Forester, a notorious bank robber, and one of the suspected murderers of Nathan the Jew, whose death in New York created a profound interest at the time. Forester, fortunately for himself, selected as his medium of exit one of the many boxes employed by Mack & Co., contractors for shoe-making, who employed some four hundred of the convicts. Surrounded and hedged in between boots and shoes, in one of the large boxes used for their transport, Forester passed through the prison gates in one of Mack’s vans, and not till he had got a distance of a mile and a half from the jail did he venture to emerge from his hiding-place. His liberty, however, proved to be only of a temporary character, for, caught in another State a little later, the enterprising burglar was again arrested, and carried back to the Penitentiary to complete his term of imprisonment.