The machine was to him as a new toy to a child, although he soon assured me that as a gas producer it was an absolute failure. That afternoon I instructed him to temporarily connect it with the city gas to provide light for the evening, and next day I would go to the company and make a new application to again become a permanent customer. As he finished making the connection he remarked that he thought that it would be a good permanent arrangement without going to the gas company. His quiet remark resulted in my having him, next day, lead the gas from the city main to the machine underground in such a way that it would not be known without a close inspection, and this I did, not to defraud the city, but “to get even” with the company who had defrauded me. A few evenings thereafter the president of this company called upon me, and, after quietly studying my new light for a time, spoke to me of it.
I then told him that I had bought his machine for the purpose of trying a new gas that for years I had been experimenting with. Several other visits followed, and although I was apparently averse to disposing of my new discovery, I finally did so, taking in return first a contract so skillfully worded that there could later be no claims brought against me, and, second, a check for a large sum of money. Had matters stopped here as I had at first intended, all would have been well, but I neglected disconnecting from the city supply from day to day, until finally an inspector, more energetic than his fellow-workers, became aware of it, and this resulted in my very willingly choosing to pay a five hundred dollar gas bill in preference to being openly written up and perhaps prosecuted.
There have occurred other deals of a somewhat similar nature, and generally inspired by the same motive, but this one suffices as an example of those that occurred later. Sometime previous to this I had had occasion to employ an attorney to transact some business in which certain papers had to be signed in my New Hampshire name, and to do this work I employed one I did not know in order that my real name should not be confounded with the name of Holmes, under which I had been known and had done all my work since commencing business in Chicago.
About a year after consulting this attorney, I was called into court as a witness on some trivial case, and while giving my testimony under the name of Holmes, I saw him sitting in the court room apparently much mystified. Instead of denouncing me to the court, as he might easily have done, he spoke to me alone, and, later, feeling he had done me a most kind favor I gave to him the greater part of my legal work; but though he attended to this conscientiously for me as an attorney, he at no time encouraged me to acts that were wrong, nor was he a party to them, and the late newspaper comments reflecting upon his integrity are most unjust and uncalled for.
Aside from this one incident I know of no time during the nine years prior to my arrest that my two names conflicted the one with the other, or caused me trouble or annoyance.
In 1890 I added a jewelry store to my business, and placed Julius L. Connor in charge of that and my drug business, his wife, Julia Connor, assisting him as cashier for a time, who, after the sale of the store, lived in the building and supported herself and child by taking boarders. That she is a woman of quick temper and perhaps not always of a good disposition may be true, but that any of her friends and relatives will believe her to be an immoral woman, or one who would be a party to a criminal act, I do not think. She lived for her child, and her one fear was that she should lose her, and as soon as the daughter is of sufficient age to protect herself, I feel that her whereabouts will be made known. I last saw her about January 1, 1892, when a settlement of her rent was made. At this time she had announced not only to me, but to her neighbors and friends, that she was going away.
At this interview she told me that, while she had given her destination as Iowa, she was going elsewhere to avoid the chance of her daughter being taken from her, giving the Iowa destination to mislead her husband. I corresponded with her upon business matters later, and the so-called secreted letters lately found could only have been obtained from my Chicago letter files, in which hundreds of my business letters were stored away in alphabetical order.
In 1890 I opened an office on Dearborn street, Chicago, and organized “The Warner Glass-Bending Co.,” the principal value of which consisted in certain not very clearly-defined ideas I possessed upon the subject of bending glass for mechanical purposes. This was a stock company, in which I had interested, among others, Osmer W. Fay, a most reputable and honest man (a retired minister), of whom I will speak later in this history. Suffice it to say here that, when I found that he had invested the principal part of his savings in my company, knowing that it would not be a successful business venture to others, save myself, I returned to him his investment with interest. At this time Pitezel was in the same office with me, selling an invention he had lately patented, known as “Pitezel’s Automatic Coal Bin.” I later established him in an office by himself, where he opened a patent exchange similar to the one he was conducting in Philadelphia at the time of his death.
At about this time, Patrick Quinlan, a whole-souled Irishman, had left his farm in Michigan to come to the city to work during the winter months, and commenced his service with me. He soon became almost indispensable, owing to his careful management and supervision of help and general faithfulness, and for several years he worked for me continually, though during that time he did no illegal act nor committed any wrong so far as I know.
Early in 1891 I became interested in one of the most seductive and misleading inventions that has ever been placed before the American public; a device known as the “A B C Copier,” which had been brought to this country from Europe by a prominent official of the World’s Fair.