“Then, with that explanation, I apologize for the trouble I caused you.”
“That removes the last sting,” I told him, and we settled down for a long talk. He recalled the fact that I had commended him to General Guzman and expressed what seemed to be genuine sorrow over the downfall of that great chieftain. Crespo was very different in appearance from the slender young aide I had known in the old days and was now a big, tall, and well-developed man. He had been President before, from 1884 to 1886, as a dummy for Guzman, so he knew something of both the responsibilities and the dangers of the office. His manner impressed me and I took a pronounced liking to him. He said he had directed the Minister of War to buy a bill of goods from me and to purchase all future war supplies through me, and I told him I had already received the first order.
“I want you to be as good a friend to me as you were to General Guzman,” he said in parting. I told him I expected to be in Venezuela for some time and would gladly be of service to him in any way that I could.
A few nights later I was summoned to an adjoining house where I again met Crespo and had a long talk with him alone. He asked me how much I expected to make in my new business. Without going into any of the details of my plans and giving myself the benefit of every doubt, I told him I ought to make fifty thousand dollars a year. He said he did not know whether he could pay me that much in salary but in one way and another he would see that I lost nothing if I would consent to stay with him. Through a visit to the United States shortly before he took the field for the presidency he had learned of the work of our Pinkertons, and had become impressed with the need of a secret detective force of his own. It was the same idea that Guzman had when I became his confidential agent, but Crespo wanted it worked out on a broader scale so that he could be kept advised as to the movements and plans of his most important enemies, and truthfully told of the fluctuations in public sentiment. He asked me to undertake the organization of a force of secret service agents, whom I was to employ and pay in my own discretion and for such time as I needed them, and I consented. A means of communication was established through an unused rear door to his private apartments at Santa Inez Palace, to which I was given a key, and I was to have access to him at any hour of the day or night. I told him, however, that our intimate relationship had best not be known, so that I could keep on friendly terms with all classes, and that I would openly criticise him, and even denounce him, whenever it served my purpose and his welfare.
In the two years that followed the relations between Crespo and myself became as cordial as they were confidential. Though of humble origin, and fully half Indian, there must have been blue blood somewhere among his ancestors, for he was a polished gentleman in his manners and extremely magnetic. He was tremendously powerful and while he weighed all of two hundred and fifty pounds he was so well built and so tall that he did not look heavy. He put me in mind of a square-rigged ship of graceful lines, with all of her canvas set. He could hardly read and write but he had an insatiable thirst for information, and his close friends used to read to him at night until he fell asleep. He never drank to excess; was a good husband and an indulgent father, and the most continent Venezuelano I ever knew. He thought he was honest and he certainly was loyal to his friends and stubborn in his opinions. He was so strong in his friendship, in fact, that he was sometimes imposed on, for with a man whom he liked and trusted he was as credulous as a child. The advice and warnings of Donna Crespo and myself caused him to turn a deaf ear to many of his evil-minded followers but we could not silence all of them, and their influence prevented him from being a really great President. In the face of a danger that could be seen, no matter how great, he was entirely without fear, but he was in constant dread of assassination. He was skilful in the use of revolver and rifle and was passionately fond of firearms, perhaps because of his besetting fear. When the first shipment of Maxim guns was received he had me set one of them up in the yard back of Santa Inez Palace. He examined it carefully, with all the pleasure of a child with a new toy, tested its flexibility and radius of action, and then cut “J. Crespo” with a stream of bullets in a brick wall sixty feet away, and gleefully surveyed his handiwork.
Not long after entering his employ I was instrumental in saving his life. He had gone for an outing to an atto, or ranch, twenty miles from Guacara, which was near Valencia, where Gen. Ignacio Andrade was then stationed. The night after he left Caracas I learned through one of my agents that two hundred men were to start out at midnight ostensibly for Saint Lucia, but when part way there they were to proceed diagonally across the plains to the ranch at which Crespo was stopping, where they planned to capture and shoot him. I employed a dare-devil nephew of Guzman, whom I knew I could trust, to gallop at top speed to Andrade with a letter in which I told him of the plot. He immediately sent a messenger to the President to warn him of his danger, and followed him quickly with five hundred troops. Crespo was found two or three miles out on the ranch, and by his order the soldiers were hidden in and around the farm buildings. When the rebels came up they were surrounded before they knew what had happened. Their leader was shot on the spot and his lieutenants were imprisoned. Andrade did just what any other good soldier would have done, yet it was this act more than anything else, I have always believed, that caused Crespo to select him as his successor, with tragic results. Though deeply grateful to me he considered that he owed his life to Andrade.
Several other plots against Crespo’s life were discovered and frustrated by the effective secret service I had created, and most of those who were implicated in them were properly punished. One of these murder schemes, which proved to be more serious than I at first supposed, involved the telephone in Crespo’s private room. The plan was to substitute for the regular receiver one which looked exactly like it but was not insulated, and then, when the President had answered a call and was holding the receiver against his ear, switch into the telephone the full current from an electric light dynamo, in the hope that the shock would be strong enough to kill him. My first inkling of this came from an American electrical engineer and while I satisfied myself that such a plot had been laid I never was able to get to the bottom of it, though I had an intelligent suspicion as to who was responsible for it.
Crespo was keenly appreciative of my services and was anxious to put me in the way of making a fortune, to take the place of the ones I had lost in speculation and in trying to outdo the King of the Belgians in riotous living, to which I have ever been prone. There were then two lines of horse cars in Caracas. It seemed to me there was a good opening for an electric system, and through Crespo’s influence I secured a blanket franchise that was most sweeping in its terms. It gave me the right to parallel the existing lines and build new ones on any streets that I selected, all over the city, or, as it was unfortunately worded “all around the city.” The only literal Spanish equivalent for this, as far as I knew, was circumvalorate, and that word was used to describe my rights. I was also given the right to condemn waterfalls for thirty miles around to generate electricity. The most desirable of these natural power plants was over toward Macuto, and was owned by one of the Guzman family. I arranged to sell my franchise to a Brooklyn street railway man for three hundred thousand dollars, but when he came to investigate it he found that circumvalorate meant exactly what it said, “all around the city,” and that outside of the lines parallel to the existing street railways, which were specifically provided for, he could do nothing more than build a belt line along the outside edge of the city. Crespo tried to have the franchise amended so that it would give me, in plain terms, just what I wanted and what I thought I had, but the amendment failed of passage by one vote, that of the Guzman descendant, who feared that my next move would be the condemnation of his waterfall. Naturally, the deal fell through. That one miserable word cost me just three hundred thousand dollars. I never have used it since then until now; it is too expensive for ordinary conversation.
In the latter part of 1895 Crespo was asked to revive the concession which Guzman Blanco had granted to the old Manoa Company, and which had subsequently been annulled. This concession, which had passed through several hands and was then held by the Orinoco Company, Limited, took in the entire delta of the Orinoco and covered eight million acres of land, an empire that was wonderfully rich in a variety of resources. Crespo, believing that here was an unusual opportunity for me to rebuild my fortunes and for him to prove his gratitude, notified the Orinoco Co. that he would restore the concession provided I was made manager of it. They were quite willing to employ me in this capacity for, without any regard to what ability I might have as a manager, they were assured of having the government with them, which is a consideration of first importance throughout South and Central America. I was by no means anxious to go with them but I finally yielded to Crespo’s advice and accepted the appointment, though without binding myself to stay more than six months. Crespo gave me, in effect, the power of life and death over every one on the concession, and put me above the law. He instructed the Governor of the Delta Territorio that whatever I did was well done, and that I was not to be held to account for it. I left for Santa Catalina, the headquarters of the concession, on December 17, 1895, the day that President Cleveland sent to Congress his message on the Venezuelan boundary question.