All first class hotels keep private detectives and watchmen on duty at all hours. The business of these men is to keep guard over the upper part of the house, to prevent thieves from entering and robbing the rooms of the guests. Suspicious persons are at once apprehended, and required to give an account of themselves. Some queer mishaps often befall guests of the house who are not known to the detectives.
Bold robberies are often effected at the hotels of the city. Some time ago a thief was captured at the St. Nicholas, and upon being searched a gold watch and chain, and five different parcels of money were found upon him, all of which were identified by guests as their property.
XVIII. IMPOSTORS.
There is no city in the Union in which impostors of all kinds flourish so well as in New York. The immense size of the city, the heterogeneous character of its population, and the great variety of the interests and pursuits of the people, are all so many advantages to the cheat and swindler. It would require a volume to detail the tricks of these people, and some of their adventures would equal anything to be found in the annals of romance. All manner of tricks are practised upon the unsuspecting, and generally the perpetrator escapes without punishment. They come here from all parts of the country, and indeed from all parts of the world, in the hope of reaping a rich harvest, and the majority end by eking out a miserable existence in a manner which even the police who watch them so closely are sometimes unable to understand.
They find their way into all classes. One cannot mingle much in society here without meeting some bewhiskered, mysterious individual, who claims to be of noble birth. Sometimes he palms himself off as a political exile, sometimes he is travelling, and is so charmed with New York that he makes it his headquarters, and sometimes he lets a few friends into the secret of his rank, and begs that they will not reveal his true title, as a little unpleasant affair, a mere social scandal in his own country, made it necessary for him to absent himself for a while. He hopes the matter will blow over in a few months, and then he will go home. The fashionable New-Yorker, male or female, is powerless against the charms of aristocracy. The “foreign nobleman” is welcomed everywhere, fêted, petted, and allowed almost any privilege he chooses to claim—and he is far from
being very modest in this respect; and by and by he is found out to be an impostor, probably the valet of some gentleman of rank in Europe. Then society holds up its hands in holy horror, and vows it always did suspect him. The men in society are weak enough in this respect; but the women are most frequently the victims.
Not long since, a handsome, well got up Englishman came to New York on a brief visit. He called himself Lord Richard X---. Society received him with open arms. Invitations were showered upon him. Brown’s hands were always full of cards for his Lordship. The women went wild over him, especially since it was whispered that the young man was heir to a property worth ever so many millions of pounds. In short, his Lordship found himself so popular, and hints of his departure were received with such disfavor by his new found friends, that he concluded to extend his stay in New York indefinitely. He made a fine show, and his toilettes, turnouts, and presents were magnificent. The men did not fancy him. He was too haughty and uncivil, but the ladies found him intensely agreeable. It was whispered by his male acquaintances that he was a good hand at borrowing, and that he was remarkably lucky at cards and at the races. One or two of the large faro banks of the city were certainly the losers by his visits. The ladies, however, were indignant at such stories. His Lordship was divine. All the women were crazy after him, and any of them would have taken him at the first offer.
By and by the newspapers began to take notice of the young man, and boldly asserted that there was no such name as Lord Richard X--- in the British peerage. Society laughed at this, and declared that everybody but ignorant newspaper men was aware that the published lists of titled personages in England were notoriously incomplete.
Meanwhile, his Lordship played his cards well, and it was soon announced that he was “to be married shortly to a well-known belle of Fifth avenue.” The women were green with jealousy, and the men, I think, were not a little relieved to find that the lion did not intend devouring all the Fifth avenue
belles. The marriage came off in due season; the wedding-presents fairly poured in, and were magnificent. The new Lady X--- was at the summit of her felicity, and was the envied of all who knew her. The happy pair departed on their honeymoon, but his Lordship made no effort to return home to England.