This was in October. From the moment of his arrival in the city Coleman was shadowed day and night. Detectives rented a room in a house across the street from Coleman's flat. Whenever he left his home they cautiously followed him. For a time he seemed to be making tests to learn whether or not he was being followed. Sometimes he would enter a large department-store, mingle with the crowds, and suddenly find his way out of a side door into a little-frequented street. But the detectives were equally wily. They adopted various disguises, and never let him out of their sight. After about two months they observed that Coleman began to make frequent trips toward Morningside Park. He made always for the same region, where he appeared to walk aimlessly about, but with his eyes fixed on the ground, as though counting his steps. On the morning of the third of January, during a heavy snowstorm, Coleman was followed to West 155th Street and Eighth Avenue, where, in a little open space near an iron-foundry, he scraped aside the snow, and began a small excavation of the earth. For some reason he failed to find the object of his search, and returned home with an air of dejection. One detective shadowed him homeward; the others did not wait for the falling snow to obliterate the traces of his excavation. They began digging in the same spot on a more generous scale, and eighteen inches below the surface unearthed a glass fruit-jar. The jar, on being lifted to the light, dazzled the eyes of the detectives, for it contained the missing jewels, which for six months had lain there in the earth where thousands of people had daily passed them by.
The detectives, having removed the jewels, placed in the jar a note addressed to Billy Coleman, signed by Dougherty and his assistants, McDonals and Wade, stating that they had the jewels, and would call upon him at the earliest opportunity. They reburied the jar, and restored the surroundings to their former condition. Coleman, as had been foreseen, afterward returned to the spot, and dug up the jar. The detectives were near enough to witness the wretched man's distress when, on reading the note, he realized that the fortune had escaped him and that the prison awaited him. He was immediately placed under arrest, and confessed all. Concerning a few pieces of jewelry that were missing from those found in the jar he gave information that led to their recovery. Coleman was once more taken to Cooperstown, and, with the additional evidence, was easily convicted of the robbery.
Coleman was a man of such remarkable intelligence and engaging personality that Bishop Potter, whose near presence at the time of the robbery the burglar little suspected, became much interested in him. There is no doubt that Coleman was really touched by the kindness which Bishop and Mrs. Potter showed to him and to his wife, and his resolution to reform was quite sincere.
"There is nothing in being a crook," he said. "I am sixty years old, and have been in prison half my life. My advice to young men is 'Don't steal.'"
At Bishop Potter's request the sentence of the court was lighter than Coleman's record might have warranted, and he was sent to Auburn prison for six years and five months, a term which discounts for good behaviour reduced to four years and four months.
Coleman's explanation of the blood-stains which had played so important a part in the various theories of the robbery was one that nobody had thought to venture. He said that before he opened the jewel-casket in the basement he really had no idea what it contained, and when he saw the fortune in gems that had come into his possession his great excitement brought on a nose-bleed.[128] His clothes were so blood-stained that he was in mortal fear of being arrested on that account, but, as he wore a black suit, the stains were not conspicuous. As to the woman's footprints, which the detectives said they found, no explanation was ever made.
Ten years later an elderly man was arrested in New York, charged with robbing a Wells-Fargo Express wagon on Broadway. With the aid of an umbrella handle he had drawn from the rear of the wagon a package containing $100,000 in cancelled cheques—not a very successful haul. His age and apparent harmlessness so much impressed the justices in Special Sessions that he would undoubtedly have been released on suspended sentence had not a detective who had been engaged in the Clark robbery case passed his cell in the Tombs. The detective recognized the famous Billy Coleman, whose police record dated back to 1869, showing thirteen arrests and a total period of twenty-eight years in prison.
Bishop Potter's last notable public appearance in Cooperstown was at the Village Centennial Celebration in August of 1907. He was the most picturesque figure in a scene rich in kaleidoscopic color and historic significance when, on the Sunday afternoon which began the week's festivities, multitudes listened beneath the sunlit trees upon the green of the Cooper Grounds, while the Bishop, mantled in an academic gown of crimson, described his vision of the future of religion in America.
