True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office Part 13

"I found out afterwards," she said, apparently somewhat encouraged, "that his first wife was a nurse maid in London."

"Yes," said I, "he told me so himself."

Just then there came a knock at my door and O'Toole appeared.

"How are you, Counsellor," he said with a grin. "You know Charley Nevers, well, av all the pious frauds! Say, Counsellor, ain't he the cute feller! What do you suppose, now? I got his record to-day. Cast yer eye over it."

I did. This is it:

No. 98

No. B 7721

The Central Office,

Bureau of Detectives,

Police Department of the City of New York,

300 Mulberry Street.

Name........................Charles Francois

Alias.......................Count de Nevers

Date of Arrest..............1903

Place of Arrest.............London, England

Cause of Arrest.............False Pretenses

Name of Court...............Sessions

To what Prison..............Penal Servitude

Term of Imprisonment........Eighteen months.

REMARKS: Fraudulently obtained motor-car in London under pretense that he was Charles Duke de Nevers, son of Oscar, Prince de Nevers."

"So he's an ex-convict!" I exclaimed.

"He's more than that!" cried O'Toole. "He's a bir-rd!"

I turned to Mrs. de Nevers or whoever she legally was.

"How did he come to do such a foolish thing as to offer to go on the bail bond of a perfect stranger? What good could it do him? He was sure to be caught."

"I don't know," said she. "He was always doing things like that. He wanted to seem fine and grand, I guess. We always travelled in style. Why, the afternoon he signed the bond he came home and told me how the police had been troubling a gentleman who had a lady with him in an automobile and how he was able to settle the whole affair without the slightest difficulty and send them on their way. He was quite pleased about it."

"But why do you suppose be did it?"

"He just thought he'd do 'em a favor," suggested O'Toole, "and in that way get in wid 'em an' take their money later, mebbe!"

"Who is he? Do you know?" I asked the girl.

"I haven't the vaguest idea!" she sighed.

A week later Charles Julius Francis stood at the bar of justice convicted of perjury. His degradation had wrought no change in the dignity of his bearing or the impa.s.siveness of his general appearance, and he received the sentence of the Court without a tremor, and with shoulders thrown back and head erect as befitted a scion of a n.o.ble house.

"There's just one thing for me to do with you, Charles Francis," said the Judge rudely, "And that is to send you to State Prison for a term of five years at hard labor."

Francis made no sign.

"There is one other thing I should like to know, however," continued His Honor, "And that is who you really are."

The prisoner bowed slightly.

"I am Charles Julius Francis," he replied quietly, "Duc de Nevers, and Commander of the Legion of Honor."

VIII

A Finder of Missing Heirs

The professional prosecutor is continually surprised at the insignificant amount of crime existing in comparison with the extraordinary scope of criminal opportunity. To be sure, the number of crimes actually detected is infinitesimal as contrasted with those committed, but even so the conviction constantly grows that the world is astonishingly honest when one considers the unlikelihood that any specific prospective offence will be discovered. How few dishonest servants there are, for example, out of the million or so composing that cla.s.s of persons who have an unlimited opportunity to snap up not only unconsidered trifles, but personal property of great value. The actual honesty of the servants is probably greater than that of the masters-in the final a.n.a.lysis.

Men are not only "presumed to be innocent" in the eyes of the law, but are found to be so, as a matter of daily experience, so far as honesty in the ordinary affairs of life is concerned, and the fact that we rely so implicitly upon the truthfulness and integrity of our fellows is the princ.i.p.al reason why violations of this imperative social law should be severely dealt with. If it were possible adequately to determine or deal with any such issue mere lying should be made a crime.

It is matter of constant wonder that shrewd business men will put through all sorts of deals, when thousands of dollars are at stake, relying entirely upon the word of some single person, whom they do not in fact know. John Smith is looking for a house. He finds one he likes with an old lady, who says her name is Sarah Jones, living in it, and offers her forty thousand dollars for her real estate. She accepts. His lawyer searches the t.i.tle and finds that Sarah Jones is the owner of record. The old lady is invited to the lawyer's office, executes a warranty deed, and goes off with the forty thousand dollars. Now in a great number of instances no one really knows whether the aged dame is Sarah Jones or not; and she perhaps may be, and sometimes is, only the caretaker's second cousin, who is looking after the house in the latter's absence.

There are thousands of acres of land and hundreds of millions of money waiting at compound interest to be claimed by unknown heirs or next of kin. Even if the real ones cannot be found one would think that this defect could be easily supplied by some properly ingenious person.

"My Uncle Bill went to sea in '45 and was never heard from again. Will you find out if he left any money?" wrote a client to the author. Careful search failed to reveal any money. But if the money had been found first how easy it would have been to turn up a nephew! Yet the industry of producing properly authenticated nephews, heirs, legatees, next of kin and claimants of all sorts has never been adequately developed. There are plenty of "agents" who for a moderate fee will inform you whether or not there is a fortune waiting for you, but there is no agency within the writer's knowledge which will supply an heir for every fortune. From a business point of view the idea seems to have possibilities.

Some few years after the Civil War a Swede named Ebbe Petersen emigrated to this country to better his condition. Fortune smiled upon him and he ama.s.sed a modest bank account, which, with considerable foresight, he invested in a large tract of unimproved land in the region known as "The Bronx," New York City.

In the summer of 1888 Petersen determined to take a vacation and revisit Sweden, and accordingly deeded all his real estate to his wife. Just before starting he decided to take his wife and only child, a little girl of ten or twelve, with him. Accordingly they set sail from Hoboken Sat.u.r.day, August 11, upon the steamer Geiser, of the Thingvalla Line, bound for Copenhagen. At four o'clock Tuesday morning, at a point thirty miles south of Sable Island and two hundred miles out of Halifax, the Geiser, in the midst of a thick fog, crashed suddenly into a sister ship, the Thingvalla, of the same line, and sank. The Thingvalla was herself badly crippled, but, after picking up thirty-one survivors, managed to limp into Halifax, from which port the rescued were brought to New York. Only fourteen of the Geiser's pa.s.sengers had been saved and the Petersens were not among them. They were never heard of again, and no relatives came forward to claim their property, which, happening to be in the direct line of the city's development, was in course of time mapped out into streets and house lots and became exceedingly valuable. Gradually houses were built upon it, various people bought it for investment, and it took on the look of other semi-developed suburban property.

In the month of December, 1905, over seventeen years after the sinking of the Geiser, a lawyer named H. Huffman Browne, offered to sell "at a bargain" to a young architect named Benjamin Levitan two house lots adjacent to the southwest corner of One Hundred and Seventy-fourth Street and Monroe Avenue, New York City. It so happened that Browne had, not long before, induced Levitan to go into another real-estate deal, in which the architect's suspicions had been aroused by finding that the property alleged by the lawyer to be "improved" was, in fact, unbuilt upon. He had lost no money in the original transaction, but he determined that no such mistake should occur a second time, and he accordingly visited the property, and also had a search made of the t.i.tle, which revealed the fact that Browne was not the record owner, as he had stated, but that, on the contrary, the land stood in the name of "William R. Hubert."

It should be borne in mind that both the parties to this proposed transaction were men well known in their own professions. Browne, particularly, was a real-estate lawyer of some distinction, and an editor of what were known as the old "New York Civil Procedure Reports." He was a middle-aged man, careful in his dress, particular in his speech, modest and quiet in his demeanor, by reputation a gentleman and a scholar, and had practised at the New York bar some twenty-five years.

But Levitan, who had seen many wolves in sheep's clothing, and had something of the Sherlock Holmes in his composition, determined to seek the advice of the District Attorney, and having done so, received instructions to go ahead and consummate the purchase of the property. He, therefore, informed Browne that he had learned that the latter was not the owner of record, to which Browne replied that that was true, but that the property really did belong to him in fact, being recorded in Hubert's name merely as a matter of convenience (because Hubert was unmarried), and that, moreover, he, Browne, had an unrecorded deed from Hubert to himself, which he would produce, or would introduce Hubert to Levitan and let him execute a deed direct. Levitan a.s.sented to the latter proposition, and the fourteenth of December, 1905, was fixed as the date for the delivery of the deeds and the payment for the property.

At two o'clock in the afternoon of that day Browne appeared at Levitan's office (where a detective was already in attendance) and stated that he had been unable to procure Mr. Hubert's personal presence, but had received from him deeds, duly executed, to the property. These he offered to Levitan. At this moment the detective stepped forward, took possession of the papers, and invited the lawyer to accompany him to the District Attorney's office. To this Browne offered no opposition, and the party adjourned to the Criminal Courts Building, where Mr. John W. Hart, an a.s.sistant District Attorney, accused him of having obtained money from Levitan by means of false pretences as to the ownership of the property, and requested from him an explanation. Browne replied without hesitation that he could not understand why this charge should be made against him; that he had, in fact, received the deeds from Mr. Hubert only a short time before he had delivered them to Levitan; that Mr. Hubert was in New York; that he was the owner of the property, and that no fraud of any sort had been attempted or intended.

Mr. Hart now examined the supposed deeds and found that the signatures to them, as well as the signatures to a certain affidavit of t.i.tle, which set forth that William R. Hubert was a person of substance, had all been executed before a notary, Ella F. Braman, on that very day. He therefore sent at once for Mrs. Braman who, upon her arrival, immediately and without hesitation, positively identified the defendant, H. Huffman Browne, as the person who had executed the papers before her an hour or so before. The case on its face seemed clear enough. Browne had apparently deliberately forged William R. Hubert's name, and it did not even seem necessary that Mr. Hubert should be summoned as a witness, since the property was recorded in his name, and Browne himself had stated that Hubert was then actually in New York.