CHAPTER XXI.
THE EGYPTIANS PASS OVER THE RED SEA AND THE HEBREWS ARE DROWNED THEREIN.
All the details of events leading through the long Summer and Autumn
days of 1872 up to the hour when the golden shower began to fall on us
are of intense, almost dramatic, interest. I will not, however, lengthen
the narrative by giving here any further account of them, but will
merely relate the story of the last five days before the actual
presentation of our home-brewed acceptances.
The bank had been discounting for weeks comparatively large sums for me.
Many thousand pounds of the genuine article discounted had matured and
been paid, and more thousands were still in the vaults, awaiting
maturity, and would fall due, while our home-manufactured bills would be
laid away in the vaults, there to remain for four or five months until
due. Of course a full month or two months before that we could pack our
baggage and be on the other side of the world; I on some hacienda in
Mexico, George and Mac at some fashionable resort in Florida. They soon
to knock at the gates of the Four Hundred, I to spend a year or two in
Mexico, playing "grand senor," until, under the skillful management of
our friends, Irving, Stanley and White, at Police Headquarters in New
York, the affair had blown over, and they invited me to return.
But, as the sequel will show, the reality took on a different complexion
from the ideal.
[Illustration: BOW STREET POLICE STATION.]
My credit at the bank was solid as a rock. That means I had gone through
the red-tape routine. It only behooved us to use circumspection enough
to avoid making mistakes in our papers, and fortune was ours. I knew
everything was all right, but George, being a thorough business man
himself, could not comprehend that it could be quite right, and he
insisted upon one supreme test. Any single bill of exchange is seldom
drawn for more than L1,000, rarely for L2,000, and one of L6,000 is
almost unheard of. If a party in Bombay wanted exchange on London for
L100,000, his broker would probably furnish him with one hundred bills
for L1,000 each. But George had made up his mind that as a test, and to
make an impression upon the bank manager, I should go to Paris and get a
bill on London from Rothschilds drawn to the order of F. A. Warren
direct. Could this be done it would, of course, make it appear that I
had intimate relations with the Rothschilds, and as a minor
consideration we could use the Rothschild acceptance--a pretty nervy
thing to do, as Sir Anthony de Rothschild, the head of the London house,
whose name we proposed to offer, was a director of the Bank of England,
and would have to pass his own paper for discount--that is, paper
bearing his name, manufactured by ourselves.
We tried to talk George out of this notion, which Mac and I regarded as
a freak, unnecessary in the first place, and impossible anyhow. But he
was persistent, and I had to start out and try. I expected an expense of
$1,000 and a delay of two weeks, but fortune or the devil favored us.
So, purchasing at the exchange broker's in London 200,000 francs in
French paper money, once more I left Victoria Station for Paris. Once
more, an unwilling victim, I heard the "wild, fantastic, fitful note of
Triton's breathing shell." At Calais I took my place in what the French
call a coupe; that is, the end compartment on a car, which, by paying
ten francs extra, you can occupy alone. It is unlike the other
compartments in that there are no arms dividing it into seats; so one
can lie full length on the cushion.
Before this night I speak of I had cherished a theory as to what I
should do in the event of an accident happening to any train whereon I
was a passenger. In such a case I proposed to catch on to some object
and hold on, leaving my body and limbs to swing freely. My theory ever
since that night has been that I will go just wherever the breaking
timbers and flying furniture send me. I had fallen into a sound sleep
before the train started, and was aroused from it to find myself hurled
about the compartment much as a stout boy would shake a mouse in a cage,
and quite as helpless.
Our train was off the track. My carriage was near the engine, and the
momentum of the long train forced the car in the rear of mine up on end,
and it appeared as if it would fall over and crush me. I thought my hour
had come, and I cried out, "At last!" There was no fear or terror in it,
but merely the thought that after many months of almost incessant
travel, and necessarily of peril, "at last" my fate had come. It had
not. How good heaven would have been if it had sent me to my doom then
and there!
The accident had occurred at Marquise, a small town sixteen miles from
Calais and four from Boulogne, the first stopping place of the express.
It was a very long train, but the carriages were all empty except two. A
heavy excursion train had left Paris, and the cars were going back
empty. What lessened the number of passengers was the fact that it was
Sunday night. The English do not travel on Sundays as a rule. So,
fortunately, a great loss of life was prevented. However, two were
killed and half of the remaining passengers injured. My own injuries
were slight and consisted of trifling cuts on the face and hands from
flying glass. But, far worse than that, I had received a nervous shock,
which took some weeks to wear off, and during the rest of my journey to
Paris and return to London I was as nervous as a timid woman. I stayed
at Marquise until noon, when the express passing at that hour made a
special stop to pick me up.
In our glorious and free country the killing or mangling of a few
persons more or less is of no particular concern to any one beyond the
friends of the victims, least of all to the railway magnate or to his
servant. But in France an accident which results even in the wounding of
a passenger is a very serious matter to the road where it occurs and to
its officials. They always hasten to take the fullest responsibility,
and if attention or the more solid matter--cash--can comfort the
sufferer, he will have no occasion to mourn long. If one life be
lost--even a servant of the road--a strict judicial inquiry takes place
upon the scene of the accident, by a high official of the State, advised
by experts, not as in this country, by some drunken country loafer or
ward heeler, who, all ignorant of the law, has been "elected" county
coroner, and one who is more anxious to procure free passes on the road
than he is concerned for the victim murdered by the neglect or parsimony
of inefficient railway officials.
The road from Paris to Calais is known as the Chemin de Fer du Nord, and
Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, head of the Paris Rothschilds, is the
president of the road. This fact occurred to me within a few minutes of
the accident, and I thought I might make use of the affair as a means to
help me in my business at Paris. I arrived about dark, went to the Grand
Hotel, and to bed at once. My nerves were so shaken that I was timid,
even when in the elevator, but I slept well and awoke at daylight
feeling better.
At 10 o'clock, limping badly and leaning on a cane, I entered a carriage
and drove to the Maison Rothschild, Rue Lafitte. The banking house might
well be called a palace. The various offices open upon a courtyard,
while the whole architecture of the building would suggest the residence
of an officer of State or nobleman rather than a building devoted to
finance. But the currents which centre there are potent and
far-reaching, and come richly laden with tribute from the four quarters
of the world. To win that tribute slaves toil, and, toiling, die, in
Brazilian diamond mines, and thousands of coolies, entrapped by agents
in China and India, enter into perfidious contracts which commit them to
hopeless slavery and send them to wear out their lives in despairing
toil amid the pungent and murderous ammoniacal fumes of the guano
islands of Chili and Peru. The Rothschilds, too, own the Almaden
quicksilver mine and others.
They control the quicksilver industries of the world, and to swell their
abnormal hoard, portentous in its vastness, other poor wretches,
condemned under form of law, are doomed to days of wearing toil, and,
their bones rotting from quicksilver absorption, to nights of racking
pains. So, too, far Siberia contributes its quota of human misery that
the golden stream of interest on century-old loans may have no
interruption, but pour on unceasingly into the vaults of the
Rothschilds.
Alighting from the carriage and mounting the steps with difficulty, I
entered the English Department, and, seating myself, awaited the
manager's presence. He came, and expressing great concern when he
learned I was a victim of the Marquise disaster, asked what he could do
for me. I replied I wanted to see the Baron. He disappeared into a range
of offices, and no doubt told Baron Alphonse I was some important
personage, doubly important because injured on his road.
Soon a slight, sallow man of about 43 appeared, wearing an old-fashioned
stovepipe hat and a shabby suit of snuff-colored garments. The look of
the attendants testified that the deity was before me. Taking off his
antiquated chapeau he began a profuse apology for the accident,
explaining that accidents were most unusual events in France; that he
would order his own physician to attend me, that I should have every
attention without the slightest charge or expense to myself, etc., etc.,
and ended by saying I was to command him if he could serve me. In return
I told him since he was so distressed over the accident and my plight, I
should say no more about either, but as I was too badly shaken to
complete the business on which I had come to Paris I should request him
to instruct his subordinates to aid me in transmitting the funds I had
brought from London back again. He called the manager and told him to
accommodate me in anything, then, shaking hands and with many
expressions of regret, he withdrew.
I told the manager I wanted a three months' bill on London for L6,000.
He informed me that the house of Rothschild was not issuing time bills,
but since the Baron's order suspended the rule in my case, he would
procure me six bills for L1,000 each. These really were just as good for
our purpose as one bill for L6,000, but I had come to Paris on George's
demand that I should procure one bill for this unusual amount, so
perforce I had to say "No," that I wanted one bill only.
The manager began to remonstrate, saying it was unusual, and wanted to
explain the nature of a bill of exchange, but I cut him short, bidding
him recall the Baron at once. The thought of recalling that Jupiter to
repeat an order was enough to send a thrill through the entire staff,
and he instantly said: "Oh, sir, if you wish the L6,000 in one bill, you
shall have it, but it will involve some delay." So paying him 150,000
francs on account, I ordered the bill sent to me at 2 o'clock precisely
at the Grand Hotel, and drove off to the Louvre, where I spent two hours
in the picture galleries. At 2 o'clock I was at the hotel, and an
attendant came with the bill, and, pointing to a signature on it,
informed me it was that of a Cabinet Minister, equivalent to our
Secretary of the Treasury, certifying that the tax due the government
on the bill was paid. He explained the revenue stamp required upon a
bill of exchange was one-eighth of 1 per cent. of the face of the bill,
making the tax on my single bill 187 francs, or about $37. All bills are
stamped in a registering machine, which presses the stamp into the
paper; but there were no registering machines for a stamp of so high a
denomination as 187 francs either in the branch revenue office in the
Rothschild bank or at the Treasury, so the Baron had taken the bill to
the Treasury himself and got the Cabinet Minister to put his autograph
on it--probably the first and only time in history that such a thing had
been done. I wanted very much indeed to keep that bill as a curiosity,
but then the necessity of the time was on me, and I was not then a
collector of curios.
I had been only eighteen hours in Paris, and by a happy fluke the
business was done over which I had counted upon spending a good part of
the month.
When I left London I was all at sea as to how I should carry out the
objects of my visit to Paris. One plan was to procure an interview by
strategy with the Baron Alphonse and try to cajole him, but without
reference, and devoid of all business relations or acquaintance in
Paris, it was at best a questionable expedient, and I probably would
have had a take-down. But the accident at Marquise came and smoothed the
apparently insuperable difficulties in my way. But I have found that
something unusual does come to help a man on his way to the devil when
he is anxious to get there, which he is pretty sure to do, if he is only
diligent and careful to improve his opportunities.
What diligence and strict attention to business do men exhibit when they
start out to wreck their own lives and break the hearts of those near to
them! In a play by a modern writer, one scene presents Satan flying at
midnight over one of our cities, while the drunken songs and joyous
shouts of some gilded revelers rise in the night. The merry songs and
laughter are music to the ears of Lucifer. He pauses in his flight to
listen, and as the songs and shouts increase in volume he looks down on
the revelers and with a bitter sneer soliloquizes thus of them:
"Ye are my bondsmen and my thralls,
Your lives I fill with bitter pain."
And that sums it up pretty well; but we must look straight away from the
entrance of the Primrose Way to the exit.
Well, I had successfully played my trump card on the Rothschilds, and,
not seeing the end, thought I had won, and cleverly won; so before
sitting down to dinner I went to the telegraph office and telegraphed to
my partners:
"The Egyptians all passed over the Red Sea. But the Hebrews are
drowned therein."
Thinking this rather witty, I went to dinner well satisfied. An hour
past midnight the moon looked from behind a cloud and saw me, one of
many miserables, leaning over the bulwark of that wretched Dover
steamer, again paying tribute to Neptune.