NF (1998) The Napoleon of Crime Read online

  The Gainsborough was his talisman, seldom far from his grasp and hungry eye, and it was thus with rich ironic pleasure that he read of the continuing saga of the Duchess of Devonshire, who miraculously reappeared time and again, in London, Vienna, and New York, raising the hopes of Messrs. Agnew & Co. and sending Scotland Yard off on a series of fruitless trails. “It has been ‘discovered’ nearly a dozen times,” The Times wryly reported.

  “I believe I have found the missing picture of the Duchess of Devonshire in Ambrose’s travelling art show which was here on May 3,” wrote one informant. On another occasion it was confidently reported that “while a gang of men were engaged in dismantling some premises in New Bond Street … [an object] was discovered in the corner of a disused cellar, and this, upon examination, turned out to be the portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire, which was cut out of its frame in May 1876, and disappeared under mysterious circumstances.” Upon further examination, of course, it turned out to be nothing of the sort, but instead one of the many replicas available for a few shillings. Another correspondent believed he had “seen the thief cheating at roulette” in a London club, a perfectly possible contention backed up with no evidence whatever. One J. Meiklejohn, a former Scotland Yard detective, claimed to have struck a deal with the “custodians of this article” and insisted that “under no circumstances would they part with it for less than fifteen hundred … they would sooner burn it than give it for less.” Needless to say, the negotiations came to nothing and the corrupt Meiklejohn was eventually jailed for a variety of “racing frauds.”

  In a bid to rekindle negotiations for the return of the painting, and presuming the portrait was still in America, Agnew’s had dispatched an art expert, David P. Sellar, to New York, where he placed several advertisements in the newspapers, hoping to reestablish contact with the thief. “Negotiations can be opened for the restoration of the ‘Noble Lady’ who mysteriously disappeared from Old Bond Street in 1876, Address L.S.D.,” read an advertisement in the New York Herald. (L.S.D. referred, as he later explained, to “pounds, shillings and pence.”) A helpful art dealer suggested the message was too cryptic, so Sellar tried a more blunt approach: “New York.—If the present owner of Gainsborough’s celebrated picture ‘The Duchess of Devonshire’ which was taken from Old Bond Street in 1876 will address LSD Herald up-town office, negotiations for its restoration can be resumed.” If Worth was unaware of the two advertisements, which is unlikely, he could hardly have missed the articles about Mr. Sellar’s “secret” visit that soon began appearing in the press. “What his precise instructions are, what price he is willing to pay, and what progress he is making towards the recovery of the picture, Mr. Sellar naturally keeps to himself … he has confident hope that the all-powerful influence of money will secure the success of his visit.”

  It did not, for Worth was not to be enticed, and had no intention of relinquishing his Noble Lady. With each fresh false alarm, faithfully reported back by his spies at Scotland Yard, and with each new attempt to repossess her by the authorities, his affection for the portrait grew and his determination to keep her for his own private pleasure redoubled.

  SEVENTEEN

  A Silk Glove Man

  With his diamond profits, Worth could now look beyond mere bourgeois respectability, toward the life of a fully paid-up member of the English aristocracy. If Victorian mores stressed hard work, dependability, and Christian family values, at least one segment of the elite was nonetheless distinguished by doing no work at all and pursuing a regime of boundless self-indulgence. Victorians talked of duty and morality, a cast of mind perhaps best exemplified by Queen Victoria herself. But what truly distinguished the most conspicuous members of the ruling class was a perfect and undiluted dedication to pleasure. Queen Victoria’s son, later Edward VII, was the most visible exponent of this heady style of existence, in which Worth now participated, as if to the manner born.

  The Prince of Wales and his Marlborough House set (not so very far removed, in its habits and personalities, from Georgiana’s Devonshire House set in the previous century) elevated conspicuous consumption to an almost full-time occupation: shooting parties, house parties, boating parties, trips to Paris and the German spas, gambling, evenings at the opera or more often the music hall, and late-night champagne-doused card parties. While birth and breeding were useful passports to this exclusive world, the only essentials were vast wealth and a determination to spend it on enjoyment. One historian has noted that, “as the first gentleman of the land, Edward’s tastes and habits, including his liking for the ‘nouveaux riches,’ set the tone in high aristocratic circles.” Worth’s riches could hardly have been newer, whereas his taste for luxury was evident to the most casual observer, and he slipped through the barriers of class with consummate ease, utterly disguised by his stolen money. The circle of those who could afford such pleasures was necessarily small, and although it is entirely possible that the future king and the monarch of the underworld rubbed shoulders, there is no evidence they ever met. But there is also no doubt that the highest in the land would have found, in the very lowest, a kindred spirit.

  The 1880s were years of consolidation and prosperity for Worth. He grew portly, and his mustache evolved in shapes ever more luxurious and rococo, for he had become what Pinkerton called a “silk glove man,” a gentleman crook and sporting gentleman of leisure luxuriating in his loot and a cut above the vagabonds and rascals with whom he had once associated. From Hatton Garden, Ned Wynert, now his right-hand man, ran the day-to-day criminal business, while Worth enjoyed his yacht and his horses, traveling whenever the fancy took him, gambling and entertaining his friends, some criminal but many of unimpeachable respectability. To his growing string of thoroughbreds he now added “a pair of the finest horses in the country, having purchased them,” recalled Harold Lloyd, one of the many lawyers on the Worth payroll, “at a public auction, outbidding the late Lord Rothschild and Baron Hirsch.” In addition, “tucked away in the New Forest, he had a shoot of some 400 acres with a nice shooting box, where he entertained on a large scale.” The money flowed in, and just as quickly out again, but “even his heavy losses at Monte Carlo could not seriously affect a fortune which was being steadily increased by all sorts of illegal undertakings.” As yet further proof of his social standing, he purchased “a very fine house on the front at Brighton, where he entertained lavishly.”

  In November 1881, soon after disposing of the diamonds from the South African heist, Worth struck the Hatton Garden post office in central London and bagged yet another clutch of gems. “About five o’clock on the evening of November 16th two registered mail bags containing diamonds consigned to various merchants in Amsterdam and elsewhere on the Continent were sealed up and hung on iron hooks behind the counter of the post-office in question ready for dispatch.”

  As Worth, in disguise, sauntered up to the counter, an accomplice, probably Wynert, slipped “down the steps leading to the basement and turned off the gas at the meter,” with the result that “the office was plunged into total darkness. For apart from the fact that at this season of the year night had already fallen, the fog outside was so thick it could be ‘cut with a knife.’ ” By the time the postal workers got the lights on again, it was too late; “Worth, the moment the gas failed, had vaulted lightly over the counter, seized the bags, slung one over each shoulder, and made his way outside and into a four-wheeled cab in waiting.”

  The uncut diamonds, quickly divided and mounted to prevent them being traced, were then sold just a few feet away from the scene of the crime by Wynert & Co., for an estimated £30,000. The general public was soon made aware, indirectly, of Worth’s heist, for the robbery “had the effect of causing the authorities of the postal department to place in almost every post office the wire-net protection of the counters with which we are all familiar, and from the inconvenience of which we have all suffered.”

  On such special occasions Worth was prepared to participate in the action himself, but m
ore usually he was content to be the financier, coordinator, and chief beneficiary of his schemes, leaving others to carry out the various forgeries, burglaries, and robberies that filled his bank account and inflated his ego. “I made an average of £63,000 a year for three years,” he later bragged to an acquaintance. The English-born jailbird Eddie Guerin, fresh from the French penal colonies, visited Worth in London in 1887, the year of the Queen’s Jubilee, and was stunned to find his old friend and fellow felon transformed into a wealthy representative of the British upper class. “If ever a man in this world could be pointed out as an exception to the rule that no crook ever makes money it was Adam Worth,” Guerin later mused. “He owned an expensive flat in Piccadilly, he entertained some of the best people in London, who never knew him for anything but an apparently rich man of a Bohemian nature.”

  Sir Robert Anderson, the head of criminal investigation at Scotland Yard, rightly concluded that Worth’s criminal professionalism reflected a hatred of the Establishment just beneath his respectable veneer: “he loved … to pit his skill and cunning against the resources of organised society; and this regardless, in some instances, at all events, of the actual pecuniary benefit accruing to himself.” Even Shinburn, in a rare moment of admiration, conceded that “Raymond loved his work for its own sake: and although he lived in luxury and style, applied his energies to the last in organising crimes.”

  Bank robbery remained a staple form of income and Worth made no secret of his belief that the bank he could not get into and the safe he could not crack had yet to be invented. “From year to year the safemakers produced stronger and better safes, which they called burglar-proof safes,” Max Shinburn observed sardonically. “The crooks followed suit by inventing tools wherewith they were able to beat them … The Bankers of that period vied with each other to install burglarproof work in their banks, which they were ever ready to show with pride to their customers or to any passing crook.” On the pretext of wanting to place valuables under the protection of the latest technology, Worth would case the latest inventions and then pass the information on to his underlings, with the result that “the burglar kept pace with the safemaker and was able to beat anything the latter could produce.”

  It is easy to imagine Worth at the heart of this criminal web, “one of the cleverest framers-up in the whole world,” in the words of a contemporary. Rich, cautious, and contented, he sits in a leather armchair, calculating his profits, his famous stolen painting always within reach, his icon of imposture. He flitted back and forth across the Atlantic at will, and while the London police sought to keep track of his movements he would often vanish completely for long periods.

  “It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco,” Oscar Wilde once observed, and, sure enough, early in 1886 the San Francisco chief of police reported that Worth had led “a mob of all round crooks” to the West Coast for a fresh criminal spree. Knowing Worth’s refusal to brook betrayal of any sort, it seems clear he was as yet unaware of the perfidy of Little Joe Elliott, who had been released from prison the year before. Elliott now rejoined him, along with Dave Lynch and Dick Bradley, a brace of experienced thieves who had proved themselves in the past, and one Charlie Gleason, an elderly Australian convict. The gang made a rendezvous at Mulholland’s pub in New York City before heading West.

  On January 9, this crew of “Eastern Experts” blew the safe of a Sacramento bank and extracted about $4,000. “It was a clean job with no evidence to convict,” complained Captain I. W. Lees of the San Francisco Police Department to William Pinkerton. “Raymond seemed to be the moneyed man, and bought the Eastward bound tickets for the whole five. Joe [Elliott] also displayed at times, considerable money.”

  After dividing the spoils, the gang broke up. Little Joe headed to Oakland to visit the parents of Kate Castleton, by whom he was still smitten, in the hope of a reconciliation with his former wife. “He is still dead in love with Castleton and will show up wherever she is,” noted Guerin. “Castleton won’t have him, but Joe says she will weaken in the end.” She did. They remarried, but fought again—for Joe’s jealousy “grew worse than ever.” This led to several embarrassing incidents, including one in which Joe “slugged one of his wife’s admirers three times bigger than himself.” Finally they broke up for good and Joe became “absolutely reckless.” In 1889 Elliott was arrested in another forgery case and sentenced to fifteen years. As one criminal philosopher observed of the bizarre romance between the crook and the actress: “It was surely the irony of fate that the first day he arrived in Auburn Prison to begin his term his beautiful wife should be starring at the local theater. The knowledge of it absolutely broke Joe’s heart; he never came out of jail alive.”

  After a tense and dangerous “dispute with the baggage man” in San Francisco, who tried and failed to get Worth to open his trunk (containing the Duchess), Worth had headed back East and recrossed the Atlantic. He did not travel directly to London, however, but disembarked at Ostend, where, by prearrangement, he met up with a group of his men, including Gleason and old John Carr.

  Two weeks later, the gang struck again, this time lying in wait for a tram car transporting jewels and cash from Brussels to Ostend. When the tram stopped briefly in a siding, Worth’s gang “twisted the lock off the car and got into the mail car and took the funds, which amounted to something like two million francs.” The Belgian police moved with surprising swiftness, and Worth was astonished and enraged to find himself among the dozens of potential suspects rounded up for questioning. Once again, bluster pulled him through: why, he asked his interviewers, would he bother to be involved in such a crime when, as a wealthy London sporting gentleman, he was winning a fortune at the card table? He showed evidence of his latest winnings as proof, and the police, with some reluctance but convinced of Worth’s affluence, allowed him to leave on the next boat for England—where the stolen money was waiting.

  That same year the pregnant Kitty briefly suspended her trail of litigation in New York and also returned to Europe to settle with Juan Pedro in Paris. Their six years of marriage had been happy, and wildly self-indulgent, punctuated by expensive foreign trips, the sole purpose of which was the conspicuous display and disbursement of their wealth. There was nothing Worth, or for that matter the Prince of Wales, could teach Kitty about the pleasures of extravagance. Soon after taking a large apartment in the center of Paris, the Terrys received the news of the death of old Thomaso Terry. The Irish-Venezuelan adventurer turned Cuban-American magnate had finally succumbed to gout, leaving an estate worth some $50 million. With his share of the inheritance added to his already considerable fortune, Juan Pedro was now worth some $6 million. Sadly, he did not live to spend more of it or to enjoy his child. On October 17, 1886, the debonair Juan Pedro Terry, who had loved Kitty for her feisty personality and sharp tongue, inexplicably died while on a trip to Menton.

  Now a widow and seven months pregnant, Kitty was distraught, though suddenly immensely wealthy in her own right. In his will Juan Pedro left Kitty one-fifth of his estate, the rest to be invested in securities, preferably U.S. government bonds, from which Kitty would derive the income until their unborn child came of age and inherited the lot. A baby daughter, Juanita Teresa, was born in Paris two months after Juan Pedro’s death. As soon as the child was old enough to travel, Kitty collected her money and headed back to New York with the avowed intention of spending it. Worth had no doubt heard of Kitty’s bereavement and windfall, for he continued to keep tabs on her every movement, but with a fortune of her own, a young daughter, and courtiers lining up by the score, she was now further from his reach than ever.

  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a successful criminal in possession of a good fortune must be in need of a wife. Worth had begun to tire of the bachelor life and yearned for the respectability of a solid Victorian marriage. One of the recipients of Worth’s fabled generosity was a poor but genteel widow who lived with her two daughters in Bayswater,
where Worth had briefly taken lodgings. “He became, in time, much attached to this woman and her children, and lavished every luxury on them, including the education of the girls in the best French schools. For years the family never suspected their benefactor was a criminal, but supposed him to be a prosperous diamond importer”—which, in a manner of speaking, he was.

  When the older daughter’s education was completed, Worth asked for her hand in marriage, and was accepted with alacrity. Sophie Lyons, who was periodically employed by Worth to carry out petty thefts and other criminal work, did not think much of his choice. “She was a beautiful woman, but a weak, clinging sort of creature—very different from strong self-willed Kitty. Although passionately fond of her, Raymond’s attitude towards her was always that of the devoted father rather than the loving husband.”

  Lyons, who clearly carried a torch for Worth herself, clung to the belief that Worth never truly loved anyone but Kitty Flynn, and she was surely right. He was fond and protective of his young, rather feeble wife, and resolved that she should never learn of his true character, but after the loss of Kitty and, perhaps just as powerfully, his acquisition of Georgiana, Worth seemed to have lost his capacity for powerful emotional bonds, let alone genuine love. He seldom discussed his wife, even in his most confessional moments. To Pinkerton he referred to her in terms of wardship rather than marriage, as “one of the little girls that lived in the lodgings where I used to live when I first came to London.” Indeed, most details concerning Mrs. Henry Raymond, including her name, remain mysterious, but in time she bore Worth two children, a son and a daughter, in 1888 and 1891, in blissful ignorance of her husband’s dishonesty. Theirs was not a grand passion such as Worth had known with Kitty, but by all accounts he was “devotedly attached to her and squandered money on her in every way.” Worth still believed money could assuage all desires, and the marriage was another stark expression of his strange, fraudulent priorities: even to his wife he maintained an impenetrable mask of respectability, believing that, by so doing, he was behaving in a moral manner and protecting her from harm. When she finally discovered the truth, the effects were, inevitably, tragic.