NF (1998) The Napoleon of Crime Read online

  At precisely that moment, the van driver returned to his vehicle and “he too set off after the robber.” For a middle-aged man, Worth could put on a good turn of speed when the occasion demanded, as this one clearly did. “The fugitive already had a considerable distance on his pursuers,” one newspaper later reported, “which he gradually increased.” Meanwhile, police officer Charbonnier had heard the shouting and he, too, joined the chase. Worth’s age, countless expensive dinners, and the weight of his haul soon made it an unequal race. Realizing the pursuers were gaining ground, Worth “hastened to rid himself of the objects he had just stolen, hurling them onto the pavement and making a bee-line for the rue Saint-Veronique,” where he hoped to hide in the crowd. As Worth ruefully explained to Pinkerton years later, he was “two blocks away” from the scene of the crime before he was tackled from behind by the far younger and fitter policeman, who, aided by two more citizens and panting from the chase, clapped him in handcuffs.

  Arrogant to the last, Worth tried to brazen it out. His name was Edward Grey (which the police transcribed as Edouard Grau), he said, from London, England, and he demanded to be released immediately. His spontaneous choice of alias may conceivably have been a reference to Charles Grey, the Duchess of Devonshire’s onetime lover. But the Belgian police were cannier than their French Canadian counterparts had been a few years earlier, and were not going to be put off so easily when, as the magistrate put it, they had him “en flagrant délit de vol,” red-handed.

  In its edition of the following day, La Gazette de Liège described the attempted robbery as “an audacious coup, brilliantly planned” and allowed some sly racism to intrude on its reporting. “Grau is a strong fellow, with a vigorous and intelligent air. His face, of the characteristic Semitic type, is furnished with a dark mustache which, like his hair, is beginning to turn gray. It appears almost certain that he is lying in his declarations and that he has given a false name. He has given contradictory responses to other questions.” Le Soir noted that “he was dressed in gentlemanly fashion and carried on him a considerable amount of Belgian cash,” and La Meuse pointed to his “conventional attire” and noted that “all his effects carry the marks of British makers.”

  When his hotel room was searched and business cards found embossed with the name Henry Raymond and his London address, he admitted he had been living under that name for twenty-five years. Next, the police produced the burglar’s tool from the scene of the crime, “the extremely solid ‘Pince Monseigneur’ [crow bar], wrapped in a leather sheath, which had been used for the theft.” Worth now spun the baffled police a remarkable tale: he was, he said, a fifty-two-year-old mechanic, originally from Munich, who had come to Belgium via “Cologne, Mulhouse, Strasbourg and other German and Swiss towns.” The burglar’s tool he had purchased from a blacksmith in Aix the previous week. Hoping to put his interrogators off the scent, he offered them a sop, saying he had not worked for two years in London but had lived on the proceeds from a few petty thefts. Prior to that, he claimed, he had worked legitimately as a diamond salesman for the firm of Wynert & Co. in London. One moment he admitted carrying out the robbery of the wagon, the next he denied it. Deprived of sleep, he began to contradict himself.

  “There is evidence to suggest that we are in the presence of a bold bandit who has strong motives for staying completely mute,” La Gazette reported as the interrogation continued, adding: “Grau is a Jew, but whether German, English or American, remains unknown.”

  For two days the police hammered Worth with repeated questions. “Who are you? Where do you come from? Where did you last work?” Exhausted, Worth finally lost his temper and he told the Belgian police superintendent he would rather die than say anything else. “If you knew the truth I would be put away in prison for eternity,” he growled, with a flash of the ego he could never suppress. Realizing that he had already said too much, at this point Worth clammed up and, despite the alternate threats and inducements of the police, he declined to utter another word. “He refuses to disclose his identity for family reasons,” the police reported. In this, if nothing else, Worth was being perfectly honest, for his principal concern seems to have been to prevent his wife from finding out about his predicament. Despite the evident treachery of his accomplices, Worth insisted he had acted alone. “With the loyalty for which he was famous Raymond [Worth] steadfastly refused to reveal the identity of the confederate to whose folly he owed his own arrest, and Curtin escaped to England,” the starry-eyed Sophie Lyons later wrote. In fact, it appears that Worth’s refusal to finger his accessory was directly intended to protect his family, since he had asked Curtin to look after his wife and children in the event of his arrest.

  All of which left the authorities in a quandary. Inquiries made at the Guillermins railway station revealed that “this individual had been seen several times over the previous weeks, wandering around the shopping areas. A sub-conductor had even seen him the week before, closely following a delivery wagon in the quai de Fragnée.” The man in their custody was plainly a criminal of some sort, but precisely what sort it was impossible to tell; Worth had hoped to come away from the van robbery with up to “a million francs or $200,000,” but in fact the packages he had stolen also contained “valuable state papers,” which raised the possibility that he might be a spy. “The official value of the papers is 60,000 francs, but the real value is a great deal more,” one newspaper stated; others estimated the contents of the box were worth at least half a million francs, given their importance.

  Five days after Worth’s arrest, he “continued to maintain an almost complete silence [and] as for the question of whether he carried out this brazen robbery with the aid of accomplices or whether he planned it alone, that too remains unknown … the robber continues to pretend his name is Edouard Grau.” Finally, the investigating magistrate at the Liège High Court, Théodore de Corswarem, took the step of circulating to European and American police forces a description of the suspect, complete with Bertillion measurements and a photograph, along with a request for information.

  “This fellow speaks and writes very good English,” Corswarem advised, “as well as German and French with an English accent. He is stout, strong and of a sanguine temperament, hair cut short, side whiskers and mustache in the Russian style, whiskers completely gray, moustache less so, brown eyes, high forehead, prominent nose.” While Worth had lavished money on racing horses and champagne parties, he had clearly neglected his dentistry. “Teeth irregular and discolored,” wrote the Belgian judge. “On the right side of the upper jaw one tooth is missing and one is decayed, on the same side of the lower jaw another tooth is missing and another decayed, on left side of upper jaw the two little molars are missing and the first big molar is very much decayed,” and so on. Since Worth was still resolutely refusing to open his mouth for any other reason, his teeth were almost the only solid evidence the Belgian police had to go on. The circular concluded with a plea from Judge Corswarem to his “legal colleagues and all police officials to do their utmost to establish the man’s identity, find out his antecedents and anything else concerning this person, and to communicate them as soon as possible.”

  The authorities were beginning to panic, for, as a contemporary noted, “neither the police nor the detectives knew him. The evidence against him was not very strong. He stood a good chance of being acquitted.” A week after his arrest, as it became ever clearer that the authorities were still in the dark, Worth’s spirits began to lift and he regained his voice, dropping boastful hints and taunting his captors, in the apparent belief that he would not be prosecuted and might as well have some fun. “Interrogated on the subject of his nationality, he said that if they really wanted to know they had only to look back over the history of an important and celebrated robbery committed, some time ago, on the railway at Ostende de Malines.” The Belgian journalists picked up the scent. “Investigations have been made in this quarter,” reported La Meuse. “If he is one of the perpetrators of this rob
bery, which we remember, there is every reason to believe that this bold bandit is an Englishman. He has retained his ‘sangfroid’ throughout, and is enjoying himself thoroughly at the trouble his anonymity has caused the investigating magistrates.”

  While the Belgian police waited to hear from their colleagues in Europe and the United States, word reached them that an elderly criminal by the name of Max Shinburn, currently imprisoned in the local jail, was only too anxious to identify the miscreant. The Baron, it seems, “had got hold of the newspaper containing an account of the arrest [and] from the description he suspected that the prisoner was his intimate enemy, Adam Worth … He lost no time in communicating with the authorities [and] made a bargain with them which was doubly advantageous to him inasmuch as it secured his own release and convicted the man he hated.”

  Shinburn laid out Worth’s striking criminal history in lavish detail, noting virtually every theft he had carried out or commissioned since the Civil War. The resulting document, which remains in the Pinkerton archives, was a masterpiece of treachery, hypocrisy, and revenge. Over the years Shinburn had learned from Charley Bullard the complete details of his rival’s career, and he now provided the astonished Belgian police with chapter and verse on the Boylston Bank robbery, the American Bar, the South African robbery, and even the theft of the Gainsborough portrait, which “had never passed out of Worth’s hands and is to this day under his control.” Shinburn noted, with only slight geographical inaccuracy, that Worth “lives in extravagant style in a house in Piccadilly above the store of Fordham [sic] and Mason,” and conceded that “Adam Worth is without doubt the most successful burglar of the present time … no one has ever got the best of him; on the other hand, he has the reputation of having got the best of everybody in his line of work with whom he has ever had any transaction.”

  Warming to his betrayal, Shinburn then launched into what can only be described as wholesale character assassination. “His policy is to deal with weak men in his line of business, [with] whom he may do as he likes without question; this is evident in looking over the men with whom he has been connected. He does not recognize the principle of honesty among thieves, and he has never been in a job where he has not taken some mean advantage of his pals. This he may have been entitled to do in consequence of always having been the head and soul of every job he has been into, but, if so, it ought to have been understood before the job was undertaken.” Worth’s alleged treachery included substituting poor-quality diamonds for good ones when dividing spoils, “weeding the swag,” and generally diddling his accomplices out of their fair share.

  Pointing out that he had “known Worth, alias Raymond, since his boyhood days,” the Baron even saw fit to spice his perfidy with some more personal remarks: Worth’s appearance is “rather Jewish,” Shinburn sniffed, and he is “very fond of wearing much flash looking but valuable jewelry, especially a number of diamond, ruby and emerald rings on his fingers … his legs are what is termed bow-legged.” Not knowing that Ned Wynert was dead and William Megotti in jail, Shinburn included Worth’s erstwhile associates in his diatribe, which concludes with a sparkling piece of hypocrisy: “It may be said with truth that this trio of thieves are the most unprincipled towards their own kind that exist at the present day, and it is to be hoped that they will soon have meted out to them their just deserts by an often outraged law.”

  The representatives of the Belgian law were not so much outraged as stunned by the unexpected windfall, but as they pondered whether to believe Shinburn’s claims, corroboration arrived from other quarters. Thomas Byrnes of the New York Police Department politely suggested that the description fitted that of Adam Worth, the Boylston Bank robber and, in his own words, “the most famous criminal of all.” This was followed by another missive from an elated Superintendent John Shore of Scotland Yard, which sealed Worth’s fate. Shore would dearly have liked to catch Worth himself, but this was the next best thing, and he offered the Belgian authorities everything he knew about Worth’s life and crimes, including the Gainsborough robbery. The result was closer to a personal denunciation than an objective package of evidence and, as Worth himself put it, somewhat ruefully, “Shore blistered me from one end of the line to the other and made me as bad as possible” in the eyes of the Belgian authorities.

  The people who knew most about Adam Worth, the Pinkertons, maintained a complete silence, making no attempt to provide de Corswarem with the volumes of information they possessed on his activities, an omission for which Worth would be eternally, demonstrably grateful. As he later told Pinkerton, and Pinkerton told his brother, “he expected every day to see a report from this country from our agency in regard to him, and he knew that it must have been my influence that stopped the report. I did not say yes or know [sic] in regard to this, but let him go on thinking so.” In fact, William insisted, “we were not called on for the report.” This was patently untrue, for the Belgian authorities had lost no time in contacting the largest detective agency in the United States and, indeed, a copy of de Corswarem’s circular is in the Pinkertons’ archives to this day. On November 3, 1892, William Pinkerton wrote to John Shore, thanking him for forwarding a copy of Worth’s photograph. “To tell the truth he has changed so that I would hardly have known him … He is growing very old and does not look like the dapper chap he was when I saw him in London eighteen or nineteen years ago. Should the Judge of Instruction call for any particulars I have no doubt that Robert in my absence will supply him with anything he wants.” Shore also made a point of writing to Robert Pinkerton, who promptly replied, stating, “I will write to the Judge of Instruction at Liège, Belgium, advising him as to what I know about Adam Worth.” But he did not, and neither did William.

  It seems likely, then, that Worth was correct in his supposition that the Pinkertons had decided not to provide the Belgians with the agency file on Worth. Pinkerton and Worth had met at least twice, in the American Bar in Paris and later in the Criterion Bar in London; the Eye turned a blind eye. Today, this would be considered scandalous, but then law enforcement ran on a less rigid basis. William Pinkerton upheld the law, but in a highly personalized way, and he was not above bending the rules if circumstances, or individuals, required it. On such shifting sands was the rock of Victorian morality built. Pinkerton did not give up Worth for the simple reason that he liked him, respected his talents, and knew he was in scalding-hot water.

  “I know what your institution has done,” Worth told Pinkerton many years later, “and I know they had an opportunity of knocking me at the time I was in Belgium during my trouble in Liège.” It was, he said, “a debt of gratitude that he could never get over.” Eventually, Worth would repay Pinkerton in full, by providing him with the most celebrated detective coup of his career.

  TWENTY

  The Trial

  Even without the Pinkertons’ help, the Belgian authorities now had enough information on Worth to be confident of a successful prosecution, and a trial date was set for the following spring. The Belgian press excitedly advertised the forthcoming attraction: “Session of 20 and 21st March—the affair of the theft from the mail wagon by the Englishman Adam Wirth, alias ‘The Prince of the Safecrackers.’ Defending attorney: Jules Janson.”

  Word that Henry Raymond, the prominent London gentleman, had been unmasked as Adam Worth, international criminal, quickly spread to both the English and the American press. “Henry Raymond, a well known sporting man, was arrested on a railway train at Liège, Belgium … while stealing bonds valued at £4,000,” the New York World reported. “He lived in high style in London, enjoying the proceeds of many larcenies … and belongs to a clique of American thieves well-known to Paris and New York detectives. He figures in Inspector Byrnes’s book on criminals as Adam Worth.” The Daily Telegraph noted that “the man Wirth … was a member of a notorious band of American thieves, two of the members of which were tried at Liège in 1884 for breaking into the Modera Bank at Verviers. Wirth, who was concerned in some of the mos
t daring bank robberies of recent years, passed under various aliases, and was known to the American police during his stay in the United States as the ‘Prince of Cracksmen.’ He spent considerable time in London, where he lived in extravagant style, and acted as the receiver of an international agency of thieves.” The press had yet to establish a connection between Adam Worth and the stolen Gainsborough, but Inspector Shore lost no time in telling William Agnew that the search for the Duchess might soon be over. The Scotland Yard detective arranged a meeting with the art dealer and laid the known facts before him.

  Thus it was that, as Worth sat gloomily awaiting trial in a fetid jail cell, he received word that none other than the American consul had arrived to visit him. The official “claimed to represent a prominent police official in America, and offer[ed] to pay him $3,000 and effect his liberation from imprisonment for information that would lead to the recovery of the Gainsborough portrait.” The official Agnew’s history, perhaps not surprisingly, makes no mention whatever of this offer, but there is little doubt the art dealer was behind it. Worth, however, “declined to have anything to do with the matter, claiming that he knew nothing about the picture, and that all stories to the contrary were false.”