NF (1998) The Napoleon of Crime Page 22

  Soon another, more credible offer arrived. Worth’s own solicitor told him he had been contacted by the “English authorities” and claimed to bring “word from the Home Secretary in Belgium that his release would follow the return of the picture.” Again Worth flatly refused not only to make such a deal but to “admit to his own lawyer that he knew anything whatever about the picture.” The lawyer pleaded with him, but Worth was adamant.

  Perhaps, as Pinkerton surmised, he feared the offers were merely a ruse, for it is hard to see how a London art dealer (however well connected) could have prevented the Belgian authorities from bringing to trial a man with an extensive criminal record who had been caught committing a major robbery. Worth was clearly in the most desperate straits of his career, but his refusal to cooperate in any way with either the “English authorities” or this nameless “prominent police official” suggests a willful obstinacy as much as caution. The painting was in a Boston warehouse, but during the seventeen years that Worth had traveled the world with his Duchess in his trunk, his yacht, and his bed, an extraordinary bond had grown between them which meant far more to him than money, more, even, than his freedom.

  During her lifetime, Georgiana had bewitched a generation. Long after her death, through images like the Gainsborough, the strange power of her personality continued to seize the public imagination. Through his theft of the painting, Worth had become the custodian of that myth, attached, even shackled to Gainsborough’s duchess by a psychological covenant he would not and perhaps could not break. Worth’s double life had crashed around him, but he still had the painting, the last symbol of the grand con trick he had played so well. With the duchess on his arm, as it were, he had swaggered through gilded halls undetected; she had been his passport to high society, and the hurdle that held him from it. The law and the world might now know him as Adam Worth—rogue, impostor, villain, and liar—but for as long as he had the Duchess he was still, in his own perception, Henry J. Raymond, worthy gentleman and mighty thief. A photograph taken by the prison authorities early in 1893 says much about Worth’s state of mind. Tieless but in a suit, a handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket, he stares directly at the camera, a picture of arch defiance, controlled and deeply menacing.

  To the intense frustration of William Agnew, no doubt, Worth vigorously denied any knowledge of the painting’s whereabouts. The Duchess was his badge of superiority and invincibility, proof that he remained as ever one step ahead, and he now penned numerous letters, in elaborate code, to his allies, lawyers, and friends, requesting help in his predicament. Many replied, also using code and false names, sending money, moral support, and the latest underworld gossip. Each letter was intercepted and scrutinized by the baffled Belgian prison authorities. From his wife and her appointed protector, Johnny Curtin, there was an ominous and total silence, but succor did arrive from another, poignant quarter.

  Kitty Flynn—the widow Terry—now wrote regularly to her former lover, sending large amounts of money with cheering messages. She signed herself “Turquoise.” Already a dab hand in legal matters, she also helped to organize Worth’s defense. Somehow the authorities rumbled the true identity of Turquoise and, perhaps through Shinburn, learned of Kitty’s strange amatory history connecting Worth and Bullard. The police quizzed Worth closely on his relationship with Kitty, but the thief, gallant as ever, staunchly denied they had ever been lovers. When it was suggested otherwise, he angrily refused to discuss the matter further. An English gentleman, even one exposed as a fraud, does not discuss his love affairs.

  As the trial date approached, Worth’s defending lawyer, Jules Janson, paid a visit to his notorious client and set the exceedingly bleak prospects before him. The police, Janson pointed out, had a mountain of evidence indicating that Edouard Grau, alias Adam Worth, alias Henry Raymond, was a career criminal of rare distinction. As for the robbery in question, the prosecutors had assembled several reliable witnesses, not to mention a record of Worth’s incautious remarks while in custody. The lawyer’s advice to Worth was stark: admit to robbing the mail wagon, but deny everything else emphatically, and throw yourself on the mercy of the court. Worth should claim the admissions he had already made were extracted under duress. Above all, Janson recommended, play down the “Prince of Cracksmen” stuff. Somewhat chastened, Worth agreed.

  On the morning of March 20, 1893, the Liège court of assizes was packed with lawyers and members of the public “eager to see the defendant who has been the subject of such extraordinary publicity.” Sleepy, comfortable, bourgeois Liège had never seen a case like it. Eastern Belgium was not noted for crime: the occasional domestic assault and a little corruption was about the most its courts expected to deal with from one end of the year to the next. A mysterious, dangerous, many-named international thief attempting a daylight robbery in one of the city’s busiest streets was a rare treat indeed. Reporters for the Liège newspapers jostled for the best view as Monsieur Beltjens, the portly public prosecutor, swaggered into court, looking supremely confident. Worth followed, in manacles, but doing his best to keep up appearances. Six months of imprisonment had taken a toll, and as he stood in the dock it was noted that he had “lost much of his gentlemanly bearing.” On Janson’s advice, Worth had reluctantly shaved off his handlebar mustaches and, “deprived of the magnificent whiskers which had furnished his face, the accused had singularly lost his dapper appearance.” As the newspaper La Meuse observed: “This is no longer the gentleman of last October: but if the face has lost some of its earlier distinction, the man has nonetheless retained his polite and correct manner.” Monsieur Beltjens may have done his homework, but Worth was also prepared for the coming tussle and determined not to be outdone in the matter of courtroom politesse.

  The proceedings were short, confusing, and often hilarious, as Worth tergiversated, trying to throw Beltjens off with a combination of charm, equivocation, calculated self-incrimination, and straightforward perjury.

  PROSECUTOR BELTJENS: “When did you go to America?”

  WORTH: “When I was five or six years old.”

  PROSECUTOR: “But you were only three when your father emigrated?”

  WORTH: “Quite possibly, yes.”

  PROSECUTOR: “How long did you stay there?”

  WORTH: “Until 1870. Then I traveled to England, but I did not stay there long. I then went to the Cape, to the diamond mines.”

  PROSECUTOR BELTJENS: “You say you left London on 27 September 1892?”

  WORTH: “Yes.”

  PROSECUTOR: “Were you not invited to Switzerland by a man called Oscar Klein?”

  WORTH: “I met him in Bâle, where a contact in Geneva had said I would find him. I stayed in Bâle until the day I left for Liège, stopping for a few hours in Cologne and Aix on the way. I arrived here on 4 October on the express train at 8:30 in the morning.”

  PROSECUTOR: “What did you notice on your arrival?”

  WORTH: “I saw the post office parcel delivery coach. Since the parcels were all stamped, I said to myself that they must contain something of value.”

  PROSECUTOR: “Is that when the idea of the robbery occurred to you?”

  WORTH: “Yes.”

  PROSECUTOR: “How did you spend the day on October 4?”

  WORTH: “I walked around the town, I purchased a padlock to see if the key might not fit the padlock on the van strongbox, and an overcoat because it had rained and I didn’t have one with me.”

  PROSECUTOR: “Did you not buy the overcoat so that you could put it on as a disguise after the robbery to cover your tracks?”

  WORTH: “No.”

  PROSECUTOR: “That’s what you told the examining magistrate.”

  WORTH: “Quite possibly, but it wasn’t true.”

  PROSECUTOR: “Where did you spend the night?”

  WORTH: “With a woman.”

  This was not, as it happened, true, but it had the desired effect. Once the audience had stopped tittering and being scandalized, Monsieu
r Beltjens resumed his cross-examination.

  PROSECUTOR: “How did you carry out the robbery?”

  WORTH: “I saw the driver leave the van and go into a house. I climbed up onto his seat and forced the lock with a tool. I had followed the van all the way from the station.”

  PROSECUTOR: “When you were arrested, you refused to say who you were or where you came from. You even told the police superintendent that you would rather die than admit where you had last worked, adding ‘If you knew that, I would be put in prison for the rest of eternity.’ ”

  WORTH: “I didn’t say any of that.”

  PROSECUTOR: “You claim you have no previous convictions?”

  WORTH: “I’ve never been convicted, or arrested for that matter.”

  PROSECUTOR: “You tell us this is the first robbery you have ever committed?”

  WORTH: “Most certainly.”

  PROSECUTOR: “Did you not tell the police superintendent that you are a mechanic by training, but that you have lived for the last two years on the proceeds from thievery?”

  WORTH: “I never said anything of the kind, but I was chained up for twenty-two hours, and therefore I said a whole lot of things, but I didn’t say that. I did say, in order to stop them from torturing me, that I would say anything they liked.”

  PROSECUTOR: “We are not in the habit of torturing people here.”

  And there, for a while, Monsieur Beltjens paused for effect, having thus reinforced the might and civilization of the Belgian kingdom. Worth had admitted the robbery, but made it sound like a spur-of-the-moment act, the uncharacteristic behavior of a foreigner in a strange land. Beltjens now moved to his second phase of attack: trying to prove that Worth was a rich and dangerous criminal with a long record of malfeasance and numerous, highly undesirable associates. He set off on a new tack.

  PROSECUTOR: “When you were implicated in the robbery at Ostend in 1886 you said, at that time, did you not, that you had no need to steal anything because you were winning 1,500 francs a week playing baccarat in the winter and betting on horses during the summer?”

  WORTH: “That’s right. I found it a bit more lucrative than working as a mechanic.”

  The laughter at Worth’s insolence did not deter the stolid Beltjens, who now charged into the thicket of Worth’s innumerable aliases, a most complicated area of inquiry which Worth did his best to render still more confusing.

  PROSECUTOR: “You gave various false names when you were arrested. Why?”

  WORTH: “First of all I said I was Edouard Grau. It was the first name that came into my head, because I didn’t want you to know my real name.”

  PROSECUTOR: “You admit that you behaved in an extremely irregular manner?”

  WORTH: “Yes, I was playing about, but I didn’t do anything illegal.”

  PROSECUTOR: “Why was it that you happened to choose the name of Grau and of Henry Raymond, names of infamous criminals in America?”

  WORTH: “During the war between France and Germany in 1870, I wanted to go to Paris but, because of my German origins, I was denied a passport, so I took the name of Raymond and came to France, where I continued to be known as Raymond, as I was in the Cape.”

  PROSECUTOR: “Do you know this fellow Raymond?

  WORTH: “Yes, he was a friend of mine.”

  PROSECUTOR: “Did you know that he was a robber?”

  WORTH: “I had heard it said, but I never saw him steal anything.”

  PROSECUTOR: “Did you not also know that this fellow Raymond had another name: Adam Worth?”

  WORTH: “At that time it was myself who used the name Adam Worth.”

  PROSECUTOR: “Did you never hear it said that in America this Adam Worth also had the reputation of being a ruthless thief?”

  WORTH: “No.”

  The judge, jury, spectators, and even Monsieur Beltjens were now surely baffled as to who, precisely, stood in the dock. Beltjens, thoroughly discomfited, pressed doggedly on.

  PROSECUTOR: “In America did you not know Bullard and Shinburn, who were tried here in 1884?”

  WORTH: “Yes.”

  PROSECUTOR: “These were both professional thieves, were they not?”

  WORTH: “I knew that Bullard was, but not Shinburn.”

  Worth had not yet learned of Shinburn’s treachery and still sought to protect him, despite the antipathy he felt toward the man. He may also have hoped that Shinburn would provide a similar character reference. There was little point in attempting to defend Bullard’s good name, even supposing such a thing had ever existed.

  PROSECUTOR: “Oscar Klein, who you said was a friend of yours, was also a professional criminal?”

  WORTH: “Yes, I knew that he lived off theft and swindling.”

  PROSECUTOR: “What intimate relations you have with professional thieves! Bullard was a particularly close friend, was he not?”

  WORTH: “Yes, I went to visit him in Paris, where he ran a bar on the rue Scribe.”

  PROSECUTOR: “Was he not convicted in Paris for running a secret gambling parlor in this very same bar?”

  WORTH: “Yes.”

  PROSECUTOR: “While he was in prison, did you not run the bar?”

  WORTH: “I bought it from him. Bullard was extremely wealthy. He had £10,000 in the bank. I had £12,000 myself. I had just returned from the Cape.”

  PROSECUTOR: “Did you know how Bullard earned his money?”

  WORTH: “No.”

  PROSECUTOR: “So, this is yet another association with a crook! How much did you pay for the bar?”

  WORTH: “100,000 francs.”

  PROSECUTOR: “You not only have a peculiar set of friends and acquaintances, but bizarre ways of corresponding with them. You received letters in prison signed Turquoise, Comedian, and Edouard Grau, the very name which you yourself had adopted.”

  WORTH: “These are the names of comic actors in London. I wanted to make sure that you didn’t find out about either my acquaintances or my business.”

  Monsieur Beltjens was running out of steam. He suggested that Worth had purchased the new padlock to replace the forced lock on the strongbox and give himself time to escape. No, said Worth, he had not. Beltjens pointed out, with heavy sarcasm, the “remarkable similarity” between the Ostend robbery and the crime in question, and insisted that Worth had been in Liège for at least a month before October 5, planning the theft. No, said Worth, he had not. Exasperated by the series of denials, Beltjens was forced to conclude his case on an anticlimax.

  PROSECUTOR: “But you do admit breaking into the trunk?”

  WORTH: “Yes.”

  The prosecution rested, and it was the turn of Thèodore de Corswarem, the investigating magistrate, to give evidence. Corswarem briefly outlined “a series of crimes that the English police have attributed to Adam Worth, without furnishing any evidence or proof”—for the simple reason that if Shore of the Yard had had any, Worth would have been in English rather than Belgian handcuffs.

  Worth leapt to his feet to protest at the admission of mere hearsay and vehemently declared his innocence. He was unceremoniously told to shut up and sit down. Corswarem then offered a glimpse into the wealthy world of Henry Raymond: “He lived at the time in Piccadilly, where he pursued a life of great luxury. He maintained a crew on a riverboat on the Thames and a yacht at Southampton.

  “When interrogated on the origin of his wealth,” the magistrate testified, “he replied that he had gambled and won 1,500 francs a week. He doesn’t seem to be in dire financial straits. He receives a lot of letters from England and New York, but these are written in such a way that it is impossible for us to know what they meant. One letter was signed Turquoise, which is the name of a woman in New York who just recently sent him $50.”

  Worth’s lawyer chose this moment to make an interjection, his first of the trial and one which Worth could have done without.

  “That’s Mrs. Bullard,” he piped up, unhelpfully. The magistrate agreed that Turquoise and the former Mrs
. Bullard were one and the same, and noted that the accused had “said he knew her, but denied that they had ever been lovers.”

  Despite Worth’s mounting irritation at this unwarranted speculation into his love life, he kept his composure. The magistrate was still elaborating on Worth’s lavish life-style. “He had some very fine furniture in London. The police in London say that he has been convicted in America. I have written for confirmation, but have not yet received a reply”—and never would, thanks to Pinkerton’s reticence. At this point Corswarem abruptly terminated his testimony with the bald statement: “He told me he had been stealing for the last two years.”

  Two more witnesses then described how they helped to arrest the robber, followed by Janssens, a railway worker, who claimed that he had seen Worth following the mail van one month before the robbery. Sensing what was coming, Worth again attempted a denial, but his protestations were growing feeble with repetition.

  Beltjens summed up, calling on the jury to award the maximum possible penalty to this “bold and dangerous” miscreant.

  Now, finally, it was Jules Janson’s turn to present the defense. Perhaps he was overwhelmed by the occasion or by the wealth of evidence against his client, or was simply a bad lawyer, but his performance was distinctly lackluster.

  “The importance of the defendant and his circumstances has been completely exaggerated,” Janson began. “Mr. Worth had made some admissions, but his situation must be taken into account. He must be seen as the perpetrator of a single crime.” As La Meuse reported: “Mr. Janson said the information furnished by the English police was the merest calumny, which should never have been allowed into proceedings and which had crossed the sea in order to discredit a man who had never had the slightest conviction for anything.” Just as he appeared to be warming to his theme, Janson ground to an abrupt halt. “Worth has never been convicted!” he spluttered, before what sounded suspiciously like a complete abdication: “The jury should be lenient for the sake of the defendant’s wife and children.” He tailed off and sat down.