“The other four are in there talking to Mrs. Siegel. Think they’re getting ready to come out.”
“Run to the Eldredge Street station and get help,” I ordered. Then I rushed to the stairs and stepped down to the doorway from where I could command the room. Mrs. Siegel screamed, but my revolver covered the four men sitting with her.
“The man who moves gets plugged!”
The four men slipped back into their seats, their hands in the air. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement. The pool room proprietor, a big tough, was edging over toward me, the butt of a billiard cue in his hand. I swung my revolver toward him and he stopped, cursing.
Those few minutes of waiting seemed a long time to me as I stood in the door with six pairs of eyes fixed on me and my gun. All those men wanted was a second of distraction. Of them all, I felt I had to watch the pool room keeper most. He was ready for anything, if he could escape a bullet in the stomach. It was a ticklish spot.
The detectives arrived on the run and the danger was over. I pocketed my gun and set myself.
“Wait a minute, boys,” I shouted. “Before you do anything, let me do something.”
I did it. I socked that tough proprietor so hard that he rolled under a pool table. He had it coming to him, and he got it, right on the button. Then the business of the arrests went forward. There wasn’t a peep out of the prisoners or Mrs. Siegel.
I telephoned to Captain O’Reilly and to Pierne. The latter bundled Siegel and the swag into a patrol wagon and rode down to Eldredge Street. Captain O’Reilly came with his own patrol wagon to take over the prisoners and the loot.
The five were held in five thousand dollars bail each and convicted before Judge Rosalsky, being sent to Sing Sing for long terms. The driver and Mrs. Siegel were spared.
Chapter XXVIII
Queen of the Forgers
That was a good week for Pierne and me. After working all night on the robbery details we went to a restaurant on Bleecker Street and, coming back to the station house, spotted three men in the act of robbing a cigar store. We collared them, and carted them along to the cells. We made arrests in two other felony cases besides, nabbing in all eleven persons. Convictions were obtained in each case, and it began to look as if things were breaking my way.
It looked even more that way when I took into custody the matronly Mrs. Catherine J. Bolch, of Philadelphia and the world at large. The newspaper headlines of the day referred to her as the “Queen of the Forgers.” She was as clever, smooth and daring as a male crook, and could do tricks with a pen that few men could equal.
Catherine had the manner that makes department store managers bow on sight. Hard-boiled store detectives would give her a glance of respect whenever she appeared. She looked to be the wife of a rich and distinguished citizen. She was about fifty years of age, with a stoutness which only added to her dignity. Her expensive clothing, her cultured voice, her treatment of department store staffs were just what might be expected from a matron of the “400.” Only, Catherine was never the wife of the same prominent citizen from one store to the next, and all the checks she left behind her bounced right back marked: “Forgery.”
In the period with which I was concerned with Catherine’s activities she had dropped into New York via Washington. She left the capital not willingly, but at the command of Major Sylvester, chief of Washington police, who gave her six hours to go.
A few days before Major Sylvester got busy a beautiful young woman had presented a check for fifty dollars, signed by “Chauncey M. Depew” to Abraham C. Mayer, a jeweler. Mr. Mayer knew of Mr. Depew. The young woman acted just as a relative of the famous United States Senator Depew would act, and Mr. Mayer gave her a forty-two dollar gold watch and eight dollars in cash for the check, hoping for more of the same exclusive trade.
But the check was a forgery and the beautiful Elizabeth Ray who had passed it was found to be the supposed daughter of Mrs. Bolch. The chain of evidence was obvious, for everywhere that Mrs. Bolch had gone, from the Atlantic coast west to Chicago, there was the same trail of worthless checks. Senator Depew did not care to prosecute a woman, but her exile was demanded.
I would have had a lot of respect for Catherine on the score of her nerve, but no detective has any use for the crook who strikes at a hard-working, defenseless person. Catherine’s most brazen stunt made me her enemy for life. The doors of Sing Sing didn’t close on her any too soon to suit me.
Catherine appeared at the house of Mrs. Ryan on West Twelfth Street and took a room. Mrs. Ryan, a widow supporting herself and her children as a boarding-house keeper, was impressed by the clothing and manner of her new lodger. Her sympathies were won completely when she saw that Mrs. Bolch’s right hand was bandaged.
“Oh, you mustn’t bother about me, Mrs. Ryan. I’ve had an operation on my hand, but I’m sure that everything will be all right. Please don’t concern yourself.”
But the generous Mrs. Ryan did concern herself. She couldn’t do enough for her new guest. She found pleasure in talking to this woman, who seemed to have been everywhere. Entirely unaware that she was being cross-examined, she told her life story, gave the names of her parents, her place of birth in Ireland, the name of the ship on which she had sailed to America, her age, the date of her marriage, the dates of her own children’s births, the name of her husband and other intimate details of her family life. Mrs. Bolch seemed so sympathetic.
Mrs. Ryan was only too glad to help when requested to write a letter to Mrs. Bolch’s daughter in Newark.
“Sign it with your own name, my dear, and tell daughter that I’m feeling better and will soon be able to write myself.”
Mrs. Ryan mailed the letter to a post office box in Newark as requested, and forgot the incident. But Mrs. Bolch’s right hand seemed to get better quite rapidly after that. A few days afterward Mrs. Bolch called Mrs. Ryan to her room.
“You have been very kind to me, my dear, and you deserve a holiday.” Mrs. Bolch was smiling at her, and that was good. “Now I want you and your daughter to take this ten dollars and go right down to Coney Island. Have a good time. Spend the whole day and all of the money. Forget all about the house. Leave everything right as it is. My hand is so much better, you know.”
Holidays were rare to Mrs. Ryan. She needed little urging on this bright summer morning, particularly with her house left in such good hands. She was gone with her daughter in half an hour, and then Mrs. Bolch set to work. First she broke open a desk and removed Mrs. Ryan’s bank book. With the letter which had gone to Newark and back, secretly, as her guide, she forged the landlady’s name to a withdrawal slip.
At the bank she passed herself off as Mrs. Ryan. She babbled so many details of Mrs. Ryan’s life and family and the signature was so exact that the bank clerk handed over Mrs. Ryan’s full deposit, fifteen hundred dollars.
Not content with this haul, Mrs. Bolch returned boldly to the house, bringing a secondhand furniture dealer with her. To him she sold every stick of furniture in the place. She set a shrewd price and insisted on payment at once in cash.
Mrs. Ryan, enjoying the outing and the luxury of a restaurant dinner down at Coney Island, was telling her daughter:
“We must repay Mrs. Bolch some way for her kindness. She’s the loveliest lady I’ve ever met. Think of her, offering to stay home herself on this hot day and watch things for me.”
At that very moment the “kind, sweet” Mrs. Bolch was ransacking the rooms of the lodgers for money, jewelry and marketable articles. She didn’t miss a thing. Hours before the happy Ryans returned, their guest was gone with cash and loot valued at from six thousand to seven thousand dollars. Mrs. Ryan was left penniless.