The Napoleon of Crime (24 page)

With one part of the plan now in place, all that remained was to ensure that the diamond shipment was delayed. Not far from Port Elizabeth “
there was a deep stream, where the coach had to cross by the ferry, which was operated on wire rope cable: nearby was a small tavern, and Worth waited until time for the coach was come, which was in the evening, and then cut the rope, which allowed the ferry to drift down the stream with the current.” The convoy was delayed by eight hours as the ferry was laboriously poled back up stream and another cable attached. Sure enough, when the convoy arrived in Port Elizabeth, the steamer for England had sailed, and the packages of uncut gems were, as usual, placed in the post-office safe as a precaution. “
The next night he entered the post office and abstracted from the safe diamonds and other valuables to the amount of $500,000.”

“
The swag,” as he later told Pinkerton, “consisted largely of packages of diamonds, money and government bills, all of which were valuable.”

The assistant postmaster was immediately suspected of the theft and placed under arrest. There was no proof he had played even an indirect part in the robbery, but the police found evidence that “
he had been embezzling money letters which passed through his office.” He was tried and sentenced to five years, but even though “
experts from England were sent out to investigate the case,” of the real thief there was not a trace—which was less than surprising, since he had left Port Elizabeth several hours before the theft was discovered. “
Knowing that anyone who attempted to leave the country would be under suspicion, Worth quietly went up the country from Cape Town pretending to be in search of investments and purchasing ostrich feathers.”

After a month, Worth, this time with a large parcel of diamonds as well as the
Duchess
, set sail for Suez and then Brindisi. He was extremely short of ready cash and praying fervently that, as agreed, Charley King had sent money to Italy for his return passage. The old thief, however, scenting money, had gone one better and, “
seeing the thing in the papers, instead of wiring the money to his account in Brindisi, for the purpose of declaring himself in with the money, started for Brindisi himself.” The two crooks could not find each other in the bustling port, and after he had waited more than a week, Worth pawned “
some article which he had and took the other route home.” When the apologetic Charley King finally arrived back in London, Worth was forgiving. Despite the fact that he had played no part in the final theft, and had disobeyed Worth’s orders by failing to send the money, Worth nonetheless gave him £1,600, “
more for the purpose of buying his silence than anything else.”

Worth’s next act, on returning to his Piccadilly pad, was equally a mixture of generosity and self-interest. His brother John Worth, the criminal incompetent who had already caused so many problems, was down on his luck, threatening to return to England and keen to participate in another criminal enterprise—a prospect which, given John’s dazzling ineptitude, was distinctly troubling to his older brother. Almost half the proceeds from the South African heist were handed over to John Worth, on condition that he abandon a life of crime and settle down in America. John agreed, moved to Brooklyn, and to Worth’s deep relief and surprise, he never again attempted to break the law.

Some years later Pinkerton reported what Worth had said and done about his younger brother: “
He said that John was a damn fool for a crook and he stopped him at it a long time ago; that he had been used by Becker and others, and that he had given John a considerable sum of money at the time of the mail robbery in Cape Town [sic], and with that had kept John clean and above board, and he hoped he would never again be engaged in any crooked transaction.” Worth plainly felt a deep responsibility for his sibling, but it was less for the sake of John’s immortal soul that he persuaded him to go straight, and rather more because, given John’s gullibility and general incompetence, he was too much a liability as an accomplice.

Worth’s generosity also reflected his extraordinary good humor on his return to London. For one thing, he had hit on an excellent and highly profitable way to dispose of the diamonds. The traditional method was to work back such stolen goods through a series of fences until they reached the open market. Not only was the process risky, since any one of the links in the chain could turn informer, but it meant that the diamonds fetched a fraction of their full worth. In a stunningly audacious move, Worth decided to cut out the expensive middle men by selling the diamonds himself.

From America Worth recruited one Ned Wynert, alias Johnny Smith, described by the Pinkertons as a “
clever, educated fellow and entirely unknown to the London police.” Wynert was an astute, reliable rogue, but an inveterate womanizer. According to Shinburn, who never missed an opportunity to slander his rivals, Wynert was “
married to a lady of a very respectable family. He treats her shamefully, spending all of his stealings on other women.” For Worth’s purposes he was the ideal henchman, as discreet in criminal matters as he was intemperate in emotional ones. Worth set up his new partner as a diamond merchant under the name Wynert & Co., in Hatton Garden, the heart of London’s jewelry trade. “
By putting their goods at a shilling or two on the pound less than the standard prices in London, they found no trouble in disposing of all their goods to merchants who came to London from Amsterdam to buy.” To Worth’s great pleasure, some of the gems were even sold to the very merchants who had already bought them once, on consignment, before he stole them. The final take was estimated at £90,000. As Sir Robert Anderson of Scotland Yard noted, a different sort of man might have been content to go into early retirement after such a coup. “
If I had ever possessed ninety thousand pounds of anything, the Government would have had to find someone else to look after burglars,” the detective once remarked. “But Raymond loved his work for its own sake” and was already plotting new schemes.

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

W
ith 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.”