The Napoleon of Crime (36 page)

“
With the exception of being grey and aged considerable I saw very little difference in him after a period of over twenty years. He seemed to me to be shorter and a little inclined to be stooped, and his hair and mustache, which was black when I knew him, was now an iron gray. I should judge that he weighed 130 to 135 pounds … very dapper in his dress; about five feet five inches high; small build; speaks with a very pronounced English accent … he is about the last man that would be picked up as the dangerous professional crook that he is. He is undersized and small.” The detective also noted that Worth “
had indications of a man who drank pretty heavily … something that he never did when I knew him.”

To judge from Pinkerton’s notes, Worth had evidently spruced himself up to prepare for this momentous meeting, summoning up what remained of his former brio: “
I weighed him up carefully for the purpose of making an accurate description of him … his eyebrows are quite heavy and evidently blacked up; face thin; eyes brown, nose prominent; large ears; rather long arms and hands; genteel; dressed neatly in dark clothes all the way through; frock coat, wears a modest gold chain, in England called an Albert chain, with a cameo charm; in scarf small pearl, pear shape, and sat bolt upright.”

Worth greeted his old enemy warmly, and Pinkerton in turn invited him to sit down and “have a chat.”

“What brings you here?” Pinkerton asked, for want of a better opening gambit.

“
Well, I came to see you,” Worth replied. “I told you a great many years ago that if I ever came to America I would look you up; now I have been over a number of times and I never have looked you up, but this time I looked you up of my own accord; I wanted to see you; I have thought a great deal of you of late; I know what your institution has done and I know that you had the opportunity of knocking me at the time I was in Belgium years ago during my trouble in Liège, for which I stayed in college five years, in other words prison … Now I am placing myself entirely in your hands; I have never done it with a human being before, but I have implicit confidence in your word that you and yours will not take advantage of what I say.”

Robert Pinkerton, William’s younger brother and head of the Pinkerton Detective Agency’s New York office.

William Pinkerton in 1876, the year of the Gainsborough theft.

An adept burglar and blackmailer of rat-like cunning, “Little” Joe Elliott was distinguished by his love of women in general, and actresses in particular.

Kate Castleton, the pretty English-born actress and star of the American comic stage who had the singular misfortune to marry Joe Elliott twice.

The “widow” Kitty Flynn, around the time she was being wooed by Cuban sugar millionaire Juan Pedro Terry. The marriage would transform her from a gangster’s moll into one of the richest and most litigious women in New York high society.
(Courtesy: Katharine Sanford)

Alonzo Henne, alias “Dutch Alonzo,” a small-time bank thief with “a great reputation for being a staunch fellow,” recruited by Worth in the 1880s.

“Piano” Charley Bullard at the time of his arrest in 1884, after years of dissipation had taken their toll, leaving him a “grim cipher of the once-glamorous rake.”

Adam Worth, alias Henry Judson Raymond. A rogues’ gallery photograph taken by Belgian police after his arrest in Liège in 1892.

Maximilian Shinburn, alias “the Baron,” bogus aristocrat, safecracker, and Worth’s nemesis.

Patrick Sheedy, a dubious gambler and “sporting man known throughout the world,” who acted as the go-between in negotiations between Worth and the Pinkertons over the stolen Gainsborough.